Category: The 12 Setps

Principle 1: Realize I’m not God. I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and that my life is unmanageable.

Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable.

Being raised in a Christian family, when I first considered this question, I though there were not any. I do remember my mom saying the she always wondered who that Indian was in her family pictures. She was never told that she was a descendant of a native American, in fact I think in her generation it was considered shameful.

Careful consideration of the question causes me to go a different direction. In my family of origin, SIN wasn’t talked about. It’s more like the family secret is that we are still sinners saved by God’s grace. If I was bad as a kid, I was punished (usually by the belt) and that was the end of it. We were somehow supposed to just be good especially once we made a confession of our faith in Jesus. In doing so we were protecting our own reputation.

Just like covering our ‘sin’, we were also expected to deny our pain and disappointment. I ended up being skilled at pressing all of those feelings down into a trash compactor thinking that their rot and stench would never effect me. This created a sad and depressed me that could never admit sadness or depression. After all, I am saved from my sin and am supposed to be happy all the time. I feel like my parents passed away without me really getting to know them. My mom was just happy all the time no matter what. With the onset of alzheimer’s she just slid into oblivion of any pain. I have often wondered what pain she experienced growing up.

Pain and disappointment is something we all experience everyday. Like the disappointment of being able to drive as fast as you want on the freeway, or to be able to just get ahead of that slow driver who is holding you back. Not to mention your co-worker or boss or spouse who never fail to disappoint on some level. It seems like pain and disappointment is like dying of 1000 cuts daily. Is this what Christ asks us to do? Die to ourselves and take up our cross and follow Him?

As a kid I learned that the world is a dangerous place and the safest place was by myself. After all nobody else really cares for me anyway.

I was the youngest child in a family where I had 5 siblings. When I came along my oldest brother had already left home, and my oldest sister left home by the time I turned 3. I had another brother and sister who were more that 6 years older than I. My oldest sister took care of me from the time I was a baby and I remember the deep feelings of abandonment the first time I went to her bedroom and she was no longer there.

My dad favorite saying was that “Children should be seen and not heard”. In my loneliness I would cry as a kid. My dad would say “Stop your crying or I’ll give you something to cry about”. My mom would say “Just quit feeling sorry for yourself”. This was the most “comfort” I ever received as a kid.

Growing up, I was always too little to be included in anything that my brother or sister did and I can remember just wanting to feel included. I don’t remember any other kids around my age so I mostly just stayed by myself. I do remember my older brother teaching me to read before I started school. We had no kindergarten so I started school in first grade a few weeks before my sixth birthday. I attended school in Grants Pass, Oregon for a few months then my family moved to Portland, Oregon and I had to re-start first grade there in January.

I was one of the smartest kids in school and had a quick wit. I came into a class that had already had a chance to form friendships or cliques, and I felt like an outsider so I continued to be withdrawn. I was different than everybody else and so I never felt like I fit in, or was accepted. I was the only ‘Preacher’s Kid’. I used NO profanity of any kind. We didn’t watch any sports at home. In 1964 during the presidential campaign I happened to mention that my father was voting for Barry Goldwater and I was physically carried off the playground and bullied by the kids of the LBJ supporters. I was also the target of other bullies too.

These incidents caused me to withdraw even more. It was not safe to share my opinion or anything with others. At home I stayed by myself tin the basement. I had my own TV to watch and I taught myself electronics and built a few projects in the basement. There was only one kid in my neighborhood near my age and he was a year older than I and in the next grade ahead of me. His parents took him on vacations, cooked steaks on the grill in his backyard sometimes, and I only wished that I could do things like that. I never had a steak until after I had left home. We never took any family vacations. I don’t even remember my dad ever having more than a day off work!

By the time I became a teenager I had had enough. I didn’t really believe in God at the time. Atheism was what was taught in school. So one day I prayed a desperate prayer. I prayed “God if you are really alive, I NEED to know you. If you don’t exist, I have no place here. I can’t live if all I am is evolved green goo and there is no life except this.” I knew that apart from God there is no meaning to life at all. Within a year of praying that prayer, God answered me.

Even today, decades later, I struggle with feelings of being left out. Actually I am uncomfortable many times when I am included. I crave attention but don’t know what to do when it is given to me. Isolation is so much easier.