the Dark Knight

The reason I share this now is not for shock or anything other than to point toward Hope and what God is doing in my life...This is a piece of my story....

It started one afternoon as evening was approaching.  I was eight years old.  My Dad was angry at me...I knew I was going to "get the belt."

I could hear his heavy footsteps approaching..directly coming for me up three flights of stairs.  There was no mistaking his approach.  It was time.

I pleaded but it fell onto deaf ears.  The standard approach was to drop your pants and shorts and bend over the bed with hands in front of you.  This is very unnatural and offers no defense...no matter how much of a rule follower you might be, this is difficult to keep this position while someone whips you with a belt repeatedly.

I started flopping around, writhing in pain ...screaming, crying, yelling...my face hit part of the bed frame.  That would cause a "shiner."

My Dad stopped and took me into his bathroom to clean it up.  Somehow in those next few minutes instead of being cleaned up I had my head slammed into his sink.  Now I had two black eyes and a swollen bloody face.  My body bore the whip marks of the spanking as well.

The final step of this humiliation was to be taken downstairs into the living room...the screen door was propped open...my Dad has something under his arm...he showed it to me, unzipped a suitcase...He proceeded to throw it out the front door and halfway across the front yard.

"Now you can leave this home with what you came into this world with." I was smacked with a cruel reality I had no answers for.

Obviously I had come into the world as everyone else...with nothing.

I made a few decisions in that moment...standing naked on the front porch...hoping nobody saw me in that moment.

I decided:
If these people are going to beat me up...I need protection...
I will buy my own clothes somehow so that I will have something to take with me if this happens again...
I will stash away food for the times being sent to bed hungry as I cried out...but nobody answered...


Enter...my reaction...

My heart disconnected from them that day.  Emotionally I left home that day.....

In my heart I only would give the look...what is the look?  The serious, no smiles, no joy...serious look of someone who is emotionally disconnected and only will give "steely" glances of ice.

It did serve to protect what was left of my shattered heart.  In some ways it saved what was left of me.  When someone young goes through something that is irrational and makes no sense...they either find a way that works for them or they don't survive. This is a fact.

I remember heading out to school and being questioned about what had happened to me.  I simply told the truth..."my Dad did this...it was punishment for what I did--I deserved it."  There's honest truth...the school wanted my parents investigated.  After they had been questioned I was yelled at for what I said because "if they take away your brothers and sisters it will be on you."  I didn't understand...I had spoken the truth in an innocent honest way.

I pulled the darkness closer...slipped the mask on a little longer this time...feeling the protection..focus..purpose...protection that that it offered...not realizing what I was giving up in the transaction.

The defining events from the next few years pushed me further towards the darkness and the protection and answers it offered.  The teasing...any other issues in relationships quickly became a part of the narrative I was creating. I worked far too many hours for a kid in school...but I was determined to have money for fear of the flying suitcase - Act II.

For those looking at me from the outside it was a curious thing.  Some guys would want to pick a fight simply because they thought I was trying to act tough.  Act tough???  I was surviving...simply surviving.  The fights that were picked ....the teasing, constant attacking or ganging up on me from other guys from their own insecurities just further pushed me into the shadows.

Pretty soon..by 15...this is who I wanted to be....... Who I truly was--was never a thought... there were enough people that liked some things about this character...and some that hated him....and he wasn't going to be hurt by either camp.

The disconnected darkness gave me a freedom to speak up.  It wasn't all bad.  It made me courageous enough to speak up for what was injustice...no fair...bullying of others would not fly near my radius of darkness....

For those that I offered protection and friendship...some even saw glimpses of the real me underneath and were true friends.

For others they used my darkness for what they could get from me...others still doing acts that could only further push me out to the shadows.

By the time I reached college I barely was a trace of who God had created me to be.  I carried these wounds all my life.  I've tried to lay these things down these past few years.

If it weren't for my son, I probably would have continued "as is" to the grave.  The deep need to give him more than who I had been to that point...spurred me out of my comfort zone and out of the darkness to stand back and look at the wounding...who I have become...and who I truly am.

It's truly impossible to convey the entire story and the commitments we make as we grow to survive in the story we are given.

I am giving up the protection of this persona that has protected me for so long. It doesn't mean I don't visit him from time to time when stress or pressures become overwhelming.  It does mean I am aware of who he is and what happened...I am conscious of all of it.  With that in mind...that is not all of who I am or what my legacy is.

I buried the dark knight...
It doesn't mean I won't mess up things in my own life...after all, he was here for a very long time-and in his defense--he did protect me.

I do like things about him...
His sense of right and wrong...justice,  his lack of fear...sense of courage, his battling against all odds.

Perhaps some of the things that I admire I will find to be true of myself as well.

I do know that even the Dark Knight spends much of his time as Bruce Wayne...a philanthropic, generous man who shares his resources with many in need.  There is much to be said of living in that side of this equation. He also lives in the light of day.

I can't say that I will never put the mask on again ever...I can only say I will never take on the darkness intentionally. I will never make an agreement like I did so many years ago.