Loser

Chronicles of a Prodigal

Author’s Note |

My relationship with God has been a lot like the Bible. I don’t mean that facetiously. What I mean is that there are two Testaments separated by a disagreement and a horribly long silence. So let it be written, so let it be done.

I remember sitting in Group Therapy while in rehab and watching the other self-medicators enjoying a vicarious buzz they were getting by listening to the stories told by suffering souls bound by addiction. Too many times ‘Testimony Night’ in church resembles that experience. Testimonies become entertainment with no spiritual value except to the voyeur. I have heard few exceptions and a few of those have affected me profoundly. One or two have even shaken me to my core and left me weeping, ‘There but for the grace of God’. Those are the ones that make listening worthwhile.

‘Here endeth the lesson.’ A good testimony is simple, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Apart from that, details are merely signposts pointing to a destination and hope for the one person with ears to hear. Just so you know, I did not want to write this and have put it off for more than two decades.

Martinet: Then why are you writing this now?

Ever go for a walk and get a very tiny pebble in your sandal but you didn’t want to take the time to sit down and remove it? After a while, it hurts and you have to do something about it. I am writing this now because the weight of it was like that pebble. A Dentist once asked me if I had a high tolerance for pain. I told him, “Yes. I was married once.”

Martinet: Is that meant to be a joke?

No and yes. I am writing this now because it has been a pain in my sandal for too long. God won’t let it go away or give it a rest. So. This is not a normal testimony. But then the one thing I have never been accused of being is normal. This is simply a collection of things I have seen and heard, the memories and miracles that made me the Loser I am today. This is the chronicle of a stronghold and some lessons I learned along the way.  Read it if you want to. Or don’t. The choice is yours. Just ignore any unintentional theatrics. Ok, so some are intentional.

Psalm 139 says, “Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.” I used to read that and believed that it meant that God Himself had ordained all of my days.

Whee-hoo! Blessings and good days. Nope. Not so much.

God didn’t write the book of my days. God recorded the book as I wrote it myself with every single decision that I made along the way.

— Loser.

 

 

1 | A BROKEN HALLELUJAH

According to some of the pronouns and adjectives my father used during my early years, my origins may have been in the old outhouse that used to sit behind the shop. I didn’t even know what that one word meant, but it sounded like it belonged in the outhouse. Years later, an Aunt contradicted his version of my arrival into the world, and insisted that I was born in the normal way. Almost. My birth happened in a rush of panic in the waiting room of the town doctor. On the floor. In a puddle. I arrived a month early. Which might account for my father’s confusion because I was due on Christmas and born on Thanksgiving. Ho-ho-ho. Surprise. Turkey.

As the Aunt told it, my father set a speed record with a ’49 Chev sedan trying to get my screaming mother to town before I made a soggy mess out of the upholstery. It was very close. Hence being born on the floor and not in a proper hospital bed. Even though I was a month early, my first breath was delayed, as if I knew beforehand what was in store for me in the Valley of the Shadow and wanted no part of it. Honestly, I would willingly claim oxygen deprivation and resulting brain damage for what I ended up doing with my life.

Unfortunately, God will not accept excuses.

Hello Monster

Perhaps my early arrival was the cause of much pain for my mother. Emotional pain and stress. I don’t know. What I do know is that my first conscious memory was formed at about twelve months of age. I can still see my mother’s anger filled face as she held me at arm’s length, screaming at me for ruining her life. I don’t actually remember the words, I am relating the impressions that were carved into my mind like letters into stone. I was the unwanted fruit in the family bowl. What was crystal clear to me was fear. Overwhelming and paralyzing. In the space of a single heartbeat, a year old infant was emotionally crippled for life and would never mature as an adult.

There are monsters in the Valley of the Shadow. When monsters raise you, they don’t teach you how to feel emotions like love or the bonds that hold a family together. Fear teaches hate, rage, criticism and insecurity. Monsters have names like Mother, Father or Teacher. Monsters take children and turn them into young adults. If you have ever met a teenager you know that’s when the real horror begins.

Until Junior High, I was obsessed with ghouls and things that go bump in the night. In those days there were a series of plastic model kits of each of the ‘star’ monsters in the movies. Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman, and Mummy Dearest. The drawings that I did in those days were all of broken people, torn, and bleeding. All victims. That is what I knew at the time. I had learned to identify with victims because I lived with Monsters.

Fear is exhausting and the day comes when you can no longer stand to listen to your own silent screams. So, you internalize, forcing them away. But they don’t leave. Years pass and one day decades later, you remember how your mother and father ignored your cries and drove away and left you standing alone on that road when you were only four. That is when you see how deep fear has cut the wound into your soul. Worse, it is still bleeding and festering into rot. The epiphany is blinding. You have become the monster, fashioned into a Frankenstein by a mother sewing bits and pieces of her own shattered psyche together to form you. I am monster, a thing so hated that not even God wanted me. The problem with the psychic-Frankenstein is the lack of anesthesia. The soul wants anesthesia. Craves it. Being both resilient and foolish, I self-medicated to kill the pain. Nicotine. Alcohol. Porn. Big Macs. Self-destructive behaviors and hobbies to obsess on. Anything to numb the pain.

The seed of failure had been planted before I could walk. Not by me to be sure. But I was the one who nurtured it, who tended that fig tree and made it grow. So successfully that I honestly did not know what ‘love’ was until I was twenty eight years old. Happy Birthday and thanks for all the fish.

A Miracle So Small

Only a few months mark the space between my first memory and the second. Long enough that I had learned to walk. Although I will admit that it was more stumbling than walking. But I was upright and mobile. The day was overcast, cold, I was tightly bundled in a light blue snowsuit with a lined hood covering part of my face. I must have looked like Ralphie’s Little Brother in The Christmas Story but half the size. The location was the yard in front of the home where I grew up. But this day it was different. This day I was seeing snow for the very first time and it was magical. This was beauty and a breathtaking marvel, a blanket of only a few inches had changed the world into something sparkling white. This day would mark the beginning of a love affair with snow that would last a lifetime. I touched it, picked it up, tasted it, and laughed out loud. Each flake so small, so wondrous. There is an astonishing mystery locked inside every single snowflake for anyone who takes the time to look. More about that later.

Snow was the first revelation of many that were to come, although I did not know that at the time. It would be almost four decades before I was to understand the divine irony about that snowfall and that location. Both would reveal the miraculous hand of God and the other an unspeakable horror. Snow would also set in motion my deliverance. In the course of time, the hand of God would put another snowflake directly in front of me, a snowflake so unlike any other that it left me gasping with shock. God would show me a snowflake that displayed the wonder of faith, hope and love. But that is for later.

The Middle of Nowhere

I was born in a small farming town fifty nine miles south of Spokane. The town was literally in the middle of nowhere. The home I was raised in was twenty five miles from that little town. The closest neighbor was two miles away. The house I grew up in was set at the edge of a field of summer fallow separated only by an unpainted picket fence. ‘Home’ didn’t have a yard, no grass, only a large vegetable garden and three acres of dirt that would move on a windy day. The unpainted picket fence did little to abate the wind or keep the yard in. So when the wind changed direction, the yard came back. The gate was rarely closed. Also unpainted. Grass seed wasn’t planted until I was three. That next summer there was a real lawn. Grass to wiggle the toes in, to lay on and stare up at clouds.

A lesson in economics and justice. If you were born in that time period, there is no point in comparing ‘poor’ stories. This was a decade after the Great Depression ended, five years after the Second World War ended and barely a year after Korea. Most of America hadn’t yet recovered. Which made everyone poor. Except for a few, like the neighbors on the other side of the hill. Three miles as the crow flies. Four if the crow walks and takes the gravel road. Those neighbors had it all. Green lawns, lush trees, even fresh fruit in season picked from their own trees. The story I heard many years later in High School was that those well-oft’ neighbors were well-oft’ because the Granddad of the Clan had maintained a working still during the depression and thrived by selling bootleg booze. That story is unsubstantiated. But having known the characters personally and having witness their ‘shady’ side, I tend to believe it.

In the interest of full disclosure, my maternal grandfather also had a sketchy past before his salvation. A past that involved playing piano in saloons. His second career was as a traveling lay-preacher. He had to be a lay-preacher because there was no money for him to attend seminary.

Laying Out the Foundation of a Stronghold

There were no freeways in Eastern Washington when I was three. The best you could hope for was two paved lanes free of tumbleweeds. The arterial that connected the ‘homestead’ where I grew up to town was two lanes of black top. That isn’t even pavement, it is basically a gravel road covered with tar. After the tar dries, a white line is painted along the center. Believe it or not, that was considered a State Route. Number 10 on the old maps if you look.

Just a few miles from home, there is a spot where the highway curves around a hill and passes between a small creek lined with trees on one side and a tall wall of scab rock on the other. The place is forever etched into my mind. That curve and that scab rock wall are still there. The creek dried up long ago and the trees died. I also remember the back of my father’s ’51 Chev as it drove away. I can still see my mother’s grinning face staring out the back window. My little legs were not long enough or fast enough to catch that fleeing car. I don’t remember what offense my older brother and I had committed, or why my mother and father had abandoned us at that spot in the middle of nowhere. But they did. For a child, primal emotions are nightmarishly sharp. Chief among them is the fear of abandonment. If you want to twist the soul and mind of a child into a pretzel, let them believe they are abandoned.

So, there we were. Alone. Both of us left behind. Screaming accomplished nothing. Crying even less. My brother kept running, stubbornly believing he could stop our parents. Perhaps because of my earliest memory, I recognized a terrible truth. Nobody wants a Loser. So I sat down in the middle of that highway and bawled my eyes out.

Obviously the ’51 Chev came back and picked us up or I would have grown up living with a traveling circus as one of the clowns. Or a trapeze artist. Which wouldn’t be all that bad. Or, as is most likely, the guy who follows the horses and cleans up the steaming apples. But my parents return – my rescue – is not part of my memories. What I can still see clearly were the two words painted in white on that rock wall to mark the spot. “Jesus Saves.” It would be decades before I understood the poignant irony. I do not mean ‘irony’ as in humor.

THEM!

The internal DVD that is my memory has a skip written into it at the age of four. A small portion where data is recorded but cannot be displayed. It is a closet with no door near the back of my mind. A single event marks that gap, an event that involves a creature about the size of a silver dollar.

An integral necessity of a farmhouse is a root cellar. A cool, dark place to store the produce of a large garden through the winter and keep it until the next harvest comes in. The root cellar of the ‘homestead’ was in the basement under the house and accessed by a single flight of rickety wooden steps. The cellar had several wooden shelves to hold all of the canning that my mother did in the season.  One of the dangers of living in the middle of nowhere are the arachnids that favor building their webs in sagebrush and wheat fields. THEM! The Black Widow Spider. From the time I had been old enough to crawl and move myself around, I had been warned to avoid THEM!. Do not touch THEM. Deadly. As it turns out, THEM! also like to build their webs in root cellars.

I don’t remember the crime, but it must have been heinous. Something so sinful that my parents locked me in that root cellar alone and turned out the light. I learned about horror that day. Real horror. Not the feelings of anxiety you get from watching a Michael Meyers movie. As I huddled in the dark, trembling like a leaf in a storm. I could hear THEM! as they moved along their webs to get closer to me. Hear THEM! as they carefully made their way along the joists of the floor above, moving closer to my trembling body. After a long while, the horrible truth sank in far enough for a young mind to recognize it. Father had abandoned me again and no amount of shrieking would bring back either mother of father. Eventually, the screams stopped and I sat trembling in darkness, listening for the sound of my own death fastened to a web of silk as it descended from above.

Obviously, once more, the spiders did not wrap me up like Frodo Baggins to save me for a late night snack or you wouldn’t be reading this. But so profound was that experience that it haunted me across many miles and fifty years.

I had my own house then, with a yard and a shop. But no root cellar. Supermarkets had been created by then, markets with frozen food sections. It was late at night and I was closing up the shop behind the house. The only light spilling into the driveway was from a streetlamp fifty feet away. As I walked from the shop to the house, I stopped at the gate to swing it open and step into the driveway. My legs suddenly stopped moving. Literally locked and immovable. I knew that I wasn’t paralyzed, I could feel my legs, wiggle my toes. But I could not force them to move me forward. I don’t know why my eyes started searching through the deep shadows the street light was casting between my parked truck and the hedge that lined the drive. But they did and they found something. Three steps in front of where I stood – in the dark – was one of THEM!. During the afternoon, one of THEM! had spun a web between my parked truck and the hedge. A black spider hanging in an invisible web at the center of a dark shadow in the middle of the night. My subconscious saw that invisible creature and stopped my legs to keep me from walking right into it. How does that even happen?

I will say now the same thing I said then. “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well.”

LESSON NUMBER ONE |

Psychiatric studies done in orphanages in South America reaped a devastating discovery. Children (1-3 years of age) who are not given physical or emotional contact, a hug or a kind word with a warm touch, became introverted and withdrawn, then increasingly aggressive. Eventually they wither and die just like a neglected plant. Growing up with the icicle sharp knowledge that you are the one un-huggable human being on the planet is a burden impossible to bear.

I have one memory of being held as a child. Just one. I grew up not knowing what love was. Worse, my emotional maturity was far, far behind physical maturity. The very first time that I felt love, real love, I was twenty eight years old. It was the night my daughter was born. The sudden knowledge of how fierce love can be nearly put me on my knees.

The monsters that children fear are real. Monsters are soulless beings that cause real pain and cripple without remorse. Some of them have a genus and a species and some of them share your last name. It is only too late that some parents realize that they were not raising children, they were raising the foundation of a formidable stronghold. Children who survive trauma tend to verbalize or act out the same patterns they were taught. Obsessively. That includes failure. Keep that in mind if you read further.

2 | SESAME BEFORE SESAME WAS STREET

Twenty five miles east of Nowhere was a little berg with a population that fluctuated from year to year but hoovered around twelve hundred. In the mid-50s Ritzville had one railroad station, one bus station, a single “use at your own risk” airport, the doctor’s office I already mentioned, five churches, three taverns and a restaurant with a lounge. It also had a decent school system and the year I turned five a whole new world opened up for me. That was the year that the school system in the State of Washington began a new program called “K”, short for Kindergarten. Which is a transliteration from the German ‘Kindergarten Vorschule’, meaning Nursery School. Ritzville was also largely of German descent. What “K” meant to me was that five days a week I was released from Nowhere and allowed to rub elbows with other humans my age. Refreshing to say the least. The downside was Nap Time which took place on the floor.  A tile floor. Cold and hard. “K” also introduced me to some of the best friends I have ever had. Books. Lots and lots of books.

Another Miracle

An interesting discovery that I made during K and First Grade was that I knew how to read. Mind you, I have no memory of learning the mechanics of how to read and I am not sure exactly how it happened. But I could read. Every word on every page.

The twenty or so students in the classroom would break into four groups to sit and read ‘Fun With Dick and Jane’. As I listened to classmates struggle with words like ‘run’ and ‘jump’ or complicated phrases like ‘see Spot run’, I was amazed. I did not understand why they struggled. The words were right there on the page in black and white. They didn’t change from one page to the next or take on whole new meanings. The teacher recognized the difference but never spoke aloud of it. Soon after, I was allowed into the Elementary School Library. Books by the hundreds waited. Books that loosed my imagination like never before. I was free at last and could escape the nightmare called “family” any time I wanted to.

For the miracle of reading, I will credit my Maternal Grandfather. He gave me my first Bible at the age of five. A King James Bible with faux leather cover that has long since hardened into plastic. I still have it on my shelf. I could barely write my own name on the inside cover but I could read the jots and titles on every page.

One of my favorite quotes: “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” — Jane Austen.

One of the blessings of living in the middle of nowhere was the library my mother kept. Hundreds of books and half a dozen different encyclopedias. There was also a wealth of literature bound into volumes, the works of Shakespeare, Poe, and Grimes. There was also music. Something my mother had a deep fondness for. During my teen years, I remember hearing real stereo for the first time. Left, right, balance, volume. Cool. Fortunately her tastes ran from Bach all the way to the Ventures. Which was fun.

The Marble

A trivial event that is not essential to this chronicle, but one I found amusing, is also proof of Matthew 15:11. In the spring of the year I started “K”, I accidentally swallowed a marble. A bright green one. Not one of my favorites which was probably why I had it in my mouth to begin with. Inconsequential since I got it back two days later. If you would like to know the rest of the story, leave your email in “COMMENTS” and I will send you the details of that recovery.

Jack Fells the Giant

For the whole of the Second Grade, I sat next to the son of the Town Doctor who had delivered me on his waiting room floor. The son’s name was John, also known as Jack. It was an interesting year. Jack, thanks to his doctor-father, was exposed to every childhood disease known to be at the time. Which allowed me to play the part of Typhoid Mary and carry said diseases home to family. Thanks to Jack, I contracted Chicken Pox, Measles, the flue – twice – and the one bug that put my father on his back with an ice-pack between his legs. The mumps. For my part, the Mumps came and went in eight days. Both sides. For dad, also both sides, he suffered for almost three weeks. Emphasis on the word ‘suffer’.

His suffering was not justice by any means. The Mumps happened in the dead of winter when my father was carrying for a hundred and fifty head of cattle. Cattle that did not worry about things like childhood diseases and had to be fed and watered whether you felt good or not. You guessed it. With my father sitting around with his ice pack, I spent mornings before school and evenings after toting bales of hay and breaking the ice that had formed over the water trough.

At the end of that school year, Jack showed no contrition for being the carrier of bugs. Fortunately for my dad, I did not share another class with him.

A New Emotion Rises from a Grave

During the winter of my seventh year, an Uncle of my father named Ed died. I knew who the man was, had seen him many times, but had never known him. Funerals are big deals in farm country. Everyone attends. I remember standing around the gravesite and watching a few flakes of snow as the wind pushed them passed my face. Any day with snow was alright with me so I had a sense of peace. The solemn looking faces were a mystery, but the words were familiar. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” The part I didn’t understand was the grave. The casket was suspended on a jacking system that would lower it into the ground. But the ground was frozen so the puzzle for me to solve was who had dug the hole? And how? After the Preacher had done his bit, the crowd reformed into smaller groups. All sad. That was the first time I heard the words, “If there is anything we can do.” Many of those present spoke the words. I would hear them again as the years passed.

After the service, my mother bundled us all into the family car, now a station wagon, and my father left the small group he had been talking with and climbed in on the passenger side. After several seconds of silence, his body slid down in the seat, his hands covered his face and he began to howl like a wounded animal. The raw emotion released was both powerful and frightening. I had no idea what was wrong with the man and was desperately trying to escape out the back of the car before the violence started. So many times I had heard my mother say, “Stop crying or I will give you something to cry about,” I just knew she was going to belt him one. Tears are not allowed and suddenly my father was weeping a flood. Instead of giving him ‘something to cry about’, she gave him compassion and comfort. Another new emotion. I knew what anger looked like, and rage and knew that pain was close by. I knew fear well. But the grief that my father was expressing was something new. There was a new kind of pain associated with grief that I was not familiar with either. But I would learn.

One Hot Mistress

That following summer, I began a relationship with a mistress that has lasted a lifetime. And she is a hot one. If you live on a farm, you work. It is a matter of survival, everybody works. Especially in harvest. It was not glamourous work. Those modern, svelte looking, air conditioned harvesting machines that you see pictures of are not the way it was. The combines of the early 50s were lumbering iron giants pulled by a crawler tractor. They were temperamental, extremely noisy, dusty and made young bodies itch everywhere. Some farmers were able to afford large canvas canopies to shade the operator. But most had to stand for hours in the sun, while suffering the baptism of chaff and dust. Two people were required to operate one of the giants. One to operate the tractor that pulled the combine around the field and one to stand on the combine and operate the cutting deck to keep it out of the dirt and rocks. A difficult job that required constant attention. On hilly fields, a third person was added to the back of the combine to operate the lever that would level the threshing portion of the machine as it passed over hills and swales. That third position was why some farmers had children. They were a very compact Artificial Intelligence who would sit and watch a bubble gauge and operate that lever. The first rule of working aboard an operating combine was simple: do not fall into the machine. Not a joke. OSHA would not be formed for another thirteen years and there were no safety guards above chains, no covers over pulleys, or even railings.

The day I met my mistress was a hot one, well into three digit temps. Sweaty, sticky, dusty, and monotonous. Early afternoon brought some shade as a huge bank of cloud began to cover the sky and block out the sun. My dad was operating the tractor and a teenage cousin was operating the cutting deck. I was the AI riding on the back of the giant. I could see my dad watching the darkening sky anxiously and knew what he was watching for. When the breeze became wind and the sky became black, I could hear the Bewitching Beauty coming. Her voice audible even over the noise of the iron giant. Thunder. A blast so loud I nearly wet myself.

The first fork of lightning stabbed out of the darkness overhead and speared the field a mile away. Then more stabbing forks came. The wind brought rain which makes it impossible to thresh wheat, so dad steered the tractor and combine out of the standing grain and moved to a spot near the edge of the field. All around us lightning flashed and thunder cracked like howitzers at war. It all go so much louder as the tractor and combine were stilled. The three of us ducked and ran to the trap-wagon to escape the storm. No sooner had the old Chev pickup that served as trap-wagon begun to move toward safety, then the world flashed white as lightning split the sky directly above us. There was only fifty feet of space between the combine and the trap-wagon and that bolt of blistering plasma exploded into the ground halfway between the two. Dad’s face went instantly pale and the cousin screamed as a gout of dirt exploded upward.

Between one heartbeat and the next, I was completely and utterly in love. I understood the danger that had frightened the two – that trap-wagon was carrying almost three hundred gallons of gasoline – but I didn’t care. I had met beauty and was thrilled. In a fraction of a second lightning could have taken us all but chose not to. The best part, I had seen the same fear on my father’s face that he had often put on mine. My dad and the cousin wore ashen faces as we drove out of the field. I laughed, and loved it.

To this day, a day with a thunderstorm is a good day, the bigger the better. To stand and witness the awesome energies that God commands always puts a smile on my face. “He covers His hands with lightning, and commands it to strike.” — Job 36:32. Every breath you take is a gift from God. You do not know how many heartbeats you are allotted. Treasure that breath and laugh at every opportunity. Many years later, I would have another encounter with my mistress, one even closer and more stunning.

LESSON NUMBER TWO |

I warned you that I was not normal. As I entered the first year of adolescence, I was functioning at the emotional level of a hunk of granite. Worse, I did not know how to express the emotions that I was having. I was now an official Loser and emotionally retarded.

3 | MAYHEM APPEARS GARBED IN A MANNER OF VIRTUE – E.R. Burroughs

Discipline was swift and meted out without mercy. Sometimes that was literally a hand, more often than not it was whatever was at hand. The leather strapping of horse harness stings fiercely and raises nasty bruises. But that is much preferred to a wooden handle of a garden hoe. It hurts to walk when the leather is done, but at least you can walk.

That ‘Oh-Crap’ Moment

At the edge of the yard was a large garden that my mother took a deserved amount of pride from. She worked hard to make it as bountiful as it was. I do not remember who struck the first blow, my elder brother or myself. But the green tomato war was begun. It was a very stupid thing to do. But then all rebellion seems fun at the beginning. After only two or three volleys, mom and dad suddenly appeared at the corner of the garden and our transgression was exposed. Discipline was swift and what was handy was the handle of a garden hoe. It was like being spanked with a club. There was no opportunity for repentance. The Oh-Crap moment of fear came and pain followed swiftly. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Thou shalt not touch the Lord’s tomatoes lest thou die.

A satisfying truth that I look forward to. One day soon the clouds will part and Jesus will return for His own. At that moment, every murderous Democrat in America with a carnivorous womb to sacrifice their unborn young will share that Oh-Crap Moment and tremble. I will kneel. They will run to hide themselves among the rocks before going swimming in a lake of fire.

Discipline By Ambush

I learned young that survival sometimes hinges on keeping one’s mouth shut. My younger brother has always had a smart mouth. It is his nature. Still, he learned.

It was summer and the day was hot enough to raise heat mirages from the blacktop of the two lane highway between town and home. I don’t remember what was said, but my little brother said it with gusto because he thought he was out of reach in the back seat. Mother skillfully gripped her soda and the steering wheel with one hand without slowing the car, twisted at the waist, and reached over the back of the seat and blindsided little brother’s face with the knuckles of her backhand. The nose bleed was instantaneous, as were the tears. Mother’s words were comforting. “Now see what you made me do? Use your shirt and don’t get blood on the seat.” And then came my personal favorite, “Shut up or I will give you something to really cry about.” If you think she was kidding, she wasn’t.

Hands are for Loving and Other Lies

My mother’s favorite dog was a worthless punk. The only person in the house who liked that dog was mom. As soon as I stepped into the room, I could see the transgression, a book lying on the floor that the dog had chewed to pieces. My mother was sitting on the couch holding the dog and quietly calming the little beastie. “Aren’t you going to discipline the dog?” I asked, incredulous that the thing was still breathing. The look that mother gave me was cringe worthy. Then she uttered the words that forever marked her as a hypocrite in my mind and heart. “No. Hands are for loving, not hitting.” Knowing exactly what those hands were capable of, I found a good excuse to go outside before she changed her mind.

Wolf Wearing the Mask of a Sheep

A traditional part of every year was Summer Vacation Bible School. It was my first year with my feet at the edge of adolescence and our church was hosting an intern from Seminary. A wanna-be-pastor. His name was James Dodge, aka Mighty Smiter of Youth (name not changed to protect anyone – bit me). Yes, Pastor Dodge, I remember you oh mighty man of God. Bully. The class had been warned to be silent, but in a moment of excitement, I spoke suddenly. The slap that wanna-be-pastor laid on the side of my face made my head spin around like Roger Rabbit and stunned the entire class. Honestly, I did not understand the provocation. Never have. A grown man, a stranger, striking a defenseless kid who was looking the other way marks you as a coward. And a sphincter. Later, you called me aside to apologize. Privately.  Compounding your guilt. Thing is, you taught me a valuable lesson that day. Never assume a Christian is what he claims to be. The proof is in the fruit not what the mouth says. Matthew 7:16.

Tea With Alice

The 60s moved me to a new school. Same town, but the Elementary, Middle and High Schools were in separate buildings. There were two rooms in the Middle School that I knew well; the Library and the Principal’s Office. If you are thinking that I am suggesting that I had behavioral problems then you are wrong. I am not suggesting, I am confessing. I had behavioral problems. Middle School was sort of like going to Tea with Alice. Some days I would be as quiet as the Dormouse and other days as mad as the Hatter. Counselors said that I was acting out and seeking attention.

Duh!

I had no idea how to deal with the feelings and emotions that seemed to fill me. I dared not express those feelings at home. Worse, school was the only place where I could practice being normal. Truth was, I didn’t really mind getting ‘hacks’ at school. What the principal did was kinder than what would happen at home. Riding the bus back into the clutches of the Red Queen in the afternoon was like descending into Wonderland one mile at a time. Dante’s Comedy might be more apropos. Dysfunction is hell after all.

“It is Better to be Feared Than to be Loved” – N. Machiavelli

Bullies happen. It is part of the dynamic of “school”. Little fish fear, big fish have a nice day. In John 16 Jesus said, “In the world you will have [bullies]”. Deal with it.

With two exceptions, the teachers that I had through twelve grades were committed to their craft and genuinely cared about their students. That is the exception now days. But then, the class that I was part of had only thirty two members. Average for a 60s small town, very small for today. One teacher mirrored the character of Elvira Gulch, right down to her bicycle. Or her broom. The other was the Shop Teacher and I will liken him to Freddy Kruger. But not as forgiving.

Freddy was a sadistic man, ex GI who believed that what young boys need was a swift kick in the behind. Which he doled out with pleasure. He could have put Alan Shepard into space for far less that what a Redstone rocket cost. I witnessed him kick more than one so hard that it lifted them off the ground. Even had it happen to me. It order to make an impression on one kid, Freddy cupped the boy’s skull in his hands, holding to the jaw line, and lifted him off the ground by his neck. But the worst was the day Freddy told me to hold my finger on a knot while he pulled the loop tight. He jerked the string so hard that finger turned blue before I managed to extricate it. Then it throbbed for the rest of the afternoon. Freddy thought it was funny. As solace of sorts, I did have the experience of sitting in the doctor’s waiting room and watching with some amusement when the School Principal brought Freddy in, with Freddy’s hand warped tightly in a blood soaked towel. Freddy had failed to pay attention while using a table saw and his thumb tangled with the rapidly spinning blade. There is a Proverb that says, “Do not be glad when your enemy stumbles – lest the Lord see it and be displeased”. The official story is that I did not laugh so that must mean I wasn’t glad. I may have smiled, but that is only a rumor and never proven. Biology says that the human body has sixty different types of sphincters. Freddy was the exception. That man was one single sphincter six feet tall. So of course they eventually made him Principal. I would like to say that he wore knives on his fingers and stuffed kids into the school’s boiler. But I can’t. The Middle School didn’t have a boiler.

Monsters are real. I am not sure how the Shop Teacher ended his days, but I suspect it was something much like a runaway singularity. He simply kept collapsing into himself until there was nothing left but a large black hole in space.

The Truth about Santa

I never did believe in Santa Claus. Not even when my Grandfather hid behind the shop did his best, “HO – HO – HO!” laugh while shaking a string of harness bells. I knew who it was. As far as I was concerned, Santa was a migrant worker who wasn’t very good at his job. Christmas was a holiday that other children enjoyed, children in other homes. I would look at their beaming faces on the first day back at school and listen to them brag about gifts while wondering what that must have been like. For me it was ten days out of school, days to spend wandering the sagebrush and coulees near home. The key is ‘near home’ not in home.

Christmas and I never got along, a sort of mutual dislike. One Christmas during Middle School was bittersweet and deserves a mention. The teacher drew names from a bowl and matched two students together for a gift exchange. There was a $1 limit. That was much more in the early 60s than it sounds like now. On the last day of school before Christmas break, the gifts were exchanged. It was all a great deal of fun. I received a set of aromatic bathroom soaps. I felt as humiliated as the kid in A Christmas Story who gets his tongue frozen to a metal pipe. I asked God why. A daring question. Most times that is a question that He ignores. I knew that the girl who had given the soaps had no money to buy a gift and had brought the soaps from home. When God answered my question, it came as a surprise. “You are the only one in the class who would not ridicule her gift.” That part was true. I never said a word to shame the girl in any way. But here’s the question that baked my noodle a few years later. Why would God deign to answer the ridiculous question asked out of naiveté? Before you ask, no, I have never heard the audible voice of God the Father. He has other ways of making Himself understood. I understood His answer. Didn’t like it, but I understood it.

For the record, my ex got custody of the holidays in the divorce. I hated not being able to spend Christmas with my kids, which made my bitter feelings for the holiday all the more powerful. Years later, I allowed Christmas to drive a wedge between my daughter and son and myself, an abyss that exists to this day. More of that later.

LESSON NUMBER THREE |

Middle School is about the time that teachers begin to ask the question, what do you want to be when you grow up? I had never considered such a question before and did not know. I was fascinated by airplanes and considered becoming a pilot. Tried it a few years later. Didn’t work out well. I had been encouraged to draw by my Grandfather and had more than one teacher suggest pursuing a career in art. I was on the fence about that.

Point is, at that age, no one says that when they grow up they want to be an obsessive compulsive with addictive tendencies. Rejection is a very resilient tree. And fruitful. Rejection bears a bumper crop of insecurity, both negative and positive pride, excessive shyness, social anxiety disorders, and even rage. All the building blocks of a good stronghold. No child ever says that they want to be an alcoholic when they grow up. Or addicted to porn, or nicotine, or fast food. The truth no one realizes until too late is that all of the hurts, the emotional bruises and the scars, all the marks left by Elvira and Freddy and thoughtless Pastors keep adding up until they become a burden your mind can no longer carry. So you begin to seek for ways to self-medicate to erase the pain.

What a perfect time to begin puberty.

4 | BUT MOM, THEY HAVE ADULT BODIES – M. Thompson

High School is not the comedy that producers of sit-coms might have you believe. High School is a functioning pubescent psych ward with teachers instead of clinical experts. High School age boys, no matter how large they are physically, are still only children mentally. It’s almost as if God, in His infinite wisdom, removes one half of a boy’s brain when he begins puberty. I know the jokes you are thinking of and you would be correct. But hey! This is a family testimony, so hush up.

Thing is, puberty is the time when hormones rage against the light and the flesh begins to think for itself. This is the beginning of spiritual schizophrenia. Two minds. Or as James the Apostle puts it, “the double minded man”. Well, almost man. Depending on how a child was raised, the puberty-slash-high school experience will last four to ten years of out and out warfare in the battlefield of the mind. The vices pursued by adolescents seem trivial because parents do those same things. A fact made worse in the new millennia because those vices are now presented as morally acceptable. Or as rites of passage. In my case, the pursuit of those vices was driven by rejection and the desire for approval. So the lust of the eye and the lust of the flesh was no different than that of an infant Velociraptor just emerging from its egg. Cute but deadly and very hungry. Congratulations. You have become a slave to your own impulses and are now the proud owner of a stronghold. The bad news about the Strongholds of addiction is that they are fun to build but incredibly difficult to break down. What you don’t know yet is that the battle you have invited into your soul is to the death. Only one of you will survive.

“Oh John Barleycorn nicotine and the temptations of Eve.” The Hombres, 1967 A.D.

“He who rewards evil for good, evil will never leave his house.” Proverbs 17, 700 B.C.

In the mid-sixties, Eastern Washington Saturday Nights were all about dances at the Grange Hall and the flow of Garage Bands that would tour the Northwest. The favorite band in the little berg called Ritzville was out of Tacoma. The Sonics. There were half a dozen smaller towns within an hour of Ritzville and the teens from those towns all showed up at the Grange Hall for Saturday night.

In the days before the Surgeon General’s dire warning, anyone could buy a pack of smokes almost anywhere. No one knew how dangerous smoking was. As for John Barleycorn, finding someone to buy alcohol for a young teen was not difficult. See above for acceptable vices.

Mama Mephistopheles

My introduction to porn was a surprise. I was ten and a classmate brought a small plastic tube to school. When held up to the light, a bare-naked lady was visible inside the tube smiling provocatively. Very shocking. Also exciting. From then on, trips to the grocery store would mean a visit to the magazine rack for me, and time to study the covers of magazines. Especially the ‘Men’s Magazines’. Some of them risqué. And thrilling.

When I reached High School, my mother became an enabler. I never understood the why of it, but she came home from the store one day and presented me with one of the new, very popular magazines of that era. Playboy. Her reasoning made no sense. “You’ll learn about it all somewhere.”

Say what?

I didn’t argue with her. The excitement of naked pics overwhelmed reason. So I read the magazine. But just for the articles. (Not!) At first, porn was rewarding. There was no fear of rejection. An alluring picture will never make excuses about why she won’t go out with you. Or why she won’t go to that dance. Pictures are always ready when you are. Always willing.

What I did not know at the time was that the foundation of a Stronghold was being built. Insecurity are the bricks and fear of rejection the mortar. If I may be allowed to mix metaphors, the roaring lion had just snagged himself a mutton sandwich.

The Last Beating

Mother was a bowler and joined a Women’s League during my Freshman year in High School. That changed the weekly routine. Instead of riding the bus home on Thursdays, I would walk from school to the bowling alley and meet mom there before League was done. It gave me an extra hour or two with my friends.

On the day the last beating came, my father was also waiting. One of my friends made the walk with me that day and we were hanging out at the bowling alley. Truth be told, there was very little to do in Ritzville during the week except homework. My father sat silent while mother bowled and I wandered around with my friend inspecting bulletin boards and stools at the lunch counter and rolling balls into the pockets of the one pool table. Everything seemed fine on the drive home so I suspected nothing.

As I got out of the car, my father’s hand grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me into the garage while the rest of the family went into the house. Dread filled because I knew what was coming, but at this point I had no idea what dreadful sin I might have committed. As previously stated, discipline was almost always delivered by what was handy. What was handy that night was a fan belt from a ’39 Dodge truck. A vicious weapon made of braided steel covered with molded rubber. The mold tapered from wide to narrow to fit the pulleys on the truck, forming acute angles. When the screams finally stopped – mine – and my father turned and walked away, I could barely walk. The backs of my jeans were sticky so I knew he’d got me good. After hobbling to my room I peeled the jeans off. I was right. He had got me good. The backs of both legs from knee to buttocks were black and blue, lacerated in several places and oozing blood. My elder brother chose that moment to enter the room that we shared. His gasps of shock attracted my father.

One of the benefits of being in High School was that I had grown and at that time was just a fraction taller than my dad was. So when we stared at each other, it was eye to eye. He glanced down at the mess he’d made of the backs of my legs, then back up at my face. For an instant only – and the only time ever – I saw contrition written there. Then his expression changed, his eyes got wider and he would not meet my eyes. He stared at the floor and then turned away and left. I do not know what the man saw on my face, what he read in my expression. I do know that it was something dark because I knew with certainty that he was never going to hit me again. And he didn’t. To this day I do not know what that beating was for. I don’t know what I had done to set him off. Or why he picked up a fan belt and not just a normal leather strap.

The part of the incident that bothered me the most came the following day during afternoon P.E. Class when I was wearing gym shorts. I wasn’t walking very well and when the Coach looked at the back of my legs, he wanted to know what the [dirty word] had happened. I lied. I told him that it had been an accident in the shop at home. I could read it on his face, he didn’t believe me. He knew the truth but did not speak it. The mystery however, was the question in mine own mind. Why, oh why, did I lie to defend my father? Oh I know what a psychologist would say about it. But a psychologist would begin with the assumption that I was normal. And as previously stated, I am not.

When a Girl Flirts

One thing that I learned in “K” was that girls make better friends than guys do. They listen better and they don’t try to punch you in the face. Unless they are moms. Then be ready to duck. Just sayin’.

What I learned as a freshman in Health Class is that girls do something that guys cannot. It is called ‘monsterating’. As previously explained, guys are idiots. What monsterating means is that for one week out of every month girls can reach a level of idiocy that guys can’t even imagine. With ease, I might add.

High School taught me that there are two kinds of girls. Sunday School Girls who expect and receive respect and girls who would rather be treated like toys. Toys flirt. If a girl flirts it means that she wants to get to know you. If she continues to flirt, it means that she wants to get to know you in the Biblical sense. That part scared the heck out of me so I dealt with flirting by running away.

Women are not girls and no male of any age can understand them. More about that later. The first time that I witnessed my mother flirting with one of my friends I was left with a feeling of shame. The only thing worse was the day a mother flirted with her own son. I was sickened and did a good impression of the Road Runner leaving. Beep beep zip dang! That only happened one time because I made sure that I was never alone with her again. Ever.

The Apple Fell Not Far From the Tree

A normal Saturday’s job assignment was on the tractor in the field. Which is where I was when the phone call came. My Paternal Grandfather had driven his car into a bridge on Old No. 10 and had been taken to the hospital in Spokane. It was an hour’s drive to Spokane. Twenty minutes to find the right hospital. Grandfather was asleep, banged up and bandaged but alright. The elephant in the room was the question “why?” Why had he driven his car into that bridge?

An Uncle ushered me into the chair beside Grandfather’s bed. I will confess that I was confused. The man was asleep and I had no idea why I had rushed to his side. I had nothing to say to the man. Or to the Uncle. Or to the Cousin pacing along the far wall. My mind was empty of words. Or feelings.

My Maternal Grandfather was a godly man who spent time with me. A man who put me to work in his garden and never hit me with anything. Who sat with me and answered questions about books. But this was my Paternal Grandfather and he was a stranger. A man as emotionally constipated as my father was. I am not even sure that he would remember my name if he did wake up.

That was the day that I had the epiphany about family. Ward Cleaver was only a simulacrum. The Cleavers were someone’s fantasy about what an American family was like. Family isn’t all that it’s touted to be around the Thanksgiving Dinner table. Whoever said that you can pick your nose but you cannot pick your family was correct on both counts. Granted, there probably are families like that. I just didn’t know any at the time.

Theology 101

During all four of my Middle School years and two years of High School, my Maternal Grandfather would drive to our home once a week to lead an evening Bible Study. I enjoyed those times. What that man gave me was a lasting reverence for the Bible. On hot summer Sundays when a childhood friend would use his Bible as a fly swatter by slamming the Holy Book against the wall to smash the fly – with gusto – I would cradle mine to guard it. I take the Bible personally.

Weekends on a farm mean work. Usually a full day of tractor work in the field. A full day is defined as ten hours minimum. Or dark, whichever comes first. I would while away some of those hours by composing sermons in my head and preaching them to the dust of the earth. I am not a preacher. Tried it once. Failed. Loser.

On this day, the subject of my musing was the crucifixion of the Christ and its brutality. Carefully elaborating on the effects of scourging and the beating that the soldiers gave Jesus. When I added a comment about breaking the bones of his hands, I heard a voice speak somewhere between my ears.

“No.” Then the voice went on to explain John 19:36. “Not one of His bones will be broken.”

I understood that I had just been schooled. I also knew what had happened. John 14:26 says, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” It wasn’t until years later that I thought that was a very odd thing to happen.

What Is the Church?

That was the title of the essay I was asked to present for Catechism Graduation. If you are paying attention, you already know that I did not have a clue how to answer that. For me, church was a place where you sit every Sunday to escape home. Sometimes on Wednesday. A place where a lot of strangers show up on Christmas and Easter. So my essay was limited to the history of Martin Luther, his Ninety-five Theses and the growth of Protestantism. Beyond that history, I had no clue what a church was. “Out of the abundance fo the heart the mouth speaks.” Matthew 12:34

“How Thou Pleasest, God, Dispose the Day!” — Shakespeare

Prayer was something that happened at church when everyone got really quiet. Or at home when my Grandfather visited. For me, prayer was something said only at night for years. A habit. Like saying, “Oh God!” when your car suddenly slides on ice. During one weekly Bible Study, 1 Thessalonians 5:17 came up. “Pray without ceasing.” The value of prayer was still beyond my understanding. Then came the Unicorn and I decided to try a different sort of prayer.

We are not talking about a real Unicorn. That is an analogy of something else in order to protect the innocent. I asked God for a Unicorn and convinced myself to believe that the answer would be real when I got home from school. You guessed it. When I got home, there was no Unicorn. Disappointment lasted almost an hour. Then my mother got a phone call from family friends at church. We had been invited to Sunday dinner. That family did have a Unicorn and I had the opportunity to enjoy it for most of an entire afternoon. Within a year, I had earned enough money working evenings and weekends to buy my own Unicorn.

That was my first lesson in prayer but I didn’t really understand until years later. The lesson was that sometimes when God answers a prayer it requires work on your part. I would like to lie and tell you that I got the message and became a spiritual giant. I didn’t. The downside of having the Holy Spirit ‘teach you all things’ is that you will take the test again and again until you pass it.

The Caveat

“Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.” Mark 11:24.

What I didn’t understand for many years is that not all prayers are answered right away with a phone call from a church family. God did not give the Children of Israel the Promised Land until they had been trained for war. Joshua 1 – 24. Some answers are put on hold until you are ready to deal with them. Even if that holding pattern lasts for forty years.

5 | “THERE’S SMALL CHOICE IN ROTTEN APPLES”! — Shakespeare

You know you are an adult when Monday morning rolls around and for the first time in a dozen years you are not in a classroom. Then you begin to deal with College Admissions and think about funding an extended education. If there is no funding, your choices are limited. There were no Student Loans in those days and the elder brother had used up any available family funding the year before. My heart wasn’t in farming and truth be told, I had no idea what I wanted to do next. Admittedly, not a good time to begin preparing. NOTE to education systems: add a class for High School Sophomores to teach civic responsibility, the responsibility of voting, how to balance a checkbook, and preparing to be an adult.

Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Flight and airplanes have always fascinated me. The Community College two dozen miles to the west had one of the best Flight Programs in the nation at that time, and a decommissioned Air Force Base to set up operations. I had enough money tucked away for a year, so I enrolled, thinking flying would be fun.

During my time at the CC, Boeing in Seattle rolled out the prototype 747. Since the Air Force runways had been built to handle B-52s, the 747 began to hang around. Never in my life had I seen something that big hanging in the sky. One afternoon, the engineers were re-calibrating the instruments on the plane that kept data on every nut and bolt. One of them came into the CC Operations Center and invited the students inside to come look at the flying beast. It was a real treat. Even though the inside of that plane looked nothing like what you see today. It didn’t even have seats. The inside of that plane was all water tanks. The water was pumped from side to side and back to front during flight to test the stability of the beast.

I was third to solo out of a class of three dozen. Handling the controls came easy and I enjoyed it. The Instructor enjoyed playing little games while we were out flying. Games like turning the fuel off just to see how I would react. I had been correct in my assumption that flying would be fun. Then came the cold, wet days of November.

The brake pads on a Beechcraft are small. One would easily fit in the palm of your hand. When the weather is cold and damp, the danger to watch out for is ice. As I was returning to base after a normal morning’s flight alone, that danger became all too real. Ice had formed in the brake on the left wheel, so when I touched down, that wheel didn’t want to roll and began to hop.

No problem. Yet. I called the tower and told them that I could not land and had to go around. One of the other school planes that was out and about came in under me and looked to make sure that the tire on that wheel was not flat. It wasn’t and the tower instructed me to land on the biggest runway the airport had.

Still no problem. As I turned the craft to line up on the six mile long runway I could see the flashing lights of a firetruck and an ambulance waiting for me at about the three mile mark. That changed my mind. The moment I realized that they were waiting for me to crash and burn changed my mind about flying.

Obviously I did not crash and burn because I am writing this. As a matter of fact, it was the best landing I ever made and the Instructor waiting on the ground – wringing his hands – complimented me on that landing. If one wheel of a tricycle gear is frozen, set the plane down on the opposite wheel and let it slowly settle onto the offending wheel. The frozen brake bucked one time, the ice broke loose and I was done with flying. It was no big deal, I was almost out of money anyway. So. It was back to working on a farm for me.

For years my Grandfather had been feeding me books he had collected that were tutorials for design, illustration, and fine art. As far as I knew, no one ever called a firetruck or an ambulance expecting an out of control drawing table to crash. Good enough. I signed up to take a Correspondence Course in design and illustration. Doing the work in the evenings.

Right Place – Right Time

The twenty one candles on my birthday cake were still smoking when my wife of a year, Holly (not her real name) made a sudden move to a city two hours away. Which left me with a choice: follow after her or let her go. My first priority after moving to the same city was to find a job. I decided to first find out if there were any openings in design or illustration. The second day of knocking on doors was the day I met the man who would be my mentor for the next five years.

Michelangelo [not his real name] was a painter, sculptor and designer. Everything I had studied in books I now learned again, working with one of the best. Several of his paintings still hang in galleries and museums from the Pacific Northwest to the arid Southwest. Logos that he designed are still displayed as marques in front of banks. The carved double doors of the local museum – still standing – are his work.

One of the companies that we did work for was an Advertising Agency. When the Art Director at the agency suddenly announced that he was moving on, I applied for the job, and got it.

“The Best of Times – the Worst of Times” – C. Dickens

The title ‘Advertising Art Director’ summons mental images of Daren Stevens slaving over a drawing board creating masterpieces of thought while being adored by his boss and his wife. That is not the reality of life in advertising.

There are two kinds of advertising agencies. One is run by creative minds. The other is run by business minds. Creative minds see the world outside the box and use it as a playground. Business minds are so anal-retentive they can see through a keyhole with both eyes at the same time but cannot see out of the box. A creative mind will always have your back when you go into the presentation meeting with the client. The business mind will walk in your office the day before the presentation meeting with the client in tow, reject what you spent two weeks creating and say – with an evil smile – the client’s wife has an idea. He will then add that the meeting has been moved up to this afternoon. The creative mind is the dove of promise. The business mind is the vulture perched on a limb just behind you. Waiting for you to fall.

The other reality of advertising is the hours. There aren’t enough. Every day presents a brand new deadline that spells the destruction of the Earth if it is not met. Ten to fourteen hour days are the norm. Now pile on the pressure abundantly provided by Account Execs, sometimes referred to as Ackerholes, who are empowered to make promises – and demands – with your time, and you have a difficult working environment. Only one thing could make it worse. The wife waiting at home who is gifted at spending the paycheck you haven’t even received yet.

Holly (not her real name) was nothing like the adoring wife of Daren Stevens. My daughter was born just before I started working the new job and Holly made the decision to quit working and stay home with the baby. What that meant on many days was afternoon Bingo. Which meant the added cost of childcare. Nor was Holly as diligent as Samantha Stevens. If we had ten dollars in our checking account, Holly would spend twelve and demand I “fix it”.

Holly was a wife but she was not a helpmate in any sense of the word. So I was forced to shoulder the burden alone. More about that later.

“Patience is a Tired Mare” – Shakespeare

The drawing board disappeared almost overnight, replaced by computers and complex software to do the same job. What used to take a week to do could now be done in a few hours. If one knew how to make the software work. Ackerholes were quick to see the benefit. Shorter deadlines and more profit. The workload grew heavier and the time spent at work longer. There were two kids now and I had to support them. I stepped into the trap that many dads do. I valued the paycheck more than I valued time spent with the kids. For fifteen years I beat my head against a brick wall I could never move.

Exhaustion took over. No one makes good choices when they are exhausted.

Diversions

While working with a local photographer to produce a “rush job” (by then they were all rush jobs) a pleasant diversion presented itself. NASCAR and Saturday night racing at the local oval track. It was an exciting step out of the rat-race.

One afternoon a week became two or three nights and a Saturday afternoon as my involvement with working on racecars intensified. I quit going to church because I was too tired on Sunday. Then came the beer. There was a lot of that around the speedway.

There is a reason that, “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall,” is in the Bible. My bad. But then I did tell you that I am a Loser. Let the fall begin.

Cine’ Freak:

Love movies. Have since the parents took us to the drive-in in town when I was four. Dad was a cowboy so mostly we saw Westerns. The Cartoon feature was a staple of all theaters in those days. Indoor and out. The bang-bang Westerns were nice, but I loved the cartoons. Decades later, I still love movies. Just not Westerns so much.

The farmhouse in the middle of nowhere had three channels when I was growing up. There were only three to be had. And it took an eighty foot tall antenna to pick them up. A quirk of timing put the home-bound school bus in our yard just about the same time the afternoon movie was ready to start on NBC. I had the opportunity to watch some good movies, with stories and plots like they don’t make anymore. Swashbuckling pirates (sober ones), Calvary to the rescue westerns, some thrilling Hitchcock mysteries. One thing that I noticed was the euphoria that came with watching a hero do what heroes do. It made sense in an odd sort of way. Being created in God’s image, we are hardwired with the innate desire to be a hero. That’s why the epic adventure movies fascinate us. The downside is that movies lie. The experiences are not yours and the feelings they produce are false.

On the small screen or big screen, moves give immoral Hollywood directors, writers and actors with inflated egos, the opportunity to teach their own version of a moral ideology. The lesson behind Valley of the Dolls is simple: drugs are fine just don’t become an addict. The Ten Commandments was inspiring. So was The Fast and the Furious. One exalted God’s word, the other exalted lawlessness and immorality. Perhaps when 2 Corinthians 11 warns that Enemy ‘transforms himself as an angel of light’, it could be referring to the movie projector. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms was a clay puppet double exposed on film against live action. Decades later, I watched as an extremely realistic T-Rex ate a Jeep and the passengers. Impressive. The lies are becoming more believable.

That is the inherent danger of movies. The feelings you experience while watching them are false. You cannot leap over a tall building even if you feel like you can. Your anger at an unrighteous situation does not make you a good person. Recognizing injustice does not make you noble. Movies are fiction, they are pretend. The do not teach about emotions and how to deal with them. What you feel is not truth. The happy parents in that comedy you watched are lies. The supportive father is a lie. The loving mother is a lie. None of it is real. Except the monsters. Those live under the bed.

In my mind there are two exceptions. The character of Walter Mitty might well be the preeminent philosopher of this present age. If you can’t beat it, dream it until you can. The other exception is Spider Man. Well, if it weren’t for the spider bite thing. Arachnids not being one of my favorite creatures. But the one thing ‘ol Spidey has going for him is that when he gets knocked down, he always gets back up.

6 | “JOY AND SORROW ARE LIKE MILK AND COOKIES” – Neil Gaiman

Adultery is always difficult to confess. Hollywood would like to convince you that sometimes adultery is the only consolation in a bad situation. One Sunday as I was walking through the foyer on my way to the sanctuary, I overheard a conversation three women were having about a popular Christian singer who had been caught having an affair by her husband. The three women agreed that the singer had no recourse but to ‘cheat’ because she was trapped in a loveless, sexless marriage. I filed the comments away and kept walking. There is no excuse for adultery and God does not grade on the curve. Over the years there were infidelities in my marriage, on both sides. Always painful, always disturbing. The first was also acerbic as it turns out.

Very early in our marriage when Holly suddenly found a job in a city two hours away, I knew that living so far apart was not going to be good for us. It wasn’t. Reference the temptations of Eve. A Saturday night of playing pool with an old friend became more interesting when two girls joined us. What happened later was a sin. Wracked by guilt, I made the drive to where Holly was living with her mother. What I found out was the acerbic part. Holly wasn’t there. She was at the beach for the weekend with her boss. Read what you want to into that, it was exactly what it sounds like.

Sugar and Spice and Some Things Not Nice

Near the end of our second year of marriage, Holly had a miscarriage. I did not grieve or mourn the child. It was not mine. To continue and “keep score” would be fruitless and verges on gossip. When Holly was young, she was one of those women that guys like to chase. Worse, she liked being chased. So many nights she just didn’t come home. The kids never knew what she was like. Still don’t. No amount of talking would convince her the change her ways. She was always right. Especially when she was wrong. We tried couples counseling. Twice. Everything was fine as long as the therapist was asking about my problems. But as soon as he turned and focused on her, she got all fidgety and the counseling was over.

I thought the worst day was the day that I found out that Holly had been with three different guys that day and I was number three. Knowing something like that begins to change the way your heart thinks about the innocent dove you fell in love with. But that wasn’t the worst day. That honor belongs to the day that I found out what a D&C was. Essentially D&C is a euphemism that can be used in polite conversation when the word “abortion” might be offensive. This was after I’d had a vasectomy and Holly had the procedure done twice. The love I had for her was still there, but now it was tainted with disgust.

We both had our failures and this isn’t a scorecard. The reason that I bring up Holly’s character here is that it will be important when we get to the Valley of the Shadow of Death. She is part of how I became a Loser. I have already established that I am broken and carried a load of perverted baggage into marriage. Maybe that’s why I didn’t give up. A friend once asked me why I didn’t just divorce Holly. The answer is simple but very few understand it. Because when I married her, I stood in front of God and made a vow. How old fashioned is that? I warned you that I was not normal.

7 | A BREAK TO LIGHTEN THE MOOD

The Book of Proverbs has long been a favorite. Thirty one chapters, thirty one days in a month, read a chapter a day and hear something from God. That has been my practice for years. I am convinced that the keys to unlocking the mysteries hidden in the other sixty five books are in Proverbs. As an example, Proverbs 14:4. “Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; but much increase comes by the strength of an ox.” Study that and you will find links to the Book of Leviticus, John 1:1-5, John 3:16 and the Book of Revelation. Here is a clue: the word for “trough” can also be translated as “manger”.

One Sunday night at church I witnessed an illustration of Proverbs 5:14 that almost caused me to laugh water out of my nose. That church had a row of chairs along the back wall with wide space between the chairs and the last pew. I was sitting in back and noticed when one of the regular characters – a whimsical fellow – leaned slowly to one side. I knew instantly what it was he was trying to do. But then who among us has not tried a one-cheek-sneak at some time? It should be noted that there was no carpet in that sanctuary, nothing to muffle sound. At the point in the sermon where the preacher stopped to gather his thoughts and silence fell over the room, a subtle push was given to finish the one-cheek-sneak and the mouse roared. The sound rang back from the tile floors and echoed off the walls. Even from the back I could see the neck of the whimsical fellow turn red.

The Lesson: You might think that God is not watching and that you are getting away with something. But that is false. Sin always has a way of announcing itself at inopportune moments. (I really did almost laugh water out of my nose.)

A Sobering Round of Golf:

Summer. Warm. Walking a beautiful golf course can be a very pleasant experience. The round started out well enough. But. The water hazards begin about midway through the course and that is where the trouble started. The problem with golf is that you have no one to blame but yourself. Sometimes it seems like the grass jumps up and grabs the club, or the trees rech out and grab the ball, but deep down you know the truth.

After another duffed shot and another ball in the water, I jammed the five iron back in the bag and started stomping my way to the drop-zone. Cursing and berating myself with every step. Then I recognized the words I was saying and stopped to weep. I was shouting the very same words to myself that my father used to shout at me when I was a child. The tragedy of the moment was stunning. I finished the round with quiet cursing.

There is a lesson in golf. If you can understand. You are the ball and God is the golfer. He gets the first shot. Some balls He places on pleasant fairways, some on the green, and some in rough places. The only way to win the game is to allow God to have the second shot. That and don’t give up. The game is not over until you – the ball – go into the hole in the ground, so don’t quit.

8 | “DOH!” – Homer Simpson

Comfort food:

Comfort food is more than just a nostalgic meal like mom used to make. It is high in calories and carbohydrates. It fills and satisfies. In a word, it comforts. The problem comes if you turn to food for comfort after a difficult day. That’s when food becomes addictive. You can find a lot of comfort food people wandering around WalMart in jeans that no longer fit. Just sayin’. The same process applies for smoking, drinking beer, or watching porn. When you begin to rely on vices for comfort, you become the addict. A Biblical word for “addict” is “fool”.

Nicotine:

Nicotine is a narcotic. It’s that simple. The Surgeon General’s Report on smoking did not come out until 1964. Even then, most ignored it. Forty years later, the evidence is staggering. The Surgeon General was right. Today you can find ex-smokers in any supermarket, riding an electric-cart with an oxygen tank because they cannot breathe on their own. The mystery for me is why. Knowing all that we know now about the danger, why does the US Government subsidize tobacco farmers and pay them to grow tobacco? The lesson there is one of civic responsibility. If the leaders we elect are so reckless, they must be replaced.

I tried to quit many times over the years. It finally came down to prayer and a hard slap in the face to throw the things away and leave them. As far as I am concerned, anyone who smokes in the New Millennium deserves what they get.

Oh John Barleycorn:

The very first drink you take will give you a buzz. A pleasant seeming glow. It’s fun. If you continue to drink for months or years, it takes more than one drink to bring the same buzz. That’s because alcohol messes with your brain chemistry. Over time, alcohol will change your brain’s chemistry to something that enables addiction.  Your brain chemistry is what allows you to think and to reason, to communicate with your body and with other people. It is safe to say that if you abuse alcohol for years, the buzz never comes and the pleasant seeming glow is replace by pain and sorrow. Because you are no longer in your right mind.

If you want to learn the truth about alcohol, volunteer to join in an Outpatient Rehab Program and sit in Group Therapy for a few weeks. I guarantee that your eyes will be opened to see the horror.

Porn:

When used as a comfort food, porn is much more sinister. It kidnaps the mind and heart. As a human, you have been hardwired to respond to the opposite sex and porn takes advantage of that. But that’s just the beginning. Porn is an addiction made diabolical because it usurps the endorphins God put in your brain to make you feel better and relieve pain. Take your crutch of ‘comfort food’, supercharge it with serotonin and dopamine and the thrill that comes with lust and you are an addict. Opioid addiction can become a reality in as little as five days. Five days. Some can view pornography one time and are hooked for life.

In a study done in the 1950s*, psychologists implanted tiny electrodes into the brains of rats, then placed them in a box. The rats were given two levers to press. One delivered food and water, the other simulated the ‘pleasure centers of the brain. The rats all starved to death, redefining the term “Rat Race”.

Only one thing could make the situation worse and you live in it. The United States of Entertainment is a culture that feeds on thrills, violence, and promiscuous sex. Turn on your tv during prime time and you will find those three on 80 out of 100 channels.

The Plague inside the Sanctuary of the Church:

Picture three hundred people in your church’s sanctuary on any given Sunday.** There are one hundred men, one hundred women, and one hundred teens. Seventy of the men view porn regularly. Forty of the women view porn regularly. Ninety four of the teens view porn regularly and started at age eleven.

Porn is the plague of the end of days.

If the day ever comes when you decide to play David against porn’s Goliath you will be surprised. Porn will not go quietly into the night. Nor will it give up without a fight.

*HuffPost/David J. Linden

**Charisma News/Luke Gibbons, Kingdom Works

9 | “FEMALE LIONS DO THE HUNTING IN A PRIDE” – National Geographic

In Kindergarten I learned that girls make better friends than guys do. In High School I leaned that some girls respect themselves and other want to be treated like toys. There are also girls who want to be ‘just’ friends. Rejection is a dagger thrust between the shoulder blades and then twisted. Girls understand the power they wield and some wield it with joy. As an adult I learned that there is very little difference between women and men. Women curve in places that men don’t but their minds are just as devious and sometimes more cunning than any beast of the field, and vicious.

The sweetest woman I have ever met was barely five feet tall and looked like a toad. She worked at the courtesy counter in a supermarket and every single person who came into contact with her loved her. She was one of the rare ones, and completely beautiful. By comparison, the most malevolent woman I have ever met was a tall, raven haired beauty that could turn a man’s head from across the street. No exaggeration. But beauty cannot hide the blackest heart. That raven haired beauty murdered her husband and got away with it. Not with a gun or a knife. Her promiscuous infidelities drove him to suicide. She happily played the mourning victim of tragedy and flirted with her next tryst at the funeral. It is rumored that she has a red hourglass tattoo on her belly. That is just rumor.

Girls accuse guys of only thinking about one thing. Granted, as adolescents that is probably true. With very few exceptions. Which raises the question, is there one thing that occupies the mind of girls?

Yes.

The Murderous Intentions of Eve:

Many years after beginning to muse that question, I found myself in a three year Bible study and found a disturbing answer. The text was Genesis 1-3. I came to two conclusions that I have never heard preached. Keep in mind that my perception is slightly twisted. And the Loser says, ‘Duh!’

The paraphrase: God made Adam in His own image. God told Adam that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was off-limits or you die. God put Adam to sleep, took out a rib – unfortunately it was the rib that God gave man to hold man’s tummy in – and used it to make Eve. Adam was impressed. Both were created in God’s own image so she was beautiful. First question: what was it that the Serpent touched within Eve in order to tempt her to eat the fruit?

The Serpent says to Eve, “did God say”? Thing is, God did not tell Eve the Tree of Knowledge was off-limits. God told Adam and it was Adam’s job to tell Eve. “Did God say?” The Serpent caused Eve to question Adam’s authority as husband. Scripture tells us that “God is a jealous God”. Keep in mind that the two had been created in God’s image. There were no ‘feelings’ before the fall. Only Godly emotions. The only emotion that the Serpent could have tempted in Eve was jealousy. “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.” The illustration here is the difference between women and men. Adam, created in God’s own image, would rather die than loose his bride, so he ate the fruit knowing what the result would be. Eve was willing to kill them both just to have her own way and be seen as wise as Adam.

Any man who has been served divorce papers from a shrew holding a burdizzo has suffered that attitude first hand. That teary eyed woman sitting in the last pew may not be as innocent as she acts. Just sayin’.

10 | THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY

Stuff happens. It’s one of the laws that govern the machinations of the universe. Jesus said, “In the world you will have [trouble].” It happens. For some, it happens as regular as clockwork.

The Bad:

□ In the autumn before Holly and I got married, I was working at a hardware store that sat at the intersection of the two main streets running through the small city where I was going to flight school. The bright sunny day was interrupted by the piercing blast of a siren. A fire truck responding to an emergency raced by the front of the store and into the intersection. Traveling the other way, was a sedan ignoring the siren and the very large, red truck with flashing lights. What came next was a booming impact of steel against steel and shrill sound of glass breaking as the two vehicles collided. The door of the firetruck flew open, the driver was ejected and impacted the side of the sedan. He was a young man, a volunteer firefighter and he never got up, never moved again. Even from half a block away I could see the red stream pulsing from the side of his head. That stream only lasted a few seconds before it stopped. That was the first time that I watched death happen. It would not be the last.

□ A year later after Holly and I married, we were living in Nampa, Idaho. We were both at work the night a ‘freak’ tornado dropped into town, dipped down to reach into a mobile home park and rolled our home onto its top. Curiously, the full garbage bag on the back step was not moved. The neighbors rescued our cat and the Landlord moved us to a vacant unit at the boundary of the Park’s property. Three nights later we were wakened by a loud crash as another ‘freak’ storm destroyed the decorative block wall that separated us from the main highway. That wall was only a few feet away from where we were sleeping. Panicked, we dressed and ran for the door. The wild winds were sending ripples through the floor of the mobile home, making it look like ocean waves. Two weeks later, we left Idaho.

□ The next November was a cold one in Central Washington. Holly and I were living in a duplex twenty five miles from where I had grown up and I was working graveyard at the sugar refinery in the town. The water pipes in the unit next door had frozen during the night and the Landlord was using an acetylene torch to thaw the pipes. Whoops. The Landlord accidentally set the wall on fire. Fire trucks arrived and extinguished the fire before it broke through the wall into our unit. But the damage had been done because the place was filled with smoke. We had to move across town while repairs were made.

□ By the time the next November rolled around, we had moved to another city in Eastern Washington. The weather was warmer than normal and the day was sunny and bright. I was driving a beautiful ’67 Chevelle SS. With the window rolled down to enjoy the throaty sound of dual exhaust from a big block Chevy. Joy changed quickly to despair when an old guy ran a red light and took the front end off the frame of the Chevelle with a very loud bang. Oh well.

□ It was a warm spring day and the grass and the birds were both excited to be out of winter. The high ridge behind where Holly and I were living is heavily populated and honeycombed with bunny trails and maintenance roads used to service several small irrigation canals. I was riding a dirt-bike and doing my best to explore them all. Several hours into the afternoon I noticed a dozen people out searching streets and trails on the slope below. A young man flagged me down and asked me if I had seen a four year old girl anywhere among the honeycomb. I had not, but volunteered to help look. An hour later the search party was fifty strong and I had parked the dirt-bike in the epicenter of the search which was the yard where the little girl lived. When one of the searchers discovered the little girl’s socks and shoes sitting on the bank of one of the canals, I started following the canal, knowing what had probably happened. The girl had removed her shoes to wade in the waist deep canal, not knowing that the current would take her off her feet. Two young men found the body a hundred and fifty yards from her home. She had been a beautiful, dark haired little girl but after spending several hours bumping along the rocky bottom of the small canal she was mostly black and blue. I walked back to the home and entered. The mother’s back was toward me and she was talking to a Sherriff’s Deputy. The man could read the truth in my face so I turned and stepped outside. As I was filling him in on where the body had been found, the two young men arrived, bringing the little girl home. The Deputy had them lay her down and cover her up. When he went back inside, I sat on the dirt-bike for a few minutes just staring at the setting sun. I know the precise moment when he told the mother that her daughter had been found because her shriek of pain was loud enough to be heard blocks away, even though the walls of the house.

A few hours later I stood on the street outside the house I lived in, looking down the hill. From there I could see the home where the little girl had lived and where her mother’s soul had been shredded. Floating in the air above that home was something that I could not explain. It wasn’t a cloud because a cloud at night is either gray or dark. This was bright white, even in the darkness, with defined but shifting edges, like a living vapor. Whatever the thing was, it was thirty yards wide and perhaps ninety yards tall and floating only fifty feet above the house. I blinked but it was real. I should have been frightened but I wasn’t. That white shape was oddly comforting and I had no idea why. “What is that?” I asked aloud, even though I was standing in the street alone. A voice whispered somewhere between my ears, “That is the Angel of Death.” I did not question the voice or the answer. It was true and I knew it in the belly of my heart.

The sound of that woman’s shriek haunts me to this day. It was the sound of a human soul being torn in half. When I read, “At the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?””, I know what His ‘loud voice’ sounded like. It was the sound of a human soul being torn in half. Even now, as I write this, I weep. Because I know the horrible price He paid for a Loser like me. There is a reason that the word “fair” is not used anywhere in the Bible, because nothing about the trade is fair.

The Good:

God does not have to speak to you to give you encouragement. He can use a business marquee on the side of the street to give you a message. Or a billboard. Or a song on the radio (KLOVE). But some days when we insist on being depressed and withdrawn, He might send a sparrow.

□ It was a down sort of day and I had no interest at all in being a spiritual giant. I wanted to mope and feel sorry for myself. The scripture of the day had been Matthew 10:31 and I had disagreed. “Do not fear therefore; you are of move value than many sparrows.”

How corny is that?

It was summer and the back door was open. I was brooding. Actually, pouting might be a better word. Very slowly, a sound began to build at the edge of hearing. A rustling, chirping sort of sound. As the sound grew into a roar I went outside to see what the heck was happening. In the back of my yard was a blue spruce perhaps fifty feet tall. That tee was full of sparrows. As I approached, the birds left the cover of the tree and swirled around it twice before flying away. There had to be two hundred sparrows in that tree. Every single sparrow from blocks in every direction had come and every one of them chirping up a storm to get my attention

On the list of ‘all creatures great and small’ the sparrow is very near the bottom. Yet they understand the dynamic of the ‘Mustard Seed Faith’ that Jesus taught. Small bird, insignificant, but they taught me a lesson. I also kicked myself in the butt and changed my attitude.

□ A good axiom for the Advertising business would be: there is never enough time to do it right but there is always time to do it over. The demands and the pressure on an Advertising Art Director’s time are suffocating. The deadlines are crushing. One Friday morning in the autumn of the year, I was the first one at work. Again. After starting the coffee pot I sat down at the drawing table to work. I had been doing the same job for more than a decade and I knew how much time was going to be involved in each project that absolutely had to be done by Monday morning. Finishing them all would involve all of the following Saturday and Sunday night. It was inevitable. So, with a hot mug in hand, I put on headphones to listen to worship music and set to work. After a decade, the hands learn what has to be done and only a small portion of the mind needs to be engaged to do it. Leaving most of my mind to enjoy the music. Which I did. There is a scripture that says, “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” I had read it but spent no time dwelling on the meaning. On this day I was given a lesson.

My focus was on worship and I was enjoying the time. Six hours later, when lunchtime arrived, the work was all finished. Every project was done. I don’t know how exactly it all happened, but it did. Imagine that.

□ The day was cold. Bitterly so. I was sitting in the parking lot at work, unwilling to actually apply effort to walk inside and be productive. The heater in the truck was doing a great job and it felt good. Outside the cab, it was fifteen below zero and much lower with the wind chill. The wind was on again off again with hard gusts at times. The low gray sky was spitting a few snowflakes but not enough of them to even be considered a flurry. The morning was a good description of the word bleak. Until I saw the miracle.

A snowflake, pushed by the wind appeared on the glass of the windshield. Not just anywhere on the glass, but at the precise spot where my eyes were focused. But it was no ordinary snowflake. The snowflake was a three centimeter wide Star of David. To say that my jaw dropped would be an understatement. It was a stunning moment while it lasted. The heat from inside the truck had warmed the glass enough that the snowflake melted. It had been beautiful in its brief life but it died and was gone. I laughed, wondering what it might mean. What was the message behind the tiny sign?

A second snowflake appeared in the exact spot where the first had been. Again, it was a three centimeter wide Star of David, as if the first snowflake had been resurrected. So now, I was wide awake and paying attention. The third snowflake was the puzzle and the answer. It too was a tiny Star of David, but the inside part of the flake had not fully formed. It was incomplete and was waiting to be transformed into the image of the first snowflake. If you are paying attention, you understand.

Understanding took some time and study. Initially I discovered a verse in the Book of Job that says, “By the breath of God ice is given.” That part I understood. The more you worship beneath the ‘breath of God’, the more your own snowflake fills in. There is also, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

I studied the snowflake off and on for years. Have not finished yet but that little piece of ice crystal still amazes me. To say ‘Star of David’ is a misnomer. Israel used the symbol on their flag when they became a nation in 1948. The six sided star has been found on coins and called the Seal of Solomon. Solomon got the symbol from his father David, King of Jerusalem. In the Hebrew language the star is called The Shield of David. I have a hunch that the snowflake might be traced back to Melchizedek King of Salem. But so far, I have not been able to study that out.

The lesson of that snowflake is not finished. Even the physics of how every raindrop and every snowflake are birthed is proof of God’s amazing grace. Given time, I will add to this blog with the full lesson.

The Ugly:

There was a certain man who sat one night in the valley of despair. The only thing he knew for certain was that his life was over. Resting in his lap was a loaded .357 Magnum. His intention was simple. Stop the pain and the loss. As he cocked the hammer and placed the barrel in his mouth his mind was filled with a vision. What he saw in his mind’s eye was three angels forming a circle with their backs to him. Outside of that divine circle were a dozen not-angels fighting to break in and push the man to pull the trigger. The man did not like the word ‘demon’ and didn’t like to use it. He considered demons and their ilk to be the stuff of stories and nothing to be concerned about. So he was shocked to see their hate face to face. The understanding of the lesson came to his mind and he put the gun down. Adam was created in God’s own image. That image includes freewill. For better or for worse. If the man really wanted to kill himself, God was not going to stop him.

Author’s Note: the great lack in the Church of America today is that they do not teach spiritual warfare. The boast about shields and swords and say all the ‘magic’ words. But they don’t teach what to do when you are in melee with the things of darkness. But then, i have learned from experience that most churches abandon the wounded and leave them to die. Just sayin’.

‘Of Cabbages and Kings’ – C. Dodgson

A cabbage is a dense-leaved head without soul or spirit. A cabbage grows from the center out, making it self-centered, a construction of programmed impulses that react to external stimuli only and offers no fealty to any. A cabbage flourishes on FaceBook and like a devout Pharisee, refuses to give grace to others.

There was a scandal in a mid-west university in the mid-80s. A young man was overwhelmed with the burden of his class load and hanged himself in a stairwell to a basement. The sorrow of the story is that his body hung in the stairwell for five days before his classmates even noticed that he was missing. No one went looking for him. But the tragedy of that story, and the scandal, is that the university was a seminary where young pastors were trained. Where was the grace that this young man needed from classmates?

All wisdom comes from the Holy Spirit. All truth. A seminary cannot make you wise. Only the Holy Spirit and the grace that flows from God can do that. You might think you are full of knowledge but you aren’t. Full? Yes. Knowledge? No.

So far I have talked about ‘creeps on the earth’ and Acker-holes. This next chapter is about Trolls.

All That Glitters is not Gold

So far I have talked about ‘creeps on the earth’ and Acker-holes. This chapter is about Trolls. I am referring to the plastic dolls with furry up-combed hair that were created in 1959 and became a fade in America during the 1960s. They were commonly found on nightstands or hanging from the rearview mirror of many cars. Now jump forward to the second decade of the New Millennia when an amusing animated feature was released called, “Trolls”. One of the characters in that movie is named “Guy Diamond” and he has a unique ability even among Trolls. When he breaks wind (PHARRP!) he spews a sparkling fount of glitter. If you would like to know how that is anatomically possible, leave your email in “COMMENTS” and I will elaborate.

Like Guy Diamond, some Christians are all bright and shiny on Sunday morning, showing their best face to the world. But the rest of the week it is not their face that they are showing. What they are doing is breaking wind and fountaining glitter. Following are a few examples that I have witnessed.

(PHARRP! GLITTER!) The Televangelist who proudly proclaimed to his television audience that he is called to a preeminent position in the body of Christ. Jesus’ disciples argued that very point on the road to Jerusalem. Curious thing about that self-aggrandizing Televangelist. There is no record that he ever humbled himself and washed anyone’s feet. There is a scripture that says, “There is more hope for a fool than for the [Evangelist] who is wise in his own eyes.” – Paraphrase.

(PHARRP! GLITTER!) Another Televangelist, a Lucifer looking fellow, who promises that if you send him a thousand dollars you will reap 30 – 60 – or a 100 fold return. Taking scripture out of context is a scam and the only person making money on that deal is the Lucifer looking Televangelist. The irony is staggering.

(PHARRP! GLITTER!) Or the Pastor’s wife who stood to her feet during her husband’s sermon, marched herself up onto the stage, moved him away from ‘his’ pulpit so that she could make a point about something he had said. Is that the reason that the Apostle Paul said, “Let your women keep silent in the churches”?

(PHARRP! GLITTER!) A Pastor who attempted to manipulate a grieving family to do an interview with News-people simply because he was hungry for the attention. What that Pastor wanted was to get his mug on tv and play the part of the compassionate rector.

(PHARRP! GLITTER!) A beloved little church with a great hope and future was destroyed from within by the leadership. Three pastors, one with a vision for the future, two with images of glitter dancing in their heads. Some of the wounded who walked away from that mess are still wounded today.

(PHARRP! GLITTER!) A professing Christian who cannot get a checking account in a city of half a million because every bank has learned that his signature could not be honored. The man defrauded his employees by writing bad checks and still owes thousands of dollars in unpaid labor.

(PHARRP! GLITTER!) A professing Christian apartment manager who keeps a thick coffee-table Bible on display in his apartment as a show. But when no one is looking, he sneaks into the apartments of his tenants. Especially the young ladies. He steals from some and raises the rents to drive away “the least of these” who cannot afford to stay. The worst case being an elderly woman who was forced to beg her family for shelter or live on the street. In the winter, the man sits in his apartment staring at the snow while his older tenants are forced to hobble over the icy walks.

(PHARRP! GLITTER!) A professing Christian who owns an apartment building has the Property Management Company serve an eviction notice to a tenant three weeks before Christmas. The tenant’s crime? The man objected when the Property Management Company started stealing from his meager utility account instead of using the building owner’s account. The “Christian” didn’t want his own crime exposed.

(PHARRP! GLITTER!) A large church in a southern state with a one-time star athlete as its Pastor. Ah. The glitter of celebrity. This man’s church put on a dramatic stage presentation to attract the lost. That presentation was so successful during its three night presentation that it continued running for five weeks. At the end they had collected eighteen thousand declarations of salvation. The problem started when the up-scale church realized that all the newborns were coming from the parts of town that didn’t smell as pleasant as the high and lofty parts. That upscale church turned its nose up at the newly redeemed. Five years later, the membership of that church had not changed by a single person.

Which begs one simple question. What happened to the eighteen thousand new believers cast out to fend for themselves among wolves?

When you are a stranger in a new church:

These people are real and the accounts above are true. Some of them sit in the same sanctuary that you do. Some of the people sitting around you are friends you haven’t met yet. Some are family you don’t know that you have. A few are the Perfectly Pious who see themselves as marble statues in God’s Museum of Best Saints. They are not. The problem is misguided perception. They just think they are better than everyone else. It is written, “There is none righteous, no, not one — for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Just smile when they give you the ‘Judges’ Glare’ and be thankful that you are a sheep and not a goat.

Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber:

After twenty years I reached the point of burn-out with advertising and needed to do something else to satisfy a creative bent. Wanting to keep up with the advances in computer technology and software, I quit the agency and went to work for a printing company. That printing company produced evangelism materials for a major international denomination. For me it seemed like a win-win and I started with a heightened enthusiasm and creative zeal. The paint wasn’t even dry on the door before I learned that [redacted] might preach Bible prophecy but they are not what they seem to be. If you listen very carefully to their doctrine, the [redacted] are preaching that if you don’t go to church on Saturday you will go to hell. Out of the side of their mouth they have a phrase they use to describe other Christians that is not kind and heard frequently in the movie Jurassic Park.

I should have known better. But I was still naïve I suppose. I remember sitting in a small [redacted] church in Endicott, WA and listening to an [redacted] Evangelist say that television was the tool of the devil and the work of the Antichrist. Scary at the time. Curious now since [redacted] have their own cable channel and hundreds of evangelists vying for the available air time

When I arrived at the Print Shop, I knew the purpose the Lord had sent me there to accomplish. But. And that is a big but named [redacted]. The man who ran the creative side of the print shop was so insecure that any idea that did not originate with him was automatically rejected. As a result, the staff was frequently given to bickering and backstabbing. Welcome to a pleasant [redacted] environment.

[redacted] Evangelists have a preconceived idea of what their finished product should look like and refuse the benefit of education and experience that dare suggests that idea was on the shady side of ‘stupid’. A [redacted] Evangelist’s most repeated phrase was usually, “Do you know who I am?” Meaning that all lower forms of life must cow-tow. “And lick my boots while you’re down there.” Meaning that [redacted] are ruled by hubris. Not wisdom. If I started dropping names here you would be shocked. You have heard of many of them and probably watched a few on TBN.

The Vice President of the print shop would travel around to Denominational Conferences from coast to coast promoting the his Shop. Every time that he returned to the Shop, the IT Department had to spend days erasing and disinfecting the hard drive on his laptop to get rid of the viruses he had picked up by visiting porn sites. During my years there, I witnessed two people viewing porn on the job. Both of the them were managers.

The environment I had expected to find didn’t exist. Although I tried to change the established system to something more creative, ten years of banging my head against a brick wall yielded the same result as twenty years in advertising. Put in a ‘Drive-Thru Window’ and produce ‘Art While You Wait’, like a creative deli.

It took a while, but after the rose colored glasses came off, I realized that there is a big difference between being a Christian and being an [redacted]. The definition of a ‘cult’ is: ‘a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object.’ In the case of [redacted], that veneration is given to the Moses and the Ten Commandments and not to Christ, the bringer of grace.

The worst component of that Print Shop is that [redacted] promote from within their own denomination. Yes, that is discrimination. But no one ever calls them on it. The end result is that every key role in the administration of that business is filled with people who are not qualified for the job. If you have ever been to a rodeo and watched the little car drive into a rodeo ring and a dozen clowns get out of it and run into each other with bull-crap on their shoes, you know what it felt like to work there.

11 | THREE VERY BAD YEARS

The phone call came just minutes after I arrived at work on a very cold and snowy February morning. My younger brother was calling and his message nearly dropped me to my knees.

“The parents are dead.”

Three hours later I was at the farm where I had grown up and was seeing the horror for myself. The County Coroner had removed the bodies but it was easy to read the trope of a murder-suicide written in the new fallen snow that covered driveway. The bullet that had taken my mother’s life had severed one of the coronary arteries at her heart. The heart had continued pumping for a few seconds, creating a mess in the snow. The bullet that had taken my father’s life had severed one of the vertebral arteries leading to the brain. His heart had continued pumping for a few seconds adding to the mess. That mess was at the edge of the driveway and blocked the sidewalk to the house. It was impossible to miss that bloodstain left in the snow, almost four paces wide and almost seven paces long. I am six foot tall with long legs so those are long paces.

For me, the day was all the more poignant because I had talked to dad on the phone the night before. About two hours before the snow was stained. There had been pain in his voice, I could hear it. He was being tortured by something, clinging to the last strand at the end of his rope. The feeling that I should make the drive and talk to him was very strong, but I did not go. That choice haunts me to this day. Hindsight is so clear.

The funeral was four days later. The church was packed. That’s how shocked that rural community was. It was snowing that day and it was the only day of my life that I found no comfort watching the white flakes fall. I am a pluviophile, someone who finds joy and peace of mind on rainy days. Or snow.

Two valuable lessons were learned and I carved them both into the stone that had formed around my heart. First, when a Christian walks up to you while standing in the cemetery and says, “If there is anything I can do,” don’t believe it. They only say things like that because they don’t know what else to fay. Second, just because someone shows up at your family reunion doesn’t mean they are family. Losers have no value and half my family walked away after the funeral, never to be heard from again. So much for Bible thumpers.

The “WHY?” question came up a lot in the next few months. But I never answered the question. As Executor of the estate, I had access to all the books and journals, even to mother’s secret bank account. I knew why dad did what he had done. Don’t misunderstand, I am not condoning his actions. I just know why he did it. For the record, I have never shared the answer, not even with my own siblings.

The short story is that family and friends from church encouraged them to make a risky investment opportunity with an acquaintance. It was a get rich quick scheme that promised a hundred fold return on every dollar. Dad was against it but mother bullied him into accepting. She was very good at bullying him. They were swindled and had nothing left to fall back on while the others did. Having been painted into a corner, dad only had one option. Sell off the majority of the land to pay the debt. The land sale went through but had not been set up the way that he had wanted it. Which brought the IRS to knocking on the door. It got worse. Mom’s fall back plan was to sell what was left of the farm out from under dad and move herself to town to shack up with the mechanic. One of my siblings took the last of the cash he had in the bank. In the space of six months the man was robbed blind by his spouse, family and friends and left to die alone with no future and no hope.

If you want to know the truth about what kind of family you have, go through probate. The bodies had barely reached the morgue when one Uncle was knocking on the Probate Attorney’s office door demanding the money that dad and mom owed him. Another Uncle tried using a ‘Slick Willy’ buyout proposal to take the remaining land from the siblings. Another truth that I have never shared with my siblings.

The Probate Attorney was tasked with collecting the money from a fraudulent Insurance Salesman who had practiced marriage counseling ‘for a nominal fee’. Either that or prosecute the man. That process was drawn out for more than two years. This Prodigal’s elder brother was so determined to get his hands on what was left of the farm that he let the fraud walk free. NOTE to Mr. C.: God knows who you are and He will have a talk with you about your actions one day.

Grief too is a monster. More cunning than any beast of the field. My grief went into stealth mode. Mom and dad died and I did not feel a thing for a full year. Neither sadness nor joy. I was numb.

The problem with having a stealthy monster is having to deal with IT when IT suddenly reappears.

One Year Later Almost to the Day:

Holly’s mother Vera was more of a mother to me than my own mother had been. The day she received the diagnosis was a bad day. Lung cancer. Terminal. Doctor’s best guess was less than six months. That was in February. Three weeks later she needed constant care so Holly and I brought her out to live with us. While straying at our home, a friend came to visit one night a week and shared a Bible study with us. During one of those nights, Vera prayed the sinner’s prayer and asked for salvation. There was no Damascus Road experience. No birhgt lights. Nothing happened at all. So every week at Bible study she questioned whether or not salvation was real. A month later she was hospitalized for Inhalation Therapy. A fancy phrase to mean ‘she could no longer breathe on her own’. Holly’s sister called us on a Saturday morning and said, “You need to get to the hospital, Vera only has hours to live.”

At the hospital Holly walked in the room and sat beside her mother. I could not. Still feeling numb from a year ago, something was blocking me at the door. The door was open but that barricade was real and although I tried three times, I could not step into that room. Confused, knowing I needed to be in that room, I went outside and sat in the truck. The vision I had showed me my own heart. A bloody, festering mess, wounded and broken. I prayed for the first time in a year, “God, I need to be in that room with Holly.” The breakdown came then. It was savage, accompanied by a flood of tears. When it finished, I wiped my face and walked back into the hospital and stepped into that room.

Watching a violent death and watching someone ‘slip away’ are two different experiences. One second Vera was there, struggling to breathe, and the next second she was not. It was the eyes that changed. It was obvious that no one was home and the house was now empty. That’s when the miracle happened.

The air around that hospital bed suddenly filled with – I didn’t know what it was. It looked light, or a beautiful fog, or both. There was color mixed in with it, making it seem like we were sitting in the middle of a rainbow. I raised a hand and moved it, watching as the colored fog parted for my fingers then flowed after. An indescribable joy came next and I understood what was happening. For a month Vera had been asking if salvation was real. What looked like fog was the glory of the Lord. Jesus had entered that room to welcome her Himself. There was one lesson in the moment. Even if Vera could come back to us, she would not leave the joy and peace that had found her.

It sounds sort of tacky to say, but one of the most beautiful days of my life was the day my mother-in-law died.

A Death Sentence for a Wife:

“The biopsy is malignant.” Those are words that will take your breath away when they are spoken to you or to your spouse. Neither of us had recovered yet from the previous two years so this diagnosis rocked us back on our heels. After the lumpectomy told the Surgeon how involved the cancer was, the Doctor was able to give a prognosis. She might make it a year with oncology and chemo. Three years, no way.

We took a long walk in the park that day. In silence. Neither of us knew what to say. Finally, she stopped and took my arm and said something that shocked me. “I want you to marry a Christian woman.” The words hurt and I didn’t want to accept them at the time. I still believed in the power of love then. So I did something different. I humbled myself under the mighty hand of God, refusing to give up, then I spent the next nine months carrying her through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

Holly feared Chemo the most. She suffered from tryparnophobia, a fear of needles. Chemo was once a week for six months and I only missed one session because I had to be out of town. The most memorable part of Chemo is the smell. The chemicals they administer carry the aroma of deadly poison. After six months, they did another lumpectomy and then a double mastectomy. I waited in her hospital room as the Surgeons wheeled her away one more time to cut away bits and pieces of the woman I loved. The pain was not for what they took from her body, it was for the pieces they were cutting away from her heart, mind, and soul. As the pieces disappeared, she changed.

Her dream had always been to have a bit of land large enough that she could keep a horse. I tapped into my retirement account at work and borrowed every dollar I could get my hands on to make it happen. We bought the land and began building her dream.

A Tender Moment

The recovery after surgery was done at home and I was the nurse volunteer. A radical surgery involves drain bags to collect run-off fluids from severe flesh wounds. There were a lot of blood clots. We sat together in the bathroom one night. She wept as I massaged the drain tubes the get the blood clots to let go and flow into the bag. That was the single most profound moment of our marriage. It was the only time I had ever known her to be vulnerable. It was a tender moment that I will never forgot.

But

A year later, the passing of time revealed that the woman that I now slept with was not the same woman that I had fallen in love with. She was a stranger revealed by the surgeon’s scalpel. Three years later – a milestone the doctors said she would not reach – Holly celebrated life. But she did not celebrate with me. She had found herself a boyfriend and celebrated with him. Another year passed and Holly and I were divorced. We shared custody of the kids, but she got custody of all the holidays and kept the land for herself.

The murderous Intentions of Eve

It was on a Wednesday before the Saturday she remarried. I called Holly and asked her if she would be willing to make another go of it for the kids sake. She said that she would talk it over with them and let me know. When she called me back an hour later, I had hope. She told me that the kids had been unsettled enough and wanted the other guy. At that time I was still naïve enough to believe her. But, I was soon to learn how low that woman could stoop. Losing fifteen years of hard work and a retirement account was painful. Losing a life partner was brutal. Losing my kids to a stranger was crushing. Part of me died when she spoke the words. A part that has never come back. Knowing that your kids don’t want you is the most crushing defeat imaginable.

On the darkest day of Holly’s life, when she needed me the most, I humbled myself and did what a husband must do. On the darkest day of my life, when I needed her the most, she turned her back to me and married the other guy.

During the trial of the Old Testament character Job, God put a leash on Enemy to restrict the intensity of the trial. Beyond that, God did nothing except wait for Job to break. Job is a much better man than I am. His words, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” The long silence between the testaments of my life happened because God and I disagreed. His word says that He will never give you more than you can handle. We disagreed on how much I could handle. So I turned my back on Him and went back to the one place where no one judges you when you walk in the door. The tavern. Put another way, I crawled into a beer bottle. And stayed there for a decade. Now, you can invite God to your little pity-party, but He will not show up.

“The folly of fools is deceit.” What that means is that you will lie to yourself and believe it. Just so you know, in scripture the word used for ‘loser’ is ‘fool’. Guilty as charged. Not my proudest moment.

12 | THE SILENT SPACE BETWEEN THE TESTAMENTS

What Courage Looks Like

Real courage. Not the glitter of ‘I am so brave for soldiering on in an unjust world’ pseudo courage social media is stuffed to overflowing with. The courage to face life without claiming victim-hood or shouting outrage at others for your own bad choices. I witnessed real courage one day in the face of a blind woman. A woman with real guts.

When I first saw her she was almost two blocks away, alternately facing left, then right, then turning to face the brick wall that lined the block. At first I thought she was a whack-job. Then I saw the white cane in her hand and the furtive way she was searching with it. She wasn’t a whack-job. Obviously she had become disoriented and was lost.

I approached her slowly, announced my presence from a dozen feet away so as to not startle her, and asked if I might be of assistance. What she said stunned me. “Can you point me in the direction of Seventh Avenue?” So I told her that I was holding my arm was near her right hand and that I could turn her toward Seventh Avenue. After I had turned her ninety degrees and told her that Seventh Avenue was four blocks straight ahead, she let go of my arm, and was off. That woman didn’t demand a special on Netflix to garner pats on the back. She simply put one foot in front of the other and moved forward. I know a few people who have been disoriented for fifty years, just turning in circles and going nowhere because ‘ain’t life a bitch’. So you know, Seventh Avenue in Eugene, Oregon is one of the busiest through-streets in the town. Multiple lanes wide and a flowing river of traffic. I watched in silence as she reached the intersection, found the familiar control to activate the crosswalk, and then crossed when the river of cars parted like the Red Sea.

Have you ever tried it? Tried standing at a busy intersection with your eyes closed and tried to imagine crossing that chaos without seeing a thing? I do not know that woman’s name, have never seen her again, but she is one of my heroes. I don’t have that courage. The courage that let Job say, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” Job is a much better man than I will ever be. If you are paying attention and study your Bible, you see the mistake. (HINT: one of the definitions of faith is courage.)

I failed. I fell. I wasn’t proud of it.

But like Nebuchadnezzar, the animal that I had become eventually looked up to heaven and God restored sanity to the Prodigal. To this day I am not sure how that happened. I do have a vague memory of lying on the floor, back against the all, and crying out to God about the mess I had made of my life. Many tears were involved. It didn’t happen overnight, but life began again. I even went back to church.

The Mourning After

Every drug that alters brain chemistry, whether it’s pharmaceutical, chemical, or behavioral, invites a diabolical spirit called “Stupid”. Like sin, Stupid has a lot of fun but comes with a NOTE stamped ‘Payable On Demand’. Stupid is not only very demanding, it picks the most destructive fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and stuffs it into the ‘inner rooms of the heart’. That fruit is Regret. Go to any Nursing Home and you can see it in the eyes of the shut-ins. A lifetime of would-haves, could-haves and should-haves are staring out of very sad eyes. Regret sucks the life out a person.

Fortunately, God is a God of second chances.

13 | “THE WHEEL IS COME FULL CIRCLE: I AM HERE” – Shakespeare

Holly 2.0

In Kindergarten I learned that girls make better friends than guys do. In High School I learned that some girls respect themselves and others don’t. After surviving divorce I learned something new about girls. As they age they become different creatures altogether. Scary creatures. Almost as if Eve’s murderous side takes over and kills off any residual feelings of snuggling or desire. Getting to know a woman that is — uhm — not younger than forty five means that she wants to know every single thing about you. Every fact, every fault, and every mistake. Which you will tell her because that is what you are used to doing. Funny thing happens when the table turns and you ask her a question. She will not answer. In fact she will fall back on the rudest of female traits and answer a question with a question. That is the mark of a manipulator and if you find yourself in a situation like this – walk away and never look back.

I did take the advice of Holly 1.0 and married a Christian girl. She was Biblical, but not in the way you are thinking. She was of the, “Better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and angry woman,” or the, “A continual dripping on a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike,” type. Ouch.

Holly 2.0 thought of herself as Holy Ghost Junior and knew everything about everything. Example: I was writing out a lesson study one day and began with the twenty third Psalm. That’s the “Lord is my shepherd” Psalm. Holly 2.0 picked it up and read it. Then insisted on editing God’s word.  Which, if you think about it, is what Eve did while staring at that fateful fruit.  Did not work out well for Eve. For my part, I did not want to repeat Adam’s mistake. That day I learned a horrible truth. I had known a woman like Holly 2.0 before. The same woman who browbeat my father into submission until he barely resembled a man. I had married a girl just like that girl that married dear old dad.

A warning to those women who manipulate, coerce, and abuse emotionally. You might force him to your will but in the process all of his warm and cuddly feelings die almost instantly. In plain English, if you emasculate him, he will not want to hold you. Not even for a moment.

Let’s just say that I failed again, Holly 2.0 filed for divorce and because I had given up all I had to try and make it work, I was dumped on the road. In the years that followed, I began what I thought were three promising relationships. Two ended when an old boyfriend showed up making three’s company. Not a fun place to be. The third turned out to have a brain-bubble so far out of balance that she made the Mad Hatter seem as proper as church deacon.

There is a lesson to be learned. Women still make great friends. Seriously, they do. But I will never trust another one to go one step beyond that. ‘Just Friends’ works both ways and that is fine with me.

14 | WHEN GOD THROWS YOU UNDER THE BUS

The upstanding in the sight of God Print shop I mentioned earlier pulled a man off of one of their [redacted] church pews and appointed him President of the organization. This was a man who had absolutely no knowledge of printing. Didn’t know what a ream of paper was. He only had two qualifications. The first was to set the thermostat to a lower temperature to save money. The second was to play golf on the company dime. The man had a great idea to make the company more profitable. Build a drive-thru coffee stand for the heathens who drink that stuff. What he did not have was an appreciation for how much time is required for quality design work. He honestly thought that a project that required a week of diligent work could be done in an hour. And then make changes to it. The short story is that I was laid off and replaced by a bubbly young thing right out of the [redacted] college in that town. I am sure that in his eyes I was disposable simply because two years into my 60s. But then, I will be the first to admit that she was a whole lot cuter than I am. Which was also important to him.

On the Road Again

Not to worry. The ole’ mind was still creative so I knew that a job waited somewhere. As the days became weeks and then months I was dismayed to learn that what the hight and might [redacted] had done was now common practice. Dump the older workers and hire the younger – cheaper – ones. At that time I had a small house that I took shelter in. But, I was a man of faith and trusting God for a ‘future and a hope’, as it is written. When the months reached the halfway point of the second year without work, the NOTE on the house came due and my keister was out on the street.

The day so very long ago when my dad found the fan belt from a ’39 Dodge truck was still fresh in my mind. I can honestly say that having my trust betrayed and being abandoned on the road again by my heavenly Father stung far more that that bloodied fan belt ever could. To say that I was crushed would be an understatement. The worst was the looks I could see on the faces of people I passed on the street. The accusing, “There goes the guy who worships a God who will not help him,” sort of looks. Pathetic. I had learned to pray, to praise, to trust. No all I wanted was for Got to stop hitting me.

Foolishness Frets Against the Lord:

If ten people read this, nine of them will not understand what I say next. But here goes. It is part of human nature that you do not forgive people who do nice things for you. The person you need to forgive is the person who has wronged you. You thank them. In the middle of the Lord’s Prayer, it says, “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven (left, remitted, and let go of the debts, and have given up resentment against) our debtors.” Your perception of a person is altered when you are the offended. The offense must be forgiven before you can move on. Sounds simple. Right? It isn’t. What if the person who has wronged you is God Himself?

Oops.

I was hurt. Confused and hurting to be abandoned again. If you have never been alone on the road, or homeless, you have no idea what the power of the feelings that overwhelm you. What followed this new abandonment was a great deal of fretting against the Lord. “You dumped me on the road!” More than once, that was the accusation I threw the in His face. One night I was too tired to throw it with any force at all. That’s when the question came. As light as the touch of a feather, with the softest touch possible He shattered me with one question. “Will you forgive Me?”

Of course I will forgive the one who has forgiven me. How could I do less? The miracle came with the tears that followed. With that same soft touch, He proceeded to teach me that the offense was mine own perception and not His doing. Thus another side of ‘grace’ was revealed because I did not value ‘peace’ until the moment after I finally said, “Yes, I forgive You.” That is when the peace finally came.

Four things you cannot do with pride: accept salvation, pray, worship, or forgive. As it is written, “those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” Truth. Do yourself a favor and be honest with Him. It will be a blessing.

15 | THAT IS NOT A MONKEY ON YOUR BACK

There is a scene in the movie Jurassic Park that is apropos to this moment. The scene is of a loser sitting on a porta-potty with his pants around his ankles and several tons of Tyrannosaurus Rex salivating as it stares down at him. That T-Rex is your stronghold. It is all rage, all flesh and knows only that it must be satisfied. The size relationships are accurate. You are a paltry human and you have allowed your addictions to become gargantuan. Your stronghold is about to devour you and there is nothing you can do to stop it. If I may paraphrase, “As a [T-Rex] returns to his own vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.” To which I respectfully add, “True ‘dat!”

The difference between suicide and self-destruction is that one happens in slow-motion. The end result is the same. Crutches cripple us. Comfort food, peanut butter cups, big-gulp sodas, alcohol, drugs, porn, these are all crutches that cripple. They are obsessive compulsive behavior, all the fruit of ‘Impulse’, taken from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They are the curse of Esau separating you from your birthright as a believer.

Here’s the rub. If comfort food is your crutch, eventually your doctor will tell you to lose weight or die. If you are a smoker, eventually you will reach the point where there is no more joy in it. Your body hurts and needs relief so you quit. Eventually the buzz that comes from alcohol no longer numbs the pain or your own foolishness. So you quit. With help, it can be done.

On the other hand, porn is always lethal because it never stops feeling good. The most powerful force known to Man is desire, the longing to be loved. Your own brain produces chemicals like serotonin and dopamine to enhance and intensify that desire. Your body and brain are traitors, dragging you into an endless cycle of euphoria and removers that will drive you into madness. Porn turns those chemicals into the walls of your stronghold. If you have spent a lifetime responding to every ‘impulse’, then that T-Rex will swallow you whole and turn you into T-Rex-crement.

One thing makes the T-Rex worse. We live in a culture that worships the T-Rex. The United States of Entertainment is built on a foundation of titillation. Everything you need to avoid is shoved in your face every time you turn on the television.

Loser.

It is written, “Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down, without walls.” In a word, defenseless. That word ‘spirit’ means much more than you think it does, depending on context. In this context, it means, “disposition: unaccountable or uncontrollable impulse”. Self-control is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit and the essence of sanctification. It is a lifetime of work. If you as a parent, have a child that does something wrong and you ask them why they did it and the only reason they can give is, “I don’t know,” then you might be dealing with an impulse control problem.

The Walls of Jericho Fell Down Flat

The first step toward defeating your T-Rex is to admit that you cannot do it alone. You must have God’s help. You begin by closing your eyes and talking to Him. Be honest. Tell Him that you repent and you need His help. WARNING: there is a difference between knowing the truth and being set free by the truth. I know a man who had to face the ugly truth one day – he was a porn addict. He repented. Then he struggled for three long years before that giant was slain. Your freedom might cost you dearly.

The second step gets harder and takes much more humility. There is a Proverb that says, “Where there is no wood, the fire goes out.” Continued iniquity is deadly. You overcome that by making yourself accountable to someone else. A pastor at your church, a friend that you can trust, out-patient rehab, or in-patient rehab if that is what it takes. Point is, you are not going to defeat the T-Rex with pride.

Strengthen the power of your no. Most won’t want to hear this, but here it comes. Fast. It is very easy to lean back from a Sunday night dinner, feeling full and satisfied, and to say, “Oh. I can do that.” The proof of you metal will show itself two days later when the T-Rex is screaming for satisfaction. It does not like to be denied. Scripture says, “Is this not the fast that I have chosen: To loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke?” When you weaken the flesh, the “no” you speak to impulses is stronger because the roar of the T-Res is not drowning your voice out.

Read the scriptures. “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” That includes dividing T-Rex from soul. Which is where you battle is. If your church does not practice ‘deliverance’, find one that does and ask for prayer.

Worship. It is written that man cannot see God and live. That is exactly the point. When you worship you are in the presence of God. In His face, so to speak. Your spirit is eternal and does not die. Your soul is eternal and does not die. The only part of you that dies is the flesh. it cannot stand before Him. The walls of Jericho fell flat because the army of Israel heard the word, obeyed and worshiped.

16 | THIS IS MY TESTIMONY

Being of mind and body, neither of which is all that sound these days, I write this – my testimony. Today, I am an old phart. Upright and mobile. Trusting in the Lord, a character trait hammered into me by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Bad people doing bad things are not what made me a Loser. I am a Loser as a result of every decision I have made along the way. I am responsible for every decision and for the mess that I am. Despite the best of times and the worst of times, the greatest fondness I have is remembering the miracles that God has shown me. So I will share two more miracles.

On the morning of the first day, it was cold, there had been fresh snow the night before and the temperature was in the low-twenties. I stood staring at a field of devastation. The field was the yard in front of the home where I had grown up in. The devastation was a bloodstain in the snow that is to this day, almost indescribable. It was huge and as the day passed, the bloodstain kept growing like water color on wet paper. Becoming worse with every passing hour. I found a snow shovel and did what I could to cover it up. To make it go away. But the effort was futile and I failed. So the bloodstain spread.

On the morning of the second day, it was cold. Again in the low-twenties. I stood staring at the same devastation. It was a sin that could not be hidden. But now, I realized that I could not deal with this. So I gave up, dropped the shovel and let myself sag back against a power pole. The words that came out of my mouth were, “I can’t do this.” But the prayer of my heart was, “Lord, help me.”

Almost immediately the wind changed direction, from the northeast to the southwest. Wind from the southwest is warm wind. All afternoon the wind blew, melting the bloodstained snow and drying the ground. Late afternoon, the wind changed back to the northeast. Northeast wind is cold. During the night, fresh snow fell.

On the morning of the third day, it was cold. But the devastation was gone. Replaced by a sparkling blanket of pure white so bright it hurt the eye to look at it. In response to a man’s prayer, the Lord had changed the weather.

I you, dear reader, are facing a problem with no possible solution, just remember that the same God who changed the weather can help you. Nothing is too difficult for Him. He was the One who designed and created a bug with a butt that lights up in the dark. I am pretty sure that He has an idea of how to help you. If your butt begins to glow in the dark, leave a comment below.

The Last Miracle:

I am a Loser. The only person I have ever known who did not turn their back on me at some point is Jesus Christ. When I take communion, I think about three nails. The nails that held Him to that cross were engraved with my name. They were my nails. I earned them and deserved them. But my Savior bore them in my place. Three days later, like the resurrected snowflake, he rose out of his grave and ascended to the Father, the great I am.

As for me, I am being transformed into the image of that resurrected snowflake. I am thankful.

 

 

Soon to Come:

The Iceberg: The anomaly of Romans 8:28. Ninety percent of the beauty of “all things” is hidden.

Spiritual Schizophrenia: Double Minded

An Inconvenient Truth: Why are the blessings of God hiding?

The Mustard Seed of Faith: It is real and definable

Toddler: A work of fiction