The Normal Order of Things

Yesterday I watched the first part of a Jordan Peterson interview with Douglas Murray. They discussed what’s happening in the world, which I won’t be going into since, if you’re reading this, you’re likely up on the current happenings.

Douglas said one thing that broke in and sent me back to a time and place of long ago. No, this isn’t a Star Wars parody. And, as a result of this thing he said, plus Jordan suggesting that Douglas join the team of instructors on the Peterson Academy platform (at which point Douglas’s face lit up, a momentary change from his stoic and sobering demeanor), I decided to enroll in the academy myself.

I still feel guilty about it … I ain’t gonna lie. Money is tight.

But then it seemed the Almighty weighed in for a brief moment, showing me why I ought to have enrolled; that He wanted me to become saturated with more knowledge to add to His uncanny gift of instinct and wisdom. No, I’m not bragging. Why am I not bragging? Well, it’s like this. Whenever I think too highly of myself and ponder the one or two talents endowed to me, I generally screw things up. Selfishness is a blinding force. You lose your awareness of impact on others, and certainly have no measure of empathy. And at this stage of my life in Christ, He does not allow me any overly-generous dosages of grace for making the same mistake too many times without any redeeming signs of improvement. In other words, He knows that I know that I should know better … and should do better.

That said, when I get caught up in one of His flow zones, when my attention is upward and outward, there is clarity and insight and a watchful awareness coupled with a readiness to act at His direction. Not a command really … it’s more like the lamp unto my feet. I’m not as blind, selfish, and stupid in the flow zone. I like the flow zone.

Except for this.

It’s exceedingly difficult to receive goodness from others in the flow zone. Specifically, to receive love.

Today was one of those days. The kindnesses and gifts that came my way today, on this very day, left me desperate to run and hide. And as I shifted and fidgeted in the car on the way home, feeling open and laid bare in all my flaws, I wondered why.

Back to Douglas.

Jordan and Douglas were discussing the recent unrest in the U.K. A terrible crime was committed by the young teenage son of an immigrant family. Douglas posited that the parents of the son may in fact be very grateful to have escaped a war-torn country and given a chance to rebuild their lives in the U.K.

But, from the son’s point of view, life in the U.K. was not in line with the normal order of things.

When he said that, my mind pulled up a memory from my own teenage years. It was late at night, and I was about to enter my house. The lights were out, the door locked, and it appeared that everyone had gone to bed. And I thought to myself, “I wonder how other kids deal with this.”

A few hours before, I was in the kitchen standing next to my mom. My dad was getting ready to beat his two black Labs again, and I could hear him rolling up the newspaper and then opening the sliding glass door a little too hard. I couldn’t see much because there was a high bar attached to the kitchen counter making a passthrough from the kitchen to the family room. But what I did see was the top of one of the lamps suddenly going down and then the sound of a crash as it broke on the floor. My mother began yelling at my father. And I saw the rage in his eyes.

He came round the bar and into the kitchen, took a spot behind us, put one hand on my shoulder and the other on my mother’s, and then slammed us together. My elbow went into my mother’s chest and knocked the wind out of her. While she was incapacitated, he started raging that it was my fault, blaming me for my mother’s injury. I snapped.

Such profanity had never come from my mouth, and as I screamed at him, he turned toward the stove and picked up the largest cast-iron skillet. Apparently noting the danger (I was in auto mode at that point), I slipped past him and into the dining room while my mother screamed at me, “Run! Run!” I did, and by some miracle, I was able to make it through the front door and out into the cul-de-sac and then reach the main street and then travel at breakneck speed down the main street and finally reach the front door of a neighbor’s house where I took refuge. It was a miracle. My father could have easily cut me off at the pass given he was standing within a few feet of the front door, but obviously not thinking, he instead followed me into the dining room, through the living room, and then at some point seemed to have stopped chasing me.

He was a very big man; I would have been toast had he caught up with me.

A few hours later I went home, let myself in and went to bed.

It was the normal order of things.

Even as an adult, I received threatening letters from him. And then I would move, leaving no forwarding address. When his brother died, I sent him a sympathy card. I was sincere; I really loved my uncle. A few days later, my mother called to tell me how enraged he was that I would send him a card … that she thought there was something wrong with my father (duh) … and that I should be careful. Again, the normal order of things.

I don’t know what was wrong with my father. Since my earliest memories, he’d always been angry and disapproving toward me. It could have had something to do with my mother and how unhappy she was in the marriage. And how she would come to me, even as a child, for encouragement. Yeah … I’m pretty sure that had something to do with it.

But, here’s the thing. I thought life was like this for kids everywhere. We just didn’t talk about it. On the nights when the tension was thick in the house, I would lay very still in my bed and listen for the screams and thuds and yelling from the neighbor’s houses, and if I heard it, I got that longed-for feeling that I wasn’t alone after all.

I never talked about it with anyone. And my friends didn’t either. It never occurred to me that their life was different from mine, and that they didn’t also have those kinds of secrets. As a child, you grow to accept a normal order of things. And that’s what you look for as you grow up. Familiarity, predictability, and a certain trained instinct about how things will go … preferring even the most dysfunctional, destructive, malevolent, and deceptive environments there are. You don’t see yourself in anything different. Anything better.

They call them the formative years. Yeah. It’s not just about Wonder Bread. It’s a thing.

Now, as tragic as my little story may sound, there are some good things that came out of it. My father was very smart. He worked hard. And, even though he drained my college fund to pay off his credit card bills, his own successful college career inspired me to commit to the vision very early on. I would go to college. Period. I had always wanted to be a lawyer; endowed with a gift of argumentation and an always unapologetic “disagreeable” personality.

My father was least fond of those gifts.

It was a little confusing. My teachers and counselors told me many things about myself that were in direct contradiction to what my father told me about myself. Even our neighbor, Mrs. Chew, who probably heard too often what was going down in our house, would lavish me with encouragement about my future, and praise my quick wit. We laughed a lot. Looking back, I see God salting my young life with cheerleaders who spoke good things into me.

Another good thing: Because I had to remain vigilant for changes in the mood of the house, I developed keen observational senses and instincts; senses and instincts rooted in that early need to avoid danger and protect myself. Now, no longer as concerned about danger and protecting myself (at least not as much), I’m still like a sponge. I can take in a room, the people, and “know” in some weird way how to speak and “matter of fact” (a verb phrase I made up) define a problem without personalizing it … creating a safe place for people to put their cards out on the table without fear of being dismissed. This has been extremely helpful in my profession.

The final thing, the greatest of all things, is this: God answered my most important question in October 1983.

I needed to prove myself. My answer? To be a successful career woman. By that time, I was finally on a real path. I had a sense of purpose. I loved my job. And then the company got into some very hot water. I was moved out of my dream job and put into a supervisory position, with the terrible responsibility of pushing the staff to work unimaginable hours doing work they were not trained to do. We didn’t know what was really going on, and the whole thing quickly fell apart. On top of that, I had made things worse for myself, advocating on behalf of the staff despite this “gift” of a supervisory position.

On that October night in 1983, I sat on my bed and asked aloud, “Is this all there is?”

The word “NO” blared out above all other thoughts in my mind … I think … it very well could have been audible, but it didn’t matter. Instantly, I saw in my mind’s eye the church building located a short distance down the street. I attended that church on that Sunday, went to work on that Monday, told my dear friend Tracy what had happened, and he looked at me and said, “You’re coming with me on Sunday.” And I did.

Everything changed. Every single thing in my life changed. I’d been rescued. In an instant.

And The Almighty has been working on my layers upon layers of deep wounds ever since. Some attachments, especially those to the normal order of things implanted during the formative years, take a very long time to extract from the soul.

We live from glory to glory, and the cycle never ends.