She Says.

Happy New Year! I hope that everyone's Christmas was blessed and that now you are rested!

In the midst of our holiday madness, our family has been venturing into uncharted waters and learning more about our new area. I've made a lot of phone calls last week in preparation for our third birth in April, and talking to no less than seven people, I am struck with the pattern that the conversations go.

Here are examples of three different people I've spoken with trying to get information on midwives.

"Yes, I know Jenny. She is very sweet, and I know she's a Christian."
"Humm," I say in response.

"Linda is wonderful! She has a lot of experience and really helped us out a lot. She's not a Christian though."
"Okay," I say in response.

"Amber is super knowledgeable and can handle any situation calmly. I don't know what she told you, but I really don't think she's a Christian."
"I talked to Amber and she said she was a Christian," I reply confused.
"She says she is, but I really don't think so."

What?

I've never encountered this type of conversation before, and I've always lived in a predominately Christian area. Person after person I spoke with made a point to tell me whether or not they were Christian, and then volunteered the information about anyone else I asked about. It is quite weird, and I'm a Christian!

There are many fields where one's faith might come into play or be important, for instance, we've always felt more comfortable with doctor's who share our views, and if we ever won a million dollars and needed a financial advisor, we'd surely want one who shared our moral standards. But, by and large, volunteering or inquiring about someone's faith hasn't really mattered for most of what we need day-to-day. People are people to us, and while our faith is an undeniable aspect of our family life, we are more likely to make an impression of someone based upon their actions as opposed to a claim they've made upon themselves.

What bugs me most about it is that it places people into a box, I say I am one thing and then say someone else is something different. I put myself into this category but exclude my neighbor from it. I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound too Christian to me. And I don't mean to say that the nice women I spoke with were trying to be judgmental, but after hearing the same phrase over and over again, I began to wonder what exactly was at play here. I began to wonder that if I started to volunteer that I was a Catholic if they'd begin to volunteer to others that I wasn't a Christian but a Catholic?

This form of fundamentalism is relatively new to me. Watching families I admire such as the Duggars way down in Arkansas seemed a far cry from the Ugs and Bomber hats we're used to in the Great White North. But I've come to find out up here, that bonnet-wearing, no-hair cutting, long-skirted, homesteading families are quite common, and perhaps that is the definition of what it means to be a Christian.

New places, new people and new experiences. Sometimes it's a lot to take in, and even more difficult to understand. I feel out of place and wonder where I fit in this pool of people; reaching out to see if anyone looks out and sees things with a set of eyes similar to my own.

And we keep on.