This is the fourth in a series of excerpts I am doing from my book “Born Again.” It’s from the second chapter, which is called Damned. If you’ve not yet read the previous installments, you can find them here: First | Second | Third
One summer at Lake Ann Baptist Camp, when I was maybe 8 or 9 years old, our afternoon group activity was called a “Trust Fall.” This was meant to be a team-building (and, of course, faith-building!) exercise. One by one we would take turns climbing onto a tree stump, facing away from the group. Our cabinmates would line up behind us in two rows, facing each other, with their arms intercrossed, palms up. The boy on the stump would put his arms at his side, call out “Falling!” as a final signal to his mates, and then fall backward, stiff as a board, onto their outstretched arms.
This was not the type of activity I enjoyed, but all of us were required to do it, and so when it was my turn, I gritted my teeth, overrode my fears, and forced myself to let go, knowing it would soon be over. But they did not catch me.
To this day, I don’t know how it happened, but I fell straight through to the ground like dead weight. I remember being stunned, feeling as if I couldn’t breathe, because I’d hit the dirt so hard. I wondered if anything was broken, or if I was paralyzed. And I wondered what I had done wrong.
“Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)
It’s hard to think of a teaching more damaging to a sensitive, compliant, obedient, perhaps even obsessive-compulsive child than the fact that he is literally expected to be perfect. For me, it was a crippling recipe for disaster.
I was a mess of a young person. I mean really, REALLY a mess. I will get into this in painful and often embarrassing detail in the pages to come, but it cannot be overstated what a wreck I have been for so much of my life. I swam for years in a toxic stew of harmful, trauma-causing beliefs, barely keeping my chin above the surface. I was absolutely savage and unfailingly unforgiving toward myself; I literally do not know how I survived.
The strange, extreme, and often harsh environment I grew up in unquestionably stunted my emotional and relational development in ways that I am still grappling with in my sixth decade of life.
February 14, 1991 journal entry
Sovereign God of All Creation,
I am ashamed at my own lack of discipline. I am appalled at my own self-pity, and my own self-centeredness. God, I am totally being attacked. I can’t even fast for one day. Satan is always the strongest on Thursdays. I don’t know if I’ll ever make it through an entire Thursday without eating anything at all. I’m so undisciplined. I haven’t even prayed all day. It is ridiculous and shameful. Please forgive me for my faults. The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak.
I was taught that the only thing—the ONLY thing—that mattered in life was what I did for the Lord. Nothing else was of any consequence; it was like mere chaff, beaten out on the threshing floor and burned with unquenchable fire (Matthew 3:12).
Our unofficial but often-quoted family motto:
Only one life,
’twill soon be past
only what’s done for Christ
will last.
February 26, 1991 journal entry
I’m really low. I’m sick of life, I don’t want to die, but I don’t really want to live either. My life has no purpose. I do not have a reason to be alive.
I am sick of being me. I’m just sick of struggling. I am tired of seeing the same things recur in my life. I am tired of this depression. It won’t leave me alone.
I don’t know how much I believe in God anymore. I’ve never felt farther from him. I do everything for the wrong motives. I am a big fat fake. I talk the walk, but I don’t walk the talk. I have no reason to continue to exist. I just simply am too apathetic. I don’t like myself, and I don’t see why others should either. I just want to leave myself, to get away from me. I want to lose myself. God help me.
I did my best to be an overachiever in many areas, especially with anything related to the Bible. I was dedicated and responsible and hardworking and reliable, and for that I was awarded ribbons and pins and badges and certificates and trophies, but of course none of it was good enough, because I still was not perfect.
I had, to put it mildly, a very complicated spiritual life. I spent much time prostrating, humbling, subjugating, flagellating, and diminishing myself before my angry and vengeful “Loving Heavenly Father,” because inside I knew what a wicked wretch I was and how far I fell short, worthy of nothing but judgment and condemnation.
I lived in constant fear: fear of “the world,” fear of Satan, fear of persecution for being a Christian (nourished by readings of books like Foxe’s Book of Martyrs), fear of my friends and neighbors going to hell and it being my fault for not witnessing enough to them about how they could be saved.
“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” (1 Peter 5:8)
I had absolutely no understanding of appropriate boundaries—not for how I was to be treated, not for how I was to treat others, and not for how those in my life were to be treated by others. I was needy, possessive, jealous, manipulative, and melodramatic. I was subject to wild, erratic, crippling mood swings. And I was often deeply, severely, and nearly chronically depressed from the time I became a teenager until my early 30s.
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You can read the next excerpt here.
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I intend for the foreseeable future for my posts to remain free, including the excerpts from Born Again. But if you’d like the full book, you have two options:
You can purchase it directly from Blurb.
Or, for a limited time only, I am offering a FREE copy to all new Yearly subscribers to this newsletter! This is a $20 value—and I’ll even cover the cost of standard shipping.
(Note: The Substack back-end tech appears to be unable to accommodate the logistics of this offer, so I will reach out to you directly after you subscribe to get your shipping details and then place the book order for you myself.)
Mike, I hate that you endured this kind of torment.
And…I can relate to so much of what you wrote.
Telling your story in all its complexity must be no small task. And such a powerful move.