vantage point.

I love Malcolm Gladwell. 

Anyone that knows me knows this. I've been devouring his books all summer.  Then I got to the book Outliers and that came to a screeching halt. I went from flying through the pages to trudging...through mud. Every page was a chore. But there is something about reading a book that keeps me from being able to quit. I have to know the meaning. I have to know the ending. 

I finished Outliers today and I'm so glad I did. 

In the last chapter of the book, he talks about the fact that his great-great-great grandmother was bought in Jamaica. She was a slave.... a man looked at her then bought her to be his mistress.  They had children, and those children produced the lineage of my current favorite author.  And the point of his entire book was about how lineage matters. How it molds you, and builds you...even if you don't realize it has. He makes the point that denying your lineage and the impact it has on your life is doing a disservice to yourself and the world.  That if you don't know the culture someone comes from, you can never truly understand how they think, feel, and act. 

That carried so much weight for me....I left the trendy little coffee shop I was in to walk home and  started crying. 

I kept thinking...my lineage is important. My lineage matters. And just crying. 

I've spent so much of my life striving for perfection. Listening to stories in church and getting the very distinct perception that you have to be really good to be successful. Like these perfect people in the Bible, that were obviously so holy because they were graced with inclusion in a sacred story. 

My life didn't look like that. My life was messy and confusing and sometimes just plain sad.  I was taught to look like these perfect stories, even if it wasn't my reality.  

So I hid and denied my lineage. I moved away from my people, because my people weren't "successful" or "good". I wanted my life to be something amazing and grand.  The kid of addicts and poverty doesn't get to be those things. That wasn't what was preached to me on Sundays. That wasn't what was shown to me in society. That wasn't what was bred in me at home.   The culture I grew up in said, if you're messy then you're unlovable, and if you're unlovable you'll never be successful.  

When my history did get brought up, it was always in an arrogant way.  Like, well yes I do come from a family of addicts, but I'm FAR superior to them because I don't do drugs or drink.  My life was falling apart but I couldn't let the pride of being an "overcomer" go.  I had to be successful on my own. Without those people and that history. 

And here is my favorite writer telling me just the opposite is true. 

I've been heading the direction of this thought process for a few months now. Reconnecting with my past. Slowly breaking down the walls of pride and false pretense I've built around myself. After having such a hard time coming off pain meds this summer, and coming face to face with the addict within me... these ideas have started to grow. 

What if all these things, the things that have happened in my life, are exactly what was needed to bring me to the place my heart has always desired to be?

What if having been raised by addicts is exactly the kind of environment I needed to be who I'm suppose to be?

What if all this time I've spent running from who I am was exactly the opposite of what I should've done?

It comes down to this for me. 

The life you live is all about vantage point. 

Yes.  I did grow up poor. 

Yes.  I am the culmination of generations of addicts. 

Yes. It does define me....just in none of the ways I always thought it did. 

I've spent my life running from the truth about myself when all God wanted me to do was embrace it. To look at my history and my lineage and say YEEESSSS.  This is who I am. This is where I come from. There is no shame in my story. 

And you know why?

Because this is all of our story. 

We live in a broken and painful world, full of SO MUCH SHAME  and experiences we don't understand but somehow....SOMEHOW  God still manages to turn all things around.  We still keep moving. There are still stories of success, and acts of kindness.  We still live in a world where the indomitable human spirit catches like wildfire.  Where men and women sacrifice their lives for their beliefs.  We live in a world where a group of firemen raced up a mountain this summer to rescue a complete stranger... because they chose to live a life of civil service and sacrifice.   We live in a world where my 20 year old daughter traveled to India to work in a orphanage full of special needs kids that the world has forgotten.  A world where a bunch of reformed addicts and gang members in Southern California taught my son to be a man of integrity, even in the midst of their own struggles and failures. 

This is my story. Just one part of it.  I have come to truly believe that who I am and where I come from matter. How I think and feel and process the world is unlike anyone else around me. And what I will bring to the world will be just as unique. 

I've always carried this truth in me... I was just looking at it from the wrong perspective. 

As it turns out, those pastors I listened to growing up had a lot of the Bible from the wrong vantage point as well.... Take David for example. Handsome. Musical genius. Killed bear and lion and giants with his bare hands. Shepherd to King.  A man after God's own heart, it says.  David was also an adulterer.  He took another man's wife, had sex with her, got her pregnant, then had her husband killed so he wouldn't get caught. That's a rough story. Totally in the Bible.  God still refers to David in all the loving ways he did before David fell head first into his own addictive process and weaknesses. This is the genealogy and lineage of Jesus, by the way. There is also a prostitute in there somewhere. 

And you know why now, right??

Because this is all our story.  

Even Jesus. The son of God.  The savior of the world.  He came from prostitutes and adulterers.  Yet he knew what of his lineage to hold on to and which to let go of. The perks of being God, I guess.  It's been more of a learning curve for me. 

But hey.  Progress not perfection.