To be Good
I came to Jesus for the first time in 1996 while sitting in the balcony of one or another mega church populating suburban southern California. My family was singing (something Jesus frees something Jesus is Lord), raising our religiously diverse voices to the heavens: my Dad, the recovering Catholic; my mom, the Unitarian; my brother, Allan, the newly converted Christian; and me, the pubescent and desperately unhappy teenager. The projected words disappeared from the large white screens on either side of the stage as the band quieted. The singers hummed and swayed and the pastor, a white man in his early 30's said, “If anyone out there who wants to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior, I want you to come and stand here at the altar and let the Lord God change your life." A hook behind my sternum, a turning in my stomach.
I walk tearfully down the stairs to the back of the church before processing up the aisle. People shout congratulations as I walk by (as if at 14 I am capable of making a lasting and/or reasonable decision) or pat me on the back, propelling me forward. I get to the foot of the stage and stand awkwardly with four other people as the pastor begins to pray. “Something something new believers, something peace, something blessing, something walk with them. Amen.” He ushers us into another room where 30 chairs have been broken up into pairs. I find a seat and an elderly man sits across from me, “Do you understand the wonderful decision you just made?” He asks excitedly, before explaining church, fellowship, and prayer in as few as 5 minutes. He gives me a piece of paper where a different prayer is typed: “Jesus, something sinner something separates me from God something Jesus's sacrifice something closer to God." It is appropriately vague, non-denominational, and strange as fuck. I fill out a card with my name and address, and leave the room to find my family waiting in the pews. They all hug me at once, happy, for now, that I am happy. And I am happy because I know this will fix me.
That, my friends, is an altar call.
I started going to church with Allan the next Sunday, my head and heart full of hope for my much anticipated counter cultural community. This wouldn’t be a place where women wore makeup or short skirts; it wouldn’t matter what you looked like. Every person would, of course, be valued for who he or she was, every person’s gifts would be used, and no one would ever feel left out or inadequate. Uncomfortably square and an obsessive rule follower, finding a place where I didn’t feel cast out made up the entirety of my social aspirations. I wanted to fit, and I didn’t, anywhere and everywhere.
Except this church had its own hierarchy. Our relatively youthful youth pastor had a thinning hairline, a small protruding belly, slightly hunched shoulders, and lovely straight teeth. A decent guitar player, albeit abysmal singer, this was a man who clearly had not felt cool a day in his life. But here, he was everything. Steve was warm, smart, and could talk about secular books and music. He could draw little graphs and charts in black marker on the whiteboard in the high school ministry room singlehandedly turning inexplicable truths into nifty, easy to understand pictures. In my last year of high school, he would strike up a friendship with one of the 17 year old girls in the group. She would tell everyone that Steve had told her that when she turned 18 they were going to date. I graduated before this was confirmed, so they just might have.
The youth group itself was compiled of the children of regular parishioners (kids who spoke only in Christian platitudes and kids who were overtly rebellious), douchebro Christians boys (with whom my brother hung out), good Christian girls (thin and soft spoken and desirable), and me. It was just like high school only worse: everybody thought they were going to heaven.
I can't think back on this time, on that church, on those people, without anger. I actually think it’s safe to say I hate most of them and hope they harbor deep, lasting shame for being such huge dicks in a space created to be inclusive, which, of course, says more about me as an adult, than them as teenagers. Perhaps I feel for my young self, a victim of rejected sexuality and blindness to my unique blend of quirks. Perhaps you never recover from slights perceived while your brain still develops. Perhaps I cleave to the past, this past, as the beginnings of my will-be knowledge of the depths of the world's damage, millions of years of suffering tucked inside the heart of one lonely teenager. Or perhaps I'm just no good at letting things go.
I tried to quell thoughts of lust, to convert all of my friends, to be so thoughtful, so connective, so enchanting that every person who met me would wonder, "What is it that makes this woman so amazeballs?" If this question had ever been posed to me I would've shouted, "JESUS," at the top of my lungs. Except no one ever asked. I was plagued by sin, convinced my unhappiness was a punishment because I couldn't be good, at least not good enough.
My body was the ultimate punishment. The thighs that rubbed together, the upper arms that jiggled and expanded, the too big breasts, the width of my shoulders, the roundness of my stomach created the tone and picture of a Failure, my whole body as sin, an embodiment of my gluttony.
Because I had an eating disorder. But not a glamorous one, if there is such a thing. Not one where people frown and feel sympathy, marvel over small weights, where other women secretly envy you because you have the self-control to just not eat or the wherewithal to throw up (I have been those other women). It’s the kind where you eat 8 pieces of toast in secret, where you push wrappers deep into the trash so your mom or your roommate won’t find them, where you wander around the grocery store figuring out which food you can eat the fastest, which food will make you feel the worst, that night and for days afterwards, because you just can’t stand yourself. The inside of a binge is barren, infested, hateful. You keep putting bite after bite into your mouth as quickly as possible, don't think, it will slow it down, only stop when you think you will die if you eat another bite. Because maybe, if you are lucky, you will.
And I was fat. Am (albeit no longer mournfully). And they would not let me forget.
My parents: “Do you need to eat that?”
My brother: “You don't want ice cream.”
My grandma: “Why don't we go to an OA meeting while you're visiting?”
My grandpa: “All you need to do to catch a man is lose those extra pounds.”
My sister: “You're fat because you have unexpressed anger.”
My cousins: “Did weight watchers stop working?”
My aunts and uncles: “Are you really happy at this weight?”
People I work with: “I cut out carbs and lost 20 pounds like snap!”
But it might as well all have been that stranger driving by me in his truck one day, as I stand with a friend on the sidewalk, laughing. As he speeds by he yells out the window, “Lose some weight, bitch!”
At 14 I was full to bursting with self-loathing and bread. Too responsible to cut myself or let my grades slip, I took it in, shame slathered across the toast with the butter. My self-esteem was a jenga game, a tower of crisscrossed blocks that they would take away one at a time, thoughtfully, carefully, until…
This is the child who came to Jesus that day in 1996. Who came weeping, crazed, terrified, but still trying to be good, still wanting for goodness because perhaps it was the only thing that could combat the truth she already knew deep, deep in her little, broken heart: I am bad.
Sixteen years later I would return to Jesus quietly, almost in secret, with the still same truth tucked firmly beneath my breastbone.
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