ECPA Top Shelf Book Cover Award
Belonging has never come easy to me.
Growing up, there was my mutated national identity to deal with—my not-quite-American, not-quite-Indonesian soul, restless in both countries. Later, when I came out as a celibate gay Christian, I found I didn't fit into the church as easily as I used to. I've often wondered what it means to belong to others even when I can't manage to blend in with them.
The way Jesus tellsit, if we give up on belonging in order to follow him, we'll find ourselves belonging anyway. We might not belong the way other people do, with normal homes and normal families and normal ways of fitting in. But we'll belong in a way that's a hundred times better. We'll be fully in place because we know we are out of place. We'll belong like aliens.
Maybe you're caught in the same tension as me, wanting to fit somewhere even as you're permanently out of place. Maybe you feel like an alien.
If so, let's be aliens together.

Jen Pollock Michel is the author of Teach Us to Want and Keeping Place, both published by InterVarsity Press with video curriculum available from RightNow Media. She is a regular contributor for Christianity Today and Moody BibleInstitute's Today in the Word. A wife and mother of five, Jen lives in Toronto, Canada.

Gregory Coles (PhD, Penn State) is a writer, speaker, and language scholar. He is the author of Single, Gay, Christian; No Longer Strangers; and The Limits of My World. Greg lives in Boise, Idaho, where he serves as senior research fellow at The Center for Faith, Sexuality and Gender.