BP 154
I graduated from high school fifty years ago. I know because I just attended the half century reunion back in the rural Minnesota town where I grew up.
I do not have great memories of my high school years. My family moved into town at the beginning of my sixth-grade year, so I was the new kid on the block. I already felt less than others around me due to multiple detrimental circumstances in my family including the absence of a father. In fact, I never met my father before he passed away suddenly. I grew up with a “rageaholic” grandmother, an emotionally young mother, and a twin sister.
Maybe it was because I grew up with three women—maybe not. Whatever the reason, I was a very sensitive boy—I felt things deeply and was highly sensitive to my environment that was so unpredictable and angry and fragile. When you grow up in a minefield, you’re always looking for the right place to step. Better said, you’re always looking to avoid stepping in the wrong place.
Worst of all, possibly, I had no idea how to be a boy. I had no male example to follow, so I winged it. I often watched my male peers and tried to emulate them. Mostly I hid. I posed as a boy and later as a man.
It also didn’t help that I wore “husky” jeans and that I just got glasses for the first time. I often heard comments like “fatso” and “four-eyes.” I still remember the day I hurried into my sixth-grade classroom because I was afraid of being late and did not want to stand out. No, never stand out and be seen by others. Unfortunately, because I was overweight, my shirt bulged out between the buttons and one of these bulges caught on the doorknob of my classroom and my shirt actually ripped open in front of everyone.
I will never forget that day, even though it has dropped far down on the list of infamous occasions in my life. I will never forget the color of that shirt. It was a deep red color, the same color as my face as I stood transfixed in front of my peers. Red was the color of my shame as a boy for several reasons. I hated red.
It was not safe to be me at school or at home. Because of that, my self-development seemed to stop in the sixth grade as I descended into a type of suspended animation or cryonic state. One definition of this suspended state (Wikipedia) is “the temporary (short or long-term) slowing or stopping of biological function so that physiological capabilities are preserved. . . In its natural form, it may be spontaneously reversible as in the case of species demonstrating hypometabolic states of hibernation.”
For me it was more the slowing or stopping of psychological and emotional function since all my energy was being directed to self-preservation, hiding, trying not to be seen because whenever I was seen at home or at school it was not a good thing. Emotional hibernation often is a part of the human experience—retreating into a cave to hide during the winter of life.
It’s definitely true that we all, to some degree, construct masks to hide our true self and rely on a fabricated persona that we present to the outside world like a ventriloquist’s “dummy”. The problem is that our persona may eventually be rewarded with praise and positive attention and so it is encouraged to remain while the true self remains hidden, unloved. How many people live their whole lives behind these masks? Their true self is never hurt again since it is so well protected, but neither is it loved. How tragic.
If some of you retreated into suspended animation when you were young due to hiding from an unpredictable and threatening environment that included shaming and annihilating anger, know right now that you will need to go back and “recover” your true self that is hidden in some closet or dungeon.
In the sixth or seventh grade, I also began to experience anxiety for the first time. Personally, I believe anxiety erupts for many reasons. One reason is aloneness because, as just mentioned, you learned to hide yourself from the outside world—and maybe also from your own shame. Anxiety is never the problem. It is a problem but not the deepest issue. It usually points to something else that you must identify and heal. For one thing, it often tells you that you developed coping skills in childhood that now prevent you from fully receiving the love of God or sharing in the fellowship of other humans.
In short, as I moved through sixth grade, junior high, and high school, I remained in a state of suspended animation—most significantly emotionally and socially but also physically since I was late developing even in that realm. It seemed that in every developmental domain I was late. Behind. Less than.
Better said, I was lost. I was lost socially, emotionally, spiritually, and gender-wise. I was never same sex attracted but I had no idea how to be masculine and had no one to instruct me.
I was so lost I didn’t even know I was lost. I just knew that for some reason, I was different than others. I did not belong. I was alien.
Because of this global lostness, I know for a fact that my life after high school would not have gone well. My uncle died from alcoholism at age fifty, and I am almost certain that my lack of a self-development would have led me down the same path. I would have joined the picture gallery of the deceased classmates who were not able to attend the 50th class reunion.
I would have been one of those ghostly pictures–except for one thing. No, one person.
Jesus.
He pursued me even after I had walked away from church and rejected faith at sixteen. He pursued me even when I wasn’t looking for Him but was effectively running the opposite direction. He called me to Himself when I was in my senior year of high school.
For the first time in life, I had hope. For the first time, I knew who I was. Yes, it would take me decades to grow into a resilient, mature self, but the truth was now clear to me that “I may be a nut, but I’m screwed onto the right bolt.” I found my identity in Jesus and immediately knew who I was, where I came from, why I was here, and where I was going.
Jesus is the Creator who gives all of us our identity since He made us! He made us fearfully and wonderfully and knows who we are meant to be. Don’t look anywhere else for your true identity.
I graduated from high school seven months after I was made a new creation.
Being a new creation means, as we have seen in Ephesians 2:4f, that God, “when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus . . .”
Yes, through salvation we are positionally seated in heaven now, at this moment, because we are one with Christ and are with Him in heaven. However, we are also still on earth walking the journey of being sanctified, becoming more like Jesus from glory to glory, day by day. So it was and is that even though I had experienced new birth in Christ at age 17, I was just beginning the journey of growing into the man God had created me to be physically, emotionally, relationally, and spiritually.
I could go into a lot more detail about my faith journey over the last fifty years. Let it suffice that having been in suspended animation for seven years (and also having been deeply fractured by the Fall) meant that I had a lot of growing to do, a lot of healing to experience in the years after I became a new creation.
God had to tear me down so He could rebuild me not just for my joy but for the serving of others. Demo work is painful and often discouraging. It can be a dark season, tedious and long. But God had a plan all along for how He was going to build me into the man he had created before time began. Ephesians 1:4 says, “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.”
Now let’s jump forward to two days ago. I only attended my class reunion this year because it had been 50 years since that day we all walked across the stage on the football field. Half a century is a landmark reunion as reunions go. I had no idea what to expect.
Twenty-five years had passed since the only other reunion I had attended. At that reunion, I was still dealing with some anxiety and felt a lingering sense of being less than others around me. It was an okay experience, but not amazing. My eyes were more focused on me and how I measured up with everyone else. I was relieved to leave.
Two days ago, I walked into the room where the class reunion was being held and felt no anxiety, no self-consciousness. I just saw them. I saw the other people and their hearts. I wanted to be with them. I wanted to listen to them. Really listen–as good psychologists do. But it wasn’t about being a psychologist. It much more than that. I strained to hear their souls. Even more than hearing their souls, I loved them. I loved them all. I was sad to leave because my heart ached for them all.
As I look back on that night that will soon move from short term memory to long term memory and then one day will be mostly forgotten (sadly), I take away one primary truth: Jesus changes hearts. In a moment, yes, at justification. But also over days, weeks, months, years, decades. (So be faithful to the journey—it’s not a sprint but a marathon).
I am a different person than I was fifty years ago—amazingly different (with more growing to do, of course). I don’t look at myself anymore. I don’t compare myself with others and feel self-consciousness. I don’t give a thought about fitting in. I don’t see me. I see Him, and because I see Him, I see them—those around me. My classmates will probably never know it unless they somehow read this post, but I loved them that night. In fact, my last comment as I walked out the door was to say, “I love you, Tom.”
I loved Myron, Keith, Jim B., Ann, Zoe, Jeff, Lee Anne, Marcia, Barb, Jane, Narcy, Deb, Tom, Jim C., David, Betty, and all the others.
There is only one thing that can account for such a change in a lost boy like me. Actually, only one person: Jesus. He not only saves us for heaven, but He matures us to be like Him day by day as we walk with Him and gaze on His face and His character. Never doubt it—Jesus transforms lives in a way that nothing else can. Politics and education may be important, but only Jesus changes hearts and transforms people so that they lay down their shame and defensiveness and protective anger and are then free to love others.
I always think of Acts 4:13 and what the members of the Sanhedrin said while they were meeting with two of Jesus’ disciples: “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.”
They had been with Jesus.
Entering Jesus’ presence through belief and faith and then practicing His presence day by day leads to a growth and maturity that nothing else in this universe comes close to cloning. Nothing.
One other thing that I observed at my reunion as I walked around among my classmates with a confidence that only comes from God: I did not feel beneath them, as I have already said, but I also did not feel above them or better than them. What I did sense deeply was that I was there for them. They were not there for me.
I remembered what Jesus said: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” ~ Matthew 20:25ff.
I experienced a deep longing to be present for my classmates and to love them as the eternal beings that they are. I mean, it was a deep longing. I sensed the Holy Spirit in me that night loving His creatures with an agape love.
So, as I reflect back on my 50th high school reunion in that small 4-H building in that small town in southwestern Minnesota, I am grateful to Jesus for so many things. One reason I am thankful is that Jesus truly changes hearts—in the blink of an eye at justification (initial belief) and then over a lifetime as we keep our eyes fixed on Him. I know. I have witnessed it inside myself. I remember very clearly who I used to be and am amazed at who I have become because of His Spirit living in my heart transforming me into His man.
Going back to that high school reunion gave me a unique opportunity for juxtaposition, namely, comparing 17-year-old me with 67-year-old me, especially in the context of the same group of people then and now. And I have changed. I have grown. I am indeed a new creation.
Once again, I see that the Bible is true, and that Jesus is The One who speaks, creates, and loves. There is no other.
Only He can change, transform, and metamorphosize the human heart with a love that forgets itself and only sees Him and them.
My word to you, therefore, is don’t leave this earth without Him.
My hope is that my twenty-four classmates who have already left this earth are now looking at Him face-to-face!
There is no greater joy.
“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” ~ 2 Corinthians 3:18
“And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” ~ Mark 12:28ff
“ . . . let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” ~ Hebrews 12:1b, 2
