Maybe [Jesus] felt the pressure of his mom’s faith. Maybe he struggled to trust his dad’s love for him. Maybe he was burdened by the expectation that he was supposed to be the one to bring a word of hope to those who were suffering. Maybe some days he just wanted to be a young adult who didn’t have to untangle all the layers of his birth story and early childhood experiences, and didn’t constantly feel beholden to this “purpose” he felt was more than he signed up for.
This year I’ve been reflecting a lot on my origin story: the events, people, circumstances, and messages that created my foundation. There are aspects of my origin story that I have come to realize are no longer serving me well, and indeed are holding me back: messages I internalized that have inhibited me in various ways, memories that have not yet been healed, perceptions and beliefs that have drastically shaped my decisions.
And today I began to wonder about how Jesus reflected on his origin story. We now know that early childhood trauma has long-lasting impact. And think about Jesus’ early childhood: born in a stable because his parents were without necessary social, medical and practical support, and then moving around for the first few years due to political turmoil. Not to mention being told that his dad was not really his father, and that his life was informed by this vision and conviction his mom had before he was born. At age 12, when he was just beginning to explore his own sense of self and sensing that he had a voice to bring to his community, his parents forgot him at church and didn’t even realize it for 3 days…and when they came back for him they criticized HIM for upsetting them.
Sure, Jesus was divine and so maybe had a particularly supernatural capacity for emotional intelligence and boundaries. But he was also human. And his human experiences in early childhood no doubt influenced his sense of himself as a teenager and as a young adult. Maybe he felt the pressure of his mom’s faith. Maybe he struggled to trust his dad’s love for him. Maybe he was burdened by the expectation that he was supposed to be the one to bring a word of hope to those who were suffering. Maybe some days he just wanted to be a young adult who didn’t have to untangle all the layers of his birth story and early childhood experiences, and didn’t constantly feel beholden to this “purpose” he felt was more than he signed up for.
A lot of epic stories involve characters with complicated origin stories. I guess at some point the superhero’s, and maybe Jesus as well, find a way to integrate their origin story into who they become as adults. They are never free from their origin. They are formed and informed by it. But they also choose in what way that origin continues to show up in their lives.
Jesus seemed to find stability in whatever he experienced in the wilderness and in his baptism. He was somehow able to name and claim that his life wasn’t going to be limited by the circumstances and expectations of his early childhood trauma. He was going to let those experiences invite him into the suffering of others in a way that led to healing and restoration.
And it cost him his life.
So maybe, as my dad’s favorite line from “Ghost in the Darkness” says: the struggle is the glory.