Hopeless and Helpless

I had no idea what this would lead to as our first grade teacher gave us each a note to pass on to our parents.  Celebrations for Mother Superior's birthday were scheduled for the next morning and all the students were to come to school in their Sunday best.  As such, Mom dressed me up in... can you believe it? a suit, complete with jacket and tie.  I have to confess, I was oblivious to everything until I arrived in the schoolyard and started noticing some of the other kids staring at me.  Yup, as far as I could tell, I was the only kid wearing a suit.  It became even more uncomfortable as I walked down the hall to my classroom.  Teachers, walking by or standing in their class doorway would look down at me with these rather suspicious grins on their faces.  I remember feeling very uncomfortable at my predicament.  I don't know if this is where I started being overly self-conscious, but it's been a curse ever since.

As I walked into my classroom, my teacher took one look at me, got up from her desk and with another grade one teacher escorted me back out in the hall all the way to the other end of the school.  As I was ushered into what I remember as a small room adjacent to the principle's office, I noticed one of my schoolmates standing there with a huge bouquet of roses clutched in her arms.  This is when one of the nuns gave me a handmade birthday card and they escorted both of us to the school gymnasium.  To my great surprise, the entire school was assembled there.  We were both marched to the front and turned to face Mother Superior sitting on the front row.  At this point, we presented our gifts to her, which she graciously accepted, and quite frankly, I can't recall another thing after that.

The way I like to say it is: "...and so began my career in the limelight!"

Now, don't get me wrong!  I wasn't the limelight kind of a guy.  But that didn't stop my teachers from roping me into some kind of role in what I recall to have been every school concert ever after.  Whether they had me in a choir, a play, a skit, singing solo, or whatever, there was no escaping it.  I want you to know, and this is not a case of false humility, I did not for a moment like being up front for anything.  But try as I may, there was no getting out of it!

Something rather strange began to happen by the time I reached the 7th grade.  While I had always had fairly good grades to this point, my marks were gradually declining, and with them, so was any confidence I may have had in myself (no doubt, a blessing in disguise).  Even then and the year after, I was still involved in front stage activities.  My Mom maintained that on the last day of my 8th grade, my role in the closing concert on the last day of school was to sing "Bridge Over Troubled Waters"... alone... all by myself.  By this time, I had such a healthy dose of stage fright that I must have blanked it completely out.  I cannot for the life of me recall any such thing.  But, who am I to question my Mother?

High school would prove to be my worst nightmare!  Each day began with an offer of prayer, usually the Lord's Prayer, after which all the students would head for their first class of the day.  Our class however, was somewhat different.  While our teacher was English Protestant, we students were French Catholics.  As such, we preferred to say the Hail Mary.  Not being a particularly religious individual, he didn't care if we had recited the American Declaration of Independence, just so long as he could be rid of us to make room for his first class.  Now, here's how he had set this up.  He would start with the first student in the front row and have him recite the first half of the prayer while the rest of us would chime in with the last half.  Then we would head for our first class of the day.  The following day, the next student would recite the first half of the prayer and the rest would finish it off.  This way, every student had his turn to lead the prayer and we'd start back with the first student all over again.

For whatever reason, the first time I had to do it, I got unusually nervous, so much so, that I even felt myself shaking and struggling to get the words out.  I was totally unnerved by my own reaction.  As such, the next time my turn was anticipated, I began to fear the same thing would happen long before my turn arrived.  And when it did arrive, I was a total basket case.  My heart pounded uncontrollably and my lips were shaking so badly, I could barely be understood by anyone.  I was devastated!  I couldn't understand why this was happening.  What made it even worse was following this very humiliating experience, one of my fellow students caught up to me in the hallway and asked: "What on earth happened to you?" which only deepened my utter embarrassment. I was so impacted by this state of affairs that for the first time in my school life, I planned to skip out of school the next turn around.  Talk about a long, boring day, stuck in the woods with absolutely nothing to do but wait for school to be out so I could go home.  A couple of times like this and the teacher got wise and when I did come back to class following my wilderness wandering, he asked me to pray, and of course, the same thing happened again.  Now I found myself having to skip two and three days in a row before returning to class.

I remember on one such occasion, there I was, lying on my back alongside the bank of Witson Creek behind our home, staring up at this beautiful, blue sky with white, puffy clouds floating by and laughing out loud at my predicament -wondering why this was happening to me.  I especially liked drafting class and had hoped to be a draftsmen someday.  I didn't want to quit school!  I wanted to make something of myself, but I felt I had absolutely no control over what was going on.  I had never in my life felt so utterly hopeless and helpless!  Since I had never witnessed anyone else struggling with a similar situation, I came to believe that no one could possibly understand what I was going through.  I had no one to turn to that I believed would be able to help me.

Have you ever been paralyzed with fear to the extent that you felt absolutely trapped? and by something that even you found totally silly and ridiculous in nature?  How I wish I had understood then what I know of God today!  How I wish I had known how much He cared for me then as I know now! If only I had understood how much He has always loved me.

"There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  The one that fears is not made perfect in love." 1 John 4. 18 NIV.

Little did I realize, God was putting a plan together that would forever alter my life.  But that wouldn't happen... at least, not for a while yet.

My Life As It Is...  Part II.