Faded Denim: Color Me Trapped

by Melody Carlson

  “I don’t know, Emily. I told LaMar that I’ll pray about it, but he wants a decision by tomorrow morning. I mean, I have no doubts that obsessing over fashion and looks is totally wrong. And I know it can really mess you up. But Aunt Cassie keeps telling me—and you know she is a Christian—that fashion in itself isn’t sinful. It’s just that it can get out of control. But she also keeps saying that the industry could really use some strong Christian influence, that it might even help to bring back some balance—as well as clean it up, you know. I guess she’s kinda got me thinking, and now I’m not so sure.”

  “You’re right to pray about it, Leah,” I finally say. “And I’ll be praying for you too. And when you put it like that, I can actually imagine God using you in the fashion industry. But you’d have to be strong enough to speak out and not fall into the gotta-be-perfect trap again.”

  “As well as not lure anyone else into it either.” She sighs. “I still feel kinda responsible for you, Emily. Like if I hadn’t started that stupid swan project, well, maybe you wouldn’t have become anorexic.”

  “Hey, that was my choice, Leah. You never encouraged me to diet that way. Sure, I might’ve been jealous of your looks, but that’s not your fault. I just took things too far. I wanted results too fast. I was stupid.”

  “More and more, I really am seeing it’s all about balance. I mean, I don’t think God wants us to go around looking like crud and letting our bodies get all out of shape. But as soon as we start focusing on only the outside, it really messes with our minds and our spirits. Don’t you think?”

  Considering my experiences this summer, with my fuzzy thinking and flimsy prayer life and all that, it’s obvious to me now.

  “I think you’re right on, Leah, and I wish I could say that I was living with that kind of balance in my own life, but the truth is, I’m not. Yet. I just hope that I can find that place. Honestly, I get so scared sometimes that I won’t really escape this—that I’ll go back to anorexia just to keep the weight off. That’s how badly I don’t want to be fat. I want it so much that I’m worried I could actually sin to get it—and it’s freaky.”

  “Just take it one day at time,” she says in a calm voice. “Better yet, just one meal at a time.”

  “How about one bite at a time?”

  “Yeah, whatever works for you.”

  “Well, at least I’ve got a support system here. I’m pretty sure these guys aren’t going to let me get away with much.”

  She laughs. “That’s so perfect. Three worship-leader dudes keeping their eyes on you. God really does work in mysterious ways.”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty weird if you think about it.”

  “And he really does have our best interests at heart.”

  “Too bad we don’t always get it.”

  “Well, pray for me about the fashion show, Em. And I’ll keep praying for you to beat this thing.”

  “Thanks. And I’ll be praying for you.”

  “I wish you were here to go visit Becca with me. I have no idea what to say to her, but I feel like I should go.”

  “You’ll be fine, Leah. Just love her. You’re good at that. And that’s probably what she needs more than anything right now. I mean, I know how it feels to put your body at risk for the sake of beauty.”

  “You and me both.”

  After I hang up I start practicing the song that Harris wants me to sing. I can’t believe how amazing the lyrics are—it’s like it was written for me. It’s about how we can’t do anything on our own, how we are totally helpless without God, but how we sometimes think we don’t need him, that we can get by, and then we fall flat on our faces. But that’s when he picks us up and cleans us off. Anyway, I sing the song again and again, and by rehearsal time, I know it by heart—I mean really by heart.

  “I love your song,” I tell Harris as we start warming up.

  “Cool.”

  “I mean, seriously, did you write it for me?”

  He laughs. “I wrote it for me . . . and everyone.”

  “Well, it’s awesome.”

  “So you want to do the solo?”

  “I’m not sure about that. You be the judge.”

  And so we go through practice and finally get to that song and I sing the lyrics and when we’re done, all three guys are just staring at me.

  “That was incredible,” says Harris finally.

  “Amazing,” says Nick, and he actually wipes a tear from the corner of his eye.

  Brett just shakes his head. “I’m speechless.”

  “Wanna do it tonight?” asks Harris. “For campfire?”

  “Do you think we’re ready?”

  “Might as well give it a shot,” says Harris.

  “And I’m guessing that if it’s a hit, and it probably will be,” adds Nick, “the kids will want to hear it again and again.”

  So we do the song at the end of campfire following Harris’ testimony, which is really amazing. I never would’ve guessed that Harris’ dad was a drug addict and his mom an alcoholic. I mean, this guy seems so solid, so grounded. But, as he tells everyone, it wasn’t always like that. He’s had way more than his fair share of struggles. My trials pale in comparison.

  Everyone seems really touched by his song, and when Pastor Ray gets up and gives an invitation for people to dedicate, or rededicate, their hearts to Jesus, it seems that everyone responds. And when he leads us all in the salvation prayer, there are tears flowing freely. It’s an amazing night. It’s like we came and did our thing, and God showed up—in a really big way.

  As I’m putting my guitar back in the case, I can sense someone standing directly behind me.

  “Can I have your autograph?” asks a girl’s voice.

  “Huh?” I turn around to see this teen girl. I’ve noticed her before. Okay, I’ve noticed that she has no arms. But now when I look at her, I notice she has this truly great smile. I smile back and try not to stare at the empty spaces where her arms should be hanging down.

  “Are you talking to me?” I ask, thinking maybe she really wants one of the guys. I mean, these girls tend to really glom onto the guys, especially Brett, who is, in my opinion, the cutest of the bunch, and I think these girls would agree.

  She nods. “I’m talking to you. I totally love how you sing, Emily. I just wanted to get your autograph, if you don’t mind.”

  “But why? I mean, nobody knows who I am.”

  “It’s for when you become famous.”

  I laugh. “I don’t have any paper — ”

  “My back pocket.” Now she turns around to reveal a small pad and a pen in her back pocket. “I asked my counselor to put it there so I could get you to sign it tonight.”

  I pull out the pad and wonder how you’re supposed to do this. “Okay then, what’s your name?”

  “Kerry.” And then she spells it for me.

  So I remove the cap from the pen and write, “To Kerry, the girl with the beautiful smile.” And then I sign my autograph and tuck the notepad back into her pocket. “There you go, Kerry.”

  She turns around and gives me that great smile again. “Thanks!”

  I shake my head. “Thank you. By the way,” I add, “do you know that you have a fantastic smile?”

  Amazingly, she smiles even bigger now. “Really?”

  “Seriously. It’s beautiful.”

  “Hey, thanks.”

  And now I notice there are a few more kids clustered around me, all with varying degrees of handicaps—rather, challenges, as Pastor Ray puts it. And they want to talk to me and get my autograph and are acting like I’m actually some kind of a celebrity, which strikes me as totally bizarre. But I play along, asking them their names and where they’re from, and to my amazement I begin to overlook their challenges a bit. I begin to see them just as kids—kids with big challenges. And, even more than that, I begin to see how totally shallow I’ve been—only caring about the surface of things.

  And before I go to bed tonight, I get down on my knees and beg
God to forgive me for my shallowness. I confess to him that I’ve been so superficial that I make myself sick. I tell him I’m sorry and that I want to start seeing things, especially people, the way he sees them.

  “Please, let me have eyes like you,” I pray. “Let me look beyond the physical stuff and see what lies beneath.”

  And before I go to bed, I unwrap the slightly stale blueberry muffin that my mom sent with me, and I actually manage to eat most of it. And for the first time in a long time, I go to bed feeling almost happy. Or maybe it’s hopeful. Whatever it is, it’s a different feeling . . . one that I haven’t experienced in recent months.

  twenty

  “I WAS SERIOUS ABOUT MY INVITATION FOR YOU TO COME HELP OUT AT THE lake,” Brett says to me at breakfast the next day. “I really am shorthanded. And trying to get some of the kids safely into the life vests can be a real challenge. Plus there’s gotta be a counselor in every rowboat. And sometimes the kids have to wait a pretty long time if we’re short on counselors.”

  “Hey, I’d be happy to help,” I tell him as I pour what I’m guessing is whole milk onto my oatmeal. I follow this up with a spoonful of raisins and even some brown sugar, and I try not to think about how many carb calories might be involved in this little meal.

  “Cool,” he says as he passes me a plate of toast. “Come on down a few minutes early and I’ll take you through the ropes.”

  As I head down to the small man-made lake in the afternoon, I think it’s probably a good thing that I’ll have something to keep me busy—something to keep my mind off of the nagging fear that I’ll probably gain ten pounds before camp is over. Don’t think about it, I tell myself. Don’t even go there. Even so, it’s hard. It’s so hard.

  Brett’s instructions seem pretty simple and straightforward, and we finish up with about ten minutes to spare, so we sit down on the dock and dangle our feet in the cool water. I try not to look at the width of my thighs, flattened out on the dock. I try not to imagine how they will look a month from now.

  “The main thing is to help the kids feel comfortable around the water,” he’s telling me. “To reassure them that they’re safe. It can be kinda scary being in their shoes, you know.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Any questions?”

  “Not really. Although I have to admit that I’ve been kinda uncomfortable around these kids. I hope I don’t blow it.”

  “I think most people feel like that, Emily, at first anyway. But if you spend enough time with them, you start to see that they’re really not that different than everyone else—like it’s just a surface thing, you know?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Of course it’s just a surface thing. Why am I so into how people look? When did I become like this, or have I always been like this and I just never noticed until recently?

  “And they like having fun, just the same as we do. It’s just a little more challenging.”

  I’m sort of amazed at Brett’s attitude about all this. Like how did he get so grounded and sensible? “I’m curious why they don’t just have the campers attend the regular camps. I mean, wouldn’t it be better to have the kids with special needs mixing it up with kids who don’t—so that everyone can get more comfortable with all this?”

  “I know what you mean, and I asked Pastor Ray about the same thing last year when I helped here for the first time. He told me that it’s always an option for the special-needs kids to attend any camp, but that they’ve had some real problems in the past, you know, with the so-called normal campers not being too patient or considerate of others.”

  “Probably campers like Kendra. I mean, she pretty much set her sights on anyone who was the least bit different from her. Poor Penny really got it because of her weight problem, but who knows how Kendra might’ve offended a special-needs kid.”

  “Kids can be pretty mean.”

  “And grown-ups too.” I don’t admit that I’m thinking about my dad right now and the way he made me feel like a second-class citizen for getting fat. In some ways, he’s not that much different than Kendra. Oh, he might say things in a “nicer” way, but it’s easy to see the meaning behind the words.

  “Yeah, I guess the human race tends to be a pretty superficial lot.”

  So I tell him about how I’ve been really aware of that in myself and how I’m praying for God to change that about me. “It’s like I got worse than ever this summer,” I admit. “I mean, all that focus on losing weight and stuff, it’s like it really messed up my mind. I hope I’m not warped for life.”

  He kind of laughs then picks up a pebble from the dock and tosses it into the lake where it makes circle after circle of ripples. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  I’m not entirely convinced that he does, but it seems to me that Brett’s got his head on a lot straighter than most kids our age.

  “And just for the record,” he adds, “I think I liked you better before you lost the weight.”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, it’s not that I don’t like you now, Emily. But you have definitely changed a lot this summer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You just don’t seem as happy as you used to be.”

  “Yeah, you’re right about that.”

  “And I always kinda admired you, the way you were so easy to talk to, like in youth group and stuff. You seemed so well-grounded, so comfortable with who you were. I was actually slightly intimidated by your confidence.”

  “Me?” I am totally shocked now. Confident?

  “Yeah, and I liked your humor. I loved the way you’d say some totally off-the-wall thing and crack up the whole youth group.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. But then I noticed you were starting to change at the last camp. You didn’t really seem like yourself. You kinda faded out, you know? Like, you weren’t nearly as funny as usual, but at the time I just figured it was because of the girls in your cabin. Now I think it was probably more about the anorexia thing.”

  “That’s true.”

  “You have so much to offer, Emily. Your music, your singing voice, your humor . . . man, I just don’t see why you had to get so obsessed over this weight thing. And I happen to agree with Harris–I’m not really into skinny chicks either.”

  I study him for a moment. “But what about Leah?” I remind him. “You took her to prom.”

  “Yeah. But to be honest, it was only because of Kyle. Kyle and I are always competing with each other, you know. And he had already asked Krista to prom, but he told me that he thought Leah was looking really hot and that he wished he’d invited her instead. Well, I took that as a personal challenge, and so I invited Leah. The problem was, while she’s nice and everything, she wasn’t really my type, and I don’t think either of us had much fun. Pretty lame.”

  So what is he really saying here? Could it be possible that I’m actually his type? Of course, I’m not going to ask him something so totally stupid and embarrassing. And he already said he liked me better before I lost the weight. But then he was probably just talking about my personality anyway, like I was so funny and stuff. Not like he was really into me, like as a girlfriend or anything.

  “Did I offend you?” he asks suddenly. “I mean, you got so quiet.”

  “No . . .” I look out over the water where the circle ripples are just starting to fade away. “I was just thinking about what you said. And the truth is, I think I liked me better before I lost the weight too. But at the same time, I feel torn. I mean, the honest truth is that I’d still rather be thin than fat.”

  “I don’t remember your being that fat — ”

  “Trust me, I was. But I guess the problem was that I kinda sold out a part of myself to lose weight. I mean, by using the wrong methods. It’s like becoming anorexic sort of messed with my soul. And I guess I can see how that really did change me. In some ways I don’t even feel like the same person I was before. I wonder if I ever will.” There’s a lump in my throat now and I really, really don’t wan
t to start crying.

  “Hey, the Bible says that God is changing us from glory to glory, Emily, into his image. So, I’m thinking, if you stick with his plan, you can only get better!” Then he hops to his feet and squints up the hill to where a group of kids are slowly coming our way. “And it looks like the fun’s about to begin.” He reaches out, takes my hand, and pulls me to my feet. “Here we go.”

  It’s not long before I discover that I’m actually having fun. Okay, I’m working hard too. And some of the kids can be kind of difficult, especially if they’re scared, but it’s amazing what a smile or a hug or a joke can do to lighten things up. And we have the celebrity factor working for us, since most of these kids are pretty wowed by the fact that two members of “the band” are helping them with their boat experience.

  By the time we’re done, I’ve only fallen into the lake once, and no one even came close to drowning. So, all in all, I think I did okay. But my muscles are sore from lifting and helping kids in and out of the boats. Even so, I think it’s been worth it. It’s so amazing to see the thrill on their faces when they’re out there, the small rowboat cutting through the water and carrying them safely across the lake. And I also understand why Brett asked me to help. It’s a big job.

  “Thanks for helping,” he says as we hang the damp life vests on a rack in the sun to dry. “Can I expect you to come back again? Or are you gonna bail on me?”

  “I’m not going to bail,” I say as I give an extra-wet life vest a shake. “In fact, I’ll help out until the end of camp if you want.” I make a pathetic attempt to flex the muscle in my arm. “And maybe by then I’ll actually have some real muscles.”

  “Yeah, it’s a pretty strenuous workout.”

  Okay, this reminds me that it’s also a good way to burn calories, but I try to dismiss this stupid anorexic thought.

  “You know, Emily,” he says as puts a stray paddle into the big wooden barrel. “What I said earlier . . . about liking you better before you lost weight . . . I meant the way you were, you know, like your personality and sense of humor. I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t admit that you look great now. All I was trying to say is that looks aren’t everything, and that I really don’t think that skinny girls look all that hot. Does that make any sense? Or am I just inserting my foot in my mouth?”