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Freckle Face. Carrot Top.  Shrimp.  Two by Four. Trailer Trash.  These were all labels I received as a child.

I have always felt like the odd one out.  Look at me and you'd say that is rediculous.  I am not a minority (though I have lived in a country where I was,  in race, language, and religion).  I come from a loving family, have parents that are still together.  Middle class, white Christian living in the Bible belt.  Outsider.  That is crazy.

But growing up I never felt like I fit in.  I wasn't one of those "cool kids" and I struggled to belong, my freckled face, red hair and skinny legs screaming, "pick on me!"  I bounced from trying to fit in to trying to stand out, anything to be noticed and accepted.  I had this gnawing emptiness inside of me, always searching to belong somewhere.  Having not grown up in the church, I discovered both Jesus and His Church when I was in high school.  Finally, a place to belong...or so I thought.

I didn't know all the right "church" words, didn't know all the Bible stories and songs the kids grew up learning.  I didn't know how to say and do all the right things that made me a good youth group kid, but I sure did try.  In the process I alienated my family who didn't share my beliefs or desire to belong to the church.  I tried so hard to fit into one world that I walked away from the family I did belong to all along. I started dating a guy who was in the group of the "real" youth group kids and I thought I was in...until that relationship went south and I was the pariah of the group I tried to so hard to belong to.[pullquote]
We all have this intimate cry in our hearts for belonging.
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It was the end of summer and I was getting ready to start my senior year, still as lost as ever.  I sat on the fringes of the youth group at an outside event we were having. I don't remember any teaching or songs from that night.  I just remember the people who called me friend a few short weeks ago sitting together and laughing, excluding me.  Every bit of laughter felt like a slight, like it was directed at me.

I walked away from church that night and it would be three years before I returned to the body of Christ, finding a new home at a campus ministry in college.  I looked at the people who talked about love on the weekends and walked into school and showed nothing of the love of Christ to the people around them.  If that was Christianity, I wanted nothing to do with it.

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