The need for belonging

“And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ” (Romans 1:6 NIV84).

I was eight years old when I learned the need for belonging.

I was known as the smart kid in my third grade class at High Point Elementary. My teacher even chose me to represent our class on a local television game show called Kiddie Kollege. Along with two other students from our school, our team won for a couple of weeks before losing to another school.

I was a happy, well-adjusted kid with a lot of friends. Everything would have been perfect, except for one detail. My father was sick. He was in the hospital that whole Fall semester while I was on the TV show. He’d phone me when I got home from the studio each time to tell me how proud he was of me, and that he’d had the nurses and doctors in his room to watch me on TV.

“That’s my son!” He said he told them.

“Thanks Daddy. I wish you could have been there.” I replied, with a trace of sadness.

“I’ll be out of here soon, Son. Then, we’ll do everything together.” He answered, trying to cheer me up.

A few weeks later, he was dead. “Cancer,” they said.

That November we moved from our Virginia home to live with my aunt in Michigan. My mother needed the support after the loss of my father.

I started attending third grade in Michigan just a few weeks before Christmas. From the first day, I was an outcast.

“Hey Hillbilly! Say something else. You talk funny!” The kids would say everytime I opened my mouth. Apparently, the Southern accent that I brought with me was considered humorous.

My teacher had to cover her mouth, so I wouldn’t see her sniggering when I read aloud in class. She even had my mother take me to a speech therapist to see about getting help.

“Repeat after me, ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain…'” The therapist instructed me, at our session together. Afterwards, I heard her tell my mom and teacher, “There’s nothing wrong with his speech. He’s just a Southerner.”

The bullying at school got so bad that I finally ended up at the hospital with a concussion after one three against one episode.

I wasn’t happy. My father was dead. I had no friends. My mother was depressed and cried all the time. And now, at school I was known not as the smart kid, but as the “Hillbilly.” I didn’t belong.

After a few months, things began to improve. I stopped saying, “Y’all” and starting saying, “You guys.” I made friends with a kid across the street named Terry. He taught me when to run and when to fight and which street corners to avoid when walking to school. I even beat a bully named Raymond in arm wrestling, which improved my stock when he befriended me afterwards. Happiness was starting to return.

At the end of my third grade year, Mom started feeling better and we moved back home to Virginia. I was so glad to be back home where I really belonged. But then, things had changed. My father wasn’t there. His clothes still hung in the closet and his leather recliner still sat in the den, but he was gone. Home wasn’t the same anymore. And I wasn’t either.

Why is belonging so important?

“Because as humans, we need to belong. To one another, to our friends and families, to our culture and country, to our world. Belonging is primal, fundamental to our sense of happiness and well-being” (CNN Columnist Amanda Enayati, The Importance of Belonging).

In his “Hierarchy of Needs,” the atheist psychologist, Abraham Maslow, got at least one thing right. He named “belonging” as one of the most basic needs of humanity. He thought that the need for belonging had to be met before one could have self-esteem and what he called “self-actualization.”

I know this. I didn’t get my sense of belonging back until I gave my life to Christ. I did this at children’s church while still living in Michigan. I called on God as my Father through Jesus, His Son. From that day to this, my sense of belonging has been growing.

I belong to Christ and He belongs to me. And so does every member of God’s family.

Yet, as I grow in my sense of belonging, this world feels less and less like home.