The Third Man

They strapped the cross to his arms with two pieces of roughly woven rope, and cut off the extra with their knives. The shorter piece of wood rested across his thin shoulders, and was pegged into a deep groove in the longer piece, which would have rested along his back if it had been a couple of feet shorter. As it was, the wood left a gouge in the dirt behind him as he walked. It was heavy, Dismas thought. Perhaps half a man’s weight, maybe a little less.

The Romans used good wood, he thought darkly. A man he didn’t know received the same treatment just in front of him, and his former “partner,” Gesmas, directly behind.

The thought that it was Friday occurred to him. There would be many travelers on the roads to and from Jerusalem; much opportunity to procure coin, and then wine.

He glanced at the jeering crowd gathered around the three of them and after a moment realized their taunts and cries were not directed at either him or Gesmas; they were focused on the third man. There were so many of them, and as they began their final walk, the crowd followed along.

Dismas tried not to think about the hill that waited at the end of their walk. He tried not to think that soon enough he would be hanging from the rough wood now bouncing against his shoulders, and crows would be pecking at his eyes.

He walked, and his feet kicked up little clouds of dust. The straight portion of the cross dragged heavily behind him.

The soldiers mostly left he and Gesmas alone as they walked, but seemed very intent on making the walk of the third man especially brutal. They began striking him with short leather whips right outside the gate and continued every ten or fifteen steps. The man’s dingy robe was bloody from it.

Gesmas swore at the soldiers, swore at the third man, swore at the crowd. Sweat dripped from his brow and made dark spots in the dirt at his feet as he walked. Only one soldier even spared him a glance—more of a glare, really. He pointed his sword at Gesmas and said “Silence…”

Dismas thought about joining in the swearing. The thought of a quick death from a Roman sword did have its allure. He’d seen people hanging from crosses, of course. They died hard, unless the Romans broke their legs to speed things up. You couldn’t breathe as well if you couldn’t push yourself up on the nails. He’d heard it was like drowning.

He hoped they’d break his legs.

Gesmas just hung his head and kept walking, and Dismas did the same. You never cut off any part of your life—not even a second—if you had the choice.

The Romans continued to taunt the third man, and the sound of their whips striking his bloody back strangely took Dismas’s mind from his coming fate. The crowd walked with them, jeering—though he would sometimes hear a few cries of “Let him go” interspersed with the cries for the man’s death. And there was a large group of women amongst the crowd, who wept openly and reached out their hands toward the third man.

He wondered what the man had done to bring such violence on himself. It was like many of the people hated him. Dismas had heard of a man teaching throughout the region and beyond, a man called Jesus, but that man seemed revered—loved, even. Could this be the same person? He’d never heard one of the man’s talks, and had not set foot in the temple in quite some time. But there was something about this man. He didn’t carry himself like other people. Dismas had yet to hear him speak so much as a word, but here he was. His robe was torn in the back from the whips, and something was twisted around his head and blood was running down his face.

The third man turned and looked toward the weeping women, and Dismas heard him speak at last.

“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children—“ His next words were drowned out by a chorus of cries from the part of the crowd that seemed glad to see him there, but Dismas suddenly wanted to hear more of what this man had to say.

He didn’t have the chance. Dismas saw the man slowly fall forward onto his face, and his cross slid forward onto the ground.

Do not weep for me, Dismas thought. It had to be Jesus, this man wounded, and hurt, and covered with blood, and mud, and the spit of his guards.

He and Gesmas stopped and watched. The third man just lay there, and Dismas could see him spit blood onto the ground. Two of the soldiers sliced off the ropes binding the man to the cross and flopped it over onto the ground next to the man. They grabbed a man that looked like a merchant out of the crowd, and lifted the third man’s cross from the ground and onto the merchant’s shoulders.

Two of the soldiers grabbed the man on the ground by the back of his robe and lifted him from the dirt. Dismas could hear the garment begin to tear, but the man still stood, wavering for a minute. The two soldiers mocked him, and joked among themselves and with the crowd about the third man’s seeming inability to stand without weaving. They pushed him back and forth between them, spitting vile profanities at him, stopping every now and then to slap him across the face or hit him with their fists.

Still he stood there, saying nothing, just absorbing their blows.

After a few more moments of their fun, the two soldiers with the third man and the rest of the squad got the procession moving again, onward toward the Skull.

Dismas followed at the rear, and watched the third man lead the column, with the merchant next, then the two soldiers with the whips, Gesmas, more soldiers, and then himself. They never touched Gesmas or him, but they continually harassed the third man, continued to beat and whip him, and when he would fall, they would kick him as well. Dismas wondered for the first time what the man’s name was. Who was this man that took every blow with little more than a groan? Who was he that he could do that? He never begged them to stop, never pleaded for his life. He just walked calmly forward. Dismas had seen a line of lambs walking to the slaughter once, and this reminded him oddly of that.

At last, just as the sun was reaching its zenith, they reached the top of the hill. Dismas stood panting, his legs on fire from the climb, with the bottom of his cross resting on the ground. Gesmas stood there glaring at the soldiers and the crowd, looking like a trapped animal.

The soldiers jerked the cross from the shoulders of the merchant, and let it fall backward onto the ground. They pushed him away and he disappeared over the edge of the hill and back toward the city. The third man started to fall forward, but his two guards caught him under his arms, and then ripped his garment down the center, leaving him in his underclothing. They let him go and he fell forward onto his face.

The two guards assigned to Dismas turned his cross onto the ground, and then ripped his robe apart as well. Dismas stood in his undergarment, and then one of the soldiers barked at him “Lie down on the cross. Now!”

Dismas did as they asked, and felt the rough wood dig into his back. Absurdly, he thought of splinters. As they stretched out his arms along the crossbar, he could hear the guards of the third man call out to him mockingly, and Dismas heard a final blow land somewhere on the third man’s body.

“Now, your majesty. Can you not free yourself? Command us to let you go, then…”

That was it, Dismas thought. The third man was certainly no thief, no murderer. He didn’t behave like anyone Dismas had ever met before. He just faced his death with absolute calm. There was just something about him that was different. Dismas had seen Herod one time, from a distance, and he almost walked through people, not just like he didn’t see them, but like they were not worthy of being seen. He just…strode.

The third man was not like that, not arrogant in the least, but was somehow regal all the same. Not like a lamb so much, Dismas thought. And then they laid the third man down on his own cross, and he spoke again. His voice was full of pain, but rang out like a bell in the still air on top of the Skull.

“Abba,” the third man said, “father…forgive them, forgive them…they don’t know what they’re doing…they don’t know…”

His voice trailed off, and Dismas realized the man was praying, praying for the men about to hammer nails through his wrists and feet.

Praying.

Dismas felt the point of the first nail enter his wrist at an angle right in the center of the bundle of nerves at the heel of his palm. He could feel every strike of the mallet through his entire body. He hardly had time to stop screaming from the first nail before the second was hammered home. He didn’t feel the nail that went through both of his ankles and the cross.

And then it was done.

The soldiers raised Dismas up on the far right, and slid the base of his cross into a hole in the ground. They raised the third man up in the center, and Gesmas on the left. Gesmas was screaming profanities at the soldiers, at the crowd, and from what Dismas could tell, God as well.

The third man hung on his cross, and Dismas could see his chest rising and falling, rising and falling. A crowd began to gather in front of him, a weeping woman at the center, with a handsome young man standing next to her. An older man, one of the temple priests, pushed himself forward through the crowd, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.”

The third man’s two guards came forward next. One of them pushed a piece of sponge onto the head of his spear and then sunk the spear into a nearby bucket. He held the dripping weapon up to the third man as he hung there but the man just shook his head. The second soldier lifted a sign on his spear and hung it over a nail protruding from the top of the third man’s cross. He cleared his throat and read aloud “Here is the king of the jews.”

He chuckled and slapped his partner on his armored shoulder. “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself,” said the soldier in a voice dripping with sarcasm.

Gesmas inclined his head over to the right and screamed at the third man, “Aren’t you the messiah? Save yourself, then. Save us!”

Dismas looked at the man on the middle cross. His head hung low, and blood ran down his cheeks into his beard. His chest and ribs were bruised and striped from the whips. One leg was positioned on either side of the cross with a long nail driven through his left ankle, through the wood, and out the other ankle, where one of his guards had bent the end over so the third man’s foot couldn’t slip off. He struggled for breath.

And then truth rushed through Dismas’s mind like a cold river—this man, the third man, was king, and the promised messiah. He knew it with absolutely certainty, and at that moment, awareness of his sin came crashing into him and through him. He saw the first purse he grabbed. He saw all the men he’d killed—saw their faces flash before him, and he knew that he could not go into the darkness of death with the weight of that sin coiled around his heart.

And he knew the third man—he knew Jesus—could take it away. He knew he could carry the weight for him, into His father’s kingdom. He leaned his head forward as far as he could, and turned toward Gesmas.

“Don’t you fear God?” he shouted. “You’re under the same sentence. So am I. And we’re getting the reward our deeds demand.”

Dismas looked toward Jesus. “This man has done nothing!!”

Gesmas fell silent.

Dismas saw Jesus turn his head toward him and turned his head as far as he could to the left so he could look into his eyes. They were filled with kindness, and tears for the people that Dismas knew he longed to save. He lowered his head.

“Jesus…”

He could feel Jesus looking at him, and he raised his head again. Everything else disappeared—Gesmas, the crowd, his cross. There was only Jesus, his brown eyes filling, and looking at Dismas clearly in spite of his own pain.

“Jesus,” he pleaded, “remember me…remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

“Amen, I tell you,” said Jesus. “Today you will be with me in paradise…”

A feeling of peace ran through him, and he looked up at the sky. The pain was distant, and it occurred to him that the end was very near. Thin clouds blew over the Skull, back toward the city. He looked down at the crowd and two soldiers were coming toward him with mallets.

He didn’t feel it when they broke his legs.

This law is raising some interesting questions

I’ve spent a fair amount of time lately reading lots of outcries from people regarding our new AZ immigration law. I can understand that people don’t want to be “profiled,” but I’m wondering what the answer to the immigration problem is if this law isn’t?

Could law enforcement use the law as the catalyst for racial profiling? Of course they could. But I think it’s also true people can be racially profiled without it. People of all colors. White people, too, if they look a certain way, or maybe drive a certain type of car in a certain type of neighborhood (though I suppose that would be more “societal” profiling).

I heard a latino gentleman on the radio yesterday (he was from Mexico) talking to the host of the show (I forget his name), who asked him what was the policy regarding illegal immigration in Mexico. The caller said “zero tolerance,” and if someone is caught illegally, they’re immediately sent home.
I think what could potentially cause problems with this law is that it leaves things up to individuals. And people are people. Are there racist or poorly trained law enforcement officers in Arizona who may choose to…use this law in a way other than it was intended? Could be.

But I think it’s unfair of people to assume that every cop in Arizona is going to start pulling people over for being brown. I also think, though, there will have to be some serious, serious training involved, from the bottom to top. This is a tough new law, and it has the potential to either work, or crash and burn epically. I’m hoping the former. But I guess we’ll see.

And while I understand that people might be afraid they’re going to start becoming targets for law enforcement because they’re brown, or yellow, or pink, and law enforcement assumes they’re illegal, I think these same people should also not make the assumption that Arizona law enforcement will automatically be cruising for people to arrest. I don’t think it’s fair to assume that all cops are bad because some of them COULD be, given the opportunity. Do we not trust the police anymore because a law was signed by the governor?

Make no mistake, this is groundbreaking legislation. And it’s up to all of us how it works.

And like I mentioned earlier, if not this legislation, then what? What are we to do about borders, and about immigration? I’m from San Diego, and we have a wall there that doesn’t work very well. People laugh at it, and rightly so.

What’s the answer? Tougher laws? Easier laws? No laws? I don’t know.

Bring us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

I submit that it’s possible to do that without coming across the border in a boat in the dead of night, or swimming across a river, or cramming into the back of a van with lots of other people.

I work as a DoD contractor, and I meet a lot of interesting people. I was on a test once where I met a soldier from Poland, who was now a combat engineer for the United States Army. He’d done two tours in Iraq, and was now training for a third tour—this time in Afghanistan. He was going to take an energetic young black lab named Bear to go sniff out mines and IEDs. Anyway, this young man had come to the states to attend college, and had liked it so much he stayed illegally after he was done with college. But he fell in love with the country, and wanted to serve, so he eventually went home to Poland, and did what he had to so he could come here legally. And he joined the Army, where today he is probably in the mountains of Afghanistan, protecting my way of life.

Anyway, I don’t like that we have this type of legislation—that it’s necessary to secure our borders, if indeed they can be secured.

But what’s the alternative? No borders at all?

We don’t live in the type of world where we can hold hands across our borders and sing happy songs, congratulating each other on what great and tolerant people we are.

So what do we do?

The Slam

Two days before I left Panama, we were all in the van driving to work. I was listening to my mp3 player, as I usually did. It was great because we would inevitably get stuck at the canal for almost an hour, and also because it drowned out my annoying coworkers–and believe me, they would annoy Mother Theresa. And like usually happens, God knew better than me what I needed. After the first week, it became part of my devotional time–I would just put on my worship playlist and go.

On this particular morning, the first song that came on when we stopped at the canal was this TobyMac song called “The Slam,” which is one I usually skip over. Never really thought much about listening to it–I didn’t care for his intro. This time, I stopped and listened to the words and this particular verse about John the Baptizer kept repeating in my head.

They came from the cities and towns all around
To see the longhaired preacher from the desert get down
Waist high in water, never short on words, he said
Repent, the kingdom of heaven can be yours
But he stopped in the middle of his words and dropped
Down to his knees and said, behold the Lamb of God
He’s the one, the slam, don’t you people understand?
You’re staring at the son, God’s reaching out his hand

John the Baptist was really an amazing person. To start with, he fearlessly proclaimed the word of God, regardless of potential consequence. And he also foretold of the coming messiah,¨the thongs of whose sandals he was not worthy to untie.

And what I was thinking about was that not only did John recognize that a messiah was coming and the kingdom of Heaven was near, he recognized Jesus when He came. Not everyone did. Think about it. When Jesus came to the Jordan to be baptized by John, he probably had to walk through a crowd of people that had come to hear John. And there were Pharisees among them. But Jesus ventured through the throng, and was baptized by an obedient John.

Behold the Lamb of God.

I wonder, how many of us would recognize Jesus if He came in such a way today? Think about it, just for a minute. What if you were at church? What if your pastor was right in the middle of a sermon, and then dropped to his knees in the pulpit when some scruffy looking guy in jeans and a work shirt came in?

Would you recognize him, too? Or, to steal from Brennan Manning, would you think your pastor’s cheese was sliding off his cracker?

I wonder what I would do? I like to think I have enough discernment that I’d be able to recognize

the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world

but I really don’t know. Of course, as a believer, I know how Jesus is going to come the second time. It won’t be like the first.

My point is this:

I don’t know about you, but it’s my tendency to stare through people sometimes. Especially, people I don’t want to see; like the people at the Jordan river that long ago day did not want to see some Nazarene carpenter.

I stare through people that want something from me I am not prepared to give them.

People that are hard to look at for various reasons.

People that annoy me.

People.

But here is the truth.

Jesus came for those people just like he came for me. He came for the old, for the rich, for the poor, for the ugly and annoying.

For the beautiful.

For me.

Should I not, as a follower of His way, be prepared to treat those people the same way He would? Should I not recognize them for who they are in the same way He recognized me for who I am when I asked Him to be part of my life?

Should I not see them as His children?

And with that recognition, in seeing a person just a little bit of the way God sees them, am I not seeing His face reflected?

Am I not recognizing Him as well?

It’s just so hard to see sometimes….

Revolution Project

This weekend Jenny and her parents and I are doing a chapel service at Crossroads Mission–as a smaller part of a larger outreach that FCC is doing. Jenny, Ken and Linda will be doing a few worship songs, and I’ll be doing a little bit of speaking. We’ll have volunteers serving at the mission all day, from morning to night. Cleaning, serving food, serving people. Also, we’ll be having a BBQ/picnic thing at Ranchsomething Elementary school, and serving the surrounding community a free lunch, with some fun things for the kids to do as well. Lastly, we’ll be doing some work for Amberly’s place, which is a battered and abused women’s shelter. Below is a narrative representation of what I’ll be speaking about. Pray it goes well!

I realized something when I was getting prepared for this. It was ten years ago this month that I began my relationship with Jesus, after a lifetime of struggling and wrestling with doubt, and despair, and addiction to all sorts of things. It wasn’t something I had in mind, but God knew better than I what the perfect timing was, and that’s when things started—March of 2000. I was on a trip to Padres spring training in Peoria, and what happened was that, as CS Lewis says, “I gave in and admitted that God was God.” And I asked Him to come to my rescue, because He was the only one that could.

First, a little about me.

I’m from San Diego, my name is Tom, and I’m an addict (hi, Tom!). I wasn’t born that way—it seems to me that addicts come in pieces, and it takes a lifetime to put them together—like one of those horrible pieces of furniture from IKEA. I had a great deal of trauma in my childhood, from abuse, to neglect, to a two year period where three people close to me died in quick succession. My addictions began as comfort, and morphed into self-medication. And as with most people with addictive personalities, if it wasn’t one thing, it most definitely was another. By the time I was an adult, I would do almost anything to meet my needs, or what I thought my needs were at the time.

My addictions were many. Early on, I became addicted to food, and I obviously am still fighting that battle today. And for a while—both before the internet and after—I developed a problem with lust, and pornography. The former led me to the latter, and the latter ended up giving me a completely distorted outlook on women, sex, and relationships. I thank God every day for that particular deliverance.

Then I became a binge alcoholic, and I was good at it. Alcohol was great—it was cheap, it was easy to get, and when I indulged, I could forget about the person I was and become someone else. This was especially great, because the person I was sucked—I knew it, and God had to know it, too.

Addiction was not my only sin, though. Not even close. I worked at a couple of restaurants when I was younger, and I stole both food and money from my employers on several occasions. My rationale was simple: life had been hard, and gotten harder. I deserved it. I was hungry, or I needed gas, or some thing, and I would do what was necessary to get it.

I was also clever, and I used that cleverness given me by God to make fun of all sorts of people—handicapped, overweight, skinny, mentally challenged. Whoever they were, they fell victim to my mean-spirited sense of humor—for my amusement, the amusement of others, and to make myself more popular. I was good at that, too. I was the funny guy that everyone liked, but at night I would go home miserable and alone.

Most of the time, that is. However, when opportunity presented itself, I indulged in several physical relationships with women I had no intention of marrying. It made me feel better at the time, but afterward I felt incredibly empty, and still ended up alone when it was all done.

All of these things were my feeble attempts to fill the voids in my life—to dull pain that I hated to even admit that I felt. To try and find just a little solace. None of them worked for much longer than a brief period, and left me feeling tired, and lonely, and drained afterward.

Eventually, I got to a place where I knew I needed God, or needed something, or I was going to die. Maybe not right away, and maybe not even soon, but the life I was leading was no kind of life at all, and dead was still dead. I’d have a heart attack, or choke on my vomit when I was drunk, or who even knew what.

I knew I needed God, but I had the idea that I could not approach him as I was. I was too dirty, too sullied by the world, too covered in the sin I had chosen to commit to approach God for anything. I was too filthy to be in His presence. This made sense to me because of all the “church people” I had known. It seemed like they had it all together. They wore nice clothes, and lived in nice houses, and they didn’t have any problems that I could see. They talked to Jesus all the time, and they were always happy. At least, that’s what it seemed like.

I wasn’t like that, and it seemed that not only would “church people” not accept me, but neither would Jesus. He couldn’t. I wasn’t one of His people. How could I ever enter his presence the way I was?

Matthew 11: 28-30 says:
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

The following is part of a longer piece written by Jon Acuff as how he imagined Jesus speaking the truth about the above scripture into his heart:

I am not asking you to complete yourself and then come to me. I am asking you to come to me. Broken and burdened, infested with the most hideous lies about me and my nature. Covered in perpetual sin that you just can’t seem to shake. Because I don’t see that. I see Christ. I see the blood of my son all over you.

His love for us is so powerful, that he allowed His son to pay the price for a debt we owed. Jesus does not simply forgive our sins, he became sin on our behalf, so that we did not have to pay the penalty we so richly deserve. He loves us so much that He wants us to come into his presence exactly as we are, and not as we should be. He longs for us to come and stand in his presence and be loved as children.

Acuff continues:

Come stand in it filthy and let me cleanse you. Come stand in it broken and let me heal you.
Come stand in it drunk on doubt and fear and let me renew a spirit of confidence and trust in you.
Just come stand in it.
Come stand in it covered with lies and misconceptions about who I am and who you are and let me reveal the truth.

And the truth is this:

Romans 8: 38-39 says: For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We cannot be separated from God’s love—and all we need do to receive this love is ask for it, and accept it when it comes. That’s actually a really hard thing to do—at least it was for me. It’s hard to get out of our heads that we really don’t deserve grace, and salvation, and life. It’s hard to accept love when all we deserve is condemnation. But love is exactly what we get when we come to Jesus, and surrender our will for our lives to His.

John 6:37 says: “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.”

Whoever comes to me I will never drive away. That sounds pretty good to me—especially after a lifetime of feeling like I deserved nothing more than to be driven out. And really, I do deserve to be exiled from the presence of God. We all do.

But because of Jesus, because He died on my behalf—on our behalves—and because our names are written in His book, it doesn’t have to be that way. Because of Jesus, we have hope in our lives, and that makes all the difference in the world.

Despair is a powerfully heavy thing to carry, especially by yourself. Hope lightens the load. And hope is available to everyone.

Jeremiah 29:11-13 says “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

He’ll listen to our prayers—He does listen to our prayers. But we have to seek Him. And the thought of hope and a future when it seemed all was lost—incredible. That’s such an amazing gift, and it’s free.

Life has been good to me over the past ten years—it really has. I remember standing and looking over the river the night I met Jesus—one minute I was holding a couple of coolers and looking forward to a baseball game the next day. The next minute, I just literally fell to my knees and admitted my life was not working as it was. I needed help. I needed a savior.

It did start off slow, though, and I had to continually remind myself that God was in control, and His timing was always perfect. And there are still struggles, even this week. Some battles are fought over and over again, and I don’t always win them. I heard it said once that without the valleys in life, we wouldn’t be able to appreciate the peaks as much. I think that’s so true. And though I give God the glory for every victory in my life, I also now know that He is with me in every defeat, as well. And He waits with me for the next battle.

There was a movie a while back with Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer called “Frankie & Johnny,” and in one of the final scenes, Johnny (Al Pacino’s character) is consoling Frankie, and he says “I can’t make the bad go away. But when it comes again, I’ll be there.”

So when I struggle (not if, but when), or when there’s trouble, I try to always remind myself that Jesus might not take it away, and might not deliver me from it. But He will see me through it. And when it comes, He’ll be there.

Why pray at all?

I’ve been spending a fair amount of time lately thinking about prayer. I think with no small amount of conviction that I don’t devote enough time to this most important of activities. I think about the fact that now it will become more and more important as time passes, as we will hopefully soon be beginning a prayer ministry at FCC—an intercessory prayer ministry. I’m excited about it, and excited to be part of it. But I’ve been wondering.

What will it be like? Will other people want to do it, too? What, exactly, will we pray about? When the time comes, will God give me and others the right words? I don’t want to be a Pharisee, standing on the corner and praying at the top of my lungs so everyone can see how Holy I am. I have a lot of questions, and am looking forward to finding out the answers. But the main thing I wonder about is how, personally, will I do at it? I also ask myself if I even know how to pray effectively. Am I fit for such leadership? And what will the others involved in the ministry think of my involvement?

I realize that much of this is my own issues coming up and snapping at my heels, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel a certain sense of inadequacy from time to time. Probably I’m not alone in this. Once you come out of your prayer closet, you subject yourself not necessarily to the judgment of others, but at least to their scrutiny. And while I realize intellectually that it doesn’t matter at all to God what other people think of me (and that it shouldn’t matter to me, either) and my eloquence or lack of eloquence at prayer, some part of me still worries about it, and does not want to be subject to any opportunity for ridicule. I worry about….well, clamming up when the time comes. I worry about sounding like a tool when I do finally open my mouth.

In the introduction to his book of prayers/poems, Poet Ted Loder says “We are never restricted to repeating the prayers of our tradition, however beautiful and helpful. Nor are there “right” prayers and “wrong” prayers, or “right” ways of praying, or “right” words with which to pray…”

He goes on in his poem, “How Shall I Pray”

How shall I pray?
Are tears prayers, Lord?
Are screams prayers,
or groans
or sighs
or curses?
Can trembling hands be lifted to you,
or clenched fists
or the cold sweat that trickles down my back
or the cramps that knot my stomach?
Will you accept my prayers, Lord.
my real prayers,
rooted in the muck and mud and rock of my life,
and not just my pretty, cut-flower, gracefully arranged
bouquet of words?
Will you accept me, Lord,
as I really am,
messed up mixture of glory and grime?

I think that’s really what it’s all about. Will God accept us and our prayers? Will the people we worship with do the same? What do you say so God really hears you? I think we have to simply ask Jesus. Why not? The disciples did.

“Lord, teach us to pray…” Luke 18:1

And I think, no I believe, that the important thing is the asking; the dialogue with Jesus, even if it seems one sided. As it so often will. But much can also come from the silences of God.

So I began to flip through the word, looking for references to prayer. I was thinking of using my concordance, but I wanted to actually turn the pages myself, you know? And I suppose it’s pretty ridiculous to say it, but the first thing I discovered is that there’s a lot of prayer in the Bible. It’s kind of intimidating, actually. I won’t list everything I found here, obviously. We’d be here until the cows came home.

One thing I learned pretty much at the beginning is that it will take a lifetime to learn everything I want or need to know about prayer. And that’s OK. I suppose in a way, that’s the idea; taking a lifetime to draw nearer to Him. Often not getting any answers until the end, when you stand before God and go right or left.

So the idea is to seek him with all your heart, and then the hours, minutes and seconds are filled with the knowledge, the absolute certainty that He is at the end of the last mile, and waiting for you with open arms and a “well done, good and faithful servant.” But for that to happen–for that to have even a chance of happening, you have to start talking to him. It’s like that old saying, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Or in this case, a single prayer. Take these words, given to the disciples by Jesus in Matthew 6:

9 Pray like this:
Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
10 May your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today the food we need,
12 and forgive us our sins,
as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
13 And don’t let us yield to temptation,
but rescue us from the evil one.

If I may indulge in a sports metaphor for a moment, it’s like running downfield with a football clutched in your arms and every enemy jersey on the field is running toward you at top speed. You know the end zone is there, even though you can’t see it through the forest of linebackers and safeties. But since you know it’s there, you struggle to find a path through the defense, and you end up twisting and turning, and yes, getting hit on your way there. And along the way, you find blockers to thrust the enemy aside; and you can sometimes open up your own “hole” in the same manner.

But how do you do that? How do you open up a hole in the enemy’s line and give yourself an opening to run downfield?

Well, one way is through practicing the spiritual disciplines and personal intercession–that is, personal prayer. You block for yourself, in a sense. I could extend the metaphor even further, but I probably ought to stop myself before I start losing people (if there are any out there reading this in the first place). I think maybe the easiest way to explain it is that it seems to me you aren’t going to get any help unless you ask for it. And ask for it. And ask for it some more, sometimes. Jesus will not force himself on anyone. We have all the freedom in the world, and what it really amounts to is that we can either ask for a life preserver or drown.

It’s just funny. Everyone has a different idea about prayer, even those who don’t do it. I imagine quite a few people think of it as a way for people who believe in something that doesn’t exist to find solace, and try to make sense out of the senseless. To make themselves feel better. Which I think is precisely the point (making sense out of the senseless)—but maybe that’s just me. And yes, I think prayer–and faith, for that matter–does make you feel better. That’s the point. It’s easy to go around feeling crappy.

Something else I noticed is that it wasn’t until I really started studying up that I realized I was remarkably deficient in that very department—that is, I had not spent nearly enough time praying, and…studying up. My discipleship was inconsistent at best, and occasionally non-existent. So I looked up “prayer” in the back of my bible and began to read (intercession is a helpful search as well).

One thing that caught my eye right away was John 14:13. “And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father.”

It seems obvious that God isn’t talking about asking for a pony or a new bike. I don’t believe the Holy Spirit will intercede for Christmas presents. So what’s he talking about then? Why should we ask him for anything?

Look at the text. “So that the son may bring glory to the father.” (emphasis added)

Oswald Chambers says:
Think of the last thing you prayed about—were you devoted to
Your desire or to God? Determined to get some gift of the
Spirit or to get at God? “Your Heavenly Father knoweth what
Things ye have need of before ye ask Him.” The point of asking
Is that you may get to know God better. “Delight thyself also in
The Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.”
Keep praying in order to get a perfect understanding of God Himself.

For me, the point is that when I truly began to know God, and know about Him, when I began to recognize Him as Lord at first thought instead of second, the desires of my heart began to change. That was one of the things so wonderful about Christ for me: the clarity he brings, if I ask him for it—if, when at prayer, I seek discernment, or wisdom. Though I know God wants me to bring all to Him, there comes a point when you realize just because you can ask God for a pony or new bike doesn’t mean you should. Prayer becomes more of a conduit for edification and enlightenment rather than simply a litany of wants, though it is that, too. But the wants will change with Christ.

Take Job 42:10. “After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before.”

Let me just say that I don’t expect God to make me prosperous, though I recognize that he certainly could. I guess it’s just that maybe when you get to a point where prayer is more about intercession than want, isn’t that more along the lines of what he wants us to seek in prayer? Also, note what the verse says—“after Job had prayed for his friends…” Job did not just start hurling petitions at God. He prayed for his friends, and then he was blessed. Prayer is not something to be self-centered about–it’s something that changes us from the inside out, and when we put other’s needs before our own (as the scriptures command), Jesus will meet our needs as well.

And I think of Jesus’ intercession in Gethsemane, praying so fervently his sweat fell around him like blood (Luke 21:44), and it occurs to me that maybe that’s the type of urgency that should be sought in prayer, at least once in a while.

How often have I done that? How often has anyone? I realize, of course, that prayer isn’t always about desperate entreaties. But intercession calls for something more than just thanking God and asking for a blessing, at least it seems that way to me. I mean, yes, take everything to Him. Just don’t make prayer merely about hurling petitions. Because in the lifting up of others, don’t we lift ourselves as well? And are we not drawn nearer to Him in the process (James 4:10)?

I want to draw nearer to the Lord, any way I can. I want him to draw nearer to me. I want Him to bless my family and friends, to lift them up, and to lift me up as well. I want Him to protect those I love from the enemy and his inevitable attacks. I want Him to protect me, too.

(sidebar–if you want a really great pictures of the war going on in the spiritual realms on our behalf, check out Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness)

Then I found another Oswald Chambers entry:

“We are too much given to thinking of the Cross as something we have to get through; we get through it only in order to get into it. The Cross stands for one thing only for us – a complete and entire and absolute identification with the Lord Jesus Christ, and there is nothing in which this identification is realized more than in prayer.

‘Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him.’

Then why ask? The idea of prayer is not in order to get answers from God; prayer is perfect and complete oneness with God. If we pray because we want answers, we will get huffed with God. The answers come every time, but not always in the way we expect, and our spiritual huff shows a refusal to identify ourselves with Our Lord in prayer. We are not here to prove God answers prayer; we are here to be living monuments of God’s grace.

‘I say not that I will pray the Father for you: for the Father Himself loveth you.’ Have you reached such an intimacy with God that the Lord Jesus Christ’s life of prayer is the only explanation of your life of prayer? Has Our Lord’s vicarious life become your vital life? “At that day” you will be so identified with Jesus that there will be no distinction.

When prayer seems to be unanswered, beware of trying to fix the blame on someone else. That is always a snare of Satan. You will find there is a reason which is a deep instruction to you, not to anyone else.”

Which is, I suppose, yet another way of saying God’s ways are not our ways. That’s something that’s pretty stinkin’ hard to remember sometimes, and it should be the easiest thing of all. God became human in the form of Jesus of Nazareth. But He is not, by nature, human. He is other. He is God.

Let me turn country for just a second or two–in the immortal words of Garth Brooks:

Sometimes I thank God,for unanswered prayers.
Remember when you’re talkin’ to the man upstairs,
that just because he doesn’t answer
Doesn’t mean he don’t care…
Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.

How true is that? Geez. If God had answered my prayers the way I wanted Him to a couple of years ago, I’d still be in a horrible relationship and drifting farther and farther away from God.

Instead, I have been blessed beyond any expectation or agenda. I am a husband. A father.

And a son.

Decisions and choices

I read an interview with director James Cameron right after Titanic came out where he mentioned that he’d written the entire movie in order to get to the central scene between Jack and Rose on the prow of the ship

“Jack, I’m flying!”

The whole movie more or less hinges on that moment, because the story really isn’t about the sinking. Ostensibly, it’s a love story, and a more modern take on Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet—or at least on the central theme of it. But really, I think, it’s about several people’s decisions, and the consequences those decisions have on their lives.

And let’s look at Romeo & Juliet, since I mentioned it. There’s a scene where Romeo is comforting Mercutio after his diatribe/discourse on Queen Mab

“Peace, good Mercutio. Thou talkst of nothing.”

and after that, he and his friends are talking about going to the party at the Capulet’s. There’ll be food there, and probably some girls. At that point in the story, Romeo is still pining away after Rosalind, and his friends are trying to get him to go to get his mind off things, and possibly even find someone else

“if love be rough with you, be rough with love…”

Romeo considers, and even though he has second thoughts

“my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars”

he ultimately goes. We all know what happens after that.

Of course, these are both ridiculously over-dramatized examples, but they well illustrate the point that our lives are deeply affected by the decisions we make. In fact, I’ve heard it said that we are the decisions we make. I think what that means is that our lives can be profoundly affected by a single decision, whether good or bad. Lives can change in a second, and in most cases, you don’t get another chance to make the right decision if you make it wrong the first time.

This is something I’ve done badly for most of my life, to disastrous consequences each time.

While of course I can’t speak for everyone, my downfall seems to be that I often act depending on how I’m feeling at that moment, without considering that I might soon feel differently, or without seeking counsel from someone else. I don’t really consider myself and impulsive person, and probably I’m much less impulsive now that I’ve gotten married and grown up a little (I guess you’d have to ask my wife how much—might not be as much as I think. I do still love potty humor), but there was a time not long ago when that wasn’t the case.

There was a catch phrase a while back, and you saw it everywhere—on bumper stickers, ties, signs, t-shirts, etc—WWJD. What would Jesus Do?

What would Jesus do?

That’s the hard part. When I think about that now, I take from it that if you’re a Christian, you need to involve Jesus in your life on more than just Sunday. You need to ask Him what he thinks about whatever you’re planning on doing. Ask him what He would have you do in a given situation. You won’t always receive a pointed direction, but sometimes the lack of a response is all the direction you need.
But this is not as easy as it seems.

Our tendency, one would imagine, is toward self-gratification much of the time, even as Christians. What’s best for me. What do I want to do? That kind of thing.

While I can’t speak for everyone, of course, this type of thinking has really led me to some wretched decisions. In regard to living situations, and credit, money, and also in the few relationships I’ve been involved in, both as a youth and an adult.

I think of one situation in particular, and what makes it worse is that I actually did ask someone what they thought in regard to the situation, and I suppose I even knew what God would want from me. I just didn’t listen. I wanted what I wanted, and who I wanted.

Just before Valentine’s day a little less than six years ago, a girl I was very much interested in, and had been flirting with (it had began lightly, but had developed into something of a more serious nature), thought it would be a good idea to have a Valentine’s day party, and all the single people amongst our group of friends (we all worked together) would attend. She had just become single herself—separated from her husband—and I’m ashamed to say I had a part in that, as well. I knew her marriage was in trouble, and I knew all about the sanctity of marriage in the eyes of God. I didn’t care. I could rationalize my behavior because her husband was a jerk, and I deserved some happiness, damn it. And that February, since I was the only one who had my own apartment, the decision was made to have the party at my place.

This girl wasn’t a Christian, and I knew on several levels that pursuing a relationship of any sort with her would be a colossally bad idea. But she was beautiful, and seemed to like me, and I fell for her. So I decided to pursue her, even though my closest friend (who was a Christian) advised me it was a bad idea, and dangerous to my walk. She was right.

And then there came a point in the evening when it was very late and everyone was leaving. The girl and a couple more friends were still there and I remember them standing by the door and her looking back at me. “You guys go ahead,” she said. “I’m gonna hang around for a while. I’ll talk to you later.”
I didn’t even think about the consequences. I could’ve done a lot of things. I could’ve said I was tired. I could’ve said, “See you later.” I could’ve not had the party at all. But I did none of those things. I just went with the easy choice. And it took years to recover from it. I actually don’t think I fully healed from that situation until I met my wife to be, and discovered what it meant to be in a relationship that was blessed by God.

I guess my point in all this is mostly just figuring my own stuff out, or trying to. But I think I realize now that even if you don’t know God, it’s always a bad idea to go and do something just because, as the saying goes, “it seems like a good idea at the time.” Trust me. It isn’t.

Think about it, for at least a second or two. Think before you speak, and definitely think before you act. Before you buy that car, or that expensive whatever-it-is. Think. Ask someone close to you that you trust what they think, and at least consider their advice before you do anything. Sometimes cooling off will give you some much needed perspective, and sometimes that’s all you need to keep you from throwing a monkey into your life. I have, as they say, learned the hard way. I’ve made horrible financial decisions, and relationship decisions, even bad educational decisions.

And suffered the consequences. I’m actually still suffering the consequences for many of those choices if you take our present living situation into consideration. Which also means that those bad decisions I made before I even met my wife affected her as well—and my stepson.

If you do know God, then you need to pray about things before you do them, even if it’s only a quick prayer. It’s still a direct line to the most wisdom a person could ever get.

There’s another saying that also applies. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Also true.

Anyway, now I try to do the right thing as much as I can, what is right before God. I think about what things will mean to God before I do them (at least I try to–though it isn’t always easy). It might even be that I consider too much before I act, what Pastor Mike would call the “paralysis of analysis.” But anyway. Now I have people in my life that I can go to with difficult things, people that will hold my impulsive, dumb-ass self accountable. I am fortunate enough to have people in several states that actually care about me enough to try and keep me from jacking up my life any more. I will do my best to listen to them…

Rocky Home

It’s kind of hard to believe it now, but there used to be cows in Santee. Dairy cows. I never saw them, but I know they were there. I know because there used to be an actual dairy really close to my house–maybe a quarter mile away on a gentle hill overlooking the group of cookie-cutter houses I lived in. The dairy was long since closed by the time I paid it any real attention, though—closed and looking as if it had taken a couple of artillery rounds. We would pass by the ruins if we were headed to Prospect Avenue School to play basketball, or sometimes just a few rounds of H-O-R-S-E if we were lazy, or there weren’t enough guys for a game.

But it’s really different now.

If you’re driving down Prospect Avenue in Santee toward Cuyamaca today, when you make a right at Double M, it proceeds straight for a couple hundred yards, and then continues up a gentle hill into a large development of pretty nice 3 and 4 bedroom houses.

Back when I was a teenager, in the early-mid eighties, it was completely different. Double M ended where the hill began. There was a white wooden fence marking the end of the road, with two yellow metal signs proclaiming “road ends.”

You could easily get around the fence, though. Right on the other side was a dirt path cutting through the field of weeds. The path proceeded another couple hundred yards to an enormous pepper tree that shaded a large flat dirt area in front of the ruins. Lots of kids would hang out under the tree–partying, getting high, and occasionally sleeping there. Some luckier souls would also sometimes drag their sleeping bags inside the entryway for a different sort of fun (though neither my friends nor I were included in either of these groups). On the crumbling wall above the door, you could still see the name in faded blue, italicized paint.

“Rocky Home Dairy.”

Through the door was a large, empty room. There was no roof left, and only three walls, with the two perpendicular to the facade tapering down to rubble about 18 inches high at the back end. Behind that, there was a large slab of cement, littered with smaller chunks of concrete, trash, and weeds growing out of cracks in the cement. Trash of all sorts was scattered everywhere. Then there were the feed troughs, also choked and overgrown with weeds. It was hard to imagine there’d ever been a bunch of cows where hundreds of tract homes were little more than a stone’s throw away.

The path through the weeds continued behind the feed troughs, and eventually led to the back end of another old and narrow street, with several older but still-in-decent-condition houses on either side of the street, along with my friend B’s house. Another friend, D, also lived nearby. As did the young man (B) who’d been the leader of the church youth group I’d attended for a while with R and his brother. B lived about a quarter mile from the elementary school we’d all attended, and it was on the upper playground we’d play basketball or whatever we had the energy for, usually several times a week. Every now and again, we’d switch to football or sometimes just “smear the queer,” if we didn’t feel up to the challenge of running plays. That was usually my favorite game—it was little more than throwing the ball into the air and tackling the crap out of whoever caught it. As for football, that was also tackle, when we played it. Two- hand touch was for pussies.

You could also take some sheets of fiberglass or aluminum siding and slide down the fairly steep incline behind the dairy. When the tall grass and weeds were dried out, all you had to do was bend them down, and you could really get some speed up going down that thing. When I was small—had to have been right around kindergarten—people used to ride their motorcycles or dune buggies around the area. There were a few good trails that weren’t too rough. I have this picture I love of my dad and two of my sisters in his dune buggy—he has this sort of half-grin on his face, and my sisters are trying to keep from getting choked by their hair.

And I digress once again. Like with most things you do before you hit puberty, that sort of fun lost its charm pretty quickly, and we began to find other things to do.

By the time Christmas vacation in 1985 rolled around, we were pretty much done with sliding down the hill. We played basketball most of the time, when we weren’t in my friend R’s room listening to music and playing Atari. When we did play ball, we usually played two-on-two, but every now and then we’d get a pickup game going, or just take turns shooting from the key while we took turns telling lies and bullshitting.

That break was weird. Normally, shortly before Christmas vacation, you’d have a week of final exams, then you could go through the holiday without worrying about anything, and start a new semester when you got back. That year, break started just a couple days before Christmas. We had two weeks off, then a little more than a week of class, then finals the last week of January. None of us were really comfortable with it. And it was doubly strange because my friend B would be graduating early, at the end of the semester. He was a little older than me and R and a few other folks that hung out at 19, and decided that he would get done a semester early, and join the Marine Corps. No one could believe it.

Christmas break went by really fast, as things like that always seem to, and soon it was time to try and get back into a school mindset before finals. We tried to enjoy the remaining time with all of us together at school, but with finals looming, it was difficult. Monday, January 27th came along, and we each had two tests a day for three days. Could’ve been worse, I suppose–just two exams and then onto the bus to go home.

On the break between classes that Monday, the four of us met on the soccer field behind the racquetball courts. R had gotten this sort of demented frisbee thing for Christmas called an aerobie, and we wanted to throw it around. What it was, was this slightly weighted rubber ring, a little larger than a regular frisbee, and it was supposed to go for miles when you threw it. Sort of a bastard cousin of the boomerang, I guess. We’d only tested it in the field next to R and P’s house, and it had almost decapitated a kid running by. The soccer field at Grossmont seemed like a much better choice.

We threw the ring around the soccer field for a little bit, one guy on each corner, and it flew as advertised. It seemed like the damn thing would have gone down the hill to Santee if we threw it hard enough. We stood around bullshitting for a few minutes after we were done, and then it was back to finals. I remember leaving my math final and thinking I wouldn’t have done well with 4 hours to take the test.

My classes Tuesday the 28th were even worse, and about halfway through the final in my first class, someone wheeled a television into my class and turned it on. The plan was to take a short break, and watch the space shuttle Challenger launch. Instead, we watched it explode and disintegrate shortly after takeoff. They wheeled in a TV during the next final as well. The disaster was all anyone could talk about. The brothers and I didn’t see B on the bus ride home that day, but it wasn’t that unusual. He never liked the bus much, and often didn’t have a bus token, either. I don’t know how he got home some days, but he always did.

I can’t remember what exactly I did that night, but I know I didn’t study for the next day’s round of tests. I remember falling asleep listening to music, though.

The next day, I woke up when I heard the “bloop” of a police car’s siren–what I always thought of as the “pull over” noise.

I crawled out of bed and went over to the window, looking out at the small piece of Double M I could see from my bedroom. The car had already gone by, and I couldn’t see anything from my window, so I wrapped my bedspread around my shoulders, and went out into the front yard. I could see the Sheriff’s car parked at the end of Double M, next to another car. An ambulance was backed up to the white fence with the doors open, and there was a small group of people milling around watching the action.

There were a few people standing around looking on, buy nobody knew anything for sure. I did hear from a few people that a couple of women had found a body lying in front of the dairy, in the large flat spot under the pepper tree. There was some speculation that it may have been a drug thing, but all we could do was wait to see what the news would bring.

It was all we could talk about at the bus stop, and on the way to school, and the fact that the brothers and I lived close by where the body was found made us persons of no small interest. For a little while, I felt like a celebrity. Who had the person been? Was it a drug deal gone bad? A murder? What was it? No one had any idea.

The tests went quickly that day, and no one saw B at all. The semester was over. We figured that he must have simply figured, screw the tests–I’m done. Or maybe he was so busy trying to cram that he didn’t have time to make an appearance on the soccer field, or anywhere else. All I know is that I didn’t see him.

We hadn’t planned on playing ball that day, but our curiosity got the best of us, and it was only a few minutes after we got home that the brothers were back at my house with a basketball and a boombox, ready to play. R slipped a cassette of Yngwie Malmsteen’s Marching Out into the stereo, and we walked up Double M to the hill with the strains of Soldier Without Faith ringing loudly in our ears.

We got to the little flat spot in front of the dairy, and were amazed to see the blood was still there, and due to the hardness of the ground, hardly any had soaked in. It was just gathered in a large, teardrop shaped puddle, with one side tapering to a small narrow stream that ran down the plateau into the grass at its base. I’d never seen anything like it, and was amazed at how bright red it was. I was also fairly surprised they hadn’t cleaned it up at all. No one had even so much as scattered dirt across the top. The guy’s life was just lying there spilled out, for all to see. There was just so much blood. We tried to guess what had happened once again, creating grander and grander scenarios, each trying to top the one before. I remember R’s brother nearly dropping the basketball in the slowly drying puddle.

Due to the weird timing on the winter break, and the rotten schedule for finals, we didn’t get any further time off, and school started again the very next day. We had yet to hear from B, but had figured that he would be sleeping in, and trying to prepare himself for wearing jackboots, and calling everyone “sir.”

When the bus pulled up and dropped us off across the street from my house that day, I saw a small, scrawny figure hanging around in front of my house. He was a little guy that was one of our group’s peripheral friends, but he lived closer to B than any of us. When I stepped off the bus, the first thing I saw was that he’d been crying.

And I knew.

It had happened something like this, though nobody could say with any degree of certainty: The night of the 28th, B left with his guitar case, as he also quite frequently did. He probably said his usual goodbyes to his family, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. But he didn’t go to his band’s practice space that evening–he went to the dairy, and the flat space under the pepper tree.

Some short time after that, someone went into his room for something and found that his bass was still there, and also came across his suicide note.

The next morning, a couple women out walking had found the body of a young man wearing jeans and a polo shirt. He was lying under the pepper tree next to a guitar case and was quite obviously dead, with a large amount of blood around his head and a small caliber rifle lying by his side. It took almost a day to identify the body as B.

I don’t remember how it happened, but one of the brothers got hold of the note. It was the most heart-breaking thing I ever read. B was very sorry he had to do it, he said, but it had to happen. He was convinced he had a mental illness of some sort (the illness went unnamed and was not described at all). He thanked a bunch of people by name for being his friends. He thanked his band and his family. And he said goodbye and asked that his body be cremated. And the really terrible thing is that somehow a copy of the note got out, and made the rounds of the school. I always suspected that little creep M, but he would never admit to it, and I never found out any different.

At the funeral, the guys from his band laid guitar picks in his coffin. You couldn’t tell he’d shot himself–he looked waxen, but asleep. His blond hair was neatly arranged (which never happened in real life). No more bass riffs. No more missing bus tokens.

He was just freaking gone.

There were tons of kids there from school, most of whom he didn’t know, and who didn’t know him. Yet there they were. Someone told me years later that any time someone that young goes in such a way, it makes everyone else feel their mortality as well. It wasn’t that way for me—I just alternated between feeling numb and pissed.

School was weird for a while after that, too. Kids—especially girls—were crying all over the place. Like they’d lost someone they were close to. It was a huge load of crap, or it felt that way at the time. There were grief counselors available. Teachers were more sensitive, and asked how everyone was doing. Most of the students were doing great, I think. Something horrible had happened, but it did give people lots to talk about. But I didn’t really know, and I didn’t really care. And the brothers and I never fully got our mojo back. It was not the same without B.

Yet still, some things were good.

A couple days after the funeral, we began to learn a new song in Men’s Chorus–an old negro spiritual called “ain’t got time to die.” We were a room full of white boys, and the words felt and probably sounded strange coming from our throats. But when Mr B played the first few notes on the piano and we began to lift our voices, it was like I could hear B’s baritone voice next to mine. I remember losing the song, then, and breaking down. I was the first, but many of the guys soon followed suit soon thereafter.

We didn’t talk about it much after that, but I remember Mr B playing the piece through, and just letting us grieve.

After that, I began to learn about a new kind of guilt. At the time, I thought of it as absolutely true. While I may not have pulled the trigger of the rifle, I did nothing to stop B. It seemed that I should have known something. I should have had some kind of sense of what would happen (my brother made that very clear. I was B’s friend, wasn’t I?). Some kind of friend “radar” should have been triggered, as it had been when the gang came to my house after my dad died.

But it wasn’t. And B’s blood had soaked into the dirt in front of the dairy.

Still, even carrying that, I had to finish school. I had to graduate. And as my final semester progressed, my mom began getting sicker, too, and I had to help with that. I had just gotten a job I liked a lot, but I had to quit so I could “be there.” It was a busy year, and I think any more catharsis would have exploded either my head or my heart like a melon.

But, boys being boys, I felt like I had to at least keep up the pretext of being strong. I don’t know if my friends felt it, but I did. Plus, it didn’t seem right to be moping around when my mom was dealing with her stuff.

It took a while, but by the end of the semester, we mostly had our lives back. Or at least we acted that way. To me, that didn’t really feel right, but it was what it was.

Sometimes I would look up toward the hill and the dairy from the bus stop, but I never went up there again. As far as I know, none of us did. We never played basketball again after that, or at least I didn’t. Nor did we talk about it, either, now that I think of it. I wish I’d known then what I know now about keeping stuff inside.

I went to my old junior high school last year, and I stood in the key under the hoop closest to the fence, on the court we’d always used. It was pretty much the same, although the netless hoops were now painted orange and there were lineup numbers nearly up to the back of the key. But it occurred to me then that I was not the same at all. I was alive. I’d changed. And where once there had been the possibility to go the same route as B, there was now Jesus in place of that darkness. Life wasn’t perfect then and isn’t now, but having something to live for, and knowing you’re loved in turn makes a huge difference.

It took me most of my life to realize that so many of the things that had happened in my life I had absolutely the wrong idea about, as far as my being responsible for them. I hadn’t totally blamed myself for B dying, but I had always felt like I could have done more, and like I’d been a lousy friend.

But even if that was true, the plain truth was that I wasn’t privy to the inner workings of B’s mind–and I had no idea about how deep his darkness really went. I had no way of knowing how long he was thinking about doing what he did. And when he decided to do it, I had no way to stop him once he’d made up his mind. He left his house at night, and not even his parents knew where he was going or what was on his mind.

Most of this God has helped me to realize over a very long period, but some of it occurs to me even now, as I sit here reading this over with my wife softly breathing behind me. The damage caused by the crap I’d believed about my part in B’s death was something I didn’t even think about healing for a very long time, well into my adulthood.

It never would have happened without Jesus, and those wounds would have colored the rest of my life. And the sad truth about all of it is that God would have comforted B in his darkness, had he but asked.

He didn’t. I didn’t either back then.

And God will not force himself on anyone, not even someone in that situation. Our free will to choose Him is absolute.

But I didn’t think about any of that the afternoon I went to the school. I just stood under that rusty orange hoop, and I thought about all games played on that court. I thought about my friends ministering to me after my dad died, whether they meant to or not. I thought about B and all the rest of the guys. I’m not sure what everyone else I used to hang out withis doing, but R is now playing music with a really good band up in Portland, OR. Not sure about his brother, either, but knowing P, he is playing music, and doing it well.

Over the past few months, thanks to the wonder of social networking, I have begun to re-establish some friendships from that time of my life—albeit from a distance. Who knows what can happen?

And to shamelessly paraphrase from a Stephen King story–although I haven’t seen them in more than ten years (with one brief exception, it’s actually over 20), I know I’ll miss them forever.

Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel

We are inclined to forget the deeply spiritual and supernatural touch of God. If you are able to tell exactly where you were when you received the call of God and can explain all about it, I question whether you have truly been called. The call of God does not come like that; it is much more supernatural. The realization of the call in a person’s life may come like a clap of thunder or it may dawn gradually. But however quickly or slowly this awareness comes, it is always accompanied with an undercurrent of the supernatural— something that is inexpressible and produces a “glow.” At any moment the sudden awareness of this incalculable, supernatural, surprising call that has taken hold of your life may break through— “I chose you . . .” ( John 15:16 ). The call of God has nothing to do with salvation and sanctification. You are not called to preach the gospel because you are sanctified; the call to preach the gospel is infinitely different. Paul describes it as a compulsion that was placed upon him.

If you have ignored, and thereby removed, the great supernatural call of God in your life, take a review of your circumstances. See where you have put your own ideas of service or your particular abilities ahead of the call of God. Paul said, “. . . woe is me if I do not preach the gospel!” He had become aware of the call of God, and his compulsion to “preach the gospel” was so strong that nothing else was any longer even a competitor for his strength.

If a man or woman is called of God, it doesn’t matter how difficult the circumstances may be. God orchestrates every force at work for His purpose in the end. If you will agree with God’s purpose, He will bring not only your conscious level but also all the deeper levels of your life, which you yourself cannot reach, into perfect harmony.

-Oswald Chambers

Waken in Me a Gratitude for My Life

O God, complete the work you have begun in me.
Release through me
a flow of mercy and gentleness that will bring
water where there is desert,
healing where there is hurt,
peace where there is violence,
beauty where there is ugliness,
justice where there is brokenness,
beginnings where there are dead ends.
Waken in me
gratitude for my life,
love for every living thing,
joy in what is human and holy,
praise for you.
Renew my faith that you are God
beyond my grasp
but within my reach;
past my knowing
but within my searching;
disturber of the assured,
assurer of the disturbed;
destroyer of illusions,
creator of dreams;
source of silence and music,
sex and solitude,
light and darkness,
death and life.
O keeper of promises,
composer of Grace,
grant me
glee in my blood,
prayer in my heart,
trust at my core,
songs for my journey,
and a sense of your kingdom.

—Ted Loder

My albatross

I didn’t understand a thing about addiction when I was a kid. I mean, I had a concept of my mother’s alcoholism, because it was pretty obvious, what with bottles being around, and mom often being incapacitated. I knew a couple of her brothers also had serious drug and alcohol problems, too. I knew, but I didn’t really understand. I saw the symptoms, but I didn’t get what they felt like.

There was this liquor store/market that was around the corner from our house, and it was closer than the 7/11 which was down on the corner of Mission Gorge Rd and Fanita Drive. The man that ran the store was also the slumlord that rented the crappy little duplexes behind the store (which are still there, and still crappy–the landlord is long dead, though), and he did something the 7/11 wouldn’t have even thought about doing–he allowed my mother to run a tab. This was especially convenient, because when my father was not working (masonry had its lulls), she could still get what she needed. Sometimes it was groceries, but more often than not, it was very cheap bottles of wine, and lots of them. There were several occasions when the bottles were chosen over food, and we ended up eating eggs for dinner a few times when my dad was out of town working.

I was generally a pretty good kid, and accepted these circumstances as the way things were. For all I knew, everyone had the same problems. Which wouldn’t have necessarily been bad, but it taught me that food was way more important than it actually was. When you had it, you really needed to pound it down, because you didn’t know if it was going to be there later. Additionally, for as long as I could remember, food was how comfort was given in my house, usually more often than affection.

I can actually remember the first time this ever happened. I was sent to the store I mentioned above with a dollar and some change. I was supposed to get a candy bar or something for my sister and a bottle of coke for myself. I ran all the way there, and about half of the way back. Right as I got to the corner of Prospect and Fanita, I stumbled and fell flat on my face. The candy and bottle of Coke went flying out of my hands. The bottle shattered on a rock, sending out an explosion of soda. I’d scraped both of my palms up, along with one of my knees. I remember running home in tears, clutching my sister’s candy bar. She ended up giving it to me, and I think I even ended up getting another Coke. And it seemed to happen more frequently after that. If I cried, or was hurt, or was rewarded for something I’d done, I would be given something to eat. Usually it was something sweet, or sometimes my sisters would take me out for some fast food. Jack In The Box was, and remains, one of my favorites.

That stuck with me my entire life, and I still struggle with it to this day. Done something good? I deserve a treat. Feel crappy about something? A nice big portion of something will make me feel better. And it did. It does. It also was a good way to numb pain, much like alcohol would be for alcoholics. Although since I’ve been aware of my family’s tendency to addiction, I’ve tried to avoid regular consumption of alcohol. Avoidance worked for a while, but in my mid-twenties, I discovered that alcohol worked even better than food at numbing. I never became a “Leaving Las Vegas” style alcoholic, but there was a time not too long ago that when I did indulge, I binged like a maniac. My buddy and I would go to Padres games, each with a twelve pack of something, and not go into the game until the beer was gone.

I do the same with food. I didn’t exhibit a lot of the behavior that food addicts do, so I convinced myself I wasn’t one for the longest time. I don’t eat in secret. I don’t often eat when I’m not hungry (but when I am hungry, I eat way, way more than I should). Seldom is the meal when I have only one serving of anything. I try not to eat many dessert-type foods, but when I do, it’s usually like I did with the beer at those Padres games. I would often consume a pint of Ben & Jerry’s all in one sitting—all thousand plus calories of it.

My problem, I think, is that I struggle doing anything in moderation–whether it be drinking, or eating, or anything at all, really. My weight, and consequently my health, has been a lifelong problem for me, and sometimes it seems like it always will be. I guess it’s the “once an addict, always an addict” philosophy. But an addict in recovery is of course preferable to one in full bloom. I guess the problem right now is that I feel like I’ve fallen off the wagon and broken both my legs.

I have made progress on and off over the years, mostly just from stubbornness and restricting the almighty heck out of my diet. A few years ago, I lost nearly 50 pounds, about 30 of which I’ve put back on. It’s slightly better than it was, of course, but still not where I want to be. I’d like to see if it’s possible to get my blood pressure down enough through diet and exercise that I don’t need to take medication for it anymore. I hate taking those damn pills.

I think my main problem is that I’ve always tried to go it alone, even to the extent of not spending any real time in prayer over my diet, and weight, and health. This is an area I’ve never truly given to God. Confessing weakness is not an easy thing for me. But in this area, I am tremendously weak.
Today, this moment, I can see that my health problems, and weight problems, were brought on not by God, but by me. My problems are because of me, and the consequences of my bad decisions (and not just the dietary problems). I choose to eat food that’s bad for me, in extremely unhealthy portions. I would choose to drink excessively (when I did drink), occasionally to the point of making myself sick. I choose to not exercise enough. A lifetime of this has left me with the very high blood pressure I mentioned a minute ago, which nearly killed me before I saw a doctor for it. Now, I have the pleasure of taking two different medications every day. I’ll probably have to do this for the rest of my life, but it’s a lot better than the alternative.

What am I getting at? I just wanted to lay the groundwork for where I am. But I also realize that changing my life is not something I’ll be able to do easily, or by myself. I need to involve God, and seek the accountability of others like myself, and people who have been through what I am only just beginning. To that end, I was briefly involved with a program called “Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous.” Very similar to AA, but different from Overeaters Anonymous, mostly in its methods. FA’s path to health and weight loss is very strict, to start, and involves abstinence from all flour and sugar. You eat three weighed and measured meals with nothing in between. It was tough, and I think I did it for a month or two. It worked, but at the time the discipline became far more than I was willing to deal with, as it required me to attend AA meetings besides the once a week FA meeting. I was not down with that, and I crapped out pretty early on.

From what I can tell from the website, OA mainly consists of accountability, and planned menus, without the extremely strict nature of FA. We’ll see, I guess. I found one that meets in Yuma, and I was thinking about checking it out, and seeing if my wife would go with me.

So short term, what I’d like to do now is to attend an OA meeting and see what that’s like, and if I am more suited to its disciplines. In that regard, to those of you who pray, please pray that I am able to maintain the discipline I need to get healthy, whether or not I take part in a program.
The truth is, I’m tired of feeling bad, and tired of not being healthier. I know what I need to do, but in trying to do it on my own, I’ve failed miserably. And of late, I’ve felt myself sinking back into old thought patterns, and sin patters, I suppose. The way I’ve been treating myself feels like sin, and I’m tired of feeling all crudded up again. I guess talking about it like this is the first step. One of the guys in my small group mentioned being available to talk about this stuff, and I may take him up on it. But the very first thing I need to do, is give all of the stuff I’m feeling to God, and trust him to be in control. I think of that quote from Romeo & Juliet. “he that hath the steerage of my course, direct my sail.”

So please pray–whatever God puts on your heart to ask for on my behalf. And while I feel like I’m at peace about whatever happens with the work thing, it has been the source of a fair amount of stress lately, and more than a few large meals over the past week. In that regard, I have a meeting with the accident review board today at 3:20, and I will be very glad to get it over with and find out what my fate at work ultimately is. I’ve been on suspension since last Friday, and it’s the first time in my life I’ve felt like a discipline case. Though I suppose it’s probably standard operating procedure when you utterly destroy a government vehicle, and almost destroy yourself along with it.