He sidles up next to me, slips his hand into mine. "Mommy?"
"Yes?"
"Am I a good person?"
"Yes, of course!"
But his face is troubled and I can tell he's trying to work something out in his mind. I squeeze him to me. "What is it, Ju-Ju?"
Jude gazes up at me and I'm startled to see that his mouth is quivering--he's on the brink of tears.
"What? What is it?"
"Mommy, what about that verse that says 'there's none good, no not one'?"
"Oh, Jude!" I gather him into my arms. "That verse isn't talking about you, sweetheart."
"But it says no, not one!"
I feel a wrenching sensation, as if someone has reached inside my chest and clenched my heart in a vise-grip. I might break out in a sweat.
"Jude," I say, "that verse has been quoted to you out of context. Do you know what that means?"
"No."
"It means that a few words were taken out of a bigger group of words."
"Oh. So, I'm not a bad person?"
"No, Jude. You are a good person. But Jude? Mommy needs to think about this for awhile. Can we talk about it again maybe later tonight?"
"OK!"
And just like that, his face clears and he smiles, runs ahead of me to catch up with his older siblings. I walk along behind him, trying to calm myself down.
I grew up with a theology that told me I was a bad person. And not just that I was a person who occasionally made bad choices but that I was inherently, intrinsically evil. This mindset affected my entire self-image. I remember thinking that if I happened to do something good, it was a fluke. But whenever I messed up I believed I was living up to my true, evil nature.
And because I thought this way about myself, I felt undeserving of love. One practical way this affected me was that it took years--years--for me to believe that my husband truly loved me. Sometimes he'll still ask me: "So, are you going to ask if I still love you?"
A few years ago I started letting the love of God enter my heart. I let myself feel His love. And His love healed (and is healing) me.
Jude and I have had several talks since that day. I've done my homework on the verse that troubled him. I've discovered that it is a verse often misinterpreted by fundamentalists. In short, it's not a blanket condemnation of all human beings.
Mostly, I've continued to do what I vowed to myself I would do on the day he was born: love him unconditionally.
I think it's working. Today he gave me this Valentine's Day booklet. And this is what he'd written:
