One of my favorite childhood Christmas programs was Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Back in those days, it wasn’t like today, when we can tune in to YouTube or other streaming services and watch things on demand. So when I saw in the TV Guide that it was going to air, I had only one plan: Rudolph.
I waited all year for the one or two times the TV stations would air my beloved story. If you know the story, Rudolph is a misfit because of his red, shiny nose. So much is made of his misfit status that a visit to the island of misfit toys is woven into the tale.
Whenever I watched, I related to Rudolph and those misfit toys.
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First-generation misfit
I was born in the USA to Finnish parents, making me a first-generation Finnish-American. My first language was Finnish, and apart from living with my family in New York City, you might not have realized I was American.
Our church services were in Finnish, we visited Finnish friends, and many of our outings revolved around the Finnish community. Even the bakeries were Finnish.
So, when it was time to start school, I definitely felt like an outsider. While I spoke some English, it was far from fluent. My English lessons mainly came from watching the cartoon Underdog on TV.
An immigrant story
My parents were also figuring out how to fit into their new home. Everything from language to customs to clothing was so different from what they had grown up with in post-World War II Finland, and they struggled to help their children navigate this unfamiliar world.
To understand how deeply our family felt like outsiders, it helps to know my parents’ story.
My mother’s father served as a sharpshooter in World War II, specifically during the Winter War against the Soviet Union. He was away from home for five years, and the family had no idea where he was during that time. My grandmother helped serve food to soldiers and worked the family farm alongside my mother and her siblings.
My father’s family lived on the eastern side of Finland, near the Soviet border. Because of poor health, my grandmother could not serve as many of the other women did during the war. My grandfather farmed with my father until the Soviets invaded Finland. The whole family had to flee for their lives and live as refugees for a time.
Dad talked about hearing the planes fly overhead in those days. He was very young but old enough to remember.
After the war ended, my parents left Finland and started fresh in New York City, where many Finns had settled at the time. Because they were from different parts of Finland, they met and married in New York.
Discovering their journey
Life improved in many ways. My parents were no longer living under the constant strain of war and poverty. Still, the enormous change of moving countries and continents weighed heavily on our family for years.
It took them years to master English. Dad learned first because he worked as a construction worker and was out among people every day. Mom was slower to learn English because she was at home raising the family.
I think this was an especially difficult experience for my mother because she was a trained RN and midwife in Finland. Yet as a child, I never once heard her complain about leaving her life behind. Her children were her life.
It wasn’t until later in life that I realized how deeply both of my parents missed their homeland. During the years I was growing up, Dad only returned to Finland to bury his parents, and Mom did not return until thirty-nine years had passed.
As I grew older, I learned to move within American culture and gradually became quite Americanized myself. Over time, I learned to move in and out of my Finnish world and my American experiences at school, work, and later, church, where I met, fell in love with, and married my very American (Texas-born) husband.
Not long after we got married, God sent us to Africa, where we began learning new cultures, languages, and customs. My thoughts often drifted back to my parents and their journey from Finland to the USA. As we adjusted to life so far from home, I quietly mourned for them and began to understand how difficult those early years must have been.
Before I spoke, I imagined
In school, my teachers often complained about my daydreaming. I was just creating. I didn’t understand it then, but I can see it now.
In retrospect, I realize I had always been writing stories in my mind long before I ever put them on paper. My first memorable piece was in fifth grade, a fable about how snakes lost their legs. In my story, snakes once had legs but were chased by hunters who eventually shot them off. Somehow, this unusual explanation earned me an A and surprised my teacher, who apparently had no idea such strange little stories were quietly brewing in my mind.
I recently wrote about taking “the road less traveled” and how those early choices shaped my life and faith journey in a Between the Lines post titled “Little Did I Know.”
As the years passed, writing became one of the ways I processed the world around me. Growing up between cultures and later living overseas in Africa stirred many thoughts and questions in me. Often, my mind simply moved my hands to write.
Never fully fitting in
Living in Africa has provided ample material for my writing. So has the nagging feeling of being a misfit. Over time, the two became deeply intertwined in much of what I wrote. I eventually embraced the reality that I would never fully fit into any one place.
• I was born to immigrant parents. That alone brought challenges and made me an easy target for bullying.
• I lived between the cultures of Finland and the USA as a child, never fully fitting into either.
• I married an American (Texas-born, in fact. What a clash of cultures that was!).
• I have lived in eight countries: the USA, Zaire (DRC), Kenya, France, Burundi, Zambia, Malawi, and now South Africa.
• I have learned languages in all of those nations.
• I have moved not only between countries, but between continents.
• I have lost count of how many times we have moved houses, mostly because rents climbed too high.
I am a mixture of many cultures and cannot fully identify with just one. It has made for a diverse and often complicated collection of experiences.
But through it all, and much more than I could ever fully list, I have learned the ebbs and flows of culture. More importantly, I have gained a deep appreciation for the image of God reflected through such variety around the world.
A lens more like a prism
So I began writing about this eclectic life through my lens of culture. Writing became a place where all those worlds could finally meet. That lens of culture feels more like a prism, reflecting the many colors and layers of the life I have lived.
“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland.”
Hebrews 11:13-14 (NKJV)
Looking back, I can now see how God used all of these experiences to remind me that I, and all those whose hope is in Jesus, are pilgrims. I have an entire company of fellow travelers walking this road with me. Somewhere along the way, I stopped being a misfit and finally learned where I fit.
So now I no longer hold to the title “Misfit.” I am, instead, a pilgrim on my way home. I just happened to pass through many places along the journey.
I’m never going to be at home in this world, but I know where I’m headed.
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Related reading: For more posts like this, see below.
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