Cheering Alone

Until I was 41, this pretty much had been my life--

I was a strange little kid. When I was 7, I'd cry happy tears during the reunions on Truth or Consequences and This Is Your Life. 

While junior high friends played rock music, I preferred classical and show tunes.

I collected blue-bellied lizards while the other girls loved Kiddles and bracelets. My family preferred stream-lined, brand new houses and I adored leaning, paintless-brown barns in the middle of wheat fields.

As a teenager, I read Jane Eyre while my friends read Jaws. I watched Carousel while church friends discussed American Graffiti. I adored the people who my family barely tolerated. I hated college while everyone else reveled in it. My friends attended loud parties and I loved quiet heart-talks on the seashore.

As a young wife, I aimed at being the best homemaker on Earth while other wives returned to college and got jobs. I wanted to spend time with my young, blonde daughter while my friends schemed each week to get babysitters. I read dusty old books and Gladys Taber, (who nobody had heard of) and I watched the tv shows no one else could stand. I spent hours in the kitchen and at the sewing machine while everyone else went out and bought ready-made.

I'm skipping a lot of other examples, but well, you get the idea, I'm sure.

I say this went on till I was 41 because it was then that I went online. And finally--finally!-- I found all those people I'd imagined in my head since I was a child. Finally I discovered that yes! There are other people out there who love best what I do. 

And finally I stopped feeling so odd.

But you know? I'm grateful for those decades of left-out feelings. Something happens when you must stand alone--you're forced to make decisions. Either you give-up who you are or you become strongly, you. 

And God can use people who have grown-up feeling alone, weird.  Sure it's nice having others help us stand, yet on that Very Last Day, each of us will stand alone before God. 

Perhaps then we'll find that, He was preparing us for that very day--and we knew it not.



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