Meeting on the Way

     The last Monday of February, 1980. It’s a miserable day in intermediate school. A skinny, slouching kid in a green windbreaker drags his feet past the classroom doors. His backpack is hanging off one shoulder. He had hoped for no math homework. But he's got three pages of multiplication. He’s in the second lowest math class and can never seem to concentrate on the problems. He would like English more if he didn’t have to spell well. He likes science, but gets marked down because his work is so sloppy and hard for the teacher to read. He likes band, but can’t really take a snare drum home to practice and doesn’t have much passion for it. In fact, he doesn’t have a lot of passion for anything other than trying to be different than everyone else. If he’s learned anything in school, it’s that being an outcast is easier if it’s a choice.

     He has missed the bus because he had to stay after school to do extra math. It’s about a mile and a half walk home, all downhill. He doesn’t mind. Sometimes it’s better than riding the bus anyway. So he walks out of the school grounds and starts the quiet walk home down Lahainaluna Road. 

     There is little traffic until a gleaming silver car seems to burst out of nowhere. It skids to a stop, gull-wing doors open and a man bumps his head as he gets out. The man looks at the boy and smiles.

This is it, the boy thinks. The aliens that are from my true home are here to take me home.

Instead, the stranger walks to the boy and looks around. He's quiet and rocks on his toes. Finally he points to the vacant fields all around and speaks.

     “Someday this will all be houses. That sugar mill down there will be gone. It’s all going to go away. Nothing stays the same, kid. You had a lousy day at school today?”

     The kid nods. What, is this stranger a time traveler? No, that car looks like it ought to fly like the ones in the stories he’s made up. The stranger continues:

     “I’ve got news for you. You’re not an alien from another planet, okay? I know that’s an easy thing to imagine. And when you think that, it kind of exempts you from the responsibility of trying to get along. I mean, it’s okay to be an introvert. But you’re not as different as you think. Even those popular kids have anxieties.

The boy looks from the car to the stranger. The man wears glasses and a long black coat, jeans and boots. The man goes on:

I just wanted to come along and tell you, it gets better. You are a lot smarter than you think, just because you freeze up doing three-digit multiplication, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid. You’ve got a great imagination. You know those stories you make up with your toy cars and spaceships? Yeah, I know, you’re not too old for toys, don’t worry. You keep doing that. It exercises your mind to create worlds like that. Don’t ever stop.

     The boy is shocked. This stranger knows about the worlds.

     You made up a story the other night too, as you were going to sleep. You do that also. The story was about two guys doing a rescue mission to a strange planet.

     The stranger sits on a low wall. He looks at the boy with the look that is sad, but proud.

     “I shouldn’t have come and done this. So I’ll just tell you the truth and then fix it. It’s true, David. I did travel back in time. I thought I would come back and see you on the week of your 13^th birthday and then I couldn’t resist saying something. I mean, I remember what it was like. And I wanted to tell you that it will get better. You’ll make some new friends. In a few years, you won’t have such a miserable time every day at school. And when you grow up, oh man, your wife will be the prettiest, sweetest girl ever.

     At this the boy makes a face.

“Now calm down. I know you still don’t like girls now right? At least that’s what you like to think. But here, I’ll prove I’m you from the future, something you never told anyone. That girl who looked out the school bus window at you? I know her name, so do you. Yeah, I know how you feel, that little crush. No, you won’t marry her. At the end of this school year, you’ll never see her again.”

The boy’s knees feel weak. But more than the gelatinous fright he feels, there is a thrill of relief. This person really does understand everything. Questions start bubbling up in his mind. What other advice could his future self give?

“I’m not going to tell you anything else. Well there is a lot more I wish I could tell you. I would like to tell you that in your future, you should make better choices. If it’s something that feels good right away, but you regret it later, then you shouldn’t do it at all. I wish I could tell you so much. Buy stock in Apple, learn to drive a stick shift, don’t watch the movie Serenity until you’ve watched the Firefly series. But no, you’ll have to make your choices and live with them. Anything I tell you to do different, it might compromise you meeting and falling in love with her, the one.  

The stranger beckons the boy close, pulls off his eyeglasses and points to the blue of his eyes.

“Look here. You’re going to forget we met. But you’re going to feel better today. You’re birthday will be fun this week. Life will get better. Forget everything else I said.”

The stranger almost stands, but looks back at the boy.

“But remember this too. Write that story down. The story about the space rescue mission, it’s not publishable, but get a notebook and write it down anyway. You are going to find that you love to write. It’s a better escape from reality than what you do now. You were born on Earth, deal with it. Go on home now. Happy Birthday.

The kid in the green windbreaker turns and walks down the hill and the stranger watches him go. The kid is still slouching and dragging his feet. But he’s looking up.

Welcome to the World, Kid

     I’ve cut 6 umbilical cords in my life. 5 times I’ve done it with scissors, once with a scalpel. The first time I did it, I said 5 words that were easy enough to remember so it’s what I said each time after. I fell into a habit. “Welcome to the world, kid” is pretty informal. But I was tired the first time. I didn’t have time to think much. I just kept saying it. Maybe if I thought about it I would have said something else.

There is comfort in knowing what to do and expect. In the first years of your life that’s how it should be. In your first few months when you have a need, it should get met soon. When you’re hungry you get fed. When you’re uncomfortable you get changed. As the months go by, you might begin to learn that your needs are not always met right away. That’s part of growing up. There is a lot to learn about growing up. It might start with the first time you are hungry and not fed right away.

Those tiny memories fade to the back as new experiences fill your growing mind. New tastes are everywhere as you explore with your mouth. Some things taste good and some not so good. You may learn that taste is just like the rest of the world. Some new things to see and hear are nice and some are not. The same goes with faces peering down at you. You might not know why you don’t like some of them and why you feel some are nice. It’s okay. Your mind is growing and learning.

And one day you will learn the devastating truth that you are not the center of the world. It won’t dawn on you all at once. It may take a long, long time to realize that the big people in your life have other lives too. These other lives don’t have you as a part of them. There are big other lives of big people with work and meetings and big people talking on telephones. There are the long legs of big people standing around talking about things that are not about you and things you don’t even understand and you’re left to stand and look up and listen to big people and big words.

You slowly realize that there is a big world besides your own. It’s the whole wide world out there. It has loud things, barking dogs and rushing traffic. There are things you mustn’t touch and places you cannot run. Is everything out in the world bad? Will that clap of thunder hurt you? Can the wind blow you away? Is that man on the street with the cigarette and the scowl a bad man? Why do the bugs die when you step on them? Where did the cat go when he didn’t come home anymore? When Mommy or Daddy go, will they come back?

So hold someone’s hand when you’re scared, when you cross the street and when the wind blows so hard that you’re afraid. It’s okay to cover your ears when the noises get to loud. It doesn’t make the noise go away does it? But isn’t it nice to make the sound not so loud?

There, you see? You are learning a little about controlling the world around you. You can make it a little quieter. You can begin to pick and choose things. And then you are entering into a time in your life where you explore, not only your world, but your boundaries. How far can you go? How much is too much? What can you do and still be loved? It’s a time of learning, and it’s a time of frustration. Why can’t you eat all the toothpaste? Why can’t you walk to the ocean? Why can’t you hit? Why do you have to be nice?

And this difficult time won’t last. One day you will remember how good it feels to make people happy. One day you will want them to be friends, not just so they can like you, but because you now know that they need friends just like you. You will start to think about other people’s needs and feelings. And you will like knowing that you are helping others to be happy.

All your life so far, you will have felt love. It has grown from the day you were born when you felt loving hands on you and you loved the feel of your needs being met. Later, you loved seeing people you knew and doing things you liked. You loved affection and you loved to give it.

And eventually you learned to love in a new way. It is a love where you don’t just want what’s best for you, but what’s best for others, for the people you love. Sometimes that means you don’t get what you want, and it’s okay.

And all along from the day you were born and never stopping, you were made to be loved. You will be loved by your family, friends your creator. God made you for a reason. That reason is that He loves you very much. You will learn more about this as you grow. You will never stop learning about Him and His love.

But for now, sleep. Rest and grow. There is nothing in the big scary world right now that you need to know about. There are just two things in your world right now, growing and being loved. Welcome to the world, kid.

Standing at the shore of despair and offering a Towel

     I think that my life is similar enough to anyone else’s that it has its good and bad parts.  I have seen a life-examining exercise where someone graphs out their past, marking the highs and lows.  I even did this once in 1996, right before I left for Hungary.  That was a tumultuous year, especially compared to 1995 that I blogged about being 80 seconds in the slow lane.  During training for Hungary I was sitting at the table with other teachers and asked to graph out the last several years of my life.  I could only describe the graph as a slow incline.  In other words, my life was just getting better.  Others at the table talked about highs and lows.  I was a little concerned that I had no real lows.  Then I went to Hungary and experienced turbulence like I never had before.  We got back from Hungary and tried to find the peace we had two years before.  We struggled financially.  Then Naomi was diagnosed with cancer.  The toughest decade of my life was starting.  If I were to graph it then, there were a few highs, but the low prevailed. 

     I am better now. What is nice is that I started getting better, and then the circumstances seemed to improve too.  I am still attending a recovery group and will start working on my testimony to deliver on a Friday night soon.  My testimony will include some very personal demons that I tried to fight alone.  The first step in recovery is stepping out of denial, which is where I lived.  It took time to finally learn I needed to rely on more than just my own understanding to heal.  But it took more than time.  It took several failures.  I lost two jobs trying to do things my way.  I had been at my new job only a year when I was suspended for my attitude.  I tried to get better.  I joined the recovery group.  I thought I was doing all I could.  But I saw the group as a sentence to be served.  I still wasn’t ready to surrender.  I wasn’t ready to admit that I needed other people. 

During Naomi’s illness I took care of things.  I held her down when the nurses needed to give her a shot.  I finagled my way though the hospital’s phone system and got ahold of the CT scan department and told them to stop making Naomi wait for her scan.  I believed that Naomi would live even when Prajna was so discouraged that she didn’t think so.  I thought I had been so strong and done so well.  And I thought I had done it alone.  And when she died I felt like a victim too.

So when I was so severely depressed that I couldn’t see the truth, I started recovery.  And I couldn’t get it.  I still couldn’t concentrate enough to convince my employer that I was getting better after the suspension.  Then my immediate supervisor called me and asked me to meet him at Starbucks.  He bought me an Americano and I sipped the scalding beverage outside on a cold December evening.  We discussed some unresolved issues at work.  He had lost a family member too and confronted me on my tendency to “Play the Naomi Card”.  He gave it to me straight.  I was not honoring her memory by using her as an excuse to be depressed and live my life with a bitter chip on my shoulder.  I don’t remember much else of what we talked about.  But one thing I have not forgotten:  He took the time to take me aside and try to talk some sense into me.  Be believed in me enough and he cared enough to do this for me.  His words didn’t matter as much as the effort he made.  And it was not in vain.  That night I realized that I wasn’t alone.  Other people cared.  That realization that I needed others didn’t scare me as much as before because there were people like him.  That was the night I started getting better.

I have written two blog entries before that I called messages in a bottle.  This was because I had a particular person in mind when I wrote.  This today is another one.  He has a birthday this week.  I won’t mention his name.  This isn’t just a message for him.  I hope anyone reading this can know that there are quiet people out there who make a big difference.  If I were to graph out my life, I would see there in December 2008 an unmistakable rise where it emerges from a despondent quagmire of self-absorption and mistrust.  And standing there at the start of that rise, there he is pointing the way.

    

           

Message in a Bottle Part II

Deus Ex Machina is a term used by writers to describe when an unexpected event happens that saves the day. If our hero is saved from a fire that the bad guy set by a sudden rainstorm that is Deus Ex Machina and bad writing. My early science fiction stories are full of it. The problem is that the hero did not do anything within his own power to overcome the conflict which lets down the reader. The problem is not that these things don’t happen every day. They do. Deus Ex Machina translates as god out of the machine. While God does not emerge from the wings of the stage at the opportune moment and say boo, he does have a plan.

I’m going to step out and postulate spiritually now. Each of us were created for a reason. That goes against decades or centuries of scientific assumption that takes God out of everything. But if you would just swallow your pride and stop thinking that you are an autonomous product of biology you will have to accept the alternative. The truth is that God has a plan and you are not so unique that you were left out of it. And when you accept that you are part of this plan there is a considerable amount of struggling that you can stop. Because unlike the movies, there is nothing you can do in your power to overcome this main conflict.

It is idolatrous to create your own god with the humanistic qualities that you think a supreme creator ought to have. And it’s idolatrous to think that God does not care about you. Accept this: God does care about you. God does have a plan for you and get this, God can make this plan happen regardless of where you are in your life or what you may have done to distance yourself.

There shouldn’t be miraculous coincidences in fiction. But this writing is a work of fact today. And in the real world, as I stated, God steps in and saves people every day. It’s not necessarily by a work of nature either. It’s usually by the work of His people being obedient to Him. One day a thousand pairs of shoes are given away. Another day a fervent prayer is spoken while holding the hands of someone who is hurting. One day it’s just a message in a bottle.

This message came to me last night as I was working. The person I thought of does not read this blog as far as I know. But someone they know does. The message is out there. It’s just a little act of faith that I will drop it and hope it gets to where it needs to be. But if it’s part of the plan I ought not to worry. There is a plan.

Message in a Bottle

When I worked nights at the radio station I would talk to Prajna on the phone. Before hanging up, sometimes I would do what I called “kissing her goodnight” and cut the sound feed for just a split second. For just that quick amount of time every listener to the station would hear a hiccup of silence and then the music would go on. I thought that this was ultimately cool to be able to send a personal message this way. I know that by that late in the evening there weren’t that many listeners. The local hospital’s emergency room kept us on and probably people who liked their radio on all night. But this message wasn’t for any of them. It was just for Prajna.

I am able to track my page views for this blog. On a grand scheme of things it’s almost like a small market radio station in the middle of the night… maybe less. But I know some of my readers personally. And if I wanted to I could even send a message in a bottle to an individual here. I would say something to the effect that no matter how important my writing is to me that they are more important. But that’s no surprise. I would get up at 4 in the morning to help out a person but not to write at 6.

I would also say something that I learned from the Book of Romans. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor heavenly rulers, nor things that are present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38. That’s the type of father I ought to be. So as you read this know that there is nothing you can and will ever do that will make me stop loving you.

You are entering a scary time in your life filled with decisions. But even though I don’t have a plan for you, He does. And one more thing, we both believe in you.