Gobbled Up
I remember standing in front of our fireplace for a picture – alone – in my Speed Racer pajamas. I guess Mom thought I looked cute or something because after her Kodak flash flashed, she said to me: “I could just gobble you up!” If you are from the South, you may have heard that expression drooled from the mouths of doting grandmothers or aunts or moms as a way of showing affection, as if the object of their affection – in this case me in my pajamas – was like a cheeseburger or a buttered bisquit or a piece of pumpkin pie. A phrase of endearment.
But the effect of those words, for me, was complicated and conflicted – even at 4-years-old. On the one hand they made me feel good – wanted – assured of a mother’s love. But on the other, they made me feel a little sick and a little used. Because, you see, while my mom didn’t know she was doing it, I had already learned that I existed at a deep level to make her happy. To sate her emotional appetite. I was her cheeseburger. The one she needed that day in my pajamas. I suppose it was because she wasn’t getting those needs met by my dad.
My father had the same desires I had – to be wanted and have worth. And often my mom couldn’t give him that. He was a pastor, primarily, because he needed to know he mattered and that was the vocation he chose that would help him know that. And Mom hated it. Hated the pastor’s wife role where she was an actress on the stage of his insecurity. When she would perform well, she was welcome. But when she felt jealous or resentful or needy, she was written out of his script, leaving her to turn to me to meet her needs.
He did the same thing to me too. He didn’t realize it, but he modeled for me the maddening methods of becoming appetizing day after day. Be funny. Be sensitive. Be strong. Be charismatic. Make people want to “gobble you up.” And I was a bit player on his stage to that end too, reinforcing the reason for my existence. When I was funny, I was a welcome participant. When I pitched a good game or told a good joke or took the lead in the church play, I was appetizing to him and for him. But when I wasn’t, I wasn’t. And he would write me off his stage that day as well.
And so I learned, way back then, that’s who I was to be. One to be “gobbled up”. If I wanted to feel wanted, that was the way, even if it meant feeling used along the way. Looking back now, 50 years later, I see this set the course of my existence, always trying to make myself appetizing to have worth.
I grew up looking for any way I could to be wanted. I had to perform to be wanted. And so I learned to throw a curve ball and how to flirt and how to be the kind of friend my friends parents wanted them to hang out with. I was never a great student, so I compensated with humor and sensitivity and charisma…just like Dad. After surviving school, I set out to craft an adventurous life and to make a million dollars and to write the great American novel – that, I thought, would make me an appetizing human. But when those things produced mediocre results, I needed something else.
Then Jesus caught me. And I became a pastor. Just like Dad.
To be sure, I was very different than Dad in that calling. While Dad used it as a stage to feel wanted, I did feel wanted – finally – by Christ. Even in my mediocre performances. He wanted me on His stage and I knew it. When I would preach His Gospel, even if the sermon wasn’t well received by others, I knew a love I had never known but had always looked for. Unconditional. Secure. Everlasting. He wasn’t gobbling me up at all.
But as the years in ministry progressed, I began to recognize that that old familiar pattern of making myself appetizing lingered and the pastoral vocation fed it. I knew the conversations that were happening in the cars of my congregation on their way home from church: “What did you think about his sermon today?” And in the cars of my elders on their way home from a session meeting: “How do you think he is leading our church?” And in the cars of the families we had over for dinner to practice hospitality: “Did you like the food he made?” It wasn’t their fault. Those are normal, human questions. Most of us are always evaluating others. But because of the security of Jesus’ love for me, it shouldn’t have mattered much. But it still did. Because I still needed to be appetizing if I was going to matter and find worth with them. Because I felt, for some, if I wasn’t appetizing or performing up to their desires – I’d be spit out and rushed off the stages of their lives in a heartbeat.
Do you feel gobbled up? Like your whole worth depends on how you perform or if people like you and want you on their stages? Do you find yourself longing to be wanted as you are and not according to how appetizing you are for them? Are you stuck in the maddening methodology of meritocracy? If so, there is a better more beautiful way in Christ. A way I’m continuing to try and live into. A way to meet your deepest needs without needing to be used. And a way of ultimate worth that you don’t need to earn but is given unconditionally. Hit me up if you want to talk about it.
Jay