Brave Surrender Read online

  We continued this pattern throughout the week. But by the last night of the camp, something was different. We made our usual move and snuck out the back to retreat to our cabin. But when we got there, this time we sat in silence. I felt a strong pulling inside me, and I was trying to figure out exactly what it was. I finally decided it was desire, tinged with jealousy. These strange kids had something I didn’t have. I didn’t know what to call it, but I wanted it too.

  I looked up at my sister, who to my surprise was already looking at me. I recognized in her eyes the same emotion I was feeling.

  “I want to go back,” I said. “I don’t know what those kids have, but I want it. But I’m kind of scared.”

  “Me too!” Amy said.

  “I’ll go if you go with me.”

  She nodded. Holding hands, we got up and walked back to the meeting hall. I could feel my heart racing and my hands trembling. Then I spotted our cabin counselor and headed toward her. When I reached her, I opened my mouth to speak. To my shock, I burst into tears.

  “I don’t know what these kids have, but I want it too,” I said again, this time choking on the words in between sobs.

  “Me too!” Amy shouted.

  The counselor laughed and lifted her hand to touch me and pray. Before her hand ever made it there, I felt a warm wind blow over me. It caused me to swoop around and fall over on my side. My sister fell on top of me, and we both started speaking in a strange language, just like we had seen other kids do. I didn’t do anything to make it happen—it just came out of me as I surrendered to Jesus. I could hear myself and had no idea what was happening, why I was doing it, or what I was saying. The only thing I knew was that I was encountering God. My body was tingling, and I felt a rush of excitement as a new kind of love and freedom pierced my heart. Something deep inside my soul was crying, “This is why I am alive!”

  When I opened my eyes, I felt new, clean, and loved in a way I had never known. An urge to express my love to Jesus rose in me. The counselor and another woman were sitting right there praying for us, so I asked them what happened and what it was.

  “Honey, that was the Holy Ghost!” said the counselor. “He filled you up, and you spoke in tongues!”

  She then explained to me what “tongues” was, telling me that God had given me a heavenly language as a gift and that I could use it to pray, praise, and give thanks to Him. She said that sometimes God might give me or someone else an interpretation of what I was saying, and sometimes He would not (see 1 Corinthians 14). I felt pretty special to have a prayer language all my own, and I couldn’t wait to use it to communicate with God. I kept my counselor up very late that night with questions about God, the Trinity, and speaking in tongues.

  The camp was to conclude the next morning with a talent show, after which we’d head home in the late afternoon. I hadn’t signed up to be in the show, but I couldn’t shake this overwhelming desire to express my love and gratitude to God for what He had done. That voice inside—the one I knew and would tell me to use my voice over and over—was encouraging me to use it again. So I went to one of the leaders and asked if I could join the talent show at the last minute. They let me in.

  I decided to sing the only church song I knew by heart—“Amazing Grace.” After taking the stage, I said to the audience, “Last night I was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. I feel so much love, and I just want to love Jesus back. I want to sing this song to say thank you to Him for loving me and giving me this gift.”

  I closed my eyes and began to sing the song from the bottom of my heart. The words never felt more true than they did in that moment. As I sang, I felt an overwhelming sense that this was something I was meant to do my whole life long. My heart swelled with love and adoration as I poured every piece of me into every note of that song.

  When I was done, I opened my eyes and looked around. All the leaders were crying, and everyone was applauding. I didn’t understand why so many people were crying, but I thought they must just feel the same love that I do.

  After the show, person after person came up to me and asked me my name. Nobody knew who I was! The reason everyone kept asking my name became clear later when the time came to announce the camp awards. Apparently this was a decades-old camp tradition. Some awards were silly, like the award for Camp Snoozer, which went to the kid who always missed breakfast because he or she slept in.

  After the playful awards and trophies had been handed out, they moved on to the more serious awards: Camp King and Queen. The votes had been counted, and to my complete shock, they called my name. I—the girl nobody knew—was Camp Queen! I had no idea why this was an award or what someone had to do to merit it, but that didn’t keep me from drinking in the wonderful way it made me feel. I felt seen, heard, and special. My past and my pain faded away, and I felt the lightheartedness of a girl who is simply a child, without a burden or worry in the world. My only job in that moment was to be happy and enjoy it. As I went up to receive my crown and trophy, the love that had filled me up swirled again inside me, as though I could hear God saying, I’m so proud of you!

  Amy and I got a ride back home with the pastor of the church that had sent us to the camp. While everyone else fell asleep in the back seat, I sat in the front seat and talked nonstop the entire way home. That poor old man—he endured an eleven-year-old girl talking his ear off for three hours straight! I told him I was convinced that I was going to do something great for God. I went on and on about how I could feel it deep down in my bones—God had created me to do something big in this world. Maybe I would be a missionary or a preacher. Whatever it was, I was so excited and overjoyed to feel such a deep sense of purpose and belonging with God. One of the phrases in “Amazing Grace” kept running through my mind: I once was lost, but now I’m found. That was exactly what I felt; I felt like I had finally been found.

  When to Stop

  When we got home, I excitedly told my mom everything that had happened. Then I asked her if we could go to church next Sunday night. I couldn’t wait to get back into worship. She agreed, and when Sunday night came, we made our way to church. Right as the worship started, I felt compelled to get out of my seat and go to the front. I lifted my hands and began dancing and singing to Jesus. I didn’t know the words to the songs we were singing, so I just sang in tongues. It felt right to do so—to worship God in the language He gave me. It seemed that my own language could not do justice to expressing all the adoration I felt toward God in that moment. I was completely lost in it, without a care in the world. I was worshiping Jesus like I was made to do it all along.

  Out of nowhere, I felt two hands grab me and begin pulling me aside. I looked up and saw a woman I didn’t know. She was leading me over to a seat. I sat down, stunned and unsure of why she had made me sit down or what was wrong. Moments later, the pastor came to the stage to wrap up the time of worship and transition into the sermon. Most likely, the woman had simply acted because it was time for worship to end, and, being lost in song as I was, I was the only one who didn’t know that. But the only reason my little mind and heart could come up with was that I had messed up somehow.

  Immediately shame crept into my heart. I felt rejected. My cheeks felt hot and flushed as I put my head down in embarrassment and tried to make sense of it all. I had been lost in worship. It felt so right. It felt like I was doing what I was meant to do. Where did I go wrong? The shame was telling me that my heart wasn’t pure and that my motivation in worship wasn’t to love Jesus but to draw attention to myself and be a distraction for others.

  It was in this moment that the voice that says, Stop drawing attention to yourself—which would become terribly familiar—entered my life. I’ve always had big emotions, and when I want to express something, it usually comes out in a big way. So, naturally, when I got excited about meeting Holy Spirit and catching a taste of God’s love for me, I wanted to pour out my love and worship extravagantly. Yet when this voice woke up inside of me, it began a long war be
tween my natural expressiveness and the crushing pressure to shut it all down and withdraw into the shadows. It was the first of countless moments that caused me to question my identity and think that there was something wrong with me and the way I was made.

  When we got home that night, I asked my mom why that lady had pulled me away and sat me down. My mom hesitated, like she wasn’t sure what to say. Then she said, “Kim, sometimes you have to know when to stop.”

  I went to my room and sat down to think. I had felt lost in worship—not out of control in a bad or messy way but in a way that was safe and beautiful. But to be told that I need to know when to stop seemed to imply that I was in full control and somehow should have known better. Again, the message I heard was that something was wrong with me—something that had caused me to do something wrong. The shame and embarrassment I felt were overwhelming. Worst of all, I felt rejected by the love that had only a day before felt so life-giving.

  And just like that, a silent and giant wall went up around my heart. I felt everything inside me immediately shut down, like a store that had gone out of business and posted signs everywhere: “Closed.” I’ve always been a little dramatic, and this moment was no exception. My heart and all my emotions shut down. I went numb.

  The next day, I noticed that when my mom and my sister told me they loved me as usual (before my mom left for work or before we went to bed), I couldn’t respond. I felt anger. I didn’t want to tell them I loved them. No words came out of me. I just stared blankly and walked away.

  As the days passed, the anger built inside me and began to burst out unexpectedly. I lived on edge, exploding into fits of rage and lashing out at my sister in arguments. The very people I felt so strongly obligated to protect and take care of were the same people on the receiving end of my wrath. I couldn’t get control.

  After each angry outburst, more shame came rushing in, bringing more rejection, anger, and hopelessness. Rejection told me the church and the people in it hated me. I wasn’t good enough, pure enough, or smart enough. Obviously, they knew how to control everything and “when to stop” and I did not.

  Anger let me justify myself and step away from the pain. Pain would cause me to look at what had happened and feel the hurt and anger all over again. Anger let me point a finger at that woman who sat me down, like she had it out for me. Anger even let me point a finger at the church camp and all the people in it. They misled me, I thought. This pain is their fault for exposing me to something that for a time made me feel so free but doesn’t last.

  My sense of betrayal fueled more rage. I thought Jesus loved me, but He had betrayed me. I thought I mattered and was special. I thought He had a plan for my life. But now, after one embarrassing and confusing experience, I believed it was all a lie. There is no good future or plan for me, I concluded. I was foolish to think that a girl like me could have such a beautiful gift.

  Chapter 4

  BORN AGAIN

  When I was twelve, a new man came into my mom’s life. His name was George, and he was a strong Christian. After she and George began dating, my mom started taking us to church consistently and making other small changes in our family lifestyle. Church suddenly became very important and didn’t seem to be as much of a ritual anymore, but rather something that we began to engage in more seriously.

  I still remember the Sunday we got in the car to go to church and she changed the radio station from our normal pop station. Pop music and MTV had always been a constant fixture in our house—Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Huey Lewis and the News were some of my favorites growing up. Dumbstruck, I asked her what on earth we were listening to. She told me it was a Christian radio station and that we were going to start listening to this music. Hunkering down in the back seat, I rolled my eyes, thinking, I don’t like these changes.

  Overall, however, I liked George and thought he was fun. He took us on trips, bought us candy, and taught us what it meant to “stir the pot.” This was one of his favorite phrases, and to him it looked like us mischievously teasing our mom while he looked on from around a corner, cracking up. It also looked like the freedom and encouragement to voice our strong opinions. When we asked him if he was going to marry her, he usually responded with a joke and a twinkle in his eye.

  But when George followed through on those winks and actually married Mom, everything changed for me. I became convinced that he would be like my other stepfathers and hurt and leave us. He was now a foe against whom I needed to defend and protect my family. On the day of their wedding, I refused to smile for the wedding pictures. I was angry and wanted everyone to know it. When my mom and George returned from their honeymoon, I told George that I did not like him, that I wanted nothing to do with him, and that he was not—and never would be—my dad. I wanted him to know I was done with being hurt by men and would most certainly fight back if he tried anything. I wasn’t afraid anymore; I was just plain furious.

  “Just Be a Kid”

  Much as I had my guard up with George, I had to admit that his marriage to my mom brought a level of comfort, security, and stability to our family that I had never experienced. Right before I started high school, they bought a house, and I got my own bedroom for the first time in my life. I had new clothes to wear and didn’t have to worry about going hungry. I was attending the first school where I would stay for longer than two years. All of this was obviously better than the pain, fear, and upheaval we had lived with for so long.

  The problem was that I seemed to be the only one who had a problem transitioning from the years of trauma into this new reality, and my relationship with my mom and George grew increasingly strained because of my unresolved anger and pain. There was a months-long period in which we had the same exchange every single Sunday. My mom and George brought me into their bedroom, sat me down, and pleaded with me.

  “Why can’t you just let go of the past?” Mom would ask. “Why can’t you just forget about it?”

  She knew my storming around the house yelling, making snotty comments to everyone, and reminding George that he wasn’t my dad were not the behaviors of an emotional, hormonal teenager, but were expressions of pain. They had a wounded, broken girl spinning out of control and leaving messes in her wake.

  I realize now that they were trying to help me and were probably very tired of dealing with my anger, but their approach didn’t work. I wouldn’t budge. I tried to explain that it wasn’t the same for me as it was for them. My mom had put the past behind her when she married someone new, but I hadn’t married someone. I hadn’t decided to do something that was a complete detour from where I was. It felt like she had moved on without me and didn’t even think about the past anymore, while I was still carrying the wounds and the scars of the past, which were tethering me to the ground somewhere back behind her.

  During one of these conversations, my mom seemed to realize that I believed I was responsible to take care of her and protect her. I think she could hear in my language and responses that I carried a sense of responsibility to take care of and protect her and my siblings. It was clear that a lot of my angry actions and outbursts were very defensive. She looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “Kim, you don’t have to take care of me anymore. That is not your job. It’s George’s job, and he will take care of me and protect me. You’re a kid. You just need to be a kid and enjoy that.”

  She undoubtedly intended for those words to bring freedom and release to me, but they sent me spinning. A world of carefully and strategically placed walls and pillars in my mind came crashing down. I could feel absolute rage bubbling up inside me, creeping up my throat, and practically choking me as it fought to escape. I honestly don’t remember if I even responded to her in that moment. The only thing racing through my head was outrage.

  Be a kid? BE A KID? I do not have the first clue about what it means to be a kid. I grew up a long time ago. The innocence and the carefree life of a child are so far behind me. I don’t know how to be anything other than what I am.<
br />
  My purpose and identity lay in shambles. If it wasn’t my job to take care of and protect my mom and my siblings and I didn’t know how to be a kid, then what was I supposed to do? Who was I supposed to be? How was I supposed to behave? What was the point of my life if it was not to take care of and protect my family?

  I began a slow, long fall deep down into a very dark pit. The one thought I grabbed on to was that once high school was over, I could escape. If I could just hang in there for these four years, I could leave and start a new life of my own.

  I began planning on moving out the moment I graduated. In the meantime, I devoted myself to finding other relationships and pursuits that would give me a sense of meaning. I befriended a ton of people in high school from all social groups—band geeks, athletes, skaters, smart kids, and more. I never wanted anyone to be picked on or left out. As a student, I worked hard and got very involved in all kinds of school activities.

  One strange thing that happened early in my freshman year was that I inadvertently made an enemy of my high school choir teacher due to an unfortunate misunderstanding. When he issued a blanket invitation to the choir to participate in a singing competition at a college in a nearby city, I eagerly signed up and paid the fee. Then the teacher informed us he would be selecting our songs for the competition and proceeded to assign me an Italian opera piece. I had no idea how to pronounce any of the words, didn’t have a clue as to what I was attempting to sing about, and didn’t know anyone who could teach me. So I decided to chuck that song and chose a song that was a big hit that year—Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.” We had an option to sing to compete or just to be critiqued, and I had chosen the critique option when I signed up. I only wanted to get some feedback on my singing, so I figured it was best to pick something that would show the judges what I could do.

  When the day came, I was standing just outside the stage, waiting to go on, when my teacher appeared and asked if I was ready. I said yes and offhandedly added that I had decided to change my song.