Lousy Excerpt 5

I'm in Israel for two weeks (which is weird and very cool) so I can't write new posts. Next week I'm having a guest blogger (don't miss it) but this week I thought I'd give you a few fun and/or (hopefully) thought-provoking excerpts from my book that just came out. So here you go:

The bible says light exposes lies, but sometimes truth comes out in the dark. It did that night. A couple of minutes after saying good night, when you’re not sure whether the other person has fallen asleep, Jen said my name. “Vince?” I opened my eyes. “Yeah?”

“Vince, I don’t like you.”

I closed my eyes.

How do you respond to that? It wasn’t that I didn’t care. I did. But I wasn’t surprised.

My father wounded me. And I, like Adam and Eve, covered up. I put walls between myself and God, and between myself and other people. It’s challenging to love through a wall. Only rarely did I experience God’s love, and this left me without much love to offer.

I grew up thinking I was a bad person. How could I not? I heard it all the time. I had been tattooed a bad person, and it was easier to just live it out.

I was angry. Years of suffering abuse and never doing anything with it left me seething inside. I was a Christian now, but I was a Christian with anger fantasies. I’d imagine dragging some guy who cut me off out of his car, shoving him into a microwave, and watching his head explode. Then I’d sigh and smile.

I grew up learning from my father’s example. Even though I hated that part of him, I now had very little patience or tolerance when people made mistakes. I became the very thing I detested. I was never as emotionally abusive as he was, and I was never physically abusive at all, but I had a way of making people feel stupid when they screwed up.

And more than anyone else I did this to my wife, the person I loved the most. She would tell you I’m exaggerating how bad I was, but … she’s nice. I was not the husband I should have been. She deserved better. If she made mistakes I let her know about it. I made it obvious that I was angry, that she never lived up to my standards.

And so, when she told me she didn’t like me, it wasn’t like she was first on the scene with breaking news. I already knew.

[want to read more? buy the book!]

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