I was the kind of kid that would hide from other kids. It was nothing to do with hide and seek, I was just afraid of other people. My family would describe me as quiet and the few friends I had would probably say I was shy. Looking back now it’s surprising I had any friends at all. I did have one best friend in high school who I managed to open up with but part way through year 8 he moved to another country with his family. That was really hard.
I always knew that technically, I wasn’t but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I was alone in the world. As a teenager I was full of anxiety, constantly wrestling with the fear that if I said the wrong thing, or if I did the wrong thing, I would be dropped and abandoned by those closest to me.
And when you feel that way, rather than risk saying or doing the wrong things, the logical thing is to say and do nothing at all – stay quiet, don’t draw attention to yourself. Meeting people for the first time terrified me, turning up to social events filled me with dread and I simply couldn’t imagine getting to a point where I could bare my fragile soul to another person.
Looking back at those years fills me with a kind of grief. In some ways it feels as if I lost part of my childhood and missed many important experiences because of that fear. It’s sad to look back at your younger self and only now recognise how trapped you were at the time.
But things have changed for me now. If you met me now you wouldn’t recognise that description of a timid teenager struggling with loneliness. I’ve got a wide network of friends, a tight group of close friends and family and I’m married to someone I love and who I don’t hide from. I cope a lot better in social situations and the kind of fear I lived with as a teenager is a distant memory. Things have definitely changed for me.
To be clear, I still feel moments of acute anxiety from time to time and tend to prefer my own company. Like everyone, I say and do the wrong things now and again, I also find it hard work to be honest and vulnerable with those closest to me - but that imminent threat of being abandoned – that greatest fear underneath the other fears – that inner sense that I was alone in the world has changed.
Everything changed for me in a single moment in my early twenties. It wasn’t a moment of inner bravery that began to transform me for the inside out. It wasn’t even a moment of human connection, like falling in love with my spouse that began to transform my outlook.
The vital difference was the moment I encountered Jesus Christ. Even as I say that, it feels mad to me but it’s what happened and it has made the world of difference. I’d got to a point in life where I could recognise that me being in charge of my life wasn’t getting me anywhere. Long story short… I asked Jesus to step in and take over.
Becoming a follower of Jesus didn’t make like easy, it didn’t turn me into some kind of fearless social chameleon and it definitely didn’t empty my life of hard things and challenging circumstances. Life is still life. But I do remember the first moments after I prayed to Jesus that I wanted to accept his offer of a new life following him, that for the first time in my life I somehow knew that I wasn’t alone in the world anymore.
Becoming a Christian has been like waking up to a better reality – a reality where the God who made us, loves us and has not abandoned us.
Elliot
