The other night at dinner, Dan surprised me by asking me about an old boyfriend. As I recounted the end of that relationship during my freshman year at Trinity, it dawned on me that twice in my life, I had been rejected because of the color of my skin. Because I wasn't "white," I guess I wasn't considered good enough for the parents of two young men who were truly NICE guys. When it came to their sons dating a non-white girl, it was a hard pill for the parents to swallow... What's even sadder is that these nice guys did not have it within themselves to "buck the system." It was easier to reject me than to go against the wishes of their parents or the society they lived in...
Of course, those rejections hurt! I cried buckets of tears at the end of those relationships and for many months after! No one wants to be rejected. To this day, I still wonder if I should have fought harder for those relationships. Who knows what my life would be like if, against the advice of their parents or significant adults, I'd married either of those nice guys... It could have turned out all right in the end, but I'm sure there would have been very rough times along the way and we might not have made it...
Obviously, if I had married one of them, I would not have been blessed with my 3 awesome kids and my 9 magnificent grandkids... So, it's all good!!
I told Dan that I'm glad the world has become more accepting of mixed marriages since the late 1970s. I'm glad that my grand children who, with the exception of Calista, were born in the States and are Americanized to the point that it's hard to distinguish them from other "white" kids, will hopefully not encounter the obstacles that I did when it came to dating and marriage.
I pray that my grandkids will learn that rejection, even though it will always hurt, does not mean the end of the world, especially where one's heart is concerned. God is still in the business of turning the ugliness that comes our way into something beautiful and even lovelier than we could ever imagine!!
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