I was in the eighth grade when it happened, and I’ve barely thought about it since then.

That is, until the other day when I got a look from my husband.

It was stupid, really. He didn’t mean anything by it. I made a comment that was a little off-hand (probably not the brightest thing I had ever said) and by the time I caught myself it was too late. He looked at me and laughed, playfully.

Suddenly, I was back in the eighth grade, back to a memory I thought I had long since forgotten, where I pushed my way through the heavy, swinging doors of the library and found a small crowd of peers gathered around something, noses pushed in to the middle of the crowd. I approached from behind, and there I saw him.

Derek Freeman, sitting in the middle.

Derek and I had been “going out” for about three weeks now, which when I was in eighth grade, meant we sat across the table from each other while we ate lunch, he walked me to my classes, and we occasionally held hands.

Despite the fairly low commitment of a junior high dating relationship, I have to admit I was a little surprised when Derek passed his note back to me in History class.

I like you. Want to go out? 

Derek was one of the most popular guys in our class.

And like all good middle school students, I knew my place in the social hierarchy. I wasn’t un-popular necessarily, but I also hadn’t secured one of the limited places in the “in” crowd. So why did he want to go out with me? Why not Becca, or Madeline, or Alyssa? Those were the girls I pictured him choosing.

Still, I was flattered, and too embarrassed to question his offer, so I accepted, and we began eating lunch together (sitting next to each other with a group of girls on my side, and a group of guys on his, so that we rarely spoke) walking to class together, and occasionally holding hands in the halls. But that day, I walked into the library, and I heard him say it, to the attentive crowd of eighth graders gathered around.

“Guys, I’m telling you. She actually bought it! She actually thinks we’re going out!”

With that, the whole ensemble of pre-pubescent boys and girls erupted into laughter.

I hid in the bathroom stall that afternoon crying, earning my very first “skip,” for seventh period art. I wasn’t mad at Derek, or at the group of “friends” who had gathered around to listen to his story.

I was just so sad, so confused, and so hurt.

I felt like a joke.

So when my husband laughed at me the way he did — likely with less ill-will than Derek Freeman on that day in junior high, I found it strange how I wasn’t sad or hurt or confused like I was the time before. Instead, I was furious.

It wasn’t tears that rose up inside of me, so strong no average human being could have stopped them. It was rage.

It’s so strange how hurt can turn to anger like that.

Still, if it weren’t for my husband, I would have just moved on.

I know that sounds weird, but I’ve gotten pretty good at stuffing my anger over the years, especially in marriage, where it seems like hurt and fear and frustration sometimes come out of nowhere, unraveling right in front of me in an unpredictable manner, until I’m untwisting and unwinding a complicated mess I feel completely ill-prepare to handle.

We followed our usual ritual.

“Are you okay?” Darrell asked.

“I’m fine.” I told him.

And we went back and forth, back and forth, like that, until I couldn’t hold it in any longer, until all those unwanted, junior high feelings of being laughed at, lied to, and left out came rushing back, and I was so deep in the mess of it all, I could hardly see up from down, could hardly distinguish between what I felt now, and what I felt then.

Hurt, anger, fear, isolation.

Slowly, but surely, with the steadiness and the confidence of a middle schooler, I engaged the conversation. I fluctuated between blaming and raising my voice; and feigning coolness or shutting down. But eventually, I found my way out.

Eventually, I found the words to speak to my husband that I should have spoken to Derek Freeman, that I would have spoken, given the guts, the self-awareness and the wherewithal to do so at the time.

“That hurt my feelings,” I told him.

He listened, and understood, and I cried, but the good kind of tears, the kind that help to wash away our long-held and heavy resentments and fears.

As I write this, it’s barely a week after the conversation, and I’m not “all better” now, but I’m better than I was before. I’ve never gotten an apology from Derek Freeman for exploiting me for his strange social game, but I’ve decided I don’t really need one. I have something better.

I have (or am practicing) the ability to notice when something hurtful happens to me, to disconnect hurt from anger, and to stand up, even if it’s like an awkward middle schooler, and own what I feel.

Have you noticed childhood pain resurfacing later in life? How have you dealt with it?

[Photo: martinak15, Creative Commons]

The post My Hurt Turned To Anger appeared first on Prodigal Magazine.

“I can’t see it,” I sigh, slowly pulling the card away from my face, my eyes trained on the blurred image. “It’s there,” says my husband, “you just have to look beyond the actual picture.”

I’m attempting to see Jesus buried in the 3-D Magic Eye postcard my kids brought home from Sunday school. I’ve tried eight times, and so far, I see nothing but a kaleidoscope of colors.

“Hold the front of this postcard right up to your nose,” the directions state. “Then very slowly move it away from your face. Try not to blink. A 3D hidden image will magically appear.”

I try again, this time drawing the postcard away even more slowly.

Nothing.

“Try it in better light,” Brad suggests. I hover under a lamp, bring the card to my nose, draw it slowly away from my face again.

Nothing. And now I have a headache.

My son Noah describes what he sees in intricate detail: Jesus, his arms held wide open, a lamb at his feet.

“What?! There’s a lamb there, too?!”

I give up.

I feel like this sometimes, and not just when I’m holding the Magic Eye card in front of my nose. Sometimes it seems like everyone sees Jesus, perfectly clear and beautiful and vibrant, like he’s standing in front of them in 3D. Meanwhile I’m squinting from the sidelines with a blank look on my face.

I recently received a Facebook message from an acquaintance who mentioned that sometimes she wishes she would click on my blog and read me boldly proclaim that I know, understand and walk in confidence, with no confusion about who I am in Christ. “That’s my prayer for you,” she said.

I felt like a total failure when I read that.

I felt like a pseudo-Christian, a less-than believer, like someone who keeps missing the mark.

But the truth is, she’s right. I don’t always proclaim boldly. I don’t always know, understand and walk with confidence in Christ. A lot of the time, I’m confused. I have questions. I waffle. Sometimes I can’t see Jesus, though not from a lack of trying.

When I read that note, my first instinct was to change how I write. After all, I don’t want to disappoint my readers. I don’t want them to come away from my blog feeling frustrated and empty. But then I realized I couldn’t do it. Writing about my faith, as flawed as it is, is inextricably linked to how I live my faith. Writing is spiritual processing and prayer for me; it offers opportunity to both rejoice and to lament. To ignore half of that equation, the lamenting part, would be to ignore half of who I am.

As I finished writing this post, I picked up the Magic Eye card one more time. I wanted a happy ending. I wanted to tell you that the image came into focus, that I finally saw Jesus and the lamb. But as I pulled the postcard away from my face, my eyes burning and watering—

I saw nothing.

“Still can’t see Jesus, Mommy?” Noah asked, coming up behind my desk chair as I held the card an arm’s length away. “Nope,” I answered, sighing.

“Well, he’s there; I see him every time,” he said.

And I believe him.

Have the opinions of others made you want to change who you are? How have you dealt with uncertainty?

[Photo: ferdy001, Creative Commons]

The post When You Can’t See Jesus in 3D appeared first on Prodigal Magazine.

In seventh grade I decided to try out for track. It seemed easier than the various other sports which required coordination.

All I had to do was run, right?

So I walked up to the starting line in my “blue’s and grays,” colors representing my commitment to school spirit, and along along with fifty other thirteen year olds, sized up my competition. I wasn’t the chubbiest, or even the least athletic. Surely sprinting one hundred yards would be simple.

Surely, I would be good at this.

I pictured myself taking off as the whistle blew, lunging forward with unexpected power, while all my classmates looked on in stunned reverence.

But as my mind flitted off to the medal stand, the whistle sounded, a gaggle of girls jolted forward on the track, and before I could be given my imaginary victors medal, I found myself dead last with a red faced coach spitting in my face and winding her arm in the universal sign for “move your butt!”

I took off in a mediocre sprint. I imagined the shocked looks on my coaches faces when I would whirr past the average athletes, as I expected to do. Then I realized how tough it was to run a half lap. Let alone a full one. I also realized, much to my dismay, I wasn’t nearly as fast or athletically inclined as my classmates were.

So I did what all kids are good at. I twisted in mid-air and plopped to the ground clutching my knee.

I took the easy way out.

I wanted to quit, but didn’t want to admit I was weak. So I faked real pain, and hobbled towards the bleachers. No medal, no honorary mention, just a free pass out of gym that day.

***

Last year I decided to cycle cross country with a tour group called Venture Expeditions, who raises awareness for different non-profits and missions groups.

It seemed easy enough.

I had a bike. I had a relatively healthy body. And I had a strong desire to leave Texas, where I was living at the time.

This combination led to several Skype conversations with the cycling tour recruiters. And then to picturing myself in the best shape of my life, being cheered on by my peers and adding “cycled across the USA” onto my cool-girl resume.

So I followed the necessary steps. I filled out an application, I found a trail by my house and mapped out a route. I asked my boss for a month off work, and he said yes. I even got on my bike a few times and rode with semi-tenacity.

But the closer the trip got, the more real it all became, and the more I started to realize how insane it was to think that my un-athletic self, the same self who faked an injury to get out of gym class, could pedal her way all the way across the country.

There was no way someone like me could ride my bike more than thirty miles. No freaking way.

On top of all that, I realized I would have to sacrifice time with my friends in order to really train. I thought about all the money I would have to raise (fundraising is my least favorite past time), and pictured the defeat of gym class happening in a group of real cyclists, in the middle of the country, with no way out but “bike.”

The very thought led me to quickly chuckle and shrug off the possibility.

So I backed out.

Like a character in a poorly selling book, I convinced myself it was a better testimony to stay at my job and work hard. I checked off why it would be impossible to raise so much money. I used all of my excuses for justifications for why I should do exactly what I wanted to do, which was stay in my place of comfort.

Basically, I realized how tough it was to run a full lap, let alone half of one.

I dropped to the floor, clutched my knee, and took the easy way out.

It felt like the bleachers all over again. I quit when it get’s hard.

But what I’m finding is that quitting only feels good for a certain amount of time. It feels good while I’m hanging with friends instead of asking for money, or while I’m protecting my ego by hobbling away from the track. But later, while I watch my classmates receive their real medals (as opposed to imaginary ones), or watch my friends come home from cycling tours or adventures or missions trips — changed forever — I wish I would have stuck it out.

In seventh grade, and at twenty-three, I thought I wanted comfort, but I don’t. There’s no fun in comfort, and no story in it either.

I want something more.

I want to push myself to finish, to cycle from California to New York, or to raise money to build a school in Africa, or just to give myself permission to be imperfect so I can keep going when its hard.

How has comfort kept you from living a good story? Do you have a story where you kept going?

[Photo: Ha-Wee, Creative Commons]

The post I Quit When It Gets Hard appeared first on Prodigal Magazine.

The phone rang, and it was him, my dad, whom I haven’t talked to in over 2 years.

To be quite honest, I didn’t know quite what to say. I wasn’t expecting his call. So I just listened, without trying to fix him. I was glad that he called after so many years, and thankful that I was finally emotionally prepared to receive the call from him.

My Dad is a man of passion, creativity, entertainment, compassion, sensitivity and amazing talent, but inside of him you’ll also find addiction, rage, anger, insecurity, bitterness, un-forgiveness and the inability to express his feelings.

These are just some of the things that come to mind when I think “dad.”

I come from a broken home where my parents divorced when I was three years old. My Dad was an amazing musician as well as my mom, and they both played night clubs to put food on the table throughout my childhood. I would say I grew up with very unconventional childhood compared to most, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything, as its made me who I am. It was tough, in some ways, at the time, but it was definitely cool to say our parents were rock stars by trade!

I lost touch with my Dad when my older brother and I moved in with our mother full time. I was twelve at the time. I didn’t really get phone calls from him much after that, and I think I remember a single fishing trip (compared to the every-weekend outings we used to enjoy while we were living with him) and what I gathered was that dad figured his job was pretty much finished at that point.

What my dad didn’t know is how much I needed him, even then.

I needed him in my teen years to tell me who I was and why I was feeling the things I was feeling; how to defend myself, take care of myself and how to talk to girls. He was quite good at that, I must say, as he landed my Mom and she was, is and always will be a knockout!

Needless to say, I needed him terribly, and still miss him now, in many ways he may never fully understand.

Over the years of being a son affected by my absent father, I developed this thing I have grown to hate, and I call it the “fix it” syndrome. Each time I would talk with my dad on the phone, I would always feel like I needed to fix him, talk down to him, or just get something out of him that I felt I had never received from him in the past.

I felt like a part of me was missing because he failed to give it to me over the years.

Before the phone call that day, I hadn’t talked to him in years.

I had been walking through some really hard things in my life. I’d determined some insecurities in myself, and through the process had begun to find peace, freedom and healing. I started to feel confident in who I was as a man, a husband and father. I had even been able to forgive my dad for not being there in very important parts of my childhood.

So when my dad called, I was actually really happy to hear from him.

While he talked, I just listened. I didn’t try to fix him or make him love me. I just showed him the love I had found myself. And from this place of security, something amazing happened. All my bitterness and resentment faded away, and I was able to impact my father in a way that gave him a confidence he had never known — his son truly did love him despite his difference in lifestyle and struggles.

It made me realize how the simplest things make a son feel loved from his father, and a father feel love from his son.

It was just a simple phone call. Nothing more, nothing less.

But I think understanding the impact of this simple phone call makes me not only a better son to my father, but also a better father my two boys, Nolan and Parker. It reminds me of the kind of dad that they need not only now, but throughout their lives. It shows me that I have what it takes to give that to them.

It reminds me to love my dad, as well as others, unconditionally without anything in return.

Dad,

I’ll always remember the amazing fishing trips that you’ve taken me on and when you taught me how to play the guitar at six years old. You’re a good man with struggles like all of us. I know that you may have had difficulty overcoming your struggles, but I know that deep inside you’re an amazing human being, and without you I wouldn’t be sitting here today with the amazing family that I have. I wish we could talk more and most definitely go fishing more. I hope you’re getting to do plenty of that because I know how much you love it! And even though we don’t chat often, I’m so glad that we still can.

I love you dad and Happy Father’s Day!

What would you like to tell your dad this Father’s Day?

[Photo : _Imaji_, Creative Commons]

The post The Call From My Dad That Changed Everything appeared first on Prodigal Magazine.

My nephew, Lucas, was born with two holes in his heart.

He didn’t get to feel his mother’s arms holding him until two weeks after he was born, because he had open heart surgery and was hooked up to tubes that were saving his life.

She held him for the first time, 14 days after he was born, and suddenly his stats skyrocketed.

Eventually the nurses had to take Lucas away again because he was still reliant on those tubes.

And when his mom stopped holding him, Lucas stopped breathing for a few seconds, and his stats plummeted.

When my sister-in-law told me this, I cried. Both out of sadness and relief. Sadness, because I wanted Lucas to be held forever. Relief, because I no longer felt guilty for needing love.

I believe our longing to be affirmed and nurtured is not a sin. It’s something innate. It’s a longing that we were created with, as babies. We are born needing to be held, to be loved, to be seen and heard.

I once had an editor call me an affirmation junkie.

I was a staff journalist for a Christian newspaper—yes, Christian—and I was more hurt by the way the editor treated me than I’ve been by anyone else in my life. I worked two hours away from the main office, in a small town, and one day, when I hadn’t heard whether or not he’d received a piece of mine he’d assigned, I emailed him and asked what he’d thought of it.

And he responded by saying, “Has anyone ever told you that you’re an affirmation junkie?”

I cried for hours. And I stopped working for the newspaper shortly afterwards, and it’s taken me years to recover, but I realize now that, in many ways, my editor was right. Oh, not in the way that he told me I was an affirmation junkie—that was wrong, because it was insensitive and cold.

But because I AM one. An affirmation junkie. And for years I felt guilty about it, until an encounter with Jesus helped me to embrace my neediness.

My encounter was not unlike Mary’s when Jesus emerged from the tomb, fresh in his resurrected body, and held out his crucified hands to her and said her name.

“Mary.”

Oh, to have our father know our name.

One day I was supposed to speak with my dad at a conference, and we’d butted heads yet again, just a few minutes earlier. Dad has always found it hard to understand me, and me, him. We were standing side by side in worship, and I closed my eyes, and I saw him.

Not my earthy father, but my heavenly one.

I was a little girl in heaven, and my Abba picked me up and held me close and told me, over and over, how beautiful I was. It was a more intimate, satisfying and affirming presence than anything I have ever experienced. In that moment, I realized it was okay. I was okay. I was accepted, just as I am.

Then, the song ended and I opened my eyes, and the next song started and I closed them again, desperate to see God again.

But worried that I’d be bugging him. So in my mind, I hid behind a tree, hoping to catch another glimpse.

And in that moment, I was the same little girl who used to stand outside her dad’s office door, because he was a preacher who worked from home, and it all made sense to me. Why I felt so desperately insecure, for the way Dad had sounded annoyed when I wanted to see him. The way I’d felt like a nuisance for wanting to talk to my father.

And that’s when I saw him–my heavenly father, looking behind bushes and trees trying to find me. And then I heard it. Abba’s voice. Calling for me.

God not only wanted to be with me; he was worried about me when I went hiding. The Creator of the universe was searching for me.

I realized, then, that I was born with a spiritual hole in my heart, born longing for a heavenly kind of love. The kind that only God can give. Jesus knows my name. He wants to be with me. He wants to see me, and hear me, and to hold me. And he will never let me go.

He doesn’t call me an affirmation junkie, even though I am one. No, he calls me Loved. And no amount of human praise will ever match the approval I feel in the arms of Christ, wrapped around me.

Have you experienced a time of total desperation? What comforted you?

[Photo martinak15, Creative Commons]

The post When You’re An Affirmation Junkie appeared first on Prodigal Magazine.