Because Grace Looks Nothing Like Co-Dependency
It happened when I was in seventh grade.
It was a field trip day. The fun kind. You know, where you
do something educational like visit the state capitol, meet a state senator and
then get turned loose in the historic district for lunch. The teachers give you
a measure of freedom and your parents give you a measure of spending money. For
a fleeting hour and a half you feel almost grownup, and you wish school could
look like this everyday.
On that particular day, after browsing the old town stores,
my girlfriends and I ended up in an arcade. I remember us huddled there around
the skeeball lanes. We were thirteen and carefree, and our deepest conversation
was likely something about which guy in our class we were most interested in “going
out” with.
I had always felt like a bit of an imposter. A
thirteen-going-on-sixteen year old dwelling in a ten year old’s body. I was
painfully shy and at that particular moment I was certain I was the only girl
in the class and probably the whole world who hadn’t gotten her period, her big
growth spurt or a bra that wasn’t a trainer. But on this special field trip
day, the heavens opened and the sun shone down on me and I was walking around with
the cool girls. Everything that seemed to make me invisible didn’t matter to
anybody else, and I forgot that I might have been different. I was one of the
girls. One of the cool, mature, lip-gloss-wearing, uniform-skirt-rolling girls.
As we laughed and counted our tickets, an arcade worker
approached us. He was much older, pushing 40 or 50. He kept inserting himself
into our conversations, handing us tokens. He was flirtatious and creepy, and
he would have been a nuisance except that free tokens seemed like they were
worth tolerating him over.
Eventually we tired of playing games, so we spent our
tickets and left. Only as we walked out, the arcade worker grabbed me by my
shoulder, pulled me back away from my friends, and whispered in my ear, “If you
will come back by yourself, I will give you anything you want from behind that
counter.”
I felt frozen. My friends were unaware, still walking
towards the door. I was left standing
there, smelling the stale alcohol on his breath, his hand gripping my shoulder
heavy and tight. My lips couldn’t form a response. And even though I was thirteen and thought I knew it all, all I could hear was my mom’s warnings from
childhood, “Never take candy from strangers.”
I robotically nodded my head at him and squirmed out of his
grasp. I ran for the safety of my friends.
I felt dirty. I didn’t understand how I couldn’t manage to
get a single boy in my class to notice me, but somehow the old smelly arcade
worker noticed me. Wanted me. In a way that chilled me and disgusted me and
chipped away a little piece of my innocence.
I didn’t tell my friends about it. I didn’t tell the
teachers. I was too embarrassed. I
thought something must have been terribly wrong with me. My friends were
charismatic and beautiful and the creepy, arcade guy sought me out.
I told my mom a few days later. She immediately called the
school. I still remember my teacher pulling me aside, “Why didn’t you tell me,
Amanda? We could have reported it and gotten him away from kids.”
I was ashamed. Ashamed that I hadn’t possessed the courage
to tell someone. Even more ashamed that it was me who he had tried to harm.
-----------------
Last week, I had a bizarre incident at the dentist. It started
off as a less-than-tasteful pregnant belly comment from the dentist: “There’s
no way you are that far along! Your boobs are bigger than your stomach! No, you
are going to either have an undersized baby or you are going to carry past your
date.” It was rude and hurtful, and maybe I could have shaken that one off, but
she didn’t stop there. She turned to my
husband and said, “So how do you like your wife’s big milk jugs?” We
were both wide-eyed and completely shocked. Who says that?! A few minutes later, she
led me back to clean my teeth and said, “No, really, I don’t know what it’s
like to have such big boobs. How does your husband like them?”
I was mortified, uncomfortable, and dumbfounded. This wasn’t
a woman contemplating the pros and cons of implants; she made me feel dirty. I
just wanted out of that conversation so I changed the subject.
I wish I could have formed the words to tell her how deeply
she had offended me, how unprofessional she was and how if this was my work
environment, her comments would qualify as sexual harassment. I wish I could
have told her how anything and everything that my husband and I enjoy about one
another’s bodies is sacred and private and beautiful and how dare she try to
sully it with her unfiltered mouth and perverse mind.
But I was silent. I sat mute, frozen, not even completely
sure why her words had so upset me. I went home, locked myself in the bathroom
and bawled. It took a full day to realize that what had bothered me the most
wasn’t that she insulted my ability as a woman to properly carry life and drew
unwanted attention to a part of myself that I am insecure about, it was that
she had victimized me. And I let her.
It took me right back to seventh grade standing frozen in
that arcade.
I wanted to assume I was wrong about the dentist. Believe
the best in people. Maybe she’s just a
quirky dentist without a filter, maybe she was abused as a child, maybe… I wanted
to take it on myself. Believe the same lie I believed in the arcade: there is something horribly wrong with me.
But I need to be real. What happened in that dentist office
was dark and ugly. It was the taking of something beautiful and making it
perverse.
Can I be honest and tell you I struggle with this? I don’t
want to judge her. I want to keep my sunshine and rainbows glasses on and
believe the best, excuse away her bad behavior, just pray for her. I don’t want
to be the girl that fights just to fight and makes mountains out of hills. But
deep down in my knowing place, I know I have to stand up right here. It’s hard
and uncomfortable, but when I want to wonder if it’s really that big of a deal,
I think of her making similar remarks about my own kids’ bodies that would
sully their innocence and the beautiful purpose in their “private parts.” Oh
no. Sometimes we fight the darkness on
our hands and knees. And sometimes we call the dental board and file a
complaint.
It makes me contemplate grace. I think sometimes we water it
down, make it look something like doormat. But
Grace isn’t co-dependency. It doesn’t make excuses for bad behavior. There
would be no discipline in God’s love if that was the case.
God is both gracious and just… and you can’t separate the
two. Justice and grace go together. They do. And together they demand that you
take a stand for what is right, that you fight for justice and you fight for
the voiceless, that you place the wrong-doing in the hands of those who are
appointed to judge. After you have made your stand, you begin to put that seventy-times-seven
forgiveness into practice.
Sometimes the place where grace needs to start is over that
girl, the one who was silent and lost her words, who didn’t think she was
worthy of a fight. She needs grace. She needs forgiveness too. And she needs to
take a stand, better late than never.
The thing is, I felt like a freak of nature way back there
in seventh grade, flat as a board and blooming later than November’s
chrysanthemum. And this dentist managed to find that one thing about myself that
I look at and see as some kind of anomaly now, larger than average; Victoria
can’t hold my Secret; they’re out there and always out there for everyone to
see no matter how high the neck line or black the shirt.
And making a stand, filing a complaint, it’s not about being
a jerk or pulling grace out of the equation. It’s looking at me, the awkward girl,
the quiet girl, the
blend-into-the-background-except-for-the-bountiful-bosoms-that-would-still-poke-out-there
girl. And loving her. It’s realizing she’s okay. There is nothing foul or
disgusting about her body. Her purity is valuable and worth the fight.
It’s standing up for God’s plans and His handiwork and
declaring to the darkness that I will not be clothed in shame. It’s instilling
in my kids that they too are okay just the way God made them. Anomalies and all.
No, grace doesn’t lie down. Don’t believe that lie. Grace
links arms with justice, and it stands tall and firm. Together they are not afraid
to call the darkness dark. They fight the perversions of truth, and shine light
on the lies of unworthiness. Grace is God’s unmerited favor but that doesn’t
mean it’s blind to sin.
Have you ever had something happen where you wish you could have formed
the words right then and there to stand up for yourself or someone else and instead
you were silent?
By Grace,
Amanda Conquers
Psst… I know it’s been
silent over here. I fear I was running short on words and needed to just be
quiet. But now, I am looking forward to catching up on all the goings on… you
know, for the few weeks that remain before I have a newborn! I missed this
place and you. {Hugs}
I'm so excited to be sharing for the first time in a long time with this beautiful community of story tellers:
I'm so excited to be sharing for the first time in a long time with this beautiful community of story tellers:
