To and Fro this Wondrous World

Megin Lea Williams 13-years-old

“I felt this. I wrote this. This is Me, 13 years old… July, 1996. I can remember that time clearly. This was me working out my faith and feelings, at 13-years-old, without even the vocabulary to understand it all… so much, so deep. I dove into it and attempted to make sense of it… and damn, I did a pretty good job at it.” -Me, looking at me at age 13.

July…. I was heart broken that month. I actually remember it clearly. Home life was the usual, also known as terrible. There was no stability, no security, no coming home and finding peace and identity and a place you belong. That is what television said life was like, once I’d fall in love, and so that is what I longed for, to fall in love, and have a family then. That’s how a person got happiness. But being born into happiness? No. That didn’t happen. We aren’t born into peace or happiness or safety. We aren’t loved just because we are. We are born into dysfunction and to people who yell and scream at each other and hit each other, and belittle each other, and never give one another the benefit of the doubt. We are born into a cruel game, where our parents are fighting each other, and we aren’t sure who is right or wrong, who is good and who is evil, but we do realize we are the chess pieces, the pawns, and we are utilized continually, perpetually, as they seek to rectify their problems. Home is not safe. Home is not happy. Home is not okay. It is not somewhere that we go to get away from the pains of the world. Rather, the pains of the world are the welcomed place we go to get away from home.

I’d had a boyfriend, at 13, the whole year of 7th grade. Chris Senn. I think I can still recall… if memory serves me, I counted the time we dated. Seven months, two weeks, three days, seventeen hours, twenty-six minutes, and 37 seconds. That’s what my journal tells me.

Does that sound crazy? Probably, to someone who grew up with a sense of security or stability. But for a child of abuse, growing up completely insecure, with no sense of stability, the fact that there was a PERSON who LIKED YOU or SAID THEY LOVED YOU and actually TREATED YOU WELL, believed you, trusted you, stood up for you, took your side, gave you the benefit of the doubt, wanted to spend time with you, complimented you, affirmed you, and literally was just a friend and companion, well THAT was a God-send. So you counted the days, the seconds, the moments. You treasured them, because those were the moments that helped keep you alive. Those coupled with the teachers and coaches and occasional ACTUAL friends, although having friends proved to be ridiculously hard. So many of us girls, it seemed, were just competing with each other all the time. Competing to be seen, to matter, to be important. Could it be, that so many of them, were just like me? We didn’t know; we had no idea, how abused we were. Because our parents paid for our clothes. They gave us pagers. They sent us to school dances and extra-curriculars, but damn was it not so much for show? Looking back, don’t we now realize how it made them feel good about themselves to have their kids perform so well? Which is why we got in trouble when we didn’t perform well… when we didn’t practice enough… when we didn’t get the right grades, or gained too much weight, or didn’t get picked for something, didn’t get the solos, didn’t make captain… where were the parents telling us that that stuff was just stuff, and not WHO we were? That those things were THINGS and not OUR IDENTITY. There were some parents out there doing a great job I know for sure, but many of our parents parented out of their own woundedness… And honestly, I don’t begrudge them. Every day I struggle to parent my own child from a place of health and not from a place of woundedness. It’s not easy. I get it. I don’t blame my parents. But it happened. We were hurt. They did their best, but this world is broken, and they were broken… and they broke us.

I felt so special, those 7 months. He was a cool kid. He lived in the neighborhood where people had really nice houses, nice cars, and the kids were part of the ‘’clubhouse.’’ In our little corner of reality, which as an adult I realize was literally as far from reality as you could get… it is better characterized as sheltered, privileged, upper-middle class suburban, where you attempt to act like you have money and have done so well for yourself and basically live to compete with the neighbors and everyone around you. It’s a far cry from the ACTUAL world with real people with REAL problems and suffering. These privileged suburban lives we led… ultimately, they did not do us much good… (For more on that, check out Amy Julia Becker’s book, ‘White Picket Fences.’ Read it with an open heart and be ready to confront your crap staring you point-blank in the mirror…with nowhere to go. Truth. Reality. Admit it. Privileged. You, despite what abuse you endured… )

Not to belittle your own traumas, our own traumas- that is not my intent, but to put them in perspective… that I believe we should do. We’ve had trauma. But we have not had…TRAUMA.

Chris ultimately broke up with me when the school year ended. Good bye 7th grade; good bye to my best friend Lauren who taught me SOO much about being confident. To this day, I remember her phrase, “You can please some of the people some of the time, but you’ll never please all of the people all of the time.” What a wise young child she was. I will forever be grateful for her friendship. Even as we grew up and ventured into different peer groups, she was always kind to me, so respectful, and appreciated me, saw me. She gave me confidence. She made me feel like it was okay to be who I was, that I didn’t have to apologize for it. That it was fine to just be me… not matter if people liked it or not. Man, she must have had some stellar parents. Praise God for friends like Lauren that God gave me along the way- kind and non-judgmental. She saw me. She accepted me. She didn’t think she was better than me even though OBVIOUSLY she was LIGHT YEARS ahead of me in the cool department. She told me I was cool if I was just myself. That was incredible. I will always treasure Lauren.

And goodbye 7th grade boyfriend. He’d wanted me to kiss him all year, but I was afraid to kiss a boy. My church pretty much told me if I kissed a boy, I was going to go to hell, so there’s that. And then there was just the actual fear that I didn’t know how to kiss a boy, and it seemed like all these kids all around me were kissing boys and girls and making out!!!! Sheesh louise. We were just 13… I was timid. I was scared… and rightly so. I was a child. I never let Chris kiss me. I’m pretty sure that’s why he broke up with me. Because he then dated another girl a month later and they immediately made out. Poor kid though. He probably wondered why this girl he liked who said she liked him back would never give him a kiss?! Little did he know the things they preached to me… my soul was on the line, as well, I was just scared.

Oh the things you remember. I got the message loud and clear though. Want a boy? Gonna have to let them kiss you. Sucks… because then you’re going to hell… but you really do need that boy, to survive the current hell on earth… oh decisions…

I look back on little Megin and I think, “Precious child. It’s okay. You were special. Don’t be sad.” We were all just kids trying to make it through. All scared in different ways, with parents that were scarred in different ways. But it’s interesting to me, to remember the circumstances, surrounding those months, and then to read this poem that my dad saved and sent to me recently. Apparently 13-year-old Megin wrote it… Was I in the midst of heart break? Sad to have lost the security that I’d had for 7 months and to be alone again, just with my family? I think that is why I have such a heart for youth. I’ve longed to come along side young lives and just let them know that actually, they DO matter. They DO have worth, just as they are. They can be different…feel however they want… express it… safely- in safety. There is space for them to be and to question and to wonder and to exist. They matter. They aren’t chess pieces. They are lives, created in the image of God. And God has so much in store for them… if they can just hang on.. make it through these tough years where nothing makes sense, and we have to find solace in a world that wounds us because it is safer than the homes that groom us.

That child… somehow, she had hope. She was hurting. Broken. Didn’t know when she’d find a new friend or teammate to make her feel not alone. She sat in her room and drew pictures, rearranged her furniture, created art, wrote songs and poems, read her bible, even when it didn’t make sense to her, and talked to God… and she hoped… she hoped for a day when God would plant her somewhere that wasn’t so scary, wasn’t so filled with everyone not believing her or telling her awful things about herself… a world where she existed for the glory of God and not for what she could do for others…. a world where it wasn’t her responsibility to take care of other people’s emotions. Where she didn’t have to be the brave one who asked Dad for money because Mom said Dad was nicer to her and would give in if she asked… a world where she didn’t have to be the spoiled brat that her sister insisted she was because she was daddy’s golden child and a cheerleader and so girly and dramatic, where she didn’t have to be terrified of her dad because she never knew what would set him off or why he was just so mean and angry all the time, where she didn’t have to wonder if Mom was going to die from her new mystery illness, or if Mom would be mad at her today, or on her side, or depressed, a world where she didn’t have to be the big sister to her brother because what the heck did that even mean? Were we supposed to love each other? I didn’t know. There was no loving it felt like. What was love in a family? She certainly didn’t think her brother loved her, or her sister loved her. And remember, Dad kept saying “she’s not your real sister.” What did THAT mean? She guessed her mother loved her, sometimes, but other times, she just said such cruel words. And her father… she didn’t even know where to begin with him… and by 13, she was just about at the point where she stopped speaking to him all together after he final humiliating beating simply because she hadn’t wanted to go to the mall with the family… the beating that Mom allowed, and that required her to go to the back office and take down her pants and be spanked with a belt… at 13. The humiliation. But she would know next time, not to have that preference. Not to want to go home early so she could go to the movies with friends. She would know next time, not to express disappointment that she had to run errands with the family. She would know next time, just to hold his hand when they crossed the parking lot, even though she was 13… and 13-year-olds shouldn’t have to hold hands… She hated him. It would take a while to work through all that…. a long while. But it would come… in time… because of one thing…

….there was this God…she’d heard of… and He loved her… and He’d work it out.

But for then, all she knew is He worked it out so long as she followed the rules, and kissing that boy would mean breaking those rules. She couldn’t risk God’s love… so she couldn’t kiss that boy, but that meant she lost her friend, her companion. Hmm… this was hard… She was going to have to give in, she supposed, in order to have a companion, someone to stand by her. Next time, she was going to have to kiss the boy, so that she could keep the boy, keep the friend, keep the teammate. But she’d feel so guilty about it, and so ashamed… oh that girl… I would love to counsel that precious, beautiful, lovely, incredible, girl. She was magnificent. I love her so much. She was beautiful. She didn’t know it. But I can’t go back in time and love her, so instead, I will love these others… my own children, any children… any one… Instead, I will make sure others know that they matter, and they are seen, and that God loves them, even if they kiss boys… and that sometimes, we are born into pain or must endure pain, but God will carry us through… and will provide a way out… we must hang on… hang on tight. Write poems. Follow the crumbs life leads us… keep working out the memories… keep working out the forgiveness that Christ has made possible for us through His death on the cross. The forgiveness that penetrates deep, and wide, and high, and long, and makes it so that today, this girl, she loves her father. She hugs her father. Her father hugs her. She loves her mother. Her mother loves her. She talks to her sister. Her sister sees her. They love each other. They pray for their brother. They are not perfect. They haven’t repented of everything probably they need to repent of… but they have been carried through by the gracious hand of God. There is forgiveness. There is grace. There is mercy. This world is broken. This world has pain. Everyone just wants love, little Megin, and her little boyfriend in 7th grade. We all just want love…to and fro this wondrous world. And by God’s grace, in time… we find it.

originally published at https://medium.com/meginleawrites