Gate (9781441240569)

by Stouten, Dann A.

  God never asked us to work harder, but he has asked us to love deeper.

  “You have a lifetime of experience. Don’t you think it’s time you shared some of it? Come on, Scout, it’s time for you to do this. I want you to share your successes, but most of all I want you to share your failures. Let Ben go to school on your mistakes. Become the coach I know you can be. Teach him; inspire him; challenge, motivate, and encourage him. Pour yourself into him. That’s what brothers do, and that’s what brotherly love is all about. Just as I believe in you, so too you need to believe in him. I know you can do this!”

  10

  hope

  Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.

  Dale Carnegie

  On the way back, I was feeling a little sorry for myself, and a little underappreciated too.

  “Ahbee,” I said, “how can you be so hard on me? If I had stayed in the car business, I’d be a millionaire by now. After years of sacrifice and education, I still make less now than I used to because I believed you wanted me to help people. I am one of the few who read the story of the rich young ruler and took it to heart. Don’t I get any credit for that?”

  “No one is questioning your willingness to sacrifice, Scout,” Ahbee said. “Or your deep desire to make a difference. That’s why you’re here. Because of that, I wanted to give you a chance to get out ahead on this. I’m hoping that you can share some of the things that I’ve shared with you, but before you challenge people to search their souls, I thought you ought to do a little soul-searching yourself.”

  “Maybe I’ll just go up to bed early tonight,” I replied.

  “That’s up to you,” Ahbee said, “but I think maybe you’ll change your mind when you see who’s waiting for you back at the cottage.”

  Curious but cautious, I kept my thoughts to myself, and the rest of the ride back was pretty quiet. The windows were down, and I could hear the whining, rhythmic sound of the tires against the pavement. I laid my head against the side window, and my thoughts and my eyes grew heavy.

  Before we challenge others to search their souls, we should do a little soul-searching ourselves.

  I must have fallen asleep because I woke up with a start as the tires on the Volvo hit the gravel driveway of the cottage. There, parked in front of the garage door, was a fire engine–red ’53 Buick Roadmaster convertible. The only person I knew who ever drove a car like that was my uncle Herb.

  “Herby!” I shouted as I jumped out of the Volvo. He came around the corner from the front of the house and gave me his usual greeting.

  “Hi, how-are-you, hi, how-are-you?” he asked, in a singsong sort of a way that mimicked the Indian drums of an old western movie.

  Uncle Herb was wearing tattered leather loafers, white tube socks, seersucker Bermuda shorts, a navy blue Hope College sweatshirt, and his signature yellow vest. Before he went into the Marines, Herb had been a tailback at Hope College. Twenty years later, I followed him there.

  There was a thing that my mother called the Herb-Sky-Dave syndrome because Herby, my cousin Dave, and I all had to learn things the hard way. Too often we masked our insecurities with bravado, and in our younger days, we all had a reputation for being hot-headed and quick to fight. They were both tougher than I was, but what I lacked in toughness I made up for in bullheaded stupidity, which was sometimes mistaken for bravery. Mercifully, we all outgrew most of that and became lovers instead of fighters.

  I stuck my hand out to greet him, but Herby was a hugger. He believed that the world would be a better place if people hugged more often. He grabbed me, picked me off the ground, and said, “Hope you’re hungry, Tiger.” I suddenly realized I was starving.

  ———

  Uncle Herb was my dad’s younger brother and had been his closest friend. Ten years separated them, but they’d had one heart. They fished together, hunted together, and vacationed together, and most of the time, they let me tag along.

  Herb and Gerry were the cool aunt and uncle everyone wished they had. I remember when I was four years old and they pulled up in front of our house on Hazan Street in that red Buick, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting on Aunt Gerry’s lap and we were going for a ride.

  The world would be a better place if people hugged more often.

  When Uncle Herb honked the horn, it went Ahuuuuga! Ahuuuuga! That started my lifelong love affair with cars. Dad always drove station wagons—sturdy, practical, dependable, roomy, and boring—but Herby thought cars ought to be fun, and I agreed.

  Uncle Herb was named after Grandpa, but he was given the letter P as a middle initial to avoid mail mix-ups. Nobody knew for sure what the P stood for, but Grandma used to joke that it meant, “Please, God, don’t let him be anything like his father.” Thankfully, he wasn’t.

  Like Grandma, Herby knew how to laugh and he knew how to love. Later in life, when Gerry had Alzheimer’s, it robbed her of who she was little by little, but Herb never forgot who she was, and he never stopped loving her. She was the love of his life. The two of them fit together like cherry pie and ice cream. I can’t think of one without thinking of the other.

  I don’t remember it, but I was the ring bearer at their wedding the same year that I rode in that Buick. Looking through their wedding pictures, I thought Gerry was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I think Herb thought so too, and from what I could tell, his feelings never changed.

  ———

  “Sky’s here!” Herb hollered as we walked out in front of the cottage. Gerry rose from the lawn chair she was sitting in. She looked as young as she did in their wedding pictures, with long, flowing, rusty brown hair; high cheekbones covered in freckles; and a smile that would melt your heart. She was wearing red shorts, a white sleeveless blouse with a blue rope and anchor around the collar, a big floppy straw hat, and a pair of Foster Grant sunglasses.

  Gerry was a hugger too, and as she put her arms around me, I noticed that she smelled like flowers and baby oil. Then she laughed for no particular reason. She had a great laugh, and even when everything else was taken from her, the laugh never left her.

  On the table in the screened-in porch was potato salad, ice-cold lemonade, and sliced homegrown tomatoes. Herb was butter-basting chicken pieces on the charcoal grill outside. He always slow-cooked it over low coals, and then right before it was done, he’d switch from basting with butter to barbeque sauce.

  Even when everything else is taken from us, we can still laugh.

  The sauce was a recipe Carol and I received from the chef at a restaurant we frequented when we were dating and she has tweaked over the years. She freely passed it out to everyone, and my family has put it on everything. It’s a thick, sweet, tomato-based sauce, and there was a mason jar full of it sitting on a tray next to the grill. Herby painted it on each piece with a brush, and as soon as he got them all basted on one side, he’d turn them over and do the same on the other side. As the brown sugar in the sauce began to caramelize, the chicken turned golden brown and crispy.

  Alongside the chicken Herb was grilling salmon. He’d made a boat of aluminum foil, placed the salmon filet skin-side down, and then placed six pats of butter on top. Then he poured a half a bottle of French dressing over the fish, liberally loaded it with parmesan cheese, and sprinkled it with salt, pepper, and dill.

  “It’s all about the timing,” Herby said as he stuck a meat thermometer into one of the chicken breasts, and after a minute or two, he announced it was time to eat. He plated up the chicken and the fish, brought them inside, and then got a little choked up as he said grace.

  After supper we moved to the living room and talked mostly about the people we loved.

  “I miss your dad,” he said.

  “He misses you too,” I replied. “More than you know.”

  “And my boys too,” Herby added.

  “They’re all doing fine,” I said. “Both of them are kind of growin
g into your shoes, Herb. Dave’s more like you every day, and you’d be so proud of Steve. Since he quit drinking, he’s become the man you always knew he could be. Like you, his heart is tender toward anyone in need.”

  “I always knew he could stop drinking,” Herb said. “I couldn’t, but I knew he could.”

  He got a little emotional, and Gerry moved closer to him and put her arm around his neck. We sat in front of the fireplace, roasted a couple of marshmallows, and talked about what was and what will be as it slowly became dark. Time has a way of getting away from you sometimes, and this was one of those times.

  Finally he got around to asking about Ben. “How’s your little brother doing?” he asked.

  “To be honest, I’m a little worried about him,” I said. “He’s never gotten over what happened up at the lake. Money’s a problem, Mary Alice is a problem, and spiritually I don’t know where he’s at.”

  “Maybe you know more than you’re telling,” Herb said.

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  “Two weeks ago you saw him come forward crying like a baby when Pastor Bill asked if anyone wanted to come up and leave their past on the altar.”

  “I saw him,” I said. “I’m just not sure I believe him.”

  “Oh, so now you are the judge of who’s sincere and who’s not?”

  “No, I’m not saying that. It’s just I know some things, that’s all.”

  “You know some things, but you don’t know everything. Besides, right now he’s been trying to make it right, and maybe he will and maybe he won’t, but you’ve got to give him time. You of all people can’t give up on him. Hope is all he has, and he’s hanging on to that by a thread. Right now he needs you to believe in him more than anything else.

  “Listen,” he continued, “he comes from a long line of prodigals. Some of us are slow learners. We have to learn everything the hard way, and we take our own sweet time doing it. Give him time, Sky, give him a little more time.” Then he got up and started to walk toward the door.

  Where there is no hope, there is no life.

  “Come on, Tons-of-Fun,” Herb said to Gerry. “We’ve got a little bit of a ride, and Ernie will be by pretty early tomorrow morning.”

  Ernie was my great-uncle on Grandma’s side, and when Dad and Herb were young, Ernie always took them hunting, and they returned the favor later in life.

  “What are you guys doing?” I asked.

  “Oh, Ernie wants to go do a little bass fishing up at Promise Point,” Herb said.

  As we walked outside, I hugged Gerry good-bye and opened the Buick’s side door for her. Then I went around to Herb’s side. “There’s something I need to tell you,” he said to me. “Where there is no hope there is no life. You have to hold on to hope even when things look hopeless.”

  “In my heart I know that’s true,” I said, “but sometimes I feel like the hope has dried up inside of me.”

  “That’s why I’m here. I know what you’re going through. I’ve been right where Ben is too. Some days, faith comes easy, it’s smooth as butter, but sometimes, doubt smothers our faith like a wet blanket. On those days you want to believe, you kind of believe, you wish you would fully believe, but doubt has got you by the throat. Am I right?”

  “You must have been reading my mail,” I said.

  “I haven’t, but God has,” he said. “And that’s why I’m here. Just because you got a hot-shot counseling degree doesn’t mean you’re not human. You’re no different than the rest of us. We hope and we fear. We pray with confidence and we worry. We believe, and God help us, we doubt.

  “In the book of Jude, the author says to ‘be merciful to those who doubt.’ Who do you think he’s talking about? Everybody has doubts. No one is immune. That’s just the way it is. And if you try to deny it, if you swallow your doubts, if you keep putting a Band-Aid on your broken faith, it’ll fester. You’ve got to deal with it. You’ve got to talk about it. You’ve got to get it out in the open. And that’s where prayer comes in,” Herby explained.

  “Listen,” I responded, “I’ve always prayed. Sometimes out of gratitude, sometimes out of fear, and often out of habit, but lately I’ve been wondering if it makes any difference. I guess I’ve just seen too many unanswered prayers.”

  “There’s no such thing as an unanswered prayer,” Herb said. “Sometimes the answer is ‘No,’ and sometimes it’s ‘Not now,’ but it’s never not answered. Usually what happens is that we don’t like or don’t understand the answers we get, and so we think that Ahbee has failed the test, but it’s really just the opposite.”

  “I’m not sure I get what you mean by that.”

  “Well, don’t you put Ahbee to the test every time you pray? If he answers, if you get what you want, he passes, but if he doesn’t, then you start to question him. Am I right?”

  “Well, I guess that’s the way it works sometimes,” I answered.

  “So like I said, when you pray, you’re really putting God to the test. But what if it is the other way around? What if you are the one being tested?”

  “I guess I’ve never thought about it that way before,” I said. “Besides, the whole idea that God tests people never made much sense to me. For example, why would a loving God tell Abraham to sacrifice his son by burning him on an altar? It always seemed like a barbaric exercise to me. What was the point of that? If God knows everything, he already knew what Abraham would do before he asked.”

  “God knew, but Abraham didn’t,” Herby explained. “The point was not that God would learn whether Abraham was committed to him; the point was that Abraham would learn how committed he was to God. He needed to know the depth of his own faith. And like with Abraham, sometimes prayer simply reminds us who’s in charge of the universe. Acknowledging that God is still God helps us stretch our faith around the things we don’t understand. Prayer changes things, and when it doesn’t change our circumstances, it changes our heart. You have to believe that! Don’t give up, don’t quit, keep believing in yourself, and keep believing in God.

  “Ultimately, the victory isn’t up to you. God has a plan, and he’s working his will in the world, even when we don’t see it. Sometimes the flames of hope flicker in the winds of life, and the darkness looks like it’s going to have its way with the world—but it won’t. So when things start to look bleak, you need to stand a little taller, a little stronger, and a little braver than everyone else. People look to you for encouragement, so you need to take the lead, to be the example, to set the table for hope.

  “Trust me, one day you’ll see it all more clearly. Here there’s no more pain, no more crying, no more doubt, and no more dying. Everything makes sense. All the pieces fit together. But until you get here, you need to be a champion for hope.”

  Herby ended with, “Tell my boys what I said, and tell them that I love them.”

  He was getting choked up, and so was I, but I could tell that they were tears of confidence and optimism.

  “When did you get to be such an expert on hope?” I asked.

  Herby responded, “A few months before the cancer finally had its way with me, I was trying to make sense of it all. ‘Where are you in all this, God?’ I asked. ‘Why did this have to happen to me, why did Gerry get Alzheimer’s, and who’s going to take care of her when I’m gone?’ I was talking to Ahbee about it, and I wasn’t pulling any punches.

  “Then suddenly I heard a voice say to me, ‘Herby, my son, you’re not God, I am. You don’t have to worry about the things you can’t control. That’s my job. Have I ever failed you before? So what makes you think I will fail you now? I am the hope of the world, and I am your hope too.’

  “I realized in that moment that although I could not see him, God saw me, and he had things well in hand. I guess when there seems to be no hope, you suddenly realize that God is our only hope.”

  As they drove away, Gerry waved and I heard one last Ahuuuuga! as the Buick disappeared into the trees.

  11

&nbs
p; limitations

  I seldom think about my limitations and they never make me sad. Perhaps there’s a touch of yearning at times, but it’s vague, like a breeze among the flowers.

  Helen Keller

  Ahbee was cordial but quiet at breakfast. “Have you thought much about what we talked about yesterday?” he asked.

  “Not as much as I need to,” I admitted.

  “Well then, maybe today would be a good day to just sit and think things through.”

  I sensed that our conversation had ended, so after a breakfast of French toast and smokey links and a little conversation with Michael, I spent the day sitting on the beach, sailing the Hobie Cat buoyed out front, and thinking about what Herby and Ahbee had said. There were things I needed to change, I knew that. I needed to be more confident, more hopeful, more of a tower of strength for those who stumble, and I needed to be less concerned about performance and more concerned about people. The question was, how?

  Up until that point in my life, my formula for living had come off a Mercedes-Benz brochure I’d seen in the seventies. “The best or nothing,” it read, and I liked it. It was very German, very concise, very goal-oriented, and it gave me a target to aim for. Like they say, “They give silver medals to first losers,” and I wanted to win. It’s funny how your attitude can affect everything about the way you live.

  Work as though everything depends on you. Pray as though everything depends on God.

  For too long I’d been looking at life as though it were a competition. When I was a boy, my dad gave me a handwritten note. It was printed in the clean, crisp, block capital letters that reflected his trade as a tool and die maker. It said, “Work as though everything depends on you, and pray as though everything depends on God.” I had always tipped the teeter-totter toward the work side. But now I was starting to believe that I had it backwards: that if life was a competition, then the goal was not so much to finish first as it was to finish well.