Spiritual Autobiography

My father's father was Catholic.  My grandmother was a protestant.  When grandmother would get the kids in Sunday school, a priest would come by and convince my grandfather to pull them out.  Couldn't have the kids going to a protestant Sunday school.

Then my dad went off to save the world in World War II, got shot out of the sky, captured, and spent some time in a German POW camp.  There was a Presbyterian minister in that prison, and although he never talked about it much, I think that was when my dad became a Christian.  I tell you this story so that I can contrast my childhood with the childhood of my parents.

We grew up in a household that was religiously unified.  My mom converted from Catholicism so that we could all go to church together.  Some of my earliest memories of from vacation Bible School and Sunday School.

My mom married a good man.  That probably wasn't as easy as it sounds.  Her mother married a guy, had a baby with him, and then the guy vanished.  Took a powder.  No one ever knew what became of him.  So what does she do next?  She marries my grandfather, the drunk.  So what does her oldest daughter, my aunt, who I never met do?  With these awful examples of men in her life?  She marries a guy who ends up in prison.

For some reason, if you try and marry the exact opposite of mom or dad, you frequently end up married to some sort of a clone of that person.  I don't know why this is so, but it is.  But somehow, my mom escaped that trap.  She married my dad.

So this was my childhood:  I had a better life than either of my parents did when they were growing up.  Really, you can't ask for more than that.  As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure if you can ask for that much.  What a remarkable thing they did.  They gave us more than they ever received.  My mom came out of that toxic family and made a better life for her children.

I can't find the words to tell you how proud I am of her.

Did we have some "issues?"  Yes.  All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  We will all have some issues.  Look at my kids.  They grew up thinking their father was a cannibal (that was a joke, honest!).  I wish my mom and I could have resolved our issues before she died, but it was not to be.

But then I got a glimpse of her in heaven.  Not a real, literal glimpse, but one day as I was praying, I got this sense from God of who she had become, of the person that I would be reunited with some day.  And you know what, she has leapfrogged past me again.  When we just started our relationship, she was the all powerful, all knowing mother and I was a little blood of protoplasm pooping in my diapers.  The years went by and I caught up to her.  I became an adult.  But before that happened, she was the one who took care of me and taught me everything.  She was my mom.

And then I sort of got the feeling that I had passed her up somewhere along the way.  I felt like I was more mature than she was, more whole than she was.  But I always knew that if this was so, it was only because she had given me a better childhood than the one she got from her parents.

And then she was gone.  And as I was praying I got this sense of my mom.  All of the pain that used to be inside of her is gone.  She is a being of pure light and deep wisdom.  Every broken place inside of her is healed and she has become perfect in the presence of God.  She had leapfrogged over me again.  When I arrive at the place where she now lives I will have so much to learn, so much to understand.  And there will be my mom, ready to teach me again.  And I don't think we'll even have to say a word about the "issues."  I think we will just hug and we will both understand.

This world is full of pain and suffering because this world is full of sin.  Sin pains and scars us all.  Sin warps our development as human beings made in the image of God.  But in the end, all things will be made right and all of God's children will be made perfectly whole.  I am so looking forward to that.

Spiritual Autobiography

So my mom was the queen of darkness; a witch on wheels!

Well, not exactly.  Here's the rest of the story as Paul Harvey like to say.  My mom was the product of an alcoholic father and a mother who was some kind of a mess.  What was wrong with Grandma?  Well, I'm told that when I was born, she was so mad at me that she pretty much ignored me for a couple of years.  My sin?  My mom and dad already had a son.  I was supposed to be a girl.  Well, nobody told me about it.  You can't fulfill these expectations if someone doesn't yell at your mother's stomach while you are in the womb and explain to you what gender you are supposed to be!

I don't remember grandma ever being mean to me.  I think she got over it by the time I was old enough to notice.  But how bent do you have to be not to go crazy about the birth of a grandchild, even if she turns out to be a little stud-muffin such as myself?

And grandpa?  I don't know where to start.  Apparently, he was omniscient.  He knew everything.  He was never wrong.  And he was ready to argue about it to the point of death.  I remember visiting him back during the Arab oil embargo in the early 70's.  He had it all figured out.  All of the refineries in Chicago were connected by secret tunnels.  The whole oil shortage thing was a plot to drive up the price of gas.  The federal inspectors would go to the Standard Oil refinery, and they wouldn't find any oil there.  Do you know why?  Because the Standard Oil people saw them coming and opened up their secret valves and sent all the oil to the Shell Oil Refinery.  Then the federal inspectors would go to the Shell Oil Refinery and they would find no oil there!  Can you guess where they sent the oil?  Can you?

He really believed whatever came out of his mouth and he was willing to argue about it, loudly and angrily, at the drop of a hat.  Visits with grandpa largely consisted of biting your tongue.

Here's a great story.  Mom was a "latch key" kid.  That meant both her parents worked and she had to let herself into the house when she came home.  This was very unusual back then, unless your dad was a drunk who was liable to blow the whole paycheck before he ever made it home.  Under those circumstances, the mother had better go out and find a job.

So here is my mom as a little girl arriving home after school.  Only she doesn't have to unlock the door.  The door is already unlocked.  There are strangers in her house.  They are measuring the windows for new curtains.  Grandpa lost the house the night before in a poker game. 

My grandma died when I was in the fourth grade.  A few years later grandpa called.  He wanted the money.  Grandma had saved up some money.  $20,000 as I remember it.  That would be worth about $100,000 today.  Mom had the money.  Her instructions from her mother were simple.  See that her dad got the interest from the money, but never let him touch the principle.  My mom was the only surviving child, and my grandmother meant for her to have that money.

But Grandpa wanted it.  And my mom had to make a decision.  She could keep the money or she could keep the relationship with her father.  This was way before my dad started earning big money.  We weren't poor, but we definitely weren't rich.

They sent him a check.  Things like that make a big impression on a little boy.

Fast forward a few years into the future.  Grandpa is remarried, and he is starting to drink again.  He is being a tad abusive to the new wife.  The new wife calls mom.  Grandpa had been put in a sanitarium when he was young because he had TB.  He had horrible memories about the place.  So mom, doing what she thought was right, told her dad that he had to get back on the wagon or they would put him somewhere until he got dried out.  He got back on the wagon.  But he never forgot.

Fast forward a few more years.  Grandpa is dying of cancer.  His wife is my mother's step mom.  There are things in the trailer they lived in that belonged to my grandmother that she would like to have.  And there was the little matter of $20,000.  Grandfather, on his death bed, tells mom that he has made on of his wife's sons the executor of the estate.  After he is dead, she is to so see him and he will tell her about all the arrangements.

So she hangs around for a couple of days after the funeral, only no one is contacting her or talking to her about a will.  So she goes to see the guy who grandpa said was the executor and the guy looks at her like she's from Mars.  He has no idea about Grandfather's will.  No one has ever talked to him about it.

She finally finds the attorney.  There is no mention of her in the will.  She will never get into the trailer to get her mother's things.  Her father, as he departed this life, set her up to be humiliated.  He rejected her after she had faithfully gone to visit him and put up with him year after year.  In his dying moments, he reached out to leave a permanent emotional scar on the only child he ever had.

I preached at my grandfather's funeral.  I didn't know about the little poison pill he had left for my mom, or I maybe wouldn't have been willing to do it.  At the visitation, whenever I would wander by my Grandfather's friends, they would hush up, like they weren't that comfortable being that close to me.  Then I finally figured it out, from a few words I managed to overhear.  These were the men who had worked with my grandfather on the railroad for years.  Drinking buddies, probably.  And all they wanted to do was tell "Ceil was a moron stories" and laugh at the dear departed.  That was grandpas name, Cecil.  And his cronies came together at his visitation to mock him.

So maybe this gives us a little perspective on my mommy?

To be continued . . .

Spiritual Autobiography

There's this one story I have to tell you about my mom.  It sort of sums the whole thing up.  Obviously, we weren't raising her grandchildren right.  We weren't afraid enough.  There was so much to be afraid of and she had no idea why we weren't more afraid.

So mom and dad are down to visit us and I'm putting some burgers on the Weber Kettle.  Mom is seated behind me on the porch swing.  And little Joy is toddling around nearby in her diapers.  And I am pointing at the fresh, pink, ground meat as I put it on the fire and telling your cousin, "See, you must always be a good girl, Joy, or you'll be burgers!"

And mom is like having a cow.  "You can't tell her things like that!  She understands more than you know!  You'll ruin her!"

But I can't help myself.  I'm on a roll.  "You see this burger, Joy?  This is almost the last part of what is left of your older brother Ralph.  He got on my nerves, so I made him into burgers!" 

And this absolutely adorable little tyke is looking at her daddy with eyes of love, drooling and having absolutely no idea what I'm talking about.  And I'm expecting mom to erupt like Mt. Vesuvius behind me on the swing.  And suddenly I hear this chocking sound.  And I turn around, and my mom is madder than a wet hen.  The only problem is, I've managed to crack her up.  She is laughing so hard, and trying not to show it, that I thought she was gonna fall off the swing.

Incidentally, you can ask your cousins about the cousin you never got to meat, er, I mean meet; their older brother Ralph.  They will roll their eyes and tell you that the subject of Ralph was liable to come up any time dad was doing burgers on the Weber Kettle.  That Ralph was one amazing kid.  Tons of meat on that sucker.  He lasted for years.

I have no idea how come my kids turned out so well, but I think it was maybe because of their mother . . .

To be continued . . .    

Spiritual Autobiography

Back to mommy.  I eventually ended up going to Prairie.  I ended up working in a very small church, with a very small salary (let's face it, we were poor), and frankly, our relationship never got healed back up.  Here was the thing.  She needed me to be something I wasn't so that she could feel okay about herself.  I needed to be in a "respectable" upper middle class lifestyle.  She knew that I could have easily pulled it off, but I didn't do it.  So she became very, very angry at me.

The only problem was, she couldn't admit to herself that she was angry at me.  So we could never really resolve the problem.  She died with it unresolved. 

How can I even begin to tell you about my mom?  Maybe this will give you a little sense of what she was like.  The very first time she met you aunt, my future wife, can you guess what the first words out of her mouth were?  I had been engaged to another woman named Nancy earlier in my life (the one God told me to date).  She was like Miss America pretty and she had my mom and dad wrapped around her little finger.  And yes, she was a wonderful woman in every way.  Not a thing in the world wrong with her or anything like that.

So what are the first words, the very first words out of her mouth when she meets the young lady who is soon to become her daughter-in-law?  "You aren't as pretty as the other Nancy."  I kid you not.

Now we had just begun dating.  We were just started, you understand.  Neither one of us realized how quickly things were going to develop between us.  As far as we both knew, we were just dating.  And within five minutes of making the first comment my dear old mom is inquiring about the possibility of grandchildren appearing on the scene.  And no, I'm not making this up!

There was a time, years later, when I thought we were going to turn the corner.  I thought I was going to regain the golden child status, if only for awhile.  None of my other siblings were even married, and your aunt and I (fanfare and trumpets, please) produced a grandchild?  Not only that, we had two of them!  Before anyone else had even one of them.  Surely the depth of her disappointment in me would dissipate that the sunshine of her approval would once again shine on me.

Didn't happen.  She loved those grandkids, but the kids themselves became a source of struggle.  Here is an example of what would happen.  Mom would watch the Today show.  They would tell her that eggs were bad.  She would call us.  We had to promise to cut down to the recommended number of eggs/week for her grandkids.  And we wouldn't agree to do it.  And she would be mad at us.

Do you have any idea how many different things the Today show would give you to be scared about over the course of a given month?  And the thing is, one month they'd tell you that the new research said something was bad for you.  And then six months later they would take it back.

So we weren't raising the grandkids right.  I wouldn't quit working at this tiny little church that simply wasn't growing.  She was mad at me but she couldn't admit to herself that she was mad at me because I was her beloved son, so how could she be mad at me?  And I would go driving up to visit her and dad and the closer I got to Rockford, IL, the more TUMS I would eat.  I would gobble them down like popcorn.

I thought about ending the relationship.  I didn't want to, but it was tearing me up so badly.  But I couldn't do it.  My dad is such a great guy.  There was no way I could deny him access to his only grandchildren.  So I sucked it up, kept gobbling TUMS, and hung in there.

To be continued . . .

Spiritual Autobiography

Mom. Momma. Mommy. Fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. Hugs. Kisses to make an "owie" all better. Taught me, what, 40-50% of everything I will ever know in this life? Maybe one of two people who would be willing to take a bullet for me (the other being my dad, of course).

I was the golden child. I was the receptacle of all her hopes and dreams. Older brother hadn't quite made it, so it was up to me. And I relished the role. I grew to love report card day. I would take it home and proudly share it with my folks and just bask in their approval.

I should probably say a word or two about older brother at this point. He was the smart one. I was in the sub-genius category, and he was in the category above that. Only he didn't apply himself in school, bringing home report cards with D's on them at times. And he didn't apply himself in college. As he approached the first semester finals in his sophomore year, realizing he was probably going to flunk out, he took off. We had no idea where he was for several weeks. Then we finally got a phone call from California. He was out there selling encyclopedias (and doing very well at it). How could a guy that smart not do well in school? I wasn't there, so I couldn't say exactly, but I'm thinking that when he wasn't stoned he was probably drunk, unless or course he was drunk and stoned. That's probably a little bit of an exaggeration, but maybe not all that much.

It wasn't until much later in life that I began to realize what a pivotal role this guy played in my life. You have to go way, way back. He as my big brother. What I didn't ask mom to explain, I asked him. How many thousands of questions? Then, when he started having a hard time in school, I discovered an entire identify by differentiating myself from him by being the good son. Didn't mean to do it to show him up or anything. Really, as clearly as I remember it, I was just trying to cheer up mom and dad; I wasn't really trying to show him up or anything.

But this is what I think. I think that when you are that smart, it takes longer to grow up because you have more inside you that needs to grow up. And if someone doesn't realize pretty early on how bored you are at the regular pace of instruction in the normal classes and get you out of there, then you are likely to go off the rails. Thoroughbreds are made to run. You can attach one to a plow and you can actually make it plow, but it won't plow very well. And it will never be happy. And you will never be happy with it.

Like I said earlier, the dude has a mater's degree now. He lives in Japan and is married to a woman how is almost, but not quite, as amazing as my wife. You know what I think? I think it's easier for him to live over there because learning a very, very different culture and an almost impossible language give him just about enough to keep his brain comfortably busy. That's my big brother.

You know, if he would just get on board with the whole Jesus thing and stop reading and believing the New York times, he'd be just about perfect!

To be continued . . .

Spiritual Autobiography

So I wrote for the school catalog, applied, and was accepted. There was only one problem. Prairie wasn't accredited. You couldn't get a degree there. You could graduate. You could get a certificate. But you couldn't get a degree.

Not so long ago I had gotten my score back from the ACT test. I got a 30. It was funny how clueless and out of the loop I was about some things. People would ask me my score, and I would tell them, and they would get a little bug eyed. And I was thinking, "That must mean that 30 is a good score?" I didn't even know. Finally some of my buds set me straight. I wasn't up there with the super geniuses, who got 32-36 scores, but I was had scored higher than 98.7% of the students who took the test in the country that year.

This seemed so weird to me. If you had asked me to guess, I would have put myself in the 80th percentile. Maybe 85th? But 98th? Apparently, I was smarted than I realized. Or maybe I was just better at taking tests? By the time you are a junior in high school you have sort of figured out where you rank in the old pecking order. I was a below average athlete, somewhat socially retarded, B+ / A- student. Then I got a 30 on the ACT. Go figure.

It would probably have made my life a lot easier if I had a bad day when I took the test and got a lower score. If I was pleased with my high score, mom was ecstatic. Her insecurities were eating her alive over her firstborn who had dropped out of college, so all of the hope and expectation came to be focused on little old me. And now, all of a sudden, I wasn't just a smart kid, I was in the almost/not quite a genius category! I could go anywhere and do anything!

And I was not, no way, absolutely wasn't gonna happen, going to some hick school on the Canadian prairies where I couldn't even get a legitimate bachelors degree. Thus spaketh mom! She wanted me to be a lawyer, but she would have no problem with me being a minister as long as I did it right. You get a four year bachelor's degree, and then you go to seminary and get a master's. And then you get a job in a mainline denomination with guaranteed minimum salary and, hopefully, the cream will rise to the top and you'll end up in one of the big churches and make decent money and everyone will love and respect you (and your mom will feel good about herself!).

To be perfectly honest, it sounded like a good plan to me. I had no problem with it, except for the fact that, as far as I could tell, the Creator of the universe wanted me to go to this Prairie place. And when the Creator of the universe wants you to do something, you just have to suck it up and do it. Even if everyone, and I mean virtually everyone, in your life thinks you are crazy.

To be continued . . .

Spiritual Autobiography

My dad had seven brothers and a sister. They could have been a baseball team. Dad was second oldest, and then came his younger brother, Forrest. I had no memory of ever seeing Forrest. I think I probably saw him when I was a little snot, but I have no memory of this. Forrest was a rare and exotic creature. Forrest was a missionary. And Forrest was on his way to my house so God could use him to explode my life.

Forrest was a missionary to a native American tribe that was located so far north that they were just south of the Arctic circle. I think they would receive their "stuff," their supplies, once a year. Probably in the spring. That is to say that in an average year they got to go "shopping" just once. They placed an order with someone and the stuff got sent up to them. It was a fairly Spartan existence in a lot of ways. In my senior year of college, when my family had come up for my graduation, and Forrest and his family were living at the school (he had joined the school staff), my dad took us all out to a restaurant to celebrate. The older of my two cousins was around twelve years old. That was the first time she had ever eaten in a restaurant.

Forrest and family had arrived while I was in school that day. When I arrived home, it became clear that in my status as the leading religious fanatic in my family, that I would have a lot to talk to Forrest about. I hadn't told anyone that God and I were having this little argument. So I sat in the living room and we visited until bedtime. And then I got up and walked down the hall to my bedroom. And just as the door was closing, Forrest called out, "When do you think you might like to come to Prairie and get some Bible training?" If he had waited thirty seconds longer to say that, I wouldn't have heard him. And my whole life would have turned out different.

So I went out to talk to him about "Prairie." Where and what was Prairie? A Bible Institute up in Canada? I really don't remember anything specific that he told me about the school. The conversation ended and I went back into my bedroom. And as the door closed, the words of my prayer came back and hit me in the face. "You have no right to make promises in Your word that You won't keep." And I knew, I just knew, that this was my answer. I knew what the next step was. I was going to Prairie. Wherever, and whatever that was.

To be continued . . .