What I’m about to share isn’t easy for me to. It’s something I’ve thought about sharing via my blog before, yet it never seemed like the right time. But for some reason God has really put this on my heart now. I don’t think it’s for me as much as it is for someone else who might stumble upon it. Nonetheless, it’s a piece of my past and a part of my heart that isn’t easy to put out there. Feel privileged.
Middle school was hell for me. Looking back, it seems like it was probably one of the greatest challenges of my life. I remember my mom telling me a few years ago that her and my dad thought I was depressed at that time; they weren’t sure what I was going to do. Come to think of it, maybe I was depressed. I just remember it being a living nightmare.
I was never good at starting school years because I’m such a momma’s boy that I would go into it kicking and screaming – literally. It was always hard for me to make friends, especially as a prepubescent teen whose face was littered with acne. And it didn’t help that I was starting junior high at a middle school where zero of my friends went. Say the words “Mayberry Middle Magnet” and I start to cringe on the inside, even today.
So sixth grade started out rough. I think that by the end of it I only had four or five friends – no joke. They were just as dweebie as I was. One was Vietnamese, another a giant, the other the annoying class clown, and yet another the kid who always wanted to play Power Rangers.
Real winners.
Making it through the first year was a miracle in and of itself. I attended youth group at church and all of that jazz. It’s not that I didn’t have a social life; I just didn’t have one at my school. It was pretty lame. I went into seventh grade year praying for friends – guy friends. I always fitted in with the girls because they found compassion for the rejects like my friends and I, but it just landed me more ridicule during lunch. And being in band didn’t help either.
It was just a few weeks in that I met Joe and Chad. We had a few classes together and the teachers stuck us at the same table. They ended up being some of the more reputable guys as far as ‘status’ was concerned. The fact that I even talked to them outside of class earned me a certain degree of respect from others. Before long, Joe and Chad invited me to officially become friends with them. I thought I found a place that I belonged, but little did I know I was getting myself in deep.
Joe and Chad weren’t exactly the best people, but they weren’t the worst either. It’s not like we went around smoking pot or drinking booze at a young age. We did make fun of those who were bigger losers than us though. Remember Power Ranger boy? Yep. We totally made that kid eat dirt plenty of times. I never usually had too much of a hand in it, but I watched. We even made fun of my other friends from sixth grade. One day I even tripped the ‘giant friend’ so he fell face first into the pavement.
This carried on for quite some time; in fact, Joe, Chad, and myself became known as a trio. It was rare that we wouldn’t be seen apart at school. We even had the same classes the second semester. Unfortunately, one day, everything changed.
I walked into Mayberry Middle Magnet School like any other morning, but something was off. People kept looking at me. I went up to Joe and Chad to ask them what was going on and Joe just slammed his locker shut and said to me, “get away from me, you faggot.” Floored, I wasn’t sure how to react. In the matter of moments they told me a whole string of reasons why they thought I was ‘gay’. From then on, I was rejected.
I wasn’t really gay (never have been), but this serves to be one of the hardest memories for me to revisit. It’s really hard to share it, let alone to write it down and put it into words. While it seems like a typical middle school memory for some with no more than your typical middle school drama, I sometimes think we neglect the implications of experiences like this.
No worries – I’ve since then walked through the scars and pulled out all of the good lessons from it. If you want to know them, I’d love to share them with you sometime. I don’t typically share this memory with people. It’s a part of my past I’d rather keep silent although it helped shape me in many ways.
But I write all of this to say, if God is a God of the past, present, and future… and if there are things in your past that you haven’t invited God into yet… why don’t you? Do you really think it’s too late to change the past? Because it’s not. God is a God of redemption in the past, present, and future.
One of the best things I ever did was invite God into middle school. The funny part? I didn’t do it until about two years ago. Joe and Chad are forgiven. I’m forgiven. I’m redeemed. I’m rescued. I’m not forgotten. I am found. And so are they.
