Like the Cool Kids

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the song “Cool Kids” by Echosmith, but here is the chorus of the song:

“I wish that I could be like the cool kids,
‘Cause all the cool kids, they seem to fit in.
I wish that I could be like the cool kids, like the cool kids.” -Echosmith

I don’t really like this song, but it comes on the radio all the time. Every time I hear it, it kind of touch a cord in my heart. 

(Vicki if you’re reading this, you’re so my BFFE)

I don’t actually want to be like the “Cool Kids”. I don’t feel the need to be like everyone else; I actually don’t even want to be like everyone else. But, like all people, I do want to fit in and that is where things become tricky.

I am not like anyone else I have ever met (this is 100% God’s doing). He makes us all unique and special, but being different makes it really hard to fit in. For me, it isn’t really about fitting in either. It’s about belonging. And being different makes it really hard to belong anywhere.

And everyone, everywhere needs to belong. God made us to belong. He made us to need people and to be needed by people. God made us to be a part of community, but He made ME unique, He made ME special, He made ME different.

I’m grateful for these differences and for the confidence to march to the beat of my own drum and to live outside the norm, but being who God made me to be means that I don’t fit in with the world. I don’t fit in with the people around me.

It has never really been my style to conform nor have I been the type to care what people thought of me. But that doesn’t make it any easier to be on the outside. (Just because I don’t care that you think I’m crazy or weird doesn’t mean I don’t want a group of crazy weird friends of my own; just because I don’t want to be like everyone else doesn’t mean I don’t want to have people that love me for me being me).

This is one of the things I am terrified about the World Race. I’m going to be living closely with about 50 other people. I don’t want to be on the outside again. I don’t want to not fit in. I don’t want to spend the 11 months once again on the outside.

I hope and pray that I find my people on this trip. I hope that I find people who march to the beat of their own drums and that we somehow sound harmonious together. This is what I pray for my trip; I pray for community. True community.

I don’t want to be a “Cool Kid”. Walking in a straight line never really suited me anyway, but I do want a place to call my own.