My first year of university in Canada hit me like a ton of bricks.
I’d recently returned from Malawi, where I lived for most of my life between the ages of 10 and 18. I thought I knew Canada—it was my home, after all. Just like so many other “third culture kids” who become a blend of their “passport country” and their “host country,” I idealized and romanticized my motherland. I remembered a place of comfort, security, and convenience. I belonged in our tiny town where Dad pastored a cozy church.
The Canada I encountered in my first year of university seemed a world away from the one I thought I knew. My roommates, though I loved them, led an engineering lifestyle involving copious amounts of weed, booze, and other substances. In my classes, I found a culture that idolized cynicism, crucified the church (especially missionaries), and seemed intent on dragging tradition and institution through the mud. To make matters worse, Canada had changed without me—the country had undergone a serious reckoning with its colonial and genocidal past. I had not. My rosy view of my country was ripped out from under me, leaving me feeling even more rootless and home-less than before.
My easy childhood faith had to run an obstacle course of dilemmas as I navigated this brave new world.
On top of that, it was winter. For those in good spirits, a Canadian winter is merely a challenge to be overcome (as it is for me now). But at the time, it was a hellscape of grey slush, grey skies, and shivering grey squirrels as I spiraled into depression and OCD.
Back home in Malawi, people had idolized my family for being missionaries. Most Malawians continue to have very positive associations with the church, and often we would be shown special courtesy and respect. Once my sister was ushered to the front of a hospital waiting line, despite my father’s protests.
Flash forward nine months. I sit in a dark basement classroom surrounded by concrete walls. The prof is lecturing about the harm done in Africa by colonialism, white people, and missionaries. I am one of only a handful of white faces in the class of 60+ people. My classmates, many of whom are the children of African immigrants, use the space to share their experiences of racism, their frustration with the way that Africa is viewed, and their disgust with the mistakes made by missionaries and NGOs.
Are they looking at me? Do they know who I am? Should I tell them?
Doubt, guilt, and paranoia began to set in. I questioned my identity, my actions, and my fundamental beliefs. People looked at my white skin and heard my accent and they assumed that I belonged in Canada. But I began to realize that I did not belong. I didn’t get the social cues. I didn’t understand the worldviews around me. Heck, I didn’t know how to use a credit card.
As the doubt eroded my sense of self, it also undermined my gifts and talents. I began to hate my own writing. The fantasy series I had begun writing as a teenager had involved my own attempts to reckon with race and “othering” in the context of the story. Of course, I got some things wrong. And in university I began to realize how sometimes my own prejudiced and racist biases had worked themselves into the novel.
Looking back, the story was not beyond redemption—a few edits could have solved the issues. I’ve learned that such mistakes are not only common, but unavoidable—especially in your first draft. You write, you stumble, and you pick yourself back up and make the novel better.
But in my depths of despair (to borrow an Anne-of-Green-Gables-ism) I believed that my story and my life were both beyond healing. Beyond redemption.
I stopped writing for over a year. I allowed the grief, the confusion, and the darkness around me to silence one of my greatest gifts.
Flash forward to the present. I still struggle with the remaining symptoms of mental illness, but I am so much better. I have slowly learned to differentiate between the voices that are “real” and the ones that are spoken from darkness.
I have been able to open my darkest fears to the friends and family around me—and I discovered that I am still loved.
Four years after the height of my depression and OCD, I am now writing a story set in a fictional African kingdom. I’m sure I won’t get everything right. I’m sure I’ll make mistakes. And I’m sure that even when I do things right, somebody might be hurt or offended. This is the price we pay for the beauty of grappling with the very real trauma, fears, and pain in the histories and cultures around us.
But I’ve learned that it is worth it.
To my everlasting surprise, I find that when I share my fears of being racist or prejudiced with African friends, they respond with kindness and love. Sometimes, they even respond with “oh yeah—me too, bro.” I’ve been accepted in a way I never thought I would deserve or imagine. Recently a Congolese friend, excited about the novel I’m writing, told me: “I hope people realize that you’re an African brother even if you may not look like it.”
If I could go back in time, I would tell my younger self to accept grace. Not because it is deserved or because I am perfect, but because Christ loves me—and that is enough.
I’d also tell myself that it’s worth it. All the pain, all the confusion of straddling two worlds. Of finding yourself torn between different cultures, families, and languages.
I am reminded of the vision in Revelation 7:9. “After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”
That’s worth fighting for. That’s worth cherishing. And it’s worth beginning to build here on earth even as we wait for Christ to return and put an end to all hatred and war. It’s hard. It puts us outside our comfort zones.
But Christ did not call us to live easy lives. He called us to follow Him into a life of exile here on earth, even as we build the future “Kingdom” as his friends and his heirs. In that land, we will not be strangers –and every tear will be wiped from our eyes.
~*~
Chris Babcock’s adventures have taken him
from the Thar desert of India to the rainforest
slopes of Malawi. He loves sci-fi and fantasy, especially books that deal truthfully with difficult topics. If you think it must be awkward for him to write about himself
in third person—he thinks so, too.
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