Tears of a Clown

Life was not supposed to be this way. This is not how I had planned it. Just a few days after my 55th birthday, I find myself at the lowest place I've ever been in. I have no job and no prospects. My marriage is strained. My faith in an all-powerful God is still a reality. My faith in a benevolent God, not so much.

You see since college, my life has been on a positive track. I graduated from college where I was a campus leader in many areas. I paid my own way. I left home in 1976 and never looked back. The sky was the limit.

Since I was a young teenager I had known my calling in life. I knew my life was in the ministry field. I preached my first sermon when I was only 15. The church has always played a vital role in my life and my life's purpose. I had strong mentors, pastors, youth leaders, Sunday School teachers.

I needed their support because I was a victim of child abuse. My father took out a lot of aggression on me while my mom stood (often because of drugs) on the sidelines, well aware of

what I was suffering at the hands of my father. She threatened to leave him once if he didn't stop hitting me. That was the only time she stood up for me. It didn't stop him.

I repressed those memories for most of my adult years. I have enjoyed many successes, but there was always a shadow over me turning the bright colors to gray. I was an expert at hiding my insecurities, especially in my college years and early working years. I was a leader in college, president of several organizations and a resident advisor. I preached on weekends, wrote for the school paper, exercised and taught weight-lifting. Everyone knew who I was.

Now, you need to realize that I can live in both the introverted and extroverted worlds with equal success. Although an introvert at heart, in order to lead and preach regularly, I had to put on my extroverted persona. Often I did this through humor. In order to take the spotlight off myself I made people laugh to get them to focus on some other situation. Smokey Robinson and the Miracles hit "Tears of a Clown," comes to mind when I think of much of my life.

I met the love of my life during my last semester of college. She was a freshman and I was a graduating senior. I couldn't leave her behind. So I waited out a year before going to seminary, and we married during her sophomore year, in December, 1980.

We moved to Wake Forest, NC. I started seminary and Anne finished her degree at Meredith College in Raleigh. Our love got us through many tough times financially, emotionally and other difficulties. I never doubted her love for me. I believe she felt the same. We were so young and it almost felt as if we were playing house, but Anne was wise beyond her years. She knew how to handle finances and I guess I have leaned on her strengths since those early years when we were learning how to face the world together. One thing you need to know about Anne is that she doesn't doubt herself or her decisions, even during those times when she misses the boat completely. My mistake was that I defered to her judgment so often that I made her think that she was the only one competent to make most the decisions. I should have shared the decision-making. This would have helped her and me both. It was just so hard to do that because she often made decisions so quickly and effortlessly that I just kept my mouth shut. If I had spoken up more, it would have lifted the pressure from her. It would have also helped her when we are in times like the present when to accept and be open to the possibility that she could be wrong. I don't blame her, I created the blue-eyed monster, by placing her in the decision-making role, even if that was her natural personality or not.

While I was in seminary, I developed "convergence insufficiency".  At the time it was called "convergence deficiency". Basically my eyes would not converge. I was seeing double. It is also caled diplopia. I had to place books on the floor to read them. If I held the book, my eyes wouldn't converge in order to see one word or page. I went to Duke Medical Center. They gave me eye exercises to help strengthen my eye muscles. The exercises didn't work. Over the past 30 years I have tried many different things, from prism glasses, to eye patches (one little girl at church asked me where my pirate ship was). They also gave me a botox injection in one eye that made it point to the side. The idea was that when the shot wore off, my eyes would be in line. NOPE. Now I can focus my eyes for about 45 minutes in order to read, then my eyes wander and I get headaches.