A Case of the Unlovelies

This is a repost from Creation Calls Out. In the process of moving away from that site, I may move a few old posts this way. In this case, it’s part of who I am why we are here and where we are going.

I was six years old, looking into the mirror hung above the utility room sink where I had just brushed my teeth and combed my hair on the way to school. The reflection was nothing new; I’d figured out mirrors years before and was used to the magic. I was use to seeing my reflection, but I was not used to my reflection seeing me.

It only took a moment – a minute or two at the longest. My reflection stared down hard at my six-year old face and pronounced its eternal verdict: ugly, with no chance for love. The reflection substantiated its claim with evidence I could not refute: too many freckles on too round a face; a brown mole the size of a half-dollar on my left cheek; hair that wouldn’t stay in place no matter how often I combed it; lopsided ears and a crooked nose; and finally, a velour shirt with lapels of a size only found in the 1970′s.

At that moment, my innocence was lost. I knew the truth. I was ugly. I was unlovable. I was worthless. In one great wave of culpability, everything I had ever done wrong in my short life paraded before my eyes. Sin entered and I knew my unworthiness was deserved. I had sinned against God and my punishment was to be a living death. I went to church and I prayed and I sang and I listened to the sermon and I devoured the Bible and I did everything asked of me, but it was never enough. No matter how much I wished to please God, it was never enough. Sin remained. The law convicted. It was only a matter of time until justice collected my debt.

As I got bigger, so did the sin and so did the consequences. Knowing that bigger consequences were coming wasn’t enough to stop sinning. I knew from all the sermons, prayers, and Bible, that God could forgive my sins, but would he? Knowing the depths to which I had fallen, would he really bother rescuing me? I was the unlovely one, the unlovable one. No, God would skip me over for those who followed his ways, for those who were created to be loved. And so I accepted my place and learned to walk slowly around corners, always expecting a piano to fall or a sidewalk to give way. The next shoe was ever ready to drop – and I confess I had done my part to deserve the dropping.

This was the only life I knew from age 6 to 33, when I read the words of John’s first epistle and heard the words, “My dearly beloved children.” I can’t tell you exactly what happened. It was as if I looked into another mirror only to see a face not my own stare down hard at my still vulnerable face and pronounce a new verdict: You are loved; you are dear to me; you are my child.

I believed that voice. I don’t know why. I had heard – and taught – those very same words countless times before. What made them different this particular night? Whose voice spoke to me with such a compassionate confidence that all the shame and guilt melted away? What could undo twenty-seven years of hearing how unlovely I am in four quietly spoken words? The words were written nearly two-thousand years ago by an old man to a group of people in a place I’ve never been, yet I heard them clearly that night as the person of God speaking his love into me.

Nearly three years have passed since hearing those words and I still believe them. I look in the mirror and know I am a beloved son whose Father is proud of him. This knowledge – this deep, experiential, earthly knowledge – has taught me to stand tall when I enter a room, to set appropriate personal boundaries, to speak up when I have something to say, to remain quiet when it is better to not, to have aspirations, to set goals, and to work toward them with confidence.

And yet, I still worry about that next shoe dropping. There is no logical reason for feeling this way; it is simply the lingering effect of twenty-seven years of listening to deceit. It is an old psychological tape that hasn’t been put away. Every missed phone call is bad news. Every request for a meeting is a termination. And the one phone call that delivers bad news or the one meeting that raises painful issues prove that final shoe that is going end it all is laying in wait just around the next corner.

No doubt, this is the deceiver working its way back in. The fear and anxiety produced are proof enough the voice I hear is not the one who spoke to me from John’s letter. So I turn to the voice who speaks love, whose love casts out this fear. And I listen. And I fight. And I hope. And I trust. I hope someday to move past this, to grow beyond it. I hope to walk smartly around life’s corners, knowing the voice who proclaims me loved is rounding the corner with me. I hope for an attitude – an emotional response – that, without denying suffering remains and pain will come, knows I am loved to such a depth that nothing, not death nor life, not angels nor demons, not fears for today nor worries for tomorrow, not even the powers of hell, no power in the sky above or in the earth below – indeed nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate me – us – from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.