The Spy Who Knew Me Well

“I have been many people over my 85 years, and not all of them have been pleasant.”  So said author and former spymaster John LeCarre in a recent interview with Fresh Air host Terry Gross.

LeCarre is the author of numerous books, most especially known for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and as the creator of fictional spymaster George Smiley.  He is also a former agent with British secret services MI-5 and MI-6.  No doubt, his varied career has given him ample opportunity to be many people – and the expectations of his vocation (as a spy) have prompted some behavior he would not like to repeat.

But, isn’t that true for many of us? I know it is for me – but in a much less dramatic and more mundane way.  While I cannot reflect on 85 years – just yet – I can look back on a lifespan almost 66 years. When I do, I see that “I have been many people… and not all of them have been pleasant.”

That reality has come back to me episodically over the years, perhaps like a Ghost of Christmas Past.  I am reminded of some of my actions – known and unknown – that make my skin crawl and potentially put the lie to who I am today.

I have said frequently that I would not go back to my teenage years for all the money in the world, even though many my age – and many of the folks I grew up with – would do that in a heartbeat.  I cannot fathom that wish.  I was so awkward and immature at that stage of life, that I would never seek to repeat those days.

As a young person, I was uncomfortable in my own skin. I can look back on those days and see the ways I tried to cope with or adapt to those feelings of inadequacy.  Trying to be someone, alcohol, anger, neediness, ridicule of others, manipulation, projecting self-importance, ambition – were among the traits of my life at that stage.

Trying to fit in to a world that was not my size took its toll.  In a time I did not understand at the moment, it all began to come crashing down around me.  It was incredibly painful and it did not pass quickly.  But in that difficulty were the seeds of my redemption.  Wholeness would ultimately emerge from that time, like a butterfly coming out of its cocoon.

As C. S. Lewis wrote, there are memories that bless and burn.  But over the years, my intent has been to grow beyond those teenage years and those later years as a young and maturing adult.

By the grace of God, I experienced healing, on many different levels.  The factors which contributed to that healing came almost simultaneously.  First, there was a transformative relationship with Nora, which caused me to refocus my life and allowed me to find love which I had been seeking.  There was also the presence of God in my life – a presence which I would know only fragmentarily, “here and there, now and again.”

Over the years, those relationships grew – with Nora and with God.  We were blessed with two wonderful children – sources of unspeakable joy.  Our relationship to God grew through our connection to the church.  Life blossomed, old compulsions and ambitions began to shrivel, and a new direction began to beckon.

The past thirty years, while not always easy, have been times of immense blessing.  As I told my sister, Anna Helm, yesterday, I can look back and give thanks for all of life.  I am able to see that each step, no matter how painful, awkward, or potentially destructive, has led me to this moment.

There have been many friends and colleagues along the way – anonymous agents of grace.  I have learned that, perhaps, the words of A Prayer Attributed to St. Francis have meaning in my life: “For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

The old saying is true: “I am not what I should be, but thank God I am not what I used to be.”

One of the episodes from Prairie Home Companion has Pastor Inqvist saying, “that whenever a preacher admits to being human, the congregation immediately wonders, ‘Who is he having an affair with and how long has it been going on?’”  I am glad to say that my life and ruminations are much more mundane, but profound, nonetheless.

My journey thus far has a lot in common with a sermon I preached recently.  It focused on Charlotte Elliott, the bedridden 19^th century English women who wrote the hymn, Just As I Am.  I used to ridicule that hymn, but now it has poignant meaning to me.  In preparing my sermon, I listened to the music from the YouTube performance of the mass choir at one of Billy Graham’s crusades in England.  The soft, gentle truth of that hymn almost brought tears to my eyes. 

I had lived it.