Jesus loves me, or so the song says...
As a child, I used to sing the song Jesus Loves Me. The words went, “Jesus loves me, this I know; for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to him belong; they are weak, but He is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me; for the Bible tells me so.”
But that innocent joy had left me there in Lake Odessa. I gradually left off from desiring to go to Sunday School, although I was forced to go from time to time, when my mother needed a break from three rambunctious boys on the weekends. I no longer looked forward to it like I used to. That feeling of emptiness did not diminish even after we moved to Hastings, Michigan, shortly after I had started the fourth grade (my mother always seemed to choose to move AFTER I had started a new school year).
It was a difficult transition to Hastings. I had suddenly been torn away from my friends there in Lake Odessa without so much as a goodbye. I had to figure out how to “fit in” to the new school, although it did not go well. My fourth grade teacher seemed to single me out for cruelty. It was the year that I also got eyeglasses and had to deal with the teasing of classmates. To adults, such teasings seem trivial and benign, but any child that experiences it can tell you without a doubt that it is definitely NOT trivial. It is haunting, devastating, and downright scarring.
The move to Hastings also saw the greatest escalation up until then in my mother’s depression and dark moods. The slightest thing would set her off and there were countless times when she inflicted whatever pent-up rage and frustration she was burdened with on one or all of us boys. We learned to spend a great deal of our time out-of-doors to avoid her, which helped to minimize the abuse.
I don’t quite remember how, but at some point, I had made the acquaintance of the Buehller family down the street. They were an older couple who attended the Hastings Baptist Church, and invited us to go, which we did–probably at the behest of my mother. We went Sunday mornings to attend Sunday School, and on Wednesday nights to participate in AWANA.
A part of me enjoyed going, but it was a small part and I still could not regain that love that I had back when I was still an innocent child. I did enjoy the AWANA program, however. It was an outlet of energy for me. We had races and other contests to start off the evening, before going off to our assigned groups where we would work our way through handbooks, learning scriptures and principles and earning merit badges–similar to Boy Scouts, yet spiritual pursuits rather than nationalistic ones.
As I said, I enjoyed the activities immensely. However, the studying portion of the AWANA meeting was tedious and boring for me. I couldn’t see the point in learning all of these things, even though many of the other kids seemed to enjoy the challenge.
In looking back, I think a part of me felt that way because none of it seemed to apply to my reality. It was all too neat and tidy and warm and fuzzy. It didn’t reflect what I knew.
I mentioned earlier the song Jesus Loves Me. It is a simple, succinct song meant to inculcate in children an initial love and appreciation for God and for Jesus. But the words had come to mean nothing to me. Somewhere inside me, I couldn’t seem to shake the anger. If Jesus loved me, why did he let such terrible things happen to me? Why was I raped by a molestor on numerous occasions? Why was my mother always angry at everything I did, and always hurting me? Why, if Jesus loved me, did he not protect me when I was weak?
I didn’t dare ask anyone for the answers. Part of the reason was my shame. I felt dirty. Violated. I felt like a wicked child who, as my mother would often tell me, “Had it coming” to me because I was “worthless” and “good-for-nothing.”
But even though I didn’t ask, the fact was that even then I was wrangling with the things I was being told that I needed to believe. I wanted to believe them. Of course I did! But I couldn’t seem to bring myself to. It just didn’t match what I was having going on in my life. If Jesus loved me, why wasn’t he protecting me–first from that molestor, and now from my mother who, it seemed, wanted so many times to outright kill me for some reason beyond my comprehension.
The fact is that domestic abuse and child abuse has as one of its “rewards” a sheltered life. What I mean is that it becomes the family secret. As a consequence of that perverted “honor system,” my perception was that all families were like mine. That left me even more confused, because I’d see other kids and they always seemed so happy and carefree. They were obviously hiding the misery of their lives far better than I was managing. And that made me prone to quick tempers and schoolyard fights.
That’s not to say that I don’t have any fond memories of those years, times when I was happy. I loved my sixth-grade math class, for example. The teacher introduced me to “whiffleball” where we would all–at the end of class–get to sit on our desktops and throw a plastic ball to one another, while trying to do so in a way that got the receiver to drop it. It was sort of like a conservative dodgeball contest, without the whipping of the ball at one another. Dodgeball, too, became a favorite activity of mine. I’m sure I was especially drawn to it because it was a release of pent-up frustration and a way for me to face up to others in a constructive way–even the teachers. At the risk of boasting, I will go so far as to say that I was one of a handful of players who could take out pretty much anyone–even the teachers. There was Andy R., Doug C., Lyle G., and a couple others. We threw hard and everyone knew it. On the girls’ side there was Kim G., Amy A., and Sue K. who were the consistent champs. Dodgeball was really good fun, but always too brief.
It was in Hastings that I also learned that I had a gift for writing. That wasn’t discovered until I met Mark Anton, who wrote these short story mysteries that were somewhat modeled after The Hardy Boys mysteries. Mark had become my best friend during my time in Hastings, although we didn’t get to spend much time with one another outside of school itself, due to my mother’s controlling nature and need to not have us boys more than a house or two away from home.
That was my start in the world of writing. I decided to try my hand at writing these short mysteries, but with Mark and me as the stars. I kiddingly referred to them later as a cross between Scooby Doo mysteries and a very lame version of the Hardy Boys. Mark’s stories were far more based in reality than mine, and more interesting, whereas mine tended towards the fantastical usually. But they did serve to awaken in me a hunger to hone that gift.
It would be my 7th Grade English teacher who would prove to be my greatest motivation to explore writing as a gift. Her name was Mrs. Hund, and the impression that she had on me has lasted down to this day. I admired her and I marvelled at this teacher who was able to bring words to life. I can’t say that I always enjoyed having to write themes and essays or book reports (few kids do!) but she always encouraged me to pursue my avid love for writing, all the same. It was during her time as my teacher that I came to love words, too. Here, at long last, I had found a way to say what did not know how to say. I could put together words and express myself that way.
Too, I had discovered fantasy as a genre. J.R.R. Tolkien was my first exposure to the fantasy novel and I was enthralled almost immediately by the possibilities. In fact, I left off from writing mysteries and turned to fantasy instead. It became an escape for me as I wrote about imaginary people in impossible situations. Too, it gave me a way to let out some of the emotions that would often swell within me, by having my characters have them. Mostly, such emotions were uncontrolled of course. And, my characters were linear; each would be representative of a specific emotion and their identity would be derived from that emotion.
It was very basic stuff really; but all the same, writing came to me at a period in my life that I most needed it, I think. And in spite of my mother’s every attempt to humiliate me about it and take it away from me, I think it made me ever more determined to continue. I had found the voice within me, and nobody was going to take it away from me. Not ever.
My propensity towards dreams returned while living in Hastings, as well. The more disturbing ones were those that actually happened later, just as I had dreamed them. Others were event-based, accompanied by a sense of terror and dread. These were of an apocalyptic nature, and even though I was no longer a child, per se, these were no less frightening. As before, I kept them to myself, afraid that if I spoke of them aloud, I would be thought of as crazy or, worse still, they would happen.
It’s hard to relate how we rationalize things while we are young. Our life’s experiences are so limited, and therefore what we experience must be contextualized by our mind’s limited prior experience. It’s like the way we recognize that an apple is an apple when we look at one–because we’ve seen one before and our brain has stored that visual and the accompanying facts so that the next time, we know it’s an apple.
But how does a young child’s mind explain otherwise illogical, irrational dreams that then actually occur. Especially given the fact that adults respond with “It was just a dream. It wasn’t real.”
Again, it goes back to what I was talking about earlier with the song that sings about how Jesus loves little children, and how that declared fact is incompatible with the reality experienced by the child undergoing molestation and abuse. The two do not synchronize, and therefore the mind is left fumbling for context. The two facts are incompatible with one another, yet our mind tells us that one of them must be true, even if they are not mutually true. And, of course, the experienced reality takes front stage. The molestation and accompanying pain, guilt, and shame are tangibly and verifiably real. If Jesus really loved me, if Jesus really was strong while I was weak, then he would protect me from harm until I no longer was weak and could protect myself from bad things. Again, this is how I as a child fought my way through the dilemma.
It was the same way with the dreams. To be told by people that they were just dreams, that they weren’t real, did not match with the reality when I, as a child, saw those dreams become reality. It brought into question the dreams which had not yet happened, had not become real. Would they? And how could I, as a child, know which was which?
I’m not referring to the dreams of a typical child as the sleeping body gives way to the powerful mind that files and stores information through that marvel-inspiring means that we call dreams. My dreams went far beyond the normal, sometimes to disturbing degrees. Especially the apocalyptic ones. I won’t relate them here, but suffice it to say that if they are to come true, the world as we know it will become a much different one than we know today. At the same time, there is nothing to say that those dreams cannot yet come true. While they were very specific in detail, there was no indication as to time of occurrence.
Still, in spite of the return of the dreams, as well as my resumption of Sunday School attendance, my spiritual side remained far off from myself. And it would be several more years before it would be reawakened in a whole new manner that would take me onto a new path in my spiritual journey.
The dreams, however, would continue, darker and more terrifying than ever before.
