In the Apostle Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, he writes to them about a thorn in his flesh. Some theologians have claimed that the thorn was a moral struggle of Paul’s while others speculate that the problem was actually a physical ailment, like a loss of vision. The latter would make sense since it is recorded in scripture that Paul was blinded by a vision of Christ on the rode to eliminate what he thought were heretics, defectors of the Jewish faith. Paul laments the constant presence and pressure of the ‘thorn’. He continues that God’s reply to Paul’s request for removal was to admit that the thorn made Paul weak and that God’s strength was perfect for Paul’s weakness.
Why did Paul use the imagery of the thorn? Its something that makes you weak. It is something that causes pain. Its something that distracts your mind from solace and peace. I know this feeling all too well. As I grow older and continue to reflect on my life, I see two things. First, I see that my experiences were perfect for me to grow to be a very insecure, sad, and lonely person. Second, I see that the same experiences would drive me to figure out my purpose and to question if there was a purpose to my pain. In what follows I want to examine the thorns in my life and my search for explanation. I want to share my pain with you. I want to talk about the hole and the thorn.
The Thorns
Insecurity is defined by dictionary.com as “uncertainty or anxiety about oneself; lack of confidence.“. Well, upon reflection, many of my experiences have made me struggle with confidence and self-love even today. I am a fragile person. I take things very seriously, try too hard, and am mostly uncomfortable speaking and interacting with people. But if you understand my thorns, then maybe you’ll understand my hole. You’ll understand the dichotomy of a man that presents to the world a picture of strength and intelligence while internalizing a fear of failure and rejection, a fear of the unexpected and the uncertain, like a prisoner of his mind.
Thorn: Retained in First Grade
As a boy, I was extremely extroverted. Many people would often tell me that I was bold. Somethings never change. I don’t think that it was boldness as much as a sense of guilt hiding things from people, even when it was my opinion or thoughts. I think that this guilt still plagues me today. I don’t try to offend people and have learned that some of my personality traits ruin my relationships.
All of this began to change after my mother asked if I would like to attend public school. I had attended Lobias Murray Christian Academy, the first fully accredited, African-American and privately owned school in Texas. My mother was making a whopping $750 bucks a month and, most likely, couldn’t afford the tuition. Carried away by my imagination, I agreed to attend the public school down the street from my mother’s job at the same place back then. But there was a problem. Instead of being placed in 1st grade, the grade I was in when I transferred, I was placed in a kindergarten class after completing a full year of kindergarten. There was an age stipulation that required all children born after a certain month to be placed in specified grades. The grade specified for me at the time was kindergarten. I remember explaining to my mother about the situation and her instructions for me to speak to the administration at the time. She could not take off work. She was the sole provider for my family, a single parent mother, and made less than $1000 a month for our living expenses. I spoke with some people. I’m sure. But I don’t remember the conversation. What I do remember is that the first grade teacher, Mrs. Harris, gave me a test to see what I knew. There were two problems with this procedure. First, the school year had just began, but I remember being given math problems that were probably taught in first grade, but not in kindergarten. Second, I couldn’t complete the test. As fate would have it, Mrs. Harris’ husband became ill, and I never completed the rest of the test.
Years began to pass, and my childhood friends, those with whom I had been raised and attended grade school, entered later grades with the memory of taking classes with me. They had photos of our time together. Worst of all, I saw these kids, my friends, at church weekly. I began to lie, something which was always against my nature. Frederick Douglass once wrote that “the conscience cannot stand much violence.” But this was exactly what I did to my conscience. How could I tell them that we were not in the same grade? They would think that I had failed because I wasn’t smart or something. After all, I didn’t know myself what had happened and why. This lifestyle of lying persisted until my later years when someone with whom I attended church began telling people that I wasn’t in the same grade as they were. I can’t explain this constant sense and tendency in me to cringe and curl up inside in front of my friends that I valued and thought the world of. On the one hand, I wanted desperately to betray myself as being on their level; however, I felt inferior, less than, and worthless.
Thorn: Poverty
Abraham Maslow is famous for his diagram of basic needs within a pyramid. The bottom need is the need for food and shelter. Both of these needs were very real to my family growing up. We would often lacked food but especially when my mother decided to quit receiving government assistance in the form of food stamps. One of my earliest memories, probably about 25 years ago, was receiving the food stamp in order to purchase a snack from the store after school. I recall entering a grocery store located on Ann Arbor in Dallas, TX. I walked in with the food stamp, an actual colored piece of paper formatted to resemble actual money. But food stamps were much smaller than actual money if not differently colored. Food stamps were more akin to the fake money that came in the famous board game Monopoly. I recall not understanding that the stamp couldn’t buy me whatever I wanted and seem to recall the cashier or clerk informing me that I could only purchase food with the stamps. The cashier, although she meant well, told me that I couldn’t make the purchase with what I had. In my mind, this meant that what my mother had given me for nourishment was not as valuable as I would have wanted it to be. I seem to recall a seed of shame that became associated with government assistance on that day, especially since I didn’t know something so obvious and was taught about my status publicly that day.
As I grew older, so did my mother’s resolve to not lean on the government for support. At one point, she decided that she would no longer apply for government assistance or she was no longer qualified. Whatever the case, we didn’t have food stamps. I think it was the former. After we stopped receiving food stamps, I recall our diet changing drastically. I was always skinny but it was during this time that it was no longer my choice. I also learned to appreciate food during this time. It seems like it is easy to take things for granted that are present to us, as if lack is a doorway to gratefulness. Often, we would have some ingredients for a meal but never quite all of them. We would have bread without meat, cereal without milk, Kool-Aid but not sugar. I recall my eldest brother frying bologna to make a sandwich. I myself didn’t know how to cook, so I lacked the luxury. Even so, I could never figure out what the big deal was. After all, it was still bologna. I must admit that once the bologna was fried in the pan, and a bubble bulged from its meaty center, that those sandwiches to us seemed delectable indeed. I recall us driving to a church that gave away free food and getting some powdered milk. We were excited since we knew that we had cereal. The milk would be a God-send. It is unfortunate that the powdered milk we acquired had the consistency of water and a color closer to it than milk as well. The taste was also like pouring water in a bowl of cereal. I also recall learning what the ‘concentrated’ meant in ‘concentrated orange juice’. I recall pouring some in a cup and later spitting it out. I remember syrup sandwiches during this time. All you needed was two slices of bread and some syrup. You pour the syrup in the middle of the two slices. And. Whala!
I seem to recall a conversation about section 8 and my mom saying that she would no longer accept section 8 or apply since they tried to hold people down. “They try to tell you how much money you can make,” she complained. “They try to tell you where you can live,” she continued. We once spent a span of time living with my aunt, which changed the trajectory of my teen and adult years. More on that later.
‘Hand-me-downs’ is a name given to clothes that you don’t buy but receive from one’s older siblings or strangers. The notion is that these are handed down from someone who wore them first. In my case, I received hand-me-hand-me-downs. The clothes that came to me typically were outgrown by the person who gave them to us, my eldest brother, my older brother, and then myself. Whenever I see an older picture of myself, a picture from my childhood, I am very often in clothes that were very large for me. These clothes, though hand-me-downs, frequently brought me comfort. I could hide my body in these large clothes. People couldn’t see me through the clothes. My rather large clothes were my way of hiding the mental, emotional, and physical scars that I lived with all my life.
Our lack of money was also proven during the weekly church visits. After the services, very often some organization within the church would sell food. There would be nachos with chili and cheese, pickles, canned sodas, pound cake, etc. Many times large crowds of people would hurry to the “kitchen” in order to purchase the food. Excitedly, I remember many times walking with the crowd of people to the kitchen. I don’t know why I was excited. I couldn’t afford anything! I would go just to see the food. I wanted to see the cheese paint those nachos like yellow paints the sun. I wanted to see them poor the savory chili onto the nachos in a circular motion, reaching up from the crock pot that held it. People would stand in a line, so that you couldn’t see that counter until you moved up to it. I would make my way through the line simply to stand there and look. After some time, I would turn around, realize that I wasn’t able to purchase any of the food and that no one would buy me any and walk up the stairs to the church bus. There was always multiple emotions present in me at any one time. I think that this was the cause of my life-long struggle with anxiety. I would feel hunger, a desire to beg for food, yet shame that I could only afford the food by begging. Our church was kind enough to offer bus services to those members who lacked cars. The church purchased several vans that would go and pick up the families who lacked transportation. Among the children, riding the church bus became a symbol of a lower class of member. “You ride the church bus,” was typically a question asked of you by those kids seeking to embarrass you. You couldn’t deny it either. The buses were always parked right outside the church. If you denied it, all your accuser had to do was walk out the front of the church and watch you get onto the church bus. Many a days my brothers and I walked to the church bus in shame. Its humorous now to me but it was anything but funny at the time.
Holidays were a clear demonstration of our lack of money. Birthdays were too. Where most kids gave their parents lists of gifts they wanted. We wouldn’t even think to ask for Christmas gifts or expect anything for our birthdays. I remember one year where my mom surprised me with cup cakes for my entire class. This was one of the only times I recall a birthday party. Whenever we would go to the store, we learned to look and not expect to receive. But my life would receive wonderful holidays from families who would adopt us many times. I had one coat, a large red coat, that I kept and wore all the way until I was married, at which point I was encouraged by my wife to throw it away.
Thorn: My Father’s Addiction
The earliest memory of my father’s presence at home is a memory of my dad and mom arguing about how to whoop me. A ‘whooping’ is a colloquialism used to indicate physical discipline. My mother, apparently, preferred a more antiquated approach of using a belt on my exposed buttocks, while my father wanted to spare me some dignity and provide discipline with my drawers in tact. I recall that this was the first fight that I experienced between them. Their argument was discipline enough for me as I walked in between them and cried, “stop fighting…stop fighting.”
My father was a child of the late seventies and early eighties. He grew up in the western sector of Dallas, TX during a time where the city of Dallas had built projects for low-income citizens. My father was a fighter from a young age. He kicked out of several schools for fighting. One of his charms was his musical talent. At the age of seven, supposedly, he walked to a piano of my grand-aunt and began to play without having lessons. He later would learn to sing and play, something he did for Johnny Taylor and others. At some point in his life, he was introduced to cocaine. He has told me that it was while playing in night clubs for Johnny Taylor that he was introduced to cocaine. He said that they would walk around with cocaine on trays and serve it in some of the night clubs that he played in.
I was too young to recall the missing household objects that would disappear as a result of my father’s addiction; however, the long periods of time he was absentee, the fights, the lack of employee, and jail and prison time were enough to alert me. I came to hold a grudge with my father. This too was a complicated set of emotions for me. On the one hand, I felt that my father was a good person. He would always talk about the Lord and God with my brothers and me. When he attended church with us, I would feel like a whole was filled. I felt complete, but this practice, like many other, he failed to continue. My father was not a consistent person. He didn’t stick to anything. I saw this as a result of him living with us and not keeping his job. The cycle was always the same. My mother would let him into our house to live with us after he left jail. He would promise to be a better person. He would get a job making little money. But, after a short while, he would stop working. He would have some excuse why he wasn’t working there anymore. Next, he would begin to stay home. He would eat all of the food in the house why we were away and walk around the house and interact with us as if he was constantly angry. This was always a source of frustration for me because the next steps in the pattern were theft, being absent for days, and next, jail time. He would steal our Christmas presents when we had them and anything of value to pawn for crack. I think that I began to unconsciously distrust authority because of my dad.
To revisit the Apostle Paul, thorns are things that we don’t want to experience. They are uncomfortable. They cause suffering and pain. But Paul concluded that the expression of his thorns were an outlet, a way out. He wrote that when he boasted about his weaknesses, then the power of Christ rested on him. What are your thorn? Leave a comment. As always, thank you for reading.