How I Accidentally Broke Up With Steven Curtis Chapman, Future Grammy Winner and Millionaire
Once upon a time, I dated someone famous. But he was not famous at the time. He was just another 16-year-old like I was, and I can assure you I had no inkling he ever would be famous. As a matter of fact, I laughed when he got “Most Likely to Succeed” our senior year. Steve Chapman, most likely to succeed? He had already been four hours late to pick me up for a date, TWICE. I thought he surely should have gotten “Most Talented” for our class, but I couldn’t see how Steve would have the organizational ability to be successful. Turns out the joke was on me, and Steven Curtis Chapman can laugh at me all he wants as he jumps up on stage to accept another Dove Award (58 so far, more than anyone in history) or Grammy (17 nominations and 5 wins) and invests (and selflessly shares) his estimated $25 million net worth.
So how did I end up breaking up with someone who turned out to be famous? Fatal flaw. In literature, the protagonist’s tragic or fatal flaw is a character trait that leads to his/her downfall. This character trait can be morally neutral (like ambition) but left unrestrained, it harms the protagonist. My fatal flaw? Righteous anger – which can be good, but usually only when used on someone else’s behalf. If I feel righteous anger on my own behalf, there’s probably a problem.
If you read my post last week about the Enneagram, you know I was pointing out how too many people seem to celebrate their number without realizing its negative characteristics. I’m a One. Ones are filled with righteous anger. This breakup scene is a classic One scenario.
Steve and I had been dating for a couple of months. Sometimes he drove me home from school, he had visited my church, and our classmates would have considered us a couple. So when a friend hosted a hayride and told me to invite a date, I was sure Steve would go with me. I caught him after school in an empty classroom and asked him to the hayride. He enthusiastically accepted, then hesitated and asked me what day it would be. I told him, and he looked uncomfortable and told me he couldn’t go. I asked why and he said he had another date that night.
I stood there open-mouthed as a multitude of feelings flooded me – surprise, humiliation, confusion, and, of course, righteous indignation (aka pride). Weren’t we dating? Who else was he seeing? Why hadn’t this been clarified? I gathered myself quickly, looked straight at him and said, “You can either date other people or you can date me.” Slowly he replied, “Ok” with what seemed to me a tone of finality. I looked at him, waiting for him to say what he chose, but he said nothing else. I assumed that meant he would not accept my terms, and he was breaking up with me.
I turned and left, still indignant, but heartbroken. I called my best friend, crying, and we quickly decided to do what every other girl in that situation did in 1979: go to the roller rink.
I skated my heart out that night, right into the hands of the rink guard, a very cute Scott somebody. He flirted and skated “couples skate” with me and told me he wanted to ask me out the next weekend. Nothing kills an old flame like a new flame, and I left thoroughly consoled in my heartbreak, floating on a cloud of Rink Guard Scott (sounds like an antiperspirant toilet paper).
On Monday, Steve Chapman stopped me in the hall and asked if he could come to my house that afternoon. Surprised and mildly curious, I said, sure, he could come. I had no idea what he wanted to say. Lo and behold, he had decided over the weekend that he wanted to date only me! I told him I had assumed he did NOT want to date me when he did not say that in the classroom the week before. He said he had just wanted to think about it and pray about it, and after all that consideration, he had decided on me. I stood there speechless for a moment (once again), then I told him, “It’s too late. I went skating this weekend and now I’m interested in someone else and we are supposed to go out next weekend.”
Steve muttered okay, and left. And I felt sad about the whole misbegotten breakup, but honestly, at that moment, I just wanted to go out with Rink Guard Scott.
WHO OF COURSE STOOD ME UP THE NEXT WEEKEND. And hardly acknowledged my existence when I shamelessly went to the skating rink the following weekend to “run into him.” So there I was, two weeks later, with neither Scott nor Steve nor any date for that hayride. So what did I do? Accidentally asked out the guy my sister had a crush on. I SWEAR I DID NOT KNOW SHE HAD A CRUSH ON HIM. But that’s another story : )
So to return to that Enneagram reference: this little slice of my life shows how a positive character trait (righteous anger) can be warped by self-centeredness to become a fatal flaw. And, conversely, our negative character traits (anger) can be transformed by God to become our greatest strengths. This is the redemption that God is always working out in our lives, if we cooperate with Him. “And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.” 2 Corinthians 3:18
