Dear inner child.
This is 36 1/2-year-old Joshua stopping by to say hello, check-in and encourage you.
Well, here we are in life. As I look back and think of you as a child, I see so many hopes, aspirations, and dreams. You were such a kid who cared so deeply about the day-to-day work you were committed to. As a kid, this meant learning and becoming the best you could be at whatever you did. This didn’t mean you would be the best at what you did, but you would find ways to learn and grow through the frustrations of not being good at something. I will say art projects were something that you never got good at. However, you found your way to understand art and bring beauty to the world around you. You discovered writing and the art of shooting a basketball.
Before getting ahead, I want to acknowledge your innocence and purity. As a kid, I learned that you only know the world around you and what you are being introduced to and exposed to. Fortunately for you, you had about a good seven or so years before you began to notice that there is an evil that lurks in the world and impacts people. Unfortunately, this evil affects those closest to you. At around the age of seven, you’ll begin to notice pain, hurt, trauma, and even death. Being so young, you will not know how to interpret what is happening, but over time, you will begin to internalize and begin to think it is your fault, and this will lead to a lot of self-harm and self-infliction.
As a young boy, you cared deeply. You would quickly comfort those around you, including schoolmates. You would soon find yourself in leadership roles in the classroom and school. You would discover tension, and a dichotomy that the joy school brought you would not be the same joy in your household. This part of your story gets muddy, and I still cannot see as clear as I would like. I call these years the middle years. - The years where innocence leaves, evil impacts you, and you begin to follow a new path that isn’t for you.
Something shifted in you during these middle years. A sense of rebellion began to take root in your heart. You began to think way beyond your years, which led you to start acting out, if you will. Going into your 8th-grade year, you told yourself that you had to be tough and you would take no nonsense from anyone. Perhaps what you had been experiencing sent a message that told you that it was now on you to figure out how to fight back.
Fighting back meant that your all-A grades would begin to slip, you would come home late, or you would not come home at all. You would start to get into fights with people at school. Your rebellion almost led to you being expelled. You threatened someone in the hallway. You said to this person who was once a friend that you would stab him. You even went so far as to act like you had a knife in your pocket. You pulled out a pencil, he jumped back, and you thought it was funny. Teachers had to pull you apart and take you separately to the office. At the office, the principal looks at you and says, “Josh, what has gotten into you this year? I never thought I would see someone like you in my office as much as I have this year. This doesn’t seem like the sweet Josh I’ve come to know.”
The principal was on to something. Your sweetness that everyone knew had now become bitter. You didn’t know what to make of it.
What is to make of what you had been feeling, experiencing, and processing? Looking back, this would have been a great time for a counselor, a pastor, or a mentor to step in and help you process. You didn’t know what you didn’t know. You were left to your demise and devices. This is not healthy for a young teenage boy growing into his adolescent years. You would come to find your environment would get worse, and you would be exposed to unhealthy outlets that would pull you even further away from the boy who had such a promising future.
In the deep pit of your soul, something was unraveling. There was a spiritual war going on. You had been exposed to religion and Christianity at a young age. In fact, at the age of six, you and your family would be baptized together. This would be one of your first encounters with God. You didn’t fully know what was happening with this baptism, but you knew this was good. You knew a good decision was made and felt good about it. Dressed in all white, soaked by the baptism water, a family united as one; this would be a memory you would hold on to when it came to your understanding of what it meant to “go to church.”
At 12, you would have your second encounter with God. This time, you were not with your family but a neighborhood friend. This encounter would be much different than the first encounter. This one would be what you would later know as supernatural. You found yourself at an altar call with about ten to twenty-teens. The minister had just finished explaining how to confess your sins, give your life to God, and ask for God’s power (the Holy Spirit) to come and live inside of you. He shared how he would come and lay hands (touch your head) and pray for God’s spirit to come on the inside of you and for you to get a new language to God called, speaking in tongues.
As scary or crazy as this man sounded, you were open to what he was saying. He came down the row. Teen by teen, he began to touch their foreheads and pray. You looked to your left and started to see teens you did not know say things out loud that you could not understand or interpret. As he got closer to you, your heart began to pound. Now he stood in front of you and said, young man, I am going to touch you and pray. You took a deep breath. You exhaled, and suddenly, something from the pit of your stomach began to rise, and out of your mouth came utterances that you never even imagined: A new language to God.
Shortly after this supernatural encounter. You and your friend went to another friend’s house late that night. You all were hanging out in the room, explaining what had happened. Your friend didn’t seem to care much. He was way more interested in watching some porn and masturbating. Something in your mind said this was wrong. You let them know that you wouldn’t stay and watch. You got up, left, and walked home late at night. On your journey home, you practiced your new language with God because that is what the minister told you to do.
Why do I share this supernatural God part of the story with you?
I share this because you’ll be marked and called by God for the rest of your life. You will be wrestling with dark and light. Even through your dark middle and adolescence years, you’ll still be trying to figure out how to overcome and be who God says you are while navigating the world around you.
So that’s it for now. I wanted to start here to jog some of your early memories of boyhood to teenage-hood, which will lead us into manhood.
I do want you to know that you are loved. Life hasn’t been easy for you. But you’re still here. You are still alive. Despite everything you’ve been through, you’ve had quite the life. I’ll share some of the incredible experiences and things you were able to do. You probably won’t believe half of what I have to share that came true. Often, I have a hard time believing them myself.
But you know, God is real, and He’s been with you and us every step of the way. He’s opened doors for us to walk through. He’s closed doors for us to walk out of.
I can’t wait to meet back here again and share more.
Thank you, inner child.
I love you.
Joshua
Love how you are speaking to yourself, seems therapeutic. Wish I could recall more of my childhood memories, I know I blocked them out a long time ago to protect myself. Thanks for sharing.