Do you ever wonder what keeps you safe in this lifetime? Certainly, I don’t mean always having things go your way. After all, we are required, throughout life, to weather difficult decisions, asked countless times to practice discernment, obligated to muster compassion, and expected to find a way to forgive—even if it takes years to materialize.
Do you have a sense that there are power(s) greater than you?
To be honest, I can’t imagine migrating through this unpredictable time on Earth without some sort of belief in a higher power. The weight of this world would crush me otherwise.
Even as a child, as ‘non-spiritual’ as the family was, there was always something in my heart. I don’t recall being taught this… but the notion was there, nonetheless.
I think that early sense of something greater revealed itself not in sermons or books, but in the most unlikely place — under fire from the neighborhood kids.
The neighborhood boys taunted us unmercifully. It’s odd to see some of them now as Facebook ‘friends’—as if nothing ever happened. The little cretins would yell, “Your father’s in jail!” and “You don’t have a father!” from across the street—most likely, little ears parroting their parents, who were trying to figure us out.
No… Dad was not in jail. He was living his life on the other side of the state, employed and in full compliance with society’s rules and regulations—and child support. One day, as I ran—gangly and awkward—away from them, I yelled out in retort, “God is our father!”
Where did that come from? It wasn’t premeditated… it just popped out of my heart and through my mouth. Did I believe it? Sort of… I guess. But it shut them up, and the taunting shifted from verbal assaults to lying in wait to pummel us with fists or stones. What little shits they were.
My brothers got the brunt of it. As unmannered as the neighborhood boys were, you didn’t hit a girl.
The boys would ask Mom for help—some guidance on how to get from the schoolyard to home, a mere five blocks. “Well, you must have done something to deserve it!” End of discussion.
When my brothers would retaliate in some way, those little neighborhood brats would bring their mom over to tell our mom how naughty we were. When the neighbor mom left the porch, we’d receive our reprimand: “You must have started it.”
Here I am, fifty years later, and writing this paragraph brings me to uncontrollable tears again. What the absolute hell was wrong with my mom that she could never support our position, our pain, our plea?
Years later, I recall her uttering some nonsense about wanting to make us strong. But that’s the thing—even a boxer, beaten and bloody, has a coach telling him he’s going to be okay. We had no coach.
What people may not realize is that when you are required to consistently second-guess yourself, an erosion takes place. An erosion of self-worth. An erosion of the heart.
