Kenny's Song and Mom's Prayer

When I was nine years old, we made a trip to Tennessee. That really wasn't all that out of the ordinary - we did that a couple of times every year, because my whole extended family lives right around a little town called Paris, Tennessee.

But the trip I’m thinking of was unusual, because my father’s body had been sent down before us. We were following him there to say good-bye.

That trip was the saddest I ever remember being in a childhood that had plenty of sad moments. The ride was always long, but that trip seemed longer. The car seemed smaller and more cramped.

One of my father’s favorite albums was Kenny Roger’s The Gambler. I can hear his rough, baritone voice singing – “You godda know when ta hold’em!”

One of the songs on that album is called The Coward of the County. I’ll never be able to hear that song – or even think about it - without tears. Heck, I’m teary now.

In that song, a young boy named Tommy is told by his convict father to live a better life than he had lived – “Promise me, Son, not to do the things I done.” He keeps his promise, though they brand him the coward of the county because he will never fight. When he’s pushed too far, though (his girlfriend or maybe wife gets attacked or maybe raped by three wicked guys), he lashes out with righteous violence.

My dad loved that song. I think it talked to something in him – something primal and powerful, wanting to be in control and wanting to lash out. I think that really spoke to him.

It talks to me, too, but for different reasons. Among the opening lines of the song are these:

He was only ten years old
When his daddy died in prison.
I looked after Tommy,
Because he was my brother’s son.
I still recall the final words
My brother said to Tommy:
Son, my life is over,
But yours is just begun.”

Ach! That hurts. Even now, decades later, it hurts.

Because I know how little Tommy felt. You see, I was only nine years old when my daddy died in a prison. It wasn’t one built by people or out of bricks, but one built by a mood disorder and out of alcohol. But it was a dreadful place and it killed him.

Who knows why we would have been listening to that song on the way to burry him. I have no idea. Perhaps it made us feel like he was still with us. But what I know is that when Coward began to play, I couldn’t fight the tears. I began to cry.

I sat in the backseat of the car and cried. I was in the middle between two sisters – one leaning on each shoulder as they slept (I think I was serving as Switzerland between to warring countries at that point). I was quiet (I didn’t want anyone to know that I was being a baby and crying – it was just the death of my father, after all), but Mom saw me. She called me up to the front seat, and I sat on her lap.

While I sat there on Mom’s lap for the next fifty miles or so (this was before the seatbelt law, by the way) two things happened: one was that my father’s death became truly real to me. The other was that God became truly real to me.

I remember my brother, Richard, driving with tears running down his cheeks. I think that made me realize more than anything had before that my dad was really gone – that he was truly dead. When my dad started to fall apart, Rich became a kind of stand-in father for me. Richard was a rock in my life – he was never weak or small. He was solid, and his love was unquestioned. He was strong and masculine without some of the more problematic issues I saw in my father’s version of masculinity (and that’s pretty much the way I still see him).

At that point in my life, I could count on one hand the number of times that I’ve seen him in tears and have fingers left over. If it was bad enough that he was crying, then it was all real and true.

As I sat there in horrified wonder at the sight of Richard’s tears, Mom began to speak:

“Ethan,” she said, “we’ve hit rock bottom. We really have. And when you hit bottom and your flat on your back, the only direction you can look is up.”

I remember the sound of the wheels on the pavement humming for a few seconds, and she whispered, “We have to look up.”

She whipped her eyes, and then she went on, “We have to believe that God is real now. That he’s up there and he’s taking care of us. That he’s going to take care of us. We’ve hit bottom, but he’s going to take care of us.”

She was quiet for a few moments, and the car rolled closer to where we would burry my father’s body. The she prayed while I sat in her lap. I don’t remember what she said to God, but I know that her prayer made God real to me. That prayer made a difference in my life – it showed me that my Mom trusted God, even though we were in such a terrible place in our lives. She was telling me that I could trust Him, too.

I trusted my Mother, and so I chose to believe her. If she said that God would take care of us and get us through it, then He would. He had to, because I was pretty sure no one else could.

I think that Mom’s few wise words and her prayer have shaped me more than I can describe.

Decieved by God

Jeremiah 20:7

O Lord, you have deceived me,
and I was deceived;
you are stronger than I,
and you have prevailed.

I love these words of Jeremiah's, because I can relate. I'm not sure I'd have signed on for this job if I knew how frustrated and sad it would so often make me. I hear about the bad stuff going on in people's lives, and I hear about people making choices to do bad things even though they would be so much happier if they did good stuff. I look at that and I think, "It would be better if you would just . . ." and they nod and smile and then they just go ahead with whatever. If I didn't care, it wouldn't hurt so badly.

I think of myself when I was new at this job. I came into it thinking I could save the world (I never would have worked for Bethel Grove if I hadn’t believed that). I think God even encouraged my idealism to help me head this direction - he wanted me in this job, and he let me fool myself some.

I also think, "okay, we can get this church on mission. We can focus it. I can do it. I can help us discover a sense of purpose and drive. My work will make a difference." and then I wonder if I am getting anything done or getting anywhere besides frustrated. Sometimes, it seemed I worked so hard to accomplish so little.

I've learned now - I can't save the world. I can't save anyone. I can't fix anyone. I can't save or fix a church. I can't even help anyone. Not even myself. No, I can't even fix myself.

I cannot do God's job.

I can do what He expects me to do - point people to Him. I cannot do more than that really.

I think he let me fool myself so that He could work through my feble efforts. He is stronger than I am, and he can do what I cannot.

Thank God, He prevails over me. I stay in this job because of Him. Even when I’d rather not. Especially when I’d rather not. Of course, there are people and things that I love, but I think if I were to stay in it for them and those things, I wouldn’t stay long. Nor would they stick with me long. It is God who draws us into this thing. He draws me. He prevails over me.

Perhaps He even prevails through me? Could it be that He directs some of my steps and causes me to actually accomplish something sometimes? I hope so. I so want my life to be a significant one.

When ministry frustrates me, I think of Jeremiah shaking his fist at heaven and shouting - "You never told me it would be like this! I thought it would be different from this. You fooled me. You deceived me. You made a fool of me!"

I can hear him laugh when he says that this is the only life he can live - that if he tries to do something else, the fire inside him takes over and he cannot get away.

And I hear him sigh a little after his rant is over. No matter that God does sometimes use us and work through us against our will and no matter that He fools us into this life of ministry – even though he does all that, you can’t hate God. Not and be sane. God is just so good, being his fool is better than being my own wise man. You cannot hate someone who loves you so much, and is so very good. Frustrated you can get, but He overcomes even that.

Praise God that he overcomes us. He fools us. And in making us fools, makes us alive.

And in fooling us, he gives us a life worth living.

Even if it is frustrating sometimes.