~Kirby is a North Carolina native. He has been a Texan for three years now, and will soon be relocating to Colorado. His life journey has now brought him to serving an important role in our society. This is his story.~
There is a myriad of ways that I could answer the question “who are you?” and I have thought through many of them. In fact, I believe that much of my life has been spent trying to determine how exactly to answer that question. However, for the sake of simplicity and clarity I will focus my attention on some of the basic details about who I am. Perhaps this may shed some light to anyone who may be curious, and if it brings up further questions or comments, I welcome them.
To start, I am the youngest in a family of five, that is my dad, mom, brother, sister, and then me, in descending order by age. As of this writing, my parents have been married for just shy of 40 years, quite an accomplishment in a world of left and right swiped-relationships, tabloid coverage of the latest celebrities’ divorces, etc. My parents, siblings, and I were all born in the Midwest, shortly after I was born we moved to North Carolina, where I’ve lived the majority of my life up until this point.
I grew up with a relatively normal childhood, however the more people I meet, the more that I realize that “normal” is relative. Nevertheless, my childhood was pretty uneventful. One thing I often found myself sharing in “about me” sections of projects as a grade school student was my miracle birth. I was born with a condition where the doctors gave me a ten percent chance to live and I somehow managed to make it through. Though I have no personal recollection of that day it has shaped a lot of who I am today.
My maternal grandma used to always say to me, “I know God has a plan for you; otherwise He would’ve just taken you that day.” Those words have stayed with me from the first time she told me to this very day, almost thirty years later. Growing up my family regularly attended a Lutheran church nearly every Sunday, a habit that was routine and without a doubt shaped a lot of who I am today.
When I was in middle school my Christian faith began to become more important to me. Part of the reason for that was likely the model that my siblings set for me. They became very involved in a Christian nonprofit organization and I wanted to follow them. So follow them I did and my identity as a Christ-follower became very important to me. This meant daily reading of my Bible, regular prayer, and trying my best to love my neighbor as myself.
As I progressed through high school my faith continued to grow and some friends that I previously spent time with began to be replaced with others who shared similar values as me. I wasn’t one to go out on the weekends; in fact most of my time was probably behind a computer screen hoping that my crush would send me an instant message, listening to alternative music, or doing homework. For reasons I cannot fully explain, I often separated my friendships between those that I met at school and those I met elsewhere, at least up until high school. For this reason, I didn’t always feel like I had one set group of friends.
Aside from being involved in Christian organizations in high school, I also ran cross country and track and field, though I wasn’t exactly one of the top runners. Actually, I initially joined the track team in middle school when I didn’t make the final cut for the basketball team and I thought that it would help me to better prepare for tryouts the following year. I ended up staying with the sport though as I came to realize that it was a nice opportunity to get to get to know some of my classmates outside of the normal class setting. Though I never did und up making the final cut for my middle school basketball team, I played on a recreational league in the town I grew up in every year through the end of high school.
I was a pretty smart student and was able to maintain A’s and B’s for the majority of my classes through high school and even into college. I gravitated toward Spanish and art classes because although I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do as a career, I knew I wanted to do something with those. Therefore, come freshman year in college I decided that I would major in Spanish and graphic design.
When I was really young I thought I wanted to be a train engineer, but ask me what that even means and I don’t think I could even tell you today. Later on that morphed into being an illustrator, and then to doing character design for movies or designing logos, shirts, and other similar graphic arts. It was this path that I was on as I progressed through much of my undergraduate career.
During my four years in college I was fortunate to have the privilege to live with international students while living on campus. Outside of a brief cruise in the Caribbean with my family when I was really young, I had really only been out of the country once before starting college. However, living with international students for the first two years of college really opened my eyes to a number of opportunities, viewpoints, and perspectives that had previously never crossed my mind. I took full advantage of opportunities laid before me to go overseas, whether it was with a Christian outreach group or a study abroad opportunity, I even studied for a semester in South America.
It was around this time that I began to consider life after college. College life was very exciting for me! It was almost like a four-year long summer camp and I didn’t really want it to end. However, I was also eager to get out into the “real world” and pursue some of my passions further. I recall a conversation with my dad sometime around my junior year when he suggested that I take a social work class because “I think that really fits your talents, passion, and skills,” he said. So I went with it.
By the end of the semester of taking that first social work class, I had determined that social work was the right fit for me. I always knew that I wanted to help people, I mean who hasn’t answered the question “what do you want to do with your life?” with something along the lines of “I want to help people”? Now, I began to focus on who I wanted to help and how I could help them. With a passion for the Spanish language and getting to know people for who they are as well as seeing the potential for who they can be, advocating for Spanish-speaking immigrants and migrants seemed like the perfect choice.
I knew it would take more than a bachelors degree to do that, but I didn’t want to go straight into a masters program without trying things out in the real world first. So a couple of months after graduating with a bachelors degree in Spanish, I packed my things up and moved out west to serve as an AmeriCorps member for a couple of years. AmeriCorps really solidified my desire to pursue social work and to work with vulnerable populations. I think it was just the right transition that I needed from the academic world to the “real world.” In fact, returning to graduate school after only two years away from higher education felt strangely backward at times.
Nevertheless, I moved again, this time to a state where I had never lived (and frankly never thought I would) to pursue a discipline that I hardly knew existed even five years prior. The decision was not an easy one and the road has been full of bumps, bruises, mistakes, loneliness, isolation, and more, but I’m so glad that I’ve made it to where I am today. I would love to say that I have no regrets, but that would not be truthful. There are words I wish I hadn’t said and things I wish I hadn’t done as well as others that I wish I had, however I am doing what I can to make a positive difference in the world whenever I can.
-Kirby
Conquering Shenea Spirit 