Peniel - Day 3...3:07pm

Looking back over my life I see this one huge, horrible cycle of expectations of myself, striving to achieve them, failing in one point, falling into despair, and then plunging into the opposite direction until my then destructive behavior nearly killed me or I got so sick of it I knew I had to stop it. Then I would resolve to clean up and repair my broken life, set my expectations and demands upon myself, and the cycle repeats.

My spiritual advisor and I had a talk not long ago about the demands of perfection I place on myself. It’s the first phase, or maybe the second, of this vicious cycle. I have a need to be perfect which is so intense, it is ruling my life and preventing me from being able to see things in perspective. I set myself up for failure.

I’m starting to see also a pattern of vulnerability in my life. Of course, we are all vulnerable as children. That’s why we need to be protected as we mature, but I think, perhaps some of my perfectionism and other destructive choices stem from a root, or maybe base of a trunk that was vulnerability.

My parents loved me. I know that now, and see that in so many ways it was obvious even then. I don’t have a horror-story childhood full of abuse, and I am grateful for that. If I dare to even think the word neglect, I am slapped in the face by the fact that I had more care, love and attention than many of my friends, of many of the people I know now. I am reminded of a dear friend whose mother left her in drug dealer's home for extended periods of time. Of a friend who was left in a hotel room to care for his younger brother as his mother abandoned them. No. I was not neglected, not in the light of stories such as these and so many worse.

I can recall times where my father’s love and approval made me the happiest little boy on the planet. Sacrifices he made to be with me. And yet, for some reason I don’t understand, it wasn’t enough. I had more love and attention than so many, and yet I starved. My family loved me, and there was no abuse. But somehow I felt the loneliness and pain of a form of neglect, and the resulting vulnerability set me up for disaster.

I remember times of feeling so loved and cared about. But I also remember sitting under a tree at five years old, crying to God because I hurt and didn’t feel that anyone loved me, that I wasn’t good enough. I don’t really know where I felt I had fallen so short of this “good enough” at five or what major sin I thought I had committed, but I remember the agony of those feelings now as though they were fresh, and the tears on my cheeks tell me this wound is more alive than dead in the past. I felt so alienated. Still do.

My, perhaps exaggerated or unhealthy, needs for love and approval somehow didn’t get met in the environment of a home full of love. That’s messed up. I don’t understand how it happened. But I know that it did. And I can see over the next 33 years how I made choice after choice and engaged in destructive behavior after destructive behavior to find that love and approval. When that need and drive became the all-consuming fire in my life I became vulnerable to influences outside my parent’s home that I never stood a chance against.

When I truly began acting out in earnest as a seventh-grader, when I began getting in trouble with or because of alcohol, drugs, sex, and many other unacceptables I knew better. I knew it was wrong. I knew I acted contrary to my own values and the core of what I believed of God. I did things I never once saw in my parents home and knew the reason that they weren’t there. I did it anyway. Why? In some twisted way to find love and approval. I searched desperately to find those two things at any cost. This led to risk-taking, great and specifically directed risk-taking that came close to killing me many times over.

I remember sitting on my swing-set at nine years of age asking the question why is this happening to me? Why do I feel this way? It was a question directed to anyone, everyone, noone and to God himself. And the only answer I heard was that something was terribly wrong with me and that if I pursued the answer further by asking parents or anyone else, if anyone ever knew what I was feeling and thinking things would only be worse. I was a mass of contradictions. I knew I was loved and didn’t want to lose that love. And yet I felt totally alone and unloved. How can that be? I don’t know, but there it is. I knew my mother loved me and would always love me, and yet I lived in a daily terror that somehow I was going to lose that love. I knew my father loved me and would do anything for me, and still felt that I was the least important person on the planet as far as he was concerned. I basked in his pride of me and felt that I never came close to measuring up. I lived in a constant state of confusion.

Sitting on that swing crying, completely overwhelmed by hopelessness and despair I saw my jump rope lying on the ground. A song filled my head, the words fueling my desperation. When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be. When we all see Jesus, we’ll sing and shout the victory. I wanted that so much. No more sorrow. No more tears. No more fear and confusion. The perfect love, acceptance and connection with my God. That day I tied that jump rope to my swing set and hung myself for the first time.

How on earth did this happen? How did I get so far off the beaten track? How could someone so loved and treasured by both parents feel so alone and unloved? I wish I knew. Oh God, I need to know. I just don’t understand.