My husband is a brave man. If I wasn’t already convinced of that, the point was brought home to me when he decided to take our five year-old Josh to the Iowa/Nebraska football game. I wasn’t sure how well this whole process was going to go and had concerns. We had a talk with Josh about what kind of behavior would be okay in that situation and then we went through our usual conversation about what he should do if he ever got separated from us. I said to him, “Josh, stay close to Daddy at the game and if you get lost you need to find a policeman. Tell him your daddy’s name is Brian Bradley . . Oh, and be sure and tell him your daddy is white or else he might get confused when Daddy shows up.” Oh the joys of being a transracial family.
We feel so completely like family to each other that we sometimes forget how we look to the world outside our home. The other day I caught sight of myself in the reflection of the glass grocery store doors and thought, “Oh, that’s why everybody gives me that look”. I guess it isn’t every day you see a heavily pregnant woman holding hands with an ethnically mismatched pair of two year-olds with an African five year-old leading the way.
It is amazingly beautiful to me how within the family of God there is a unity that embraces and values the differences we each bring to the table. Our home is a little picture of how within the Body of Christ even those who seem so different from the outside are family to the point that sometimes we forget this isn’t the way the rest of the world works. We are certainly not colorblind because we love the colors, the differences, the uniquenesses God has built into each of us. What a gift God gives us to learn from each other if we take the time to invest in those around us and embrace our differences.