A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones (Proverbs 14:30).

I still have a crystal-clear recollection of two conversations from my first week in Amsterdam, back in January of 2003.  And the reason I remember them so clearly is that they initiated feelings of insecurity and cultural envy which have been echoing throughout my life ever since.

The first one was a conversation with an American friend of mine (who had moved to Amsterdam as a part of the church plant team).  One morning, immediately upon seeing me, he literally snorted out-loud and mocked me for choosing to wear a Minnesota Twins baseball cap as a fashion accessory. Not that he was against the Twins. He just said, "A baseball cap, hmm? I haven't seen one of those in awhile!" And he laughed in a tone that nailed me to the floor as a greener-than-green, wet-behind-the-ears, just-off-the-bus, culturally-ignorant foreigner who had no idea "how things work in Amsterdam." I don't think he was trying to be mean. We all had our own cultural insecurities at that point in the game. But that conversation stayed with me, and from that day forward it was only under very special circumstances that I would allow myself to wear a baseball cap in public.

The other conversation was with a Dutch friend who had been one of the first to join up with our ministry in Amsterdam. We were just talking and hanging out in the church office one day, during our first week in Amsterdam, when she pointed to the Nalgene water bottle hanging from a carabiner on the strap of my backpack and she laughingly said, "What's the deal with all you Americans -- always having one of those water bottles hanging from your backpack???" I'm sure I just laughed off the incident at the time. But like the baseball cap incident, the conversation really stuck with me -- and I secretly vowed to myself to do whatever I could to lose my Americanness and become as European (or at least as culturally neutral) as possible.

In those early days, after first moving to the Netherlands, my cultural identity was a constant battle. I never felt completely comfortable with my American cultural identity -- my affinity toward American sports, American foods, American hobbies, and so on -- at least not as long as I was living in the Netherlands. I felt like I had to lose those parts of myself in order to gain acceptance in the culture around me. And so I gave up basketball in favor of Sunday-morning voetbal (soccer). I tried to develop a taste for uniquely Dutch food and beverages. I learned the Dutch language and played games with myself to see how long my cultural identity could be obscured from local strangers. And -- of course -- I stopped wearing baseball caps and carrying a Nalgene water bottle.

But it was a tiresome endeavor.  I was basically envying others because of their inborn cultural identity.  I never felt completely at peace with myself.  My envy and insecurity ate away at me, almost like a cancer in my bones.

Fortunately, over the last several years, I've been slowly, gradually (and still not completely) coming to grips with the awkward in-between existence that is my cultural identity. I've come to realize that I now have the blessing and the curse of being bi-cultural. I have two countries in which I feel at home; and I have two countries in which I feel foreign. While I've gotten better and better at following cultural cues and blending in -- wherever I happen to be -- I've also learned that I will inevitably feel some degree of awkwardness. I will always (even if it's only in my own eyes) stick out as a "foreigner" in certain ways. But I can choose to embrace these differences and choose for the muddied middle ground with pride and joy. It is, after all, where I most appropriately belong -- even if it's not always easy to explain to others.

I'm proud to say that I've gone back to wearing baseball caps and carrying a water bottle with me.  I've decided that these are things that I like to do -- even if these things still aren't widely practiced among the Dutch people around me. So what if it's kind of American??? So am I!  To me, these finding my own footing in the context of these cultural cues has been a way of bringing peace to my heart.  As the Proverbs say, a heart at peace gives life to the body.  And no matter which culture might be surrounding me, I've discovered that a peaceful heart and a lively body are things to be highly prized, world-wide.