Taking Dad Home [Life Story]

My Dad was always a home town boy and all his life went back to the little town of Liberal, Missouri on a regular basis. He seemed to know everyone in town. He left from there to serve his country during WWII. He started his married life from there. Most of his family was still in the area. I had grown up used to making weekend trips to see both sets of grandparents, thinking even then how lucky I was to have all of them in the same home town along with a few aunts, uncles and cousins as well. 

I carry a lot of memories about Liberal.

When I was a young boy Dad and Granddad would take me for a walk. Granddad on one side smoking his pipe, Dad on the other with me a tow-headed boy in between holding their callused hands. All I needed was a slingshot stuck in my pocket and we would have made a Norman Rockwell painting.

In reality I was just cover, an excuse to leave the house so that they could go to the pool hall over on Main Street. For me it was a wonderland. I would stand by the pool table staring up at those big schooners of golden liquid. Sometimes I would even be given a sip! At times I would go and watch Granddad and the other older men play dominoes or checkers. These were serious games and played fast from years of experience and perfection.

Now, what kind of dad takes a boy that young to a pool hall? What kind of business lets a youngster of tender age come inside? Well, I was Homer’s boy and it was a different place and time. He was also the kind of dad and man that would find Jesus in later years and give his son the opportunity to find him as well. (But that’s another story.) He taught respect and life’s lessons by example and showed that life is what you make of it.

One of our trips in our adult years was to attend the funeral of Mom’s mother. After the funeral Dad rode back home with me. I have forgotten the reason there were just the two of us. He started telling me a story about Liberal.

He told me that the last few times that he went to Liberal there was a young boy in white overalls following him around.  He saw the boy at all his old favorite places to play.  He said that the boy would hide behind trees, jump fences, etc.

I noticed that he seemed to be deep in thought while he was telling me about the boy.  I told him that it wasn’t too surprising for him to be seeing a boy doing the same kinds of things that he did because Liberal is a pretty small town and that he shouldn’t worry about the boy following him around.

Dad was quiet for a long time before he said, “You don’t understand, Son.  That boy I’m seeing is me.”

I didn’t think yet that he was being literal but just to make sure I queried, “You mean he looks like you?”

“No, son. I mean the boy is me.”

We just kind of let that hang there.  Dad was absolutely not given to say things like that.

The next thing he said to me I will always remember.  He said, “Son, if something happens to me I want to be buried in Liberal.  I don’t care what you have to do to get me there.  Drive me down sitting in the seat beside you if you have to but get me to Liberal.”

I told him I would.  The call to return home can be powerful.

Two weeks after getting back home I received one of those calls in the morning at work that you never want to get. The foreman came out on the shop floor to the machine that I was working on and told me that my dad had been taken to the hospital. He had had another heart attack. That was all the information that he had.

Afterwards I learned that his attack occurred at the little self-service laundry that he and Mom owned.  He had been working on one of the washing machines, stopped, took a nitro pill and hopped up on one of the folding tables and sat there swinging his legs.  I had seen him do that a hundred times when his heart would bother him. Only this time he just laid over.

He had had a couple of heart attacks and finally couldn’t go back to work.  My folks bought the laundry to keep him from driving the rest of us crazy.  He had worked hard all of his life and just sitting around was just not in his game plan.

I don’t even remember running to the parking lot, jumping into the car and taking off. The first thing I remember is that I was heading for the hospital as fast as the car would go. The road into town had a section where it abruptly dropped to a lower level. When I hit that section I went airborne. All wheels off the ground.

Time seemed to stand still and to this days words are inadequate to explain what took place. It was like a wind blew through every fiber of my being. It was like I was seeing a star-filled night sky and being pulled into it but not. It was a powerful communication. It’s hard to describe. There were no words spoken but rather they were understood. I was told that Dad was gone and to slow down. There was a glimpse of vastness and a kind of light beyond my comprehension around that voice. It was a calm presence.

Then the wheels touched down and I was back to a very fast reality. The rest of my trip to the hospital was at a more sedate speed. I arrived at the hospital and was taken right to a small waiting room. Most of my family was already there.

Mom looked at me and said, “Your Dad is gone.”  I replied, “I know, Mom.”  The chaplain said, “Now we don’t know that yet; they’re still working on him.”  The chaplain left and came back after a while with the official news that Dad didn’t make it. They gave us some time with him before we left.

We were home that afternoon and Mom was trying to figure out what to do.  I discovered that even with Dad having serious heart problems for such a long time they had never talked about final arrangements.  I said, “We’ll bury him in Liberal,” and told her of my conversation with Dad a couple of weeks prior.

So, just as he wanted, we took Dad home to his beloved town and laid him to rest surrounded by his history, secure in the faith of a life well lived. 

My Tipi Sabbatical [Life story]

Back during the summer of 2012 I had been caring full-time for my father-in-law, Paul, for almost 10 years. I finally reached a point where I had come up against a wall and desperately needed a respite. Paul came to live with us in 2003. He had Parkinson’s disease and it was no longer safe for him to live on his own. The level of care he needed was continually escalating. Shelley, my wife, agreed with me that I needed a break and my brother Kim would help her care for him while I took off for a few days. My plan was to pray and meditate at my cousin’s place at Table Rock Lake, not far from Shell Knob, Missouri.

Ready to leave, I had my suitcase completely packed. When I went back to get it to load it into the car I forgot that I hadn’t zipped it up yet. I picked it up and dumped everything on the floor. Not an auspicious start. Then on my way out of town I decided to gas up. Try as hard as I could the access door to the gas cap wouldn’t open, no matter how many times I pushed the release button on the dash. Just as I was thinking that I was going to have to take a chance on breaking the switch or physically pry open the door to the gas cap I realized that the trunk was wide open! The switch to open the trunk was right next to the switch that opened the door to the gas cap.

My cousins have a place right at the edge of the lake. On their property they have a for real full-scale, traditional tipi. This is where I planned to sweat, meditate and pray. There was a drought that summer so in addition to taking care of some prayer requests I also intended to pray for rain. My main prayer, though, was to have the strength, patience and ability to continue taking care of Paul. We all knew what his prognosis was too well. He was going to get worse. A lot worse.

The first time I went to the tipi my cousin LeAnn had some trepidation. Mainly she didn’t want to send me home…you know…dead from heat stroke. I could see the front porch of their house through the open flap of the tipi. Periodically before I settled into a nice meditative state I would see her coming out to check on me. For some reason when Shelley’s not around people seem to think that I need extra watching.

I finally did hit a transcendent state. That doesn’t happen for me very often. While I was praying for rain I felt drops falling on my face. It took a bit for it to sink in that it was raining on my face. You might remember that I said I was inside the tipi. I opened my eyes and looked up. Though I wasn’t sitting underneath the vent opening, the rain was swirling down in such a fashion that it came down on my face. I looked outside through the opening and could see rain hitting the ground. It was so dry that the raindrops made little puff clouds of dust as they hit the ground. It only rained for about 30 seconds. I kind of wished that I had prayed for a specific amount of rain.

Unsure of what to do next, I decided to pray some more even though I had been sweating in there for over an hour already. So, I closed my eyes again and prayed about what I should do next. A few minutes into prayer I again felt something on my face. I opened my eyes and discovered that I was covered with granddaddy long legs spiders. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor with my back against a seat. The seat was covered as well. Nothing else. Now normally I would have been freaked out by this but as it was I was utterly calm. It was time to leave.

I went into the tipi other times but I never reached that wonderful state of calm and acceptance again, though I did sweat a lot. That isn’t a bad thing if one of your goals is to do that very thing. People pay good money to go places to sweat and I was doing it for free and having a pretty good time to boot on the hot summer day that the Lord provided.

All good things have their time and at last I had to return home after being well cared for by all my cousins. On the way home I was having major trouble staying awake. Probably all the carb loading that I had done during my stay was making me drowsy. When I say drowsy I mean slap yourself in the face to keep from nodding off while you’re driving drowsy. Not good.

I pulled over at a rest stop not far from Parsons, Kansas. I thought that if perhaps I could just get 20 minutes of nap I could make it on home to Park City, just north of Wichita, KS. Unfortunately I was low on gas and couldn’t leave the car running with the a/c on. I tried resting on a bench underneath some shade trees at the rest stop but it was just too hot. My only option was to get on down the road. I figured that I could make it to Fredonia, only another half-hour away and where I planned on gassing up.

I pulled over again to the side of the road as I was leaving the rest stop and prayed, “Lord, I’m in trouble here and I can’t stay awake. I need your help to safely make it home.”

With more face slapping I made it to the gas station outside of Fredonia. While I was gassing up I was absorbed with my thoughts of what do I do next because I really needed to make it back that day. People were counting on my return to take care of Paul. Shelley had to go back to work and Kim was taking care of our mother at the family home as well as helping Shelley, so he was carrying a heavy load.

The next thing I knew someone was tapping me on the shoulder and talking. I turned and there was this face just inches away from mine and he was jabbering. All that I could really make out is that he was calling me “Boss” every few words. He was standing way inside my physical comfort zone. I asked him to step back and let me finish gassing up, then we would talk.

After I finished I sized him up. He was a young, long-haired guy dressed up in something that looked very much like a toga. Back in the day he would have been called a hippie. (I was one for a while.) He was driving an old beat-up van and wanted to know if he could trade some jewelry that his wife had made for some gas. His story was that they were musicians and headed to a church in Wichita where his wife’s dad was a pastor. I told him that while I didn’t need any jewelry, I would give them enough gas to get to Wichita. He thanked me profusely.

After taking care of them at the gas pump I went inside and picked up some munchies for the rest of the trip home. I couldn’t get the whole incident out of my mind. It was just so unusual. I was just outside of Augusta and about half an hour from home, when it dawned on me that I hadn’t been drowsy even once since my stop. One of my many prayers had already been answered, just not in a way that I expected.

I made it back to Shelley and Paul feeling renewed. And we did make it all the way with him on his life’s journey. There were more tough times but we knew that God was with us every step of the way.

Prayer, what is it good for? [Religious]

The title is a play on a song title and a question posed. Some would give the same answer provided in the song.

For the record I have not been to seminary. I am not fluent in scripture. Greek is…well…Greek to me and that’s all. I have several bibles. My wife Shelley makes me go to church. (Kidding!) I like beer. I screw up on a regular basis. After much thought in the matter I am willing to accept that I have benefited from white privilege. I’m retired. Thanks to the internet I am now an ordained minister. I am of the faith. Those are some of my bona fides.

Over the years I have wrestled with a lot of questions about prayer. What is prayer? Does one prayer count for more than a thousand? Does God hear all prayers? Does God answer all prayers? Is the prayer of an adult more important than the prayer of a child? Are there some things that we shouldn’t pray for? Can non-believers pray? If they can’t can we pray for them instead with any possibility of such prayer being answered? Does a prayer have an expiration date? Are bar codes involved? (I hope not.)

I’m sure that others have biblical answers to all of the above questions and more when it comes to prayer. There are also disclaimers in the bible as to why prayer won’t work for some. Usually having to do with guilt, being sinful in some fashion or not being righteous enough. Frankly it just all gets too confusing. After reading some of the verses dealing with prayer I’m not sure that anyone is truly qualified to have prayer answered.

It seems to me then that the best time to pray is right after a person accepts Jesus because they haven’t had a chance to be sinful again yet. That doesn’t sound right though does it? We’re going to screw something up. It’s what we do. We’re fallible. Even the best of humanity.

Perhaps it’s better to start with what prayer isn’t. Prayer isn’t magic. Abracadabra in the name of Jesus you’re a lottery winner! If you pray this prayer abracadabra you’ll make a lot of money this year! Hocus pocus if you’re righteous you will have material wealth if you pray just right. Praying to a bobble head Jesus on your dash will keep you safe from wrecks.

I don’t believe that giving the church or other intermediary money gives a prayer a better chance of reaching God’s heart. (Unless of course you want to give me a million dollars and then at some point I will personally deliver your message. If this helps you in your decision to give me a million dollars I am getting old. I’m not that many years away from having a lifetime supply of pills in the medicine chest.)

As a Christian I think that the answer I most often heard from childhood to adulthood is that God answers all prayer but with the caveat that prayer isn’t always answered in a way that we expect or understand. The perfect disclaimer of absolution. I believe that answer leads to unrealistic expectations on the part of Christians and validation for those not of the faith that prayer obviously doesn’t work or we wouldn’t need such an addendum.

Really if prayer always worked then children wouldn’t die and we would have world peace. But children do die and we don’t have world peace.

But sometimes children and others don’t die when they should have. So I think that we need to use the modifier “sometimes” when saying that prayer works. This is about the time that God’s plan or will jumps into the prayer fray in discussion. In other words a prayer contrary to God’s plan or will would be DOA. Praying for something evil is a non-starter. Prayer isn’t vindictive but we can pray for mercy as in letting a loved one slip away from their suffering.

I saw a great meme on Facebook the other day about prayer. A doctor was giving the grieving family the news that they lost someone because they were 2 prayers short on Facebook or something like that.

Rewards-based Christianity. I can’t tell you how many testimonies that I’ve heard over the years from people saying that prayer or tithing to the church has made them wealthy in the material sense. That always makes me wonder if poor Christians who tithe are somehow doing something else wrong, like not praying right. Evidently they’re guilty of some biblical infraction. After all we are a rewards-based society. Do something right—get rewarded; have your prayers answered. Do something wrong. Get punished. It’s only natural to want to have something to threaten the opposition with. Too often our prayers imply an insult to those less fortunate – that if only they believed (and prayed) harder or better or longer they would not be homeless, or poor, or in ill health.

God set the universe in motion as well as all the laws governing it. So there’s the free will of the physical world as all those myriad forces act with one another as well as our own free will thrown into the mix. What I mean by the free will of the physical world is that regardless of what we do there will be earthquakes, volcanoes, storms, heart attacks, disease, accidents, etc. In other words—stuff happens. Lightening will strike some people because they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. The free will of the physical universe means that yes our world can be obliterated by a stray asteroid. We can pray of course that won’t happen. Sometimes our prayers and the free will of the physical world coincide like when seas part.

Man! I’m bringing myself down here. Things were going fairly well until I got to that sentence about obliterating the world. I’m thinking here it might be time to delve into why I do pray.

I’m sure there are reasons prayers are or are not answered but they are simply beyond our ability to sort out or understand. For sure though if there is no prayer there is no answer and can be no fulfillment. Why pray then?

Well, I pray because sometimes it works. While I can’t explain or understand why some prayers aren’t answered I do believe that some prayers are answered. I pray every day; more often than not several times. I also believe that miracles both large and small happen on a regular basis. I believe that God speaks to us but we have to pay attention. It’s easy to miss all of these things as the chaos of free will swirls around us.  We’re so busy dealing with the world that we often miss the miracles occurring around us. We’re so busy coping with life that we forget to live it.

Testimony needs to be personal. On a personal level, since September of 2015 I have been dealing with some health issues. It started out with me having some serious chest pain. That led to tests. The tests attributed the chest pain to stress. Evidently I wasn’t handling the stress of selling a house, buying land, moving stuff to a half dozen storage facilities, finding a new place to live in another state, getting bit by a brown recluse spider, 2 bouts of shingles, working up home plans with an architect, having our church come apart and losing a loved one (Paul) real well. (I should mention that Shelley went through this with me and did a much better job of handling the stress. Including one wild Beverley Hillbilly style ride pulling a trailer.) Those tests led to my being diagnosed with an enlarged ascending aorta like my older brother had. The doctor was surprised that I didn’t already have a cardiologist and told me to be sure and get one when we got moved to Missouri. A follow up with doctors in our new locale ended up with more tests confirming the original diagnosis.  

Fast forward a few months, to a new CT scan done in order to check and see if the aneurysm had gotten any bigger. The nurse called to give me the results of that scan and informed me that I now have zero aneurysm. What?! However, the CT scan showed up a nodule on my lung. Swell! I had subsequent PET scan to check that out to see if there was any indication of malignancy. There wasn’t any. Needless to say, there had been a lot of prayers going up about both of these health issues. It’s obvious to me that they were answered.

Shelley and I also credit prayer for where we are now. It was Shelley’s prayer that brought us here to Table Rock Lake, of this I have no doubt. A couple of years ago Pastor Rob Schmutz gave a sermon in which he told us not to be afraid to pray big. So she did. Unbeknownst to me she prayed that somehow it would be possible for us to move to Table Rock to be near my family. She didn’t share her prayer with me because she didn’t dream that I would ever consider leaving the little town of Park City, Kansas where I grew up. When I turned to her one day and said, “Babe, what would you think about us selling our house and moving to Table Rock Lake?” she said you could have knocked her over with a feather. This is a time of life when we were supposed to be settling in comfortably for the final run.

God frequently takes us out of our comfort zone.

How and where I pray has also been affected by a chance encounter with another Christian in a rather odd circumstance.

Once upon a time on our way home to Park City, Kansas from Table Rock Lake Shelley and I stopped off at an Iron Skillet for a bite to eat. After the waitress had served our meal a swarthy man walked slap footed into the non-smoking dining section where we were seated. He had an unlit cigar that had to be at least in inch thick stuck in his mouth. I disliked him instantly. I figured that he was probably going to light up his cigar and stink up the non-smoking section as soon as he sat down.

He didn't light up. I returned to our meal in progress. The next time I looked in his direction the waitress had just delivered his meal and his head was bowed in prayer as he said grace before he ate.

So, did the guy with a cross earring, me, say grace before we started chowing down on our delicious lunch? Nope. What kind of message did I deliver to the young waitress that waited on us or others in the room for that matter? We stopped eating and I said grace. I remembered several lessons while we ate our lunch. I should have followed that meal up with several helpings of humble pie.

Being a Christian only works if we apply the teachings in our day to day lives. Just going for some God time on Sunday between such and such times isn't enough. Listening to the praise music, testimonies, prayer and message from the pastor isn't enough. It won't help us in our daily lives unless we apply what we've learned and know to be right. It won't help if we don't try and make a difference by helping others. It won't help if we don't lead by example. It won’t help if we don’t pray.

There’s a lot of talk about Christianity being under attack these days in this country. From the memes that I see on Facebook you would think that Christians are being persecuted for practicing their beliefs. I do think that we are under attack but sincerely believe that our main adversaries in this country come from within the faith and the lack of practicing what we’re supposed to believe. Instead too often the examples that those not of the faith see from Christians are negative, filled with words and actions that are contrary to the teachings of Jesus.

Doesn’t it seem like we should be seeing more Christians in action being stopped from practicing our faith if we are truly under attack? And I’m not talking about being forced to bake a cake for someone. Jesus didn’t go and ask about the beliefs or lifestyles they lived before he fed the 5,000. Being denied the right to force Christian beliefs on others is not the faith being under attack. Lacking a servant’s heart is not someone else’s problem. Jesus practiced helping the less fortunate in deeds and words.

It seems to me that one of the most obvious things that Christians should be seen doing as everyone goes about their daily lives is praying. Do you see a lot of that when you’re out and around? How many times have you been in a restaurant and noticed someone saying grace before a meal? Have you ever heard anyone in a restaurant saying that, “Hey! We don’t allow no Christians praying here!” Didn’t think so.

One of the easiest ways to get a non-believer to at least think about the faith even if it’s for a fleeting moment is for them see someone praying at a meal. Better yet pray with a non-believer at a meal or wherever you’re at. (Ask first! You might be surprised.) I have told people not of the faith just to think of us as wishing them well to a figment of our imagination. It’s an offering of kind thoughts for them at the least and an introduction to the faith at best.

This country full of Christians doesn’t pray in public that much on a consistent day to day basis. It seems to me that Christians avoid the most obvious way of sharing and promoting the faith on a regular daily basis. Think of how many people would be reached if Christians started praying in public as well as in private. Think of the statement that it would make if you went to a restaurant and half of the people there were praying. You aren’t liable to see that happening frequently any time soon.

When I pray I give thanks for the day and all that we have because prayer reminds me to be aware of the bounty that surrounds us. I am thankful for the day and the beauty that can be acknowledged even during the power of a storm. There is beauty in the day. Prayer on a regular basis helps me be mindful of others less fortunate (without insulting them in the process).  

Some of the things that I will pray for on a regular basis for myself and others are healing, knowledge, guidance, understanding, strength of character/body/mind, peace, discernment, lightening of a heavy burden, a joyful heart, to be a better person/friend/husband, seeing through the clutter of life, perspective, safety, forgiveness. Prayer helps me stay positive.

What kind of Christian will I be today? I will pray that I’m a better representative of Christ.

Prayer, what is it good for? Absolutely somethin’!