Because Grace Looks Nothing Like Co-Dependency

It happened when I was in seventh grade.

It was a field trip day. The fun kind. You know, where you do something educational like visit the state capitol, meet a state senator and then get turned loose in the historic district for lunch. The teachers give you a measure of freedom and your parents give you a measure of spending money. For a fleeting hour and a half you feel almost grownup, and you wish school could look like this everyday.

On that particular day, after browsing the old town stores, my girlfriends and I ended up in an arcade. I remember us huddled there around the skeeball lanes. We were thirteen and carefree, and our deepest conversation was likely something about which guy in our class we were most interested in “going out” with.

I had always felt like a bit of an imposter. A thirteen-going-on-sixteen year old dwelling in a ten year old’s body. I was painfully shy and at that particular moment I was certain I was the only girl in the class and probably the whole world who hadn’t gotten her period, her big growth spurt or a bra that wasn’t a trainer. But on this special field trip day, the heavens opened and the sun shone down on me and I was walking around with the cool girls. Everything that seemed to make me invisible didn’t matter to anybody else, and I forgot that I might have been different. I was one of the girls. One of the cool, mature, lip-gloss-wearing, uniform-skirt-rolling girls.

As we laughed and counted our tickets, an arcade worker approached us. He was much older, pushing 40 or 50. He kept inserting himself into our conversations, handing us tokens. He was flirtatious and creepy, and he would have been a nuisance except that free tokens seemed like they were worth tolerating him over.

Eventually we tired of playing games, so we spent our tickets and left. Only as we walked out, the arcade worker grabbed me by my shoulder, pulled me back away from my friends, and whispered in my ear, “If you will come back by yourself, I will give you anything you want from behind that counter.”

I felt frozen. My friends were unaware, still walking towards the door.  I was left standing there, smelling the stale alcohol on his breath, his hand gripping my shoulder heavy and tight. My lips couldn’t form a response. And even though I was thirteen and thought I knew it all, all I could hear was my mom’s warnings from childhood, “Never take candy from strangers.”

I robotically nodded my head at him and squirmed out of his grasp. I ran for the safety of my friends.

I felt dirty. I didn’t understand how I couldn’t manage to get a single boy in my class to notice me, but somehow the old smelly arcade worker noticed me. Wanted me. In a way that chilled me and disgusted me and chipped away a little piece of my innocence.

I didn’t tell my friends about it. I didn’t tell the teachers. I was too embarrassed. I thought something must have been terribly wrong with me. My friends were charismatic and beautiful and the creepy, arcade guy sought me out.

I told my mom a few days later. She immediately called the school. I still remember my teacher pulling me aside, “Why didn’t you tell me, Amanda? We could have reported it and gotten him away from kids.”

I was ashamed. Ashamed that I hadn’t possessed the courage to tell someone. Even more ashamed that it was me who he had tried to harm.

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Last week, I had a bizarre incident at the dentist. It started off as a less-than-tasteful pregnant belly comment from the dentist: “There’s no way you are that far along! Your boobs are bigger than your stomach! No, you are going to either have an undersized baby or you are going to carry past your date.” It was rude and hurtful, and maybe I could have shaken that one off, but she didn’t stop there. She turned to my  husband and said, “So how do you like your wife’s big milk jugs?” We were both wide-eyed and completely shocked. Who says that?! A few minutes later, she led me back to clean my teeth and said, “No, really, I don’t know what it’s like to have such big boobs. How does your husband like them?”

I was mortified, uncomfortable, and dumbfounded. This wasn’t a woman contemplating the pros and cons of implants; she made me feel dirty. I just wanted out of that conversation so I changed the subject.

I wish I could have formed the words to tell her how deeply she had offended me, how unprofessional she was and how if this was my work environment, her comments would qualify as sexual harassment. I wish I could have told her how anything and everything that my husband and I enjoy about one another’s bodies is sacred and private and beautiful and how dare she try to sully it with her unfiltered mouth and perverse mind.

But I was silent. I sat mute, frozen, not even completely sure why her words had so upset me. I went home, locked myself in the bathroom and bawled. It took a full day to realize that what had bothered me the most wasn’t that she insulted my ability as a woman to properly carry life and drew unwanted attention to a part of myself that I am insecure about, it was that she had victimized me. And I let her.

It took me right back to seventh grade standing frozen in that arcade.

I wanted to assume I was wrong about the dentist. Believe the best in people. Maybe she’s just a quirky dentist without a filter, maybe she was abused as a child, maybe… I wanted to take it on myself. Believe the same lie I believed in the arcade: there is something horribly wrong with me.

But I need to be real. What happened in that dentist office was dark and ugly. It was the taking of something beautiful and making it perverse.

Can I be honest and tell you I struggle with this? I don’t want to judge her. I want to keep my sunshine and rainbows glasses on and believe the best, excuse away her bad behavior, just pray for her. I don’t want to be the girl that fights just to fight and makes mountains out of hills. But deep down in my knowing place, I know I have to stand up right here. It’s hard and uncomfortable, but when I want to wonder if it’s really that big of a deal, I think of her making similar remarks about my own kids’ bodies that would sully their innocence and the beautiful purpose in their “private parts.” Oh no. Sometimes we fight the darkness on our hands and knees. And sometimes we call the dental board and file a complaint.

It makes me contemplate grace. I think sometimes we water it down, make it look something like doormat. But Grace isn’t co-dependency. It doesn’t make excuses for bad behavior. There would be no discipline in God’s love if that was the case.

God is both gracious and just… and you can’t separate the two. Justice and grace go together. They do. And together they demand that you take a stand for what is right, that you fight for justice and you fight for the voiceless, that you place the wrong-doing in the hands of those who are appointed to judge. After you have made your stand, you begin to put that seventy-times-seven forgiveness into practice.

Sometimes the place where grace needs to start is over that girl, the one who was silent and lost her words, who didn’t think she was worthy of a fight. She needs grace. She needs forgiveness too. And she needs to take a stand, better late than never.

The thing is, I felt like a freak of nature way back there in seventh grade, flat as a board and blooming later than November’s chrysanthemum. And this dentist managed to find that one thing about myself that I look at and see as some kind of anomaly now, larger than average; Victoria can’t hold my Secret; they’re out there and always out there for everyone to see no matter how high the neck line or black the shirt.

And making a stand, filing a complaint, it’s not about being a jerk or pulling grace out of the equation. It’s looking at me, the awkward girl, the quiet girl, the blend-into-the-background-except-for-the-bountiful-bosoms-that-would-still-poke-out-there girl. And loving her. It’s realizing she’s okay. There is nothing foul or disgusting about her body. Her purity is valuable and worth the fight.

It’s standing up for God’s plans and His handiwork and declaring to the darkness that I will not be clothed in shame. It’s instilling in my kids that they too are okay just the way God made them. Anomalies and all.

No, grace doesn’t lie down. Don’t believe that lie. Grace links arms with justice, and it stands tall and firm. Together they are not afraid to call the darkness dark. They fight the perversions of truth, and shine light on the lies of unworthiness. Grace is God’s unmerited favor but that doesn’t mean it’s blind to sin.

Have you ever had something happen where you wish you could have formed the words right then and there to stand up for yourself or someone else and instead you were silent?

By Grace,

Amanda Conquers

Psst… I know it’s been silent over here. I fear I was running short on words and needed to just be quiet. But now, I am looking forward to catching up on all the goings on… you know, for the few weeks that remain before I have a newborn! I missed this place and you. {Hugs}



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