Grow Up! I've been guilty of using these words when talking to my kids. Why? Why is it that I have a hard time accepting childishness from a child? It seems I want to rush maturity. I've used them when referring to my ex-wife. I've used them internally to myself. Let me back up and give you some background...
I was a fairly happy child. A little sensitive, but happy and content. We were well below the poverty line, and I never saw my dad, but for the most part, I was happy. I had a gentle spirit and had deep concern for those around me. All through my early childhood, and into early elementary school, I was very well-liked by my peers. Then one summer, something changed.
I have never been open about this except to a very select few close friends, and so this is kinda weird to me, but I need to share this. Mom and Dad were going to camp, and for whatever reason, that year the kids didn't go. They had to find a last-minute babysitter for me, and I ended up in the home of a favorite sunday school teacher. She lived out on a farm, and would let me work the steering wheel out in the pastures. She also always had apple butter for her PB&J, and i LOVED apple butter - so I was happy about this arrangement. I somehow didn't know she had a teenaged son, but this week, I was staying in his room, and he befriended me. I was excited to have the approval of a teenager!
Then one night, I was lying there and he decided it would be a good idea to molest the seven year old boy sharing his room. I won't go into the details, but the pictures in my head are as vivid as the night it happened. My emotional development was stopped dead in its tracks.
Everything changed after this. I was suddenly desperate for attention. I would take criticism VERY hard, and would overcompensate for my perceived deficiency. I went from being well-liked to being widely disliked. Which of course, fed the need to do even more to try to gain acceptance. It never came. The rejection of those years stung hard.
In addition, the following year, my dad was gone even more. He had up to this point been gone quite a bit. First, he was in seminary while pastoring two churches full time a full 80 miles away from school. You can guess how much I saw him then. Next, he was a full-time pastor for a few years, and I remember vividly seeing my dad whenever I would venture over to the church office. I don't remember seeing him at home much. But that year, Dad went into full-time evangelism, and was on the road almost non-stop. Its not like he didn't try to be there for us when he was home. He would take us out for special time with just one of us and him from time to time when he was in town. But this would continue for me until high school. I was the school geek, dad was gone, and mom was alone with three boys. I got to understand rejection very, very well. My emotional development continued to stay completely frozen.
As I went into high school, mom and dad saw that not having dad around was a problem for us children, so they began to home-school us. While this was great for seeing dad, it opened some new problems for me. First of all, I was getting ready for high-school, and was coming into my own. I had learned to deal with the rejection by putting on a facade. An icy-cold exterior. An impregnable fortress around my formerly tender heart and spirit. So I wanted to enjoy some social activity with my peers for the first time in years. Again, I felt rejection. Second, having dad around for the first time in my life created the issue of familiarity. I didn't know him much at all, and now here he is asserting himself into my family. What nerve! He was not the distant disciplinarian or occasional fun guy who came home to take us on special daddy time any longer - He went from omnipotent to omnipresent, and while I loved my dad, I didn't know him or understand what right he had to upset my apple cart in this manner. He was now the muscle that mom had needed all these years, but I felt nothing but harshness from him. I lost my friend and gained a bully. I already HAD one disciplinarian. I didn't need another. Again, I was stung by rejection.
As an adult, the result of much of this is that my emotions have been somewhat disjointed. I could still feel emotion, and feel strong emotion, but I had no idea how to process it, especially when the fear of rejection would rear its ugly head. It caused me to hide, obfuscate, or even outright lie to avoid being rejected. My emotions would be like a roller coaster. I was unable to process them regularly, so I woul just supress them until I felt so strongly that they could no longer be controlled. Rather than feel emotion as it would happen I would instead get VERY depressed, or VERY angry, or VERY happy once I could no longer contain it.
Who would have thought that divorce would be such a catalyst for healing? Such intense rejection should have continued the pattern, right? Instead, I have felt the Father's love pour over me. The changes I was referring to in yesterday's blog have a lot to do with this - I am opening myself up again to that tender seven year old boy. James Putnam would NEVER be this open. In the next few hours, the number of people who know about my past will increase more than tenfold, but I think that this is part of the healing, as well. The damage that did to me is far deeper than what I've been able to spell out in this blog, but the basic premise is the same.
I made myself grow up. I forced a persona onto myself that wasn't fully me. I missed out on being a child. I have tried to force others around me to do the same. Father forgive me! Jesus make me whole! Bring out that light in my eyes that I had as a child! I want to be everything you have created me to be - I want to feel everything you created me to feel! I want to help my boys grow up in the proper timeline as fully whole individuals so that they can be MEN. Not boys in a mans body, as I have been. Father, make me into your image!
There may be more on this in coming days, I don't know. Thanks for reading.
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