I don’t think I really liked myself much until I was over thirty.
This was for lots of reasons, but I think the most significant one was that I learned at a very early age that my feelings were not things to be respected. Nor was I as a person. It became more and more obvious that I was less than most people. I had to be. I saw so many people living happy lives, and having healthy relationships. I saw people being loved in all sorts of ways, and my own perceived lacking in this particular area became more and more noticeable all the time.
There just had to be something wrong with me. Because I felt and really believed that I didn’t matter, it was easy to despise myself. Even after becoming a Christ-follower, this was something I did. It made sense to me somehow—though I think now it was more of a false sort of humility.
I despised myself, and it made sense that everyone else probably despised me, too. This was not a conclusion I arrived at solely on my own. Because of some physical and psychological abuse from a relative roughly between kindergarten and third grade, I learned that I was not like other people. I learned that I existed to serve the purpose of others, or to be an object for them to relieve stress or tension upon. I have a few places on my body where I can still see the evidence of my tension relieving ability.
That was bad, yet when I think about it now, the mental part seems worse. Not just because it hurt me in ways that I had no idea how to deal with—as opposed to actual physical wounds—but also because it taught me that I as a person was worthless, not wanted, and unloved. Not to mention, incredibly unsafe.
I also felt absolutely filthy. Disgusting. Like I could scrub forever, and never get clean. Like everywhere I went, people were not only watching me, but pointing out my dirtiness to others.
And laughing.
I pretty much always felt like a bad person, an unclean person, an ungodly person. This was, and remains, a very hard feeling to shake, even when I now know the truth of it. It’s just so much easier to see myself as a slime covered oyster, rather than a pearl of great price (more on that visual a little later on).
Grace has always been hard for me to accept–both from God, and from the people in my life who love me. I’ve never really felt comfortable with anyone washing my feet, because I sometimes still doubt my worthiness of being cleansed.
I’ve been a lot of things in my life. I’m an uncle, eleven times over. I’m also a brother—number five of five siblings—and youngest by many years. I’m a son, though my parents have been gone for many years. I haven’t had that many close friends over the course of my life, but I’d like to think the ones I had/have love me as much as I love them. I told myself for most of my life that I was good in all these capacities. I was a great friend to people, a good brother, a good son, or uncle. It never even occurred to me that I was self-absorbed, self-centered, and selfish. Or that I was allowing myself to be sucked into a vortex of self-pity, and self-justification.
The truth is, though, I wasn’t most of those things, and in many cases, I’m still not. I think all along I had this clouded image of the person I was, vs. the person I wanted to be. I had this idea that I was a pretty nice guy—which was true. But I also thought, deep down in my heart, that I was crap, and I probably always would be.
It was an easy realization, when I thought about it. As a son, I was a pretty good kid when I was small, but began to develop my self-centeredness (along with my fortress of self-pity) in my adolescence. My parents were a bit older than everyone else’s, and I could have tried to make it easier on them, but I didn’t. I made it worse. I needed this, and I needed that. When I didn’t get these things, I wrapped myself in a cocoon of self-pity.
I did not want to acknowledge my parents in any sort of way, much less honor them. In my mind, they weren’t supposed to be seen or heard, just provide. In a way, I was ashamed of them. They were old, and tired, and looked like they’d led hard lives. And it became obvious in junior high that I had already surpassed both of them intellectually. They became embarrassing.
I couldn’t bear going to my dad’s funeral when I was sixteen, so I volunteered for babysitting duty. I sat at home and listened to records while most everyone else was honoring my father.
When my mom was starting to get really sick, we had her in a hospital bed in the living room, and I remember she would have these dreams where she would wake up literally screaming at least once a night. In the dream she was always alone in the house, and water was rushing in all the windows. She had never learned how to swim, and this was the worst sort of terror for her, the worst thing she could imagine.
Drowning.
My brother and I were the only ones at home, so the best thing to do would have been to get up and sit with her. I hated to do that–I had school the next morning, and when I did get up, I was surly about it. Instead of spending every second I could with her, and being glad to have them, I hated it, and did almost everything I could to avoid spending time with her.
The truth was, at some level I resented her for complicating my life. I helped when I had to–when my sisters were not around–but I was not nice about it. I suppose I was being a typical teenager, but the situation called for more than that–more than I was willing to provide, anyway. It didn’t matter that my mother never really talked about her illness, or even admitted to herself or anyone else she was dying, at least, not until the very end.
It didn’t matter, at least not to me. It was obvious what was going on, and instead of responding as a loving son, I was in just as much denial as she was. I could not treat her the way I should have, because that would have required an admission of her frail mortality.
I could not do that.
As a friend, I wanted my friends to be ready to spend time with me when I wanted to hang out–and to stay away when I didn’t. I never really asked them how they felt about anything. And while it was true we were boys, it was also true that I was not really there for them, and they were always there for me.
This seemed so true for most of my life, especially when I thought of my friend Ben, who had shot himself less than a quarter mile from my house when I was 17, and snug and comfortable in my bed. I didn’t hear it, and never had a clue he even felt bad before that cold, January night. I remember walking by where it happened on the way to play basketball, and seeing all the blood. I can still see it.
Someone else I was not there for.
As a brother, once I got out of my childhood, I avoided my sisters whenever I could. I still haven’t really been able to figure out why. Maybe it has something to do with them reminding me of the person I used to be, rather than the person I was at the time. I was Tommy to them, rather than an adult. Tommy was who I used to be. He was a child, and helpless, and a victim. I hated him.
The thing is, my sisters had always done the best they could by me. They did it when I was a kid, and my parents couldn’t or wouldn’t do it themselves. They looked out for me as a young adult, as well. They still help me out sometimes as a man. They are family, in the truest, and most purse sense of the word. They were always there for me, and there were times when they needed me there for them. Instead, I just took advantage of their many kindnesses, and ignored their needs. There were times when I willfully turned away from them.
When I became an adult, I went through a period where I had no friends at all—literally. I went to work, but did everything I could to avoid interacting with people in any real way. I became Mr. Superficial, and could talk forever about nothing of consequence, and reveal little about myself. I didn’t trust anyone. I would go home at the end of the day and I would sit and watch war movies, over and over again. I liked the violence, and was enthralled by it. I would watch adult-type movies as well, though of a more “soft-core” nature. The only reason I never got into the hardcore stuff was because I was too embarrassed to go find it or purchase it. This type of entertainment was best of all, because the performers in the movies did not seem to have any respect for each other as human beings—neither did I. The women were simply objects, and the men? Well, it sent an incorrect and dangerous message about where real power lies. And it gave me a very warped outlook about love.
I also discovered dark metal music around this time, and began to listen to bands like Testament, Exodus, and Slayer, to name but a few. The music fit my mood—and death, when not my own, was fascinating. I like hearing songs that glorified it, and I loved horror movies even more–everything from Halloween to Faces of Death. The more gruesome, the better.
And I would eat.
I had not yet discovered alcohol, or I probably would have overindulged in that, too. Instead, I numbed myself by shoveling all manner of things down my throat. I told myself I deserved a little comfort, because my life had been tough. But it wasn’t a little comfort, it was a lot.
I had always told myself I would never become addicted to anything, all the while developing a serious and potentially deadly food addiction. It affected my health, and my finances, and my life. But it was a way to numb myself, to stave off sadness, and loneliness. To say that I wallowed in self-pity would be the understatement of the year. It seemed fair. Why not pity myself? It’s not like anyone else even noticed I was alive.
I didn’t necessarily want to be alone, but interacting with people that had the potential to hurt me was not something I was interested in doing. It was easier to always keep things on the light and superficial side.
It was easier to hide.
Eventually, though, it became impossible to avoid people any longer, or to ignore my need to be liked, and loved, and to befriend and be befriended. Then I started approaching things from the other side of the field—I would do literally almost anything to make people like me. I was insecure to the extreme, and sought approval above all things. I would conform at the cost of almost anything, up to and including my own identity.
After a while, it became obvious even to me that I had no idea who I was, or how I would find out. But in a way, this was sort of OK, too, because I probably wouldn’t like my real self—whoever he was.
This was how I learned about alcohol. I hung around with people that indulged, so I began to indulge, too. Drinking allowed me to be uninhibited. It allowed me to be the person I thought I wanted to be, and the person I thought everyone would like. A person that was funny, and carefree, and fun. I didn’t drink all the time, but when I did, I made it count. I would drink to the point of throwing up, or wanting to. I even passed out a few times. Had something dramatic not happened, I probably would have become a full-fledged alcoholic, rather than just a serious binge drinker.
I also became a sort of social chameleon, and an ardent “when in Rome” practitioner. I would be whatever person I felt the people I was with would most accept.
It got me in a lot of trouble.
Then something dramatic did happen. After traveling very far down a dark path of my own design, I met Jesus on my own personal road to Damascus. In spite of everything I’d seen, and done, and experienced, every moment of despair and doubt, I asked Jesus to change my life in March of 2000, and he did. It had just become so painfully obvious my life was not working as it was—that it was no life at all—and I knew something had to change.
The first something that had to change was that I had to let Jesus take control. This was easy, at first. It was like grabbing onto a life-preserver. The thing about life-preservers, though, is that once you get hauled back onto the boat, you forget that your life was just saved. You take the life jacket off and throw it on the deck. I was no different about my salvation.
Summer came and I began to drift off again. I met a woman who I believed was “the one.” It was a bad situation, and even though I knew better, I pursued her. She was married, and I not only encouraged her to leave her husband, but helped her to do it. I would have done anything she asked me to. I did do almost everything she asked of me, over the course of the next three years (our “involvement” was for maybe a little less than one of these).
I knew the situation was wrong, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be alone. I convinced myself I was in love with her. I pursued her for all I was worth, and I did things that I’m still a little ashamed of. I saw things that disgusted me, that I knew were even more wrong than what I was doing, and worst of all, I began to question my relatively newfound faith. I could, and did, rationalize any and all behavior.
One of the people she and I spent a lot of time with was a young, very promiscuous gay man who had been a Catholic his entire life, and many of his points made so much sense to me. Maybe scripture wasn’t valid anymore. Maybe the people who wrote it did mean it a different way then than it would mean now. Maybe there was more than one way to Heaven. And the other thing was that he could quote scripture better than a lot of Christians I knew—certainly better than me.
It made so much sense to question what I knew about God, and Jesus, and myself. After all, belief was about denying yourself all the good stuff, and I was just discovering the good stuff.
One of my closest friends (the one who helped lead me to Christ) told me to be careful, that I was too new in my faith to not have it be damaged in some way by what was going on in my life. I didn’t care. I just wanted what I wanted.
My friend was right.
I hit the bottom, and I hit it hard. I lost my relationship with this woman, and irreparably damaged my closest male friendship at that time. They’d become involved with one another. This was a betrayal on so many counts I nearly lost track of them.
I kept up a front as much as I could. I did normal things, and I had fun with my friends, but I started binging again in earnest, both on food, and on alcohol. If my friends had a party of some sort, I would be drinking, and drinking a lot. It was just so easy to forget who I was when I drank—and to pretend to be someone else. It was the same thing with stuffing my face. Why not? It made me feel better, and when I was doing it, I could convince myself I didn’t have a problem with addiction, because you couldn’t be addicted to food.
I got myself into a lot of financial trouble, too. I had a couple of credit cards, and I used them way more than I should have, because it made me feel better to buy things. I deserved them, I thought. I had a very strong sense of entitlement. Life owed me things-God owed me things. Life had been tough, and continued to be. Dammit, it was my turn to have something good.
I carried on like this for close to three years. All the while, I knew in my head that God had my best interests at heart, and I even knew somewhere that the bad things that had happened were my own fault, mostly for being an idiot and making a million bad decisions, because all I ever thought about was the short term. I had no concept of future, even though I knew that technically, I had one. I had recognized Jesus as Lord of my life. I had made that decision, but really, had not explored a relationship with God much further beyond that one thing.
I had surrendered my heart back in 2000, but not all of it. I clung desperately to whatever I could of my former self, and it ended up literally like a snowball rolling downhill. By the time I got to the bottom, I was coated with crap from the hillside, so much so that I couldn’t see, couldn’t think, and couldn’t really feel anything but pain. And I hated myself so very much because I could see it was all my fault.
Brennan Manning talks about a time when he was still doing effective ministry, even though he had not yet surrendered all to Jesus, and let him be Abba of his life. That’s what it was like for me, to an extent. Sometimes I even convinced myself I was doing well in my walk.
I was posing.
I was part of a ministry team that did great work, and I even allowed God to use me, but only to an extent. It became a great thrill to pray for others, to intercede on their behalf.
But never for myself.
When it got time for me to talk to God about me, I just couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t talk to me anyway.
He didn’t really want me. How could he?
And then Easter 2007 came. I went to the 730 am service, and planned on sitting alone. But I guy I knew from the ministry I was part of came up to me and said he was going to sit with me, if that was OK.
I told him it was, but I was really cringing on the inside. I wanted to be alone. I had sensed God moving me toward something big over the past week, and I was more afraid than I’d been since I was a kid. I couldn’t risk having to “go there,” as they say, and consequently having to change.
Then another friend showed up, and she sat on the other side of me. I knew before the service was over that today was supposed to be the day, and I had two choices. I could stay and face whatever “it” was, or I could go and keep faking it. I walked my female friend to the door of the church, and then I walked back and sat next to the guy from the prayer ministry. It would be today after all.
“Can you pray for me?” I asked him. “I don’t really know what for…”
So I sat next to him, and he leaned in and began to pray, so that only
I could hear. And as his words flowed around me, and seemingly through me, I began to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit. It was like arms around me; comforting, strong arms. And for the first time in my short Christian life, I really, truly, let it all go, and asked Jesus to take my burdens, really take them.
And I grieved like I’d never grieved before. It was a good thing there was nearly 30 minutes between services. I needed them all.
Jesus came to me that morning, sitting in the third row of the sanctuary. He became more than just God, but Abba. And I realized for the first time that I always had been son, and felt the comfort of that in my heart. I felt the value I’d always had to my Father, my real Father. I felt that I was bought at a price, and suffered for. I felt that two thousand year-old blood shed on a Roman cross had been on my behalf. I’d believed that before, but I had not felt what it meant.
That day I did. I felt that Jesus did not see me as who I’d been before, did not see where I’d been, or what I’d done. He only saw what and who I’d become when He entered my heart and my life. That feeling utterly shattered everything I’d always thought and believed somewhere about myself, even after coming to Christ.
Like the day I became a believer, everything changed that morning. And nothing changed. I found that it was possible to draw on that comfort when I needed it, and not just lean on other people, or myself. And I began, just began, to see myself the way God sees me. This is something powerfully difficult to come to terms with, but it’s something I can no longer deny. I don’t want to.
I’m a son. I’m beloved, and I was meant to be here. My Father has a purpose for me, and it isn’t just to spin my size 13 wheels in place. Just trusting God with my grief had been so incredibly difficult, probably the hardest thing I’d ever done. But I don’t think I ever could have gone any further with Jesus until I’d done it, because I wasn’t trusting him with all of my heart.
Over the past year, an image has come to me several times. Actually, a series of images—nearly a video. It’s virtually the same every time, and it has come to me either during my personal devotional time, or in a healing prayer session, often when I am interceding for someone else.
I see an oyster, slick with slime and sediment from the ocean’s bottom. The oyster is resting on the open palm of a hand, while the other hand gently cleans it. First, the slime is wiped away, leaving a shell that is bumpy, still dirty with accumulated sediment, and not yet ready to open. A small, curved knife appears in the other hand, and layer upon layer of the filth is gently peeled away. At last, at long last, a shell devoid of grime lays in the palm, and the hand gently opens it, revealing the contents laying within—a small and shining pearl.
A pearl of great price.
I have yet to hear a voice telling me the pearl represents myself. But I do know that my filth has been peeled and washed away. I know I’m clean. And I know that when the dirt comes again, a hand will wash it away. A gentle hand, scarred by nails and hard work.
The hand of a carpenter.
I have every confidence that my purpose will be revealed in the fullness of His time. I had always figured I would just find a job somewhere in San Diego, and I would become more involved at Canyon View, and maybe I would settle down someday. I had a good job, and it paid more money than I had ever made in my life. My life became a little easier, and I began to be complacent with it. I didn’t really think about the possibility of meeting someone. I figured I would probably always be single, and felt I would be able to live with that, if God wanted me to.
Then just before I went on a vacation with a couple of friends, I began talking to a couple of women online, and could not really find it in my heart to be passionate about either of them. I had this conversation with God where I just asked him to make it really clear to me what he wanted me to do in that regard. I could not do it anymore myself—I didn’t really know how, and I never had. I asked Him to show me the person He wanted me to love, if that was ever to be in my future.
I gave Jesus that part of my heart as well. Then, I went to Mexico. I prayed more about it in Akumal. I asked God why every attempt I’d made at love had needed to fail. I asked Him why I’d had to be hurt so many times. I asked Him for peace about whatever He intended for my life.
And then against all odds, hopes, and expectations, I met the woman that would help me to begin changing the rest of my life. She showed me love in the purest, most true sense of the word. She accepted me exactly as I was, not as I should have been. She never once turned away.
She just loved me.
And God began to call me away from what had been my life for longer than I could remember. This time, I was listening.
As I sit here typing, I’m looking down at the ring on the third finger of my left hand. I’m thinking of my wife, and all she’s brought to my life. I’m thinking of the life we’re beginning to make together. I’m thinking of my son, and how I never want him to wonder how I feel about him. He’s not of my blood, but he’s of my heart. He’s in my heart, and when he looks at me and says “Daddy,” I am forever changed.
He accepts me, just as I am. He looks to me for knowledge. He looks to me for his protection, and provision. And he makes me look to Jesus for mine.
I’m thinking about how, for some reason, God has rewarded me beyond my wildest dreams. I’m thinking of how much I’m beginning to love my new town, Yuma. God called me to the desert, of all places.
All I had to was listen, and be patient. All I had to do was be faithful, and wait on the Lord.
My life is so different now. Hope is all around me. Love is all around me. Not a day goes by that I don’t feel the love of my wife without her so much as saying a word. Not a day goes by that I don’t feel the same from God. My new church family has already lifted me more times than I can count. My new pastor has a powerful anointing, and I believe it will spread out amongst the Saturday evening congregation, and then into Yuma itself, and beyond.
I have begun to serve, and give, and pray more than I ever have. San Diego is my past. It’s where I grew up, and lived most of my life until this year. I will always love it, and my friends and family who remain there. They will endure in my life, just as God does in my heart. It is only 2 hours away.
San Diego is my past.
Yuma is my future.
And Jesus is a larger part of it than He ever was before.
