I turn aside and weep. I cannot look. I sit and bury my face in my knees trying to block the sharp, metallic smell of blood. I cover my ears to mute the jeers and laughter, human cruelty at its worst. Even above the raucous crowd, delirious with blood lust, I hear the piercing, agonized, screams of the two crucified on either side of him. The crowd ignores them and hurls taunts and insults at the silent, suffering one.
I raise my head, look into his eyes, and glimpse what he’s enduring. I bend over and retch; my fellow soldiers laugh. One of them kicks me.
“Some soldier he is! Look at him vomit his breakfast!”
“Leave him be,” an older, gentler voice says. “He’s but a lad. He’ll toughen.”
When I looked into the eyes of that man on the cross, I saw something I’ll never forget. I saw pure innocence suffering guilt. I saw him feel my guilt for the first sin I can remember, when I was just a little boy and angrily pushed my baby sister and heard her arm snap before her screams started.
You think it’s impossible that I saw that in his eyes? I did though. I saw him feeling that shame and carrying the guilt for everything I’ve done since, secret things no one could have possibly known.
In a split second, I saw all the other sins that innocent man was carrying as his own, terrible, unspeakable things, things people had done even my corrupt heart had never imagined.
Let my friends laugh. I sprawl face to the ground and weep for the crushing pain that man is feeling! At night, sometimes, I wake, and I can hardly live with my own guilt. And that man has somehow taken into his own heart the sins of all mankind and is feeling the crushing, unbearable weight of guilt for them all?
Who is this man? Why is he doing this? Never mind the skin flayed to the bone, the nails pinning him to the cross in ancient, barbaric torture, the mockery of the jagged crown of thorns spilling blood into his eyes-the guilt, the guilt, the guilt! How can he bear it?
After six hours that seem like sixty years, I hear his strong, triumphant shout, “It is finished!”
A fellow soldier says, “Truly, this man was the Son of God.”
I believe! For the first time in my life I feel no guilt. That man somehow took my sin and guilt into his heart and undid it all. He didn’t just cover it up; he made it not to be. I have no idea how he did it, but my sins are gone! Why did he do it? As crazy as it sounds, he did it for love.
With different tears, forgiven tears, I raise my face and arms to heaven and shout, “Praise God!”
A strong hand grabs my neck, and a rough voice says, “Let’s get him out of here. He’s a disgrace!”
The older, gentler voice says, “Leave him be. It’s his first crucifixion. Can’t you see he’s but a lad?”
The strong hand violently shakes me; I hear a stream of curses and feel more kicks. I don’t care. I’m staring at the man. The Son of God.
A soldier pierces his side and says, “He’s dead.”
I don’t know what it means, but a phrase comes to mind, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming.”
Some man, they call him Joseph, is taking him away now. I must follow and see where they bury him.
I think of something Mama often said, “Sometimes, things that look like the end are just The Beginning.”
When Easter Sunday comes, will we all still be under
orders to stay home and stay safe? Perhaps we will be. Thinking of that
reminded me of an article I wrote about an Easter we spent at home in 1978. I
sent it to our local paper, The Hillsdale Daily News and was overjoyed when
they published it on the front page on March 27, 1978. I laughed when I noticed
the typesetter had changed “friends” to “fiends.” I’ve made my own share of fiendish
writing errors!
9:30 p.m., Saturday, March 25, 1978—Freezing
rain pounded at the windows, and the lights flickered a warning.
“Just let me read this to you before you fix supper,
okay?” John asked.
We’d fed the three small ones earlier and planned a
late evening supper alone, an occasional event in our home, almost like a date
night without having to leave home. But John decided he needed to practice
Sunday’s Easter sermon out loud, and I was the only available audience, since
his guppies refused to look interested. So, I listened, and supper waited.
10 p.m.—John snapped his
Bible shut. “What do you think?”
The lights flickered and went out. “I think I don’t
like cold tomato soup.”
11:30 p.m.—The
inside temperature dropped to 62 degrees, not uncomfortable. Did we usually
keep the house too warm? Surely, we weren’t one of those energy hogs we
condemned, were we? On that thought, we oink-oinked our way to bed.
Midnight to 7 a.m.—The
inside temperature dipped to 58 degrees overnight but Sleeping bags for the
three small ones and two extra blankets for us kept us almost too warm. How
quiet it was! No motors running, no FM radio—perfect for sleeping. We couldn’t
sleep. It was too quiet.
7:30 a.m.—John
ice-skated on four wheels up to our country church. There was no electricity there
so no heat. The church was cold, and branches littered the road. He and the
board decided to cancel the Easter service.
“It’s too bad I was the only one who heard your Easter
sermon,” I said.
“Oh well,” came the cheerful reply. “Maybe you were
the only one who needed to hear it.”
8 a.m.—Cold breakfast:
juice, milk, peanut butter, un-toast, and cold cereal. The house temperature
was 56 degrees. We put on jackets.
8:30 a.m.—We
settled in the living room for our Easter service. Our four-voice choir plus
one coo did feeble justice to the hymn, “Christ Arose!” We read the
resurrection story and talked about the promise of eternal life we can have
because Jesus died for our sins and rose again. Suddenly, it felt like Easter.
Easter morning—We
took a walk outside. No crocus, daffodil, or green grass welcomed us, but the
ice-encased branches had their own beauty. Flowers are nice, but they aren’t
the only proclamation of a risen Lord. We heard a whispered announcement from
God’s handmade crystal, breathtakingly lovely, and sparkling in the sunshine.
Noon—Friends from
church knocked on the back door. They had a gas stove at their house. “We knew
you couldn’t cook on your electric stove,” they said. They gave us smiles,
hugs, jugs of water, ham, homemade rolls, home-canned jelly, a relish plate,
and hot stew. With the Lord’s provision and the love of friends, who needs Easter
lilies?
Afternoon—That
afternoon we asked ourselves questions. Why do we normally use so much water?
With the limited amount we had—pumps need electricity so country people don’t
have water without it—we discovered how much work a little bit of water can do.
We remembered our camp stove and lantern and hauled
them out of the attic. Why didn’t we use the lantern more often? And it doesn’t
have to be summer to set up a camp stove and use it outside. The house
temperature dropped to 54 degrees but with extra sweaters no one felt too cold.
Why didn’t we grab sweaters before we reached for the thermostat?
“We’re having an adventure,” we told the kids. “Let’s pretend
we’re camping in the state forest up north like we do in August.”
“Oh, fun!” they said. And fun it was.
6:30—7:00 p.m.—We
lit the lantern and stayed in the same room after supper. No one wanted to sit
in the dark alone. The baby nodded and smiled in his highchair. The other two
small ones played on the cold kitchen floor. John and I did dishes, using sparing amounts
of water. What should we do with the dirty dishwater? We didn’t want to waste
it by just pouring it down the drain; it wasn’t like we could turn on the faucet
for more. Our noses told us where it was needed most, and the dishwater became
very useful in the bathroom.
7—8 p.m.—We
curled up with blankets in the living room and read to the kids from one of the
Little House on the Prairie books. It seemed appropriate.
“Hey!” A little one interrupted. “They had lanterns.
Just like us!”
8:30 p.m.—Prayers
were said and sleeping bags zipped. Three little bodies stilled, and three
cheerful voices quieted. John and I huddled together and talked about what a
wonderful Easter it had been. We discussed what amazing conveniences we enjoy
and how we often take them for granted.
10 p.m.—It was time for
the last talk of the day with the Lord. We thanked Him for the big thing: Our
risen Savior, the bridge between man’s sin and God’s holiness. We thanked Him
for the day’s many blessings, our surprise Easter meal, the beauty of the ice,
the sweetness of our family, and the many concerned phone calls and offers of
warm places to stay. We thanked God for the many things we’d taken for granted:
light at the flick of a switch, heat at the turn of a dial, water at the twist
of a faucet, and a toilet that flushed all by itself without dishwater.
5:30 a.m.—We
heard the welcome sounds of noise pollution, motors and pumps. John yawned his
way downstairs and came back.
“The furnace is running now, but it’s only 50 degrees
in here.”
Under ample blankets and with hearts warmed with
gratitude, no one had noticed the chill. No one at all.
Back in 1966, those three young divinity students looked
more like they belonged in junior high than in college. Good friends, they sang
in a music group and did almost everything together. They said things they
thought were hilarious like, “Ya know? Ya never really know.”
I’d never tell about the time one of them was on a
date and the other two pushed his car half a block away so he couldn’t find it.
I’d never write about the double date we went on with one of them when. . . .
They were great guys though. One became a missionary
to Italy, one the head of the music department at a college, and the third the
pastor of a country church. I married the third one.
They were right though. Ya know? Ya never really know.
Who would have thought that the first day of spring
2020 would arrive to find the world in chaos? A friend asked, “Am I the only
one who feels like I went to sleep and woke up in an episode of the Twilight
Zone?”
Well, hello coronavirus, COVID-19!
What positive things do I have to say from up here in
my Pollyanna tree? Please, don’t shoot me out of my tree just yet; I don’t
really like this any better than you do. Positive things. Hmmm. Well, we’re
learning new vocabulary words! Until recently, I thought “flatten the curve”
was wishful thinking when you flunked a high school chem test. And I thought “social
distancing” was something only hermits practiced.
Long ago, I wanted to be a semi-hermit. I wistfully imagined
living in an isolated cabin with just my family and a very few hand-picked
close friends nearby. I supposed that with just those few people, and my books,
I’d be perfectly content. But are selfish people ever really content?
I just didn’t know myself. I care too much about
people to be a happy hermit. How could a hermit love this saying, “They might
not need me; but they might. I’ll let my head be just in sight; a smile as
small as mine might be precisely their necessity.”
But wait. Wasn’t Emily Dickinson, who wrote those
words, a model for social distancing? Never mind. I’m distracting myself.
I’d ask you to link arms with me, walk my country road,
and talk about the crisis of coronavirus, but just for now, you stay over there
on your side of the road, six feet away, but let’s talk. What’s that you say?
My road isn’t six feet wide? Okay, I’ll walk off the road in the grass.
Community, friendship, love, these are beautiful words,
richer than we realized. No perhaps about it, we’ve taken so many precious
gifts for granted. And now we’re missing our normal lives.
Last week our little country church announced a
potluck. We love our potlucks. A friend posted on my Facebook wall that to be
Baptist you had to believe in Jesus and own a casserole dish. I told her that
was theologically incorrect. You also had to own a crockpot.
For almost forty-six years we’ve been crowding into
our fellowship hall, an old, one-room country schoolhouse for potlucks. You
should see our long table, groaning under its beautiful load of crockpots.
The schoolhouse has no running water, no indoor
bathroom, and it’s not big enough for all of us. But, oh the love and laughter
we’ve shared there. We’ve shared sobs and hugs too, at funeral dinners. I
fiercely love that old building, but I’m as anxious as anyone to see our new
addition completed. We’re going to have a fellowship hall with running water
and bathrooms, but we’ll still be the country church on the corner of two dirt
roads because that’s who we are.
We won’t be having a potluck this week. There’s no way
to practice social distancing in that old schoolhouse; it wasn’t built for
that. And you know what? Neither were we. None of us were built for social
distancing. We need each other. We need to give and receive love, friendship,
help, hugs, and comfort.
We won’t even be meeting for church; we’re doing our
part to flatten the curve. Sure, I’ll miss the big reason meet, to worship God
together and to learn from His Word, but I’ll miss the little things too. The
coffee and donuts on the back table. The smiles, handshakes, love. The shared
sorrows. The sound of the bell ringing out over the fields. The little kids
running out of children’s church anxious to show their handwork to anyone who
will look, and we’ll all look. The jokes. The laughter. The young people
helping the older ones to their cars. The contented silence of the church after
the last person has left, waiting for John while he locks the door, and walking
arm in arm with him to our car.
Soon, this social isolation end. Let’s not take each
other for granted ever again. Because, how long will we have each other? Ya
know? Ya never really know.
Jo trudged through deep snow the half-mile home, tears freezing to her eyelashes, head lowered against the bitter wind. The foothills of the Adirondacks Mountains laughed at the calendar. They didn’t care if it was almost Easter; snowbanks still piled almost as high as the telephone poles lining the rural road.
Jo and Peggy, her younger sister, giggled whenever
they heard the song:
“In your Easter bonnet
With all the frills upon it
You’ll be the grandest lady
In the Easter parade.”
Hadn’t Irving Berlin, who’d published the song in 1933,
known people still wore winter hats and snowsuits at Easter? Liberace made “Easter
Parade” popular again in 1954, and he’d been born in Wisconsin. Surely, he’d known
not everyone wore Easter bonnets. Some people still shivered in snow boots in
late March and April.
Jo’s one freezing cold bare hand reminded her of why
she was crying, and she stubbornly forced herself to stop. She wouldn’t cry at
home; she never had, and she never would.
“I’ll give you something to cry about,” she muttered sarcastically to herself. “I didn’t cry at my own mother’s funeral.” That’s what Mom always said if one of Jo’s siblings cried. Jo didn’t cry. It was her only claim to fame.
Mom was going to be so mad about that lost glove. The
minute the bus drove off, Jo realized her glove was missing. She stared after
the departing bus, sighed, and began the long walk home. Maybe she’d find the
glove on the bus tomorrow, but tomorrow would be too late to stop the magic
belt.
To take her mind off what was coming Jo did what she
often did; she slipped effortlessly into the lives of the characters in her
favorite books where parents cuddled their children and little girls put their
heads on their mother’s laps. Jo had never done that. Sometimes she hugged
Mom’s apron, though, when she took it off the clothesline, and it smelled like
sunshine and outdoors. She’d pretend Mom was in it, hugging her back.
Once, after a really bad time with the magic belt, Dad
had snuck into their room. “Jo, Peggy, are you alright?”
Peggy had just cried quietly.
“No, we are not alright,” Jo had said angrily. “One of
these days she’s going to kill us. Why don’t you stop her?”
Jo knew she was being melodramatic. Mom wasn’t going
to kill her. Probably not.
Dad had sighed. “If I say anything, it will just make
it worse.”
Dad had gone back to the paper he’d always hid behind,
but Jo a had loved him anyway. She’d loved Mom too. Even as a little girl she’d
intuitively known something, Mom loved her children.
Jo knew something else too; she wasn’t afraid of Mom.
She was afraid of something, but it wasn’t Mom. And it wasn’t the magic belt.
Jo kept switching the glove from hand to hand trying
to keep from frostbite. Finally, she opened the door to the warmth of home. Maybe
at least supper will be good; Mom’s a great cook.
Jo didn’t smell Mom’s mouth-watering homemade
spaghetti sauce or the wonderful garlicy scent of pastavazoola. She almost
gagged at what she did smell. Just her luck. Lentil soup.
Too bad Mom wouldn’t send her kids to bed with no
supper, but she never did that. She couldn’t bear to have her kids hungry.
Might as well get this over with.
Jo put on her most defiant face, the one Peggy always
warned her not to wear, and marched up to Mom. “I lost my glove again.”
“How many times have I told you…?” The yelling went on
until suddenly it appeared out of nowhere, the way it always did. Mom
didn’t go get the belt, or take it off her clothing, or remove it from a hook.
Suddenly, like magic, the belt appeared in her hand. Mom always said a belt was
nothing compared to the razor strap she’d been beaten with as a child.
Jo took it stoically, staring at Mom unflinchingly
until Mom’s arm got tired. Jo ate the cursed lentil soup. It tasted worse than
it ever had. Finally, it was bedtime, 7:30 p.m. and time for the Great Escape.
Jo squeezed her eyes shut to close out the world. They
stung as a salty tear escaped. When even breathing let her know her sisters
were asleep, Jo scooted over in her bed and patted the edge to make room for
Jesus. She knew He wasn’t physically there, but He was there. She wished she
could put her head in His lap.
“Do you know what it feels like? The magic belt?”
He pointed into the distance. She saw Him there on the
cross. She’d forgotten that part of the story, the part where the soldiers had
beaten Him, probably with thirty-nine lashes. Jo shuddered when she saw the
whip, a horrible thing with pieces of bone and metal attached to leather
strands.
Jo whispered. “Was it magic?” she whispered. “Was your
whip magic too?”
Jesus threw His head back and laughed so loudly she
thought He’d wake her sisters. “There’s nothing magic about belts, or whips, or
tears, or sorrow, or suffering. Only love and joy are magic. They are the only
things that get to live forever. Look! Look where my whip is.”
Jo squinted through her tears. The whip was nailed securely
to the cross, but Jesus wasn’t there. Of course, He wasn’t there. He’d risen
again, and He was right here with her, and with all who loved Him.
She was getting sleepy. She heard Jesus murmur, “Why
don’t you tell me what you’re really afraid of?”
Jo opened her eyes, startled. He knew that too? Her
secret fear?
She whispered, “I’m afraid of me. I’m just like Mom,
stubborn and angry. I don’t want to scream at my children someday. I don’t want
to hurt them with the magic belt.”
“You won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“You won’t because you don’t want to. And I will help
you. Now go to sleep, and dream of the real magic. Love.”
And she did. It was warm and sunny in that land of
love. She didn’t need gloves; she wore a beautiful Easter bonnet, and Mom
hugged her. She’d always known Mom had those hugs in her. They’d just needed to
find a way out, and someday they would.
Photo credit: Mary PostPhoto credit: Beth Ann BarnesPhoto credit: Linda Ellington StevensPhoto credit: Mary DeSalvoPhoto submitted by” Marie BlackburnThis is how Jo and Peggy would have looked if they’d worn Easter bonnets. Thanks for submitting this photo, Linda Barvinchak Hackley
Who are all these people? And why do their titles all end in
“ologist”? John and I never expected so many ologists to become part of our
lives when we said “I do” fifty-plus years ago, but here they all are. The
Cambridge English Dictionary defines ologist as “an expert in a particular area
of scientific study.”
Let me introduce you
to our ologists. We know a few self-proclaimed gemologists. If the next
pandemic happens, they will darkly say, “Don’t say we didn’t warn you.” We can’t
really get rid of them; a few of them are family members!
We have a favorite meteorologist; you can find him on
Facebook if you’re interested, Meteorologist Ross Ellet. We don’t mind sharing
life with him; we voluntarily check his page almost daily. We think it would be
fun to know a zoologist, but most of our ologists aren’t the fun variety, and
we don’t visit them voluntarily.
Between us, John and I have seen dermatologists, several cardiologists,
a nephrologist, four neurologists, a neuropsychologist, a hematologist, a
pulmonologist, a gastroenterologist and two ophthalmologists. Throw in a few
surgeons, orthopedic and neuro, sprinkle with a few anesthesiologists,
radiologists, physical therapists, phlebotomists, and nurses who administer
infusions, and you about have the story of our social lives.
Our favorite doctors are our family doctors. We used to call
them family doctors; now all our specialists ask, “Who is your primary care
physician?” So, I guess the correct term now is PCP.
Whatever you call them, John and I love our at-home doctors and wish we could see just them and not our plethora of ologists, but as one nurse candidly remarked when I said that, “Well, then you would be dead.” So, there is that.
Our primary care physician’s job is to diagnose us and hand us off to the ologists; we understand that, but what happened to the good old days of Marcus Welby, MD?
Marcus Welby, AKA Robert Young, was a family doctor. He knew
his patients by name and made house calls. Just his smile and voice were enough
to calm fears. That television show was a favorite of many from 1969-1976 when
days were simpler. True, in 1976 the average man lived only 69.1 years and the
average woman 76.8 years. Now, according to stastita.com, the average male in
North America lives 76 years and the average female 81 years, so I guess we’ve
made progress with all our ologists.
Still, Marcus Welby would die of a coughing fit if he saw
the complicated ICD-10-CM system doctors must now use to report to insurance
companies. The old ICD-9-CM system had 13,000 codes; the new ICD-10 expanded to
68,000 codes. John’s cardiologist says it’s a pain in the place where you sit
down; only those aren’t his exact words. I understand that the 68,000 codes
have their place; the ICD-10 reportedly has fewer rejected insurance claims.
But they sure aren’t back country simple; they are like Carmel, Indiana with
its 125 roundabouts, more than any other city in the world. Carmel says it has
reduced injury accidents by 80 percent. Our country dirt road couldn’t handle
the traffic load of Carmel, or Chicago, or New York City.
Some things just can’t be simplified; we need all our
ologists if we want to live and thrive until ninety-five. And so, when we must,
John and I regretfully drive down our dirt road, leave the sanity and solitude
of countryside behind, and head to the insanity of Ann Arbor or Lansing. We see
more traffic on one of those doctor or hospital visits than we probably do in a
year at home.
When we get stuck in the inevitable traffic, one of us
always says to the other, “How do people live like this?”
And yet, we’re grateful they do. Those ologists have saved
our lives more than once, or rather, God has used them to do that.
We submit to the unavoidable; we sometimes must go to big
city doctors and hospitals, and if ever we visit Carmel, Indiana, we’ll have to
take a roundabout, though just thinking about that gives me nightmares. I’m not
putting a visit to Carmel on my bucket list.
I’m no a city girl. When we leave cities, roundabouts, and
interstates behind and see open fields, I feel my shoulders relax. I can
breathe again.
There will be interstate days for all of us when there’s
barely time to breathe, when life seems nothing but driving from one ologist to
the next, from one roundabout to the next, from one obligation to the next. But
do you ever wonder if we’re getting hooked on our own adrenaline? Do we sometimes
drive life’s interstate even when we could take a backcountry road?
Long ago I determined to leave a margin around the pages of my days, a little room to breathe. John and I promised each other to do that, but life’s demands grew, and we can’t do things as quickly as we used to. We find ourselves working early, late, and in between, and seldom taking a day off.
I see many others in the same situation. Like the frazzled
White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, too many of us drive frantically from one roundabout
to the next muttering, “Oh, my fur and whiskers! I’m late. I’m late!”
What good does it do to live on a backcountry road and live
an interstate life?
So, here I am, the ripe young age of seventy-one, just now
figuring out if I’m going to get off the interstate and live a country road
life, I’m going to have to leave some things undone. You too?
It’s not our location that determines our lifestyle. We can enjoy
a country road life if we live in a high rise in the city; we can endure an
interstate life if we live on three-hundred isolated acres in Wyoming.
We don’t want to mess life up because we only get one shot. I’m
not encouraging laziness. Life is short; we want to finish well, but even Jesus
told His disciples to come apart and rest awhile. It might be tricky figuring
out a balance between hard work and rest, but we can at least try.
We can start with this ancient prayer: “Oh Lord, may I be
directed what to do and what to leave undone.” – Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845)
I don’t suppose we can fire any of our ologists, but maybe
we can take time for a picnic on the way home? Oh, my fur and whiskers, a
picnic sounds just lovely. I think I’ll pack a book.
University of Michigan Frankel Cardiovascular Center
As I write, the winter wind’s howling outside my
window, and school is cancelled for the third day three in a row. Our back
roads are a mess of frozen mud and drifted snow, but we’ve seen hopeful signs
of spring here in Michigan.
Snowdrops are the first flowers to poke their brave
heads above ground, defying winter winds with their fragile strength. A few
days after they appeared a half-foot of snow covered them and said, “Take
that!” The resilient flowers took it and will be just as lovely when the snow
melts, perhaps even lovelier. They are flowers that never disappoint hope.
The red-winged blackbirds are back, and some people
have even seen robins, not just the few that somehow over-winter here, but
trees full of them. It’s a bit early for robins; I start looking for them
around Mom’s birthday, March 13. Mom left us for heaven when I was twenty-five,
so I don’t think of her everyday anymore, but I think of her when I see my
first robin and hear the spring birds sing. Mom’s favorite song was, “God Will
Take Care of You.”
The spring peepers will sing before the birds, and
that could happen any day now. When I get out of the car on a March evening I
pause and listen for them; in the distance they sound like sleigh bells. My
heart dances when I hear the peepers!
The days are getting longer, and I exclaim about that
often enough to drive the people who live with me crazy, but I can’t help it.
It’s an undeniable sign of hope fulfilled. I’ve lived through another winter,
and through enough winters that I no longer take a single thing about spring
for granted. Nothing is lovelier than renewed hope in the spring.
Spring is coming, so even when the wind chill
approaches zero like it is today, I’m ready to sing.
We’ve had so many blessings this past week that our
hearts are singing with gratitude. We’ve had burdens too, but I don’t really
feel like talking about them. I’d rather tell you about the blessings.
I guess I’ll have to share some burdens though, or you
won’t understand the blessings. We don’t tell people everything. John has been
pastor of our country church here at the corner of two-dirt roads for
forty-five years now, and we know these people. They are not be trusted.
If they know we need something, they’ll dig deep into their own too empty
pockets and do something about it. So, we tell God, but we don’t tell them.
Sunday, we had to tell. Our old van broke down in the
church parking lot after everyone left Sunday morning. John tried to move it
out of the way with our even older truck, but the van was in park, and the key
refused to turn, so the truck struggled to help but only made things worse. There
the van stubbornly sat, sideways, in the way, and obviously in need of repair.
“Sorry the van’s in the way,” John apologized to the
congregation Sunday night. “I’ll get a wrecker up here tomorrow and get it home
or to the mechanic.”
That afternoon John and I had wondered if we should
even repair the van; she with all her old-lady ailments, and her sister, our
other old van, about keep Glory to God in business. Yes, that’s actually the
name of the place that fixes our vehicles. I think they say, “Glory to God!”
every time we call them, and we groan something else every time see the bill.
They’re good to us though, and keep expenses to a minimum, and give us a
discount.
Two days earlier we’d brought the other old van home
from Glory to God; I, perhaps irreverently, shorten it to G 2 G. That repair
hadn’t been cheap.
The month had surprised us with several unexpected expenses. A lifetime of living with John at these country corners has given me an education in faith. When I flunk the class and start to worry, John says, “Go ahead and worry, Donna. I would, if I were you. After all, God has let us down so many times before.”
John preached a good sermon that Sunday evening, and I tried not to worry about the van. Afterward, a couple who attends only on Sunday evenings because they go to their own church on Sunday mornings, gave us a car. You read that correctly, gave us a car! We were so shocked we could hardly speak. Talk about seeing someone be the hands, feet, and heart of Jesus!
Monday came and with it bill-paying time. Money
usually available for bills wasn’t there this time.
“Okay, John, what are we going to do?”
John smiled; I knew he’d prayed, but he even he looked
a little worried. He walked out to the mailbox later.
“Bill, bill, advertisement, hey—I don’t know what this
is. You got a card or something.”
He tossed an envelope into my lap. I opened it and
read a sweet, encouraging card from people we’d known long ago. “God has put
you on our hearts lately….”
“What’s this?” our daughter, Kimmee, asked. She picked
up something that had fallen out of the card. I hadn’t noticed it.
It was a check for more than enough to cover the bills
waiting to be paid.
And a few days later our daughter and son-in-law bought
us a new mattress for our bed.
A car? A check? A mattress? All in one week?
I don’t want you to get the idea I think material
blessings are a sign of God’s favor and lack of them is a sign of His
displeasure. I don’t buy into that health-wealth-materialism gospel. It didn’t
seem to work out too well for Jesus or the apostles.
God always takes care of His children, but it may not
look like it to us at the time.
Remember I told you Mom liked the song, “God Will Take
Care of You”? God took care of Mom when she had excellent health and worked
circles around the energizer bunny. God took care of her when she had her first
stroke in her forties and lost the use of her right arm and partial use of her
right leg. And God took care of Mom when a brutal second stroke took her from
us before she reached her mid-fifties.
God took great care of us this week with a car, a huge
check, and a new mattress. God was taking just as good care of us long ago when
we stood in the grocery store aisle discussing whether to put back the coffee
or the toilet paper because there wasn’t money for both. No money fell from the
sky; we put back the coffee. And God will still be taking care of us if we
stand in the grocery store aisle again regretfully putting back the coffee so
we can buy the toilet paper.
When John Wesley was dying, he said, “The best of all
is God is with us.”
Having God, we have everything. We have hope. Hope is
the only thing we can’t live without.
When storms of any kind come, physical, financial,
emotional, or spiritual, God sometimes rescues His children. More often He rides
the storm out with them. He helps them find beauty for ashes, joy for mourning,
and hope when all seems lost.
The days are longer; the snowdrops will survive this
storm; the red winged blackbirds have come back to Michigan.
And we are pilgrims, singing our way Home, thanking
God for our county roads, and saying with Emily Dickinson,
“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all.”
Photo credit: Kara GavinOne of our country backroads
School uniforms on, faces scrubbed, smiles bright, Angie,
Johnnie, and Danny grabbed the lunches I had ready for them and kissed me.
“Bye, Mom!”
“Bye, Mom!”
Make that two kids grabbed their lunches and kissed
me. One usually walked right by, thinking of other things and headed out the
door.
“Murphy!” his dad said. “Get your lunch. And don’t
forget to kiss your mother.”
Johnnie earned the nickname Murphy from a radio
commercial about little boys delivering newspapers. A voice barked out
commands. “Get up! Brush your teeth! Eat your breakfast! Kiss your mother! Pick
up your papers!” It continued with instructions. At the end the voice shouted,
“Murphy, go back and start over! You forgot to kiss your mother!”
That was our Murphy. He loved me. He just had many
things on his mind, and unless reminded, he forgot his lunch and forgot to kiss
his mother.
Once on the road with Dad driving them to school, all
three kids had a lot on their minds. Many of their sentences started with,
“Daddy, what in case. . .?”
The curvy backroad to school took them through Lost
Nations, a game preserve with few homes. One house had chickens that liked the
road better than the yard.
“Daddy, what in case we hit one of those chickens?”
And one day they did just that.
Sometimes the kids laughingly tried to think up
outrageous questions. “Daddy, what in case a plane falls out of the sky and
lands on our car?”
Sometimes their questions were serious. “Daddy, what
in case you and Mommy die?”
John reassured them that we had no plans to die
anytime soon, but if we died, God would take care of them. We probably failed
to teach our kids many important lessons, but I hope we taught one important thing,
that whatever they face in life, God will be with them.
“Daddy, what in case we’re late to school?” The kids
asked that almost every day.
It was a legitimate worry. We lived only seven miles
from school, but their Dad usually pulled into the driveway of Freedom Farm
Christian school at the last minute.
The kids didn’t want to earn the late demerit; three
demerits equaled one detention, and they had a remarkable ability to earn
demerits without trying.
“Bye, Daddy!” they’d yell, flying out of the car and
into the school, about knocking over anyone in the way.
One day that anyone happened to be a favorite teacher
of theirs and a friend of ours, Al Neinas. He sauntered out to the car. “You
know, Pastor Poole, there isn’t an award for this.”
John smiled. “An award for what?”
“An award for consistently being the last parent to
get his kids here the final second before the late bell rings.”
When John picked the kids up in the afternoon, they
didn’t have as many “what in case” questions; they were too busy talking about
their day. I sometimes had a few “what in case” questions of my own. It wasn’t
unusual for John to call me from school.
“Hey, I’m bringing two extra people home for supper,
okay?”
Ten minutes later he’d call again. “Hey, make that six
extra people coming home for supper; is that okay?”
What in case I can’t think of what to feed them? I was pretty sure I could though. My friend Kathy said I was the only person she knew who could feed a dozen people with a cup of hamburger.
I thank God for the invention of the casserole! When Danny came home from school and saw a casserole cooking, he always looked at it suspiciously.
“Did you get that out of a cookbook, or did you make
it up?”
If I said I’d found the recipe in a cookbook, he
relaxed. If I said I’d created it from my imagination, he almost cried. Danny
is forty-three now and still suspicious of casseroles. Whenever he looks at a casserole
at one of our church potlucks his face says, “What in case I eat that and die?”
Those what in case years passed quickly. When we were
forty and our other three teens or almost teens Kimmee joined our family. I
don’t think she ever said, “what in case”; she hung around her older siblings enough
to know the proper words were “what if.”
Now the four kids are grown; the “baby” just turned thirty-one. They, their spouses, and Megan, our oldest grandchild, face serious “what if?” questions every day, and we do too.
I try not to let any “what in case” questions keep me awake at night. Whatever my family faces, and I know they don’t tell me all of it, I only hope they remember what we taught them, that no matter how hard things get, God will be with them. I hope I remember it too.
Yesterday is gone, why worry? And tomorrow? Well, like Elisabeth Elliot said, “Tomorrow is none of my business.” That just leaves today..
What in case today I remember I am God’s child and just
enjoy life in the beautiful backyard of my heavenly Father? What in case you do
too!
When winter backroads ooze with mud or wear a coating
of ice, I take an inside road. Books take me anywhere I want to go. February is
a good month to read; it’s National Library Lovers Month. The second week of
February is also Freelance Writers Appreciation Month. Okay, you can sit down
now; that’s long enough for the standing ovation.
I wasn’t one of those early, natural readers. In the
1950’s we didn’t use the term “learning disability.” Kids were either smart or
dumb; nice adults never said which, but we kids quickly put ourselves into one
group or another.
I knew what group I was in. We had four reading groups
in school; I’m sure the first group wasn’t the bluebirds and the last group the
crows, but that’s how I remember it. There really needed to be a fifth group
just for me, the dead-road-kill-crows. I rode home on the yellow school bus, my
report card in my hand. With every bounce of the seat my brain said, “dumb,
dumb, dumb,” and panic kicked in. Mom didn’t suffer fools gladly, and I knew
exactly what she was going to do about the Big Red U in reading. I was half-way
through second grade and couldn’t read one word, not even “dog” or “cat”.
I don’t remember the spanking. I do know Mom sniffed
with disapproval when she discovered the school was teaching reading by the
“see-say” method: look at the picture, memorize the word, recognize the word
without the picture. She got phonics materials, and in the evenings, when my
siblings went to bed, she sat up with me and tried to drill phonics sounds into
my brain. Mom was not patient, but she was persistent. I was going to read, or
one of us was going to die in the process.
I thought I was going to die. I prayed I would die. I
begged to go to bed. I just could not get it.
Until that night. Suddenly, a light switched on in my
brain. Phonics made sense. I could sound out words; I could read! I fast-tracked
from the crows to the bluebirds and got into trouble for reading ahead in the
book because I didn’t want to wait for the others who couldn’t keep up with me.
I can’t imagine what my life would have been like
without Mom. If you can’t read at school, you can’t do much else either.
Looking back, trying to self-diagnose my learning disability, I’m guessing it
was a combination of visual perception problems and dyslexia.
Thanks to Mom, I’ve meandered many backroads in my
reading.
When I was a kid, I devoured books. I didn’t just read
them; I lived in them. I found wonderful families, friends, and adventures, and
I joined them in my imagination. I loved Charlotte’s Web, The Five
Little Peppers, Little Women, Little Men, Rebecca of
Sunnybrook Farm, Pollyanna, and so many more.
Mom and Dad had a collection of children’s books. Each
volume was a different color; the book of fairy stories was red. I wore that
book out. I enjoyed the book of mythology too. I even read some of the
dictionary.
I loved Bible stories, especially ones about Jesus. If
I felt lonely at night, I scooted over to make room, patted the edge of the
bed, and invited Jesus to sit. I fell asleep, sure He was there, smiling at me,
keeping me safe.
As I got older, I read book series: Cherry Ames,
Hardy Boys, and my favorite, Nancy Drew.
Life wasn’t always easy when I was a little girl. I
was a stubborn child and refused to cry about anything in my life, but I cried about
what happened to the characters in my books.
Dad walked by one day when I was reading and crying.
“You know you’re crying about more than that book, don’t you?” he asked.
I looked up at him, shocked. I think that was probably
the most astute thing my dad ever said to me.
Reading both kept me out of trouble and got me into
trouble, like it did when we were getting ready for a rare family trip to town.
“How in the
world can you have no clean clothes?” Mom scolded. She looked through my sister
Mary’s clothes. Mary didn’t have any clean clothes either, but she had
something new.
New clothes were even rarer than a trip to town. I
don’t remember where Mary got the skort, a short, white pleated skirt attached
to white shorts.
Mom bit the tags off and handed me the skort as Mary
watched sadly. “Put this on, and don’t you dare get dirty before we leave.”
What could I do and not get dirty? My books! It was a
beautiful day, so Nancy Drew and I carefully climbed a tree with low branches,
sat there, and I started to read. All went well until I forgot I wasn’t inside
on the couch and leaned back. When I fell out of the tree, I landed on a barbed
wire fence. I didn’t get a scratch, but Mary’s beautiful new skort wasn’t as
lucky. That barbed wire neatly ripped that skirt right off those shorts. You
don’t want to know the rest of the story.
I kept reading voraciously as an adult until I had
brain surgery. After that, reading was almost impossible for a while. I never
lost the ability to read words, but by the time I got to the second paragraph
on a page, I couldn’t remember what I’d read in the first. Reading wasn’t fun;
it was frustratingly hard work. Years passed before I could really enjoy a
book, and even now I read much slower than I did. That’s okay though, I thank
God I can still read!
I love my books; I have some good friends between
dusty, old, hard covers. My books, and especially my Bible, have made me who I
am today.
So, who am I today? Well, if you psychoanalyze me by
the books on my bedside table, I’m one strange lady! I have fiction books, two
great devotionals, a dictionary cataloging death by poison, shooting,
suffocation, drowning, and strangling from 1900—1950 in London, a book of
Puritan prayers, a mystery about a murder in Mackinac, and a writer’s market
guide.
I’m too old to worry about who I am; I’ll leave that
to my progeny. I have more important things to worry about, like how am I going
to live long enough to meander down all the backroads in these books? And that
reminds me. Family, when I die, don’t donate my books before you let the
readers among you choose any they want. I’m pretty sure someone will want my
dictionary of murder. And should my death seem at all suspicious, dust that
book for fingerprints. Just in case.
I looked with a critical eye at My First Valentine. He
seemed to have no sense of propriety. Did he not know that one simply did not
appear in public with a red or black upper lip and chin, depending on which
color crepe paper bow one had chewed that Sunday morning? And had he not heard
the choir director tell us kids in cherub choir to fasten the snaps at the
wrists of our little white angel robes?
What kind of mother does this kid have? Had I
appeared on the platform week after week with red or black dye all over my face,
and with my angel robe flapping at the wrists, my mother would have had plenty
to say!
Come to think of it, why didn’t the cherub
choir leader tell this little Johnnie Poole to stop chewing his crepe paper bow
and fasten his snaps? Must be God wanted me to do the job.
I was a strange little girl, painfully shy, but if I thought someone was doing
something wrong, shyness aside, I was on a righteous crusade!
I edged closer. “Johnnie Poole,” I said, in my most
authoritative preschool voice, “stop chewing that bow this minute and fasten
your snaps.”
That Johnnie Poole gave me a look I was to learn only
too well. With inscrutable, deep brown eyes he calmly stared directly at me,
then looked away and kept right on chewing. Oh, but this little boy was about
to learn I didn’t give up easily. Every week I gave him the same lecture. Every
week he gave me the same look and kept doing what he wanted to do. It was
infuriating.
I remember our first real argument, several years
later. Our dads were counting the offering after church.
“I can spell my name. Want to see?”
He wrote on a blackboard, “John.”
“That is totally wrong. Listen to me.” I pronounced
his name over and over. “Do you hear any ‘h’? I didn’t think so. Your name is
spelled J-O-N.”
He looked at me calmly, erased his name, and said, “I
guess I know how to spell my own name.” And he walked away.
See? Infuriating.
At some point we must have decided we liked each
other, but I don’t remember any conversation about it. I do remember we held
hands behind the pole in children’s church until Johnnie Poole decided it
wasn’t the right thing to do; his standards always were higher than mine.
Except when it came to chewing crepe paper.
A boy whose dad also counted money offered to marry
us. He said he knew how to do it because his older sister had just gotten
married. We were bored; the money-counting took a long time, so we agreed.
The boy finished the ceremony and said, “You may now
kiss your bride.”
“I’m not kissing no girl!”
“I’m not letting him kiss me!”
Our officiant was distressed. “But, then you can’t be
married.”
“Okay!”
Our divorce or annulment was quite painless. We paid
our officiant nothing, and without even thanking him, we ran off to play with
our friends.
After fourth grade our family moved and left that
church. I don’t remember saying goodbye to Johnnie Poole.
Dad’s job transferred him back to the area the summer before eighth grade.
One Sunday a boy I knew said, “Someone wants to sit
with you in church. He’s really handsome and nice, but he’s too shy to ask you
himself, so he sent me.”
“Who is it?” I wasn’t interested in any boys. Still, I
was curious about this handsome, shy stranger.
“Well, it’s Johnnie Poole.”
“Johnnie Poole!” I laughed. “I’ve known him all my
life. You tell him if he ever wants to sit with me in church, he better ask me
himself!”
Moving time came all too soon, and my parents were distressed. Moving was expensive and emotionally draining on the whole family.
“I can’t understand why God would move us back here
just for three months,” Dad said.
None of us could, but looking back, I can see why.
It was our last Sunday at church.
“Goodbye,” Johnnie said.
He left, circled around, and returned. “Well, I guess
this is goodbye.”
He repeated that several times. Finally, he asked, “Is
it okay if I write to you?”
“Sure!”
And that began a weekly correspondence of half-page
letters. His always started with, “How are you? I am fine,” They ended with,
“Your friend, Johnnie Poole.”
I grew older and began dating the way most girls did
in the 1960’s, but the weekly letters continued. I never thought of Johnnie
Poole as anything more than a friend and had no reason to think he felt any
thing but friendship for me. True, he did send Valentines, starting in 1963,
the “Thinking of You” kind, signed “Yours truly,” or, “Your friend.”
When I got my senior pictures, I enclosed a small one
in a letter to him, and he did the same for me. I gave my large picture to my
boyfriend at the time.
During my senior year, the choir from John’s Ithaca
High School went on tour, and one of their stops was my high school,
Maine-Endwell. Each choir member from my high school signed up to house a
student from Ithaca.
“I got some kid named John Poole,” my boyfriend told
me.
“Oh, you’ll like him. He’s nice. I’ve known him for as
long as I can remember.”
After the Ithaca choir left for their next stop, two things happened. First, my boyfriend told me, “That John Poole looked at me real funny when he saw your picture by my bed. He sounded kind of mad and asked, ‘Where’d you get that picture?’ I told him you were my girlfriend.”
The second thing was a very upset letter written on
hotel stationary where the Ithaca choir was staying next. I was shocked to find
out that for all those years Johnnie had considered me his girlfriend and felt
betrayed when he discovered I was dating someone else.
In my return letter I tried to reason with Johnnie and
explain I had no idea he thought of me as a girlfriend, and he couldn’t assume
a girl knew how a guy felt if he’d never told her. That went about as well as
our argument when I’d tried to tell him how to spell his name.
It was inevitable. Johnnie and I started dating in
college in 1966 and married in 1969.
It hasn’t all been hearts and flowers, moonlight and
roses for us. The first time he said, “I love you,” I responded, “But how does
a person really know something like that for sure?”
In our fifty years of marriage we’ve faced physical,
spiritual, emotional, and financial challenges. Sometimes we’ve been so busy
we’ve almost lost each other in life’s shuffle. The wisdom that came with age taught
us not to be so busy reaching out with both hands to help others that we forgot
each other. Now we try to hold hands and reach out to a needy world with one
free hand each. Still, we can get so busy we feel like we should introduce ourselves
at the end of the day before we kiss goodnight.
God has been good to give me all these years with My First Valentine. When I tell John what to do, he still looks at me calmly with those inscrutable brown eyes and does exactly what he wants, but I haven’t given up trying. I’ll probably be bossy to my last breath. I hope he’s with me when I take it, and I hope he knows how grateful I am for all his years of faithful love, even if he still doesn’t know how to spell his name.
I mean, say it out loud and listen to yourself. John.
John. Do you hear an “h”? I didn’t think so.
It was getting old, this standing, red-faced, in a new classroom in the middle of a school year, trying to help a teacher pronounce and spell my name. Why couldn’t I be Donna Smith instead of Donna Piarulli?
We moved often because Dad worked for an airline. I was in
eighth grade now, and I really hoped this would be our last move. I looked with
a critical eye at the little town of Maine, New York, population around 5,000,
and sighed. I’d loved the few years we’d lived near Taberg, New York, in the
foothills of the Adirondacks. If my parents asked me—they didn’t—this town had
about 4,950 too many people. I wanted my wild, isolated country back.
Once again, a truck backed our ten-foot by fifty-foot house
trailer into yet another spot in yet another trailer park.
I felt a little better about the move when I discovered the
nearby Nanticoke Creek. At least my sisters, Mary, Ginny, and I had somewhere
close to wade, swim, and ice skate. And
we had our bikes. Who knew what adventures awaited?
I didn’t relish the adventure of finding a church, but I
knew we had to do it. That’s one of the first things Mom and Dad did whenever
we moved. A new church was as bad as a new school, especially a church where
all the kids had known each other since they were born. When my parents chose
First Baptist, I had a feeling no one would even talk to us.
I was wrong. First Baptist, Maine, New York was easy to love. The church orchestra forgave Mary and me when we played our clarinets off key. They patiently explained we didn’t have to try so unsuccessfully to transpose our music because it was already written for B-flat instruments. They didn’t even laugh, at least not in front of us.
We were welcome in the Bunts’ home anytime. They had fifty-seven
children, or maybe it was only eleven. No one there cared if everything was
perfectly neat. They just shoved things aside and made room for us in their
hearts and home. I loved Mrs. Bunts, always smiling, never ruffled, never
saying her kids were going to give her a nervous breakdown. Not only that, but Mr.
Bunts worked for a dairy, and we could drink all the milk we wanted.
Bonnie Ward was only a year or so older than I was, but she was
a serene, comforting mother hen. I still remember her tiny bedroom with its lavender
flowered wallpaper. It was beautiful, just like she was.
I had so much fun at Jim and Judy Cole’s house. They taught
me to play pinochle. I didn’t tell my parents. Playing cards was on their
rather long list of sins.
Half the girls in the church had a crush on one of the older
boys, Donnie and Jack Olson and Rodney Post. Many years later, my sister, Mary,
married Rodney’s younger brother, Steve.
And then there was Ronnie Lewis. I thought he was cute; he never knew I
existed. I remember getting an awesome fleece
hat with a long tail and a big pom-pom. I wore it when we church kids went
Christmas caroling. Maybe, I thought, Ronnie will notice my hat and
say he likes it. He didn’t.
Time passed with youth group parties and outings, water
skiing, bowling, and roller skating. We had struggles at home about many of the
church activities. Water skiing happened on Sunday afternoons; that was the
Lord’s Day. Bowling was another issue because they sold beer in the basement of
the bowling alley. And roller skating? That was an awful lot like dancing. Mom
and Dad finally did let us do most activities with the other church kids. One
thing they refused to budge on was letting us dance in gym class. The Piarulli
girls sat on the bleachers and watched while some of the other church kids had
fun learning dance steps. I wondered if anyone from church who did let their
kids dance wanted to adopt me.
Some kids dread going to church, but I loved it. Looking
back, I don’t remember a single sermon. I just remember how the pastor and people
made me feel: warm, wanted, and loved. If more churches made kids feel that way
today, they might lose fewer of them.
By the time we were high schoolers our church youth group
had our own room for prayer meeting. We met upstairs with no adult supervision.
Pastor Barackman said he knew he could trust us. We had wonderful times in that
room. We talked, laughed, prayed, and mostly behaved. Until that Halloween
night.
Someone said, “Hey, where’s Ronnie?”
“I don’t know. I think the Lewis’s had to go out of town.”
“Really?”
The pastor’s son just happened to have a dozen or so bars of
tiny soap, the kind you get at motels. Someone suggested we go soap Ronnie’s
window. I don’t know if anyone objected; I’m pretty sure we all went.
We had all heard the warning. Soaping windows was strictly
prohibited. If anyone was caught, the offender would get arrested and must wash
all the soaped windows in the town of Maine. But we didn’t intend to get
caught.
We snuck down the creaky stairs and passed the open doors of
the auditorium where the adults were praying. Had anyone heard us? Nope.
Giggling with relief
we hurried the few blocks to Ronnie’s house, getting more nervous the closer we
got. It was a dark night, and we had no flashlights; it felt spooky. We didn’t
see anyone else.
When we got to the
house, the conversation started. “I don’t think we should do this. I’m scared
we’ll get caught.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Well, someone
should do it. The rest of us could keep look out.”
“I’ll do it,” I
said. “Which window is Ronnie’s?”
I was terrified,
but I wasn’t going to admit it. Through the dark, shadowy yard I crept, finally
arriving at the window. I gave it a good soaping. Then, feeling as triumphant
as Caesar on a victory march home, I ran back toward my friends, laughing. I
was high on adrenaline; nothing had ever been this much fun, not even the
amusement park at Harvey’s Lake.
“You guys! I did
it! I. . . .”
That’s when I
noticed my friends were strangely quiet. No one said anything. Not only that,
but two tall men were standing with them. I squinted into the darkness. It
couldn’t be…but it was. Cops. Two of them. They turned on a flashlight and
shined it in my face.
“What were you doing?” One policeman demanded.
“Ummm, I was
soaping our friend’s window,” I said.
“Whadda ya know,”
he said, sarcastically, looking at his partner. “We got an honest one. The rest
of you who told us you were just out for a walk? Do you think we’re idiots?”
Fortunately, none
of the kids answered that question.
The policeman pointed
his flashlight at the ground. There was a big pile of soap the kids had ditched
when they had seen the men coming.
Those policemen
scolded us until our stomachs churned. Then they marched us back to church and
into the auditorium where the adults were still praying, heads bowed
reverently, murmuring in hushed tones.
“Who’s in charge
here?” One of the policemen shouted.
Prayer stopped.
Parents looked at us in horrified disbelief. Pastor Barackman looked at us,
hurt on his gentle face. “I guess you could say I am,” he said.
Then the policeman
scolded our pastor. “If you can’t be responsible enough to keep your church
kids under control. . ..” he said. I can’t remember the rest of it. I just
remember how betrayed Pastor looked when he glanced at us.
I don’t remember
what Mom and Dad did to us; I’m sure it wasn’t fun. I do remember that was the
end of our youth group having our own prayer room. The adults said we couldn’t
be trusted.
I can still see our
pastor standing there, taking that tongue lashing from the policeman, and it
was our fault. It was my fault. The adrenaline rush long gone, all I felt was
regret, not for what might happen to me, but for what was happening to him. And
there was nothing I could do about it.
That was the day I
learned it doesn’t pay to sin against love.
Isn’t that what
every infraction does though, sins against love? Inexplicable love sent Jesus
to the cross to take the sins of the world into his heart, to suffer the guilt,
to feel the shame, to pay the price so that we lost sinners, every last one of
us, could be offered His gift of eternal life.
Well, so many of
those people who looked at us in shocked disbelief that night are in heaven now,
Mom and Dad, Pastor Barackman, and even Ronnie Lewis. With their glorified
sense of humor, perhaps they will forgive me if I still get a trace of a grin
when I remember flying through the shadows, soap in hand, a triumphant night
warrior.
Thanks to the many friends who helped me obtain these pictures! Special thanks to Joyce Young, Rita McGregor Stanley McKeon, and especially to Phil Child for taking time to find and send me photos from his files along with some interesting history.
