A Park, A Person, and a Prayer

I had a great experience today with my wife and students at Six Flags.  The temperature was right, the breeze was right, the lines were right, the Mr. Freeze roller coaster running backward was very right, but God's timing was absolutely smack-you-in-the-head perfect when He led me to someone in need using a full lunch table.

After riding several roller coasters, it was clearly time for lunch.  As we stood in line at one of the many excruciatingly slow pay-a-lot-for-a-little burger joints in the park, I found myself becoming impatient for a place to sit.  When we finally paid for our paltry burger and chicken strips and made our way to the only available table, my three students had already camped out leaving only one seat.  Of course, being the gentleman (and good role model for the two boys with me) that I am, I offered the seat to my wife and began to scout a suitable place for me.  The only open spot around was at the table right next to ours, a table that was occupied by a woman studiously pouring over a giant text book with her laptop next to her and her tunes in her ear buds.  I politely got her attention and she motioned for me to have a seat, but that was the extent of it, so I sat and ate the three-bean salad I brought in for myself and engaged in small talk with “my” table right next door.  As we ate, my table and I chit-chatted merrily and the woman across from me busily scribbled notes on a worn yellow legal pad and highlighted and underlined in the text book.  Being a curious fella, I tried to steal a glance at her text book and was excited to see that it was an upper-level biology book.  However, even more than the biology book, I was excited to see another book in front of her-- a worn, brown leather Bible.

Immediately, though she showed no hint of the same, I felt an overwhelming urge to speak to this woman, but didn’t.  I’m not good at initiating conversations, especially with strangers, as I always think I’m going to sound awkward or stupid, so I just sat there and continued to talk with my table.  My mind, however, was definitely back on that Bible.  Finally, as my group began to finish their meals and make like they were ready to leave, I thought, “Awww, to heck with it” and broke into her thoughts by asking, “Are you the teacher or the student?”  She said she was the teacher, and we fell quickly into a conversation all about “teacher stuff”.  After a few moments of this banter, I mustered the courage to breech the topic and, indicating the worn Bible said, “I see you’ve got the best book of all with you.” 

And suddenly all awkwardness and pretense vanished.

In some strange, twisty working of what I like to think of as God weaving all of us together in a big, beautiful tapestry, It turns out that this woman and I had a ton in common.  We had both been teaching the same number of years, we both taught science, we had the same last name, she knew folks that attend my wife’s school, we both have sons, and we were indeed both Christians educators, even though she taught in a public school on the other side of the river.  It was as if the two of us had known each other forever and she was suddenly so comfortable telling me about how she keeps her Bible out on her desk and plays Christian music in class (at her students’ request), and about how her students can see something different about her that they like.  It turned out to be a great conversation, and as my people prepared to leave, I asked her if it would be okay if I could pray for her. 

And that’s when I knew God directed me specifically to her.

She immediately grabbed my hand and asked if we could pray for her son who is deployed in Afghanistan, and just as quickly my people gathered around and I led them to lift her up before the Lord in prayer.  We thanked the Lord for her years of service to children and his years of service to his country, we petitioned the Lord to prepare her heart even now for a safe and effective school year this fall and for Him to put a hedge of protection around her son and bring him home safely, and we praised a mighty God who could engineer the meeting of two strangers who were kindred spirits with so much in common over a full table at an amusement park.

As we finished praying, she gave my hand a firm squeeze and we said our goodbyes, and as we walked out of the restaurant and on toward the next ride, I couldn’t help but reflect on how good the Lord is.  I have been down so many times with no one reaching out to me, yet here He takes me out of my comfort zone to do that very same thing to a perfect stranger.  Yes, the rides were great and I enjoyed my time with my wife and my school family, but what I really came away with from the day with was the reinforcement of the fact that when I am sensitive to the Lord’s leading, amazing things happen.  No one goes to Six Flags to grow spiritually, but I’m awfully glad it happened to at least two people in the park this day.

Winning

Ahhh-- the sweet contentment of victory!

Tonight, my oldest son won first place in his division in our church's annual pinecar derby race. This is a huge accomplishment in our house, as much for me as for him. You see, even though it's his car, due to his youth (and, frankly, his immaturity and ADD) I'm the once who must take on the majority of the car's construction.

Lets see...

Design: Me (with limited input from him once he realized that I couldn't make it look like some CGI spacecraft out of the latest Hollywood blockbuster)

Fabrication: Me (well, he's only eight and I would rather him keep all of his didgets, so I'll man the bandsaw)

Sanding: Me ("You know, Dad, sanding just isn't my thing.")

Weight distribution: Me (using a drill to hollow out spaces for tungsten weights, see "Fabrication" above)

Wheel preperation: Me (again with sandpaper AND the drill)

Weight extraction and redistribution: Me (using drill once more to remove the previously inserted weight as the danged car exceeded the weight limit by almost an ounce)

Autobody repair: Me (my kid with wood glue to repair major split from axel insertion-- never!)

In the end, I/we had a sweet car that finally weighed the exact limit and beat out the competitors handily. This is clearly proof of God as it's a miracle the thing worked at all with my/our track record from years passed. Even more miraculous is the fact that the boy was at least in the garage with me for most of the ordeal.

My son is like a little finch flitting from place to place and never having more than a thirty-second conversation due to his inability to focus his and his natural inclination toward chaos. All through the construction phase words such as, "Don't touch that switch or you'll cut your hand off," and, "put the spray paint down before you make Mommy's car look even worse," and, "Touch another tool without my permission and just see what happens," rang throughout the garage for the entirity of our time on the project. There were times he just about drove me off the deep end, and I'm sure he probably felt the same about me.

And then the real miracle happened.

The boy actually painted his entire car all by himself with my willing assistance and it looked very, very awesome when finished.

Beautiful to us, in fact.

Us. Not "I/we" or "my/our", but "us".

For that moment, we were a team and he was actually enjoying it! There was no yelling, no threatening, no whining, no tears-- just two guys, and dad and his son, working on a car.

Sheer unadulterated bliss.

We had a rare but exceedingly beautiful father/son moment framed in the context of a simple wooden car, and I wouldn't trade that for all the money in Fort Knox.

After the race, my boy was so happy for having won. He beamed from ear to ear. He was a winner!

And after the race, I was so happy for having built that car WITH my son.

WITH my son.

I'm still beaming from ear to ear.

Tonight, I am a winner not because I did most of the work, but because my son recognizes it as a collaboration with his old man.

Partners.

Yeah, I am a winner.

Tonight, I Hate

If I have learned one thing during my walk with recovery, it's the importance of forgiveness.  Unforgiveness sits within you and eats away at your soul like cancer, so I believe that to forgive is a matter of spiritual life and death.  Over the past several years, I've made it a point to forgive and seek forgiveness often.  It's not always easy, but you grant freedom to both parties when you forgive.

I've forgiven my former step father who vehemently hated me and was not shy to tell me so or show it with his fist.

I've forgiven my nighttime babysitter's son who threatened and frightened me into submission so that he could molest me for years.

I've forgiven my mother for letting both of these individuals into my life.

I've forgiven my oldest brother upon his request for being absent from most of my life up to that time.

I've forgiven the girl that ripped my heart to pieces after our brief but emotional summer fling so many years ago.

I look for opportunities to forgive because of the liberation that comes with it.  It's music to my ears and light to my eyes and love to my soul.  It's so very, very sweet.

But there's one person that I struggle to forgive.  He knows me better than anyone else and understands when he hurts me.  Intimately.  Frighteningly so.

The person I struggle to forgive is myself.

Sometimes, for reasons that may sound foolish to you, I hate myself.  Deeply.  More often than not, it's because of my dysfunctional and skewed relationship with food.

Today was just such a day.

As a person who has struggled with food's allure and control my entire life, especially as I've come to accept and understand this battle as a full-blown addiction, I know my limits.  Just as a recovering alcoholic knows he cannot take even one drink and expect to stay sober, just as a sex addict knows that a single one night stand couldn't possibly be enough, I know that I can't indulge in trigger foods as I will not stop, no matter how strong I believe I am at any given time.  I know that if I succumb to the temptation of even a nibble, a binge is guaranteed to follow that will leave me emotionally sick with guilt and anger and physically sick to my stomach.

I know this I know this I know this I KNOW THIS, yet addiction has a way of blurring reality and blinding you to the truth.  Addiction doesn't give a flying fig about what you know as it's only interested in what you feel, and for me, I always feel like eating.  Notice that I didn't say anything about hunger-- that's physical.  Nope, food addiction is emotional and all about the endorphin-laced high that comes simply from putting food, LOTS of food, into your mouth.  The trick to putting your addiction in its place is to not listen to its siren call, its lies, its pleadings.  You have to be smarter than it is.  You have to be meaner than it is.  You have to be more determined than it is.

And sometimes I'm not.

And that's when I hate myself.

Today, listening to my addiction tell me that they would be for my sons' Easter baskets, I took the only tip I've earned in weeks on my weekend job and bought a bag, a LARGE bag, of malted candy coated robins' eggs.  Then I listened to it tell me to open the bag and smell the eggs.  It told me that one egg wouldn't hurt me.  One tiny egg would be okay.  One little piece of candy couldn't lead me to-- 

OH STUFF IT YOU WUSS AND EAT!

In less than five minutes I had completely consumed that entire bag of robins' egg candies.  In less than five minutes I had inhaled almost a thousand calories of pure carbohydrate poison to a diabetic food addict like me.  In less than five minutes, I had stolen from my sons what would have brought them joy.

What a jerk.

What a big, fat, stupid, arrogant, screwed-up JERK!

Addiction, I can usually turn the tables on you and see you as the positive that finally pushed me into getting healthy.  I can usually ignore you.  I can usually put you in your place, but tonight I hate you.

Tonight, I hate myself for giving in.

Again.

Tomorrow's a new day.  Tomorrow I'll be able to put it all in perspective and know that I'm forgiven by those that matter most (my family and my Lord).  Tomorrow I'll be rational.

But tonight, there's no forgiveness in me.

Tonight, I hate.

Blinders: A Parable

Blind-er  n.  1. blinders A pair of leather flaps attached to a horse's bridle to curtail side vision. 2. Something that serves to obscure clear perception and discernment.


There once was a little boy named Theodore.

Theodore was a peculiar lad who loved to count and wanted to be the very best counter in his village.  Theodore counted the clouds in the sky, the words in his book, and even the cucumbers in the garden.  That wasn't enough, though.  He needed more.  He needed to count higher.  Looking around his village one day, he noticed the bricks in the sidewalks.  There were bricks in the sidewalks along his street and bricks in the sidewalks along the village square and bricks in the sidewalks everywhere he looked. 

And so he started counting bricks.

His mother asked him to do his school work, but all Theodore wanted to do was count bricks.

His father asked him to clean the barn, but all Theodore wanted to do was count bricks.

His younger brother asked him to play hide and go seek, but all Theodore wanted to do was count bricks.

His grandmother simply asked him to sit with her, but all Theodore wanted to do was count bricks.

Wherever Theodore went, he methodically counted the bricks before him hoping to count each in the village to the very last one.  Day after day he counted without even the slightest pause, without the slightest care for anything else, head down, murmuring each number to himself as he strolled.

Always thinking of bricks.

Always counting bricks.

And day after day, try as he may to keep it all in his head, something would distract Theodore from his self-appointed task and he would lose count.  Maybe it would be a child's bouncing ball coming to rest before him, or maybe a playmate from school waving and calling out his name.  Sometimes, it would be his fellow villagers warning him to watch where he was going before he got hurt.  It really didn't matter the source as each day Theodore knew the result would always be the same: he would lose his count and need to start over.

"This is no good," Theodore thought.  "At this pace, I'll never finish counting my bricks."

So Theodore wondered and pondered about a way to keep himself from being distracted in order to finally complete his goal.  Suddenly, with a burst of inspiration, he remembered an item from the family barn that would surely help him.
Blinders.

Theodore retrieved the horse blinders from the side of the stall that held their trusted mare.  Though his head was, of course, much smaller than the horse's, Theodore affixed the blinders to his own small head as best he could and straightened the leather flaps out to each side.  It was a little awkward at first, but soon enough he found himself back on the roads counting the bricks, this time his mind focused fully on the road before him and not on the world just beyond the blinders.  He raced around the village counting with renewed confidence.  He ignored his family's pleas for help or attention.  He ignored the bouncing balls.  He ignored his waving friends.  He ignored the warnings of the villagers who noticed he was more obsessed than ever.  By now he was approaching the village kiln where the bricks were made.  The end was in sight.  Nothing could distract him now that he was so close finishing the counting of the bricks.

Nothing could distract him.

Nothing.

And that was when he stepped out to cross the road leading to the kiln and was suddenly struck by a wagon carrying bricks being pulled by a horse with blinders on.  As the wagon sped past, Theodore lay broken and bruised and trampled and still in the gutter.

He no longer counted bricks.

Don't become so focused on what you want that you ignore everything else around you.

Take off your blinders.

Breach

I just watched one of my snakes eat his dinner. Of the two corn snakes I have, I think this one, Hershey, is a little dim.

Okay, call a tree a tree: he's stupid.

You see, snakes are born with an instinct to eat their prey, in Hershey's case a dead mouse, head first. The idea is that by swallowing the noggin and then the body and finally the feet, everything lays down in a perfect position against the mouse's body with the legs outstretched behind it making for a very easy swallow. My other corn, Ellie, knows this and never has any trouble snarfing down her rodent.

Hershey, on the other hand..

Here's the play by play:

The second I come close to his habitat, Hershey knows something is up and gets a little skittish. His tongue begins to flick out at a maddening pace tasting the air for me and what I hold in my hand, and he follows my every move. When I open up the top, he pulls back like a pinball lever, and the second I drop the mouse in his bowl he LEAPS forward and SNAPS his jaws around the furry little morsel.

Except he does it backwards.

Breech.

Instead of lunging for the white whiskered head, he goes for the butt!

So what, right?

Wrong.

By trying to go butt first, Hershey sets himself up for abject failure as he begins an attempt at pulling the mouse into his gaping maw. That snake opens wide and stretches his jaws and pulls the mouse in by shifting his mouth around the critter like he's done hundreds of times before, except this time, by going butt first, the mouse's legs catch at the side of Hershey's head and refuse to bend backwards against their nature. The mouse is stuck and can't be swallowed any farther into Hershey's gullet.

Stuck.

Oh that snake tries and tries to pull the mouse in. He backs his head up, waits a second as if sizing up his dead enemy's prowess, and strikes the butt all over again with the exact same set of problems. He'll do this several more times with the mouse getting stuck in the exact same position each time.

Does he give up?

Nope.

Fifteen minutes more of patient observing (his stupidity is mesmerizing) later, I finally walk away knowing that this will most likely go on for some time before he finally realizes he's been attacking the wrong end. At that point, exhausted and frustrated and HUNGRY, he'll slither (no more lunging for this tire baby) around to the proper end and suck that varmint down in no time.

What a waste of time and energy all because his stubbornness wouldn't let him try a different approach.

You know where I'm going with this, don't you...

How often are we like that little snake?

Much like Hershey's instinct and his meal, I believe we have the ability to look at a task or situation and see the right way to do it, but end up attacking it from the wrong direction because of our stubbornness or deceitfulness or selfishness or ignorance or any number of other things that get in the way of our success. We know the right way to do it, but we let our arrogance assure us that it knows a better way. We continue to attack the butt when we know the head will get us there with less time and effort and cost and heartache.

Folks, it's time to get our heads out of our butts and do the things we've been made to do and do them the right way! You know what to do, so do it!

Politics? It doesn't matter what party you belong to so long as you get out and vote!

Money? Stop blowing your paychecks on worthless crap! If you save and save and are still broke, at least you know you've worked hard to prove you've done all you can!

Relationships? Love is a choice SO CHOOSE IT!

Health? You can't have your cake and eat it too without then working that cake off in the gym and eating well after it. Take care of yourself!

Man, I am right there with you. I struggle and sometimes fail miserably, but I'll learn from my mistakes and avoid that butt-end next time. I'll strive not to make any excuses. I'll do my best to do it right the first time, and when I don't I'll pick myself up and go at it from a different angle.

No breech for me; I'm going in head first!

Over here, Hershey; let me show you how it's done

Parallels

I have a weekend job as a delivery man.  I really enjoy this job for several reasons, among them being the extra money (duh), seeing new (and sometimes scary) parts of my city, experiencing the happiness my packages bring, and the fact that I get to listen to the radio.

Radio?

Oh yes, NPR to be exact!

I know, many of you who know me also know that I tend to lean very heavily to the conservative side of things and that NPR is anything but conservative, but c'mon, they've got really interesting programs!  I start my day with "Car Talk" and usually end it after "The Splendid Table", but smack dab in the middle of my day is one of the highlights: "This American Life" with Ira Glass.

Ira is a master at the art of theme programming.  Each week he takes an always-interesting, sometimes eye-opening, and often sly topic and weaves three or four stories loosely around it.  I usually find myself mesmerized by the accounts and have openly guffawed out loud a time or two at a person's predicament.

Sometimes I cry.

I did this Saturday.  Not a lot, mind you, but enough.

This week's umbrella theme was "Slow to React" and recounted stories of folks who had life-altering situations that took a very long time to resolve.

And the story in act one was all about me.

Well, it wasn't literally about me, but the events and situations and feelings were close enough to make me pull over and stop my delivery truck. 

The Act.

The Desert Years.

The Resolution.

As I sat there in the cab entranced, I couldn't help but make a two-column list in my head of "similarities" and "differences".  Before long, I had more mental checkmarks under the same column than the different column, but those differences were notable.  More than once I had shivers run down my spine and felt the hair on arms twitch.  Several times I started to reach out and turn the blasted radio off as I had recently come to peace with my version of the story and didn't need to open up that wound all over again, but I was entranced and couldn't pull myself away from this story that paralleled mine in so many ways.

It was good to know that at the conclusion he got it right.

I got it right.

We got it right.

More importantly, for the first time in my whole life, I heard someone else speak candidly and without trepidation about the same tragedy I knew as a little kid, how it affected his (our) progress into manhood, and how he (we) reached a satisfying conclusion to many long and painful years of anger, doubt, confusion, guilt, and revulsion. 

At the story's end, I wiped my eyes, sighed, and knew I was not alone.  There was someone else (and many millions more, though their voices are usually silent) who told a story parallel to mine.  I felt like I had a brother in arms that knew me and understood as he had been there in his own life too.

And kept it a secret for most of his life.

Like me.

And survived.

Like me.

I needed to hear that particular episode of "This American Life" more than I've ever needed to hear anything else on the radio.

Thank you NPR for your bold programming.  Thank you Ira Glass for boldly putting a voice to part of my struggle by presenting this story.  Thank you David for boldly sharing a life-altering event that most men would bury deep in the recesses of their memory and choose never to speak about again.

Call it what you will (and sometimes there may not even be words adequately to describe it), but rape and molestation stay with you forever.  However, there comes a point when it doesn't have to rule over you anymore.  Freedom can come simply from the knowledge that you're not alone.

I am not alone, and by the grace of God and a forgiving heart, I am free.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/425/slow-to-react

Apology

Things sometimes transpire and intersect in ways that cut me to the quick.  Some folks may see them as isolated incidents that just happen, by coincidence, to converge at a certain time and place.  I don't buy that for a minute.  I believe God engineers these moments to get my pig-headed stubborn attention.  It's one of the ways He speaks to me.

You guessed it.  He spoke.

I found myself deep in a facebook conversation yesterday about a high school shooting in Ohio where a student walked in, opened fire, and ended three lives.  During the course of this conversation, I stated several times that while I absolutely do not condone what the shooter did and believe wholeheartedly that he should receive the maximum penalty for his actions, I do at least understand his motives.  His method was wrong, but his madness was real, a real I understand all too well.

He was bullied.

Then tonight, I had the opportunity to get caught up on one of my guilty pleasures, the television program Glee.  In this episode, a high school football player who had made it his life's pleasure to bully a gay student realizes later that he himself is gay, outed, and bullied right back.  Confused by his newly-admitted sexuality and unable to cope with a single week of being bullied even after he had picked on his own victim for months, he puts on his best Sunday suit and tries to hang himself.

Bullied.
 

And that's when I began to feel God take a sledgehammer to my heart.

I had been bullied in one form or manner all throughout school, most of it taking place without my parents or friends even knowing (I'm a superb actor).  Though there were some bright spots, most of my schooling before late high school were years I would really like to forget in large part due to how others treated me.  Even more damaging than those bleak years of school, however, were several years I had been bullied horribly by a neighbor as a young boy and later by someone who was supposed to be a trusted part of my family.  I won't talk about those experiences here as they're best suited for another time, but suffice it to say that they left me damaged, confused, scarred, and angry.  Very, very angry. 

I could easily have become that shooter.

I didn't, thank the Lord, but I did release my pent up emotions in another way: I became a bully myself.

The bullied had become the bully, and I never really thought about it until the convergence of that high school shooting in Ohio and the episode of Glee (which takes place, ironically, in Ohio).  I had bullied other kids as a way to mask my own pain and gain the upper hand for once.  If I couldn't escape the taunts and jeers of  the people that picked on me, I could at lest pick on the ones I perceived to be worse off than my own sorry state.

As part of my personal recovery, I have now come to realize a very important fact about human beings: hurt people hurt people.  I have, honestly, forgiven all those folks that bullied me over the years, but I've never said I'm sorry to the ones I dumped on.

Sledgehammer.

Thank you, God.  I needed that wake up call.

So, to all the folks I ever picked on as a response to my own hurt and insecurity, please accept this symbolic apology.  Many of you are now just faded images in my mind and I've long ago lost your names.  Some of you I remember very well indeed.  To all of you, I am sorry.

Please forgive me.

Seriously.

To Bruce, the big bully in seventh grade who had to repeat his freshman year of high school several times before finally dropping out, I'm sorry for how I made you out to be such a Neanderthal when I moved on and you had to repeat ninth grade.  Looking back, I'm sure the deck was stacked against you socioeconomically and (with my knowledge as a teacher) you likely had some pretty big learning disabilities.

To Travis in middle school and Andrew in high school, I'm sorry for picking on you and calling you names.  I always thought of myself as "dumpy", and, well, in my eyes you were "dumpier".  You were easy targets for me and I know my words must have cut deeply.

To Tito, I'm sorry for making fat jokes at your expense.  That was totally unconscionable of me and completely hypocritical.  You were the only person in my classes fatter than me and it threw attention off my shape to poke fun at yours. 

To "Squamata", I'm sorry about how I laughed behind your back when you got on and off the bus because I thought you were ugly.  I had no idea what you were like on the inside because I didn't try to see it.  As an outcast myself from "bus culture", I had no right.  I don't even know your name.  So sorry.

To Muncie and Earl, I'm sorry for going off on you for being gay before any of us even really knew it.  It didn't matter what you were then, and I'm glad you're confident in who you are now in spite of so many of us giving you such a hard time.  I had been abused as a child by another male and let my disgust of that time bleed over onto what I thought you were.  It took a good gay friend in college to show me that we're all just humans that want to be loved.  Man, what a jerk I was.

To the "burned man of St. Ann", another nameless soul I'll never know, I am soooo sorry for pointing at you and laughing at you and mocking you in Walgreen's at Northwest Plaza.  You frightened me because you were so very, very different, and I covered my own fear with false bravado and jeers.  This has bothered me for years and I use you often as an object lesson with my students.  I wish you were still with us so I could make things right.

I know there were others, probably many, but these are people that stand out in my mind.  For those I can find, I will make it right.

Still, who was I? 

I was a bully. 

Hurt people hurt people.

  

If there's anything I can take away from my own experiences of being picked on and beaten down it's that I'll not stand for it anymore.  I'm not sure when that mental switch was thrown in my head, but I'll stand up for the underdog now every time.  I will go to my grave preaching to middle schoolers about how their words and actions hurt.  I will never bully again.

I just wish I had made that promise to you all those years ago.

Please accept my apology.