Memory Lane

I've been walking down the memory lane lately. But not in the way you might think. With a trusted professional, Johnben, I am walking down the streets in the neighborhood of my childhood and reliving some of my most difficult days.

I've gone back to Teller Street. Then to Marshall. I've stood alongside my 13-year-old self as his world fell apart. Friends that he thought were . . . well, friends . . . became attackers. Boys that I had known since I had started school . . . who I had shared so much of life with, became as mean as enemies. It is time to go back to the old neighborhood and think over some of the messages that stuck to me during those days.

As I talked with Johnben this afternoon, I was able to "reprocess" some of these events (with a technique I'll explain at a later time). The goal is to have these memories decrease in their capacity to bring pain, shame and discomfort. I told Johnben that as a result of talking it through, the painfulness decreased from a "7" (on a scale of 1 to 10) to a "3 or 4". What a difference.

With adult eyes, and no doubt the aid of the Holy Spirit, I saw a handful of boys thrown into the 8th grade world of sexuality.

Without any warning to me, the parties of my schoolmates became "make-out parties". It seems odd as I type it on the keyboard. You go to a party, somehow connect with someone of the opposite sex and then makeout in a dark back room of the house. At my first party, I was completely taken by surprise. I have a vague memory of someone explaining to me about the whole back room thing, and of getting pulled into a spin-the-bottle circle.

As I write these words, I think of my sweet little niece who just turned 13. That kids her age were being sexual at my school seems twisted. My, what a bizarre culture it was in my junior high school.

Surely my mom and dad had no idea about these parties. Surely they would have prepared me, or, far better, channeled me toward friends that had moral standards. But we were all together naive, unchurched, spiritually dead, foolishly uninformed.

I wasn't ready for it all. I was young for my grade, and I don't think that my sex drive had even arrived when the makeout parties started.

An aside . . . what a gift and a help to have a Christian upbringing. Without church involvement, I defaulted into the creepy culture that I've been describing.

In summarizing our discussion, I told Johnben that, as I relived some of those tough days, I thought more about the other boys -- the instigators -- than I did about myself. I thought about M, now a Christian and a godly man. On several occasions, he has expressed regret over his actions in those days. P, went to a Christian college and was said to have been accumulating "notches on his bed post". His marriage a few years later lasted only a matter of months. I recall T boasting of his college sexual experiences. But much in his life these days reflect a deeply broken masculinity.

I've not only thought about these boys, but I have thought of their fathers. Now as an adult I see their flaws. Surely these men did nothing to speak truth into their young son's lives. The boys were swept into sexuality at 13 and suffered for it. Their lives, in one way or another, bear the scars.