Memorial Day 2019

            Every Memorial Day, I pause and think about those comrades who died while deployed. One sticks in my mind. We desperately tried to get him to medical treatment on time. He bled out as we carried him across the FOB in makeshift litter made of a poncho, his bootheels cutting grooves which collected his blood. On this day we honor him and all those like him that perished in the service of their country. I also think of Howie.

            Howie served in a subordinate unit. He did so with great efficiency and as required, bravery. During this deployment, we pursued a very aggressive set of operations designed to subdue Al Qaeda in Iraq, often known as AQI. In these operations, we sought to synchronize multiple services, and nations. We endured many stretches of uninterrupted labor, inside and outside the wire, often working thirty-six or forty-eight hours at a stretch. In some of our operations, we coordinated the movements of units from the United States and back. We enjoyed great success though at a great price in men and material. At the end of the operation, we’d either killed or driven key segments of the AQI organization from the operational field. We were exhausted. A picture of me snapped when I was unawares shows a man who was “rode hard and put up wet.”

            Howie returned to the states shortly after the end of the operation. He arrived in the states early in the week and as always attended the chapel, where he sang in the choir. There, on the first Sunday of his return, he collapsed while singing. He died in front of his wife, children, and friends while worshiping. We’d all noticed his haggard look, but we then we all looked pretty rugged. None of us could imagine the corrosive effects of the pace on Howie. The demands of the operational pace had consumed him. Though Howie did not die of wounds due to enemy action, his wife and children remain deprived of a loving husband and father and their grief and pain remain just as real as if he died in the violence of an improvised explosive device. I think of him and how hard he worked and how worn he was. Howie had poured his life out in Iraq and there was nothing left. So, I remember Howie and other friends like him who gave all they had and were crushed in the process.

Happy Easter

            Cool and quiet, darkness reigns. All light extinguished and banished. There is tranquil rest after labors. Nothing moves in this place of silent stillness. Sealed, locked away from a world that holds its breath, matching vacant and motionless lungs. Battered and torn flesh wrenched muscle and sinew chill in borrowed darkness. Far away, hidden behind sealed and locked doors frightened, red-rimmed eyes shed bitter tears of regret. Here, the silence of furtive fear and disillusioned darkness reigns. None gives voice to the silent questions of how and why. Everything is motionless as creation pauses.

            Then, it happens. With scarcely a rustle, a diaphragm moves and lungs fill. A breath slips past open lips and everything changes. A heart beats once, twice, three times settling into a steady rhythm. And life flows, and not just through one man’s veins. Life pulses out across time and space. Tombs, recently cracked open as the earth twitched violently, give up their grip on saints that now walk home. This life, this new life radiates outward infecting all it touches with a new type of existence. The once almighty death is defanged. Inside the previously silent grave, new life stirs; life that cannot be contained. The new, yet ancient of days, rises.

            Outside hands that once flung stars into their places now gently cup a grieving tear-stained face, dispensing comfort and grace. These same hands that crafted human form now bear scars, scars that remind all of a burden born, mission completed, and a crushing debt paid. God came down, became man, absorbed our punishment, experienced death and rejection by mankind and His father. Now He lives and those same scared hands now turn back death. Life and light now reign where darkness once walked supreme. His rising changed that. His blood, once again oxygenated brings life; not just to Him, but also to His body. Now, all is new. Happy Easter.

Corvair Blues

            Life often takes us down roads to destinations we would not have chosen could we have seen the end from the beginning. Such was the case for my brother and me in the Abilene, Texas of the middle 1960s. My father, an aspiring History Professor, taught at Abilene Christian University while working on a doctorate in Latin American History. Eventually, we would spend two years in Fort Worth, Texas while he finished his Ph.D., but that is an entirely different story with a very different ending. As a junior member of the faculty at a small, but growing, private school, my father did not earn a particularly large salary. We lived in a nice house, ate plenty of good food, and enjoyed a good standard of living; however, my father drove older cars in order to stretch his paycheck as far as possible. For a time the family heapster was four-door Corvair.

            We cruised around Abilene and out into the country in this light blue auto. For a time, my father preached at a small church in Shep, Texas, just a smidge over forty miles from Abilene. In those days of looser attitudes towards safety, my brother and I often wrangled over which one of us would ride on the small dash in the back of the car as we returned to Abilene after the evening service at Shep. I always enjoyed watching the stars wheel and turn as we rumbled down 277, a two-lane state road. Like any older car, our Corvair came with a variety of unique characteristics; one of which was a small hole in the rear floor-pan.

            I do not remember which one of us discovered this small aperture to the outside world from the back seat, nor do I know why looking at the asphalt rush past was so intriguing. But hey, who truly knows what goes on inside the head of six or seven-year-old boy, least of all that boy. We would clamber into the back seat and then wrestle to watch North or South first slip past at a scorching thirty-five miles per hour. Then we discovered a new game.

            Again, memory fails me in the exact origins, but one of us would slip small bits of trash through the hole while the other one looked out the back window to spy some familial litter bouncing down the road behind us. This was great fun and we never had to pester Mom or Dad. We scoured the car for gum or candy wrappers to shove through the hole. Light colored items were best as they were visible against the oil-streaked asphalt of the age. We could not foresee the unhappy destination that awaited us. We just enjoyed our new game. We were not hurting anyone. Then one day, we made a precipitously bad, no horrible, decision.

            My mother had to run a few errands. She gathered up her rather unruly bunch, secured her purse, applied a splash of lipstick, secured her hair under a fetching scarf, and headed out in our Corvair. Somewhere along the way her purse ended up in the back seat with Brian and I. In a brutal convergence of circumstances, we ran out of detritus to jettison at the same time. Which one of us was the dumper and which one of us was the spotter remains locked away in the deep vaults of the cave of my memory. It is enough to note that we discovered my mother’s purse to be a treasure-trove of items small enough to fit through our portal to the road; soon a string of lipstick, fingernail files, and other important ladies’ items were bouncing down South First…do not ask me why my memory is so clear on that point.

            Eventually, my mother wondered at the levity and general party atmosphere emanating from the back seat. As any good parent would, she inquired as to the cause of such bonhomie. Logic and good sense rushed into our minds a bit too late, so we sat there, mute lumps oozing guilt. Ultimately under the harsh spotlight of a mother glare, we stammered out an explanation. My mother, in a move Mario Andretti would admire, whipped the Corvair into the parking lot of Burro Alley on the corner of South First and Willis where she soon discovered the absence of several small items. In very clear and unambiguous language, we learned that her purse was never to be used as source material for our game and we were to spend the rest of the outing sitting in the back seat with our hands in our laps. I do not remember being told to stop playing the game, just that her things were not viable candidates for ejection. Yes, that day, we discovered that the Corvair was truly unsafe at any speed.

F.M. Ebenezer

             Drive almost any F.M. (Farm to Market) in Texas and you will find at least one. The faithful gathered there twice on Sunday and once on Wednesday in sun-backed clapboard shotgun Churches, that still dot the landscape. Step inside the quiet, cut with slanting beams and listen. Hear the soft echoes of singing from worn dusty hymnals that still gather in the stillness between the pews. See the leather-faced men, and women, that defiantly wrenched a living from sandy scrub. Veneration of those self-made-independent-men-women informs our theology. Like Noah and the other patriarchs who stood alone with God, they faced great adversity, armed with fifth Sunday singings and potlucks, unaware of the source. Meringues and casseroles lined up on folding tables beneath a straggling Live Oak, planted in belligerence, against a cobalt blue sky. Sister Harshberger’s deviled eggs always set the bar high. The next round of farmers and ranchers frolicked in the spaces between the rows of cotton that press up against the caliche parking lot and dust-coated Fords, Chevys, and Dodges; after a good year Lincolns, Plymouths, and Chryslers sprout from the same dust. These grim prophets stride out of the bleak countryside with their message of hard work and unremitting faith. They believed in a God that wanted us to be self-determining, stand on our own, and carve out our niche with one hand on the plow and the other on the Bible. They knit together the thought fabric of West Texas, a place of harsh flatness, astringent weather, and heart-aching sunsets, with the warp and woof of sweat and toil. Muleshoe, Sudan, Lazbuddie, Friona, Bovina, Shep, and countless others strewn across the landscape each have their monuments. An F.M. tour of the caprock reveals these testimonials to stolid faith and hard work. And if you pause, in the quiet glow of setting sun, they will come to you and speak of their dreams and desires, failures and hurts. Some still grow under the silent sun. Others dried up and blew away leaving only the bleached ebenezers where ghosts still gather to commiserate about this year’s cotton yield.

            

Five Stones

            Recently the preacher where I attend challenged us to think of five moments in our lives where God had somehow intervened, orchestrated events perhaps, in order to change the trajectory of our lives.

            “Think of them as stones,” he said, “Like the five stones David picked up on the way to fight Goliath.” So here they are five stones God dropped into my life that changed everything, that altered the arc of my life. Stones that would make the difference between the man I am now and the other person I might have been. Stones that, at the moment, seemed in some ways crippling, but now, looking back, paved the way to a closer relationship with Father. But, before I can talk about stones, I must provide a bit of back-story.

            I grew up in a Godly home. Both of my parents were, and remain, committed Christians, active in their faith and congregation where they worship. I wanted for no good thing. I enjoyed friends and family in abundance. We attended a great community of faith (South 11^th and Willis St. Church of Christ); one where I was surrounded by men and women who daily sought to walk out their faith, where I was nurtured and cared for. Some of you that read this know, for you were there. I share this with you so that you will know that my mistakes were my own. They were produced by my own pride and stiff neck. I alone bear the guilt for my failure. Sadly some of those that love me bore the shame of my sin. Yet, God graciously bore with me, arranging for the stones needed to redirect my path.

            Stone # 1: Baptism remains a bright, shining moment in my path. Though I was a young teenager, the moment remains fresh. I still see the blurry wavering faces surrounding me in the pool at Camp Wildwood as a counselor plunged me deep into the water. Though I’ve vacillated and wandered as the years unfolded, that experience of being buried with Jesus has stayed with me. It reminds me that God has a claim on me. He owns me. I died then. He lays claim to all that I am and have. As His bondservant slave really, I am often recalcitrant. But, since that undimmed moment, He owns me, no matter how far I wander or how badly I fail.

            Stone # 2: I went through a time where I wandered far from God. In truth, I ran away. Like Jonah, I rejected God’s desires and admonitions. My actions brought dishonor to my family, earthly and heavenly. Some of you who were there know, the rest can well imagine. It is enough to say that I was despicable in my rebellion. Yet, in the middle of all the ugliness, Dub Orr, an elder in the congregation where I grew up, dropped by my place of work. He asked to eat lunch with me. I agreed. During our meal, he tenderly without rancor or condemnation extended fellowship and love. “Matt,” he said with sad eyes, “Right now you have rejected God’s path for you. I just want you to know, that when you are ready to come home, we are ready to accept you in love.”

            Unremarkable in delivery and location, simple words that offered reconciliation made all the difference. We ate that day at Pizza Inn on East Highway 80. But there God dropped a stone that opened a door for me. I was not ready that day, but soon I was.

            Stone # 3: A night of debauchery and failure ended with a large policeman, one of Abilene’s finest, kneeling on my back while placing me in manacles. As the stony asphalt ground into my face, I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my way would end in failure. I was not nearly as smart as I thought I was and I could no longer flout the law. My flawed decision-making process had led to the curtailment of my freedom. I was a selfish, drunken, stumblebum. Fortunately for me, that incident turned into a near miss. I did not hear the clang of a jail door. I was not confined. I did have some hefty fines and a car to pay for, but my future was not impinged. God used a dark night to pave the way for future growth. He had other encounters in mind.

            Stone # 4: The dark night of failure gave way to a dawn of repentance and restoration. I wish I could say that from that point forward all was well, that all my decisions were wise, that I did not stumble, but those would be lies. However, the path changed. I moved forward with a better understanding of how weak I was. Mr. Orr was true to his word. The faith community at South 11^th and Willis welcomed me back without judgment. A civil magistrate took care of that. Soon, I was stationed in Denver, Colorado. I attended a congregation there, meeting a fine, beautiful Godly young woman. As young men and women are wont to do, we started spending time with each other. One thing led to another and we grew more serious about a future together. One evening in the late summer we picnicked in a park just west of Denver. Sitting there, enjoying the quiet and watching the lights of Denver come on; she turned to me and said, “Matt, I feel myself falling in love with you.” Now, I thought this was great news; but she continued, “Consequently, this will be our last date. I will marry a Godly man, and you are not him. You play at church, but you are not serious about your relationship with God.”

            A door had closed. A moment had passed. I had been weighed in the scales and found wanting. She remained friendly, but there was no going back. Time and distance have blurred her face and erased her name, but that moment, that stone, remains. God used that to refine a self-centered young man. There was, and is, so much I do not know or understand.

            Stone # 5: Eventually, with a lot of work by God, He found me ready for marriage and brought Christy into my life. We married, spending two years in the Philippines as missionaries. Then I pursued a career in the military. We had children. And as things unfolded I was sent to Iraq multiple times. The last tour came at an inconvenient time for my family. Christopher, the oldest, needed serious surgery, Candace and Timothy were in high school with all the standard teenage problems. Christy, never a fan of large crowded cities, was not particularly thrilled with living in San Antonio. But, duty called and I shipped out for one final hurrah. Arriving in Iraq, I sorted out the location of the chapel on our FOB (Forward Operating Base) and trudged toward it on the first dusty Sunday there. Feeling despondent and rather sorry for myself, I paused at a spot where I could look out over the T-walls into the city beyond. Despair welled up in my soul and I cried out to God, “Why did you send me back to this God forsaken place!” And then I heard Him drop a stone, deep within my inner being.

            God spoke, “Matt, I have never forsaken this place. I am here just like I am in San Antonio. You cannot escape me. And, I love these people just as much as I love you. I sent my son for them too. Never forget that.”

            A stone dropped into the deep, dark well of my self-centered pity and pain. Its splash still ripples through my life. The deployment unfolded like they all do. I suffered separation from my loved ones. Christopher’s surgery, while good for him, was excruciating for Christy. I was rocketed, mortared, and participated in a horribly failed operation. But true to His word, God was there. He never left me. In fact, all of these stones, and others, serve to remind me that God is indeed with us. And He uses stones to move us, to change us, to reclaim us, and restore us.