Monday, September 3, 2007 at 12:12am
The burning time
Column: Woman at the Well
I was 15 years old when God gave me a sense of purpose. God told me to "give a damn about somebody else." This was good. It was simple. It was practical. I stopped obsessing over my own disappointments in life and began to search out others who might need my sympathy and support.
I tried going to church more often, but the sermons were still interminably long and seemed to have nothing to do with me. I continued attending the youth group, but the questions I asked still upset the group leader and left me wondering where I might find the spiritual guidance I needed.
I still fought with my mother and disliked my stepfather. I still lied about where I was going in order to spend time with my boyfriend. But I wasn't suicidal anymore. Life had meaning.
Then Mom found and read my journal. I didn't understand at the time why she was so obsessed with my relationship with my boyfriend. She seemed so cold and frigid, I just assumed that she had no idea what passion was all about. I was a teenager. Mother just didn't understand.
It would be years before we had the conversation that helped to make sense of those crazy times for me.
When my mother was a teenager, she had fallen in love with a young man who became a pilot in World War II. He never came home. She was pregnant with his child and had a back-room abortion at age 16. I can only imagine how terrifying and horrible it must have been for her. Now I was a teenager, and all her pain was resurfacing as I merrily went about the business of trying to grow up. She was angry (scared) and controlling all the time. I was rebellious and determined to do life my own way.
When reading my journal confirmed her worst fears about my relationship with my boyfriend, she ordered me out of her house, disowning me in helpless outrage.
I called my dad and got permission to move back in with him in Sacramento (a gift). I was a senior now and had one day to say goodbye to all the friends I had made in my three years in Fremont. I was giddy and upset.
I was forced to leave my journal behind. It was two inches thick, binder paper written on both sides, my life from age 12 when I started it to now when I was 17. I never saw it again.
I was told, months later, when I found the courage to ask, that my stepfather had burned it. My life, my poetry, my adolescent traumas were deemed worthy of the fires. As I write these words, I still feel the grief of that loss. Was I so very bad as that? My family seemed to think so.
I have always felt an affinity with the witches who were burned during the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. My heart and soul had been condemned as evil and burned.
Journaling had always been a way to create some inward sanity for me. As with dancing, it grounded me in my real life. If I could put my thoughts and feelings into words, then perhaps I was not completely crazy.
It worked for me. When I moved to my father's house, I began again. Looking back, those first pages of the next phase of my life reveal a deeply wounded girl who believed her parents were right about her: She was evil and deserved to be punished.
But God's love outweighed their judgments. I held on to my faith like a lifeline, for indeed it was. It has grown since then to be less self-condemning or condemning of others, but the small grain of faith I had in those days was enough to move mountains. And to give a lonely girl hope.
— — —
Rev. Kristi Denham is pastor of the Congregational Church of Belmont, California (United Church of Christ). Her email address is {email RevKristi@aol.com}RevKristi@aol.com{/email}. © copyright 2007 by Kristi Denham
I tried going to church more often, but the sermons were still interminably long and seemed to have nothing to do with me. I continued attending the youth group, but the questions I asked still upset the group leader and left me wondering where I might find the spiritual guidance I needed.
I still fought with my mother and disliked my stepfather. I still lied about where I was going in order to spend time with my boyfriend. But I wasn't suicidal anymore. Life had meaning.
Then Mom found and read my journal. I didn't understand at the time why she was so obsessed with my relationship with my boyfriend. She seemed so cold and frigid, I just assumed that she had no idea what passion was all about. I was a teenager. Mother just didn't understand.
It would be years before we had the conversation that helped to make sense of those crazy times for me.
When my mother was a teenager, she had fallen in love with a young man who became a pilot in World War II. He never came home. She was pregnant with his child and had a back-room abortion at age 16. I can only imagine how terrifying and horrible it must have been for her. Now I was a teenager, and all her pain was resurfacing as I merrily went about the business of trying to grow up. She was angry (scared) and controlling all the time. I was rebellious and determined to do life my own way.
When reading my journal confirmed her worst fears about my relationship with my boyfriend, she ordered me out of her house, disowning me in helpless outrage.
I called my dad and got permission to move back in with him in Sacramento (a gift). I was a senior now and had one day to say goodbye to all the friends I had made in my three years in Fremont. I was giddy and upset.
I was forced to leave my journal behind. It was two inches thick, binder paper written on both sides, my life from age 12 when I started it to now when I was 17. I never saw it again.
I was told, months later, when I found the courage to ask, that my stepfather had burned it. My life, my poetry, my adolescent traumas were deemed worthy of the fires. As I write these words, I still feel the grief of that loss. Was I so very bad as that? My family seemed to think so.
I have always felt an affinity with the witches who were burned during the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. My heart and soul had been condemned as evil and burned.
Journaling had always been a way to create some inward sanity for me. As with dancing, it grounded me in my real life. If I could put my thoughts and feelings into words, then perhaps I was not completely crazy.
It worked for me. When I moved to my father's house, I began again. Looking back, those first pages of the next phase of my life reveal a deeply wounded girl who believed her parents were right about her: She was evil and deserved to be punished.
But God's love outweighed their judgments. I held on to my faith like a lifeline, for indeed it was. It has grown since then to be less self-condemning or condemning of others, but the small grain of faith I had in those days was enough to move mountains. And to give a lonely girl hope.
— — —
Rev. Kristi Denham is pastor of the Congregational Church of Belmont, California (United Church of Christ). Her email address is {email RevKristi@aol.com}RevKristi@aol.com{/email}. © copyright 2007 by Kristi Denham