Peripheral people

 I remember a time years ago when I attended a social gathering for young adults in our church. I was my usual quiet, non-obtrusive self. At the end of the party, one of my friends looked at me and said, “Nancy, have you been here the whole time?” I don’t know why that memory is still so sharp.

In my teenage years, I dwelled on the periphery of whatever excitement was happening. I was always the last person chosen for the baseball team in PE class. In group assignments, I needed to gather my courage to speak up. I never raised my hand in class, although I usually knew the answer. I felt left out much of the time.

This was not the whole of my existence as a young person, and I do well to remember this. My family was warm and close; I always had a “best friend;” my church family accepted and encouraged me. And so on.

And as I matured, so did my feelings. I learned to focus more on others. I also developed a keen radar that detected when someone else was feeling peripheral and I tried to befriend that person. I still do that. 

Marriage to a good, loving man and then the children God gave us brought with it all a deep place of belonging.

Even so, that lonesome, overlooked feeling pops up every now and then. Even now.

Older people are especially vulnerable to the sense of being left out. Retirement and down-sizing don’t help. Nor do the aches and pains that limit our activities. Our culture itself seems to focus on the young and fit. I feel invisible at times in a grocery store or public gathering.

The cultural ignoring of the elderly is diminishing somewhat. We now constitute a larger voting block, so there are regular times then politicians do not ignore us. They court our favor with praise and promises. TV ads target the “golden years” more than they ever have. There’s money out there.

But that kind of attention does nothing to feed the soul or give a sense of belonging. It has little to do with us as people and more to do with being a growing segment of society. And being a social segment is not comforting.

One of the most painful peripheral places for me is large family gatherings, with brothers and sisters, in-laws, and all their adult children, grandchildren and the greats. All those beautiful kids whose names I can never remember. It’s a bright space of friendly noise, singing, and of course lots of great food. But the louder the noise level, the quieter I get. My introversion kicks in big time and I often just find a comfortable chair off to the side and try to look happy to be there. Pathetic, right?

Again, I do well to remember all the good spaces where I feel at home and accepted for who I am, regardless of age. And there are many. I belong to a Sunday school class that has become my church family. I serve as a volunteer editor on a well-known journal and my contribution is appreciated. I live in a retirement community where we residents are known and cared for; age discrimination is, of course, utterly absent, since we’re all older. And among my own grown kids and grandkids, the exchanges of love are real and warm. I have much to be thankful for.

And, most miraculous of all, God calls me his beloved daughter. My name is tattooed on the palm of his hand. Although God loves all his many many children, somehow we are all unique and uniquely treasured. Age is irrelevant. 

There are no peripheral people in the kingdom of God.