The Courage To Tell My Story

Mr. President, you tweeted yesterday that it takes courage to share your story. This has inspired me to tell my story…or at least a portion of it.

Awhile back as I was driving to one of my seminary classes a song by Radiohead came on. The song is called Creep. Its an angry song about a young man that has a crush on a girl but he really doesn’t feel like he is good enough for her. At the end of the day he wishes that he was special like her.

“I want you to notice when I’m not around” is perhaps the most telling lyric. The young man in the song feels insignificant and unnoticed. He would sacrifice his own identity just to be someone that would be liked. For a long time this song was the cry of my heart.

I was bullied from a very young age. I’m not sure why the short kid with big ears and glasses was so offensive but I was. I identify with what Ed Welch says here:

Imagine a ten-year-old boy, smaller and less athletic than his peers, waiting to be picked for a soccer game. Two of the more “honored” (that is, cool) boys are captains, and they select teams from a group of eager participants. The two go back and forth, choosing the best players first. As players are chosen they walk to their teams, and the selection pool gets smaller and smaller. With each pick the remaining boys become increasingly self-conscious, then embarrassed. Shame, however, is reserved for the last boy standing, who isn’t picked at all. Slowly, head down, he walks to the side that is stuck with him. The opposing team, laughs while his team groans as if they have become contaminated. Apparently shame is contagious…The shamed boy will be the scapegoat for the teams loss, and somehow, he will be blamed for any teammate’s misfortune for the next week.

This was my childhood, save for the part about being less athletic. But that only added to my confusion. What was it about me that was so deeply shameful? Even if I intercepted passes and hit homeruns somehow I was still a contagion. I carried around these wounds (and others that perhaps I’m not yet courageous enough to share).

I did all kinds of things that I now regret to try to numb this pain. Things to try to somehow…someway…feel significant. Nothing worked. Towards the end of high school I wanted to take my own life, but I didn’t have the courage to do it.

And then I heard a really offensive message. It cut me to the core. It was the message of a man named Jesus. He acknowledged what I’d known for so long—I’m actually not alright. I am unclean. I am unacceptable. I am small. I am broken.

But his response to my brokenness was something different than I’d ever experienced. Rather than picking me last or booting me to the curb, he showed me the depth of His love. He went to the places of my deepest and darkest shame—the stuff that I’m not even willing to share—and he spoke tender words of care.

He didn’t back down or cover over the things that I did in rebellion. He didn’t gloss over my sin. Yes, sin. Even though I was sinned against I also responded sinfully. And He had the audacity to go there. To tell a victim that he was also a perpetrator and that I too needed to repent.

And it was here that I found healing. I’m not totally there yet. I still have pockets of shame and guilt and places of confusion. But I’m healing. And it didn’t come from me “just being myself” or pretending like I was the captain of my ship.

My healing came from God opening up my eyes to how unbelievably small I really am. Those kids on the playground didn’t know the half of my smallness. But God did. And it was His response to my deepest shame that brought healing. Rather than boot me to the curb and relegate me to the places of the outcasts—he became a curse for me. He bore my deepest shame.

What Jesus has done for me has changed everything. I’m accountable to Him. He’s my master. And in Him I’ve found true freedom. I’ve found rescue. I’ve found the balm for my deepest shame.

So that’s my story…or at least part of it. I assume that you’ll celebrate my courageous story just as you’ve celebrated that of others. Certainly it is not only certain stories that are courageous, but all of them—even, perhaps especially even, when they go against the tide of popular culture.

But I suppose my story is a bit more offensive because my story is one that impacts you as well. Because if my story is true then it means that my story is also your story. It means that I don’t hold the pen. My story is actually His story. This means we are rebels if we try to grab the pen from His hand and write our own. And it also means that Jesus is casting out of His kingdom all sin and unbelief and replacing it with passionate worshippers. There are consequences to trying to write your own story.

And so I’m praying my story is yours as well. Sure the plot is different. But at core the story is the same. Jesus redeems sinners, of whom I’m the foremost.

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Photo source: here