Since peeing off of the porch hadn’t made quite the splash I’d hoped for, I decided to move on to greater exploits. The first thing to catch my eye was a lovely kindergarten classmate coming towards me one morning while making a strange gesture with her fingers. Not certain as to what was going on, I made like a paycheck on Friday night and disappeared.
Later, I asked a friend about the strange gestures and discovered that was the young lady’s way of saying, “come here.” Wow, I got all that attention without wearing cologne or brushing my hair. Well, I may have brushed my hair, but the appearance of my deeply rutted waves and curls were highly resistant to grooming, so no one ever knew if I did or not. This was very liberating for a five year old boy!
What I did not find liberating, strangely enough, was the attention of this girl with the funky finger signals and big brown eyes that had the beauty and innocence of a fawn’s gaze. She began making it a habit to pursue me around the playground with her fingers doing that thing that might as well of been morse code ... and those deep brown eyes. But, I never surrendered and I was never caught, though I secretly wanted to be.
I could never convince myself that I was worthy of attention from one whose hair was perfectly obedient and whose glance left me breathless. I was held captive to a deformed leg that mostly did as it pleased. I couldn’t control it and it often betrayed me when I was on the verge of greatness. It robbed me of my coolness and left me ashamed to be me.
My certainty that I could never measure up to the normal folks screamed so loudly in my head that I missed what was right in front of me; a beautiful girl who wanted to be my friend so badly that she chased me for days. She must have never noticed my disheveled hair or my unsightly limp. She saw me, not my faltering attributes and I’m sure she would have told me that if I had ever stopped running from her beauty.
This would not be the only time I would take flight from a pretty face. A few years later, I was spending part of my summer vacation with my older sister, Martha, who lived in Thomasville, at the time. One day, I was minding my own business on the front porch when a pretty young girl came pedaling my way. She had perfect freckles that seemed to make her eyes sparkle when she smiled. I even liked her boots and I confess I rarely notice shoes at all. But these were those Roman styled boots that took days to lace, but were obviously worth the effort.
As she passed our porch, she gave me a smile that I carried in my memory like an autograph for what felt like years, but it was probably just a few weeks. She waved my way, while exclaiming, “I’m gonna come see ya on my way back!”
I tried to muster a smile as the blood drained from my face and visions of possible escape routes ran through my distraught mind.
Thinking as clearly as mud, I dove into the laundry closet and buried myself in dirty clothes, a decision I came to regret within seconds. Little did I know, my sister was taking note of my whereabouts while laughing at me to the point that breathing was no longer an option. When little Miss Georgia Peach came calling a few minutes later, Martha was more than happy to expose my hideout and my goose was cooked. The girl with the perfect freckles pulled away the layers of dirty clothes (I still owe her my gratitude for that) and gave me a puzzled look, simply saying, “What you doing in here?” I had only a dumbfounded look and a pair of dirty socks stuck in my hair to offer in response.
When you don’t like who you are or what you look like, you miss out on life. Instead of smelling the roses, you just end of smelling of whatever lie is in your head that keeps dictating endless thoughts of inadequacy. I wasted much of my youth in that prison. Better days came years later when I discovered the identity given me by Christ and it came with the keys to unlock the doors I didn’t even think existed.
I’m sure God made us to run towards beauty, not away from it, but sometimes the hardest place to see it is in ourselves.
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
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