All the King's Horses

The Weight of Who I Am 

Chapter Seven

All the King's Horses

This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. -- 1 John 5:3-5

It seems like I have always worked somewhere, whether selling donuts door-to-door, delivering cherry-limeades window-to-window, writing stories day-to-day, or sitting in staff meetings week-to-week. I've always worked somewhere doing something, just like it seems I have always gone to church, always had children, always had certain stable things by which I could measure my value and weigh my accomplishments to find some assurance I was somehow managing to stay somewhat on the right track. When life would go rickety on me, I could always either go to church, to work, or home, the things which can pull the wayward one back on line.

Always.

Of course, those are not the places we should hide when dark descends to cloak the light of life, because they too can become mere distractions designed to distance us from God. In extreme cases, we can use the church, the workplace and even the family to shield us from the truth of who we are and who He is. I was extreme.

During the same two weeks that my appeal to the church shifted from a hope for pastoral counseling to the reality of membership removal, the impact my arrest would have on my job as Oklahoma Chief of Staff for AT&T revealed itself. Twenty years of corporate ladder-climbing and employee loyalty found a formidable foe in the five-minute park conversation. Had the unraveling reached a point beyond retrieval? My well-known determination to rise above all things and emerge as a survivor was colliding head-on with my now well-known penchant for self-destruction. My senses were dulled; I was panicked; I was afraid. I was coming to grips with the reality that we are not guaranteed survival. Of all people, considering my in-the-spotlight falls in the past, I should have been prepared for the worst of consequences. Yet, somehow I had always been able to overcome my stumbling and move forward, nicked and hobbled, but whole.

Not always.

I knew my supervisor, the Oklahoma president of AT&T, was an avid newspaper reader. The Saturday morning page one Daily Oklahoman story of my arrest was not going to slip his attention or that of my co-workers. My mind wavered a bit between updating my will or sending the following May 2 e-mail:

May 2, 2009 

Dear -----, 

I'm writing from my personal e-mail box to advise you of a very serious issue that involves me. You have likely already heard about this and I apologize that it has taken me this long to contact you directly. I've been in a bit of shock, trying to make proper decisions. 

As you may know, I was arrested Thursday during my lunch hour in a sting operation at ------- Park targeted at men who were in the park seeking sexual gratification. While I was not there for that purpose, I did engage in a conversation with an undercover officer from the window of my vehicle to his which resulted in my arrest. I exercised poor judgement. 

As much as it pains me to admit it to you, I have had, in the past, a problem with same-sex attraction resulting from some issues earlier in life. That past made me too susceptible to the conversation once it began. Those issues and that problem have been dealt with through serious professional and prolonged pastoral counseling. My life has been very much in order and Lisa and I have been very happy and have a very stable marriage. However, based on my personal past and the circumstances surrounding the Thursday arrest, my situation will be viewed with great skepticism by some. Although this incident is not reflective of my present personal life, it brings great embarrassment to me, my family and to my workplace. 

I am sorry to have caused this difficulty. It is important to me to have a proper work ethic and to be professional, and, while this incident did not occur during work time, as I was out for lunch, it has created a notoriety that is very harmful. 

You are an excellent supervisor, -----, and have become a friend. I did not mean to cause you harm. 

My thoughts at this point are that I should retire. I know we have a busy week ahead, but it might be best if I take a week of vacation to consider the options and to reduce the potential for embarassment to you, especially with Mr. ------ coming to Oklahoma. The preparations for the visit have all been made. 

I appreciate your guidance here . . and I deeply apologize. I am attaching below the note I sent to my counselors yesterday. Lisa and I met with our pastor last night. 

Thom 

Much like my pastor, who had sped over with his tape recorder upon receiving my earlier e-mail, my boss responded quickly, within a few hours, in a way that steadied my breathing just a bit and allowed my mind to work. I have always been one to hustle around for crumbs of false hope.

Thom, 

I am sorry to hear about the situation, but am glad that it appears you have the support of your faith and family in dealing with this situation. I appreciate you bringing this to my attention, and think your suggestion of taking the next week off is a good one. Why don't you take this week to assess the current situation and your thoughts and we'll get through this week and discuss next steps. 

God bless. 

----- 

As Monday morning came, I tried to settle down, but panic set in when I saw my I.D. and key card lying motionless on the desk at home, the car in the driveway well past the morning rush hour, my briefcase sitting unopened where I left it by the chair on Friday, or when I would hope the phone would ring and then hope it would not. Lisa going about her daily routine in the house reinforced the imbalance of my not-so-routine presence as the day went by. I knew my fate was being hammered out in meetings and on phone calls of advisors behind the doors of corporate offices, just as it was in meetings of deacons and pastors. It would come down to a calculation based on "what is" and "what if." The result: "what will be."

My fate was tied up in a strange mix of prayers and gossip, fact and fiction, calculated risks, counted losses. It would not take a math genius or an imminent psychologist to know that this fall was well beyond all the king's horses, all the king's men. Only the King Himself could settle this one out.

Unfortunately, the on-line version of The Daily Oklahoman story opened an avenue for public comments posted by two of my own sons, hurt by the past, embarrassed by their father, susceptible to untruths and willing to pass them on. These too caught the eye of my supervisor, their weight magnified by them being posted by my own sons. Weeks later The Oklahoman would remove the remarks containing the false allegations even from the newspaper's archives, acknowledging they were posted in violation of The Oklahoman's policy. The untrue remarks had already done their damage.

The week flew by . . . like rocks in a race. The following Sunday, May 10, ----, my supervisor sent a brief note from his Blackberry asking if I could meet with him the next morning, to "discuss the current situation and next steps." Nine little characters on a smartphone keyboard: "next steps." Ominous.

The conversation in his office was a brief one, shared over diverted eyes, seemingly between two people who had never met, never worked together, never shared a project or a plan. I could stay . . . if I wanted to . . . but obviously not in the same job and not with the same responsibilities . . . and I would need to understand, he said, that Asset Protection would be asked to conduct an internal investigation. Vague and veiled, the suggestion was clear that this might be the best time for me myself to count the costs, close the door on the career, leave the key in the drawer. I had destroyed his sense of confidence in me and had become a liability instead of a leader. But, of course, I could stay if I wanted.

Monday afternoon, I responded:

May 11, 2009 

Dear _____, 

After our discussion this morning, I have decided to retire. I'll call Benefits this afternoon and begin the process. I assume the effective date will be this Friday, 5-15-09. 

I need to turn in my ID, secureID, keys, computer, Blackberry, and passwords. Do you want to schedule a time for me to come by or do you want me to leave them with -----? 

I made two return visits to the place where I had spent 20 years watching Southwestern Bell become SBC and finally AT&T, a constantly-challenging, always-changing, high-octane environment where I had spent countless hours with close and respected colleagues, melding our talents and our insights into success. I met briefly one afternoon with ---- and my successor, ----. It was late afternoon . . . and most of my co-workers were gone for the day and gone from my life. A few days later I returned after hours to gather up my personal belongings and leave my laptop. I wandered the familiar halls, empty and quiet. I detected the fading smell of someone's burnt popcorn, paused at the elevator and questioned whether I should have fought for my job . . . and then realized that my being there in the cover of after-hours was evidence I knew I would never have been able to return.

Having seen the ups-and-downs of 20 years in a corporate structure, I have always known that all careers, no matter how grand, eventually come down to cardboard boxes filled with photo frames off the desk, souvenirs from projects, a book or two, a few personal items, like broken glass from my windows blown out by the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, nameplates bearing various titles from past career points, a half-empty box of mints and a collection of birthday cards and assorted ataboys. Into the elevator, out the door, out of the parking space, down the oft-commuted highway and home. All over. Stunningly efficient and . . . stunning.

On May 15, 2009, I officially retired from AT&T. Twenty years of service, age 55 . . . totaling 75, the exact amount of combined time and service required for full retirement with pension, insurance and benefits. One day earlier would have been too few to qualify. May 15 was also my birthday, a quiet one for sure, but for the first time in two weeks I realized that God was in control. Life had come down to focusing on taking deep breaths, but there was a hint of possible peace in the inhaling.

Providence: God conceived as the power sustaining and guiding human destiny. 

By May 17, I was without church and without job, without colleagues, without children, most friends, any sense of a schedule, any idea of a future, no plans. Only Providence. And a wife who believes in Providence.

When I look back, I find myself wishing somehow that I could find greater distinctions between how my situation was handled by the church and by the corporation, both of which followed neat and final procedures to remove me. What would become of the once-reliable relationships with brothers and sisters in the church or co-workers in the company?

I have a blurry memory from when I was probably about six, playing ball in a vacant lot next to our home on Texas Street. My dad throws the ball a little harder and a little faster than my stick arms can handle and I dodge instead of catch. The ball bounces across the uneven ground and I realize that I have missed it, so I turn to run, Daddy cheering me on as I dash into the field. And then, I freeze in pain, just as I grab the ball and see that it is covered in stickers, almost as thickly as my bare feet, and now my hands. I am in the thickest sticker patch I have ever seen and cannot move, can only cry. There is no where to go, nothing I can do but absorb the pain and cry.

And Daddy, in his leftover WWII combat boots, crosses the field, picks me up and begins to pull the stickers out my hands, my feet and the ball, one by one. After I healed, we found another place to play.

It had been a very hard couple of weeks, but much lay ahead. There was a charge to be addressed, which meant there was an attorney to be hired and a plea to be made.

Providence?

About 40 Years Earlier 

Denton, Texas

If God does indeed have a plan for each of us, and I believe He does, then it may be irrelevant to wonder how my life might have turned out had we never made the late-'60s move from Lewisville back to Denton. The list of things that would never have happened would have been replaced with a different list of things that would have. The confusing events set to unfold were likely not at all dependent on where I was, but just a continuation of who I was. In Houston I had given my life to Christ; in Lewisville I had learned the truth that God is always with me. In Denton I would be exposed to things that in some ways might have been easier to accept had I not believed at all in an omnipresent and unshakable God.

I'm not sure why we left Lewisville, but it was most likely because of my Mother's jobs in Denton, and her determination to, at this point in life, put her children first and provide as best she could, finally free -- we thought -- from our stepfather. Mother had ably adapted to single-parenting, even teaching me to drive at the age of 13 . . . in Lewisville. As usual, she did it her way, leaving a lasting impression.

Naturally we had the ugliest car in Lewisville . . . in the county . . . probably in the state. I remember wondering what auto designer in his right mind would have dreamed up the huge pink Buick we referred to as a boat, and what person in her right mind would have bought it. It occurred to me that the ugliest car was likely the cheapest car in the county as well, which explained why Mother would have bought it, charming some used car salesman to some how part with it. If charm hadn't worked, tears would have. On the rare occasions when Mother would take us out for a bit in the boat, we would usually duck down behind the big pink front seat, to remain unseen.

My opinion of the boat changed when Mother gave in to the notion I needed driving lessons. It was "My Buick" now as we made our way slowly around the low-traffic residential neighborhood in Lewisville. I followed the instructions to "turn right here," "slow it down," "stop behind the sign," "sit up so you can see over the steering wheel." Then came "turn left," and I encountered my first gravel road, which I put a little power into, discovering the responsiveness of a mid-60's V-8 engine.

The boat roared forward, slid left to right, skidded into the downgrade and I, of course, sitting up to see over the steering wheel, put an extra foot on the gas pedal. The boat was flying . . . at least until boat met truck, a nice shiny truck parked in front a nice home that just didn't belong on that gravel street.

"Get out," Mother said in her loud and commanding whisper, as she opened the driver-side door, pushed me out onto the gravel road, slammed the door shut, slid over behind the wheel and began to bawl hysterically, just about the time the man of the house -- who just happened to be a sheriff's deputy in uniform -- made his way from the porch, across the lawn and around to her window.

"I don't know how it happened," she said to the officer through her tears, looking back and forth from the dented front right of the boat to the crunched left door of the county's truck.

The deputy's eyes shifted from Mother in the car to me in the road to my little sister in the backseat, doing her best to mimic Mother's great sorrow. He wasn't stupid. This was more drama than he needed.

"It'll be okay, Ma'am," he said. "You go on along . . . and be careful now."

It had not taken him long to surmise the situation and realize that we probably had enough trouble just coming up with 25 cents for a gallon of gas, much less insurance, and for sure, no way to pay a ticket for an unlicensed underage driver in a boat-truck mishap. It would have to be one of those "your county taxes at work" moments.

I climbed in the backseat; we drove home and my love of cars began. Man, what an engine. Mother, to her credit, self-repaired the broken headlight, decided it was her fault after all and we never talked about it unless we laughed. Who knows, maybe that's one of the reasons we left Lewisville.

Returning to Denton brought back a rush of childhood memories, just in time to compound emerging adolescence. My father had left us in Denton. Mr. Hooten had sexually abused me in Denton. Best dogs and good friends had died there. Mother would be taking us to the same park where Daddy had come to visit us on weekends before we had moved to Shawnee and Houston and Lewisville.

But . . . I was sure all those things were behind me now. I was not my daddy's "Tombo," and I was no one's little buddy. I was God's and I was good. Even more important, I was a roller-skating car-hop dodging plastic pink monkeys on the Sonic Drive-In lot, risking my life skating between distracted drivers cruising in their souped-up cars. Following in the footsteps of my older brother who had been promoted to cook, I was delivering foot-long coneys and cherry limeades to the waiting windows of the popular kids who had cars and girlfriends and money. And I was getting paid 70 cents an hour, plus tips. Life had meaning, at least from four to midnight.

As a 14-year-old, I wanted two things: a watch and a car. For some reason, wearing a watch bought with my own money seemed like a milestone to maturity. A car of my own meant I could cruise the main drag and park at Sonic, like any other customer. I was determined that being 14 was not to be an obstacle.

Our duplex on Denison St. -- not just an apartment for once -- was about equal distance between the junior high and the Sonic and when I wasn't in school or working, I was walking to one or the other. After school, I would walk down Denison toward the Sonic and stop at the Kentucky Fried Chicken for a chicken leg and a biscuit served up by an Aunt Bee look-alike. She could have been straight out of Mayberry and I felt as normal as Opie, telling her about my dreams to own a watch. Indeed, the day I paid the last layaway payment at Zales, in the shopping center down the street, she was the first person to see my gold watch. She gave me a hug and biscuit.

Prior to junior high I had the impression that there were really only two categories of people: good and bad. Mr. Hooten and Michael were bad. Jon David and my Sonic boss, John, were good. I had not really categorized my dad; it just seemed like something I should not do. Family members deserved a pass and time to work it out, so Daddy, my mother and my brother were floaters. My sisters were good.

It was simple before the shades of gray crept in and before teachers and co-workers began to point out distinctions in everything from color to sexual preference, something I had never before considered. I preferred the simplicity of good or bad. Good people sometimes do bad things; bad people can even do good things. Yet, people, I began to learn, are more complicated than they seem. One semester of Mrs. Birchfield's junior high social studies made it clear: this world is messed up. She was a woman on a mission of confusion and my mind was a witting target.

I sat uncomfortably near the front row, not far from Keith, one of the most popular boys in the school, a junior high quarterback, class president. The son of a local up-scale clothing store owner, Keith was the sharpest-dressed kid in the school. I, on the other hand, sometimes came to school in the black pants and white shirt uniform of a carhop.

"Take Keith and Thom, for instance," said Mrs. Birchfield to the class one day. "They have something very much in common."

"No, we don't," I said to myself. "Nothing at all." Not in social studies or anywhere else social.

"Look at them," she said. And everyone did.

"See Thom's and Keith's thick lips?" The studied expression on the thirty other kids showed they clearly did see, despite my deep-red glow.

"Well," said Mrs. Birchfield in her sweet teacher voice. "That's because somewhere in their past, they inherited Negro blood."

The sixties were a confusing time for race relations . . . but that had clearly been lost on Mrs. Birchfield. Keith storming out of the classroom and my sinking behind the desk may have brought her some clarity. The kids in the class, regardless of color, were not sure whether to be mad, sad, silent or just giggle. I, for one, didn't really care what blood I had: I just didn't want people staring at my lips, and wold prefer at that point in life they not even glance in my direction. I'm sure, at some point, Mrs. Birchfield and the junior high higher authorities somehow straightened it all out, even without sensitivity training, and we moved on, but the innocence of the '60s was beginning to fade.

Looking back, I can see that a lack of awareness can be a blessing as much as a curse. I learned as much from Keith's reaction as I did from Mrs. Birchfield's revelation. People, I would find, are not only different outside, but inside as well, and sometimes the difference in heart and mind magnifies the outside differences way beyond where they should be. It was a lot to think about on that day's long walk to work. "Aunt Bee" assured me I was exactly who God had made me to be and she gave me a biscuit to boot.

At least it would be one of my last down-Denison walks. Mother's decision to teach me to drive at 13 led to my insistence that I buy a car at 14 and apply for a hardship license, which I was able to get because I was a working boy. That was something Keith and I definitely did not have in common: hardship.

Though not the car of my dreams, the 1960 Ford Falcon, which my boss helped me finance for $300 and which my tips helped me pay off at the rate of $25 a month, was at least red, which counted for something. It was also a standard with a floor-mounted stick shift, something my mother had not taught me about, but about which I soon learned on a long grinding and grueling drive across Denton. I couldn't wait to show off my car, but I was very careful for a while to pick routes that avoided every hill and stoplight.

I had my watch and I had my car and I had a feeling that life was changing. I'm not sure, as we grow up, that we realize the way change creeps in on us, inching along with varying levels of protection based on the proficiency of parenting. At that point in my life, I felt fortunate to have only minor parental interference, embracing the excitement of discovery, but doing so with a sense of foreboding, as if something might go wrong. I kept most people at arm's length as I observed and analyzed, proceeding with caution, always on alert, very observant, withholding and waiting, wanting by wondering. The more aware I became of how different people are, the more different I felt myself. Mrs. Birchfield could have learned a lot about social studies by carhopping at the Sonic.

And a lot about sex, something I was naturally curious about at the age of 14. I realized that some of the guys -- the older ones -- had inside jokes they would share with each other and ways of teasing that singled people out. Some of the jokes were about the girls that worked there; some of the jokes were about a few of the guys. Two of the girls were known for being particularly "easy," I was told, and one of the guys, I was also told, was a "homo," whatever that was. The older boys would face off against each other to give the girls a ride home after the evening shift, and they were always joking that "Mark" had to get his work finished at the Sonic so he could do his second job at the car wash. I was not interested in driving the girls home, not because I did not like girls, but because I was not too sure about the "easy" part. It also made no sense to me that anyone would work at a car wash after midnight.

Only when Mark came into work one afternoon with a wide scrape across his head and a bruise on his cheek did I hear that he had been beaten up, allegedly because he had been hanging out again . . . at the car wash, and someone apparently had been less than happy to see him there. His co-workers' under-the-breath taunts of "homo," soon led to his decision to quit his job and I never saw Mark again. Still, the awareness that he was different and the dangers of being so stayed with me and I vowed I would never be like Mark. At the same time, I would not be like Edward, who liked to call his friends back into the cooler to tell them stories of his exploits with the girls he would take home from work at night.

I asked Kevin, one of the older boys, what a "homo" was and he said, "you don't want to know." I asked Lance, another of the older boys, and he, thinking I was somehow interested, took me into his confidence and we drove out on a country road, parked on a hill above Denton and he showed me his private collection of self-produced Polaroid porn, all neatly laid out and labeled in a three-ring binder . . . just like the one I had in social studies. Why was he showing me this? I had an inquiring mind, but this I did not want to know.

Some might say that these types of incidental encounters and passing exposures comprised the sex education of the '60s for many teen boys. Maybe so, but it was something I would have wanted to ask someone about . . . someone I could trust, perhaps a dad. But I didn't have a dad. I did, however, have a car . . . and a watch . . . at least something in common with Keith, and a determination that things I did not understand really did not matter.

I liked the freedom of being a teenager in Denton with a mother who worked two jobs, but it had not taken long for life to take some unwelcome turns. Some days were dazzling in their freedom -- driving my own car to an out-of-town football game, revving at the red lights next to new-found friends who had nothing in common but a command of the clutch -- but other days were like wandering into a field of stickers and wishing someone would come and carry me out. I found myself longing for Lewisville, for Bill's butcher shop and a simple barbecue sandwich with good old Jon David. A Bible sword drill would have been fun.

Life affords little opportunity for going back, instead pursuing us and pushing us forward. The next great push would come with the return of Michael.

(Next Week: Chapter Eight.)

Jilting Jeremiah: The Consequence of Context

Aimless, frame-less, never blameless

Declaring self but feeling nameless

Wandering, watching, reaching, aching

What plans today are we forsaking?

Questions, answers, wants and needs

Paths and trails and doors and deeds

Cleared or opened . . . closed or blocked

Perhaps because we never knocked.

-- Thom Hunter

The Weight of Who I Am

Chapter Six

Jilting Jeremiah:  The Consequence of Context

"I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." -- Jeremiah 29:11

Barely more than 36 hours into the great unraveling, Lisa made tea.  After all, the pastor was coming.

When in self-induced trouble, the Bible verses that come to my mind are not the ones that bubble up on joyous days.  As I stood at the window watching for Pastor ---- to pass in front of the house, park in the driveway, travel the sidewalk and pause before pushing the doorbell, I found myself pondering the applicability of the verses in Matthew 18 where we're told to forgive seven times seventy times.  I grappled for verses of grace, stories of stones being dropped, examples of mercy.  I wanted hope, but anticipated doom.

I had learned long ago that smiles and handshakes are most-often just part of getting to the business at hand.  Pastor ---- went through those motions and soon we sat, brief prayer followed by a long sigh and an uncomfortable 15 seconds of silence before he turned on his digital recorder and began to ask his questions.  This would be a conversation of consequence, filled with devilish details of my previous day's dance along the edge of disaster.  Slowly and methodically I told Pastor ---- the story of how the unremarkable errand had led to the innocent car-to-car conversation in the park which eroded into the inappropriate expression of sexual banter and suggestion, exploding into an against-the-car pat-down search in handcuffs and 12 hours of jail and 24 hours of self-judgment . . . preparation for the external waves of judgment to come.  I told him everything my rattled mind could remember.

Pastor ---- clicked off the recorder.  It was his time to sigh and say, "Well, brother . . ." leaving his sentence as open-ended as the deepest well I had ever known.

And then there's context.

The reality is that while things may happen in real time, and words be spoken in a particular moment, we analyze them in context with the actions, reactions, events, declarations and decisions that precede.  Just as I would often explain my adult sexual brokenness in the context of unresolved issues of a dark past, I knew that the events of April 30 and the now-recorded words of May 1, would be measured in context with earlier slips into the abyss.  Today's truth would be watered down and dissolved in previous days' deceptions.

My "thanks for coming by," felt more like "nice to have known you;" his "goodnight" more like "goodbye." And that's the unintended consequence of context.

Pastor ---- was diligent.  He reviewed my remarks; he drove to Oklahoma City to view the scant police record and verify the charge:  "engaging in an act of lewdness in public."  He consulted with his deacons and his mentors.  Six days later, I received this e-mail from Pastor ----.

May 7, 2009

Thom,

The leadership, consisting of the Pastor and Deacons, have met several times and had many extended discussions about the recent events, as well as the entire history of your ongoing struggles.  After examining the evidence thoroughly and carefully, we have come to the unanimous conclusion that you are not walking out your repentance as you claim to be and that your recent arrest and charge on April 30^th is the final proof that you are continuing in a lifestyle of homosexual sin, as well as continuing to intentionally deceive your wife, your church and others about that lifestyle.  We are agreed that there is now no choice but to comply with the commands of Scripture in 1 Corinthians 5:1-13 to remove you from the fellowship and membership of ----- ---- Baptist Church.

This has been a heartbreaking process for all of us.  We were devastated to hear of your arrest because we have prayed and labored for nearly two years now to help you be free of this sinful domination.  There has been sorrow in all of our hearts about your family and the consequences this has for your marriage, your job and your children.  We are still praying that God will radically transform your heart and bear the fruit of true repentance in your life.  We will also be praying for your family as they suffer the inevitable consequences.

On Sunday, May 17^th at 7:00 pm, we will hold an official business meeting of the church for the purpose of hearing testimony and voting on your removal from membership.  You will be given an opportunity to speak in your defense before the church at that time if you so desire.  You also are welcome to speak privately with the leadership at any time prior to this meeting if you have testimony or evidence that would prove your innocence in these matters, particularly regarding your arrest.  We will be meeting on Saturday, May 9^th, at 7:00 pm at ----’s house for this purpose, as well as to pray.  Please let us know if you intend to speak to us on Saturday and of your intentions to be present and/or speak to the church on Sunday night, the 17^th.

We have earnestly studied, prayed and discussed this matter almost incessantly since last Friday, May 1^st, when we were first made aware of the situation.  I hope you understand our sincere desire to see you liberated from sin and free in the power of Christ.  Even in this difficult and final stage of church discipline, we are praying for a spiritual breakthrough that leads to true repentance and brings lasting fruit.

Your Pastor and Deacons

"Spiritual breakthroughs" are not always well-aligned with human hopes.  "True repentance" is not easily measured with human hands.  "Lasting fruit" may be slow to ripen in human lives.   But God -- who is love -- is patient and kind, all-seeing and all-knowing.  I understand -- in the context of human reaction -- why God says His burden is easy and His yoke is light.

I did have one more conversation with Pastor ---- to help determine whether there was any hope in my attendance at the May 9 and May 17 meetings.  Unfortunately, the powerful verbal semantics of "engaging" would overpower any explanation I could offer.  The very word indicates action and it was clear to Pastor ---- that if I had not been "engaging" in some lewd act, the ticket would have been written in some other way.  Unless I could prove I was not "engaging," there was no need to meet; fate sealed.  While the newspaper called the charge "alleged," and the lawyer, plea and court action would determine my fate elsewhere, the word "engaging" written by an officer's hand on a little pink ticket warranted turning me over for the destruction of my flesh by my local church.  I had engaged in conversation, nothing else, but case closed, as far as Pastor ---- was concerned.

Another consequence of context: once a liar, always a liar?  While I had admitted to having engaged in sexual activity with men in the past, I had also lied -- out of fear and for regard of self-preservation --  about having done so in the past.  In Pastor ----'s mind, the deceptive-protective me was dominant to the truthful-humble me that was developing cautiously through the ongoing practice of repentance, an ongoing practice that had found itself challenged full-force by the powerful pull of an unwanted sexual addiction.

In earlier conversations, months before the arrest, Lisa and I both had asked Pastor ---- and the chairman of the deacons, who had become a personal friend, if we could share about my struggles with other members of the church, believing that more transparency would mean greater accountability as I sought to walk away from the temptations that had plagued me for so many years.  The answer from both was that the church members were not at a point where they could handle that kind of information and it would be better to keep it among ourselves.  In retrospect, I wish I had spoken out, regardless of the pastor's timidity.  My wife and I would have benefited from the support of other Christian couples. I believe every church should equip itself to address the sins of its members . . . no matter what sin it might be . . . and help them find freedom.

On the night of May 17, I sat at home while my wife attended the evening service at ----- ---- Baptist Church where Pastor ---- laid out the charges and presented his evidence and the church voted my removal as my wife sat in silence beside Stephen Black, director of First Stone Ministries, who was there to witness and to comfort.  Pastor ---- had urged Lisa to attend, telling her his presentation would be compelling and provide new information that would open her eyes.  He was unable, however, to close her heart.  My children -- grown, and members of another church -- had been invited to the closed church meeting as well.

I have forgiven Pastor ---- for being hasty, for not probing deeper for the truth beyond a pink piece of paper, for perhaps being swayed by a mentor, and even for proceeding in a prideful, boastful way by proclaiming that night, in front of my wife and children, that his church would now flourish from the rooting out of a sinful member.  One less man to pastor.  And soon, one less woman.  My courageous wife, who felt God leading her to continue attending ---- ---- Baptist Church in the weeks following my removal, was soon told by Pastor ---- that she needed to leave, to ease the discomfort among the members that her presence was causing.  "You're a nice lady," he told Lisa, "But we just don't want you here anymore."  His words shocked her.  She believed she was only doing what God wanted her to do; the sorrow was slow to fade.

I see now that God was in the process of removing more of the thorns that have always plagued the progress of the plans He has for me.  Pulling out thorns is painful.  In a span of 16 days -- from arrest to removal -- I lost the anchor the local church provides, the ear of a pastor, the friendship of the members and the fellowship of the brothers.  It was getting very quiet, with some of the greatest battles yet ahead.

Besides Pastor ---- and Stephen, I had written one more e-mail on May 1.  It went to my boss, the Oklahoma president of AT&T, someone I worked closely with as his chief of staff.

It wouldn't take long for him to respond.

The mid '60s

Affliction and addiction have more in common than just the fact they make good rhyming words in poems.  Both come upon you subtly and cling tenaciously; both ebb and flow, come and go; fool you into thinking at times they have departed completely and then, peeking around some corner in the shadows, jump at every opportunity to re-state the power they have over you.

My stepfather, Michael was an addicted affliction.  He lurked pretty much around every corner and was adept at creating opportunity.  Fleeing from him was really the only option, hoping his debilitating addiction to alcohol and self would slow down the determined affliction he was to our family.  Generally we would sneak away under the cover of one of his stupors, hitting the highway while he was hitting the bottle, or while he was hitting the floor after hitting the bottle.  He was sneaky and sleazy, but he had his predictable points.

It was such a down-the-interstate sneak-away that led us to Lewisville, Texas, the home of The Fighting Farmers -- yep, that's the high school football team -- and not much else in those days.  A sleepy little town north of Dallas. I'm not sure why we ended up in Lewisville, except perhaps the possibility that cheap apartments were cheaper there.  Maybe we thought if we crammed ourselves into a little apartment, which itself was crammed into a paved plot between a Minyard's grocery store and a respectable housing addition, Michael (A&A -- addiction and affliction) would not find us.  I cannot imagine the mountains of macaroni my mother bought at Minyard's on her single-mom salary.

I was entering that age when material things matter; mansions come to mind, so I hoped no one else would find us either.  We were not coming up in the world.  Still, there was something oddly comforting about living a lifestyle that allowed for a constant do-over, a new beginning always on the horizon, albeit the route always seemed to be across broken-glass, hot asphalt and jarring potholes, like the parking lots that were often just inches out our front door, a convenience when you have a drunk in the family.

I left Houston with Jesus and glasses.  I was different now . . . over it.  "It" being the rejection I had felt during the years since my parents' divorce.  "It" being memories of perverted pain in the hands of pedophile.  "It" being Michael.  All gone.  Boxed up.  Done.  I could barely quote John 3:16 . . . but I was sure that in the short time I had known Jesus, He had taken care of  "it" all.  I was good.  None of that stuff mattered any more.  New place; new me.

Oh, child.

My "I'm an island" stance among the high-rises and highways of Houston dissolved in the fuzzy welcomeness of little town Lewisville.  At this point in life, I had learned that the best thing to do when you come into a new place is make the best of it because it will not last and you will move on.  Remain untouched; leave unscathed. But, in Lewisville, I learned that measuring growth is more than making lines on a wall to mark the height one's head from the floor.  I learned that even good and right caring is painful.  I witnessed personal sacrifice . . . and I think I may well have come to the point of truly loving my mother, releasing her from the blame I had piled on her for what others had done.

And I met Jon.  Jon David.  Of course, I also met Paul and Timothy and Phillip and Mark.  These were not biblical characters, but the "perfect family" that lived on the other side of the fence that separated us apartment dwellers from the neighborhood.  I needed a friend and Jon's charismatic, energetic, ever-exploring, constantly-dreaming personality was the spark I needed to uncover the parts of me I had buried inside in my zeal for self-preservation.  His sincere interest in me made it impossible to hide.

Jon was a preacher's kid and I quickly became a preacher's-kid-sidekick, though I could tell early on that his Dad knew a heathen had invaded the gates.  I reached for the bread before bowing in prayer.  I was dismal at Saturday night Bible sword drills, struggling at first to even find Matthew, much less Zephaniah.  Longing for  Jon's approval, I memorized the location of the books of the Bible and eventually did Liberty Baptist Church proud at the regional youth meetings.  And it didn't take long before I was bowing with the best of them at all times appropriate.

Twelve-year-olds don't have the privilege of retrospection.  I did not realize that I was, in a sense, carrying a crush for Jon, not in a sexualized way, but in a way where someone broken looks longingly at someone whole, believing that through mimicry he can minimize the impact of brokenness, or that through that person's acceptance and approval, the brokenness will disappear.  In this childhood relationship, I was experiencing what would be replicated through many years of seeking completion.  And Jon, so comfortable even at that age with being admired, accepted it.

To me, Jon's life was perfect.  A mom who sold Mary Kay Cosmetics  . . . and a dad who stood in the pulpit, four brothers, a house.  Jon even had a man's job, working as a butcher's assistant in a shop downtown.  I would walk several miles each Saturday to have a barbecue sandwich, just to spend time with Jon in the bloody spectacle of the meat shop.  I admired his already big hands, scarred from near-misses with the massive knives.  I was not aware in those days of the dangers of making someone an idol.

Indeed, in 7th grade, with the two of us being arguably the most popular boys in school -- I was aware my popularity depended on his proximity -- we ran for class president against each other.  The thought of him losing was more painful to me than the prospect of me winning was pleasurable.  I bowed out and even went so far as to break school rules, tossing in the air in the crowded between-class hallways hand-made campaign sheets marked "Vote for Jon," with a piece of forbidden bubble gum attached with a staple.  He won.

I ignored or minimized the rougher side of his perfect reality.  His father's weekday temper, always tamed by Sunday, but released with frequency at Jon for insufficient performance at chores, or for an inappropriate slip of the tongue, or an insolent response, often leading to a front-yard yelling match, his dad throwing things at him as he ran down the street and telling me to get out of the neighborhood.  I'm not sure which bothered Jon the most:  the high-speed level of the violent eruptions or the speed of the ensuing calm that followed with the absence of any real comfort or clarification.  It was more confusing for Jon than for me. I boiled it down:  "At least you have a dad."

It would take years for me to fully understand Jon's influence on my life, as, of course, we moved away from Lewisville far too soon.  Still, we would be friends for several more years, even after I left Lewisville, making it perhaps the first sustained relationship of my life.  Through that, I would realize that people like Jon, who grew up under a rigid set of rules and a tight guiding hand with great expectations, suffer in ways that differ from someone like me, too free and void of much expectation at all.  The pressure of great expectations can exact a tragic toll, as time would tell for Jon.

I believe, in Lewisville, my mother helped us reclaim a bit of the dignity that had disintegrated on the dingy streets of Houston.  She was a different mother without my stepfather, though stressed by working two jobs and still coming up too short on the due dates.  Mother was still a connection to the possibility of normalcy; nothing and no one else had been there for the duration of my whole life to that point.  And really, no one was as oddly normal for the '60s as my mom.

Whether it was Christmas or a crisis . . . which in our state of being could be wound around each other . . . she was consistent in her efforts to breathe pride into our lives, albeit in her own remarkable way.

Christmas first.

All of my life, the announcement of the coming of Christmas came right after Thanksgiving when Mother would put the Bing Crosby and Perry Como albums on the hi-fi and crank them up while dusting and rearranging the furniture for the tree.  The dusty old boxes would come out from closets and from under beds.  Bing would sing "White Christmas" a thousand times in vain, wherever we were in Texas in our short-sleeves, vainly looking at the sky.

In Lewisville, though, even Bing was having trouble bringing the Christmas spirit into the Hunter house . . . that shabby little Minyards-shadowed apartment.

"Mom," I whined in chorus with my sisters and my brother.  "It's only four days 'till Christmas and we're the only people in the entire world who don't have a Christmas tree."  Never mind that the absence of a tree left no place for all the presents that were surely hidden . . . somewhere.

"We'll get one tonight when I get home from work," Mother sighed.  I remember thinking how heavy a sigh it was.

After school that day, we sat in the living room watching TV on our old black-and-white until the taxi pulled up and Mother was home from work.  We rushed her.  She was barely in the door when we pulled her back out into the night and across the alley to Minyards to get our tree.  Our $7 tree.

I had never seen a crooked tree.

"We'll make it work," Mother said, all smiles as she put the ever-encouraging Bing on the hi-fi and hot dogs on the stove so we could eat and decorate at the same time.

We set it up.  It fell over.
We put a string around it and thumbtacked it to the wall.  It fell over.

To a Perry Como serenade, Mother got some nails from a kitchen drawer and with not the slightest hesitation hammered the tree directly to the floor through the worn carpet and into the wood below.  I couldn't speak, but just sat and basked in her victory.

We decorated and decorated . . . lights . . . ornaments . . . icicles.  In awe, we turned off the ceiling light and viewed the beauty of the makeover of the crooked $7 tree.  She was right.  We had made it work.

We stood back, hot chocolate in hand, and admired the tree from every angle.  First came the muted but growing creaking sound . . . then the slow-motion but clearly-progressive tilt as the back of the stand lifted off the floor and followed the angle of the crooked bend in the tree.  Gracefully, like a ballerina taking a bow, the tree moved from perpendicular to parallel, sending fragments of Christmas past flying and shattering on the floor as it kissed the coffee table.

Well, Christmas is a crisis when a tired mother has been scorned and is $7 lighter in the wallet.  In the wink of an eye, Mother unplugged the lights, jerked the stand, bent nails and all, out of the floor, reaching through one of the many bare spots to grab the tree by the trunk.  Mother headed out the door, across the parking lot, down the alley and straight for Minyards, icicles swirling, light cords dangling and dragging through the dry leaves littering the cluttered street gutters.

"Mother," I shrieked.  "Please don't do this!  It doesn't matter."

Apparently, it did.

I remember thinking that every one of my classmates, or at least Jon and his brothers, would be in the checkout line, pointing at the crazy woman doing a Grinch number with the ugliest tree in town.  There are some blessings to growing up in the days before everyone automatically dialed 911.

All the stress and strain of a long year came flowing out as Mother tried to explain, through mascara-dingy tears, that her children would not have a Christmas tree this year and it was all Minyard's fault because they were pawning off defective trees for an outrageous $7.  The store went on automatic pilot as every checker in the place paused to see what the boss would do for this poor, hysterical lady and her stunned children who were hiding behind the line of carts, outside the possible line of fire.  The store manager paused only briefly, realized all were unarmed, smiled and stepped forward to reclaim the tree.

Our new tree -- with a wonderfully-straight trunk and gleaming new decorations -- was beautiful.  Not a bare spot, not a crook, not a tilt. And the box of Christmas candy, offered free and in true Christmas spirit by the teary-eyed checkers themselves, was the best we'd ever had.  We finished the glorious tree with tinseled icicles -- one at a time, of course -- and I sat beneath the tree and celebrated one of my own traditions, finger-swinging from one icicle to the next, from branch to branch, perfecting a Tarzan yell while my sisters rolled their eyes.  Christmas would not crash after all.

My big Christmas gift that year.  Chinese checkers.  Not really.  What I really received was a bit of joy that had been missing for too long . . . and the clear sense of being loved.  I realized that night that my mother would go through anything, including public humiliation, to meet my needs and demonstrate the resiliency and faithfulness of her love.

Sadly, I would put that resiliency and determination to greater tests.

Our time in Lewisville was more than just finding a buddy on the other side of a fence and a tree that refused to fall, but those experiences stand out because they provide reminders for me that stability can be discovered in the midst of chaos.  We all need to catalog times when we are loved and accepted beyond our merit, so we can use them to prop ourselves up when we are leaning and about to crash.

In the context of the complete journey, Lewisville was a relevant rest stop along the road.

Silent Statues in a Graceless Garden

If I was still climbing, you'd steady the ladder.

If I were in pain, you'd ask what was the matter.

So why all the silence when you saw me falling?

Why turn away slowly when you hear me calling?

If grace flows so freely, then why are we silent?

If God says to give it, then why so defiant?

If grace we've been given so we keep on livin'

Then why so be so graceless to the other forgiven?

Is my sin so mighty and I'm so to blame?

While yours is so silly it's not worth the shame?

Is that what grace does, covers sins just so small,

That we wouldn't really need grace that much at all?

I truly don't think so; I think we're all wrong

If our grace is for some and not for the throng.

So why are you silent, when ladders are falling,

Reducing to whispers the cries of the calling?

'Tis grace helps the fallen to rise to his feet,

While the lack of grace lowers him down to defeat.

God's grace, we all know, is abundant and free

To choose who receives it is not up to me.

-- Thom Hunter

Human Beings, like plants, grow in the soil of acceptance, not in the atmosphere of rejection -- John Powell.

One of the benefits of living in apartments and duplexes most of my growing-up years was that yard-work was pretty much someone else's problem. Still, we occasionally lived in homes with fairly good-sized yards, and, being a boy, I was expected to mow.  It helped that I had an older brother who was the first on-call, though he was too soon gone, his motorcycle affording a means of escape from anything that did not appeal to him, like lawn-mowing.  I have to admit, my memories are more of my mother putting her full weight behind the push mower, which was always choking on the too-tall weeds that tended to mark our yards, but I did do my share.

To me, the mower was power.  I would survey the yard with all the Bermuda grass "antennas" sticking up jaggedly and envision them as TV antennas over the thousands of homes that populated the yard, living rooms filled with lazy, hapless viewers . . . and then I would put myself into a spirit of annihilation and let the destruction roar and roll.  "You're next," I would say to a plot of green-ville and would even, every now and then, decide who was living in the "house" I was about to shred.

I was indiscriminate.  If you were between the porch and the curb, your house and all within was going down.  How dare you get out of control in my yard?  Nothing short of perfect 3/4" submission would be accepted. Grasshoppers and doodle-bugs that didn't flee surrendered the right to be.

I would not have made a very good God.  I was into whirling blades, not unlimited grace.  Yes, I know it was just a yard and it all grew back with vengeance, but in my metaphor-making machinations, I was a cruel master.

And then life continues on and the mower becomes the mowed and wonders "where's the grace" of which we all so boast?  Can Christians be known for our love and, at the same time, recognized for our lack of grace?

A few weeks ago, with company on the way and a garden that had been graced with Oklahoma's extreme weather -- 106 degree days followed by six-inch rains -- I found myself on my knees furiously pulling two-feet-high weeds from around hidden vines of cantaloupe and cucumber, their fruit mis-colored and mis-shaped by the absence of sun under the crowded shadow of choking weeds.  My grown-up mind reflected on my boyhood of the antenna-crunching of the innocent, but I had adapted to the passage of years and the gain of life's experience to a better metaphor.

"You're next," I would say to a clump of weeds as my gloved hand reached down to the base just above the roots.  Only this time, I found myself ripping judgement from the ground, plucking harshness, dislodging rejection, culling out complacency, digging up haughty arrogance, pulling prideful finger-pointing.  I would pause and look around and realize the never-endingness, the impossible task of getting every weed, and when I viewed it as a landscape, it seemed impossible indeed.  But when I focused on just the weeds before me, each came up and eventually the so-craved-sun found the distorted fruits of the hidden vines and shined like grace to say it's your time again to grow.

I know what grows in the garden in the absence of grace.  It is bitterness, the mis-shaped fruit of those gasping for grace, thirsting for forgiveness, reaching for restoration, but hidden beneath the weeds of rejection and crowded out by the jungle of judgment.  Grace tends the garden so the root-bound can grow again.

Withholding grace from those who sin and repent. . . is a sin.  Like the weeds that came into the Garden with the original fall, the weeds of withheld grace take root in the spring, take over the summer and become the harvest of autumn.

A man or woman who struggles with a habitual or addictive sin -- such as acting out on same-sex attraction, heterosexual or homosexual lust, viewing pornography, committing adultery -- learns that these particular sins are deemed by many Christians as too slippery for the grip of grace.  Maybe the deeming is not official, but more an expression of Christian-correctness, as much as culture's approval of almost everything is deemed political-correctness.  As Christians, many of us just can't handle the reality of sexual sin.  Steal my bread and I'll forgive you and work out the repentance of repayment.  Slip into sexual sin and I'll . . . forgive you perhaps . . . but regard your repentance as an exercise of repetitive futility. Once a pervert forever a pervert.

Okay . . . I said, "many Christians."  I have found that the vast ocean of Christianity is populated with fertile islands of the forgiving who cultivate grace and hope and believe in mercy and kindness.  Their lighthouses are welcome beacons to the wrecked vessels being tossed about on the seas of rejection.  Grace heals and rebuilds and makes the sinful once again seaworthy.

Interestingly, these islands of grace are more often than not populated with those who have received grace themselves in abundance, people who themselves fell and looked up to find a hand extended, offering grace. Come to think of it, that should be all of us.

After years of struggling and falling and finding fewer hands extended, I understand the great pressure placed on those who offer grace "once again."  As if it is in limited supply, there is a tendency to hold it back for someone more worthy.  But . . . then . . . it becomes not grace at all.  For no one ever will be worthy.  No one deserving.

Those of us who have been shown grace by those we hurt, should be the most generous purveyors of grace.  We have been given much and from us much should be expected.  We even must find a way to extend grace to the ones who reject us and consider us worthless, because just as in the absence of grace, the weeds of bitterness grow in its hoarding. So, give.

Not lazy, hazy, spacey grace, but clear, powerful, unrelenting, unchallenged, full and . . . unmerited . . . grace. Stun the devil with clarity.

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.  And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast -- 1 Peter 5:8-10.

The God of all . . . grace.

The withholding of grace to each other is the height of selfishness, to keep something which is unlimited away from someone who is in need.  To look at ourselves and fear the embarrassment that the person we pick up may fall again and leave us with some proverbial egg on our faces.  To stand back, pretending patience, when what we are really doing is passing judgment and piling on with piety.  If we keep grace in a precious box because we have decided that the person to whom we should give it will just squander it and return to sin again, we are assuming the worst of both the sinner and of God.  How can we in our own limitations determine when the sinner will drop the idol and claim the grace?

To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But You brought my life up from the pit, O Lord my God.  "When my life was ebbing away, I remembered You, LORD, and my prayer rose to You, to Your holy temple. Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to You. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the Lord." – Jonah 2:6-9

Are you up to the challenge of giving grace and letting God deal with the graced and his or her sin?

Giving grace is an act of courage.
Giving grace is an act of the will.
Giving grace is an act of fearlessness.
Giving grace is an act of selflessness.
Giving grace is an act of trust.
Giving grace is an act of love.
Giving grace is an acknowledgement of the grace we ourselves have been given.

If we are but cold silent statues in a graceless garden, we have forfeited the tending to others.  Blinded by our own coldness, we cannot even see what grows, we cannot turn and reach, but are frozen in our selves.  Nor do we care; we are there for others to see, immobilized on our granite pedestals.

Step down.  Pull some weeds.  Bring grace like rain to the thirsty vines.

God Bless,

Thom

Note:  Many families remain divided because of sexual brokenness issues, including homosexuality.  The movie Reconciliation addresses the ability of God to restore families through grace and forgiveness.  I'm including the trailer here in hopes that you will see the movie yourself when it becomes available on November 9 and encourage others to see it as well.  I have pre-viewed the movie and recommend it wholeheartedly.




RECONCILIATION trailer from Chad Ahrendt on Vimeo.

When Giveth and Taketh Leadeth to Hideth

When you've come to the end of your ration of grace

And it seems there's no more left for you.

When you look at the life still remaining to face

And you don't know what else you can do.

Then remember that grace is not rationed at all,

In its limitless wash over you.

And your life still remaining is part of a plan

Of what God's yet intending to do.

So much more than we fathom, so much more than we know,

There is reason beyond what we see.

There is grace beyond measure and love still to flow

For the persons we are yet to be.

The Weight of Who I Am

Chapter Five

When Giveth and Taketh Leadeth to Hideth

Putting one foot in front of the other is not of much benefit if you're heading toward a cliff.

On the morning of May 1 -- the morning after my arrest -- I woke with an awareness that my life was being measured in hours, much like a man on a deathbed who is aware that all is slipping away, but has no clear understanding of what will happen when all he knows is gone. I wanted life to pass swiftly by; I wanted life to stop passing by at all.

Twelve hours from arrest to release.

One hour to drive home.

An hour of silence.

An hour of tossing and turning.

A few hours of sleep.

An hour to drive to work.

A few hours at my desk pretending all would be well, that no one would know, that I would somehow be protected from exposure and granted an unearned escape from consequence, my heart stopping each time the phone rang, racing each time someone paused near the office door.

My lunch hour came and I completed the errand I had failed on the day before, driving along the same route, right past the park -- 24 hours after the lunch hour of disaster -- followed by four groggy hours in the afternoon. An hour 'till leaving time. The near-normalcy of the day was lulling me into a slim sense of relief, an almost even-breathing.

During those hours, my mind shifted back and forth from "what have I done?" to "what will happen to me now?" At the halfway point of the final hour, between 4 and 5 p.m., the answers began to come. This would be a rough ride before a sellout crowd.

The Daily Oklahoman's on-line edition hit the web at 4:30 p.m. featuring the story of a police sting in a public park, noting several men had been arrested through the day-long operation. My past years as a journalist prepared me for the inevitable. I was featured prominently in the story because of my position as the state chief of staff for AT&T. I read the story once, packed up my laptop and headed home. The drive home took . . . about an hour.

At home, I sat. I waited. After about an hour of mind-shouting solitude, the phone rang and a co-worker who had read the story just wanted to know if it was true or if there had been some kind of mistaken identity. I assured him the identity was clearer than the circumstances, but it was indeed me; he assured me of his thoughts and sympathy. While it seemed odd to reply with a typical "thank-you," there seemed nothing more appropriate to say. "Hang in there," he replied.

I knew that in about 12 hours, the morning edition of the daily news would be slapped on porches across the metro. As the paper would be unfolded, so would my future. My failing would be one of many bearing revelation in the day's edition, but to me and many others, all that would matter was what was revealed about me.

I wonder about the complexities of the mind; how it can race and freeze in unison. I was overwhelmed with fearing, regretting and supposing . . . but in a total stall when it came to acting. My mind screamed "do something," but offered nothing to do. Finally, early in the evening of post-disaster-day, I sent two e-mails, two cries for help, two hopes for some offering of clarity in the descending fog. One was to Stephen Black, director of First Stone Ministries in Oklahoma City; the other to our pastor, ---- . Both Stephen and ---- knew of my struggles with same-sex attraction and the stumbles that had marked my past with loss. My need for their help overcame the shame of having to admit that need.

Pastor ---- and Stephen, 

I am very grieved to have to confess to you that I have stumbled. Not in the sense that I actually committed a sexual act, but in the sense that I allowed myself to be in the wrong place at the wrong time again and did not flee as I knew I should.

Yesterday, on my way to --------- to take a flag for framing for the company, I was talking on the phone to Lisa as I drove up upon ------ Park on ---- St. I turned in, with nothing at all on my mind beyond finishing the conversation with Lisa off the road and then continuing on to --------, about a mile east of there. After I concluded the call, I decided to go ahead and eat lunch in the car, since I had my lunch with me. As I was eating lunch and reading the paper, a man in a pickup truck pulled up beside the passenger window and motioned for me to lower my window. At that point, I should have driven out. I did not. He began a very innocent conversation, but I should have know where he was going with it. I resisted the conversation and the direction it was headed, but he was skilled, perceptive and persistent and I allowed it to proceed to an inappropriate point. Apparently, he heard enough to signal his co-workers and I was arrested. It does not matter whether he was an undercover officer or not, the location and the conversation was inappropriate and I know better. I should be able to sense evil and flee.

I do not go to -------- Park. I am unfamiliar with it and would not have been there at all had I not been going to ------------ during lunchtime. That is not an excuse; only a statement of fact that I do not cruise parks and I no longer cruise on-line. Those activities are behind me. I realize that is hard to believe now, but it is true. What I realize is that, put in a certain situation I am still not careful enough and now am paying a very high price.

While this is horrible and painful for myself and for Lisa, I don't intend for it nor believe it will get me off track. I have made significant progress through the Grace of God and on the prayers of friends and I know where my heart and head are. This may be one of the most painful chapters yet, but for even this, there is purpose. Perhaps under this painfully bright light I will have to face up to all the past years of denial and be honest with everyone now. This is not how I would have preferred it, but if it be so, I accept it.

There is little more to tell. It just is what it is. And it's bad and sad and only God can get us through this. I believe He will.

I am sorry for the great disappointment this must be to both of you. I love you and I have gained tremendously from your support and guidance.

Thom

The phone rang. Having read my e-mail, Pastor ---- was on his way over, a rapid response that brought me and Lisa temporary relief. I did not realize I had just pulled the first string of the great unraveling. I was entering a time of taketh away.

The '60s

I can't remember what the evangelist preached at Willow Meadows Baptist Church in Houston when I took the bus to the revival service when I was 12 years old. I only remember that it had something to do with coins and a fountain . . . and all of a sudden, to the accompaniment of the old hymn, Softly and Tenderly, I was slowly and gingerly making my way down front. It may have been the song which softened my heart and helped me believe that in a world of abuse and abandonment, there is a God who cares and a Christ who loved and died for little boys like me. I decided to trust and believe, to give in and receive. I opened my heart . . . a bit.

Blessings on my head . . . and a good life from now on. I wasn't quite sure how all that would reconcile itself under the influence of a cursing, chain-smoking, gambling-addicted alcoholic stepfather whose ideal attire for Sunday lunch was boxer shorts, black socks, slippers and a too-tight t-shirt. Meals generally started with a belch, not a prayer, and ended with a toddy, not a blessing.

"Two roads diverged in a wood" . . . and it would take me a long time to realize I would be traveling on both, accumulating and discarding baggage along the way. I was carefully devising ways to not get hurt again, to avoid the Mr. Hootens of the world, of which I was sure there might be many. The little boy's once yearning heart became a turning heart . . . selectively shutting out anyone the least bit threatening, but doing it skillfully so no one would know. I vowed myself to be untouchable, not invulnerable in the way that a boy models a superhero like Superman, but in a way that came across only as casual separation . . . a determination that few would really know me. I had secrets. I knew things I should not have known, had already done things I should not have done.

My memory of the sexual abuse was not one of guilt or shame. It was of anger, albeit a strange mix of anger, a swirl of colors and characters. I felt angry with myself that I was not better and stronger and more appealing, coming to the realization at a very early age that I was easy to leave behind. First my father, then Mr. Hooten, and I was clearly of no interest at all to my stepfather. I was angry at all of them because they didn't seem to care enough to help me change and become something better. And I was angry pretty much at everyone else because they didn't even seem to notice I was hurt and angry. My response was to create a wall of separation internally and externally. On one side was the happy boy, on the other was the hiding boy. After a while, they were not that aware of each other. I was hiding.

When we are children, and sometimes even as adults, we think that every choice a person makes that doesn't include us or somehow hurts us was made as a conscious decision to reject us. We make it simple: daddy leaves because he doesn't love me. Mr. Hooten turns away because he doesn't need me. The boys on the balcony laugh at me because they hate me. My stepfather serves lima beans because he knows I hate them. My brother runs away because I'm not worth staying home for. My mother doesn't listen because she doesn't care. In truth, we all make decisions surrounded by competing influences and our own layers of protection and misconceptions of self-identity. We make many choices out of desperation and ignorance, unaware that our choices are washing like storm-driven waves against the innocent around us and even the innocent yet to come. Such was m y own decision to divide myself into the me-you-see and the me-you-never-will. A decision that set waves into motion.

Unable to wrap myself in the newness of my salvation -- bus rides were less frequent when the revival was over -- I was fading, perhaps intentionally, sensing some safety in diminishing myself. In my growing guardedness, I realized that those who notice you have a greater potential to harm you. Speeding through the Houston alleys on my banana-seat bike I was vibrant and colorful, shouting to the walls, challenging the skies. Sliding through the living room of our small apartment to the room I shared with my brother, I let slip the brighter hues and took on the grey of home.

We lived in the shadow of the emerging Astrodome and rode our bikes through the construction of Houston's first superhighway, all of which made me feel very small. As people changed around me -- my teenage brother leaving Houston behind forever in a furious motorcycle ride north, my older sister spinning 45s and hanging out with friends to dance instead of coming home from school -- I felt stunted. Though my little sister became my best friend and unwitting ally in a determination to survive the uncertainty, a child should not be so focused on growing up.

I began, in my mind, to wonder why God as Creator had not been able to achieve a better balance between giving and taking, good and bad, leaving and staying, loving and hurting, pain and joy, dark and light, rest and fight. Why this mix? And, important to myself, where was I in that mix? Just grey?

My earliest memories of God as being something different and bigger than man had come in the cavernous sanctuary of the old First Baptist Church in Denton. When we went there, my mother wore her best dress, highest heels, finest fake jewelry and widest smile. She would sit between me and my younger sister to try to keep us separated, but we would peek at each other from in front and then behind my mother's perfect church posture until the giggling would begin to overtake us. Only Mother's brightly-polished fingernails with nearly skin-piercing pressure could quiet us down. She would not have done that anywhere else; God must be something.

A few years after Denton, when my stepfather moved us to Shawnee, before he moved us to Houston . . . I discovered that God is . . . in people. I didn't understand it, but I saw it. I was 10. Ironically, it was here that the first flicker of hope grew in me that there were indeed good men. My mother took me to Vacation Bible School at a Shawnee Baptist Church. I was in a big room with lots of boys, laughing and building things. My mother had dropped me off so she could look for a job.

We all had two curved pieces of wood, a coat hangar and a pair of wire cutters . . . and we were going to make a harp. All except me. I was gauging whether I could get to the door and out without being caught. I had not had a father to teach me such things. I was so all-thumbs and lost. . . until this guy caught me eyeing the door and walked across the room and sat down across the table and picked up the wire cutters and the coat hangar and started snipping the coat hangar . . . and talking to me . . . and we built a harp. And I was back there tomorrow. I had been rescued. It impacted me that he was probably unaware of his impact on me. He expected nothing in return. He gave me some hope; he planted a seed. In the midst of all the brokenness of Houston, the seed would grow and God would move into me.

It takes a while to learn that while God is good all the time, the world in which He places us is not.  Abiding in us, God giveth and God taketh and he is generous in both actions, but neither are always easy to understand. Giving often seems to come when least expected; taking often claims when least deserved. I feared His taking; I doubted His giving.

I knew that He had taken my third-grade friend who was accidentally killed while wrestling in the front yard with his older brother. A misplaced hand-move or arm-lock and my friend was gone, a family shattered, an older brother trapped in guilt and sorrow, a mother who would drive around for the rest of her life with a lonely flower of memory on her car antenna and a father who retreated into his work. They faded.

I knew that He had taken a fourth-grade friend who -- dashing across a not-so-crowded street after school -- met the front bumper of a passing car and was thrown to the curb where he lay still and gone. I remember the tears of his baby-sitter, who also worked with my mother at the office supply. In her bitterness, she dismissed my pain with a "you don't understand. you're too little." I went to my first funeral, saw my friend in his quiet dashless rest, and he faded.

I knew that God had taken away three young friends of my little sister who turned a slumber party into a nighttime fire, probably with tipping o fa simple candle. Their bodies were found huddled together in the corner of what had been a pink-filled room of stuffed animals and ruffles and Tiger Beat posters. They faded.

And yet, God had given me a stranger who could help me make a harp, a bus to a church, an evangelist who could connect with my longing, and the words to "Softly and Tenderly." Before then, God had been little more than polished shoes and a hard church pew and whispers to hush. He had now become more than just a reason for Papa to abandon Solitaire, Nanny to slip out of a house dress and mother to shine her nails. Now, He could whisper to me. In those first days after Meadow Wood, I wanted to believe that God was everywhere, but the bus would take me home and I could not find Him there. It would take a while for me to try to put him on my hiding list . . . and even longer to learn I could not.

We don't always know at the moment if God is doing His greater work through the giving or the taking, but these are all events that I've never forgotten, early events that add their bulk to the weight of who I am. He knew then what I just now know . . . and He knows already what I may never know in this life, but will know with Him. And He already knows about all the losses to come and the gains that remain.  Someday I would be able to look back on my life and His intricate balancing of the giveth and taketh and see the full force of grace, but as a boy I was less impressed about God's abilities and more concerned about what seemed to be His limits.  I held back.

I picked up one more thing in Houston, something that even in the past uncertainty of life I had never experienced much before, not as a little boy barefoot running the peaceful streets of little towns, pausing beneath bright streetlights to dodge clouds of summer June bugs.

It came in winter, which in Houston was often not much more than just an excuse to wear a jacket in the colder humidity. My stepfather had planned a Christmas Eve poker party. The liquored chocolate-covered cherries were in abundance, the best whiskey shot glasses were out for the Black Crow flow, the poker chips were stacked, the Marlboros ready to fire up to create a proper smoke-filled environment.

"Where's the damn egg-nog?" Michael bellowed. That would be my signal to scurry through the darkness to the U-Tote-Em to get it home so it could be properly spiked in time for a midnight toast. I was happy to go, knowing I was just to be trapped all evening in the dismal back bedroom, unable to drown out the deafening profanities of the drunken guests he called his friends.

Dollar bill in hand, I began my trek through the dark streets of the jungle of apartments. It was a cool night with a gentle breeze and only a sliver of a moon. I decided to walk, leaving the bike behind, knowing it would take longer and make my stepfather even more angry, an anger he would have to hide because guests were coming.

Halfway down the sidewalk in front of a neighboring building, I heard a scream, loud and long and fading into silence. I stopped and stood in front of the building until a man -- dressed in total black -- came running out of the building on a sidewalk set to merge with mine. He also stopped and stood . . . and it was suddenly my time to run.

I knew the alleys and all the shortcuts and soon the bright neon lights of the U-Tote-Em glowed like an island of safety. I browsed the comic books, drifted up and down the candy aisle, wandered eventually to the cooler, selected the eggnog, paid, paused at the door and headed home. The man in black was no-where and I was soon safely home in the comforting chaos.

About an hour later, our doorbell rang. I had heard the Christmas carolers making their way down the street and I hesitantly looked in my stepfather's direction through the haze of the smoke-filled room as the bell rang again.

"Give them this damn dollar and let 'em sing," he laughed.

My sister and I through open the door and stepped out onto the apartment lawn to the strains of "O Little Town of Bethlehem," and I came face-to-face with the man in black, singing, yes, but wringing black-leather-gloved hands and staring straight at me. My mind was racing: "He knows where I live."

No, nothing happened. A stronger breeze blew a plastic bottle filled with my sister's bath powder out of the window in the middle of the night producing a scream from her that rivaled the one I had heard earlier when walking by the building next door, but I never saw the man again. Still, I had come to see that good and evil are often intertwined and in constant collision with each other. Sometimes evil just stands and mocks; sometimes when we answer the knock it comes in and has its way.

The afternoon of the front-lawn underwear protest had been the early-warning signal to us all that we would soon be leaving Houston, and not long after Christmas, we did.  I said goodbye to the bulldozer, George, the Jewish deli, Meadow Wood and, at least for a time, even my stepfather. Despite a desperate near-death faint into the carpet in his stringy bathrobe, we were moving without him, this time to Lewisville, Texas. My mother was finding her voice and her worth.

I was searching for my voice and worth as well, looking among the men who carry harps of compassion and those with black-gloved hands bearing harm.

(Note:  Chapter One is available at this link: Have We Finally Come to the End?, Chapter Two is available at this link:  Sadness at the Sound of Trains, Chapter Three is available at this link: Why Was My Voice So Small?, and Chapter Four is available at this link:  The Vapor of Vanishing Innocence.)