On My Worst Day

by John Lynch

  Copyright 2013 John Lynch, Bill Thrall, Bruce McNicol

  All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published by CrossSection

  940 Calle Negocio #175

  San Clemente, CA 92673

  800-946-5983

  crosssection.com

  Scripture Taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version , NIV .

  Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.

  Book + Jacket design by Crosssection

  Set in Adobe Garamond & Trixie

  First Edition: September 2013

  Printed in the USA

  ISBN 978-0-9847577-9-4 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-0-9899537-0-2 (e-book)

  Cheesecake, Evil, Sandy Koufax, and Jesus

  I am running with everything in me. The wind coming through the ear holes in my helmet is so loud, I wonder if people in the stands can hear it. It feels like everything in my life depends upon my sliding into third base safely. Every day, something feels this important…

  Today, the good guys win. I hit a triple and score the go-ahead run. And on this late spring afternoon, my team, the Upland Lions, defeat Boyd Lumber 6–3, here at Olivedale Park.

  The teams shake hands, the coach talks to us for a few minutes, then everyone packs up and heads home.

  … It’s now two-something. I’m sitting on top of a picnic bench, in my sticky wool uniform, baking in the bright sun.

  My mom is late again.

  Everyone has left the stadium. The maintenance man graded the field, locked up the snack booth and has now driven off. I’m officially the last witness at the scene.

  It’s 1964.

  I’ve been staring into my glove and picking mud off my cleats. I’m now trying out different sounds and voices. I’m bored. I am rarely bored. But the heat and glare are taking their toll. There’s little shade yet at this recently built park.

  Then suddenly, it happens. Without planning it, I find myself talking to God. I’ve never done it before this moment.

  God, so I think you should know, I’m on to you. I know something’s up. I know you’re real. The other night, I was walking home in the dark. I saw things in the shadows that didn’t look right. Someone was following me. I was scared. So scared. I didn’t know if I should knock on a neighbor’s door or start trying to outrun whoever it was until I’m home.

  In that moment I called for someone I couldn’t see. I whispered, “Help!” That was you. Wasn’t it?

  Why did I call out to you? My family doesn’t believe in you. We are Unitarians, I think. I don’t know what that means. But my dad says you don’t exist. He says leaders made you up so people would behave better.

  Anyway, I felt something I don’t know how to describe. I haven’t talked to anyone about it. I’ve never felt anything like it before. I want my whole life to be that way—the way it was those two minutes. I want it to come back so much.

  So, who are you?

  I see paintings and statues at churches. That can’t be you. You look terrible! They make you look angry or sad or like you need some food. You have this look, like you’re expecting us to do something. And nobody seems to be able to figure out what you want. And none of it matches what I felt walking home the other night.

  And church people. I don’t get them at all. They seem so strange to me. They’re trying too hard or something. Like they’re trying to convince themselves they’re better than others. Maybe they are, but I would never want to be like them. Their smiles don’t seem real.

  Anyway, I don’t know what to do next. Don’t forget me. I know what I felt that night was real. I wanted you to know I know. Thanks for making the people in the bushes go away.

  Then a horn honks…It’s my mom, in our 1957 Chevy Biscayne.

  This is the last time I will talk to him or think much about him for nearly two decades.

  That boy is me, John Lynch. What follows is the chronology of figuring out how to make real the life I experienced, for several minutes, that night in the dark. My story seems to follow this progression:

  The first part of my life I spent trying to make myself lovable so I would be loved.

  The second part of my life I spent trying to make myself worthy of the love I had found.

  The third part of my life I spent trying to convince myself the love I had found was enough.

  This fourth part of my life I am actually beginning to experience the life love has given me.

  So, I’m writing this book—for us. To help us believe God is daily drawing us to receive a life magnificently worthy of his love.

  A life which will hold up—on my worst day.

  Maybe you too will find yourself on these pages.

  For he has heard your call in the dark, too… even on your worst day.

  Table of Contents

  December 1958

  February 9, 1964

  October 1972

  December 20, 1979

  December 23, 1979

  December 1979

  June 3, 1985

  July 1985

  2013 Summer

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  December 1958

  The first Christmas gift I can remember was a rubber-tipped bow and arrow set.

  During the Eisenhower administration, it was maybe the finest gift available to a five-year-old. I tore into the cellophane-wrapped package and sprinted into the neighborhood to show off my six arrows and bow. I proudly carried it all in the provided plastic quiver, transported with a functional twined strap.

  Our family celebrated Christmas earlier in the morning than most. So, at 7:30, I was not as welcomed into neighborhood homes as I had hoped. I was left alone to hunt imaginary weasels in my Allentown cul-de-sac.

  That’s when I wandered by the only manhole on our street. I had no reason to believe it wasn’t the only one in the free world. One of the neighborhood kid’s uncle told him if you dropped a stone into the manhole, got real quiet, and waited long enough, you could hear a person in China swear in their own language. He reasoned China was exactly across the world from us and that they didn’t yet have manhole covers. Only the holes. My friends and I spent many hours around our manhole cover, to see if we could make it happen. But so far, nothing. Sitting there, now, with my bow and arrows, in front of the manhole, I began to wonder if perhaps an item with more substance would better make the journey.

  This next section of this story, I still can’t get my head around.

  Without giving myself a chance to question my impulse, I slid one of the arrows into the tiny manhole cover hole and let it go. I listened. It made several indistinguishable sounds and then…silence. Nothing conclusive. So, I tried another. And another. Eventually, I put all my arrows down that manhole. I may have jammed the bow down there too. I had to go home without my bow-and-arrow set. The same boy who left with a bow-and-arrow set.

  Later, upon questioning, I panicked and told my parents Dougie Herring had forcibly taken my arrows and put them down our manhole. He was an easy mark. Nobody liked Dougie Herring. Even his parents didn’t believe Dougie’s defense. That night he got the spanking of his life.

  If I hadn’t known by then, I knew it now. I was capable of great wrong.

  I lay in bed that night wondering to myself, What in the world happened today? Did I actually throw my entire bow and arrow set down a manhole?

  I didn’t yet have anyone I could trust to talk about this, except myself. And I didn’t want to talk about it. So I stuffed it. I would
learn to become a very skilled stuffer over time.

  I walked out my door the next morning as a kid who threw his prized possession down a manhole, and then blamed a friend for it.

  Welcome to my world.

  … John, you will not yet be able to hear these words, but starting today I will speak to you for the rest of your life. We can play the highlights over again when you get home. For now, they will cause you to sense something beyond your own voice when you go to bed tonight. When you finally do hear me, twenty-three years from now, you’ll find it familiar enough to trust.

  … So, here we go.

  You are correct. Today was an odd one for you. I understand all things and I’m still not entirely certain what that was all about! The entire set of arrows? Really?

  But know this: from before the world began, I wanted there to be an exact you on this planet. I picked for you to arrive into this city, Allentown, Pennsylvania. Someday, you will travel to where you were told those arrows went.

  Yes, you will do bizarre stuff like this again. On a winter’s day, five years from now, you will bury a brand-new sweater, which you actually like, between second and third on a local baseball field. In your forties I will have to stop you from throwing your keys overboard during a choppy ride in a friend’s boat. You will reason, because you have no pockets in your swimsuit, your keys eventually will fly from your hands into the lake. Trying to avoid this tension, you will actually consider beating fate to the punch.

  Even this bizarre quirk is all part of the way I created you. You’ll add your own peculiar twists to it. But know this: I am never disgusted or embarrassed of who you are. Not now, not later, not ever. … Oh, and you’re going to take us to some very odd places. So, cut yourself some slack. We’re just getting started on this ride. Yes, I’m aware of the lying. And I see you stuffing feelings away and going private with what confuses and embarrasses you. But yours is a book with many chapters. I’m going to need some time. …

  1960

  I am sitting in my parent’s 1957 green Chevy Biscayne in the Upland, California, Shopping Bag Market parking lot. I’m barely old enough to be left alone in the car. It’s a field day for a kid to be given free rein in his parent’s car! I can make so many buttons and knobs do cool things. There used to be cigarette lighters in cars. I put my finger onto the orange-hot coil. That was a mistake. I spit on my finger and keep working my way around the dash. I run the wiper blades. I spin the dial across the radio. I honk the horn, making shoppers jump as they carry groceries past our car. I must be the funniest boy in town!

  After awhile it dawns on me, my parents have been inside the store a long time. Uncomfortably long. What could take so long in a grocery store? You buy your stuff and check out. It’s not like there’s a theater in there! I fiddle awhile longer with mirrors and seat adjustments. Still no parents. Then this: What if they’re so sick of being my parents, they’ve planned this opportunity to slip out the back? They’re willing to give up the car and their home and spend the rest of their lives on the run, if they can get away from me. I’m seven, maybe eight; and in this moment, this is the most logical, reasonable explanation I can come up with.

  Where does that come from?

  My parents love me. On occasion they tell me. They feed me and wash my clothes. They signed me up for school and take me to Dodger games. But my best explanation for them being too long in a grocery store was child abandonment. I am strategizing my next few hours as an orphan when they walk out. I realize now how deeply this runs in my DNA. Nothing really sad, no traumatic rejection has yet happened to me. No relatives have died. I don’t like girls yet. But this internal voice plays, without sleep: Something about you John, is fundamentally wrong. Given enough time, people will reject you. Others aren’t like you. They are normal and worth loving. Apparently, you are neither. Figure out some reason to be loved; some talent to keep people around, or this is going to be a very lonely and hard life.

  In a hundred different ways I can still create scenarios of impending abandonment. Now it’s my wife, or those closest to me.

  I wonder if all of us, early on, experience something similar. Some go my route. Others pretend they are superior and everyone else is suspect. Either way, we’re all bluffing, whistling in the dark, until something or someone comes to convince us of our actual worth.

  1962

  I’m still not sure where we got the idea to hammer ordinary rocks from our backyard into pieces, put them into a shoebox, and then sell them to our neighbors. We thought our yard was different from other yards. Ours apparently had magic rocks. Why else would neighbors give us money for them?

  We’d simply knock on a neighbor’s door and confidently say, “Hey, look at these. Would you like to buy any?”

  “You’re Jim and Pat Lynch’s kids, aren’t you?”

  “Why, yes we are!”

  This would be usually followed by an awkward silence … then a call into the house, for help. “Margaret! Do we want any broken rocks from the Lynch’s backyard?”

  Eventually the man at the door would look into the shoe box, scratch around with his finger, and mumble, “Oh, I guess I’ll take this one. How much?”

  “A dollar.”

  I’m pretty sure we pulled down thirty bucks that first day. There was growing concern we’d soon run out of magic rocks in our yard.

  I remember telling my dad about the rock sales and that I was willing to help him out financially. He got very upset with us. I didn’t understand. Maybe someone was a bit jealous his children were making almost as much as him!

  Several years later, Dave Barrows and I often didn’t have enough spare money for candy and snacks after school. So we started doing scavenger hunts. An older group of kids had knocked on our door the weekend before and recited to my mom a long list of unusual items. I watched my mom eagerly come back with several of the objects from the list. She was so happy to do so. I thought to myself in that moment: This is too easy.

  The following Monday, Barrows and I hit the neighborhoods. Every time out it was the same. “Hello ma’am. I’m John Lynch; this is Dave Barrows, and we’re team blue on a scavenger hunt for our youth group. We’re hoping you might have one of these following items. An Egyptian peacock feather, a bronzed bust of Abraham Lincoln, a picture frame made from gun powder … and a nickel from between 1950 and 1960.”

  “Hmmm. Well boys, let me go take a look.” She’d come back saying, “I honestly thought we might have that bronzed Lincoln. … But here’s a nickel from 1957. Does this help?”

  I never thought we were being bad. I saw it like Halloween. You do your part, do the work, be cute, and neighbors give you stuff.

  I have a feeling this conversation went on in heaven that night, between God and the angels:

  I like the kid. I really do. But he does some of the oddest things, doesn’t he? Still, he’s got to gain some confidence and learn to tell stories. Don’t forget, when he’s in college, he’ll spend an entire summer walking door to door, unsuccessfully trying to sell Fuller Brushes. So, I say, let the boy have some coins for an Abba-Zaba.

  1962

  Our principal at Baldy View Elementary walks into my fourth-grade class like she’s about to announce one of our students has landed on the moon. She calls Susan Sato up front. “Students, several weeks ago Susan turned this quarter into the office. She found it on the playground and wanted to make sure it got to the person who lost it. We waited to see if anyone would come looking for it. Today, I return this quarter to you, Susan, with great appreciation for your honesty.” The whole room applauded like she’d been awarded the medal of distinguished service. She was like a hero at our school for the next few weeks. Kids would ask to see the famous quarter.

  That evening I took a five-dollar bill from my mom’s wallet. I didn’t think she’d notice and I’d have it back to her soon enough, along with some world-class praise and attention for her son.

  I turned in the bill to the office. “I found this out on th
e playground. I was going to take it home but I thought someone might miss it if it was theirs.”

  The lady at the front desk was not impressed. She appeared inconvenienced.

  Wait, I’m thinking, where’s the principal?

  I wanted to ask for the money back and come back at a more strategic time. “How long before, well, we know if someone claims it?”

  She was vague. “If the principal comes to your class, you’ll know.”

  “So, you’ll be sure to keep it safe and stuff, um, in case someone wanted to claim it?” She shrugged more than nodded.

  I waited … And waited … And waited. Every day for five weeks I prepared myself for the principal’s arrival to my classroom. Imagine, if a quarter got such a response, what five dollars would get me!

  The principal never came.

  Finally, I went to the office and asked, “So, I turned in a five-dollar bill awhile ago. I was just wondering when the principal will be coming to our class.”

  The same lady at the front desk looked at me coldly. “Oh. Someone claimed that. Thanks.”

  I was devastated. I wanted to yell out, “Hey, lady, that was my money! The only person who could claim it to be lost was me. And the only one who knew about it was you. You took my money, you old hag!”

  But I knew she had me. If she told the principal I brought my own money in to get back and be awarded for, I’d be in big trouble.

  I walked backwards out of the office, glaring at her. She held eye contact with a forced smile which said, “I’ve already spent your money, you little chump.”

  Two lessons emerged from the experience. First, I realized adults in roles of authority do not always have your best interest at heart.

  And I freshly discovered the lengths I would go to be adored and praised. I never told my mom. I only learned to bury deeper the truth of what I was capable of doing.

  John, I know what happens from here. You will want to dig yourself deeper into shame. You stole money from your mom, and then lost what belonged to her to a dishonest person. You took from your parents so you could get from your friends.