January 9, 2024

Going Full Circle

I think about things … a lot of things … that are part of the unfolding of this life-altering transition that, though I resented its seeming imposition, and struggled so desperately hard against it, I am now fully involved in embracing it along with the changes that are unfolding as the natural flow of settling into what I can only view as God’s gift in my life for such a time as this.

 A large part of this transitioning fits within the scheme represented by the words … full circle.

I find it rather amazing how, in this transition, I am merely embracing more levels of my true original self. It’s not that I have dreamt up some new version of me as some persona to develop and portray. Far from it. The reality of it is that I am now free to just be me … an older version of the kid that I have always been. 

As that kid becomes more front and center, it’s easy for me to see how so much of the life I lived over the decades, so much of what I have done in my life, both the bad and the good of it, has often been something of a misguided pursuit of trying to find my original self in well-intentioned illusions and people pleasing. I was there all along but I could not see the kid in me anymore.

Oh, those damned thick layers of socially poured concrete that buried me.

I invited some of the layers. Some of the most sinister layers were poured by well-intentioned others along the way who, for some reason or another, felt that they had my (and more importantly “their”) best interest in mind. I tried to fit the constructed molds. I tried to perform according to the expectations of so many others. All the while the layers grew thicker and heavier smothering my original self … the one I was created to be. The spines of those boney horses wore blisters on my narrow sun-deprived ass.

It was out there on the NW Kansas prairie at the turn of the Millennium, that year I lived under a huge cottonwood tree in my vintage camper, that I began laboriously chipping away at the concrete layers that buried me so deeply beneath them. It was there, under that cottonwood tree, that I laid to rest the Martyr Complex that I had so easily justified as the price for serving others as a pastor. I learned some hard lessons about human nature during that season in my life, lessons that none of my preparatory education in that field prepared me for.

It took several years to chisel out from under that life sucking burden of weight. Part of those several include the two years that I lived practically in seclusion in New Jersey. Nobody from my past but my mom and daughter knew where I was at. For all practical purposes, David just disappeared altogether. Honestly, I was happy to be gone too. I was happy to put some people behind me. I refer to the first of those two years as “the year of my bleeding”. I spent that first year emotionally bleeding on every blade of grass on that golf course.

It was there, working on a golf course in New Jersey, that I began exploring and embracing a more contemplative spirituality rather than the Evangelicalism I had known all my life. I also developed an extreme resistance, almost an animosity, toward anyone who tried to press their notions and ideals upon me, especially where hardshell Evangelicalism is concerned. I had fought for and won my freedom and I would not be led away again into captivity with a hook in my jaw.

I can never go back in time physically to live again those early years of my life. I can, however, remember. And, in remembering, re-member, as best as possible, my original true self albeit now being hauled around by this aging vehicle doing its dead level best to defy the effects of aging.

A lot of labor and love have gone into rearranging and redecorating the inside of this little shack beside the track. A certain sense of integrity has been maintained throughout respecting the past and honoring the place that Shirli, my greatest hero, filled while also creating an atmosphere that accurately reflects where I am today in this crazy full circle adventure that is the life of David.