“Check these out, Anisa!” I passed the socks to my friend. “Fourteen pairs in a pack, and only $10! They have colors on the toes and heels, but it won’t show when they’re wearing school shoes.” I had just returned from a fundraising trip in the States with two duffel bags full of Amazon purchases, the little things that are harder to find or more expensive in our city. 

“Um, yeah, but aren’t they supposed to come up higher on the ankle? They’re nice, but I don’t think they’ll be allowed for school uniform.” I was shocked. The school list said “short white socks.” But not just any short white socks apparently–a particular height, a particular style, a particular thickness. No one felt it necessary to specify those details, because everyone knows what “short white socks” means for a school uniform. 

I’ve lived in this country for eleven years, so these moments sneak up on me. The moments that scream to me in the tiniest of details, “You’re a foreigner. You don’t understand the rules. You don’t belong.” Those things that “everyone knows;” I don’t. I wish these moments didn’t hurt so much. It’s just socks, after all. 

Every time I experience a “sock moment,” I face a heart-check. Of course I want to belong. We all do. But am I remembering my true belonging? We are reminded in Ephesians 2:19 that because we are reconciled in Christ, “[we] are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of His household.” Whatever I know or don’t know about this culture, wear or eat differently, pronounce correctly or flub like a toddler…whether I ever feel accepted in this country or always like an outsider, I have a home. 

And this home is filled with people from every corner of the earth because “[Christ’s] purpose was to create in himself one new humanity…thus making peace” (Ephesians 2:15). In Christ, people with the wrong socks and people who make the incomprehensible rules about them, become a family. Thank you Jesus that through your work on the cross, you tore down every barrier between me and those in this country you have called me to love!