Belonging gives us the sense of membership, security, and a common bond, while estrangement gives us the sense of disconnectedness, lostness and loneliness. We are all created with the capacity to know when we belong which means we also know how it feels to not belong. 

       Tick Tock the Game is Locked

Since we often moved, I’d transfer into a new school long after alliances between classmates were already formed. Breaking into a group was nearly impossible because everybody knew that new kids didn’t belong. 

During the elementary school years, I was all too familiar with the feeling of loneliness associated with not belonging. There was a song that my classmates sang whenever I tried to join their game on the playground; “Tick tock the game is locked, nobody else can play, hurray! If they do, we’ll kick them out. Tick tock the game is locked.”

In junior high, I was a minority; a white girl among a large population of Mexicans. My pale skin and scrawny body was an easy target for verbal and physical bullying. 

My greatest sense of not belonging though, occurred after Dad ended his life. He was the hub that connected our family, and after his death, the family, as I knew it, blew apart, scattering  pieces that were once attached. 

Even though Mom was still alive, she did not have the wherewithal to hold herself together, let alone her brood of children. And though I was still conscious of the basic tenets Dad instilled in us; respect and honor, no one held me accountable to such things anymore. It was as though nothing mattered and “whatever” was the family motto. 

To no longer be linked, to be on my own attempting to find where and to whom I belonged was the scariest place I’d ever been in. It was so disconcerting that in my early twenties, I considered following in my father’s footsteps, and putting an end to my life, putting an end to the discomfort of not belonging. But, I didn’t. 

Instead, God showed up in a vision that was real enough to get my attention and alter my plans. I accepted his invitation to believe. I trusted that he would give me a new life, one that I could not manufacture for myself; one in which he was the leader and I the follower. Since then, I’ve taken millions of tiny steps of faith, and now know beyond any shadow of doubt that I know to whom I belong. I belong to the One who created me to belong. 

Why bother knowing the One to whom we belong? When we discover to whom we belong then we detect that we really matter no matter what may come.