02/06/2022
I got a call last week at work from a friend. She said that she had an ancestry emergency and needed my help. Most people would find it odd to be called out of the blue with an “ancestry emergency,” but I am who I am and was happy to help. She said that she had ordered DNA kits for her children for Christmas, and that the results had just come back, and that there was an individual who showed up as a “first cousin or so.” She recognized the name, but it wasn’t somebody that they were related to. Now most of us know our first cousins, and would know our children’s first cousins, as they would be our niece or nephew. Her first question to me was, “How accurate is this DNA stuff?” I smiled, and assured her it was pretty accurate; besides, didn’t he show up on both children’s tests? She confirmed that he did, with the same close relationship. So, I quickly did some genealogy sleuthing during my lunch break, and within an hour I had a reasonable guess as to this person’s parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents and all thirty-two of his great-great-great-grandparents. I was looking for any overlap between my friend’s tree, her husband’s tree, and his, and found none.
I have seen this scenario before a couple of times, including in my own family. DNA is an interesting tool now available to genealogists; but it is double-edged: It can prove that the paper trail is correct, but it can also prove that it is wrong. In this case, I suspected that a biological parent was someone different than the paper parent. To be a nephew, this person would have had to be a secret child of a sibling, but that was impossible as he was only a couple years younger than any of her siblings. I checked a few more possibilities out, but within minutes I had to give her some very distressing news: “I hate to say it, but, I don’t think your dad is your father.”
What a difficult conversation to have. My friend is my age, so, she is doing her thing and living her life, only to wake up one morning after forty-something years and realize that nothing is as you thought. All the memories, the family reunions, the picnics, the graduations—was all based upon an understanding that turned out not to be true. The man she knew as “daddy” her whole life was not her biological father, and the man who was, she had never known. Her siblings? In all reality were half-siblings. Her core identity was at question. Who was she? Where did she belong.
She wrestled with it and decided that she had to question her parents about it. She confronted her mother, who’s first question was, “How did you find out?” She and her father cried together, and reiterated that whoever her biological father was, he would always be her daddy. She ordered her own DNA kit. It has been a rough week and a half for her; her world has been turned upside down. Yesterday, I was sharing a few of the details with some co-workers, only to have one of my co-workers turn serious and confess, “that’s my story too.” My co-worker has known for a few years now, but she is still dealing with the effects of that revelation. It is one of the reasons that Ancestry includes warnings on its kits—you may find out information that is troubling.
In my own story, I have not had to wrestle with that particular discovery. Yet in a sense my passion for genealogy comes from a search for identity. Who am I? Where do I belong? Not nearly as serious, but I have wrestled with that when people ask me where I’m from? At first it was easy to say, “Minnesota,” but after living in Virginia for nineteen years, am I a Virginian? If I live in Virginia for longer than I lived in Minnesota, do I become a Virginian? What are the qualifications—is belonging based upon a group that you are born into, that you inherit through no activity of your own, or is it something that you can decide, or choose?
In 2006, I had a struggle with the United Methodist Church. Sometimes when I tell the story, I say that I was kicked out, but, that’s an oversimplification to be sure. I wasn’t fighting with the whole denomination, just the hierarchy of one Conference. I’m sure that I would have been welcomed by Minnesota United Methodists, or North Carolina United Methodists, and in fact, I had interviewed with a Methodist congregation in Chesapeake, Virginia, who was ready to welcome me with open arms. Yet, in the weeks before the Chesapeake congregation said “yes,” I was really struggling with identity and belonging. I had attended a United Methodist church my whole life, had been active in the Minnesota Conference and West Ohio Conference, had attended a United Methodist seminary, had pastored four United Methodist churches and worked for two others. I had embraced the theology, I knew the hymnal, I taught the Discipline—it was very much a part of my identity and where I felt I belonged. In the fall of 2006, I was asked by my Superintendent to surrender my license to preach and to celebrate the sacraments, and it felt like a terrible blow—like being disowned by one’s family. At the same time that a congregation in Chesapeake was hoping to redeem that, as a minister of finance, not preaching, a Quaker congregation was willing to offer me the chance to preach. I wrestled with that decision, and much of that wrestling involved my sense of identity and belonging. In spite of all that happened, I still considered myself a United Methodist. Could a United Methodist preach in a Quaker congregation. (The answer is a resounding “yes,” but I didn’t know that at the time.) Did it make sense for a Virginian to commute every Sunday to a North Carolina church? In the end, I made the decision to join Up River Friends because it did feel that it was exactly where I belonged. I felt welcomed. It felt like a family. I examined my beliefs against those of historical Quakerism, and it felt right…in some ways felt like coming home.
There are different ways of belonging and of “fitting in.” Brene Brown argues that those are two different things. In her book, Braving the Wilderness, she writes that belonging is “the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging, but often barriers to it.” (31-32). You see, belonging is something that is inherently hardwired into us, a searching, a deep need that all of us have. The Quaker/Methodist identity thing is interesting to me. In 2018, Donna and I traveled back to Delaware, Ohio for my doctoral graduation, and I wanted to attend the baccalaureate service. As a part of the service, communion was served, and although I had considered myself a convinced Quaker for over a decade, I easily switched the Quaker-Methodist identity button in my head. I spoke the language, I knew what to expect, I felt like part of the family. Donna, on the other hand, did not. To her it was all a foreign language, and like an anthropologist, she was witnessing a religious ritual ceremony as an outsider, an observer, rather than as a participant. She did not feel like she belonged. I never really even thought about it before, until I was able to hear that experience from Donna’s point of view.
There have been many times when I felt like an outsider. There were school dances where everyone would get on the floor and dance to that one popular song that EVERYONE knew, which of course I had never heard of before because I listened to Classical music on MPR. At Chris and Adrienne’s wedding, Donna, who feels perfectly at home on the dance floor, so wanted me to come out with her and dance, but there are very few places that I feel less like I belong than the dance floor. I attended a party once, invited by a friend, where she insisted that although I didn’t know anyone else there that they would go to great lengths to make me feel “at home.” I have never felt less at home than I did at that party. I attended a Roman Catholic Mass in Jamaica where I was one out of the only two people who were white, Protestant, or American, and felt much more at home than I did at that party.
Why? What has to happen before we feel like we belong? Earlier I asked the question, “How many years would I have to live in Virginia before I felt like a Virginian?” I think this is a valid question to ask when it comes to identity and belonging. Southern Bank, like many other banks, has been involved in mergers and acquisitions over the years, and so you have an environment where some employees have only worked for Southern, while others have come from other banks that were acquired. In the first year or two, those identities can be very strong, but over time they tend to diminish—yet some people will work for Southern Bank for 20 years and still introduce themselves as having worked for a legacy predecessor—in their heads, and their hearts, they never really made the switch. I’ve seen that in churches. A member who loyally attended a Quaker meeting for 40 years, who contributed her time and money and was there whenever the doors were open, but if you asked her she’d be quick to point out that she was a Baptist. I asked her about this and she was clear—she was born a Baptist—her parents and grandparents were Baptist, and even if she attended a Quaker meeting for 100 years, she would die a Baptist. In so many ways, her identity was strongly tied into the group she was born into. Interesting to me, as a loyal Southern Baptist, she did not denounce the faiths of Jews, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists. “They belong to the religion of their parents; they are what they were born into. If I was born to Muslim parents, I would be a Muslim.” Many people would argue that religious belief isn’t really an ethnicity—you can’t inherit “Southern Baptist,” but she was convicted in her views, and it was futile to suggest otherwise.
Back to author and psychologist, Brene Brown. She argues that “True belonging is not something we achieve or accomplish with others; it’s something we carry in our heart. Once we belong thoroughly to ourselves and believe thoroughly in ourselves, true belonging is ours.” What does that mean? I think it means that be so comfortable with our identity, that even if we are in places where we don’t fit in, or places where we are alone, or places where we are really struggling, we will find that we still belong. That’s an interesting argument. To be out in the Wilderness—out struggling to figure out who you are and where you belong is a scary place to be. That’s happened to me after divorce, after changing losing a job, after my parents’ deaths—a sense of loss and a sense of having to recalibrate who I am and where I belong in the Universe.
Why do people join gangs? Why do people join cults? Why do people join churches? (Some of my FB friends will mix all three of these up into one.) Often it is because the said group offers help, an opportunity for support and camaraderie, and in one way or another, it meets that deep inner need of wanting to belong. Have you ever had a group of people that you spend time with that you feel closer or as close to as your biological family? That you feel as much “at home” or more at home than you would have your childhood home? In a couple of weeks I am flying to Minnesota to spend a three-day weekend playing boardgames non-stop in a basement of one of my high-school friends. None of us are biologically related, at least not within ninth cousins, but, I consider them both family. I have a strong sense of belonging in that basement.
Psalm 100:3 says, “Know that the LORD is God, It is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” Isaiah 43:1 says, “But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” Jesus tells us, “The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls is own sheep by name and leads them out.”
Brene Brown talks about a state of being where we can feel so secure that we will feel like we belong wherever we are—that our deepest psychological needs will be met, but, she doesn’t exactly spell out how to go about making that happen. For me, in my journey, the above three verses have been key. I have an identity that goes beyond being the son of Rick and Peggy Wilcox, beyond being a Minnesotan, or White, or Male, or a Protestant, or a Banker. There is the Voice that drew all things into being that also brought me into being who knows me, knows everything about me, knows me better than I know myself, and who calls me by name. I’ve heard it. I’ve responded to it. I matter, not because of where I came from, but because of what I’m made of, and Who is calling me. I listen for the Voice that knows me and calls my name, and I follow—and it is there, wherever I find myself, that I truly belong.
For my friend who has had an emotionally devastating week, I have confidence that she will find where she belongs. Her Daddy is still her Daddy. She loves and she is loved. Her identity is so much more than chromosomes, and she belongs right where she always has—that hasn’t changed.
