It started with wanting to be like him. I mean, I said I wanted to be like Jesus, but really I wanted to be like my dad, the man who could fix anything with a crescent wrench, a screw driver and WD-40. The man who could drink buttermilk without gagging. I wanted to be like him, and somehow I knew that if I were, I would also be like Jesus.
Somewhere along the way I learned that I was not like him, and I most certainly was not like Jesus. I felt sure that if anyone ever figured out or noticed just how much and in how many ways I wasn't like either of them I would be driven out like Frankenstein's Monster. So the me I saw in the mirror became something to hide from in the dark, and the world saw only the mask I made in Sunday School. And I learned that there were some things he couldn't fix. One of those things was me. Nothing could fix me. I was Humpty Dumpty, only nobody noticed because I was still walking around and playing and trying to smile, but inside I had shattered and the pieces had scattered. I hoped and wished that Jesus was still my friend and that some how, some way, I would or could learn to be like Dad, like my brother Jonathan was.
It was an accident really, and it wasn't anything like Dad. Dad never drank, but I discovered beer. Dad never drank, but by then I knew that I could never be, just simply wasn't at all, like Dad. I wasn't like Jesus either. I wasn't like any of the other kids in junior high. I wished I wasn't like me. But the drunk down the road left some beer in the ice chest on his back porch when he passed out the night before, and I was curious. It tasted sour and spoiled and made my stomach turn as much as the buttermilk I tried to drink to be like Dad had. I swallowed it down and forced myself, I still don't know why, to choke down the rest of the can as quickly as I could. My first beer, not even a teen, and instinctively I shotgunned it. Before it was gone I couldn't taste it anymore, though I could still feel the cold in my throat and stomach as the liquid entered me. But a moment later I learned I could be something else. I could be someone else. I could feel different. Or maybe I didn't have to feel? I wasn't sure, but either way, it was good. I wasn't like him, but I wasn't like me either. And I would try not to think about how even more unlike Jesus I had become, because it was obvious that no matter what the silly songs said, Jesus didn't like boys like me who couldn't even pretend to be good.
Drugs found me next. And liquor, the liquid fire that worked so much faster and better than beer. I would be in high school before long, that is if I didn't get expelled from junior high or kill myself, both becoming more possible each day. I barely wore the mask anymore. I only pretended at home until I could hide in my room or in the field behind our house. Well, and also at church, which had always seemed like home away from home, even though I knew I didn't belong, didn't fit in, didn't qualify and hadn't for years. The rest of the time I put the mask away and let my mirror face peek out. I didn't realize that this too was a mask, a created thing born out of the sadness and hurt and reactions to not being good enough to fool myself into believing that I could be like Jesus, much less like the man who could fix anything except me. I became the monster I hated and feared, except when the chemicals made me different or nothing. And different was better. And nothing was best.
And everything I used to try to change the me I had become, the me in the mirror, failed. And the magic potions made that better and worse. Worse, in that it made me worse and even more unable to be anything but the monster inside. Better in that they made it OK. If I couldn't be good, then I could at least be good at being bad and not care that I was a mutant, pieced-together monster and not the happy, good boy people made up when they told me stories of my childhood. And all the things I tried to close the gaps, to fill the canyons, between me and everyone else, turned out to be the wrong things, horribly wrong. I had been tricked, and the things that I had been told would bring me closer to the people I felt so ostracized from only made it worse and blew up the bridges I hoped to build. Even today I stand at the edge of canyons I dug at 13 and 14 and wonder if there is any miraculous way that a bridge can be built and relationships restored. By that time I had given up. I couldn't be like Dad or Jesus or Pappa (my mom's dad who was my hero) or even like the old me, which would at least be better than being the mutant I saw in the mirror. And it wasn't just drinking and drugging anymore. There were other things that made it better for a moment, that changed the way I felt, that made it hard to see the mirror me or feel him eating me up from the inside out. I tried all of them I could. One of them would be my salvation since Jesus must hate me now. I certainly did.
One of the other things would make it all better. One would not only change the way I felt about me and hide me from the mirror me, but it would change me. Because it would literally plant the seed which would change my very identity. I would no longer be the monster, the mutant, the freak or the bad boy. I would be Daddy. I wouldn't be like him. I would be him. I would do all the things that he did right. I would do none of the things that I thought he did wrong. I would be the him that I wanted him to be. And that would make me not me anymore. I would leave me and the mirror me in the past like a katydid husk and become something else. I would be blessed. I would have a quiver full of little ones who thought I could fix anything, and my name would change, and that would change me. I liked the name. I liked the way it would change who I was, who I would become. Daddy. Dads could be like Jesus. Dads could be better than...well, better than me. Dads were special, and there is no love greater than a daddy's love, right? I wanted to love like that.
The house of cards I built in which to hide myself from mirror me crashed, and I lost all hope. I learned that not all boys get to grow up and be Daddy. I learned that life is cruel and liked to tease and give and take away and make you hope and then laughs at you as hope dies like a fading echo of heartbeats that stop too soon. And even the people who say they want you and will take anybody didn't want me. Desert Storm came, and though I couldn't be like Dad, and I couldn't be like Jesus, and I couldn't be like the me I imagined I once was, and I couldn't be Daddy, I could at least follow Pappa's path. But the Army didn't want me, nor the Navy or the Air Force, and not even the Marines. They said it was because of my knee and that I couldn't pass the physical, but I knew better. I was so worthless I couldn't even be valued as fodder.
It was all downhill from there as the masks slowly stopped working, along with anything and everything that made it OK, that changed the way I felt or made me not feel, as every illusion that I could be happy, could be someone who could look in the mirror without gagging, broke into as many pieces as my insides. And God wouldn't even let me die. I know because I tried. More than once. I had been banned from the grave, made invincible in my misery.
Prison. I partied like it was 1999, because, well, it was, and I had nothing left but to burn out and crash. Go faster. The road had to end sometime, and maybe, if I couldn't end it, I could use it up, burn through a lifetime in a year or two of drugs, sex and rock and roll so intense that nothing could survive. Only I did. And survivors go to prison and live with survivor's guilt. It wasn't supposed to be this way. This isn't what my life was supposed to be like. The mirror had lied, tricked me, and all my solutions had been nothing more that snake oil poison provided by grifters and cons who stole my innocence and childhood and hope and me.
Something had to change. If God wouldn't let me die, I had to learn to live. Somewhere out there, there had to be a way to transform the cursed beast into a decent human being who could look unafraid and unashamed into the mirror. But there was a problem. So many of the magic potions the young monster had tried in attempt to transform into a real boy, or at least a monster who didn't care he couldn't be the boy everyone wanted him to be, had taken control and would not be cast aside. Not even prison could sober me up. But the pilgrimage began, and the searching continued. I looked everywhere until I finally looked back to where it all began. I knew the answer. I just couldn't get there. I couldn't figure out how to make it work for me.
Parole placed me in recovery. Ironically enough it wouldn't be church and good religious folks who would lead me back to the place of
Jesus Is My Friend. It was drunks and druggies like me, fellow monsters who told me that the monster in the mirror was the illusion and the mask and that there is a solution. I never imagined in all those years that freedom could be a short journey, that it was only 12 steps back to the beginning and transformation and everything changing. I found the way to the relationship I wanted and needed from the start. It hadn't begun with wanting to be like him after all. It had begun with wanting to be like Him and learning, knowing, hallelujah, Jesus is my friend.
I learned that Jesus loves me. I learned He always did, even when I wasn't who I thought everyone wanted me to be. I learned that I was never made to be like him, because I was made to be like me, and that God loves me as I am, not as I should be. I am not a mutant, a freak or Frankenstein's Monster made up of a dozen different pieces, some of them criminal. I learned that I don't have to change myself or make myself something I'm not or even figure out how to be good enough, because while my Heavenly Daddy loves me as I am, He loves me so much He won't leave me a captive, broken, mess of a sick slave. He made me new, and the new me is what I was always meant to be in the first place, a human being who is able to be friends with Jesus and others, not the monster hiding from the mob or scaring the villagers or being driven to destruction.
I'm going to be 46 in 23 days, which is ironic considering today is the 23rd. Two months beyond that I will have 7 years clean and sober. I am a preacher's kid still, but that is not my story. I am also a broken mes of a little boy growing up at 40, in public, but that is also not who I am. I am also an alcoholic, and an addict and an adrenaline junkie and..... and none of those are who I am either. I am a convict and a felon, but no, you guessed it, that also isn't who I am. Neither is the preacher and minister that I have become. Or the husband. Those are all pieces and part of my story that makes me who I am, but they are not me. And some things don't change. I'm still not Daddy, and I never will be, but that lost dream is also not who I am, and it doesn't hurt as much as it used to (though some days still remind me that God hasn't completely healed all wounds or completely filled all the empty children-shaped holes in my heart yet). Just because we find the Land Of Promise doesn't mean that every dream comes true. We can't always get what we want, and most days I'm OK with that.
I am all of those things and more. None of us are 2-dimensional paper cut-outs. Dads are more than Daddy. Pappas are more than men who once were soldiers. Jesus is more than a story to inspire little boys to be good. And I am more than all of the roles I have or the past I lived. The sum of all my parts and the sum of all your parts can not be reduced to simple terms or convenient definitions. But today I know who I am. I am that which once was a boy and then a monster and slave and has now become a boy again, a child of God, a new man, a free man, a pilgrim making progress who is still far from perfect. Oh, and all that is because I am a friend of Jesus. It turns out He really does love and like and want to be in relationship with bad boys like me, and bad girls and freaks and mutants and monsters and all of the marginalized who can't hide from the fact that something is wrong without Him and that they can never be good enough.
I'm still not like him, like my Daddy, but I don't need to be anymore. I do still want to be like Him, but I don't have to pretend I am and can admit without hiding or shame that I am not. One day He'll finish His work and I will be. Until then I'll just keep on being His friend and hopefully, by grace, live in such a way that others will want to be His friend too, so that they can get what I have been given.
Ironically enough, now that I know I am not like Dad and never will be and am OK with that, people tell me more than ever before how much like him I am. Daddy has become one of my very favorite words, because of Abba. It rarely rips me to pieces with taunts and torturous reminders of failures and dreams that won't come true and being Frankenstein's Monster. Isn't it amazing what love can do? And that's why none of the previous is my story. Because it isn't my story, or at least I am not the hero of my story. Love is my hero. And to tell you my story is to tell you of the amazing love of God that did everything it took to breathe life into the death of my soul and make beauty from the ashes of the monster who tried to burn out because he couldn't fade away.
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