Friday, February 11, 2022 My Story, Part 2

There comes a time in everyone’s life when they confront three deep theological realities: evil in themselves, evil in the world, and death. Of course, as a child, the words “deep theological realities” don’t mean anything. But looking back, I remember certain incidents in elementary school that fit the bill and have stayed with me all these years.

I’d seen small acts of bullying before and my usual thought was that I didn’t want to be a victim of it myself. We called it “being picked on,” and it was usually done by kids who wanted to display power over others, most often in the form of verbal harassment. I didn’t like bullies – who does? Yet all these years later, I cannot explain why one day I decided it was my turn to pick on someone. I suppose I wanted a taste of that power myself. My victim was a girl in my class named Marsha who had the misfortune to develop early and also wore braces on her teeth. We had a nickname for her that was especially cruel. I started following her home one day, calling her names and throwing spitballs at her. Suddenly she turned on me with tears in her eyes and pleaded, “Leave me alone! Why can’t you just leave me alone?” I was stricken and ashamed. I turned around and went home, newly acquainted with a darkness in my soul that I could not scrub out.

As I was leaving school another day, I came upon a scene that I did not comprehend at first. Two older brothers of a friend of mine were confronting a classmate of Chinese origins named Henry. They called him “Chink” (a word I’d never heard before but understood immediately as a racial taunt), and were trying to kick him in the face. His face, as I recall, was already bloodied. It was clear from the context that their hatred of Henry had nothing to do with any action on his part, but solely because he was Chinese. I was profoundly disturbed and unsettled. There was an ugliness and a brutality to this that went far beyond the usual mischief making and petty pecking order posturing of the schoolyard and classroom. It was a glimpse into a wider world that I’d rather not have seen, but couldn’t forget.

In that same year, one evening we had policemen turn up at our house. They wanted to talk to me, to see if I’d seen Grace P. lately. Grace and her family had been our next-door neighbors until I was about 7 years old. She and I had been good buddies, but I hadn’t seen her since her family moved away. She’d gone missing and her parents were desperately trying to pursue any possible leads as to her whereabouts. The next morning, the picture was in the paper: Grace’s grandmother grieving and in shock. Grace had drowned at one of our local lakes while out swimming with friends. Death was no longer a theoretical idea – it could happen to friends. It could happen to me.

But for all of this, I was still not very attuned to spiritual things. One night the neighbor kids were all abuzz with the rumor that Rodney, a boy who lived a couple houses down from me, had gone to church and had spoken in tongues. I’d never heard of this before and once someone explained it to me, I had a hard time reconciling the idea that Rodney was not only a churchgoing boy, but also had received some special gift of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit must not be very discerning, I thought. Rodney was not a nice boy. All in all, I thought churches were strange places and this was just further confirmation.

Off I went to junior high school (a lesson in survival) and then high school, going through different friend groups, trying cigarettes and then rejecting them, getting a job, wishing I had a boyfriend – ha ha – all the typical things of an average girl who occupied a very small territory in the bigger world of these bigger schools. I can’t say that God wasn’t working on me in those days, as I am sure He must have been. Certainly as I look back, I can be thankful for the things from which He spared me, like that boyfriend that I wanted so much. It wasn’t until my college years that I began to form definite ideas about Christianity – not the warm and fuzzy kinds of ideas either.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning, but hey, check out the slug bug in that photo!

My Story Part 1
My Story Part 3
My Story Part 4
My Story Part 5
My Story Part 6
My Story Part 7
My Story Part 8
My Story Part 9
My Story Part 10