Just some writing (A Work in Progress)

Who do you want to be when you grow up? As a child, I remember wanting to be a firefighter, a doctor, and a soldier among many other things. These desires of course changed according to the game I was playing at the time. I lived to pretend and to dream. Many days I fought valiantly against the dragons invading my backyard, heroically protecting the beautiful princess in the jungle gym, I mean castle, behind me. I blew countless Nazis to kingdom come with my pine cone grenades and cap machine gun. I wanted to save the world, be the hero, and still have mom tuck me into my bed at the night. It was a perfect life for me. It was who I wanted to be. It was who I was, at least in my mind and isn’t that all that mattered?
Soon, however, I aged into middle school. A different reality dawned. It was one immersed in paranoia and total self-confusion. Everyone was looking at me, examining me and critiquing me to see if I won the approval of the prestigious “in-crowd”. That was my perception of it anyways and I’m quite sure I wasn’t alone. I was determined to meet these expectations, for my social life depended on it. Therefore my life depended on it.

I lived for the approval of my peers and ingested their fickle and ruthless words as gospel. Nothing outside of this worldview mattered. The Peer’s Word remained true. Parents, religion, friendship were all just means to the end. Acceptance. A smile from a cute girl, scoring fifteen points on the school’s basketball team, making fun of the awkward kid, this was my salvation. Recognition and approval was my motivation. But it was fleeting. Reaching one standard did not guarantee an eternal destiny of popularity. It only promised fifteen minutes of fame…….maybe. There was neither certainty nor rest for the weary. It was an addiction, a lust. A taste that never granted satisfaction, it only heightened the longing with every morsel that was devoured. I was a starving man in the desert chasing vainly after the mirages before me. I didn’t like it, in fact I abhorred it all, but I rationalized that my continued existence deemed it necessary. It was a necessary evil. So entangled in this web of influence, I entertained these thoughts as truth when the stench of their deception was so blatantly obvious.

The days of playful adventures and dreaming big dreams had long passed. Sand castles and mud pies were now ancient history. No more fun and games. It was about survival. It was about chasing popularity and reaching the status of "cool", the envy of my peers. I now wanted to grow up and be whoever the "cool" people wanted me to be. Yet these strivings brought me nothing but greater loneliness and disillusionment. I realized too much later the fickleness of shallow relationships and the impossibility of my pursuit. Heartbreak and despair was my only constant and faithful companion. But by God's grace those hellish years were brief and I soon began to find myself, but most importantly I found the One to whom my heart belonged…….Rescue was coming.

(More to come, God-willing)