Train Journey

I.

I was four-years-old the first time I thought outside of myself. Our pre-school had an interesting playground, in the era before playgrounds came in primary colored plastic and sat close to the ground. We had a metal train sitting off to the side in the tanbark, and we would sit there for a few minutes at a time, pretending we were on a journey, before our energy transformed the peaceful trip into a train robbery. One fine morning we sat a little longer, I remember because I had time to think.

The other kids, I think, were talking, which was what kept us there. As usual, I had little or nothing to contribute, so was feeling the outsider again. Why? Why me? I did not know who I was asking, but I knew there was someone to ask this one question, and only one who could answer. Surely there were others you could have brought to this life who would have done a better job with what was alotted to them, who would have been happier and made others happier than I am doing now. So why did you chose me? Could you not have left me alone where I was before this? I almost cried. I could have gotten away with crying because I cried once every morning between five minutes to an hour after my parents drove away. At least that cry was explainable. This question and feeling of deep loss and loneliness, I knew, was not shared by the giggling group around me.

“You’re It!” one screamed as he hit me and everyone scrambled in different directions. The question was forgotten for the rest of the day, but would never leave me as I walked through my school years lonely, frightened, and hyper-analytical. I was It, alright, I was chosen to live a life I did not choose, and I lived it running around trying to pass my curse to someone else so I could be like everyone else. But I was a slow runner, lacked strategy, and lived life in defense, so I was stuck in the position to which I was born.

II.

“But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?” [Romans 9:20-1]

A few years later I secretly began to assimilate the ideas I heard in my parents’ conversations. I believed that we had some choice in who we belonged to, which meant that I had some choice in being a part of the family I feared. It also meant that I had been given an opportunity to reconcile with these two people whom I might have offended in a previous life. I clung to this idea to bear the unbearable wounds I collected each year.

Hope wore thin, and the conclusion that eventually life would become worth living after the reconciliation (which I thought would come about through constant service and compliance) was not enough. I started asking why I, or anyone, would chose to put our family together, to put three people together through an unusual chain of facts and events to produce so much hurt? I started to think I had nothing to do with the decision.

Now I am told that I am not supposed to ask questions like this, at all. The fact that I never arrived at satisfactory conclusions to the questions that started on the train were probably part of the journey that led me to Christ. I had hoped, of course, to find some answers in Christ to my questions. I find not answers, but redemption and grace and hope--let this be sufficient.