Query or Lesson
From the Archive | Originally Published May 2020
“Query or Lesson”
Difficult moments often bring questions to the surface before answers become clear. A person may need time to pause, pray, reflect, examine what is happening, and decide whether the moment is asking for deeper understanding, wiser action, or a more grounded response.
Every question does not carry the same purpose. A query can create space for wisdom when it is rooted in humility, patience, and a desire to understand. A lesson can emerge when a person is willing to look beneath the surface of an experience and consider what needs to be strengthened, changed, healed, or learned.
This week’s Dear Mixed Girl® anchor, “When ‘What Are You?’ Becomes More Than a Question,” adds another layer to this conversation. Questions can help people grow, but questions can also become harmful when they demand access, explanation, or emotional labor from someone who has not consented to being examined.
One question remains important as this archive piece returns to the conversation:
Is this moment inviting wisdom, or is it asking someone to carry what does not belong to them?
Archive Note
Questions carry responsibilities shaped by relationship, purpose, timing, and the amount of access being requested from the person receiving them. A real query can create room for wisdom, patience, prayer, discernment, and growth when a person is willing to examine a difficult moment with honesty.
This week’s anchor adds another layer because not every question invites growth. “What are you?” often arrives after visual assessment rather than relationship. Skin tone, hair texture, facial features, a surname, or family structure can become the reason someone decides personal explanation is owed. The person asking may see a quick moment of curiosity, while the child receiving the question may experience inspection, belittlement, or pressure to make her family story available.
A wisdom-rooted query can help a person grow, while an entitlement-rooted question can reduce a person to evidence. When identity, dignity, and belonging are at stake, the purpose behind the question matters as much as the words being used.
For a mixed or biracial girl, growth cannot be framed only as becoming more patient, polished, or prepared when someone places her on display. The adult, relative, educator, ministry leader, peer, or community member asking the question must also examine why curiosity has crossed into intrusion. A child should not have to carry the emotional labor of turning someone else’s invasive question into a teachable moment.
Proverbs 1:5 speaks to the wise increasing in learning, and 1 Thessalonians 5:11 calls people to encourage one another and build one another up. Within that spiritual frame, inquiry should deepen understanding rather than diminish dignity. Words offered in care should create connection, not pressure someone to defend her identity, explain her parents, or make her family story available for public interpretation.
Dear Mixed Girl® invites a fuller understanding of what inquiry can do. A mixed girl should have space to ask her own questions about identity, culture, family, language, belonging, and self-identification. Inner questions can become part of her becoming, while questions forced upon her by others require boundaries, discernment, and adult accountability.
The work ahead is not teaching mixed girls to endure identity interrogation with more grace. Families, schools, ministries, and communities must become wise enough to recognize when inquiry helps a child grow and when a question teaches her that dignity is conditional.
Questions can open understanding, but wisdom must guide who asks, how they ask, and whether they have earned access to the answer.
Query or Lesson
There are times that arise when a situation stumps us and we do not know what to do to overcome it. This is surely a time of great reflection, meditation, prayer, and necessary visualization. On another end of the spectrum, it is equally a time to decide the situation means to you (at your core).
One situation that I have encountered is in dealing with difficulties within the school setting and not having adequate support that I think I need in order to perform well. Yes, in difficult moments, we can get angry, fuss, cuss, and yell…but is that enough to give us the answers and the vision that we need to take what happened and turn it into something fruitful?
When the road gets rough, the thing to consider is whether what is happening is a time for a query or a needed lesson.
Even when we think that we are wise and intellectual, there is yet still something to be learned. These queries may stimulate our growth and the lessons that you may need to let could set you apart from others at every level. When reached for what you can learn from queries or lessons will change your life in the way that you allow them to.
Think clearly. Be patient with yourself. Take the time to understand beyond the surface what you need to learn, especially when you are facing trials in your life.
Bible & Spiritual Connection
Proverbs 1:5 & 1 Thessalonians 5:11
There are countless lessons to be learned in life, but it is important to remember the value that they hold and that in your journey toward seeking sound knowledge God is present. No one walks this road alone, so do not be afraid to ask questions or learn the lesson that you need to learn.
Dr. KayLa N. Allen-Young is the founder of Dear Mixed Girl® and a certified health & well-being coach whose work explores identity, belonging, emotional intelligence, cultural proficiency, and human-centered leadership. Through writing, speaking, coaching, and educational experiences, she supports girls, families, educators, and leaders in developing healthier relationships with themselves and the communities around them.
This reflection is part of the Dear Mixed Girl® archive — a growing collection of writings preserved across different seasons of thought, growth, and becoming.
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