A couple weeks ago I started a three-part series examining my life’s “Eden,” “apple,” and “heart” moments, as inspired by one of my favorite musicians, Brandon Heath. Part 1, “My Eden,” was a fantasy-laden post chronicling my glorious childhood days of bikes and games and empty parking lots with siblings and cousins.
Part 2, “My Apple,” isn’t quite as fantastical. It’s a little darker–actually, uh, a lot more. But before I delve any further, I’ll let my blogging sidekick Brandon Heath set me up once again.
Take it away, Brandon:
What’s my apple, you ask? What’s stealing my innocence? Well, Brandon and everyone else not named Brandon, let me tell you.
My apple is other people. Let me explain.
Growing up in Pennsylvania, I rarely if ever cared what anyone outside my large amazing family thought of me. Looking back, I didn’t really have any great friends as a kid–but I can’t remember that ever bothering me. I had a solid home life and extended family, and I was who I was at school and church with little concern over the foreign concept of self-image.
Then I moved to Georgia, far far away from my fantastic extended family, and suddenly this desire to be liked and thought cool and have great friends started sprouting, started meaning everything.
No longer was I that confident carefree creative little boy constantly playing games with his family; suddenly I was a scared seventh grader in a foreign school in a foreign state in a foreign region of the country, forced to grow up and change everything about my life when I didn’t at all want to.
And thus my innocence was forever lost, as those social anxieties still remain with me over a decade later.
That’s not to say I completely hated my 11 years in Georgia, as I gained countless positive memories, experiences, and friends there. But it’s startlingly revealing that my childhood in Pennsylvania was this Edenesque paradise I now long for as an adult, and that my move to Georgia clearly left me with some intrinsic sense of innocence lost.
How I yearn to rediscover that mystical place of belonging–where purpose and community collide, and where I can plant roots and dwell until I return to dust.
Last time I had some cool comments from people sharing their “Edens,” but that was a much easier topic to write about. It’s easy to talk about those joyous experiences that left you feeling blissfully carefree; it’s much harder to talk about when carefree became careful and innocence was stolen.
How about you? What is your apple? I’d love to hear your story, if you’d be so bold.
[…] is the final post in a three-part series. If you missed the first two parts, check out My Eden and My Apple […]