On My Worst Day

by John Lynch

  But one day, in his forties, God worked through the hazy slits in the blinds. My brother allowed in light. I was sitting with him in a restaurant one afternoon, embarrassed by his bursts of loud, inappropriate, crazy talk. On this particular occasion, for a reason I don’t yet know, I didn’t try to quiet him down. Instead I said, “Jim, there is a place, a land, where no one is mentally ill. My brother, there, in that place, you will be as sharp and awake as any other person.” He leaned forward and whispered with lucidity I’d not seen for decades, “Where is this place, John?”

  Sitting there over the next hour in that restaurant, I told him nearly everything I knew of Jesus. He asked, “John, how do I get there?” That day he trusted Jesus, and then patiently waited for the day he would take Jim to the land where his mind would work again.

  Awakening: Not all the magnificent heroes get revealed in this lifetime. Some are trapped in bewildering chaos and illness they did not cause. This too is why Jesus came.

  1968

  Arlene Ellis is another girl in the crowd. Freshman year she wore braces. But suddenly, today, this first day of school, in Spanish class at Washington High School, I cannot stop looking at her.

  “Must-act-now. Must-become-boyfriend-now!”

  I’ve dated several girls before, but this is the first time I will realize I’m not a kid. Several evenings later I risk what seems my entire existence to call her.

  This can go so wrong on so many levels. I might become a source of nearly legendary mocking and derision if I screw this up and word gets out. I’ve never risked anything like this.

  Everything has to be exactly right for this call. First, I must find a window of time when my parents aren’t home, so I can have run of the family phone and adjoining pacing areas. I’ve written out a script of what I’ll say, with alternate sections depending upon her responses. Now, minutes before the call, a clumsy script rehearsal and a final edit. I have a song selected to play in the background.

  If there is a god out there, I promise right now to devote my life to feeding lepers in Nepal, or whatever you’d like, if you’ll just cause her to hear me out when I call. I’m willing to follow any god out there who can make this happen. Do you hear me gods? I’m asking only for this one thing!

  I’m nearly dry heaving, I’m so nervous. I’m continually shoving back the blinding anxiety, and the utter sense of my universal inadequacy. I dial all but the final number and hang up several times. I fear the first thing she’ll hear will be the sound of me clearing my throat. I fear she won’t recognize my name.

  I dial. I hear the phone ring on her end. She answers. She sounds not unhappy I have called. Somewhere amid my prepared sounding patter, I do manage to slip in that it would be nice to “go get a soda together sometime or something … um, like to talk over the Spanish assignments.” She says she’d “like that.”

  Did you hear that? She said she’d “like that”!

  Now, to get out of the conversation without swearing or sneezing into the phone. I stumble off the call like a blindfolded man maneuvering over a gauntlet of flaming furniture.

  I hang up. I am intact! She and I will be drinking a soda at the same table sometime in the near future. I did it! I am not a loser! I fist pump my way around the house for the next few minutes, shouting and doing something approximating dance.

  In that short, clipped conversation, I become a different person. Over the next several years I will live with a confidence and sense of bearing I have not known before. We will now begin to tell our lives to each other on that phone, for hours, almost every evening. I soon realize I have the capacity to give and receive love. I’m being taught to articulately express affection and affirmation because I need to find exact words to convey the depth of what I am experiencing.

  Those first two years are some of the most innocent, playful and winsome days of the first half of my life. I will not know love like this until I am introduced to Stacey Marie Pilger. By then I will be almost mature enough to begin to understand what to do with it.

  Jesus says,

  So, that promise about devoting your life to whoever could pull it off? Well it wasn’t Zeus. I should mention, for the record, you won’t make good on your promise. You will ignore many more such promises before we get it right. I’ve never held you to them.

  But you are learning incredible truth these days. You are learning to believe love is indescribably powerful—that it transcends all else. Later, your hungering for a love which refuses to leave when others’ loves do will draw you inexorably to me. In the meantime, enjoy. You will spend a lot of money at expensive ice cream shoppes and movie theaters. But you will learn you are lovable—that someone wants to be with you. You will learn you have much love to give and unique ways of expressing it.

  When there is no other conflicting issue on the table, I will always defer to giving you the best experiences of joy available. I’m not who you have pegged me. I have loved you completely and perfectly from before the world began.

  In the meanwhile, know this: nearly every high school guy resents and admires you for calling her first. Well played, young man, well played.

  1969

  Pyracantha is nearly irrefutable proof of the existence of Satan. I believe it to be his personal plant of choice. In even the harshest climates it steadily matures into a sticker-hedge of death. I’m almost certain, as a boy, I witnessed a neighbor’s dachshund chasing a ball into the pyracantha … and never coming out. A tiny yelp and then eerie silence. Two hedges of it came with our Phoenix home purchase. Front yard and back. Picture green barbed wire, with inedible red berries.

  Trimming it was part of my particular list of “chores.” Chores were at the center of the tension between my father and me during high school. He thought I should do them.

  I felt strongly I should not.

  Especially during summer. I thought I should not be asked to do anything during summer break but stay out long after the streetlights came on.

  I was to pick up the dog poop, clean the pool, make my bed, wash the car, mow the lawn, and keep up with the ever-advancing pyracantha. Nearly every day it was the same:

  Dad: “John, did you do your chores?”

  John: (indistinguishable mumbling)

  Dad: “Well, you’re not leaving this house until they’re done.”

  John: (louder, nearly distinguishable mumbling)

  And so it went. My halfhearted keeping of chores, after enough nagging and threats.

  One June morning, this all changed. Before he walked out the door for work, he found me. I was doing nothing, preparing for an entire day of doing nearly nothing.

  He was wearing black dress slacks, a starched white shirt and a red tie, held to his shirt with a clip.

  “John, I don’t tell you enough how much I care about you. You bring a lot of life and laughter to our home. Your mom and I are so proud of you. Do you know that?” Then he headed to the door, turning back to say, “If you want, when I get home, we could play some catch.”

  Then he was off. So were my plans for the rest of the day. I still don’t know what happened. Did he take a parenting class the evening before? Regardless, almost involuntarily, I walked to our shed and pulled out our hedge trimmers. They were rusted and jammed. I had no gloves. I poured a jug of water and walked out into the Phoenix summer heat to tackle the hellish pyracantha.

  I dug deep into that spreading vine of death. I reshaped that ignored mass of thorns into something almost resembling a manicured hedge. It took me almost all day. I didn’t care. I don’t think I’d ever worked so hard. My hands were blistered from the antique hedge trimmer and my arms were bleeding from picking up thorn-covered vines formed during the Hoover administration. I took garbage can after garbage can to the alley and mowed up the last scraps I couldn’t get by hand.

  I was in my bedroom when I heard his ’62 Chevy station wagon turn into the carport. Mom greeted him at the door. “Jim, you have to come and see what John did today!” Through th
e mostly closed blinds on my bedroom window, I watched him walk out to inspect what I’d done.

  Then, the reason I had cancelled a summer day with buddies. He smiled. I rarely got to see that smile. He was beaming. He was proud of his son. I was getting to be the son he described to me before he left for work.

  A rebellious high school kid turned friend in one interchange. Though my dad didn’t have God as his motivation, something about being formed in the very image of God caused him to affirm and bless a son who less than deserved it. And that son found himself wanting to bring great joy to his father.

  Awakening: The motivation of grace will always bear greater fruit than the coercion of demand.

  1971

  The moment I first see Koufax I want to be a great pitcher. I never worked at anything as hard. I give up all other sports by my junior year and concentrate on whatever I can do to become an All-State pitcher and help Washington High win a state title. In the offseason I run up mountains and lift weights. Most free moments I roll a ten-pound weight, attached with rope to a stick, up and down, to strengthen the muscles in my pitching hand. My parents allow me to build a mound in our back yard. I cement two beams sixty feet and six inches away and hang a mattress between them. I pitch thousands of baseballs into the square I draw onto it. I can still hear the thud of a fastball hitting that thrift-store mattress.

  Spring of 1971 surpasses even my dreams.

  In my first six games I throw two no-hitters, a one-hitter, a two-hitter and two three-hitters. I’m striking out two batters an inning! As a lefthander, I’m averaging a pickoff a game. I dream about setting up a hitter with a high, inside fastball and punching him out with a low and away curve that will buckle his knees. I’m copying what I’ve watched Koufax do all those years—with his same high leg kick.

  One June morning, I’m reading the sports page and I turn to the feature article titled, “The Arizona All-State Baseball Team.” I search for my name. … There it is.

  “John Lynch, left-handed pitcher. Washington High School.”

  My mom walks through the neighborhood with scissors to capture as many copies of the article as possible. Life feels about perfect this day. …

  But, when you’re dreaming a dream, you often don’t see past the moment of its realization. You see it happening and imagine all manner of stupendous good following it. But it doesn’t always work like that. Even dreams coming true often carry an ugly asterisk next to them.

  The Arizona All-State game in 1971 is played at the Cleveland Indians’ spring-training stadium. In the rows behind home plate are dozens of scouts with speed guns monitoring everything in front of them. I pitch second for the North team and don’t allow a hit over my two innings. I’m hoping I’ve done enough for someone to draft me.

  After the game, a scout for the Giants finds me. “John, that was a mighty fine performance out there tonight. I’ve got to talk to some folks upstairs, but I think we’re going to take you in the draft next month.”

  I stood there frozen … with my dad, some friends, and a scout for the San Francisco Giants! It seemed too good to be true.

  It was …

  He ended with the words, “All right, John Pierson, keep your nose clean. You’ll hear from us.”

  John Pierson?

  The scout had mistaken me for John Pierson, my teammate from Washington High, who had also played in this game. The John Pierson who was once a close friend. The John Pierson who had recently stolen away my girlfriend.

  That John Pierson.

  By reflex I got out the words, “Um, I’m not John Pierson. I’m John Lynch.” “Oh, sorry. Could you point out John Pierson to me?”

  I did.

  As my friends found excuses to leave that moment, my dad and I began to make our way out from under the lights and into the dark neighborhoods where our car was parked. Nothing was spoken. But another layer of shame got added to the story, which begins with the words, “Lynch, there is something uniquely and particularly wrong with you.”

  For the rest of my life, I have watched many versions of that story get played out. It kicks the wind out of you. If you know God, it can twist your picture of him.

  As long as I believed God’s goal for my life should be painless and smooth, with only happy endings, I would live in a cognitive dissonance, which would make me pull back and protect myself. I can slip into dangerous thinking that if he’s good and powerful, our lives should be smoother and less messy than others. Bad guys should lose more often. Good guys, with a big curve and a dream should most often win. Sometimes it works that way. Often it does not. Not yet.

  God apparently allows some of the pain of a fallen world to get through to us—believer or not. It’s what he does with the pain and bad endings that ultimately proves his love and goodness. If he is able to take all of the twisted mess that finds us and is somehow able to turn it all into our good, that would be something very amazing indeed. For all the accusation he has promised too much, this is exactly what he says he is doing. “I will cause all things to work together for good” … for the likes of us.

  That night at the All-State game made no sense to me. How can something I worked this hard for end up more painful than having never tried anything at all?

  His answer to this question will come decades after this game, only after I’ve trusted him with the answer.

  John, I watch how hard you try to continue to draw near to me, even as I allow things into your life which utterly exasperate you. You’re clinging to the belief that I am fully for you, and care more about you than you do. Then something happens which seems to undermine it all … I know. I watch. It deeply hurts me to watch you experience such disappointment and a broken heart. You might try to let me off the hook by reasoning I’m not fully in control of your world. Such thinking might maintain a measure of your affection for me—like giving a pass for a grandfather who loves you but can’t always remember your name. But this lie will ultimately ruin our relationship. I am fully in control of your world. There is nothing that happens, doesn’t happen, refused, or delayed without me seeing it, or allowing it. I am in control of your life. And I love you more than you love you. My character cannot and will not do wrong. I take whatever your race has brought on, and I redeem, refashion, and rework it all into beauty beyond anything you could have possibly imagined. All things. Horrible things. Evil things. Chronic things. I decide what is allowed through and what it will accomplish. I decide what needs to be refashioned. But mostly I stand in the arena, when you cannot stand, defending you and protecting you. I do not lecture; I do not mock. What I do is love you, no matter how angry you are at me, no matter what you imagine in your heart about me. I enter into your pain more deeply than even you. This I can do. This I will always do. Until we are home together in the land where tears cease.

  1972

  It was always about playing hard, and coming home tired with enough memories of glory to sustain our dreams. It was always about laughing hard and having a great adventure. When we were done with the day, we’d lie on our backs in cool grass, with our arms folded behind our heads, staring at clouds, and retelling to each other a version of a game much better than what actually happened. In my neighborhood, nobody talked about discipline or taking it seriously. But we played harder, enjoyed it more, and had each other’s back better than any organized team we will ever play on after it.

  That’s why it hurt so badly to get trashed by a coach for enjoying it so much when I got to college.

  I had scholarships to other schools after high school, but Arlene Ellis chose Arizona State University. So, without a scholarship and way over my head, I continued my boyhood dreams at ASU, under coach Bobby Winkles. He was the man! A legendary backwoods, tobacco-spitting, old-school coach, he had turned Arizona State from nearly intramural baseball to a program yearly competing for an NCAA national championship.

  He liked me. He appreciated my passion and love of the game. He started me in center field one practice game. He
rarely put pitchers in other positions. I hit the first pitch from Dale Hrovatt over the center field fence at Goodwin Stadium! Next inning, I misplayed a fly ball, and was back to pitching. But still! I don’t think I ever enjoyed playing for a coach as much.

  But in those days, the freshmen were coached primarily by the assistant coach.

  … He enjoyed me not much at all.

  I was surrounded by nationally recruited, blue-chip, flame-throwing sensations; most would go onto long major-league careers. I was now a junk-throwing local kid with a damaged shoulder and a memory of a fastball. I shouldn’t have tried to hang on. But I wasn’t ready to leave the game. I’d thrown some surprisingly good winter ball stints in relief. I still thought I’d make it back and would get drafted in late rounds.

  But mostly, baseball was still fun to me. Warming up is nearly every ballplayer’s favorite part of the sport. The fifteen minutes before drills, batting practice, fielding, and inter-squad games. It was our refuge—from schoolwork, from responsibility, from the looming seriousness of life.

  Each of us had warmed up thousands of times in ball fields all over the country. We knew that ball-hitting-glove sound like our own voices. It was therapy and a theme park all at once. This is where the best humor came out. We’d mock each other. We’d work on our invented knuckleballs. (All college ball players think they can throw a knuckleball). We’d turn our gloves inside out. We chewed tobacco and sang jingles from commercials. We’d talk trash about each other’s girlfriends. … And, in a raw and clumsy way, we learned to have each other’s back. We knew when to get serious. All of us did. But as time honored as any unwritten baseball rule, screwing around while getting loose has always been near the top.

  At least I thought so.

  In one of our routine team meetings, sitting on the grass in the outfield, the assistant coach wanted to talk about “discipline and taking things seriously.” He chose me as the scapegoat to make his point. He tore me apart in front of my friends and fellow ballplayers.