Set apart and holy. Not-too-crazy and approachable.

Does it have to be either/or?

I got stared at a lot when I worked with Jen at George Fox. No one else there looked like me, not even remotely. It kind of made me feel like I was from another planet. But one day another lady who worked there walked by me on her way out, and she said, “Your shoes are awesome.” [Or something along those lines.] And that made my day. It made me feel like a normal person. I smiled at her, and she smiled at me, and it didn’t matter that we looked different from each other. I was just a girl with cool shoes, and she was just a girl who liked them. Normal.

Those same red plaid shoes got a similar response at a garage sale that Eric and I went to. The lady whose sale it was told me I had cute shoes and wondered if we didn’t have rules about shoes. That opened up a conversation about being Mennonite, and more importantly Christian, that was both a blessing to us and to her and a couple others there. They were Christians as well, and we connected on that level and were not so different after all.

But then there was the day Eric and I were walking through Fred Meyer and one of Dora’s coworkers saw us. She told Dora later that “he didn’t match,” as in Eric didn’t look as conservative as I did. And that bothered both of us. There was nothing wrong with what Eric was wearing. Apparently though, blue jeans and flip flops and a polo shirt didn’t match a grey cape dress and flip flops and a covering in her mind. In a way, I felt judged unfairly. And in another way, it made me wonder.

Are we to be so set apart that we are no longer approachable? Or are we to somehow reveal something in our demeanor that speaks past the “old-fashioned” clothes we’re wearing and that beckons seekers to come? ...continue reading →