I wrote this first chapter over two years ago and had it packed away in my archives. It will give you the initial view of how I perceived God, due to the surroundings that shaped my perception of Him:
My knees shook.
I was only nine years old. I was frightened and frustrated by the slowly unfolding scene before me. Nine year olds aren’t supposed to deal with this kind of fear. But there I stood, next to my four brothers and one sister, the oldest thirteen and the youngest six. We were all shoulder-to-shoulder in line, a sort of tragic/comedic pose that none of us had planned. We stood in the small kitchen of our rural house in the outskirts of Hershey, Pennsylvania, sharing the same child-like feeling that this shouldn’t be happening.
The six of us were openly crying, sobbing in children sobs, the kind that make little noises with each breath. My mom stood in the doorway of the room, staring across the room at my dad, arms folded and her jaw set.
This is summer time, and summer is supposed to be fun.
Yet there stood my father, hand on the doorknob, wearing sunglasses even though he was inside the house. He wore Bermuda shorts and a short-sleeve shirt and looked for all the world like a man about to pack his kids off for a day at the amusement park.
Except he was going, and we were staying.
“This is it,” my mom said, folding her arms. “Tell them, all six of them. You make your final choice. It’s either your mistress, or it’s your children. Make your choice. But tell it to their faces.”
I looked over for support from my older sister. Her cheeks were red and a tear rolled down the side of her nose. One of my brothers was crying so hard that he was gagging.
My dad looked at us, raised his hand slightly, waved and walked out the door.
There. It was done.
Except for the crying.
The dad that I had known all of my life, the man that brought home candy from business trips, the one who sat in a chair reading the newspaper and chuckling while we colored cartoon faces on his white socks, the father who taught me how to throw a football – that same man had closed the screen door, hopped into his Volvo and had gone to live with another woman. A night club musician, at that. He left my diligent Russian-heritage mom (who knew how to make incredible pierogis and kapusta) for a bespangled xylophone player who didn’t even know how to cook a Thanksgiving turkey, for crying out loud.
As a nine-year old boy who was still learning the nuances of catching a baseball in a leather mitt and of trying to understand the necessity of Sunday School, this was the bulldozer that leveled everything. I didn’t realize it, but my childhood had been largely built around the safety and protection and character of my dad.
And now he was gone.
I sit and type this memory during a break in the classes in a private academy where I teach (the students are taking aptitude tests today, so I have a little bit of time on my hands). I feel a deep grieving within my chest that rises up and pushes tears to my eyes. This is still too fresh for me. I take a break and leave the computer to take a quiet walk down the school hallways to get a coffee and try to compartmentalize this pain, push it back in the proper slots that all adults are supposed to have. I’m a teacher. I’ve been a pastor. I should be over this, right?
This incident was over thirty years ago and yet I still feel as if someone had pushed me down and stepped on my chest with both feet. How could anyone think that this was okay? Who makes the rules? It reminds me of another childhood memory where, as a spectator at a local baseball game, I was hit with a batted ball, a looping shot that smashed into my skull and knocked me from my seat. As I fought the pain in my skull and spit the aluminum taste from my mouth, I noticed groups of teenagers doing a poor job of trying to hide their laughter. What could possibly make them think this was funny, I asked myself in more anguish than the pain brought, why can they not see that I am hurt?
How could anyone think this is okay? Who makes the rules? Why am I such a small player in the scheme of things?
It brought to mind another deeply painful incident. I can’t scour it out of my mind…
I stared in terror. I couldn’t move.
This can’t be happening. This can’t.
This past week hasn’t been real. Perhaps I can re-think this whole week – would that make a difference?
My new stepfather lit a cigarette, glanced at us and jerked his thumb toward the moving truck. “Go. Get in. Now.” He turned his back to us and blew out a puff of smoke.
My mom had re-married. We were to begin life in a new region, at least six hours away in a small community in Maryland. We had hurriedly shoved every possible belonging into the back of a rented moving truck, ending up with an unstable heap of furniture and boxes shoved toward the front of the truck’s enclosed trailer. There was about five feet of open space between the rocking mound of tied-down gear and the back pull-down door.
And that was where we were supposed to go. We stood in and helped one another into the back of the truck, sleeping bags in hand. My oldest brother quietly rolled out each of our bags and instructed us to lie on them. We turned to take one last look at our farmhouse before my stepfather walked in front of our line of vision and pulled the moving truck’s door down. We were in total darkness for the next six hours.
I propped my head on my arm in that thick darkness, staring at the ceiling and hearing the terrifying creaking of the furniture, trying to hold back the panic that rose and puffed behind my ribs. Stuff like this doesn’t happen to children. This isn’t real. I heard the sobbing of my next youngest brother who openly panicked (To this day he still has claustrophobia, not wanting spaces any tighter than a living room.).
At six-fifty this morning I sat at a local coffee shop and drank some dark roast, reflecting on the brutal childhood years of trying to deal with this rejection. I finger a small card that has a Latin phrase I’ve been studying while preparing my doctoral dissertation: Coram Deo: “before the face of God." I suppose I should come up with a pithy saying that tells the reader of this magnificent God who watches over all, but I don’t get that out of this phrase …nope, not at all.
I don’t think of Him as being a God on a tower overlooking the football field of players. I see Him as the personal God who sits and has coffee with me. He wakes me in the morning with a quiet hello when I know He could just as easily send a splitting thunderclap or a jangling emergency.
I never remember my dad coming into my room – day or night – as I lay in bed as a child. I don’t remember him sitting and playing very many games with me. Once, as a ten year old, I sat with him and played a round of Scrabble, beating him on the last word. I could see in his eyes that he was upset. Dad, I want a partner to enjoy, not a competitor. And so went my youth experience, filled with uncomfortable visitation trips and half-hearted holiday presents.
My dad didn’t watch over me in a living-room-and-kitchen kind of way. He made occasional visits in a mall-and-theater-type of way. Some kids would enjoy this. I detested it. But I didn’t detest Dad. I wasn’t mad at him…but I wasn’t happy with him either. He was sort of ... there, and I was sort of ... here, and it was just as much my part to go out to the car and get in for visitation as it was for him to drive down from Pennsylvania to pick me up. He initiated a scene by buying a gift that he assumed I would enjoy, and I finished the act by smiling and promising to play with whatever it was, even though I would probably have no use for the item. That’s the way it was – a balance between parent and child. That was normal, wasn’t it?
Well, that’s the way I saw God, too. He was polite, yet indifferent. That’s okay, I thought. I can work this out as well. God will initiate the scene by showing me a nice time in a large building with well-mannered adults who sang, listened to a long message, and had a nice pot-luck dinner once a month. My job was to sit still, listen to whatever sounded interesting, and make sure I ate enough of the main course so that I was allowed to have a generous hunk of Shoo-Fly Pie.
