4. secrets & tall tales
The best piece of advice my dad has given to me is, to know who you are. He bestowed this nugget of wisdom on me later on into my adult life after many many failed attempts in pursuit of the concept. The value of this lesson learned was, of course, hindsight 20/20 as most lessons are.
Hollywood had never quite been my inspiration, but vision boards with quotes about lone travelers and cut outs to create magazine collages focused on a creative life, and honestly just a continuous cycle of trial and error had been my formula until after over a decade the answer to that question…. who am I!?….finally became trial to recognition.
What I didn’t realize then, is that the greatest adventure, the grandest role, and the highest title is to be a follower of Christ. He is the freest, most abundantly creative being, and lavishes me with an identity where I am given names like…
ambassador, ( 2 Corinthians 5 : 20)
conqueror, (Romans 8 : 37)
beloved, (Colossians 3 : 12)
and daughter of the King (John 1 : 12).
However I did not believe these things walking the halls of middle and high school.
Teachers and parents would not have labeled me a “problem child”, my friend’s moms weren’t worried about their kid spending time with me, and I got stamped with the goody two shoes label in no time. But it wasn’t so much due to a desire to be held in the ranks as a poster child for straight laced mortality, as it was most likely due to the fact that I was known as a pastor’s kid.
Truth be told, back then I would have rather been granted a reputation for being a daredevil, someone who says yes to anything for the sake of a good time, or the life of the party. I tried to draft this identity from what I saw from the world.
My mom used to tell me that as a toddler, her rule was that I could not come out of my room during nap time until after she came to get me (probably because it was her nap time too).
She said that I would wake up, put my toes riiiiight up to the line of the carpet where the boundaries of my room ended and the edge of the hallway began, and I would yell out her name. I followed the rules because I thought they were inescapable, but I flirted with the line of obedience then and the enticement to tango with naming myself “boss”, became my clumsy dance later on down the road.
In high school my group of friends on the volleyball team used to do something called the Hot Seat. I’m sure there are variations to how it’s played, but my experience was that one person would sit in the middle of the circle and were grilled with questions as the rest of us gathered around in eager anticipation, hoping to hear the juicy details, secrets, and tales of each other’s personal lives.
This tradition batted me into staking the requirement for being an interesting and worthwhile person, into a treasure chest of wild stories to share.
Sitting in youth groups and hearing verses like Matthew 5:5 about meekness, which I equated to being a dull doormat, did not appeal to my spontaneous mentality.
Looking upon the vastness of the sea amazed me,
Standing on top of a mountain nearly one with the sun completely inspired me,
Documentaries like Into the Wild, about a man who shed society to become a leather tramp, captivated everything within me.
Leo Tolstoy wrote in his book Family Happiness,
“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in a quiet life.”
I underlined this quote and instead of holding it up to the Bible and seeing that excitement, danger, and sacrificing for the greatest love is so much the mark of a Christian life… I leaned on my own understanding and visions about how to live a worth while existence.
I imagined being dropped into an old western movie would be the thrill of a lifetime and alcohol seemed to be a friend to hold near and dear. In these places there didn’t appear to be rules, just freedom and wide open spaces. The mountains don’t tell the birds where to fly, cowboys are lawless, and a few good drinks is a companion to help me become whoever I wanted to be.
Satan’s accusation that God wants to stifle us or bench us from anything that could cause a rise in heart rate amplified my apprehension that Jesus was holding out on me.
Psalm 16:11 promises
“You (Jesus) make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
To me winning the lottery felt like a greater possibility than somehow being in God’s presence on earth, let alone within my heart.
Doubt in His abilities to satisfy me more than______ literally fill in the blank, really started to show. And I put the pursuit of happiness into my own hands, not realizing that happiness is circumstantial. But, I wanted to be the one in control of how I felt and who I was, rather than leaving it up to someone unseen and certainly hadn’t seemed trustworthy at that point.
This ignorance that claimed, God doesn’t know better, absolutely blinded me. It set the course for my reckless running. Being apart of a “religion” rather than the world didn’t equate to fullness of joy and pleasures. But to do the things requested by my flesh and then not have the enjoyment fulfill me, quickly became a never ending, maddening quest for more.
Striving to be my own keeper was an attempt that always turned up fool’s gold. Fulfillment of my endeavors remained untethered and the void within grew rampant as the disease of self-sufficiency corroded everything around me.
Avenues for control and “the next best thing” claimed my attention.
Deciding who I wanted to be, based on superficial worldly identities dragged me in all kinds of different directions.
Anxiety continued to chase after me.
A lack of assurances mounted beyond the horizon and I begged my bones to be still, but as the stampedes grew closer, they rattled all the more like pebbles in a tin can…