Collecting the Dots
PART OF WHAT MADE the whole deal with Art so brutal is that it obliterated an emotional safety net I’d found security in for nearly twenty-five years. Whenever something really hard would happen in my life, I used to say to myself, “At least Art and I are okay.” You see, before Art, I’d held a belief that forced me to hold all men at a distance. The story of my life was marked with men who devastated me. So the story I constantly told myself was, “Don’t open your heart to men. Men steal hearts. You can only trust yourself to take care of yourself.”
I’d made an exception with Art. And for a long time, I was so glad I did.
And then everything changed.
This made me so unsure about so much: unsure what I truly believed about forgiveness, unsure how to move forward, unsure what to do next. I wanted to be able to say, “I’m okay even if Art and I never are.” But I wasn’t there yet. I wanted to be. However, there was more work to be done. And I knew the work would require me untangling other scripts and beliefs that were making me not okay.
Like I said in the last chapter, counseling was an important part of this process. But equally important was gathering with my friends at the gray table week after week, processing our stories. As we talked about forgiveness, bitterness, and places of struggle in relationships, we noticed so many ties to our growing-up years. I started to recognize how much we write scripts to help us navigate life experiences based on our past experiences. And how much those scripts turn into belief systems that inform our actions.
We all have a story. And then we all have a story we tell ourselves. Revisiting the past can be scary. But if we want to fully heal, we need to dig into our stories to understand what’s behind the curtain. Forgiveness isn’t just about what’s in front of us. Sometimes, a bigger part of the journey is uncovering what is informing us from long ago. Woven throughout our experiences is a connecting thread that pulls the beliefs we formed from our past into the very present moments of today.
So, even though it’s hard, let’s lean in. I’ll go first. As I tell my story, look for the threads woven through my experiences that led to the beliefs that still echo into my life today.
To understand me and why I function the way I do, you have to first understand my mom, who, for most of my life, was my person. My mom started life born to a single mother quarantined in a sanatorium on April Fools’ Day and then she was promptly taken to an orphanage. I’m not sure of all the reasons why, but I do know her mother was in the sanatorium because she’d been diagnosed with tuberculosis and she thought she was going to die. When her grandmother found out my mom existed, she went to the orphanage to get her. But, somehow, by the time she got there six months later, though the name on her birth certificate was Linda (which is the name she goes by to this day), the people at the orphanage called her Ruth. We’ve never figured out that mystery.
Forgiveness isn’t just about what’s in front of us. Sometimes, a bigger part of the journey is uncovering what is informing us from long ago.
Her grandmother got legal guardianship of her and brought her home to live in a little white house on a large tobacco farm in North Carolina. I don’t know why my mom’s mother never did what was necessary to be a real mother to my mom, even after she was discharged from the sanatorium. I do know she tried to kidnap her from her elementary school several times and my mom had to be rescued by teachers. But my mom didn’t at all feel wanted when this happened. Instead, she was terrified by the woman who gave birth to her. Then, her grandmother died suddenly on Thanksgiving Day when she was only in the first grade. And her birth mom still didn’t try to make things right.
So my mom grew up with her grandfather and two aunts who made her their world. She was absolutely doted on and delighted in. Her aunts never married. They never even moved. To this day they live in the same house they were born in more than eighty years ago. They lived their lives to raise and love the little girl their sister never returned home for . . . my mom.
My mom was loud in a house full of quiet. She was bold in a house where everyone else favored blending in. Her aunt Barbara once needed a broom, and, without thinking, my mom tossed it down the stairwell, accidentally nailing Barbara in the head so hard it knocked her out. I’m sure there are other stories about her childhood, but that’s the only one I remember. It so perfectly describes my mom and how her enthusiasm and energy always run slightly ahead of any sort of sense of caution.
Mom worked in the tobacco fields in the summer and was the first homecoming queen for the brand-new high school she attended. She was beautiful and spunky and well liked.
That’s about all I know about her childhood.
She married straight out of high school, and when I came along, she was barely finished being a child herself.
My dad was deployed for most of the first two years of my life. My mom and I quickly became a unit, a force that rose above the limitations of our trailer park where we lived next door to my dad’s parents in a less-than-ideal situation. My mom shares very little about our life in that single-wide trailer, except that all our furniture was plastic. I think at some point she decided I should skip the stage of being a baby so we could be buddies. She needed a friend. And from what I’ve been told, I was happy to be just that.
It won’t make a bit of sense when I tell you what I’m about to share, but it is 100 percent true. I have grainy square photographs to prove it. She started potty training me using a toddler’s plastic pink toilet when I was six months of age, I was walking by eight months, and I could say the entire Pledge of Allegiance by age two. None of this was because I was particularly smart or advanced. It was because I was the sole focus of a very young mom in a very hard situation who delighted in me being her one-way ticket out of loneliness.
She and I laughed and played and pretended our way into a completely grand life where we were fancy and able to go wherever we wanted. Imaginations aren’t limited by finances or people’s opinions or daddies who never wanted children. She was my person, and I was hers.
I don’t remember many rules from that season of life. I think there may have been just some basic things, like no sugary cereal and the last three things before bed I must always do: brush my teeth, go to the bathroom, and say my prayers. Those are rules which, to this day, I keep. They are as much a part of me as my mom’s green eyes and dark hair.
The only other rule I can remember from early childhood was never eat raw cookie dough. That one didn’t make sense to me, since my grandmother on my father’s side, who lived next door to us in the trailer park, served chunks of raw meat for appetizers on Friday nights. And I don’t mean undercooked. I mean meat-straight-from-the-fridge-to-the-table raw. Even as a small child I thought this was completely odd. But since the adults could eat raw meat, I rationalized that cookie dough paled in comparison and did whatever I could to sneak a spoonful.
I always thought my grandmother was one of the wealthiest people on the planet, because she ordered stuff from the Sears catalog and because her car had four doors. She was obsessed with keeping things clean, and she was very particular. When I would eat saltine crackers, she would make me sit on a blanket and, with every bite, lick the edge of the cracker so no crumbs would fall.
And then, around age three and a half, I was told a baby was coming. I don’t remember how my mom told me. I just remember this was not welcome news. I felt like a stranger was about to invade our world.
I have absolutely zero memories of ever getting in trouble or being scolded by my mom before my sister was born. But when she came, so did the relationship rules. Don’t hit. Be gentle. Use your inside voice so you don’t wake her or scare her. Take turns. Share your stuff. Give her the other piece of pizza. Let her go first this time, since you went first last time. Hold her hand. Help her.
She was a tiny girl with dark spiky hair, chocolate brown eyes, and olive skin that always smelled like a combination of pink baby lotion and my mom. I was very hesitant to welcome her. But my mom did a good job helping me see that she could be part of us. She wouldn’t divide or subtract from our lives; she would make it more fun, full, and interesting. And when she grew big enough for me to also discover she would clean my room for a few pennies, I warmed up to her presence exponentially.
My dad was home for a few years after my sister was born. We moved around a lot, eventually landing in Tallahassee, Florida. My mom got her nursing degree and worked at the hospital. My sister and I walked to and from school every day, only needing to cross one major intersection between our house and the school. It was the same intersection where my mom once got a ticket for speeding, I think. It was twenty-five dollars, and when she told my dad he took our county fair money to pay her ticket. My mom, my sister, and I were all devastated that we didn’t get to go and ride the rides that year. My dad was not sad. He did not change his mind, even when he saw us cry. I remember saying a word under my breath we weren’t allowed to use about my dad because of his decision.
I was about eight or nine years old when we somehow connected with my grandmother who had never come back for my mother. My mom gave her a second chance. I was thrilled and remember begging my mom to let me go visit her in the big city she lived in. I very much regretted that decision. My grandmother had a neighbor who became my biggest nightmare of sexual abuse.
He used to babysit me when she would go to her doctor appointments. She went to a lot of doctor appointments. He told me if I ever told anyone he would hurt my mom.
I loved my mom, so I stayed quiet. I decided I was a bad person for saying that word about my dad and for stealing bubble gum from a convenience store one time and for not being strong enough or brave enough to run away from the bad man.
I vowed inside my head to be a better person. The heavy feeling inside my heart was something I couldn’t describe. I determined all the bad things were because rules were being broken. So rules must be followed. Rules must be enforced. And whatever I couldn’t enforce, I had to find someone who would.
My dad didn’t know what happened to me. And before I could muster up the courage to tell him, he left us. Eventually, when I was in middle school, with tears streaming down my face, I told my mom, even though I was terrified of what the man would do to both of us. My mom told my dad. I was so sure he would do whatever was necessary to right this wrong. Surely, he would be as devastated about what had happened as we were. And he’d want to protect us by coming home. He did not. I think I cried more about what my dad didn’t do than I did about what the bad man did do.
My mom did confront the man who abused me. She did everything she could to protect me and seek justice. He never came after my mom. But the fear that he might, combined with my dad’s absence, kept me looking over my shoulder for years.
My mom once again proved to be my person. She helped me pick up the pieces from that season, and we somehow made life work. We ate lots of boxed macaroni and cheese, but my mom, my little sister, and I found a sense of normal inside the blue split-level house on Eastgate Way. And besides the time when a drunk driver ran his car through our front door into the den or the time my mom was featured on the front page of the newspaper for rescuing baby possums and feeding them with an eye dropper, life did seem quite normal for a while.
The most drama during that season was between my sister Angee and me. To be clear, she is, in fact, one of my favorite people on the planet today. But back then, I was the bossy older sister and she was the sensitive one. Whenever my sister and I would get into an argument, my mom was the judge. She would always step in and declare one person wrong and the other person right. She was fair. She was the rule enforcer. And although I didn’t always agree with her estimation of who was right and who was wrong, I felt safe knowing, no matter what, she could fix situations, settle arguments, and she would give us a script to repeat that included one person saying sorry and the other, “I forgive you.”
Then Mom would have us hug and tell us to get back to playing nicely or she’d give us something to really cry about.
It was good for my mom to teach us this rhythm of being kind and making up in the midst of silly girlhood selfishness. But it engrained something deep inside of me that didn’t mature past childhood. So my belief system around relationship complications and forgiveness contained expectations that didn’t keep playing out quite so easily as I got older. I thought this is the way it should always work:
•Someone is clearly wrong.
•Someone is clearly right.
•A person in authority declares that what was done must be addressed.
•The one in the wrong is scolded.
•The one in the wrong says they are sorry.
•The person in authority instructs that the hurtful action must not be continued.
•The person who was wronged or hurt feels secure that if this action is ever repeated, there will be consequences for the offender.
•In this atmosphere of clear justice, the person hurt forgives.
•Forgiveness then leads to reconciliation, and the relationship is good once again.
But when I started school things changed. The teachers didn’t just have two little girls to navigate. They had twenty or thirty kids and couldn’t possibly step in to right all the wrongs of all the kids.
I think it was around fifth grade when things got especially complicated at school, because an imaginary line started to separate the students. Some were called “popular” for wearing the right things, saying the cool things, and knowing more inappropriate phrases and words than the other kids. At some point I realized I was, in fact, not accepted into “the group.”
My hair was frizzy. I had buck teeth. And we couldn’t afford the cool clothes. Those were the reasons I tried to tell myself I wasn’t accepted. But secretly, deep down, I suspected it had to do with things I didn’t talk about. Maybe they somehow knew. But at least I had some safe friends who didn’t care that we weren’t in the popular group. We would survive the divisions at school together. We were the rule followers. And that felt good.
Until the two girls I thought would be with me no matter what saw an opportunity to cross over into the popular group. Their initiation was to act cool, which was really code to do something cruel to me. I never saw it coming. Out of the blue, one day on the playground, my friends declared I was ugly and no one liked me and then shoved me down.
I was shocked.
So I think instinct kicked in. I took my tears and my proof of being wrongly treated to the teacher and very much expected her to follow the same script as my mom.
I was stunned when she told me to stop being so sensitive and scolded me for being too emotional. My face felt like it was suddenly engulfed with flames burning under my cheeks. I was ashamed of my feelings. I could hear the laughter of the ones who’d just hurt me, and I couldn’t bear to turn around.
I felt something confusing and alarming inside my chest. It was part sorrow, part anger, and part frantically wanting to run away. Panic gripped me. How could the teacher do nothing? A seething angst barreled through me.
I didn’t know who I hated more in that moment . . . my “friends” or myself.
I’m not sure why this rejection seemed to be such an epic moment. I had been rejected and hurt and betrayed before. But this one was public. And I think that’s why this one not only hurt but made me feel ashamed in front of what felt like the whole world.
An unsettledness came over me. I wanted my mom. But I knew she couldn’t be with me on the playground. Not that day. Not any day. Moms sometimes came to the classroom for parties, but they never came to the playground. I scanned the fence around us with an urgent need to find a way out.
When I realized there was nowhere to go, I clenched my jaw. I choked back the tears I’d already been told by my teacher were not acceptable here. My hands went numb. I was utterly terrified by the shocking reality that the only one who could protect me was me. And I already knew how powerless I was.
It wasn’t just about what happened on the playground. It was my dad’s mother who made me feel like a terrible child for the few cracker crumbs that escaped. And my mom’s mom who never came to get her and then allowed me to get hurt. My dad who didn’t come home and didn’t protect us. And the girls who were supposed to be my people.
A burning need arose inside of me to one day make them realize how awful they really were. Except I didn’t want them to be awful. I wanted them to be good and loving and kind. I wanted them to see me and to like what they saw. I wanted them to love me and protect me. I wanted what I read about in the storybooks and saw modeled in the only two TV shows I was allowed to watch: The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie.
I wanted something I knew should be possible. It just wasn’t possible for me. And not because of what was wrong with everyone else. What I really feared I would never escape was being me. The common denominator of all the pain was that I was in the center of it.
The greatest hell a human can experience here on earth is not suffering. It’s feeling like the suffering is pointless and it will never get any better.
The playground never felt safe again after that. I didn’t blame the teacher. She was actually a lovely woman. But there were things going on she never saw. The rules were different out on the playground. Instead of be nice and play fair, it was a game of survival. People who said or did mean things were protected by the others in the popular group. It seemed they could get away with anything. They were the cool ones, the strong ones, the ones in charge. No one said they were sorry. And the only justice was if you could figure out a way to secretly seek revenge on the mean kids without getting caught.
In essence, we all became what we feared. Mean kids. And if you didn’t want to be mean at first, it only took a few days of being targeted to conform, for the sake of survival, into an exact replica of the kids you disliked the very most.
I decided not to tell my mom. Being a tattletale was worse than being uncool.
It felt safer to fit in with the meanness than to be vulnerable and brave. It was not an option to be kind, since kindness exposed tender places where others would be able to hurt me the most. Toughness and roughness and joining in the mean game allowed my vulnerabilities to stay tucked underneath an increasingly hardened heart.
Eventually, I discovered there was one way not to join in the meanness and still escape being targeted—by going silent and blending in to the point of basically disappearing. No words. No emotion. No telling. No closeness. No expressions whatsoever.
My saving grace that year was when I volunteered to be the teacher’s helper so I could stay in the classroom during recess. I cleaned the chalkboards and swept the beige and green square flooring while everyone else took their chances out on the playground. And that’s when I started learning that it comforted me to review all the proof I had against all the mean kids. Files of things they said and did with precise detail collected in my mind day after day. Proof I planned to share one day when I finally figured out who was playing the role of the judge and righter of all wrongs at this school.
I never found the judge.
Fifth grade came and went. I was absolutely convinced middle school would be better. And I was absolutely wrong. The judge wasn’t there either.
I left that playground for the last time more than forty years ago. But to this day I sometimes wonder if the playground has left me.
I tell you all of this, because things we learn as children stick with us. I would imagine, as I shared my story, bits and pieces of your own story started to emerge in your mind. Fragments of memories like old movie clips clicked on. Some as delightful as the ones I have of playing with my mom. Some as painful as my dad leaving and not coming home to protect us. Some as strange as a drunk driver hitting my house. Some as hurtful as my friends turning on me.
Those things that happen in our lives don’t just tell a story. They inform us of the story we tell ourselves. If we listen carefully, woven throughout our narratives is a belief system that formed inside of us as children.
For me, it was a system of thought that included several things.
First, it instilled in me a clear idea of what I believe I should and shouldn’t do. I still do the things my mom taught me must be done before bed. I still don’t buy sugary cereal. I still lick the edge of every cracker I eat, just like my grandmother insisted. I don’t steal. I cringe when I hear bad words. I don’t always think it’s safe to share feelings. Rules are meant to keep us safe and should be followed. The people who follow the rules are much safer than those who don’t.
Second, it impacts what I believe about other people. I believe some people are safe. But lots of people have issues I don’t know anything about. Unresolved issues and undealt-with wounds make people say and do things that can hurt. I try not to personalize what other people say or do, but it’s really hard when I’m a deep feeler. I get hurt. And sadly, though I never want to hurt others, I do. Even when I do everything I know to do to make things better . . . sometimes things don’t get better. Some relationships don’t survive in the long run. Sometimes we never really know why.
Third, it influences what I believe about myself. Fourth, what I believe about God. And lastly, what I believe about forgiveness and moving forward in healthy ways. I didn’t fill in any examples from the last three, because I think I’ve talked enough about me, and those thoughts are better reserved for sharing in person. Maybe one day we will run into each other, and, over coffee (extra hot with steamed almond milk and one stevia, please), we can pull out our journals and open up our hearts together. But for now, this is where I hand the pen to you.
My counselor likes to encourage me to collect the dots, connect the dots, and then correct the dots. We’ll do the connecting and correcting in future chapters. But right now, at this moment, let’s start at the beginning and allow your memories to leak out in liquid pen strokes. Don’t fear how the words come out or get tangled up in any sort of timeline, or feel like you have to ensure every detail is precise and correct. It’s not about getting it all right but rather getting it all out.
There’s an amazing person I want to make sure you don’t miss truly meeting. The one and only glorious you that you look at each day in the mirror . . . full of the most interesting experiences, delightful quirks, honest hurt, inspiring resilience, hilarious family oddities, and absolutely astonishing reflections of our heavenly Father. I’ve never been so honored to meet someone. Hello, beautiful, beautiful you.