Growing Pains

You said I could fly, could make a difference in the world. You told me great things were in store for me. You taught me how to survive, how to hold my own in any crowd.

So I took these lessons and flew with them, I soared on the winds of my training; I fell and got back up, I won and celebrated. And I brought these scars and these medals to show you what I'd done.

And you threw them back at my feet. You liked the stories of what I'd seen but never asked me how they made me feel. They weren't the stories I was supposed to be living. You held the golden wings I'd earned but you never rubbed their luster or said you were proud of me.

It didn't matter, I told myself. I knew what I'd done and that was enough. So with the taste of flight still on my tongue I set off for more adventures. Bigger adventures. I left behind the part of me that still cared what you thought.

The trials that come along with success, and the failures that are part of learning, all of these I met time and again. My mind and soul grew up in places with exotic names, doing things I had only dreamed of with people who made me safe to be myself.

It would be nice to come home after all of that, and to feel like a child again - safe and loved. I wanted to share my scars and my medals with you once more, a childish need for your approval that sprang up unbidden. I thought it had died long ago.

But I proudly showed the medals, all the things I had won because you once taught me never to quit. I told stories and bared a few of the scars, sharing parts of myself I wanted you to love.

You listened, you looked. And threw them all back at my feet. This was not the "difference" I was supposed to make. These were not the "great things" you had trained me for. They meant nothing. I was nothing, incomplete.

My heart knew the lie of your words, yet it felt their pain seep into the parts I had tried to share. In a last desperate plea, I did what I thought you might love me for. But I failed. All the other challenges I'd faced and defeated, but this defeated me. And I knew I didn't want to do it at all.

But I didn't throw it back at your feet. I gently laid it down and walked away.

Because I am not incomplete, nor am I unloved.

"And ye are complete in Him, which is the head of all principality and power." Colossians 2:10

"But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us," Ephesians 2:4