The Junior High dance and what I didn't know at 13

Degrassi's Voula getting ready for her first Jr. High dance

Sorting through old pictures, yearbooks, and keepsakes, I try to eliminate useless clutter.  I pick up a stack of pictures from my school days, one for every year.  Surprisingly, one is missing. 

Grade 7. 
All that I have is the class picture, a tiny frame of myself.  The picture is so small I'm not even sure it's me. 
I walk into the bright overhead light and squint with my nearly 40 year old eyes, peering at a 13 year old me. 

Hair cut into a strawberry blond bob, a smiling brace-face. 

I'm reminded of my first experience with imaginative prayer.  I had been listening to a sermon series Undivided.  One sermon ended with an exercise where you imagined yourself sitting at a small, round, child's table.  Beside you on one side is an empty chair, on the other a bag full of memories symbolized by snapshots or mementos.  Jesus sits down in the chair beside you so you can rummage through the contents of the bag together.  The idea being that Jesus redeems our memories.  Those things you learned about yourself that aren't true. 

I was sitting at the computer with earphones in, trying to close out the everyday noise of my house.  I desperately wanted to participate fully in the exercise, eager to see what memories would arise.  But it was too hard to concentrate.  I could picture myself at the table but when I tried to see Jesus beside me the image would fade to ordinary things or whatever else was trying to be first in my mind.

The timer on the stove called out it's warning, my laundry was done (it's downstairs in the basement and the only way to remember it is with the timer on the stove).  Frustrated, I pulled the earphones out and stomped to the washing machine.  I stopped to open the lid, pulling out the wet clothes and suddenly I was confronted with an image from my 13th year. 

I recall it so clearly.  Me, sitting near the school gym doors at my first junior high dance. 

I remember how long it took for me to get dressed to go.  I spent hours trying on different outfits in my room.  Sifting through a bag of hand-me-downs from my cousin Betsy.  I settled on a sweater and pants.  So unsure of how I looked, not confident in my appearance at all.   Hesitant to go.  Shy and nervous.  Junior high was hard enough as it was, I was maneuvering all of this without the guiding, loving hand of my mother.  Did I look okay?  Was I overdressed? 
I did work up the nerve to go in the gym and then sat in the light pouring from the windows of the swinging doors.  I didn't move the entire night.

In my imagination, I am standing farther from the doors looking at my 13 year old self.  Jesus is standing beside me as I look on.  Little me looks so lost and out of place.  All of a sudden I can remember all the insecurities, fears and uncertainties of those years.  Jesus puts his hand on my back and says to me, "I love that girl.  I was with her always.  I never left her side". 

Immediately the fear and insecurity I associate with this memory are gone.

The image leaves as quickly as it appeared. 

I stand frozen by the washing machine. 

I begin to cry, overwhelmed by the love I feel filling my being, from the top of my head to the ends of my toes. 

All of those times I wrote with tears in my journal, asking difficult questions, trying hard to make sense of my loss, those hours spent alone in my room - He was there. 

That seems too good to be true, but I know at 38 what I didn't know at 13. 

He is faithful. 

He is beautiful. 

I want to know Him better, to surrender all of my years, days, hours, minutes, and seconds to Him.

What wonderful things will I know about Him at 63, that I don't know now at 38?