Skip to main content

At some point in your story, a character says "You're better than this..."

She was desperate to be good. An A- was a disappointment, a harsh word's echoes didn't quit. Her standards were impossible, but she met them, and the times she didn't were deep disappointments. Success was survival. Approval was survival. Whose approval? God's? Her parents? Her church's? Despite living every moment subservient to it, they never quite gave it. Perhaps God did, but how could she have known? And so she did two things. She found someone who did accept her. He wasn't burdened with religious requirement, and his acceptance was a relief, even if she failed to see the danger in the flip side of the coin, of lawlessness. Next, she went in search of God. Because despite the convoluted image given her, she saw goodness, and wanted sense. She found truth, and she found God. And found the whole point of this Jesus they told her about was that she didn't have to jump through their hoops, recite their formulas, look just so, or behave just so. She could stop berating herself. You're better than this, do better, be good, be perfect...all faded. She locked the door, stepped into a field of possibility, running her fingers through its grasses, plucked the purple flower, and walked toward grace.

Comments

Looking for the T[ea] said…
I love seeing the different ways we approach the same prompt! I hear your journey.
December 14, 2023 at 1:36 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Describe your childhood bedroom using all five senses

It had purple carpet, because Heidi liked pink and I liked purple. My bed had a soft comforter that was just two sheets sewn together with batting between, but I loved it and kept it through college. Lee Gebhardt wrote all over his chest with lipstick and spread eagle fell on it, so it was stained forever. He loved me, but I didn't love him because of that, plus he was a grade below me. I kept my typewriter in the closet. It had a satisfying click click click and bang when I typed. I'm sure the room smelled like White Rain, because that was the only hairspray I had late elementary into junior high. I'm sure it tasted like it too, because that stuff gets in your mouth. Heidi and I had some kind of speaker system we could use to talk back and forth. I kept it on my nightstand, and when we were supposed to be going to sleep, Heidi would crackle in with some nonsense and we would giggle until we got in trouble.
4 comments
Read more

Describe your childhood bedroom using all five senses

The problem lies in which bedroom, as my childhood was filled with arranging and rearranging. Never quite settled, never anything quite totally mine. I suppose my first room was the guest bedroom. Two single beds, first door on the right of the hallway, with the tiniest of walk-in closets, and, of course, the doorway to the attic at its outermost edge. A shared space with nothing that belonged to me except my body and the clothes I stored in my grandparent's spare dressers. The little closet, still full of clothes that hung on my grandparents bodies some days. I would sit in that closet and take in deep breaths. It wasn't that it smelled good or bad, just that it smelled. I didn't think then of it as the smell of the elderly, I thought of it as the smell of home. I wonder now, would I recognize that scent on my grandmother's body today? At night the blank walls lurched with dark, reaching shadows. While daytime frolics with the Ouji board were invigoration, the night he...
2 comments
Read more

Compliments

Your hair looks nice.      Oh, thanks. Ooh, I love your sweater.     This old thing, I've had it for years! Where did you find your boots?     Well I first bought them at . . . How do you always know what I need?     Blank stare. It's not that compliments aren't lovely, it's that they overwhelm. Receiving them an admission of self-righteous ego. That dirty word, pride. The thing to be shirked and shunned. Once the kindness floods the senses the balloon in my hand threatens to peel the soles of my feet from the firm ground. Lifting with tender force my heel, then footbed, until there's nothing tethering me to this earth but my twinkling toes. So I repel.      Decline.           Defer.                Deny. Planted, I must stay planted. For who has the right to soak in the joy of being? Who is entitled to bask in their making? Who . . . But Who taught us th...
2 comments
Read more