My Story- Part 1

I guess I will start at the beginning. Paint a picture of my simple beginnings if you will. I was born in Lake City, Florida. A smallish highway town adjacent to the even smaller town where my parents lived and served as youth pastors- Live Oak, Florida. There is a certain beauty to the town. It does indeed have some beautiful mossy trees. The kind you see in movies and that you picture in sleepy southern towns. Sometimes the movies don’t lie about these sorts of things. I don’t actually remember living here. But I did visit as a child and even into my young adult years. My dad had goals. Plans. Ambition? I really can’t say. Knowing my granddaddy, perhaps something to prove? So, he moved my mom and I to Oklahoma, where Bible school was calling. I think he wanted to be official in vocational ministry. I will have to ask. We didn’t last too long there. He worked at a gas station and the lack of support proved to be too much. It was time to move on after just a few short months. Move “home” to the metro Atlanta area. Atlanta is one of those cities that has suburbs for days, and my dad was born and raised there. His family was there. So, at the age of about 1, I officially became a Georgia peach. And I am still one today! 

I remember such happy beginnings. Living on the same street as my grandparents. Having a neighbor on one side who was a playmate and on the other who would give me cookies. It wasn’t weird, I promise. We had a creek behind our house and my mom would heat up a frozen burrito when I got home from school. I actually loved them. And before you judge her too harshly, it was the 80s and she was only 25. That was probably one of the healthier things I ate.

Then I remember things changing. There was a certain uncertainty in the air. The small church my dad pastored was forced to shut its doors. 

I think this marked some kind of a change in my thinking. I was only four or five, but it was my first realization that adults can be fragile. That not everything goes right all the time. My dad felt like a failure, and I saw that, and in some ways felt it. There was tension from time to time. My parents fought, like I am sure most do. What was next? My mom was a stay at home mom, my dad had always been in some sort of vocational ministry. So, the search began. What was next for my small family? 

Missions?! Heck yeah! I think at some point anyone who loves the Lord thinks to themselves “Should I be a missionary?” So, we “dabbled” in missions. My dad was still searching for a way that he could serve the Lord. “Church” was hard. I realized that from a young age! We knew good, kind people who were doing the Lord’s work in Jamaica and Costa Rica, and so there we went. While those places sound beautiful and tropical (and they were!) they were also full of a kind of life I had never seen before- hot buses, dirty old trains, tiny shack-like houses, iguanas inside my room on top of oscillating fans, slums that I didn’t know at the time were slums, meat pies from street vendors, coconuts in the yard… I don’t remember much, but what I do was beautiful and different from life in the states. I didn’t realize until much later what a gift this was, to be in circumstances that were not my own at such a young age, to not recognize privileged America as the only norm or way to live life.  

It was at about this age, when we came home from being abroad for a little while, that I really saw some of the struggle my dad had. I am sure he hid large parts of it from me, but I remember times of his lament, depression maybe, lying in his bedroom with my mom trying her best to comfort or encourage him. Or, maybe she was just telling him to suck it up. But, my mom being the calm and non-confrontational presence that she was, I always imagined her telling him it was going to be okay. 

I don’t remember how or why, but in my little girl eyes I saw him struggle and I remember reassuring him that God had a church out there for him. I had a dream, and I told him so. Not too long after that he was offered the opportunity to be lead pastor of a small, potentially dying, congregation in Tucker, Georgia. And this gig came with a house! We were set! At least for the time being. We moved the 20 or some odd minutes to another suburb of Atlanta and thus began my solid life as a “PK” (preacher’s kid Or “pastor’s kid”). Often heard at Church of God youth camp: “Oh, you’re a PK! Me too.” Yeah, that’s a thing. 

If you didn’t grow up in the “church” world, it’s okay, you still have time to catch up. I mean, if you want to. If you don’t, that’s okay too (and totally understandable from a sane normal person point of view). But pretty early on, church was the center of my world. From school, to extracurricular activities, everything was church related! Jesus was good. Church was good. Life was… mostly good. I still saw my dad struggle, I still knew my parents didn’t have the perfect marriage. But things were good. I was extremely sheltered. We constantly had people around us, family living with us, church friends to entertain. I was extremely blessed that I did not suffer any of the abuses of ministry at an early age. I clearly remember one church event where my dad made a church member so mad that he got punched, but that was about as bad as it got. It was not until years passed that I realized life was complicated and far from perfect.

I knew all the appropriate songs of being a PK. It was simple really. “I am a C, I am a C-H, I am a C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N…” And that was really all there was to it. I mean, there were other characters in the stories we were taught, but the realization that pain existed, that evil was prevalent, it just didn’t compute. The spiritual darkness that I feared, as most kids fear something, was best described as a costumed representation of “El Diablo,” easily translated the devil, from a Christian children’s program called Gospel Bill.  So, whereas most kids grew up with concrete fears, most of mine were abstract, supernatural even. 

I was an only child until seven, and then I had 2 sister, one born when I was 7 and the other two years later when I was 9. I was not a perfect older sibling, just ask my youngest sister about the time I made her deathly afraid of her own ear wax. (Oops!) But, I did feel some sort of care-giving instinct kick in, I loved taking care of my baby sisters and younger kids. Maybe I was what they called an old soul, but I also always felt a keen sense of responsibility. From about 4th or 5th grade I never felt quite sure that I fit in. Today I am quite sure this is being human and is probably what all kids go through at some point in their development, but at the time I felt totally unique. And my mom had little babies, probably not the best person to talk to about all of this. I had close friends but I often wanted to create the illusion that I had it all together so I didn’t talk to them. So, I didn’t really talk to anyone. I kept it in and kept trying to fit in. After all, I was a pastor’s kid, remember?! I needed to be okay.

I always loved when I was able to connect with someone over something. Whether it was a love of drama and plays, some certain kind of food, I craved that connection that could bring me closer to someone else. I also felt nearly as bad for other people as I did for myself when there was a lack in connection. If someone got their feelings hurt, if someone got mad at me or criticized me (or hinted at criticism), I was a deep well of emotion. Now, in the age of enneagram, I know that I am a two. And, there are others that feel the same way I do! Other emotional “feelers.” Such a wonderful thing to be able to learn more about yourself, but also just to know that there are others who experience similar reactions to the world around them.

Sometimes, I look back and laugh at myself, but then I know that I did feel all these things that deeply, because I lived it. And maybe it is a testament to how simple my life really was, that such small things affected me. But, my dad could tell me that I had a booger hanging out of my nose and I would embarrassingly stalk off to cry in a closet. I mean, really?? I was quite emotional.  

And in my emotional about nearly everything state, I imagined that God was only present for the very big things, that he couldn’t possibly care about the minute details of my little life. He cared about how I behaved insofar as he cared about me not doing bad stuff, but I never took it beyond that. I never doubted his existence, but I never really thought deeply about WHY he existed, or why he made me. He just did, and I just was, and there was no reason for the way I reacted, I just needed to get over IT already….whatever “it” was…