MY FRIEND JAMES TAUGHT ME about partiality this summer.

Partiality is a big word: it has ten letters and five syllables, and it sounds like a wave breaking if you say it slowly enough. Parrrrrrr-sheeeee-AAAAAL-i-teeeeeeee.

Maybe you have to have lived by the beach to understand that.

I’m a Florida girl. Technically I was born in Virginia, but I only spent a few weeks of my life there before we moved to Florida, where I’ve been ever since. Or was, until I moved to Ohio last summer. 

That’s really not as big a change as it sounds. My mom is from Ohio, so I’m used to visiting almost every year. I even remember ten-year-old me vowing to move here someday. 

And I know Ohio is a meme state, but while it is cold all but three months out of the year, and while it’s completely surrounded by land and obsessed with football, it doesn’t have summer nights so humid you have to swim to get to the mailbox, or three-inch-long brown beetles that fly into your house and chase you. One of those inches is made up by their antennae, by the way.

Now, in Florida, I grew up so close to the beach that when Hurricane Michael came through and flooded everything and destroyed the sand dunes, we could hear the ocean from our house, which is about ten minutes away by car. By the end of February I’d say wistfully to my siblings, “I can’t wait to go swimming!” The beach season officially started in July. 

I know the peculiar rattle of wind in the sea oats. I know the smell of sand mixed with that salty-fish smell of the ocean. My siblings and I would dash through the sand, kick up firework sprays of water, shriek at the cold, dive underwater to ‘get used to it’, and suck salt water out of our hair on the way home.

This was my life for twenty-one years.

Then I moved to Ohio.

A landlocked state of eternal winter. I knew it would be bad when I had to put on a jacket in August.

My family has been to Ohio for Christmas a few times, but usually we go in July, which is one of the only hot months here. Suffice it to say, I was not as prepared as I thought I would be.

But at the moment I focused on the excitement of starting school and the delight of non-humid weather. I do not exaggerate when I say it feels too humid to breathe at the height of a Florida summer. “I have three pairs of jeans,” I said proudly, “four pairs of fuzzy socks, a winter coat, and a bunch of pretty sweaters! What can go wrong?”

I ended up spending over a hundred dollars on things for the winter.

By the time spring came, my feet had perpetually frozen into five pairs of socks and my roommate gave me side-eyes whenever I turned the heater higher than seventy. Our electric company made good money off of us that year.

Then spring came and thawed the land. No, actually it snowed again. And again. And there was ice. And it snowed. I added fluffy black cat slippers to my five pairs of socks. 

Eventually, the snow stopped, flowers bloomed, and the sun shone again. The electric company mourned its passing, while my feet remembered what the floor of our house felt like. July was just around the corner. I began to hope that life might go back to normal for a while. It was almost swimming season, after all! I couldn’t wait to splash into the—

Oh, you thought things were going to be normal?

Remember how I said Ohio’s landlocked? Instead of an ocean flinging its waves everywhere, offering homes to shells, dolphins, and the occasional shark (to spice things up), there is a pool that does nothing unless someone gets into it. Not even the courtesy of an alligator.

I became deeply depressed. My soul longed for the cry of a seagull. If I thought hard enough, I could almost smell that tangy air, taste the salt flung onto my lips, feel it burn my eyes while damp sand squished beneath my toes.

How can you have summer without these things? How can anyone possibly live with land surrounding them on all sides? The claustrophobia will take you quickly if you allow it.

Ohio summers don’t even have the decency to be hot all the time.

I went on vacation to Maine and stopped at Niagara Falls on the way. When I heard the shrill cry of a seagull (for the first time in almost a year), I just about cried. Does this sound crazy to you? Obviously you didn’t grow up burying your popcorn in the sand before the seagulls got it. Core memory right there.

Well, as summer started to get decently hot, I began reading from the book of James, and my friend James drew my attention to ‘partiality’. Merriam-Webster defines this as, the quality or state of being partial; a special taste or liking. ‘Partial’ is defined as, inclined to favor one party more than the other (biased).

James says, “Show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, ‘You sit here in a good place,’ while you say to the poor man, ‘You stand over there,’ or, ‘Sit down at my feet,’ have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?” (James 2:1-4, ESV)

Ow.

Has that got you thinking about all the times you judged someone for what they were wearing or how well they seemed to be taking care of themselves?

It got me thinking about the beach. 

I love the beach. I miss the beach. I have so many memories of the beach, and of course I would. I’m not used to cold weather. I don’t really like snow. I really don’t like having to put on five pairs of socks. My fluffy black cat slippers are a bit bigger than they used to be. 

But I spent all my time wishing things could be ‘normal’ without accepting that ‘normal’ for me growing up is not normal where I am now.

Even worse, I looked down at Ohio for being so cold and landlocked. I unconsciously elevated myself in my mind because, “Where I’M from, you only need three sweaters at most!” I may not have judged any people to their faces, but I basically told the state of Ohio to go sit at my feet while I pined after Florida.

And in doing this, I didn’t appreciate the great things about Ohio, like the wildflowers in the spring, the fireflies in the summer, how beautiful the snow is in the winter (even if I don’t enjoy it). I can step outside without becoming a sweaty mess. I don’t have palmetto roaches in my cupboards!

That’s the thing about showing partiality. Not only are you painting one thing as better than the other, you blind yourself to truth. The truth is, Florida and Ohio are not superior to each other. They’re each very different states, and I love them both. Maybe someday I’ll have memories of Ohio winter as rich as my memories of Florida summer.

But I’ll only appreciate those memories if I stop showing partiality.