If you looked into my eyes…

If you would have looked into my eyes two weeks ago,  and had the fortitude to lock eyes with me for more than a few seconds, you would have seen brokenness and pain.

Our eyes really are windows to our soul.

I discovered that truth on a whole new level last weekend.

I need to back up just a little…..

A few of you who know me personally, know that I have not been able to cry since  I was 16 . (I’m currently  54)

I can pinpoint the  day it happened.

My brother and I were  wrestling and it went from a good natured match to an all out fight.  He kicked my butt.  To make matters worse, he was a year younger  and it happened in the presence of my mom and dad.

I wept.

I can still remember the shame and humiliation.  I swore in my heart I would NEVER  Ever, experience that sort of thing again.

NEVER.

Well, unbeknownst to me, somehow, deep within the recesses of my soul, I flipped a switch and could no longer cry.  Only once in the 38 years since do I remember weeping…I won’t go into that now, just to say, it was in the midst of some intense emotional pain.

So last weekend during the course of a men’s conference, one of the things we covered was the fact that all of us have areas in our hearts of brokenness and shame. …

Things  people have said to us.  (or not)

Things we’ve intentionally done that nobody knows except us.

Broken relationships.

Abuse

Physical things about ourselves we are ashamed of.

it might even be your name….  the list is endless, but the results  are still the same.   We begin to  carry around this ever increasing load of hurt and shame.

I was able to identify 4 very specific hurts last weekend.

That situation with my brother.

Secondly, a vague but very real, dislike for how I looked as a youngster growing up:

My name if you can believe that..

and finally, on a very personal note, the fact that I was a very late bloomer…didn’t physically mature into late into my senior year of high school.   The shame and embarrassment of those years in high school  really did a number on my self esteem.  Gym class was Hell.  Yep, I was a runt all through high school.  Not the last one picked when we chose teams.but one of the last.

All of it is  bull shit (that’s german for garbage) .

Another word picture…

Our hearts are full of  cracks. They leak like a sieve….and until those  hurts are brought into the open and addressed, we will  attempt to fill those cracks with anything that  gives  temporary relief.  Food, shopping, sex, alcohol, people,  $, our jobs, blogging, e-mail, face book, video games, hobbies taken to excess, etc.

None of it lasts.  Before long,  I’m  looking for another fix.

The food addict, is  no different than the shop-a-haulic or the sex addict.  All three of them are dealing with the same crap, just going about it in different ways.

If someone cared enough to look to look  deeply into our eyes…no sunglasses on …. they would see the pain.

To make a long story short, God touched all 4 of those hurts in a very specific way.

I no longer feel their weight.

I look @ that picture of my younger self and like what I see. I LOVE my given name,  (my real name isn’t Doug btw/ it’s Douglas) I am in touch with my emotions…(I wept at least 4 or 5 times last weekend) and finally, I’m OK with being a late bloomer. I suspect it  saved me from a lot of heartache.

I’m sure  there are  probably still  pockets of brokenness to discover, but for now,  I don’t have the same compulsions to check e-mail, face book , or even blog…all ways I think I was trying to connect with people in a way to satisfy the longings in my heart.

Thanks for checking in.    DM

Little Moe

Little Moe with the gimpy leg

________________________________

Rebekah tagged him  little Moe with the gimpy leg within the first couple of days after we got him. (She loves to quote lines out of old movies and said it was  from  Home Alone 2)

We’re raising 60  baby chicks this summer to butcher  in conjunction with 5 other local families.   free range and organic grain to supplement  their caloric intake.  We’ve had them now for 18 days.

While the other 59  chicks will run at the first hint of danger,  Little Moe will just stand there…..one thousand one, one thousand two… before he hobbles away,dragging his right leg behind him. burying his little body into mass of other baby chicks in the corner of the  room.

You’ve no doubt heard of the term “pecking order”.  There really is such a thing in the animal kingdom.  It comes from the chicken house.

Chickens really do establish who is the top dog (or chicken) in the flock.

Guess who’s @ the bottom of the pecking order?

Yep.

Little Moe.

I’ve always had a tender spot for the underdog  even back  in school.   While I was not low man on the pecking order,  I was certainly not at the top either.  Which in large measure why I do not  have many fond memories of my time in school.

I hated school.

It got worse once I hit 7th grade.

I can still remember  Ray, Randy, and Jeff pushing Greg out of the locker room with nothing on but his  jock strap.  Where the teacher was I have no idea.  Our locker rooms were right down the hall from the student center…

imagine  getting thrown out  into plain view of a  group of your peers with  little or nothing on…..

Another thing  the bullies  loved to do was come up behind you when you least expected it and pull your  gym shorts down.  they called it de-pants-ing…  Luckily, neither of those things ever happened to me, but I lived in constant fear of it happening from 7th grade right up until my senior year.

There was a girl in our class…Her name was Debbie Cooper. Kids called her “De-coop”    She was from a poor farm family.  She’d developed early, was somewhat over weight, wore thick horn rimmed glasses.  Gary  loved to harass Debbie…until she’d take a swing at him and then he’d laugh.

We had another girl  named Denise.  Pretty.  Transferred into our class  when we were in 6th grade.  Her mom had died and her dad was doing the best  to raise 2 girls and a boy.   I can still remember sitting in our 6th grade choir room, looking outside while another class of 6th graders were   outside for recess.  Gary  (yep, same one)  came up to Denise and pushed her down into the snow.   Where were the teachers????

Denise was shy .

All she wanted was to fit in. Somebody tagged her with the nickname “Scarecrow” ….

 

Imagine being a girl with a nick name like Scarecrow.

Want to close with  a short plug for an excellent book on this topic of bullying and emotional abuse.

Frank Peretti tells his true story  in the book he’s titled The Wounded Spirit

It is a must read for anyone who has been in the receiving end of this sort of thing.

____________________________________

Getting back to little Moe.  I’ve already decided we’re going to keep him long term….

Any thoughts or experiences on this whole issue of pecking orders and bullying?

As always thanks for taking the time to read my stuff.  DM

_________________________________

Update 4 hours later.…just brought my tomatoes in for the night.

I’m in the process of “hardening” them…In case you’re new to gardening,   these tomatoes were raised under a grow light in the basement and the cell structure in the plants is not strong enough to handle the wind and elements initially, so for a week or two before I finally plant them in the ground, I set them out during the day, give them a controlled exposure to the elements.

At night I bring them back inside and allow them to recover….unfortunately, a couple of the plants were really  tested today and two of them snapped in half.  My mind instantly went to this blog post about adversity and while some adversity is good for us (as Trish pointed out) making us stronger,  it is possible to  be broken long term…just like this:

Brandywine tomato plant snapped off by the wind  today

2 trays of tomatoes just in from a day of adversity.  Tray on the right doesn’t look to bad.  Tray on the left had a harder day.