This past weekend I was privileged to speak and serve at the Hearts of Beauty Women’s retreat.  I was following a speaker/friend who shared how we two characterized our growing up years in two distinctive ways:  She grew up in a racially divided area in which she did not fit into either of the normal categories.  She called herself an outcast.  I, on the other hand, grew up in Southern California, “the melting pot.”  In our conversations, I told her that I understood her struggle, but that I never felt like an outcast. Instead, I described the feeling of being “set-apart.”  She thought that sounded a lot better.

As she got ready to introduce me, I was searching for how to segue into my subject matter. I asked the Lord for words and in that moment the Lord told me that when I was growing up I was “a little brown girl…