I watched a video this week that caught me off guard.
A little Black girl, maybe five or six years old, is crying.
She tells her mom:
“I don’t want to be Black.”
Her mom responds beautifully.
She reminds her how beautiful she is. How beautiful it is to be Black. That God made her the way she is for a reason.
Then she pulls her close.
They hug.
And honestly, it sounds like the right response.
But I paused the video there because something else was bothering me.
This is absolutely a story about race.
But I think underneath the racial wound is an even older question:
Do I belong?
Because when that little girl says, “I want to be white,” she isn’t only making a statement about skin colour.
Somewhere, somehow, she has begun connecting being different with being outside.
And once that lie takes root, another one follows quickly:
I need to become something else in order to belong.
That one hit me.
Because I’ve believed versions of it too.
Not about my skin.
But in friend groups. In culture. In rooms where I quietly wondered which version of myself would be easiest to accept.
Maybe I should talk differently.
Like different things.
Tone this part of me down.
Turn that part up.
We learn to edit ourselves before anyone ever explicitly asks us to.
And underneath all of it is basically the same question:
What must I do to be loved?
That little girl’s answer, in that moment, was:
Maybe I need to become someone else.
Ours can be more sophisticated.
Maybe I need to achieve more.
Be funnier.
Be more successful.
Be less awkward.
Be more spiritual.
Get invited.
Wear the right thing.
Sit at the right table.
Prove that I deserve to be here.
Different fruit.
Same root.
I don’t believe that I already belong.
And this is where beloved identity changes the way I see behaviour.
Because behaviour is often the visible fruit of an invisible belief.
Before I only ask, How do we correct what someone is doing?
I’m beginning to wonder:
What are they believing for this behaviour to make sense?
What lie would have to be true?
Maybe the better question isn’t simply:
“Why would you want to be someone else?”
Maybe somewhere underneath it is:
Who told you that who you are isn’t enough to belong?
Who told you love was waiting on the other side of becoming?
Who told you acceptance had prerequisites?
Who told you that you had to earn your place at the table?
Because the Gospel begins somewhere completely different.
Not with what we must become to finally be loved.
But with Love coming toward us first.
Before the performance.
Before the improvement.
Before we figured ourselves out.
Before we could make ourselves acceptable.
Already loved.
Maybe so much of transformation begins there.
Not helping people become worthy of belonging.
But helping them discover they never had to become someone else to be welcomed in the first place.
And when the old lie whispers,
You need to become something else before you can be loved…
I keep hearing another question:
Who told you that?
See you next Friday
