V.

I live in a time of civil unrest that flows in waves of social media. Some days, the whole world knows of one town, one person, and then the next, it vanishes in the eyes of the next new crashing wave of fashion, sports, foods, or TikTok trends. In my last 10 years, I’ve experienced racism for being brown, (I’m not Black, so it’s not as severe as the torture and hate our lovely darker skinned brothers and sisters have and are experiencing) but I have learned to open my worldview for how everything is interpreted. That includes the Bible. I opened mine today. I wanted it to be for me. To read God’s Words as if He were speaking to me too. I live and grown up in a predominantly white town, with Churches from the Latter Day Saints to evangelical, and once, Catholic. Every post, every play, every display, every congregation, there wasn’t much diversity. The last 10 years, learning geography and culture and societies of the Asian and African Continents, I reshaped how Jesus has been portrayed to me all these years. The ways He and God Himself have been reshaped to fit a only a certain society, and ONLY that society. So as I was reading, literally two sentences in, I became frustrated with the way the Words created scenes in my head. No diversity. No one that could look me, the people Paul is talking to. Why did the story of the King of all Kings become so whitewashed?

How many of us Millennials are nearing our 30s with a lot of baggage we don’t know how to unpack? I think it’s more than just one. I’m two and a half years away from 30, I don’t have a degree in anything, I work in retail still, and I’m just starting to see that this three year relationship that I’ve been in is a really shit one. I think of my parents and how they’ve done so much, and I don’t have a damn thing to give back to them. (Yeah, yeah I know, our parents love us regardless, that’s cool) but I personally want them to see my success and I’d like them to see it before they’re retired or have passed on. I want them to enjoy my success, whenever it comes, with me. But sometimes I find myself stopping because I have no clue what the next three years will entail because of politics and the climate and the taxes and all that shit. And I find myself wondering why the fuck am I so enveloped in those kinds of things that I allow them to affect the future I want for myself? Why am I using this outside stupid world as the general excuse for why I can’t do something, that it would be pointless to carry it on? I’ve been in this program for almost three years, a program that takes ONE year, I’ve turned it into three years. That’s ridiculous.