My earliest memory of my childhood involved my brother Stephen. We moved from Georgetown to Pasadena, Texas around the time I was three or so. I remember my brother luring me into the back of the U-Haul we were using for the move and closing the door behind me, leaving me in the dark. I was terrified. It was hot and it was dark. No one seemed to notice I was missing for quite some time. My dad discovered me when he opened the door to load up more things.
The memory always stirs up in me feelings of loneliness, abandonment and fear. I also feel very powerless against those that seem to have more power than me. I could not save myself, I had to wait in the dark for someone to notice I needed to be saved from the dark. Somehow find the way out to save myself. I also remember worrying that my family would never discover I was missing and that I would get lost in the dark.
I see a lot of these same themes play out in my life today and in my process. The powerlessness I feel with others, the sheer vulnerability I feel at times, particularly with those in authority is still very present with me. The other morning, one of my supervisors confronted me with material he felt was missing in my paper. Instead of standing up and really engaging him as a peer, I allowed him to bully me a bit. That morning felt a bit like the back of the U-Haul. I kept waiting for someone to save me, I felt powerless to save myself to stand up to this power. I shut down and resigned myself to that spot that morning. The door was opened when the session was over.
I think I let others lock me away in the U-Haul a lot. I go back there a lot. This feeling when it arises prevents me from being fully present and who I am with my colleagues and peers. I often resign myself to being simply a victim. Alone and abandoned by those closest to me. My fear of intimacy is related to this I think. I fear being abandoned about as much as I fear anything. I feel insecure in my relationships, always looking at ways that people might hurt me, leave me alone in the dark. Forget about me.
One interesting theological twist I hadn't contemplated before now. I often think of salvation as something each of us must seek on our own. No one, not even Jesus, can save us. We must save ourselves by following Jesus. By following The Way. However, this sense that God will save us through no power of our own has always bothered me. I seem to think of it as a "I'll show you the way, you do the rest" kind of a thing. Not a lot of grace in my theology.
As I reflect on this, it kind of strikes me that this is how I think of it when I waited so desperately for someone to save me in the back of the U-Haul truck. I knew I couldn't do it for myself. Perhaps my theology is more in line with my resistance to this sense of pervasive powerlessness I feel. Perhaps God's power is the one thing, in my mind at least, I have the ability to control. It is everyone else I let bully me. God, on the other hand, I have created to be vulnerable, just like me. This theology may not be serving me very well. It is authentic to who I am, but it may not be helping me claim my own authority and power. Just as I'm writing, I'm wondering would it would look like if I let God open the U-Haul for me and let the light of Grace really touch me for the first time. Would I be able to find my own power even as I let the power of God wash over me?
I am beginning to wonder if I have been living too long with a myth of rejection and not long enough with the reality of God as love in my life. Perhaps by letting God save me, by letting the light of Grace come upon me, I can find true freedom to be who I am really called to be: an authority in my own right. An author of my own story. Then perhaps I can shout the words of the old spiritual: "Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last!"
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