Creation Myths

I was born in late May, the rhododendron still in full fushia bloom and being craddled in arms every where upward bright sloshes of green across a blue sky-- the oak, the dogwood, the tulip poplar, the holly, the pine andthe japanese red maple tossing upward its own incongruent deep maron. I was born in the garden. 

I knew I had sinned by the time I was four, the nursery aids returning me to my mother to be disciplined, though I don't remember being punished. I had inherited her ornery-ness. 

I remember standing on a bench. Climbing a net. the scent of salt in the air at the ocean. I remember the first time my truth wasn't believed, something simple  a doll's lips being painted pink then red and my sister's denial. the stubborn seed rooting in me, that as a three year old, I would hold this memory like a closed fist, I would remember that I was right whether anyone believed me or not.

I remember rocks. hopping upstream. building dams. catching crawfish. swimming. my whole childhood bathed in green light. I don't remember winters. 

I started journaling in 1997. I was always craving more. a longing heart. I wanted wildness, adventure, to be compelled by duty or love or 'mission' 

I remember the flipchart books of missionaries. of jungles. of the unexpected. the lilting voices of sunday school teachers, the inflection for Lord and often help me. That incantation that carried into my own prayers help me to be good, help me to obey. The Chet Bitterman play, where nothing in the world seemed better to me than going to an unknown land, a mystery and learning a language, translating truth into the vast darkness. I knew I wanted to be a missionary, my mother wrote it in her Bible. I wanted to do something with my life. Something wild and daring and demanding.

My grandmother said, "but anyone can be a missionary, you could be president." It felt sharp-edged and hurtful to my thirteen year old ardor, I didn't realize it as her vision of a wider horizon, of all the things I desired beyond my small world of church and homeschool activities and the books I absorbed. 

My first gay friend told me to read the Perks of Being a Wallflower and I read it like sin, delightfully secret and mine, under the sheets at night. 

When I was sixteen I was ordinary again all I wanted was to kiss my best friend but I responded to the altar call to give up this lustful desire and 'date God for a year' devote my time and attention and hormones to Jesus. If only Jesus had let me know, he didn't mind.  Texas. The red dust. The heights. The spectacle of it all.  

When was I created? Where was the departure. Was it a book? A resentment as I saw the same type of kid from youth group to the Honor Academy praised for their extroversion, their appeal, their coolness while being told how to dress, how to act, how to minimize my womanly temptation? Was it for being confronted sitting on the sidewalk outside my friend's window to talk to him (we weren't allowed to enter their building.) Was it all the tiny cracks.

Till I could see the horizon my grandma saw. It took so much time. To create myself. To realize I was still creating.

It took so much time to remember the bright flashing green, that the world and my body were good, were good, were good. It took so much time to tempt God with my whispers of doubt and to hear the calm ascent of mystery, of questions-- to remember that I knew my truth even if others denied it. The lips were pink first, then she painted them red.