Gratitude – Back Road Ramblings

by Donna Poole

I never wanted to be a zebra. If that sounds odd, I’ll try to make it clear later.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a pastor. Mom told me when I was a toddler I used to stand on a box, say, “Hum num one,” wave my hands in the air, and start singing. She finally figured out I was saying, “Hymn number one.” At out church the pastor was the song leader, and I was imitating him.

When I was about ten, I was standing in front of the mirror combing and recombing my hair.

“Bobby, what in the world are you doing?” Mom asked.

“I’m trying to make my hair look like Pastor Miller’s,” I said.

Other kids had sports heroes. My heroes were preachers. I know, I know. I was a strange kid.

I knew exactly what kind of church I wanted to pastor, too. When I grew up and went to seminary, my fellow students laughed when I told them I hoped God would send me to a little country church, maybe even one on a dirt road.

“Are you crazy, man?” My best friend, Joe, asked me. “Listen, Bobby. Aim higher. You go to a country church, and you aren’t going to have the time to dig into Greek the way you love doing here at school. You’re going to be doing everything else that needs done. You’ll be the guy pushing the broom on Saturdays to get the church cleaned for Sundays.”

“Yeah, Bobby.” Ted laughed. “Joe’s right. You’ll be the guy they call when the toilet overflows.”

“Oh, come on guys,” I said. “I don’t think it will be that bad. Country churches need pastors, and most seminary graduates aren’t interested.”

“True,” Ted said. “That’s because we want to get paid enough to eat something besides pork and beans and maybe even save up enough to retire someday.”

I didn’t say what I was thinking. What about Jesus’s command to go into all the world and preach the gospel? I don’t remember reading only go where they can pay you the big bucks.

Okay, so in retrospect, I can see where I felt a bit superior, maybe even condescending.

“What are you grinning about?” Joe asked.

“Oh, nothing,” I replied.

But I was remembering a joke I’d heard. “The first rule of the condescending club is kind of complex, and I don’t think you’d understand even if I explained it to you.”

I felt bad thinking that, but I still chuckled. The fact was, I was no better than they were. God called them to large churces, and they were good at what they did. And God gave me the desire of my heart. He sent me to my country church. It was even better than I hoped; it wasn’t just on one dirt road. It sat on the corner of two dirt roads. And Ted had been wrong. They didn’t call me when the toilet overflowed because they didn’t have indoor plumbing, just an outhouse. A deacon did, however, ask me to help him tip over the outhouse and get the bees out of it the first week I was there. I could picture Joe, and Ted, and the rest of the guys laughing as I turned the stink house over, especially when I got stung by a bee. I admit, seminary never prepared me for that. I could almost hear my friends’ voices.

Still happy about your country church, Bobby boy?

I was happy. Preaching to those people and loving them was what I’d been born to do, I was sure of it. I was still sure of it when a dog bit me when I was out calling. I never doubted it when I had to slide down a coal chute into a dark basement to rescue some children who’d been accidentally locked inside a house. Even lying flat on my back between piles of dog poop to fix a parishioner’s broken pipe—I knew I was where God wanted me to be. But seminary had never prepared me for most of it.

The guys had been right about one thing. If we’d had to eat only what we could afford from the salary the church paid me it would have been only pork and beans, and we did eat a lot of that. But in those early years, the people who attended church in that little white frame building didn’t have much, but they shared what they had. My family and I never lacked for fresh milk or eggs. Sometimes people would leave beef in our car from a cow they’d butchered.

And Grandpa Finn—that’s what everyone in the church called him, sometimes left beautiful gifts in our car. He was a master carpenter. I think he might have been rich and famous in the city where people could have afforded to pay him what he was worth. He made a cookbook stand for my wife, a barn for our boys, a cradle for our little girl, and bookshelves for me. He framed our old fireplace and got it working. Grandpa Finn had no family, so my wife often invited him to come home for Sunday dinner. He didn’t say much but smiled a lot. He especially liked sitting in front of the fire after dinner during what he called the cozy season.

Our kids asked Grandpa Finn what the cozy season was. “It’s the cold ‘brr’ months,” he said. “You know, September, October, November, and December.”

Usually, when Grandpa Finn was putting on his hat to leave, he said, “Good sermon, preacher.”

That warmed my heart. I loved preaching. Holiday sermons were my favorite. I especially loved preaching the Thanksgiving ones. I remember my first Thanksgiving sermon. I preached on I Thessalonians 5:18: “In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”

I threw in a few quotes for good measure. John Miller said, “How happy a person is depends upon the depth of his gratitude.”

J.R. Miller wrote, “Somehow many people do not train themselves to see the glad things. There are a thousand times more things to make us glad than to make us sad.”

Those words are easy to say when you’re young and life has few problems. But years passed, and in twenty-five of them, sorrow and suffering came along many times and took me places I hadn’t planned to visit. I learned a hard truth. Real gratitude and joy don’t depend on easy circumstances; they depend on the presence of God.

Still, I wasn’t prepared to become a zebra, or for what it took from me. It started slowly. My legs got tired easily, and my eyes looked droopy. Sometimes it was hard to swallow. And then my voice got soft and hoarse. The hard of hearing people in my congregation were having trouble hearing me even with my mic turned up to just below screeching level.

The doctor ran tests and came up empty. She said, “They say in medical school when we hear the sound of hooves, think horses, not zebras. But I guess you’re a zebra. I’m not sure what’s wrong with you, but I think you might have myasthenia gravis. It’s a rare disease. I don’t have any other patients with it. It only affects 20 out of every 100,000 people in the United States.”

By then my voice was so nasal and quiet I had to ask twice before she could hear me. “Can it be treated? Can anything improve my voice so I can keep preaching?”

“I think so,” she said. “From what I’ve read, it’s treatable. I’m going to send you to a neurologist who specializes in MG.”

The specialist had high hopes treatment would restore my preaching voice, but it didn’t. Soon, I could only whisper. The Sunday I had to resign, tears ran down my face. Strangely enough, it was Thanksgiving Sunday. People crowded into the front pews to hear what I had to say.

I preached my first Thanksgiving sermon all over again. I Thessalonians 5:18: “In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”

“We can be thankful today,” I whispered, “that God is still God. He’s not surprised by this, though frankly I am. We can be thankful that Jesus who died for us will help us face whatever we have to endure in this life. We can be grateful he will be with us in life and in death. Where do we go from here? I don’t know. You’ll have to find a new pastor, and I will pray for you and help you. I’ll have to find a new job, and I don’t know how to do anything but preach.”

Grandpa Finn stood. “I’ve been praying for a long time for an apprentice. I have too much work, and I’m old. I have no one to leave my business to. Would you come work for me, Pastor?”

The seminar never prepared me to get a job offer from the pulpit. I looked at my wife. She grinned and nodded. I looked at my kids. “Go for it, Daddy!” the youngest hollered.

“What if I stink at it?” I asked Grandpa Finn. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a preacher who was a good carpenter.”

“Don’t you?” he asked.

Everyone laughed. Except me. I didn’t get it.

“He means Jesus, Daddy!” My same kid hollered again.

And so, I gratefully accepted the job. When I see the Lord and give an account of my life, I hope to say, “I was a preacher. And I was a carpenter. And I did my best at both. In all seasons.”

And then I hope I hear that Master Preacher Carpenter say, “Well done.”

The end

***

These blogs are now available in book form on Amazon:

Backroad Ramblings Volume One: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Two: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Three: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Four: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

I have six other books on Amazon as well, four fiction books in the “Life at the Corners” series, and two children’s Christmas picture books.

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by Donna Poole

Long ago our road was just a path the Potawatomi tribe used as they foraged the fields and camped out on Squawfield Road. Pioneers built cabins in our area, and the tribe was friendly to them and helped them through the winters. It was an unspoken understanding that when a native showed up at a cabin with fresh meat he expected to be invited to stay for dinner, especially if he was Chief Baw Beese. And then the government unfairly forced the Potawatomi to leave, and the last moccasin left its print in the dirt on our old country road.

The road was still little more than a cow path when Henry Ford awed Detroit and North America by building his Model T. It didn’t take long before some of his cars showed up on our road and on neighboring backroads. As years went by, soon almost everyone had a gasoline powered vehicle of some sort.

There was one hold out. I remember the story well, but forget his name, so let’s call him Wilbur. Wilbur stuck to his horse and took a lot of good-natured teasing for doing so. As he plodded by, taking forever to get to church or a store, neighbors sometimes hollered, “Get a car, Wilbur!”

Then came the year of the spring rains. Many backroads, ours included, turned to mud. All those lovely Model Ts slid every which way and refused to budge. Along came Wilbur, and graciously pulled out neighbor after neighbor. He didn’t charge a penny, but he got his payment. As he left each grateful farmer, he said, “Get a horse!”

Time passed. The generation of people who told me the stories about the Potawatomi and Wilbur traveled one last time down this old country road. With a swirl of dust, their taillights disappeared in the distance. Now, they are a sweet memory that lingers in the glow of the sun setting over the fields.

I love this dirt road; we’ve lived here forty-eight years. Our oldest daughter was only two when we taught her not to play in the road, lest she get run over by a truck or a tractor. Our other three had their introduction to our road when they bounced down it on their way home from the hospital as newborns.

The road is a metaphor in my mind for our children’s independence. They were thrilled when they could ride their bikes to the corner for the first time without mom and dad. And when they got permission to ride north to the bridge over the St. Joe River, just a slow-moving creek there, that was big stuff.

I remember the kids patiently sitting at the corner, balancing on their bike seats, and looking west down Squawfield Road. They were waiting for their first glimpse of Grandma and Grandpa’s car arriving all the way from New York. As soon as they saw it, they’d pedal home furiously, shouting, “They’re coming! They’re coming!”

Down that road our children drove to school, to their first jobs, to college, to their own homes. And down that road they come back to visit. When they leave, we watch them go until their taillights disappear. They turn on Squawfield, and they’re gone until the next time. It’s the road to independence, and it’s the road back home.

Fourteen grandchildren travel down that road to visit us, thirteen with their parents, one on her own. That one will be leaving in the spring to get her physician’s assistant training. I’m proud of her; I’ll cry when I see her taillights turn onto Squawfield heading for a different state, but I know something. I know she’ll never forget the road back home to Grandpa and Grandma’s is always open to her, wherever we may live. And I hope all our family remembers that.

Two family members live with us, our married daughter, and her husband, and we’re grateful for them. Without them, we don’t know how we would have gotten through the last two plus years of cancer—tough enough—and the treatments—even worse. I can’t count the number of times our daughter has driven me down our old country road.

I love country roads. Thank You, Lord, for all my years on this one. It’s true that “the lines have fallen unto me in pleasant places.” I could have been happy in the city; I was contented when we lived there, but I’m glad for these years of corn and bean fields, for wide blue skies, and country smiles.

Old road, it’s true you’re sometimes impassable in the winter. You may be a mud bog in the spring and a dust bath in the summer, but oh, you make up for it now. You’re breathtaking in the fall.

Someday, I too will leave you for the last time; my taillights will disappear in a swirl of dust. I hope it’s in the fall.

When I leave for the final time and know there’s no coming back, I’ll take one last look to see you in all your autumn glory. Though the place I’m heading will be far more glorious, I’ll glance in my rearview mirror just for a second and say, “You’ve been good to me. Here’s to you, old country road.”

Tag: Gratitude

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