Class Reunion

I’ve been reading so many deep and thought-provoking entries in other people’s blogs and diaries. And while I have been encouraged to think and remember, I also have been feeling exceedingly shallow. I feel thought-less. I feel shallow. Here’s how shallow I am:

In four months my class is holding it’s 30th high school reunion and I was just sitting here thinking about two things: how am I going to lose 40lbs before April 1 and how will I inform my former “best friends forever” of my criminal status.

Me. I never smoked a cigarette. Never even took one puff. Was only drunk once and got so sick I swore off alcohol completely. I never tried any drugs. I wasn’t even around them, that I knew of. I never got a speeding ticket and the only accident I caused was when I tried to park between two cars in a hurry because I was late for band practice and I hit a friend’s car and when backing from that I scraped my boyfriend’s parent’s car on the other side. I never shoplifted. My worse crime was over-due library books. I was fourth runner up to Miss Teenage Columbus, in the band, in choir and ensembles, in drama, and extremely active in my church youth group.

Me. I graduated from college. Got married. Had two beautiful children. Pastored for 20 years, and was a counselor for seven. Have 3 masters’ degrees, half the work done for a doctorate, and 4000 clinically supervised CPE hours.

I had everything and I handed it back. Stupid barely describes me.

Me. Arrogant. I could take on the world. I could flirt with danger. Rules were for others who couldn’t handle things. I was super mom, super counselor, super pastor. Boundaries were for wimps. I gave and gave and gave. Why hold back anything in reserve? Why even have a reserve? I was totally spread beyond thin and completely spent. And somehow I thought that was a good thing.

Sometimes when I reflect back to that time and it seems like a dream, like I must be thinking about someone else’s life. It felt that way while I was living it too, only it wasn’t a dream it was a nightmare and I couldn’t wake up. And being raised in an alcoholic dysfunctional family was great prep ground for being about to wear the mask of “everything’s just hunky dory” when I would need it at church or work or even home. It was a phony as Mr. Rourke on Fantasy Island: “Smiles everyone, smiles.”

Come to think of it, there was a lot of that “smiling” going on when I was in high school. My parents were alcoholics, but I didn’t “know” that. Mom never went to bed without a couple drinks first, and most nights she fell asleep in her chair. I thought she just woke up hard. I didn’t know they were hangovers. The first DUI I knew my dad got was when I was in college.

I wonder about affairs. Dad traveled for many years for work. He would leave on Monday’s and not come home until the weekend. He was quite flirtatious. The women all loved him. One night after several drinks it even seemed Mom tried to confess something. I was ready to hear it. I’ve never gone back and asked. My brother’s first marriage failed because he had affairs. My sister married a man whose wife had only been dead two months—their relationship had been “building” before the death. He ended up having affairs on Sis and they divorced. And then there’s me.

Not only did we know how to wear smiles to cover our shame; we knew mastered the art of the disconnected or fragmented life. Have you ever watched a little kid eat who can’t stand to have their food touch? Frantic effort is expended to make sure that there is no inner-mingling between meat and potatoes or potatoes and veggies. I was so completely deluded that I thought I could keep all those things separated in my life—denial. It’s poison, slowly killing the soul.

Tuesday morning a new group of workers started out at the plant. I’m supervising them. They’re working in conjunction with T-Net and with Job and Family Services. They have to work so many hours to continue to receive their benefits (food stamps). The agreement between T-Net and the R Company is that the work that these folks do will not be anything that would be regular R Company work. So mostly it’s busy work. Takes a lot of supervision. But I digress…

Anyway, when this group started on Tuesday, Dan introduced me and in that introduction told them I had a pretty interesting story that he hoped I would tell them some day. It’s the felon makes good story. I sort of blitzed by that and hoped that no one would ask. They didn’t on Tuesday, or on Wednesday. Today they reminded me and they asked so I gave them the Reader’s Digest version. Even without giving them a single detail of my crime, they stood there and a couple jaws dropped. I just don’t look the part. I don’t act the part. I’m not the part and yet I am.

You know, thinking back over this, perhaps there’s more than 40lbs I need to lose.

And why do I want to go to this reunion anyway? There are a few people I would dearly love to see. The group I hung out with were the brainiacs. My dear friend is a doctor, a heart surgeon. One of gang is a music professor at a university in the Chicago area. One was the editor of a popular magazine here in Ohio. Will the people I really want to see be there? Is there anybody wondering about me?

My life probably would seem like a tremendous disappointment to them. At times it feels that way to me and yet I know that it has been through brokenness that I have come to understand real love and forgiveness demonstrated through Nelson (over and over). It wasn’t until the arrogance was shattered and I reached out to grab the hand of one far greater than me that I began to see my significance.

These days there’s a smile, but it’s not contrived or covering. It’s born of genuine contentment—thin at spots and hard to discern but there nonetheless. And the masks come out rarely if ever. I’m just learning how to really be real.

Ok, now I’m sitting here and I’m wondering, not so much how I’ll tell my story, but what stories of journeys others have taken. Surely, I’m not the only one with heartache and growth to share.

I wonder how much weight everyone else is thinking about losing before April 1st.