Safe

“The trees look like giant people!,” she exclaimed as she squeezed my leg and nestled up to my side. “They’re just trees, sweetheart,” I reassuringly replied as the wind softly whistled across the moonlit field behind our house. “What is that noise!?” “Those are just cicadas, dear.” “What are cicadas!? Will they hurt us!?” “No, they won’t hurt us. They just make lots of noise.” It was a Saturday night in October and my seven year old daughter and I were taking an impromptu walk around the block around 9pm.

I’ve always been a protective parent. There is something deep inside me which feels a sense of responsibility and purpose in guarding and comforting my children. I want my kids to feel safe and I want them to know that I will protect them at all cost. In fact, some might say I’m overly protective. Yes, I do keep track of what our kids are doing on the internet. I do care what they’re being taught at school. I make them wear helmets when they ride their bikes. It matters to me who they’re hanging out with. Call me crazy…I’m even concerned about what they eat. Of course, there’s a happy medium. It is indeed a scary world out there, but I’m learning that balance is key.

As an analyst, I’ve often wondered why I’m so protective. Is this fearful conscientiousness simply in my blood or do these tendencies stem from my own childhood? I certainly didn’t feel safe as a child. My early years were overrun by traumatic memories. I can still see my dad unveiling a dusty skeleton in the attic of the Château when I was four years old (apparently, a dead priest and a well known relic at the Château de St. Albain). I can’t forget the image of two police officers taking my father away in the night. I can visualize my dad yelling at my thirteen year old sister as she sat in a Victorian style chair as I hid behind a small wooden art easel in our Chalon apartment - all the while contemplating what it might feel like to jump out the 4th story window. I remember a silhouetted stranger lurking on the front doorstep late at night as my mother, sister and I shuttered in fear as we peered out the window in an upstairs bedroom. I can recount my mom carrying me as she ran down the chattering stairs of our Chalon apartment building. I recall looking out the rectangular rear window of a boxy gray Citroën car as it rumbled down the gravel driveway of the Château de St. Albain in Macon - one of the last in a sequence of memories during our hasty and controversial departure from France in May 1980.

Looking back, the first five years of my life play out like a thriller. Other missionary kids I know have very few memories from France and definitely nothing as traumatic. It is safe to say I still carry some anxiety in my core - and even get the shakes from time to time when I’m unnerved about something. As a child, I didn’t feel safe - at times physically and in most cases, emotionally. Questions weren’t welcome. I was typically hushed when I tried to talk about my feelings. I don’t recall seeing my mom cry - not once. I was cut off from emotion. I wasn’t even allowed to attend any of my grandparents’ funerals. There was no music in our house until I returned from college - yet the walls of my parents’ home were decorated with beautiful and elaborate paintings and calligraphies. There was color and imagery everywhere, but emotion in the Gegner household was nearly non-existent. One of the most striking examples of this is when I told my parents we were pregnant with our first child in 2011. Their mouths dropped and their eyes widened in shock when they heard the news. Meanwhile, my mother-in-law was nearly doing cartwheels and my father-in-law had a grin from ear to ear. Were my parents afraid I couldn’t handle fatherhood? Of all times, this would be a moment for celebration - yet the child inside me questioned whether I needed permission to feel what I was feeling.

Growing up as an MK, I often heard the words “grace” and “forgiveness.” Yet, I didn’t feel safe to fail. There was an unspoken, invisible limit - an undisclosed point at which my misbehavior would tip the scales. My sister stood as an example to me. She was the black sheep of the family - and it felt like we all knew it. She was the typical rebellious missionary kid - trying to find herself in a foreign country. She smoked and apparently hung out with shady motorcycle riding boys (and even offered me a cigarette when I was four years old). In fact, it was “her fault” that we had to leave France in 1980 (funny, according to my memories, it was my dad who was arrested). Through the years, my dad would often comment that my sister “needed to apologize.” I certainly didn’t want to be ousted like my sister. As a child, I lived in constant fear that like her, I was going to screw up one too many times.

Fast forward 40+ years and life is a radically different story. Ironically, in a twist of fate, I’m now the black sheep - yet I’m ok with it. This history…this rejection…these fears…have all made me who I am today. I am blessed with a new freedom. I’ve found deeper roots. And I can breathe easier outside of the toxic incubator. I now find my peace in God’s acceptance. I’m not afraid to express my emotions or share my weaknesses and I’m confident I’ll always be loved by my Heavenly Father - even when I trip and fall on my face. To top it off, I get to be the father of two awesome kids - wrapping my arms around them and assuring them that they’ll be safe in our love and forever in the love of Jesus.

Pictured above is one of my childhood drawings - a police car, an airplane and possibly the Château in France.