by Mark Bouman
I tried to be sympathetic, but it was difficult. What’s so scary about a bunch of guys with guns? I’ve seen that since I was a kid. And tanks aren’t scary—my dad had one.
As the next missionary shared, my mind cataloged my childhood. Pistols, rifles, antitank guns, simulated knife fights, the tank, the ship, the dynamite—all united by a near-constant sense of chaos and fear. I still had shrapnel in my ankle!
That’s when the blinders fell from my eyes. Maybe the other missionaries hadn’t been prepared for what happened to them, but God had prepared me. Specifically, for that time and that place. Words from the biblical story of Joseph sprang into my mind.
“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.”
Suddenly I saw it. God had used the evil of my youth to prepare me for my time in Cambodia.
42
TWO WEEKS LATER I got a call from San, my right-hand man at the orphanage.
“Papa, soldiers came to the orphanage today. They spoke very rough to me. They told me they’re going to come back. They told me if there is a foreigner here taking care of this place, they will leave us alone, but if not, they will take away every valuable thing. Papa, can you please come back? Just to show your face and let them know you are still looking out for us? If you do, they will leave us alone. If you do not come back, they are going to take everything from us. I’m afraid something bad will happen.”
The pause stabbed my soul.
“Can you please come back?”
I had to get back. My friend was right. I wasn’t my father, but I was Papa, and the kids needed me.
I called our regional director, Ron, and explained the situation. I couldn’t wait for things to “get better” inside Cambodia. “Ron, I have to go back. Now.”
“You can go back,” he relented, “but you have to go alone. It’s still too dangerous for anyone else to go with you.”
My earlier epiphany returned: I have been prepared specifically for this time in Cambodia. This is going to work. Somehow it is going to work.
The next day I said good-bye to my family, then went to the airport in Bangkok. A few Thai airlines had reopened flights into Cambodia the day before. Foreign journalists lined up to fly there and report on what was happening, and they were willing to pay a premium.
When I arrived at the airport, I found myself caught in a small mob of people who were pleading with an airline attendant for a seat on the next available flight into Cambodia. I stood there for a minute, listening. Person after person asked, “When will a seat be available?” The attendant seemed flustered. She told them she was sorry, that no seats would be available until later. Without waiting to hear her finish, I wandered over to another desk that had no one waiting in front of it. I politely asked if there were any seats available on the next flight into Cambodia.
“Let me check,” the attendant said. After a couple of minutes she looked up at me. “Yes, there is a seat available. May I have your passport?”
I handed her my passport, hardly able to believe what I was hearing. I glanced back at the crowd still surrounding the adjacent counter, wondering by what miracle I got a seat while others were being turned away. As soon as I had my ticket in hand, I slipped past the mob.
Less than two hours later, the wheels of my plane smacked the tarmac at Phnom Penh.
The road south to the orphanage was nearly deserted. All that remained of the wrecked tanks and vehicles were charred spots on the pavement. Dark stains I knew to be blood were still visible. Gas stations were silent, and only the regularly spaced bolts testified to the pumps that had once been mounted there. Whole blocks of factories in what used to be a thriving garment industry were empty. House after house was destroyed, with bricks strewn about from shattered walls, a testament to the errant tank rounds that had blown fragments in every direction. Shards of glass gleamed across the dirt. The houses looked exactly like my childhood house after the tornado leveled it.
One thought filled my mind. Get to the orphanage before the soldiers do. I repeated it at every mile, as if saying it enough times would make it come true. Get there before the soldiers. Get there before the soldiers.
Three hours later I pulled up to the orphanage gate. Everything on the grounds seemed silent and deserted. A wave of fear swept over me. Normally the orphanage was bustling with life as kids ran across the grass or lined up to choose sides for soccer.
The gates were bolted. Something terrible must have happened. I climbed out and walked along the sidewalk that led to the main building. My mind was reeling. Where is everyone? What happened? Am I too late?
I stood in the middle of the compound, motionless. There wasn’t a single sign of life.
A piercing scream set my spine tingling.
“Papa!”
Then longer. “Paaapaaa!”
Suddenly a great chorus of shouts rose up around me, coming from everywhere at once.
“Papa, Papa, Papa!”
The kids had been hiding inside the buildings, cowering in fear. Now their shouts of disbelief and relief announced them as they streamed out from all sides, streaking toward me across the grass like fireworks.
Boys and girls leaped and cavorted, shouting as they ran and spun in circles, as if words were insufficient and only their small bodies could express their overflowing happiness. Some ran so fast they slammed into me while trying to hug me, and soon they were in my arms, too many to count, surrounding me, and we clung to each other in a tangle of happiness.
A father to the fatherless, prepared to care for these children by the apathy and evil of my own childhood. I was my dad, but changed—turned inside out by grace and granted a chance to redeem the past. I was Papa.
“You’re back! You came back!”
“Papa, you’re back, like you promised!”
“We didn’t think you’d come back, Papa, but you did!”
Joy was in flood, and I was drowning in it. Every word healed me. Every word left me wanting more.
EPILOGUE
AS AN ORPHANAGE director in Cambodia, speaking at churches back in the States was part of my job description. It was a good way to raise funds for everything the orphans needed, from job training to English classes to hot meals to hospital and funeral services. I never needed notes: after living side by side with the staff and kids for years, I had seen God do so many amazing things that I could fill an entire book. I would simply speak from my heart, telling the congregation first about my own childhood and then about the orphanage.
Telling my story with Dad in the audience was never part of the plan.
When it came to choosing churches, I avoided my old neighborhood. Speaking to strangers in Ohio or North Carolina, I could almost pretend I was talking about someone else, but I knew that wouldn’t be possible if I ever spoke near where I’d grown up.
Yet on one fund-raising trip to the States, for some unfathomable reason, I felt compelled to call a church that had been started a few years earlier just down the road from Blakely Drive. When I told the pastor over the phone about what God had done in my life, he agreed to let me speak. And then he asked, “Why don’t you invite your dad to the service?”
Sure, why not? Dad and Ann lived nearby, and he had never heard me speak at a church before. This time I would simply stick to stories about what God had done in Cambodia. There was no need to bring my childhood into the picture.
As soon as I hung up with the pastor, I dialed my father’s number. “Hey, Dad, I’m going to be speaking about Cambodia at a church near you. Would you like to come?”
“Sure, Son. Which church?”
Two days after I invited Dad to the service, the pastor called me back. “Mark, I know you said you would speak about Cambodia. And that’s great! But Mark, I believe God wants you to share your testimony at that service.”
My heart sank. I knew exactly what he meant by that word. Testimony. The things I had witnessed. My story. My entire story.
“Mark? Mark, are you there?”
“How can I do that?” I managed. “My dad is going to be there.”
“I really believe that’s what God wants you to do, Mark. There’s a reason for this.”
“I don’t know,” I said, stalling. “I already invited my father to the service, and he said he was looking forward to hearing me speak. I can’t undo that, can I?”
“Don’t undo anything—just have him come like you’ve already planned, and then plan on sharing your testimony.”
I hung up the phone with a shaking hand. How am I going to get myself out of this mess? I was trapped. The pastor’s words continued to race through my mind. There was simply no way I could describe my childhood with my father in the same room. And there was no way I could share my testimony without describing my childhood. Hardest of all, something in my heart told me the pastor was right: I did need to share the whole story.
I tried to look on the bright side. Maybe I would get violently sick on Sunday morning.
The next few days were agony. I searched every corner of my brain for a way to uninvite Dad, but every idea was worse than the last. Finally, desperate for help, I reached out to a friend.
“Why don’t you call your dad?”
That thought had never occurred to me. I screwed up my courage and dialed Dad’s number.
“Dad, the service you’re coming to . . . well, I was going to talk all about Cambodia. Look, I don’t really know how to say this, but the pastor wants me to share my life story at that service.”
There was a pause on the other end. I took a breath and kept talking. “I would never do it to make you look bad—I just want to tell people what God has done. But I won’t do it without your permission.”
The pause stretched.
“That’s okay, Son. Go ahead. You can do it.”
I was scarcely able to believe his words. Never in my memory had my father put himself in my hands. I had always been the one who was powerless, but now he had chosen to turn the tables.
I knew it was largely a testament to Ann. She had kept me posted on how Dad was doing over the years, since he wasn’t one to speak much about himself anymore. The shape of their relationship had surprised both of them, from start to finish. One time she recalled, with equal parts surprise and laughter in her voice, one of their first dates, just after Dad emerged from his mother’s basement.
“I pointed out a full moon to him, Mark, rising above the trees, and he stared at it for a minute. And do you know what he said?”
“I could probably guess,” I joked.
“He said, ‘Yep, that’s a great bomber’s moon for sure!’”
Dad had always spent whatever money he had. Whether it was ten dollars or a thousand dollars, he would come across something he needed to buy, right then, before some other guy got it first. Ann, to whom every nickel was absolutely precious, put a stop to that right away.
But there had been deeper issues. Ann believed she had made it this far because of God’s continued provision, and she wasn’t about to turn her back on that, so she laid down the law to Dad: “If we’re going to be together, you will start serving the Lord!”
At first she thought it was her job to make sure that happened. It took many long and painful years for Ann to admit that she couldn’t transform Dad by herself. But since she still loved him and still believed he could change, she looked to her one remaining hope: God.
God answered by starting to wear down my once-dauntless father. He had no kids around on whom to focus his authoritarian tendencies, and Ann refused to be controlled by him. She didn’t scream back at him or hit him. She didn’t curse him or attack him in quieter ways. She simply went on living her life—canning, working, praying, sewing, and believing that Dad was headed in a direction he couldn’t yet see. He began to suffer through various health problems, from back pain to failing eyesight to the early stages of Parkinson’s, and consequently he was forced to do something he had never done before: rely on someone who loved him for everyday help.
It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t immediate. It wasn’t without regression and tears. But everything good that happened to Dad after his divorce happened through Ann.
Once, years before, Joan and I had gone to a flea market with Ann and Dad. It was a bright, sunny day, and Dad wanted to protect himself from getting sunburned, so he donned one of those caps with an umbrella stuck to the top. He brought along his video camera, too, which was just slightly different from the average model. Since changing dead batteries annoyed him—he could take hours of footage of engines and parts and vehicles—he’d yanked out the original battery and soldered in some long wires that he ran down to a fanny pack. Inside the fanny pack was an entire motorcycle battery.
“He’s all function and no form,” Ann griped to Joan and me when Dad shuffled off to take more video. But there wasn’t any venom in her voice. And the second she saw him turning to walk back toward us, a smile wrinkled the corners of her eyes.
The sound of the three-part amen faded, and in the silence that followed I glanced again at the program in my hands. Nothing else was listed that would shield me from what was about to happen. I tried to swallow. I tried to pray, but all I could manage was a kind of wordless, terrified sigh.
The pastor, a neat-looking man in a dark suit, stepped to the pulpit and began his introduction. “Friends, it’s my great honor and privilege to introduce our speaker today. Mark Bouman grew up in these parts, and some of you may remember him. He’s been living somewhere very different from Michigan for quite a while, though.”
The pastor paused, touching each pew with his gaze.
“For the last decade-plus, Mark and his lovely wife, Joan—” he smiled and inclined his head toward Joan, who sat beside me—“have made a home for themselves far, far from here, all the way across the world in the city of—let’s see—See-han-ook-ville, Cambodia. Did I pronounce that right, Mark?”
I managed a nod. It was one of the better pronunciations I had heard.
“Just think of that, friends—Cambodia! That’s a long way from here, but Mark went there for a very good reason: to be a father to more than a hundred orphans and to share the love of Jesus with each and every one of them. Mark’s going to speak to us about the ministry he directs, and I’m sure his words are going to bless you.”
I stood, thinking the pastor was finished, but he wasn’t. Not quite.
“Oh, and I’d also like to mention that Mark’s father was able to join us today.” The pastor gestured toward Dad, who was sitting next to Ann at the back of the church. I heard more than a few murmurs of recognition in the audience behind me—some of the members remembered his exploits, no doubt—and another small sigh escaped my lips. The pastor was beaming at my father from the pulpit, and all across the sanctuary pews creaked and groaned as people turned to look at him. I turned as well.
Dad was in his late fifties but looked ten years older. What little remained of his white hair was combed neatly across the top of his head. He seemed uncomfortable in his gray polyester suit. His hands were folded in his lap, out of sight, but I knew that his palms would be rough and marked with grease, his fingernails each ending in an arc of dirt. His face was expressionless.
“Mark,” the pastor said to me, “thank you for sharing with us this morning.” With that he sat down in a chair behind the pulpit.
The congregation applauded. Each person there assumed the obvious narrative: a proud father watching his son preach.
Except that for the next hour, I told them a different story.
I tried to tell everyone sitting in that church as much of the truth as I could. I spoke about firing guns, driving the tank, living on the ship, and Dad blowing up a stump with dynamite. I recalled the feeling of Dad’s hand and Dad’s belt. I stalked again through the Grand River in search of turtles and heard Zeke’s eager barking. I revisited Cambodia, witnessing orphans surprised by hope and finding a future they had never dared to dream of. With my father sitting not fifty feet from me, I spoke
my way inside my own past. I lived each event as it emerged from my lips and relived it as I watched the crowd absorb what I was sharing.
Finally, I realized my stories were finished. No one moved. I searched inside for what to say next, and I found the words already waiting for me.
“I’m not telling you these things to make someone in my family look bad. I just want you to know what God can do. If God can use me, then God can use anyone.”
You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.
Our ramshackle home, our poverty, our good-enough-if-it-works existence, our injuries, our fights, our familiarity with chaos—even our abject fear and shame and the seemingly bottomless well of pain from which Dad constantly supplied us—hadn’t all of that been used for good? Those things weren’t good in and of themselves. Many were evil. Rather, my childhood had become good. It had been intended for evil but transformed into good. Transformed by God, whose reservoir of grace made my father’s well look like a child’s bucket.
I had become who I needed to become for the saving of many lives—not the least of which was my own. Dad had been the unwitting agent of my remaking, from the boy I was into a father with his own two sons and into Papa for the children at the orphanage.
I looked at Dad. He seemed frozen in the back row. He was too far away for me to read any nuances in his expression. The silence felt like it wanted to stretch forever, and part of me wanted to let it. But I had more to say. I raised my arm and pointed directly at him.
“I want you to know something, Dad. For all that happened, you’re still my dad, and I still love you.”
I didn’t say that because I was speaking in a church or because I was trying to create a fairy-tale ending to my life. I said it because it was true. In a way that made no sense apart from grace, it was true. I loved my father.
