mysterious, as if a high school girl can even be mysterious.
I remember Dirk driving us somewhere on a date, and he would
begin to ask me questions about my childhood—my likes, my
dislikes—and I would answer them to a point and then stop. I
didn’t want him to get too close; I knew I couldn’t stand the
rejection, so I held him at arm’s length for a while. Yet Dirk was
determined to get to know me and not just stay on the surface
level of shallow, empty conversations.
Because I wasn’t happy with the way God had made me, I
could not understand someone else being okay with it. I felt
broken. I felt boring, and it made my hopeful heart sink. I felt as
if God had made a mistake when He made me, and I did not
want anyone to know, so I tried my best to cover it up and to
hide.
From the outside no one could see the inner turmoil I went
through on a daily basis. I felt as Paul did in 2 Corinthians 12:7
when he talked about his thorn in the flesh. I, too, have a
“thorn,” and I’ve begged God to remove it from me for years. In
my limited understanding of God’s plan for my life, I was sure
He had accidentally made a mistake when He made me. If only
He could change this one thing about me, I knew I could serve
Him much better.
I struggled a lot with learning to read in elementary school. To
this day I remember being in kindergarten and one of my
classmates knowing how to read the first day of school. I
remember the little girl sitting in front of us in the teacher’s
chair the very first morning of school and reading a book to the
whole class. I sat astonished that she could conquer that
amazing feat, and I remember the sickening feeling in my