If you were to ask my husband, “What events in Lori’s life shaped her into who she is today?” Or better yet, “… who she was before she began to trust in God?” He would not have to even think for even a moment before he answered. Not because I whine and complain about them, I assure you, but because they were so profound and damaging. I was not abused in any way nor have I had major trauma in my life. You know about the affair and that did change me, but I am referring to early life experiences. The ones that contort and disfigure your perception of yourself and change you into the person that makes poor decisions or believes they don’t deserve better so they settle for less. My experiences may be small and inconsequential compared to what others have gone through in their lives, I totally get that. These experiences have shaped me into who I became, influenced choices I made and help to shine light on why I so desperately wanted to be loved and accepted … by anyone.
There are quite a few events in my life that I can trace the majority of my screaming insecurities and poor self esteem back to. There are two major soul crushing events. We’ll save the second for another post.
The first was Sr. Una.
My family lived in Santa Maria, the birthplace of true Tri-Tip BBQ and Michael Jackson trials. Sr. Una was my fourth grade teacher at St. Louis De Montfort Catholic School. She was an Irish nun, about as pent up and angry as anyone could get and certainly more than someone who is supposed to be “married” to God should be. I have absolutely no idea why Sr. Una didn’t like me. I was new to the school, maybe my uniform was not regulation or maybe she despised, as much as I did, the Dorothy Hamill haircut I was sporting. Whatever the reason she decided that I was a moron. No, not Mormon.
I suppose if that were the case, I would understand her disdain … her being a strict Catholic and all. She decided I was a moron and changed my name to Featherhead. She would go back and forth from Featherhead to Moron depending on her moods. On a good day it was, “Featherhead, come do this problem on the board.” On a not so good day it was, “Moron, come do this problem on the board.” I asked her once why she called me those names. Her response was, “because you put the cart before the horse.” What?
At ten years old, I had no idea what that meant. I just knew that I must be a moron because one of God’s helpers thought I was, so God must have told her to tell me. Well, that was that, in my ten year old mind. The song says Jesus loves the little children of the world, but that was about our skin color … there wasn’t a song about God loving the dumb kids or the kids that disappoint. I wondered if God could love me even if I put the cart before the horse … whatever that meant.
Part 1│Part 2
