Freedom for Strange Ducks

"I will not leave you comfortless: 

I will come to you." -- John 14:18

Have you ever been labeled a strange duck?  I was going through my bookshelf the other day for inspiration and I came across my old beat-up green-bound original copy of The Living Bible. It's worn, either from being packed and un-packed over decades of moving, or, hopefully, from all that reading and memorizing from my high school days.   Uh . . . . huh . . .

My younger sister and I both got a copy for Christmas back in early high school.  Most of the young people in our high school youth group had made the green shift and set aside the old KJV for our generation's version of the Bible.  This was during the era of the "Jesus Movement" . . . as if He'd never moved before.  We were all about Good News and Love Song and  . . . well . . . new stuff.

But not everyone was excited and accepting of all the "new" stuff.  One weekend we went to visit old middle school friends in the midst of a summer revival in what we might have charitably referred to as a church "set in its ways."  The evangelist, making his way down the aisle, paused to shake our hands and welcome us . . . and paused a little longer, his eyes rolling a bit in his head, which was shaking back and forth.  He actually developed a momentary twitch and backed away like he was on the verge of a seizure.  In the pulpit, he made a shocking announcement that he had just received a new message and proceeded to preach about the "strange ducks" in the sanctuary.  That would be me and little sister Sue, clutching our "Living Bibles" and fighting the urge to cluck out loud. Suddenly our green Bibles -- paraphrases, not the real King James --  felt like flashing neon signs in our laps.  In our immature defiance, we raised them to our chins so he could see them better, which increased his fervor.  Needless to say, we didn't walk the aisle during the invitation, but we did hang around for after-service refreshments. 

I had never been a "strange duck" before, and I didn't much like it.  It was my first experience at in-church rejection, which felt a lot like out-of-church rejection, which was all too familiar.  I was heading back to the comfort of the flock . . . or gaggle . . . or family.  Whatever they call a bunch of ducks who stick together.

That was years ago and I've fluctuated between the NIV and NAS and noticed that all the true translations and the paraphrases seem to flock together fairly well these days.

Through the years, it would not be the Bible I carried that gave me the feeling I didn't really belong.  It was the burden I carried in my heart.  The big secret.  The defiance of my younger days yielded to the self-protection of deception.  "These things have I hidden in my heart," pertained not to Scripture but to unacceptable thoughts and temptations which crowded out the promises of God to "give me a hope and a future."  Occasionally I would hear the recriminations from the pulpit or from teachers and leaders and Christian friends about the place in hell reserved for those who were depraved and unrepentant and I knew I was the one they were talking about because of my evil and uncontrolled desires.  I was, in the vernacular of the time, a "homo," though no one knew it but me and God and I was afraid to talk to Him about it based on what I was hearing would be His response. I never entered the lifestyle; I just borrowed from it for personal satisfaction and retreated to the safety of a more acceptable place.  Still, the flock, or the gaggle, or the family, was a way of hanging on, even if it meant hiding in plain sight, perfecting deception while prepping for a mighty fall. 

Believe me, when I fell, the neon sign flashed brighter and longer and projected further and will be remembered far longer than that silly little Living Bible defiance of decades before.  This duck's wings were clipped.  That's the danger of a double-life; when the hidden one is revealed, the known one is suddenly reviled as if each moment had been faked for the convenience of the hidden decadence.

Strangers and Aliens

I've been asked a number of times what it is like now for the people in my life to know about my struggles with unwanted same-sex attraction.  To have been "outed," after so many years of living a well-established double life -- that of a good man in the church and a confused and struggling man in the lurch. At first, it was a bit like being a dead duck.  A stranger.  An alien.  Like someone had pulled back a rug to find a lurking and threatening rat.  "Get the broom . . . or better yet, the shotgun."

"Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household." -- Ephesians 2:19

Those of us who have at times felt like we were visiting a place where we did not belong but so badly wanted to be need to take comfort in Paul's words.  When he says "consequently," he is talking about the change in a believer's status.  Therefore, those of who are Christians -- though we have struggled -- have a different status as a result, even if we are falling short of the full reality of the positive consequence.  Those of us who have openly admitted our sinful conditions are full aware of the value of consequence.  We have heaped upon ourselves the negatives.

You Can Fly Now

When Paul says we "are no longer foreigners or aliens," he is saying there is no way to revert.  If the change is real, it's real.  Take comfort in the reality of realness and accept that you don't have to be an alien anymore.  You're a duck, but so is everyone else. If they can fly, you can fly.  They cluck; you cluck.

We ARE Fa-mi-ly

What Christ does is abolish the pain of being a stranger.  He welcomes us in and says "you're family."  From that point on, much of the separation is voluntary on our part, due to our fragility that ties us to our sin which we could exchange for His strength if we would just give in to something different.  It's not like we don't know how to give in. Our desire to trust in what we know -- the old familiar and comfortable sin -- instead of Who we know -- the ever-present sin-bearer --  is our downfall.

The downfall is not a simple stumble down a flight of stairs or even a head-long plunge into a canyon.  It's a spiral of ups and downs as we reject our sin, seek restoration, strive for perfection, fall into dismay that we are still struggling and spiral down again into bad behaviors and anticipated judgment.

Love is part of being in the family

The gospel of the Bible is that God's love for us is not all about behavior or perfectionism. Paul the Apostle says God is even willing to forgive murderers . . . like Paul. And . . . oh yes, adulterers, homosexual offenders, gossipers and others who long for the comfort of the forgiven-flock.  What you did?  That too.

"But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared. He rescued us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to his mercy." -- Titus 3:4-5

Mercy.  So . . . you mean, it's okay to sin?

No . . . and you and I both know that.  I am the poster child for the obvious truth that you cannot sin and get away with it.  "My sins will find me out," should be written across my forehead because it is so true.  The reward for years of deception is wells of emptiness that can only be filled in God's timing.  But the good news is that while He fills the well, at His pace, taking into account my ridiculous resistance, I walk among the living and not the dying.  Forgiven, graced, transformed . . . no longer an alien.  Just a plain old duck.

The bars on my eyes that held my captured soul are down.  There is freedom for the prisoner of habitual sin.  It doesn't happen overnight for most . . . so don't tell someone that it will because they will hold you to that out of their own lack of understanding.  We work on it and we work it out if we never give up. 

So don't give up.

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
      because he has anointed me
      to preach good news to the poor.
   He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
      and recovery of sight for the blind,
   to release the oppressed,  -- Luke 4:17-19

 God Bless,

Thom

Why We Have Reason to Hope

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for. -- Epicurus

Hope?

Hope is part of growing up.

I remember hoping I would get something specific for Christmas or my birthday, everything from a hamster to a new car, which was beyond all hope. I remember hoping my dad would come visit, which eventually was also beyond all hope. I remember hoping we would not move again, but we always did. I remember hoping the teacher would get sick and we wouldn't have the test, but she never was sick when she really needed to be. I remember hoping my car would start one more time, but if it did, it usually died in the middle of a busy intersection. I remember hoping Denise would say yes in high school and go to the homecoming dance . . . and I remember hoping that Lisa would say yes and go to the forever dance. Both said yes, but Denise jilted me at the dance. Lisa meant forever . . . and became one of the greatest sources of all my hope from that point on.

We hope a lot. Probably the worst words in the world are these three: "there's no hope." Nothing sounds darker; nothing sinks in more deeply, more bleakly, and seems more permanent than to know there is no hope.

Hope?

Hope is not just a part of growing up, it's a part of growing on. Of holding on. Without hope there is no vision and, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." -- Proverbs 29:18.

I have often confused having hope with starting over. Through the years I prayed that God would somehow restore me to the past, as if He would just erase all the years of bad decisions, missteps, exhaustive struggles, deceptive-protective maneuvers and somehow make it all right again. In the meantime, He would undo the scars of childhood sexual abuse, somehow make it not have mattered that our father left us, take away the seeds of confusion and longing that evolved into same-sex attraction and just remove the temptations altogether. There would never have been any acting out at all. And, of course, along with all of this, my children would forgive me, which would cause everyone else to forgive me and we would live happily ever after.

This is the "fix me" prayer that so many strugglers pray . . . echoed by those around us who pray "fix him." Why doesn't God just do what seems to make so much sense to us at the time?

When our oldest son was about five, and our second son was about three, Zach, the oldest, had had more than enough of Russell, the second. Five-year-olds are not known for patience and Russell was not known for his compliance, so the two were known more for fits and fights than for brotherly love. From Zach's frustration grew hope and then a vision and a plea in his bedtime prayers, overheard in the hall.

"God?" prayed Zach in quiet earnest. "Would you just take Russell away?"

Whoosh. Like that, Zach hoped his prayers would be answered and his little brother would disappear into the night forever.

Fortunately, God, in His wisdom, knows how to hear our hopes.

Somewhere along the line, strugglers who "hope" to become overcomers learn to accept the idea of hope within reason, reflective of responsibility. In that light, the struggler can "start over," just like others who fall short of what God intended for them in their lives. We can't undo what we have done to others anymore than we can undo what has been done to us, but we can move on, confess, repent, forgive others and ourselves . . . and seek forgiveness and the opportunity to restore the damage our actions has caused.

There is, of course, a limit to what we can do to restore the damage. Sometimes the past is too powerful. Sometimes people refuse to believe the authenticity of God's ability to cleanse and heal through the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives just as in the lives of other sinners. Some people seem to believe this particular problem is beyond God's ability to handle. Why would we believe that God can heal others and not us? Why would anyone want us to believe that?

Don't let the naysayers convince you that you are in some set-apart minority that has no hope, or no right to hope. Don't let their unbelief be the stone that pulls you to the bottom of the pit of quicksand in which you have been struggling, not when it is clear that Christ stands at the edge of the pit with hand extended. Never let someone else's denial of God's power deprive you of it.

I'll never have the privilege of looking back on a long life and saying I always did it well. I will always wish that I had struggled harder sooner. I'll always wonder why I resisted the free gift of grace. There's no erase button effective enough to take my past away. But, I will have the privilege of knowing the depth of God's love, the firm grasp of His grace, the fullness of His forgiveness, the evidence of His patience, and the reality of His restoration. This is my hope.

Along with faith and love, hope is an enduring virtue of the Christian life. Some will have endured much and stretched the endurance of others to the limit, but still cling to hope.

"But now faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." -- I Corinthians 13:13.

And this hope produces joy (don't we need that?) and peace (haven't we sought it so long?) through the power of the Spirit.

"Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." -- Romans 15:13.

Our job is to believe first . . . and then abound . . . in hope.

When our children were small I did as most parents do. I read to them. One of the books we read was Charlotte's Web. You probably remember that the first words Charlotte wrote in her web were "Some Pig." That was amazing. But even more amazing to me in light of my life, was the second word: "Radiant." We move from hiding in the mud to radiance . . . shining the light of true joy.

If you are struggling, keep on and do so in the hope that abides with faith and love. If you are walking with a struggler, keep hoping.

In Him,

Thom

There's a Fork in the Road

Stop right here, there's a fork in the road,

I don't think you want to get lost.

One way leads to a potter's field,

The other way leads to a cross. -- Ken Medema

It's harder to get lost these days. With on-line maps, GPS systems, satellites, Google Earth and cell phones, we should pretty much know where we're headed all the time, anticipate all the forks in the road and know who and what to expect when we arrive at our destination. Wrong turn? Just reconfigure, adjust and move on. Guys don't have to ask for directions anymore; they just listen to the device on the dash.


This is all well and good if you're driving a car. But what if you're just trying to live a life?


Years ago on a Labor Day weekend we made a spur-of-the-moment, sans advance planning, somewhat ill-advised and under prepared trip to Colorado. We needed scenery, we had that road-trip urge and we needed to escape for a few days. We also needed to do it on about $3.75, but that's a different story. I don't know how we thought we were going to "escape" anything with three little boys in car seats and baby carriers, but that's just an example of our thought processing at the time, a midpoint somewhere between carefree and stupid. Imagine putting a baby in an infant seat on the backseat floorboard of the car and traveling through several states into a mountain range and you'll understand the stupid part. Today, that would get you arrested. Still, I remember when I was a kid sleeping in the back window of my father's car as we headed out to Yellowstone, laying on my side and waving at the cars behind us.


We made this Labor Day trip in 1981, the year of our third son's birth. Had we made the trip only a few years later, we'd have had four boys and a daughter all strapped into or onto something.


My understanding of cars -- especially in the early '80s when we made that trip -- is that they run on gasoline and oil and that you also need to keep plenty of air in the tires and water in the radiator. I had no idea that carburetors needed to be adjusted for altitude, nor would I have known how, so when our stressed-out little brown barely-there car started gasping for air and straining its way up the mountainsides, I just pushed the pedal harder to the medal and tried to keep my eyes off the Land Rovers lining up in the rear view mirror. I looked and felt like a prairie geek.


We took a walk across the sky on the Royal Gorge Bridge, dipped our toes and kids in clear running springs, listened to John Denver cassette tapes until we could stand it no more and stretched the patience of the our oldest son, the only one who could talk, but could get no answers to the "are we there yet?" question because I was never sure where we were. I only knew that if I took my eyes off the road for one second we would be airborne.


And that led us to Ouray, the Switzerland of America, a quaint little town in a river valley in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. All I knew was that the gas gauge was near "E," the kids were crying, a dense fog was rolling in, night was falling and John Denver was singing about passing the pipe around for the 100th time that day. Hooray for Ouray. It would be a nice gas stop, a quick pass-through, a little diversion on the way to Silverton where we would finally rest.


Sometimes what we think are little diversions are the forks in the road. Night falls fast when mixed with fog flowing down from the mountainside.


On the edge of Ouray, our car gasping, we pulled into a little roadside gas station, just as the sign flickered out and the inside lights went dark. "No," I said aloud, waking the boys. "This can't be." As we coasted in, a tall shadowy figured emerged at the gas station door in the thickening darkness, securing the lock. Dressed in a long black cape, she glanced towards us, paused and waited.


"Hmmmm . . . . " I wondered. Coast on in or coax a little more from the gas vapors? Every scary movie from my childhood came to mind as all the color of the day faded to black-and-white . . . and long capes and fingernails . . . and noses.


She raised her hand and beckoned us to the pumps and met us there.


"Such a beautiful family," she said, peeking into the back at the wide-eyed boys whose lips were pulled back into grimaces of half-smiles as they looked back and forth at each other.


When I told her we were just gassing up and heading on to Silverton, she paused and smiled and said . . .


"You'll never make it in the dark with this fog. There's too many curves in the mountain roads. You'll plunge right over the edge."


I asked about a local hotel, but she said all the college students were down from Montrose and everything was booked.


"My name is Smiles," she said. "And I guess you all better just come home with me." I protested a bit, but she just waved a long finger at me, pointed at the boys in the back and told me I really didn't have a choice. And with that, she pulled the hood up on her black cape and we followed her into the foggy night. My Twilight Zone-based understanding of dark nights and strange places assured me we were doomed.


But of course, we weren't. Smiles was wonderful and her husband just as nice. Their house indeed looked like it was right out of Switzerland and the buckwheat pancakes and homemade syrup in the morning were . . . odd . . . but a really nice gesture. In the morning light, without a cape, she was just a nice lady who saved us from what would have been a devastating and prideful wrong turn at a providential fork in the road.


We went on our way, survived our vacation, changing diapers at every roadside attraction, and the car recovered from its asthma about the time we crossed back into Oklahoma. In the years since, I've often wondered if indeed I might have gone on in the dark and plunged my family though a fog-shrouded guardrail and into a deep gorge, had it not been for Smiles, beckoning us to pause at the fork in the road. I just needed to trust her, because she knew what I did not.


How many times in my life have I not paused when someone told me I should not go on down the path, along the course I had set out for myself? How many times have I pushed onward through the closing dark and the rolling fog? How many times did I come so close to the edge on the curve before finally plunging through that guardrail, taking my family along on the free fall to the rocks below?


I read a story yesterday about a car filled with young people that crashed through a guardrail in Tulsa, careening across two boulders placed to block the entrance to a deep rock quarry. The car went airborne and smashed to the earth 60 feet below, killing three of the friends. In an interview after learning of her driver-son's death, the mother said, "I think he just didn't know where he was going."


How many times have I not known where I was going, but insisted I drive on, figuratively, certain I could handle everything just fine . . . until I, of course, discovered I could not?


God's plan for us -- His path -- is not always clear. There is fog and sometimes darkness clouds the vision. But, there are also "Smiles," or people like her who step out of the fog and extend a hand and try to keep us from steering into a detour when we should probably just wait for the fog to lift.


Some of us are driving like mad, headed for a free-fall. Some of us are leaving the lights on just a little longer in hopes the others of us will pull off the road and rest and think and search for direction.


It doesn't really matter if the roads are curved and steep, or monotonous and stretched out long into the horizon, there are going to be forks in them. God knows which way we should go if we trust Him.


Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He Will make your paths straight. -- Proverbs 3:5-6.

God Bless,


Thom

The Blessing of the Taking Away

Naked I came from my mother's womb,

and naked I will depart.

The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;

May the name of the Lord be praised. -- Job 1:21

My first stepfather was a colorful character who could re-draw himself whenever necessary for the purpose of survival. He possessed a catalog of addictive behaviors and could shift from one to the other so easily it made it hard for anyone to put a finger on his issues. His destructive behaviors spilled over into the lives of everyone who knew him, yet somehow he could be charming and likable and always seemed worthy of one more chance. All of this, of course, led to eventual intense hatred towards him from all angles and I believe he died a very lonely and confused man who at some point could no longer shift his chameleon skin and became just a common lizard in the dust, overlooked.

His greatest affliction was narcissism. He could never be wrong. He could be drunk and broke and abusive and cruelly sarcastic and judgemental, but it was all because the world was out to get him.

I remember a day when I came walking home from school with a group of friends and my sisters and found him spreadeagled on an old mattress on the patch of lawn in front of our apartment building wearing only a tight t-shirt stretched across his swollen belly and gaping boxer shorts and black dress socks. He was protesting our broken air-conditioner, arguing in a loud voice with the elderly woman in a beehive hairdo who owned the building. We probably hadn't paid the rent . . . but his rights were being violated. I wish I could say that moment stands as the most embarrassing moment of my life, but I have since superseded it with my own actions.

I think, looking back, that it was not the world that was out to get my stepfather. Maybe it was God. I don't really know for sure, but Michael made it very clear that he had no need of God. He had his Black Crow whiskey, his poker friends, chocolate-covered cherries, cigarettes, TV dinners, Jackie Gleason and his typewriter repairman tools. He also had the ability to cry crocodile tears and fake fainting spells and gain the sympathy of others when his behavior reached the reeking point. He was too busy with himself to ever sense the presence of a God who could have forgiven all and given Michael a life of meaning.

Michael is on my list of forgiven. Of course he had an impact on my life. He entered it when I was only a little boy. However, beyond standing as a lesson of where life leads when we reject God's attempts to get our attention, his influence on me now is about as useful as his old typewriter tools.

I believe there are times when God does work in extreme ways to get our attention. He removes us from the routine of life; reminds us that everything we live for can fall away in an instant; that even the things we most love, in which we most invest, that we slowly built and admired, can fade and crumble into dust where lizards run.

For some of us, God has to go to great extremes. Sometimes when I look in the mirror in the morning I pause long enough to look into my own eyes and remind myself that I am indeed still me. In a relatively short time I have gone from a father surrounded by his five grown children and spouses and growing number of grandchildren, a very-involved church member, a well-established manager in a large company with significant responsibility, a man with plenty of friends and acquaintances and business associates . . . and a secret that was bouncing around all those areas like a spike-covered ball, slowly poking holes in my comfortable existence. Turns out the secret exploded like a landmine and took everything away with it.

A relatively short time later: no kids, no grandkids, no comfortable mid-management job, no respected business associates, no church even. But . . . no secret either. No spike-covered ball, no land-mine.

I hope for those of you who are struggling with some secret addiction of your own that you will hear the still-small-voice of God long before He finds He has to roar through your life like thunder to gain your attention and reclaim your soul.

While it is scary and lonely when life enters a period of isolation from the things we have built into it . . . it is in these dry places where no one can or maybe wants to help us that we find out that God is truly our only source. Our families, our jobs, our possessions, even our church friends can not heal us or protect us from ourselves. Only God can do that. And when we shift our attention away from our gains . . . and our secrets . . . He will.

Pretty much everything I had and everything I thought I ever wanted was gone. And I got to endure and overcome prostate cancer in the midst of it all. For what remains, including an incredible wife and a beautiful home, I am thankful. I think God was and is preparing me for a transition. And for restoration. If you're scratching your head at the losses in your life -- even if they're explained by your own actions -- you may be on the brink of restoration. Unless, of course, you reject it, as did Michael, and choose the dust.

The Bible is full of people who lost everything only to have it restored. Abraham was separated from his family and ended up in the Promised Land with countless descendants. Joseph's brothers tossed him out of the family and he became the second most powerful man in the world. Moses wandered in the desert for 40 years before he delivered his people from slavery. And David hid in caves and wondered aloud why everyone wanted to kill him. He was aware of his sins . . . but he was also aware of the greatness of his God. And God chose David to be a King.

I have no one to impress. No business associates to try to outdo. No committees to run. I'm not a role model; I'm not even really a peer. But whatever I am I am what God is creating me to be now. Believe me, He has more than my attention. This is, without a doubt, the strangest time in my life. Hence the reason I pause in the mirror to remind myself of who I am. I don't want to join those who have forgotten.

Back about the time my stepfather was flopping belly up in his skivvies in the Houston suburbs for all the neighbors and drive-by gawkers, there was a popular song out by The Byrds.

To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)

There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)

And a time to every purpose, under heaven.

A time to be born, a time to die.

A time to plant, a time to reap.

A time to kill, a time to heal.

A time to laugh, a time to weep.

A time to build up, a time to break down.

A time to dance, a time to mourn.

A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together.

A time of love, a time of hate.

A time of war, a time of peace.

A time to embrace, a time to refrain from embracing.

A time to gain, a time to lose.

A time to rend, a time to sew.

A time for love, a time for hate.

A time for peace, I swear it's not too late.

Of course, we know those "lyrics," with some minor adjustments, particularly there at the end, came from the third chapter of Ecclesiastes. They're timeless. Dolly Parton recorded them. Amy Grant sang them to close out every concert in her most recent world tour.

Whatever it is that God has in mind for this time, it's His. I'm giving it up to Him. I call it transparent, but I'm pretty much naked. If something is blocking you from hearing Him, I pray that you will let go of it before he applies the heavenly crowbar. Out of His great love for us and because of our value to him, He has a way of separating us from our idols and our secrets to get our attention so that we can discover things about ourselves we were denying and replace them with things we might never have known. That's revelation. That's grace.

God Bless,

Thom