BP 149
Following are brief admissions of three children who are clothed with an adult on the outside.
AMY: I am twenty-three on the outside. I am six on the inside. I am not loved in my family. Not really. Only tolerated. I am not the favorite child. No, I am the least favorite. I am too much for my parents. I am not an asset but a burden. I am never quite good enough. How do I cope? I hide my child from them (actually from all people because don’t we all transfer our family wounds and fears to the world and then trust no one?).
I also withhold my emotions so they don’t have to withdraw from me and so I won’t be vulnerable when they hurt me again with their subtle messages of rejection. My coping keeps me safe at the price of being alone. Sad. Not really attached.
I compensate for my lack of value by making myself “good enough”. I gain value by achieving good grades and performing at work and showing just enough skin so I am tantalizing, wanted. I am so alone, but I can’t risk being rejected again or labeled as “too much”. So, I wear armor that hides who I am on the inside.
My life is reduced to five stages fixed forever: I perceive rejection and hurt from others. I then believe I am not loved or wanted. I cope by pulling away so no one can hurt me yet again. Then I feel alone because people never get to know who I really am—they only see my outside persona who is smiling and achieving but do not see the crying girl inside. So, I feel unpursued, rejected, and hurt—and so the cycle begins again, eternally.
BEN: I am thirty-four on the outside. Inside, I am five. My parents left me. My mother abandoned me emotionally because I dropped her. Deeply hurt, she broke like a fragile vase. I was very angry with my father because he never had time for me. Then he died, suddenly. I must have killed him with my strong negative emotion.
My destiny is to be left. I will always be alone. I must send my child away because his hate killed my father and his desire to escape from his controlling mother caused her to leave me alone. There is something wrong with me. I am bad. No one knows it but me.
I was molested by an older boy who gave me the attention my father did not. It felt good even though I felt deep shame and did not want to like it. I hated what I liked and liked what I hated. What is wrong with me? I deserve to die. How can God love me?
Abandoned by my father and my mother who daily reminds me how badly I hurt her, I am left with OCD symptoms shouting at me that I did something wrong. No, even worse than that. I am wrong. I feel ashamed or awkward when anyone gets too close to me, so I hide. I am so alone, so sad, but I dare not need someone because I will make them go away. I must detach and live dead on the inside. My anger will make even God turn his back on me.
MICHAEL: I am thirty on the outside. On the inside where no one sees me, I am seven. My parents were always fighting. My mother was emotionally reactive, and my father was an alcoholic—as unpredictable and moody as the month of April in Minnesota. Life was chaotic. My house was a minefield. So, I hid. I ran away from my parents. Emotionally.
I was so afraid of the two thundering tornados on the outside and so overwhelmed by the ocean of emotions on the inside that I had to sever the bridge to my own heart. I felt more than I could contain, especially when I was all alone. So, I detached from my own soul.
I hate anger and conflict. I despise tension. It makes my stomach hurt. I will reflexively lie to have peace. It is much safer to lie than to be seen by an angry face. When someone does get angry with me—have I told you that I hate anger–I will cut them off and just show them my nice self that is very pleasing and likable. Anger terrifies me.
Am I afraid of their anger or my own?
My True Self with his emotions and needs has been sunk (by me) like the Titanic miles beneath the frigid waters of the north Atlantic. He remains there unless someone admires me which makes me feel really safe and loved. Then I resurface like a schoolboy, giddy, childish, impulsive. If no admiration comes, I must numb myself with alcohol and pornography. The lonely Titanic boy who languishes at the bottom of the sea must have something.
I live for admiration. I breathe to be seen.
But it is never enough. When received, “love” leaks out of my soul as if it is riddled with holes, and I am soon empty. Always empty and hungry.
Truth be told, my True Self is so hungry for love that he (I) will run without discrimination toward anyone who idealizes me. The only problem is that I have learned that those who idealize me are also capable of devaluing me if I disappoint their childish hunger.
Their fawning love is not love at all but an overwhelming need to make some man or leader into the father they never had. If they travel through some emotional wormhole and morph me into the amazing father and then I deign to return their attention with passionate love from my hungry boy, they will feel loved. But if I do anything to reject them—and they are hurt easily–they will hate me with the same burning passion with which they loved me.
Oh, what a fragile existence it is. God, please help me! I struggle to believe in you except with my brain because hungry boys need a mom or dad with skin on. Some days, theology is all I have to know you are real. But head knowledge is never enough, in the end.
I demand love.
ꟷ
Everyone has a child inside. It is just a matter of degree how much we are child and how much we are adult. Do you know your child?
Am I talking here in metaphorical language? Not necessarily. Part of the experience of being in this world is being a sinner and a saint, being seated in heavenly places and still stuck in the slough of despond, in some ways very mature and adulted but in other ways still very young.
So, who is the child living inside of you? The little girl is the part of you that experienced trauma, rejection, fear, or an aloneness so deep you thought the ache would stop your heart from beating. You were too young to know what you were doing, but you had no choice but to divert all your energy to self-protection instead of growth. Maturing was not possible. Surviving was all you could do. The child could not flourish and blossom.
The boy in you is the part that felt unseen or unloved or rejected by father and peers alike, so you hid yourself from further rejection and pain. The boy could be the part of you that still copes in young ways like feeling sorry for yourself, or that presents himself like an alpha male on the outside, or who hides behind your muscles and your masculine walk or voice when inside you feel so young, so small.
How can you know your child? You need to let God and others see you.
What does Jesus want you to do with your child? Scold her? Hide him? Ignore her? Lock him into some room deep inside the basement of your heart never to be seen again?
There is amazing comfort in Scripture for the boy or girl who lives inside of you: “Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”
Someone or something may have sent your child into hiding years ago, but that girl and boy leak out of you every day of your life. You see, children do not do well in the adult world. That child may keep others from drawing too close to you. She may fear that if anyone sees the True Self, they will shake their heads and walk away. The boy may feel so weak and needy that he hides himself from the eyes of others in a hiding place deep inside that eventually becomes a prison.
But Jesus says, “Let the little children come to me.”
Only children can receive the kingdom of God. It seems that God Himself has a child within Him. No wonder he wants the girl or boy to come to Him. No more hiding. With God, it is always, “Come.”
“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we” ― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy