I Will Pray For Him, Too, Though I Do Not Know How

I wrote a post last night about this. It was late. I wrote some things that had deep roots in anger and a churning stomach. My hands trembled as I typed. But those words brought death to me, a deep sense of hopelessness and despair, and I suspect they would have brought the same to anyone who read them.

So I deleted the post.

Then I received a message from a friend. “There’s so much hate,” he said. “So much confusion.” Would I write something? Would I put words to the deep hurt so many of us are feeling? At first I thought, no. I can’t. I can’t dig this stuff up, this rotten stuff inside of me, this stuff that needs more time to break down and decay before it turns to useful soil.

I woke up late this morning after a long night debriefing with close friends. We wept and wondered why, how. These things don’t happen to your friends, your church. Of course not. They happen to other people in other cities with other problems.

Then, after I slept in, we celebrated my daughter. She turned nine this morning, and we sang Happy Birthday to her while walking down the steps to her room, served her breakfast in bed (chocolate chip pancakes and hot chocolate and one extravagant gift). I remembered how she came screaming into the world, bloody and wet. I remembered how I had cried when she emerged because she was a she, a girl to the boy my wife had delivered 18 months earlier.

“It’s a girl!”

Then I brought in the Christmas tree and cut off the lower branches and it smelled so good. So clean. A fresh start. But there was still this sick feeling in my stomach over everything that had happened, everything we had learned. I wondered if throwing up would help, but I haven’t yet. There’s a sadness, too, a weight. The heaviness of disappointment and death – not a physical death, but the passing of innocence and the loss of futures and this outward spreading ripple of anger and sadness.

Should I hate this young man, my friend, arrested yesterday for sexually assaulting a teenage boy? Should I hate him, now waiting in a jail cell, on the way to being officially labeled a pedophile?

I certainly hate what he did. I hate the atomic bomb of sexual assault, how it flattens and chars and melts. I hate a world where people take advantage of other people’s trust. These things I hate.

But do I hate him? I don’t think so. I don’t know.

* * * * *

But I still ache. My insides literally churn with desire for a new world. For a world where families don’t receive this kind of news. For a world where young boys are given the space and freedom to grow and develop and mature in a healthy way. For trust.

That’s close to the foundation of it, I think. I yearn for trust. To trust and be trusted. But this world falls so short. And because the church is in the world, it falls short, too. The church, made up of imperfect people, hurting people, cannot protect everyone. Even the most innocent. Even the most vulnerable.

I hate this about the church, so much so that I want to grind my teeth and scream. I also hate this about me and my friends and my pastors, because we are the church, and sometimes no matter how many background checks you do, no matter how many references you check, you cannot protect everyone. I hate that we cannot protect everyone. Someone will always manage to take advantage of our deep yearning to trust. To be trusted.

I hate this about us, our powerlessness. Our failures. Our impotence.

* * * * *

What now? Where do we go from here? What do we do?

What do I want to do? I want to give up on church. I want to give up on trusting people. I want to keep my kids home this Sunday and hide in solitude, cutting down trees and chopping firewood in the backyard and thinking about nothing. I want to watch a movie with my kids and ride four-wheeler with them and pretend none of this ever happened. Pretend my friend did not do this.

But on Sunday I will go to church, and I will hug my friends. I will cry with them over the pain that has so recently descended. I happen to be on the schedule to work in the children’s class, so I will accept the looks of skepticism and distrust the parents send my way, and I will understand them. I will not be offended in the least. I will nod and shake the hands of parents who can no longer leave their kids with other people. I will hug them, too, because I know how they feel. I don’t blame them, not at all.

I will plead with God that peace rains down on the family who has entered the nightmare, and I will pray that they will find their way as best they can. I pray that they still know, deep down, that they are good parents. Because they are.

I will pray for my friend, too, though I do not know how.

* * * * *

I started reading Ruthless Trust by Brennan Manning a few days ago, before I heard about all of this. “Before” – that word has a certain echo to it, a certain emptiness. Anyway, there was a passage that I highlighted, a verse that Manning quoted that resonated with me on that particular day.

Here is a saying that you can rely on and nobody should doubt, “that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15).

Sinners, like my friend, now looking to spend year after changeless year behind bars. Sinners, like those of us who did not possess the wisdom or the guile or the power to stop this from happening.

Sinners, like me.

Jesus, please return.

The Day I Got Beat Up

4278178313When I was a kid, the poorest person I knew was a boy named David. He was a big guy, strong and somewhat round. He lived on a farm close to me, and sometimes on summer days we’d race our bikes around the middle school, the one surrounded by country fields, the one so vacant in the summer it was hard to believe anyone actually attended there. Of course I never admitted to my friends during the school year that I hung out with David in the summer. When I saw him in the hall I usually found something else to look at.

I doubt he ever went hungry – he wasn’t that poor – but there was a cloud of lack that clung to him. Even in the morning, when his face was flushed from taking a hot shower, he still smelled like the barn. His dress clothes consisted of flannel shirts tucked into frayed jeans. I don’t think he ever owned a pair of sneakers – work boots did the trick, at school and on the farm. He never played on any sports teams, though he was certainly strong enough. From the little interaction we had, it seemed like he was needed at home.

The clearest memory I have of David was the day he came to my house and we got into a fight. I don’t know what led up to it, but I said some mean things to him and he wrestled me to the ground. That was sort of the story of my existence as a boy: my childhood strength was never physically overwhelming, so I often resorted to words instead of punches. Which once in a great while led to being on the receiving end of punches. Real ones. It wasn’t a great strategy.

What I remember most about that fight is big David sitting on top of me, the warm summer grass under my back. I was pinned, and I couldn’t move my arms. He was furious, his naturally red cheeks even more flushed than usual, his eyes letting off sparks.

But he just sat there, staring at me, trying to decide what to do. He didn’t hit me. To this day I’m not sure why not. I certainly deserved it.

* * * * *

There’s been a lot of talk during the last week about poverty. A lot of internet back-and-forth. To be honest, I haven’t read any of the articles or blog posts yet, although I’m sure I’ll cave at some point. It’s just that the endless sparring leaves me tired and wondering.

But all of this talk about poverty and wealth brought David to my mind. It’s all rather humiliating, thinking back to how I treated him. I was so concerned with self-preservation – you know, that thing so many of us clung to during junior high and high school. What can I do to get in, and, once I’m in, what do I have to do to stay there?

The point, though, is that when I was in middle school I didn’t know how to deal with poverty – financial, relational, or otherwise. I saw it, even at that young age, and I recognized it, but I just didn’t know what to do.

So I looked away. Which is what so many of us are still doing when it comes to poverty. We recognize it. We know it’s there. But we’re not sure what to do about it other than feel guilty, so we avert our gaze to the other side of the hall, or desperately search for a friend so that we can pass poverty by.

I just can’t help but believe that our lack of understanding, our lack of concern, won’t somehow end up with one side of our culture on its back, staring up into a justifiably angry face. A face that’s tired of being ignored. Overlooked. Treated like second class. A face that’s tired of being painted with the broad brush of “lazy” and “unmotivated.”

I don’t know. Maybe not. I hope it doesn’t come to that.

* * * * *

Eventually David got up. He was crying at that point, though I’m not sure why, and I was shocked at his overwhelming attack and subsequent retreat. We sat there, the summer sun beating down on us.

Then he walked home.

Three Things I Learned About Seeing Life as a Journey

IMG_0165
The bus we traveled in for four months and 10,000 miles.

It’s Sunday night. We’re packing bags and finding lost things and preparing for the journey back to Pennsylvania. There’s a football game on in the background. No matter how many times we tell the kids to go to sleep, I keep hearing the pitter-patter of feet running around upstairs.

It’s also the end of the year, and I find myself thinking back to previous years, previous Thanksgivings. One year ago I didn’t have any writing projects and questioned a lot of things about my life. Two Thanksgivings ago we were finalizing plans to head out on our cross-country trip. Four years ago we had just moved into my parents’ basement with our four kids and $55,000 in debt.

What a journey.

The five-hundred-mile journey ahead of us and the journeys we’ve been on as a family have me thinking about the nature of this life, the nature of journeys.

Here are three things that came to mind late on a Sunday night (when I should be sleeping):

1. You are on your journey, and you can’t trade it for a different one. So many of us get caught up in trying to live lives we think we should live, instead of living the life we’ve been given. Too often the plans we make are more a reflection of what our culture expects than they are of what we’ve been created to do. Make your own way.

2. Embrace whatever leg of the journey you’re on. If life is a series of journeys, then you’re either preparing for a journey, on the road, or resting before the next journey begins. The most difficult of those three, for me, has been the resting, the waiting in between. The times when I didn’t know how everything was going to turn out. The times when I felt forgotten. But these times inevitably come to an end. It’s only wasted time if I spend it worrying and wishing it away.

3. Celebrate. Maybe you’ve published a book. Maybe you’ve gotten married or had children or went on a trip. Maybe you finally got that degree, or that job, or that promotion. Maybe you’ve passed a milestone. Celebrate it. Maile and I have been looking at our lives and trying to figure out how we can become more deliberate about celebrating the completion of journeys. The discipline of celebration is one way of pulling yourself into the present.

What journey have you been on lately? What journey would you like to embark on?

The Night Sammy Broke Free

IMG_1045Rain taps against the window. It’s a cold night, a dark night.

I fold four large blankets in half on the floor, help each of the kids get settled in, then turn out the light. We all sleep in the same room when we go to Maile’s parents’ house for the holidays, and I have to admit that there’s something nice about all being there together, everyone accounted for. I often come in late, after everyone is asleep, gingerly walk among the sprawling bodies, then fall asleep listening to the hum of the fan and the quiet, gentle sound of their breathing.

“Daddy, what do you remember about me from when I was little?” Lucy asks. She is our family historian, our rememberer.

I have to think hard. She is eight, and so many thoughts have passed through my brain since she was tiny, so many memories and worries and years. They get caught in there, all of those things, like debris too large to fit through a fine sieve. I shake it around. I see what falls through.

“You used to like it when Cade crawled over you,” I say, suddenly remembering an image of two littles on the floor of a small house in England. Cade, only 16 months older than Lucy, wasn’t very careful around her, but she laughed and laughed, lying on her back as he bowled her over.

They giggle there on the floor as I tell them about it. I sit on the edge of the bed. It all seems not so long ago.

“What about me, Dad?” Sammy asks. “What about me when I was little?”

We all laugh, because we always tell the same story about Sam, how when he was little the rest of us were in the living room watching a movie. There was a crash, and we ran into his room, and he was standing there, outside of his crib, holding on to two bars that he had managed to break off. He quickly ran back and crawled in through the gap in the bars, then sat in his crib, looking up at us as if to say, What? What did I do?

I tell the story again, even though we all know it, and the kids giggle and Sammy is embarrassed, but he still smiles.

Behind my smile I’m remembering how difficult that time was, when we had first come back from Virginia to Pennsylvania, when I was trying to make my way as a writer. Those years when we had to decide at the end of the month which bills to pay and which to hold our breath about. Those years when, let’s be honest, I often felt like an irresponsible loser who didn’t know how to operate in this world, this culture.

Those were difficult years, but the kids want to remember them, so we do.

We pass the time that way, telling stories, the rain tapping on the glass, Thanksgiving only two days away.

* * * * *

There’s something powerful about remembering. Remembering where we’ve come from, where we’ve been. Sometimes, when we forget who we are, the most helpful thing we can do is remember the road we’ve already traveled. There’s much to be thankful for, and much to be bitter about, if we so choose. There were the days we thought that life couldn’t get much better, and the days when we honestly wouldn’t have complained if death came and took us early.

Such is life. And unless we take time to remember, we lose our perspective, like a boat lost at sea without any reference point. Like a man lost in the forest, unable to see the stars.

Their little voices echo in my mind.

Daddy, what do you remember?

* * * * *

Today, I’m over at Pilar Arsenec’s blog answering all kinds of questions about writing. You can check out that interview HERE.

Where We Found a Thing Called Hope

IMG_1503We picked the kids up from their classes and headed south, through a sky already growing dark even though it wasn’t yet 5:00. Winter days will do that here, especially cloudy ones. The van bulged at the seams, full of pillows and blankets and luggage for our annual trek to North Carolina for Thanksgiving.

We bought fast food so that we wouldn’t have to stop driving. Maile called out the orders and doled out the food. Last minute trades were bartered. Complaints were heard and mostly dismissed. Then we passed the milkshakes back.

“If anyone doesn’t finish theirs, pass it right back up to the front,” I called out, not getting my hopes up.

We continued south, two hours, three hours. We had decided to spend the night at a friend’s house in southern Virginia before driving the rest of the way on Friday morning. Four hours passed.

“Are we there yet?” Abra asked over and over again.

After four hours we got off of 81 and headed east, into the mountains, into the shadows. We missed the lane the first time, had to drive a mile up and turn around, then circle back. We called our friend. Her name is Andi.

“There’s a small sign by the driveway,” she said. “Just follow the lane and keep to the left.”

We pulled slowly into the lane, crossed a narrow, wooden bridge. We had arrived at God’s Whisper Farm.

* * * * *

The house was cozy and warm. There were books everywhere, even on the stairs where Andi’s husband had painted the kickboards of the steps to match the spines of particular books. The Hatchet. Paradise. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Their dog, Meander, was pleased to see the children, and she wrestled with them until she was completely tired out, lying on her side and panting. Andi gave out bowls of chili, supper at 9:30pm, followed by hot apple pie. Then I took the kids upstairs and wrapped them in their blankets. They were tired from the drive, and they fell asleep while listening to us through the vent in the floor.

We spent the rest of the evening talking, just the four of us, the heater lulling me to sleep. It was one of those nights when you wish it was possible to purchase extra hours, an evening when you want to keep talking but eventually your eyelids grow too heavy.

We went to bed, and for some reason I dreamed about hobbits.

* * * * *

The next morning we woke up, ate bacon, eggs and toast, then put on our boots and walked the trails through the woods that skirted the mountains. Meander ran past us, then back again, and the kids took turns racing her, falling hopelessly behind. Lucy and Sam scaled a small cliff leading up from a creek bed.

Andi showed us where they hope to build a lodge and then walked us over to the place her father plans to build a small cabin. There was the chicken coop, in progress, and the sloping field where the goats will live. A flat expanse had already been planed out for a barn.

As we walked the acres of the farm, and the three younger kids climbed on the tractor, and Cade wrestled with Meander, I realized what I felt there. I realized what was so appealing about that little valley.

Hope.

Andi and her husband have plans for that place, and they don’t seem too caught up in the concern that some of those plans might not come to pass. They’ve staked little signs into the ground with names that designate what they hope the future holds for each parcel of land: “Lodge” and “Cabin”. There is an overwhelming sense that things are not finished, that what you see is not what you get, that there is a story in the making. A beautiful story. A compelling story.

This, I think, is what the Gospel is all about. This is the Kingdom that Jesus invited us to take part in: an ongoing, compelling story, one full of hope. One where we take the time to place handmade signposts into the earth. Not signs that we anchor with cement or mortar, but signs that can be moved, signs that speak of a beautiful hope.

* * * * *

We walked back towards the van and the remaining four hours on the road to Charlotte. Lucy looked up at us with hope in her eyes.

“Mama,” she said to Maile, “when I grow up and leave our house, I want to live on a farm just like this one.”

This is the beautiful thing about hope. It’s contagious.

* * * * *

Please check out Andi’s new book, The Slaves Have Names: Ancestors of My Home.

The Problem With Hard Work

IMG_1293Where I grew up few things are more admirable than hard work. Calluses, blisters, and sore muscles are signs of worship to God. Short grass, clean cars, and weedless gardens are the result of extreme holiness. Waking up before the sun or working long after dark are indications of piety.

* * * * *

There’s a legend that circulates here in Lancaster County. It says Amish women have an unspoken competition with each other on Monday mornings to see who can get their laundry on the line first. I don’t know if the legend is true or not, but I’ve driven in a car with friends past those orderly stretches of clothes waving on a long line between a house and a barn, and the feelings of guilt experienced by those of us in the vehicle have been palpable.

“I have so much to do around the house,” my friends mutter under their breath. “Look at all that laundry that woman has already done today, by hand.”

I think about how I I slept in until 7:30 that morning, and the remorse is so heavy that in that moment I am certain my eternal fate has just been sealed.

* * * * *

When I was a kid, there were only two reasons you ever sat down: to eat supper, or to adhere to the Sabbath. Even on Sunday the sitting was only acceptable if it was on a hard bench, or the floor. During the week you could start breakfast at the table but the last few bites must be eaten on the fly as you’re walking out the door, an illustration of how sorry you were that you hadn’t started working as soon as you stood up out of bed that morning.

Armchair recliners were clearly of the devil, as were pillows and cleaning ladies. Of course you could be a cleaning lady, but you couldn’t pay one to come clean your house. Pay someone else to scrub your toilets or wash your windows? What were you, some kind of lazy city-slicker?

I often found myself sitting around on Sundays listening to the adults humble-brag about how hard they had worked that week, how many hours they had put in, how many fingers they had lost.

Yes, that’s right. How many fingers they had lost. One particular man I remember had a hand missing at least six digits.

“It’s a pity about all those missing fingers,” someone said after he left.

“Yeah, but he sure is a hard worker,” their neighbor replied, getting up and walking around the room just to keep the feeling of relaxation from settling in too deep.

* * * * *

“The Lord helps those who help themselves” was a regular saying in these parts, although it can be kind of a silly thing to say if you think about it, as if God’s willingness to act is somehow tied to my ability to put in a 16-hour day. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not against hard work. I’ve inherited my share of Anabaptist genes. I still get a kick out of sweating, of working the earth, of maintaining order.

But I’ve also seen how this little idol of hard work saturates the minds of those who worship it. Many a father went before the idol of hard work and laid his family on the altar. Many a judgment was made about those in poverty, that they don’t work hard enough, that the answer to all of their problems is a little dirt under their nails, a little ache in their shoulders. Many a beautiful moment was missed, because the enjoyment of that moment would have required a pause in the action or an “unproductive” minute.

We still joke about it, though, how much we love to work. We laugh at ourselves, because we know that we often take it to the extreme. But after the jokes settle, we still whisper in admiration, “That guy sure knows how to work,” or “I don’t know how she does it all.”

* * * * *

“I don’t know how to live in this county,” someone from the west once told me, “because all people ever talk about here is work. It seems like no one has any hobbies. It seems like no one does anything just for the fun of it.”

I’m learning how to rest. In fact, just the other day I sat in my arm chair for no apparent reason. On a Thursday. At 2:00 in the afternoon. I’m pretty sure I felt the rumbling of my grandfathers rolling over in their graves, but that’s okay.

They’ll get over it.