13th Chair

Tears, tears, more tears. “Mom, I got stupid 13th chair!” My daughter received the news two days after her audition for chair placement for the annual “Strings in Concert”, featuring Rapid City’s 4th- 8th grade orchestra students. The chasm between her expectation of herself and reality was too big for her to cross.

Megan’s biological blood type is AB, but her personality blood type is 100% type A. She makes high demands of herself. If her straight-A report card is corrupted by a “B” cell, she quickly diagnoses the entire report card as malignant. “B” cannot stand on its own, nor be self-contained, it spreads and infects all of the “A’s.” Just as important to her is class rank. If she’s not towering over her seventh-grade core, she might as well be at the bottom. Though Megan has never had a private violin lesson in her entire life, she is accustomed to consistently holding one of the top three chairs in her school orchestra. You see, she must be at the top. Her sense of self-worth depends on it.

When Megan was in fourth grade, I initiated an email exchange with my mother. “Will you pray for little Meggie and us? She is so tired and stressed out. She got a “basic” rating in math yesterday, and that just won’t do. She has to be the best at everything and it’s wearing her out….we just need wisdom on how to handle such a strange breed that must perform well and be perfect at absolutely everything…..” My mom responded, “Of course I will……what you are describing to me is YOU (when you were young) and WE were the ones looking for direction with just as much concern as you have”.

Ouch. Yes, I guess this “strange breed” was actually birthed by me. My contribution to Megan’s blood type “AB” is the A. For four years in high school I clawed my way through pages and pages of books to be valedictorian. I had to. My failure to do so would have rendered me incompetent, worthless. I vied all four years of high school for vocal solo parts, chair placement in band, casting of school musical parts, and burned my finger prints into my piano repeating songs endlessly in pursuit of a “1” score at music contest.

Why this dual-generational need to jockey for position? Why the drive to achieve? Why the striving to be perfect? It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I realized these were even questions to be asked. That was also the time it became evident what years of grasping for first place had done to me.

Reeling the tape backward to 7th grade (Megan’s age) for me conjures up emotions of feeling awkward, inadequate, and sometimes, rejected. Like everyone else, I was born with a need to “get life” – to feel valuable, accepted. And I, like everyone else, will do whatever it takes to get it. By the first year of high school, I discovered a strategy that seemed to hold promise: Be perfect. Be the best at the things I showed aptitude for. For me, this was in academics and music.

This strategy actually worked well for quite some time. Hours of vocalizing propped me up to win pageant titles. My straight-A report card earned me multiple scholarships, and better yet, dinners with applause and my name in newspapers. I could add these to my title as President of the Honor Society, plus the seat I held in Student Senate in college to my first resume which landed me a job that made others jealous by the time I was a sophomore in college. All these things seemed to seal the value I had hoped I was creating; the liquid metal now set into a trophy I would carry with me into a lifetime of achievement. In my adult years, class rank and contest scores morphed into job performance and church involvement. A student’s reflection is seen in report cards; an adult’s, in resumes, certificates, positions. I have said “yes” to countless things because I didn’t feel I had any other choice, that is, if I wanted to get life. So, one “yes” led to another, and yet to another, and before I knew it, my life was the spin-cycle of my own strategy; a cycle of need, then grasping, then affirming the need, then starting all over again.

Of course, the execution of any strategy requires a power source and control over its tactics. As long as one has both, success is within reach. Ten years ago, this control began to slip from my hands. My power supply began to get cut off, one cord at a time. Severe insomnia, leaving me often in a zombie-like state, pulled the first plug. I barreled my way through it, determined that it would not interfere with all of the things I had said “yes” to. It became a little harder to keep this up when TMJ entered the picture. This was my first taste of chronic pain. Three years later, even now; chronic neck pain. My “yes” activities slowly became replaced with doctor’s appointments, chiropractors, physical therapists, medication follow-ups, injections, denervation procedures, and hundreds of hours of home therapy. All of this amounted to ten years of thwarted strategy. Ten years of grappling with my inability to get life in the only way I knew how. Ten years of watching my Tower of Babel fall, crumble, scatter.

This decade-long journey took me through various deserts of depression. I eventually found a spot next to an oasis and built a hut of acceptance. It’s not completely furnished yet, but I’m settled there. I don’t feel near the need to grasp anymore. I’m not compelled to say “yes”. God has slowly transformed my perception of internal value. I certainly will always have this tendency towards the wild animal of my old strategy, but it has been tamed through the bridle of pain. I’m learning to decipher between excellence, and its evil twin, perfectionism. Excellence seems to want the best from the resources God has provided at the present time. It tends to think people should come first. Perfectionism, on the other hand, wears a fig leaf to mask its true identity. It’s a smooth criminal. You roll out the red carpet so that it can slink through your front door like a model in Vogue. Then, it steals what you value the most – your energy, your joy, even your relationships. It rips you off. And others around you too.

This fall I had a conference with one of Megan’s teachers, Mrs. Gill. I realized I hadn’t come to this conference for Megan, but for me. I was beaming (and blushing) as she went on to tell me how courteous, helpful, and respectful Megan is to others; and that she exhibits strong leadership in her core. We then proceeded to discuss her grade in Science class. Mrs. Gill updated me on what her current grade was; I think a 97, and then proceeded to give me her perspective, which was very poignant. She told me about the extra credit that Megan could take advantage of to get that grade up to a 100%, but that she actually really admires the fact that she isn’t always driven to do it. “It’s a sense of wholeness of person,” she said. I went on to tell her about my performance mentality in school, and my attempts to encourage Megan to take a different path. She welled up with tears and offered up her encouragement. “Amy, you are breaking this pattern for the next generation,” she said. I was stunned. I walked away with the sense that God had lifted the veil to see that one of my greatest “achievements” in life will be the achievement of teaching my daughter that she doesn’t have to achieve. That life isn’t a contest. To do things because you enjoy them, not to win. You don’t have to be the best. The 13th chair isn’t any bigger than the chair in 1st place. It can hold just as much joy. What a strange thought from such a strange breed.