“I’ll miss you,” said Bernard.
“Me too,” said Jeff.
If you were to ask me about my happiest moment of fatherhood, I might mention the night soon after we returned. Jeff’s marks were up a little, hovering near the passing mark. I hadn’t heard him fight with his sister or grumble about a thing. Not yet. And the laughter was back—not the hyperventilating kind, but his vital signs were good. He was making himself a snack in the kitchen along about midnight, and I could smell it from our bedroom, so I crept out to see if he would share.
The boy had cracked half a dozen eggs into a bowl, along with a pound of shredded cheese, and thrown an entire package of Canadian bacon into a sizzling frying pan. As he stirred the eggs and cheese together, he said to me, “Dad, I’d like to sponsor a kid in the DR. It’s thirty-five bucks a month, right?”
I tried not to let him see my tears, then decided it didn’t matter. I’d just watched my son go from talking about Christianity to doing it. From following those who follow Jesus, to following Jesus for himself. I guess hope always catches us a little by surprise.
Dear Lord, never let me
be afraid to pray for the impossible.
DOROTHY SHELLENBERGER
The earth is divided into two groups of people: those who like The Lord of the Rings and those who don’t. Ask my eldest child which book of earth is his favorite, and he won’t skip a beat. Ask him about a moment when his prayers seemed silly, and he just might smile broadly.
Without a doubt, Steve’s favorite book is a story of hobbits and Bilbo Baggins. All 23,000 pages of it. To my utter amazement, he had read all three books in the Rings trilogy by the age of ten. Before we celebrated his fifteenth birthday he had read them thrice and was gearing up for a fourth voyage. Crazy; I thought. He should be cleaning my car. He read them between playing basketball and ice hockey and table tennis. He read them in the evenings when he should have been studying. He read them late at night when he should have been snoring. The day I informed him that Peter Jackson was bringing the stories to life on the silver screen, he ricocheted around the living room, pumping his fists.
The filmmakers should have used my son as a consultant. From beginning to end, he can tell you more than you want to know about Middle Earth, about hobbits and goblins, about the “one ring to rule them all.”
Shortly after we attended the first movie together, Steve turned sixteen. This is an age when fathers and sons have whispered conversations about life and love and being all grown up. One night during one of those discussions, I spoke to him about the importance of reaching this milestone of manhood. How, like his favorite hobbit Frodo, he would be faced with great temptations and great opportunities as he journeyed through the darkness of this earth. I said I would like to present him with a small gift as a covenant between him and me that he would walk the way Frodo had walked, choosing to do the right thing, though it cost him everything. I talked of putting God first. Of faith. Of purity. He nodded his approval.
“What’s the gift?” he asked. When I told him, he smiled.
The next day I ordered the first item I’ve ever ordered on the Internet. Scary thing for me. Even scarier price.
On the evening the package arrived, we convened for a family ceremony. The children leaned in, wide-eyed, as I opened a small box. “Hey! It’s a Callaway golf ball! Just kidding,” I said, then pulled out a wooden box. Inside was a genuine replica of “the one ring.” White gold, complete with Elvish engravings.
“What about ours?” whined the other two.
“You wait,” I told them.
I read a short verse of Scripture: “‘So fear the LORD and serve him wholeheartedly,’ Joshua 24:14. For sixteen years that’s been our prayer for you, Steve. That you would honor God and serve Him.”
We prayed together, committing this child and his future to God. Then I took the ring, hung it from a gold chain, placed it about his neck, and kissed his forehead before he squirmed away.
There the ring stayed.
Until the night Steve arrived home from school carrying small pieces of the chain. He could scarcely bring himself to tell me.
It had broken, he knew not when.
The ring was gone, we knew not where.
We searched everywhere. Along sidewalks and hallways. Through classrooms and cars. Then we began looking in ridiculous places, like the toolshed and heating vents. Nothing. It was permanently gone, I knew. Hanging about someone else’s neck. Adorning another’s jewelry case.
So Steve began to pray.
His younger sister and brother joined him too. At suppertime, they prayed that we would find the ring. At breakfast they prayed, believing. I hated to doubt, but I am a grownup. I’ve gotten very good at it.
“There’s more chance of the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series,” I told my wife.
“They’re not even in it,” she said.
“Precisely.”
We had other things to pray about too, of course. Things that seemed just as impossible. Decisions related to Mom and Dad and life and work.
Steve told his grandparents about the ring. They didn’t know what a Frodo was, but they too began to pray.
Months passed. Winter came and went. The dazzling white snow that covered the field through which my son sometimes walks to school began to melt. And one evening as we sat down to eat together, I noticed a particularly broad grin on Steve’s face. As we ransacked a roast chicken, he told us he’d been walking home from school when a glint of reflected sunlight caught his eye. He then held his hand out and opened it.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. The ring. White gold, with Elvish etchings. As good as new. Back from Middle Earth.
Oh me of little faith.
Do you know what my prayer had been all this time? That he wouldn’t be too disappointed when his prayers weren’t answered. Here I was, praying that God wouldn’t dash the boy’s hopes too badly. There he was, asking God to do the impossible, something He has delighted in doing since the dawn of time.
The ring hangs about Steve’s neck from a sturdier chain now. I hope it will serve as a constant reminder to honor the Lord and serve Him wholeheartedly. I hope it will remind the rest of us that those who seek find, that those who ask receive, and that grownups of little faith sometimes get another chance.
Accept the fact that there will be moments when
your children will hate you. This is normal and natural.
But how a child handles hate may determine whether
he will go to Harvard or San Quentin.
ANN LANDERS
Abounding grace is the hope of mankind.
A. W. TOZER
Have you ever wondered if there’s hope for the next generation? I certainly have. They’ve got more earrings than brain cells. They’re confused. They don’t know which way to point their hats or how high to pull their pants. They have problems with their eyesight. They can’t find a thing to eat in a fridge full of food nor a thing to wear in a closet full of clothes. They’re glued to their cell phones—when they’re not chatting online in brief, meaningless sentences.
Whenever I share such thoughts with my wife, she just grins. I worry about the kids, she tells me, because they’re a lot like me. And she is right. Not a lot of grownups lit up with hope when they saw me.
I was a skinny child. So skinny that I had only one vertical stripe on my pajamas. So skinny that I needed suspenders to hold up my Speedo. So skinny that I was swimming in a lake one summer and a dog came out to fetch me—three times. My mother used to scrub laundry on my rib cage. People looking for a toothpick at the dinner table would grab me. You get the picture.
I wasn’t a particularly bad-looking child—my father did not spank my mother when I was born, as my older brother claimed—but I was uncommonly thin, and it took me years to discover any humor in it. I remember as if it were an hour ago the time a beautiful girl in our school rode past me on her silver bicycle and shouted, “Hi, Skinny!” as if that were m
y given name. I would rather she had leveled a potato gun at me and pulled the trigger.
I suppose I became a writer partly as a response to the enormous humiliation of being teased as a child. A sense of humor and my ability with words were the only weapons in my arsenal. So I kept my wit sharp and my tongue forked.
In elementary school a classmate broke my thumb with a hockey stick, threw snow in my face, then laughed as I cried. His name was Ken, but I called him other things, things I’m not proud of. I told him things of which he had no idea. Things involving his family history and his future.
I knew he was going to break my other thumb. Instead he quickly skated away. I realized something wonderful that day: sticks and stones can break bones, but words can shatter something far deeper.
In high school, an upperclassman named Larry approached me in the hallway and said, “Callaway, you’re so skinny, we should slide you under the door when we need stuff.”
I couldn’t think of a gracious response, so I said, “Well, you’re so fat, you broke your family tree!” He was stunned.
I was on a terrible roll. I said, “You’re so fat, when you bend over, you cause an eclipse on three continents.” I couldn’t stop myself now. I had thrown my tongue into gear before engaging my brain. “You’re so fat, you beep when you back up.”
I thought he would murder me and the jury would unanimously acquit him. Instead, the color drained from his face as he turned and walked away.
That same year I discovered writing. I was about ninety pounds at the time, which was just enough to make the keys on the typewriter go down. My first critical review came from classmates in response to my essay, “A Day in the Life of an English Student,” in which I pointed out various physical characteristics of our teacher and just how boring it was to be in his class. I believe his reason for reading my essay publicly was to humiliate me. To show the class that using his name in an assignment was improper and unwise. That ridiculing his teaching habits would not go unpunished.
It backfired big time. The students clapped. They cheered. They loved me. A few rose to their feet. One saluted me.
The teacher stopped reading and wrote across my essay in red ink, “Composition poor. Grammar bad. See me after school.” He gave me a D.
As I sat at my desk that afternoon, I began to dream. I dreamed of becoming a writer. Of penning hugely successful novels jammed with humor, sarcasm, and revenge. I dreamed of the day Ken and Larry would want me as their friend, would beg forgiveness for not treating me better.
Two things stood in the way: A mother who prayed for me every day of my life. And a father who promised me a watch if I read one chapter of Proverbs each day for a month.9 I began to encounter verses like “Reckless words pierce like a sword” (12:18) and “The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life” (15:4).
I remember reading once that the singer Karen Carpenter’s fatal obsession with weight control began when she read a Billboard reviewers comment in which he dubbed her “Richard’s chubby sister.” At the age of thirty-two, Karen died of heart failure.
The tongue can be an ambassador of the heart. Or a deadly weapon.
Somehow the Spirit of God took hold of me. I realized the devastating power of reckless words. And I began to pray that God would transform my tongue and use my words to bring healing and hope.
I believe it is one of the prayers God loves to hear and that He answers it for all of us. I have seen Him do so in the most surprising ways.
I was speaking about God’s grace at a large convention recently, and when I stepped off the stage, guess who was waiting for me? Ken. I kid you not. He gave me a bear hug that made my kidneys hurt. There were tears streaming down his face. Ten minutes later, guess who elbowed his way through the crowd? Larry. There were tears in his eyes. Mine too. Two bullies and a skinny kid. On even ground at the foot of the cross. Amazed by grace.
As parents we do what we can, but we always fall short. And God’s grace comes in. Surprising each new generation, captivating us, meeting us where we are but never leaving us where it finds us.
“Isn’t God good?” said Ken, taking my right hand and squeezing it a little too hard. “How’s the thumb?”
“Never better,” I said. “Never better.”
Author’s note: Names have been changed in this chapter because these guys are still bigger than I.
Dogs lead a nice life.
You never see a dog with a wristwatch.
GEORGE CARLIN
It’s a funny thing, this getting older. Okay, maybe not so funny. But interesting. It’s an adventure unlike anything we’ve experienced before. For one thing, our bodies aren’t what they used to be. We have to stretch before playing checkers now. We get winded looking at staircases. To make matters worse, those same bodies have simply stopped taking directions. In fact, they’ve gone on strike. “Feed me,” they whimper, “and I will think of serving you again. Feed me large hampers full of cholesterol-stuffed ham and red meat.”
Since the age of three I have played ice hockey. But lately when I play, my mind screams at me, saying, “Go get the puck, you fool! It’s right there in front of you!” Meanwhile, my body hollers, “I bet Ed’s Diner will be open after the game. They serve those nachos with that cheese-flavored lard! Besides, there is a younger guy who wants the puck worse than me. Let him have it!” And my mind, which doesn’t hear so well anymore, repeats the words, “Let him have it”—and my body, which rarely follows directions, finally decides to. So I shish-kebab the younger guy with my hockey stick.
The forgetfulness problem is an interesting one too. Recently, at a large gathering, I introduced myself to the same person twice within the space of three minutes.
“But we just met,” he said, this younger guy with a razor-sharp mind.
“Aha,” I replied, “I was testing you.”
Perhaps you’ve done something similar. You meet someone you haven’t seen since high school and want to introduce him to your spouse. You say, “Honey, this is, um…a dear friend of mine from…uh…high school. We were in, uh…a class together. I sat next to him three years in a row… Yes, we were best friends… He was best man at our wedding…and, uh… Do either of you need more punch?”
There are three things we need to remember when it comes to forgetfulness:
1. Our minds are like sponges, but they also leak.
2. The part that doesn’t leak isn’t of much use.
As early as ninth grade, our brains begin to accumulate junk—years and years of completely useless information—which includes jokes told during recess and the lyrics to seventies songs. Almost every day people ask me important questions about history, about the Christian life—sometimes on radio or national television—and though I am trying to access file folders stored in my brain since youth, all I can think of is a lyric swirling round and round, a lyric I am not making up:
Drop kick me, Jesus, through the goalposts of life…
Straight through the heart of them righteous uprights.
Country songs are to blame for the mass migration of most of my thoughts at vital moments. I cannot count the times I have racked my brain for an important nugget of information, such as where a particular Bible verse is found, where I parked my car, or whether I brought my wife with me to the mall, only to find lurking there a song I first heard in the eighth grade, something like “Folsom Prison Blues” or anything by Tammy Wynette. Just this morning I woke up to discover that “Counting Flowers on the Wall” by the Statler Brothers was going round and round as I shaved. I had not thought of the song for at least twenty-four years.
Smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo
Now don’t tell me, I’ve nothing to do.
Perfectly good brain cells were wasted on these things, and if I could go back to high school (and there are teachers who insist I should), I would keep the radio off and study more important things, like how to remember the guy’s name who sat beside me those three years in a row.
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They say that fifty is the new forty, that thanks to modern science and medicine and things like liposuction, we are taking much longer to look our age now. And they are probably right. This chart, however, which is based on a study I considered conducting, shows that the decades are distinctly dissimilar (a completely useless and redundant word I learned in high school and can’t forget):
In your forties In your fifties In your sixties
You have The Eagles Greatest Hits on cassette, LP record, eight-track, CD, MP3, your laptop, and your iPod. You can remember the advent of the Sharp all-transistor desktop calculator, which weighed in at fifty-five pounds and cost $2,500. You tell your grandchildren you saw Beethoven in concert and have his autograph but can’t remember where it is.
Hair turns gray. Hair goes underground and starts coming out your nose. Hair? I had hair?
You can remember where you were when you heard that Elvis Presley died (1 was roofing a house with black shingles). You can remember and hum at least three Elvis songs and have several on gramophone records. Pelvis? Yes, sit down and I’ll tell you what happened the first time I broke my pelvis.
You crack jokes about older people and doctors and rubber gloves. Rubber glove jokes aren’t funny to you now. You wince at the sound of snapping rubber. You try to remember doctors’ appointments and jokes about doctors and rubber gloves.
You stand tall for your daughter’s wedding. You keep a chart to measure the height of your daughter’s children whenever they visit. You shrink half an inch and add a little weight.
Your eyesight is pretty good, though you are beginning to hold restaurant menus with your feet. You can’t tell the difference between 60 mph and 80 mph road signs, but the police officer won’t believe you. You remind the officer of his grandparents, and he lets you go.
You see a girl across the room, but for the life of you cannot remember her name. You ask someone nearby, “What’s her name?” The girl turns out to be your spouse.
Family Squeeze Page 6
