Tell my mom to send me back

So…. this happened over the weekend. Our President told four members of Congress to go back to their countries. They are all citizens. Only one representative was not born here. Granted, he inserted himself into a disagrement between these four Congresswomen and their boss, but he looked at their foriegn sounding names and brown skin and told them to go home.

I’d like to see him tell my mom to send me home. Would he? If I worked for the Washington Post and asked him a question he didn’t like or if I was a paralegal on Capitol Hill and somehow got on his bad side, would he only see that I’m from the Philippines and tell me to go home?

If he did, I’d tell him that a Colorado-born white Christian American citizen spent a lot of money and time to adopt me and make me a citizen. I’d tell him to tell my mom to her face to send me home.

Then I’d step back and let my mom yell at him.

But seriously, I’m concerned that the leader of my country has such a low opinion of people that he doesn’t see as fully American.

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A Deep Need for Love

My bank account was debited for my annual WordPress subscription this month reminding me that I have not been using my money’s worth on a regular basis.  I seriously need to get better at blogging more regularly.

Now that the toddler can keep himself entertained in the living room while I type at the dining room table, my posts will be more frequent.

Recently, I was having a conversation with someone from college and we were talking being part of a group that we didn’t realize had really unhealthy group dynamics.  This was a church group, so we thought it was legit. Many are, but some aren’t.

I longed to be part of something.

I longed to be accepted and loved.

I longed to make a difference.

This group gave me the promise of all of that.  This group promised that if I did the right things, said the right things, acted in a certain way, God would truly accept me – not just merely die to redeem my soul  – but count me as one of the good kids.  Doing things His way means that His sacrifice for me was not in vain.  I believed saying and doing the right things within the group would land me one of the cute Christian college boys that I had my eye on.  Because I wanted to get married.  I wanted that deep connection with someone.  I was taught that for women, marriage was what we were made for, so I would not be complete until I was married.

I wanted to feel complete because I had a giant hole in me for my whole life.

The hole of being abandoned as an infant.

The hole from insufficient emotional care I received in an institutional orphanage.

The hole of unresolved trauma as I grew up.

This group could fill it so I didn’t think anything bad about it.

I am not part of that group, but not because I was mad at them. I left to pursue a career change.  I only saw the negative influences of the group once I had some distance.

That got me thinking about how else can holes left by loss and trauma be filled? Can they be filled with entertainment, by success, by a spouse, by children? These things can’t fill us completely, and in some cases, if we use a person to fill that hole, our need takes away from the other person.

Only when we are truly on the path to being healed can we find a group, a spouse, a person that we can truly healthily love.  Only when we are on that path to being healed can we recognize what is true love and what is harmful.