When I was a Child, I thought like a Child

As I bask in the afterglow of Easter, I'm reflecting on the way that this year's Lenten journey coincided with the completion of my sixth step work in the Al-Anon program. 

To put it simply, (and to quote it directly) in step 6 you're asked to 'become entirely ready to ask God to remove our defects of character.' And while I had a list of behaviors I picked up in childhood that no longer served me, like the need to control my surroundings and others, obsessive thinking, self-righteousness, (character defenses we may also call them), I was happily ready to leave all of them behind except one.

It was something that I'd been holding onto, a program that had been running in the background of my mind, influencing the way I related to people. It was a grudge. A resentment of a childhood figure, the story I told about "why I can't be happy now." 

I loved to talk about it whenever the subject of intimacy came up, to use it as a defense, the reason I couldn't "let go" and experience joy with others. In a Lewis Howes interview I watched recently, he said that one of the reasons people stayed in victimhood was so that they could garner attention from others, albeit in a short-sighted kind of way that took energy from people. 

I believe that God's been setting this up for me for years, a way to dismantle the fortress I built around myself. The walls I originally built for protection but that were increasingly becoming a prison. I first became aware of it when I started to question the 'ick' I felt when I was dating. 

The 'ick' is a phenomenon in which a potential romantic partner could turn you off for reasons that had nothing to do with how suitable they were. Like, for example, the smell of their laundry detergent, the shape of the back of their head, or how much they said "uh." 

In early days I attributed it to the lack of a 'love connection' and kept going, but after many (maybe hundreds) of dating mismatches, it was obvious that it had something to do with me. I had a further revelation when I realized that that same feeling, the feeling of crawling skin, happened to me when one of my caretakers stood close to me. 

It was fear. I learned in early development to keep a safe distance for fear of being hurt, and this was coming up any time a well-meaning person tried to get close to me even decades later. But I wasn't a helpless child anymore. I had choices and dominion over my life, discernment, and the ability to keep myself safe. 

While I understood this mentally, I wasn't able to shake that visceral feeling that was bringing my potential relationships to a halt. At the same time I was making these connections, I was reading the bible for the first time, with the lens that it could actually be true. 

I read the words of Paul who wrote in his letter to the Ephesians, Honor your father and mother - which is the first commandment with a promise - so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. Ephesians 6:1-3

Was God commanding me to be in right relationship with my parents? When I came across this, I wondered if it was this that was preventing me from moving forward in my life. And even though I had problems trusting others, I was beginning to trust God, so I took the commandment seriously. I started working on it with my therapist, I asked for prayers at church, and last year I made it my New Years resolution to forgive. 

A day later, I found myself in my first Al-Anon meeting. I was there for other reasons, but when I volunteered to read the Al-Anon Do's and Don'ts and saw that forgive was first on the list, I knew that I was in the right place. 

When I started working the program, I breezed through the first three steps; Admitting that I was powerless over others, that my life had become unmanageable, and that I would give the will for my life over to God. 

And in steps 4 and 5, I experienced perhaps more growth than I ever have before when I took a "searching and fearless moral inventory of myself", and shared my life story, including all of my darkest and most shameful secrets, with my sponsor. 

Then I got to step 6, to the point when I was meant to become willing to ask God to remove my defects of character, and most significantly, resentment. I shared about it at many meetings, talking over and over again about how I was taking my time with this step, that I wasn't ready yet to give this one up. 

Instead of simply answering the questions in the workbook as I had done for my previous steps, I took out another workbook and answered more questions, savoring it and sharing all of it with my sponsor. 

I decided that I would let myself sit in it for lent, the forty-day period meant to emulate Jesus' 40 day fast in the desert, where he went "to be tempted by Satan." I gave up my vices, the things that I used to distract myself from feeling pain, like scrolling on social media, emotionally snacking, fantasizing. 

A friend of mine had recently shared with me the biblical significance of fasting, and that it was designed so that we would go to God rather than grasping at the things that could ultimately not fulfill us. To give us the opportunity to study the emotions beneath our urges, and reorient ourselves towards proper help, strengthening our relationship with God. 

I spent more time in prayer and I asked God to teach me more about the person whom I resented, so that I could accept them. 

At the meetings when I shared about why I had these resentments, I let myself grieve. For the first time, I was crying over the relationship that wasn't what I wanted it to be. It was sad. As a kid, it would have been too difficult for me to dwell on that, because there was nothing I could do to get myself out of the situation.

One day in the final week of lent, I was answering some of my extra curricular questions, when I felt God comforting me and telling me, "it's time." I was ready. I answered the last question I'd been saving and decided that the next time I saw my sponsor, I'd arrange to meet with her to close out this chapter. 

A couple of nights later, I had a nightmare that woke me up in tears. A woman came to me, a terrifying woman, with a gruff voice, dull skin and crinkly hair and a black tattoo that faded down from her lower lip. She told me, with no emotion, that she was my real mom. It left me sobbing. I didn't want this woman as my mom, I wanted my mom. I loved my mom. And I was heartbroken that I didn't share the same mom all of my siblings had. 

When I woke up and shook it off, I thanked God for the gift he gave me. My life, which he crafted meticulously just for me, including everyone in it, out of his love for me. I saw that the people whom I had the most expectations for were simply imperfect human-beings like me and struggled in their own ways. Maybe they played those roles in my life so that I could grow. 

It led me to seek a relationship with the one who will always be there and never let me down. And as I now go on to form new relationships, I'll keep them in their right place, without trying to force them into a role they could never fill.

On Good Friday, I was able to make the evening service after spending the day on set. The pastors used the sermon to remind us that it was important not to rush through to the joy of Easter. We were invited to try to live into the mourning and the devastation that the disciples experienced when their savior died. 

They said that when we allowed ourselves to experience grief, we would allow it to carve out space for something new in our hearts, like the joy of Easter. 

On Easter morning, my friends and I got up before the dawn to witness the sun rising over our congregation while we sang together. There was nothing we could have done to speed up those three days before his resurrection, or the Lent season for that matter, and nor would I have wanted to. It prepared us for what was to come, and it was all a part of his plan. 

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 1 Corinthians 13:11