Becoming a Boy

 I've been reflecting on when it was that I went from feeling like a legitimate man and I have to say that when I dated Noel, when I pursued her I felt like a man.  I went after it and I got it.  In fact, I got it more than I ever dreamed I would get it.  I wasn't going after that, I just liked her and thought she was intriguing.  Man, I can almost smell her now.  I had some amazing nights with her.  Some amazing afternoons with her.  She wanted me and I wanted her.  And she was so cool about it all.  Never that complicated.  

Then she went off to a backpacking camp and came back a changed person.  I longed for her to get back and make out with her again, but she had other ideas.  She basically broke up with me.  Those next few weeks and months were really tough.  I had football to focus on but I was physically starved after the sexual activity that we did.  Man, that was tough.  I had a lot of desire that was not fulfilled.  It was hard to deal with and I had no one to talk to about it.  Well, maybe Jon, and maybe Eric.  But I think that was about it.  

Then the football injury happened.  Boy that was a low point.  Walking through Lafayette High School in a sling for weeks on end.  

Then basketball started and I couldn't even hardly lift my arm, let alone the slowness I felt in my legs.  If was humiliating.  During practice the one senior who was the football quarterback, I forget his name now, schooled me by driving right by me, I knew I had really lost something.  I had always been amazing on defense and this time my legs just let me down.  

Then there was the bus ride with Nate Ross.  We really connected.  Then he sort of just dropped me.  I was crazy about Sarah Moore and he was excited for me.  Then our friendship just kinda grew cold.  That was tough.  

Then there was my senior year when I would pack my lunch and sit by Stephanie Noyes and her friends each day.  I wanted to reach people with this amazing message of the gospel that had literally changed my life, but that time at the lunch table just made me feel like less of a man, and more like a boy.  

Eventually I found a home again at summer camp, at camp mo-val.  God that place was a source of comfort and hope for me.  Spending the summer there was like giving me a place where I belong.  I still felt like and outsider a lot of the time, but I also felt like I was part of a community.  I can hardly remember my first summer on staff, with Tiffany, and Kristy Sailor, and Brian, Kit, Kevin, Marc, Sophie, and the other girl from Brittain, 

At SBU I felt like such a man being part of the bible study group.  It was even good for a while the semester after Steve left and Matt and I let the group when we met at our apartment.  Then I tried to lead it into my post-senior year and it just fell apart.  That meeting where I boiled like 30 hot dogs and only 3 or 4 guys showed up made me feel like an incapable boy.  That was a tough semester.  That was the semester that I met Summer.  The night I also lost my virginity to some girl I met at Jordan's Creek when she invited me to go home with her, but I turned her down.  And my respect from the other guys at SBU must have completely ended, mostly ended.  And I felt like a boy trying to find my way.  

I was on house staff at ECH.  Not the kind of work I saw myself doing with my business degree and wanting to do camp administration.  But I was convinced by Caroline to take the job.  

I felt like such a man getting the job at St. Peter's.  Susie must have saw that.  Must have been attracted to that.  The folks at St. Peter's... well, it was just the right fit at the right time for those families.  Maybe it was a God thing at the time... Then it all went sideways after a while.  After I started learning about the Bible and about church history.  And Susie and I started to drift apart.  And, I didn't realize it but I was becoming a boy.

And so now, here I am with a wife who has no respect for me.  I'm this little boy, or at least a junior in high school, trying to become a man.  But I'm stuck here in this mind of an 11th grader.  

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