The View from the Edge of the Desert

I asked you what was wrong with me

"Nothing," you said, that you could see.

"Just be what you were meant to be."

And that's supposed to set me free?

"But this feels wrong," I answered back.

"Somehow I just seem off track."

"You're fine," you said, with gentle tact

"Your feelings are just out of whack."

"Don't carry 'round your guilt that way.

"We're living in a brand new day.

"There's no more need to self betray,

"Don't give self-judgment so much sway.

But what of God?  He sees inside

Surely He won't just let me hide,

With self and pride so justified

And truth and grace so well denied?

You answered back with a practiced glow

"Just drop this sadness, discard that woe,

"Accept yourself, just bloom and grow.

"After all, God loves you too, you know."

And a bit of truth slipped from you to me,

"God's love is what will see me free!"

From what I was to what I'll be.

For God's compassion won't lie to me. 

-- Thom Hunter

Sadness and joy often run parallel in the lives of Christians who struggle with an addiction, no matter what it is. Victories and defeats can be close partners, both eyeing the finish line.  Bogged down in life, but seeking to leap into freedom, it is a life of anticipation and hesitation. The passage of time can lead to assurance or dejection, but the presence of God, reflected in His responsive renewal, lifts the spirit and the journey continues. If you've turned your back on a struggler, you've denied yourself a view of God's great gifts as He works in the hearts of a broken soul tuned in in hope. If you have kept your compassion in the closet, tucked away among the dusty things of life, your heart is the one that suffers most from the hoarding. 

Outside my window this morning, life is fluttering by.  Literally.  In the past few moments, a graceful, floating butterfly and a determined and focused red wasp have been gliding about just beyond the window screen.  Both of them on a mission.  Pollination, sweet nectar, a bitter sting.  A mix of beauty and a bit of bite.

Some mornings we want a butterfly to lull us into peaceful bliss.  Some days we deserve -- and need -- a sting to bring us directly into contact with the reality of pain.  Sometimes when we want to follow the lazy butterfly down the garden path, we should be dashing down a trail swatting away at a yellowjacket, confronting the reality that life bites more often than hope floats.

I have come to the conclusion that at this point in my life I have been favored by a rationing of compassion, resulting in a reasonable rationality of reality.  For the most part, my problems indeed turned out to be real problems for me and many others . . . which in the long run leads me to seek real solutions.  Of course, that "long run" has been much longer than I would have ever thought my mind and heart and soul could survive, and it surpassed the limits of others.  But guess what?  The perilous points of rest along the way were punctuated with real compassion . . . the love that God provides for the endurance of those who run the race instead of forsaking the pace.

Truly I have experienced the mean-ness of compassion. That borderline compassion that feels so hateful at the time, like the sting of a wayward wasp, who sits for a second on your bare arm, inflicts his pain and flits away leaving heat and swelling, redness and itching.  That's wrong . . . and it's why aerosol sprays were invented, so you can respond in justified wrath.  Sometimes, when  those who claim to represent God inflict "compassion" in ways of pain and flitting, they need to be shot down so they don't just fly around stinging others.

I have also experienced what seems to be the coldness of compassion.  Zapped by truth in its most freezing and paralyzing form, left to drift and die on an iceberg in view of those who sip their drinks on the balcony of passing ships and point at me as I become smaller and smaller as the distance between us grows.  They may be cruising on their own Titanic, but no one may know 'till the iceberg comes to view.

Lest this be seen as merely a meandering of woe is me, I have also experienced the compassion that is real and warm to the touch.  A compassion that does not depend on determined distance but on intended closeness.  Not on separation, but on walking with.  I am amazed at the beauty and grace that some exhibit, pouring out in an immeasurable and constant flow the compassion that comes from an unlimited source.  They heard and learned of God's truth and refuse to let the world's definition of it divide it into meaningless portions.

Maybe it takes a mix of compassion.  Even the bitterness of detachment can be motivating.  Perhaps the experiences we have of being cast aside and tossed away by those who discriminate not between sin and sinner, teaches us great things not only about consequence and condemnation, but also builds our own commitment to convey compassion that is not contorted.  I find myself feeling compassion for those who have abused it; those who banged people about the head with love in the name of holy correction.  I pity them because they share this world and when they fall, they will want to sample a compassion that rises far above what they themselves have shared.

But who do I really feel sorry for?  I feel sorry for those who have suffered and cried and were not told that Christ had suffered and died so they could be freed from that.  I feel sorry for those who have been drowned in the gushing carelessness of a compassion that tells them that they don't have to change, they don't have to address sin so they can swim in the cleansing lake of grace and emerge on the banks of freedom to walk free of the weight of who they were.

The harshness of "hate the sin, love the sinner," has, in the compassionate minds of the misguided, dissolved into a hollow "I love you just the way you are."  No . . . you don't.  If you really love them the way they are, you'll help them be what God intended them to be.  I am so saddened for the young men and women whose parents, in selfishness, embrace their giving in to temptation so they can still have Sunday lunch and smile and pass the peas.  Careless compassion causes us to place happiness above healing . . . and we have not because we ask not.  The carelessly compassionate Christian prays for a perverted peace and discovers turmoil; proclaims acceptance and smothers a deeper and honest desire for change in the ones we love. This is not happiness; this is not healing; this is not helping.

Does it sound like I am not compassionate?  Should we pick up a drunk on the sidewalk and help him back into the bar so he won't think we are judging him?  Should we pause to tell a prostitute she might look prettier in a brighter shade of pink?  Should we stock a few essentials in the cabinet for the visiting addict to cook his meth?  Should we give a list of topics for the local church gossip to make her job easier?  Look the other way when cheaters get a little careless so they won't get uncomfortable when revealed?  We may as well paint a bull’s-eye on our shoulder to make it easier for the wasp to zero in.

Careless compassion can be as dangerous as not caring at all.  I never wanted anyone to tell me that my sexual brokenness was just a cause for celebration.  Unfaithfulness is unfaithfulness.  Sin is sin.  Lust is lust.  Betrayal is betrayal. Deception is lying.  Knowing God's Word and doing one's own will is willfully defying. 

Wandering is wandering.  If we're lost in a desert and we have a choice between a determined guide who knows his way out or a jovial, smiling and funny "it'll be okay, we'll find our way" sympathetic soul to walk with us until we drop in thirst upon the barren sand . . . who should we choose?  I don't know about you, but I wanted out.

Some have not gone with me.  Some may never believe I found an oasis and drank.  Some are still back there at the edge of the desert telling the slowly-dehydrating that they'll be fine.  "Just keep putting one foot in front of the other."  Others are standing at the same edge and saying "you deserve it.  The buzzards will be here soon."

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. -- Matthew 9:35-36

Don't mislead me; don't leave me. 

Compassion is a gift from God that we can corrupt like everything else He gives us.  Oh . . . but when it is presented in its perfect form, what healing takes place, what joy abounds, what grace flows and what beauty springs forth from the dry desert, shocking those who view it, like a brilliant and seemingly fragile butterfly that pauses on a morning glory.  Imagine, that little fluttering thing that looks like tissue paper in flight can cross the continent and return again.  It looks weak, but it is strong because it has learned to manage the currents and soar.

I have looked into the eyes of Christian parents seeking direction on how to love their children who are falling prey to the lies Satan is spinning at an ever-more-furious pace and which the world is reproducing and portraying in an ever-more-attractive display.  How do we love those who are drowning in proud deception?  How do we keep them close and yet speak a truth that often makes them want to expand the distance?

With compassion. 

To love them less with this sin is a betrayal.  We all sin in one form or another from the day we enter this world.  Self-centeredness can take some nasty forms, but it is still that:  seeking the satisfaction of the self.  Our response is to be compassionate and giving of self.

In retrospect, reviewing the years of dog-paddling in my pool of sin, I realize I would only reach out to take the hand of ones who could see me as I am -- created like them in the image of God -- and accept me there with the compassion not of "love the sinner, hate the sin," but of "I love who you are as a child of God."  These are the ones who went beyond tossing a vinyl ring with verses printed on it so I could ponder as I tooled around in the pool.  They had no fear of the water. These are the ones who helped me out and showed me a stroke that does more than just keep your head above water, but actually moves you toward the side.  They put more value on me than they did my sin.  By showing me the value of me, they helped diminish the value of the sin onto which I held in my distress and it became less and less of a lifesaver as it became less and less of my life.

Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:  Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. -- Lamentations 3:21-22

True compassion is not compromised. Compassion, God's truth, love and hope are intertwined like a strong and trusty rope.  Remove one and we are in danger of descending back into the mire.  Of being re-consumed.

Don't hang back and take in the view from the edge of the desert. Carry the Living Water. Practice "true" compassion.  It's a life-saving skill.

In Him,

Thom

BridgeBack Ministries

"Why Was My Voice So Small?"

1962

Not all rescues are welcome.

Our return to Texas Street from Bridgeport was a temporary stop in a newly-defined normal that no longer included a dad. The house was familiar; the yard was the same; the trains just as loud and wall-rattling as they clipped the yard on their way to somewhere . . . somewhere else. Which is where I wanted to be, away from the bagworm-infested trees and the heat of the summer. The barefoot boy was ready to walk away from pain and confusion, but had no where to go.

I loved that old house, though it held its fears. I remember when our family would sit around the table in the dining room with bowls of pinto beans and cornbread and sour pickles and great glasses of sweet iced tea. I remembered the time Daddy brought home a pet skunk which had the run of the house, but usually just hid in the hall closet and dashed out only to taunt my mother and provoke an argument about the absurdity of a rodent rummaging among our Sunday clothes.

The fear? It was the attic opening above the hallway between the dining room and the kitchen, slightly askew as if it were frequently used by someone living up there who came out only in the dark, perhaps to itself rummage the closet in my bedroom or slide beneath my bed. When I would be sent to the kitchen to refill the tea pitcher or bring more bread, I would skirt along the wall and keep an eye on that opening.

When I look back now, I am comforted to know that as a seven-year-old, my fears were so benign and common: dark and empty attics, monsters under beds. That would end at the age of eight to be replaced by fears that moved inside of me to produce a different darkness.

“Rescue” came in 1962.

For the first few years after my parents’ divorce, the Continental Trailways bus between Denton and Fort Worth was the connection between my dad and his children. Sometimes Daddy would take the bus to Denton for a day in the park; sometimes all four of us children would board the bus for the trip to Fort Worth for a walk in the zoo and an evening of biscuits and pinto beans in Daddy’s little apartment. And sour pickles.


The bus was loud and smelly and the people, despite the fact they were on a bus headed to some specific designation, looked lost and wandering and self-absorbed, which is how I felt. Though we would laugh and share the inner jokes of siblings, pestering the passengers, exhausting the good will of the driver, the bus became a symbol for never being home, but just somewhere in between.


Within a year of the divorce, the bus trips became less frequent. Daddy was often broke and unable to afford the ticket to come see us, or the four children's fares for us to go see him. We began to find other ways to spend our Saturdays. Movie matinées and Milk Duds, swimming with cousins on my mother's side, cashing in coke bottles for comic books to curl up in a world of conquering heroes.


Home still echoed an aching emptiness I was sure would never go away. Everything was a reminder. The space in the driveway where Daddy used to park his car. The disappearance of the ash trays in the living room. No vienna sausages in the pantry. No snoring at night; no red flickering of his cigarettes in the darkened living room where he would wander to try to figure things out. No weekend fishing trips to Bridgeport. No skunk. No one to chase away the monsters or straighten the tilting attic door. We soon moved and Texas Street moved into memory.


Mother worked hard to fill the emptiness, loading us up to go to drive-in movies at night, putting together picnics on the weekend, bringing home a new puppy. Still, she knew my brother Mike and I needed the influence of men in the absence of our father. We were too cooped up with sisters, and my brother -- five years older than I -- was already beginning to find his own way out into a more adventuresome world.


When Mike came home with the news that a bunch of the boys in the neighborhood were being rounded up to start a new scout troop, Mother was all for it. A young, clean-cut outdoorsman and self-proclaimed scoutmaster, Mr. Hooten, had been showing off his collection of hatchets and knives, outdoor gadgets and camping gear. He had a way with words and weapons. Like all the boys, we were hooked. Mr. Hooten was going to build the sharpest Scout troop in Texas and every boy in the neighborhood was welcome to join and march in formation into manhood. I was, of course, way too young.


I took to Mr. Hooten right off. He reminded me of all the good things about Daddy. Mr. Hooten decided I could join the troop – unofficially – even though I was only eight, several years too young. He promised Mother he would watch out for me; he promised my brother he would not let me be too big a pest. And he promised me he’d “protect” me from the older boys, just in case any of them might be bullies. I was parading in the personal attention. I was finally someone’s favorite, and I was anxious to learn all the things Mr. Hooten could teach me.

Mr. Hooten was a pedophile. Sick and sly, he knew how to take a little boy’s grin of anticipation and turn it for his personal satisfaction. He “protected” me as anyone would valuable personal property. I was not a member of the troop; I was his.


The sexual abuse began innocently enough, creeping in like a welcome sunrise on a clear morning that gives no hint of the storms to come in the heating of the day. If sin would announce itself, like the first incoming missile of an air war, we could duck and run for cover. It doesn’t happen that way. Sin slides in.


Mr. Hooten’s favorite activity was movie night. He would order movies boys love – westerns and war movies and hokie horror flicks – and we’d all crowd into the community room he’d borrow from the city. Movie night was a reward for the hard work of memorizing oaths and carving soapbox cars. There, in the dark, perhaps 30 young teenage boys and a little brother or two would sprawl on the floor and become enthralled in the adventures on the screen. There, in the dark, Mr. Hooten became enthralled with me. I didn’t mind. I admired him; he cared about me. Sitting closely in front of him in the crowded room, I welcomed his arm around me as he would pull me back towards him and slide me down so I would be comfortable and he could see above my burr-cut head. I didn’t mind the backrub, the slow movements of his strong hands along my spine. It didn’t seem wrong when he reached around in front and rubbed my chest and stomach and pulled me closer. There, in the dark, with all my friends around, it didn’t even seem strange when he fondled me through my jeans, or even when he began to reach inside, never taking his eyes off the screen. He was, after all, Mr. Hooten. It couldn’t be wrong. He even called me Tom-Bo, the nickname my Dad had given me. I began to live for Friday nights.


My daddy had taken our family on a few campouts when I was a little boy. He’d even driven us all the way out to Yellowstone National Park where we slept in a tent and listened for bears and took hikes and identified berries and skipped rocks on streams. I missed those days, so I was very excited when Mr. Hooten said our troop was going to camp . . . and I could go along. He assured my mother I’d be safe. In fact, he said, I could sleep in his tent to make sure the older boys played no late night pranks on me.


When I was with Mr. Hooten, I felt loved and accepted and singled out. He knew that. I was so easily taken in by him. I anticipated the camping trip with more excitement than any Christmas. I packed my things weeks ahead, complaining incessantly to my mother that I needed a sleeping bag we couldn’t afford. Mr. Hooten told me not to worry about it; he had one for me. He would take care of everything.


Off in the wilderness, out in the woods, beneath the stars, only a few feet away from the remains of a smoldering campfire, behind the zipped doors of a musty tent and crowded into one sleeping bag together, Mr. Hooten’s cautious caring came unraveled. His “little buddy,” his Tom-Bo, became his toy. His protection became perversion. His acceptance of me became his using of me. I went into the tent puffed up, euphoric and longing for the next day’s outdoor adventure, my mind crowded with memories of Yellowstone adventures of the past. I came out broken, confused, and longing for home. The comfortable reassuring closeness of movie night, which he had used to reel me in, was replaced by the rough manipulation of a strong man accustomed to making people do things, and accept his doing things to them. He did as he wished and I did as he wanted. He was, after all, the master.


“Do exactly what I tell you to do or I’ll . . .” I had never heard words like that before, spoken in a tone that made it clear I had placed myself where I could no longer choose my actions. It would be the first time I had done so; the first moment of giving away control, an involuntary step onto the edge of an, at the time, invisible slippery slope, a re-defining of what was right, a challenge to all reason. I found myself, even at eight, rationalizing to prevent rejection.


Just as I would not weep years later when tossed in a holding cell as a result of my own actions, I would not weep that morning as I emerged into the clearing where the campfire’s ashes lay cold under the dawning sky. Not here; not with these boys.


Mr. Hooten was a sick man with a twisted mind and a way of making evil look and feel like love. I had a deep need for an adult man worthy of my trust and admiration. I was ignorant and innocent and eager to be accepted, wanting and wandering, ready to be molded, as he said repeatedly, into a little man. And he took it upon himself to reshape my life. With sadistic precision he filled in the gaps left by the loss of my father’s love with his predatory sickness. With a false smile and a corrupted touch, he slowly and skillfully and malevolently took my childhood simplicity and innocence and pleasured himself, turning it into premature guilt and confusion, which I buried deep inside so as not to disappoint him. He took the gentle psyche of an innocent boy in his perverted hands and twisted it so hard that he left a permanent imprint on the future shape of my life. And from this, he gained his wicked satisfaction.


Back in Denton, in my shame, I was silent. For a time, I curled up in the quiet with my comic books and plastic soldiers and the pain, both physical and mental, slipped away as I found justification for his intentions. I resented myself for the sullenness I had shown in the last day of the camp-out, for the hurt feelings he must have had as I shied away, which had made him mad and had lead to his ignoring me all that final day. I felt guilt -- not for his actions in the dark, but for my reactions in the daylight -- and I was ready to tell him I was sorry. In only a few days, I was longing for movie night. I needed Mr. Hooten to be nice again, to curl up on the floor of the big room full of boys and pull me – only me – up in front of him and hold me, touch me; make me feel special. To remind me that I had been chosen. I decided he had not really meant to hurt me in the tent, that I had just been stupid and not like other boys, who would have been glad to have been given such attention. I had been mean and ungrateful and I wanted to make it up to him so he would keep me in his troop.


Mike and I were only a few minutes late to movie night, but the lights were already down low. I scouted the room from far in the back and finally saw Mr. Hooten, there in the darkest spot in the middle behind the projector and I started picking my way around and between the sprawled bodies of the scouts. And then I stopped. Mr. Hooten and another burr-headed boy were curled up together in the dark. A smaller boy, maybe only six, someone else’s little brother, had taken my place. My week of fading remorse had resulted in a jarring rejection. I found myself a spot alone far out on the edge of the room. I don’t remember the movie.


After Mr. Hooten traded me in, I retreated into a shell, custom built a safer world around me, and became very selective about who would enter. It was only a brief "relationship," but like all children preyed upon by sick adults, I did not escape undamaged.


When I was cast aside by Mr. Hooten and able to think more clearly, it didn't take me long to know how wrong it had all been. Feeling real guilt for the first time in my life, I went to a couple of people I thought I could trust. I was embarrassed and frightened, but I took a risk and told. I sought real rescue.


"I've been doing something terrible. Can I tell you about it?" I remember asking. It did not occur to me that it was he -- Mr. Hooten -- who had done something terrible. To me . . . it was me.


"Yes," I was told by each. "You can tell me anything."


And I did. And I thought they were listening. And I thought they would help me.

"Don't you ever repeat a word of this to anyone," one said angrily. "People will call you a liar . . . and a lot of other things. There's no excuse for making things up just to get attention."

One even punctuated his shocked response with a hard punch to my shoulder, as if the pain would reinforce his warning to never speak of this again.


I tried to tell a few others, but it was too difficult for them to hear. Pretty soon I learned that there are things you just don't tell people. Things that people do to you; things you yourself do. Secrets that slowly become a part of you. Deeds that do indeed shape your manhood, but with contaminated clumps of clay. In Mr. Hooten's menacing shadow, my voice had been too small.


I don't know what eventually became of Mr. Hooten. I have lain awake at night wondering about the hurt and damage he inflicted on other little boys. Sexual abuse is slick and tricky and well-disguised. It slips into a child's world with a smile and a laugh, a chuckle and a touch, and doesn't leave until childhood purity has been stolen away and destroyed, and along with it, the ability to trust.

I don't know if Mr. Hooten was gay or straight, because it was not really about sex at all. It was sport and selfishness and an unending search to fill a perverted emptiness. It was the conquest of a child, power over innocent prey, the sad satisfaction of a selfish soul at the expense of another, and the crumpling and tossing aside of a person perceived as less significant. There was no love, no care, just power and presence preceding emptiness and rejection from both to each.

And shame. I know there was great shame on my part or I would have told my father. I wonder if he might have risen from his own self-absorption to rescue me?


I've not been one for excuses. I know what statistics show -- that a great majority of grownups with sexual identity problems were abused as children or abandoned by their fathers, or both -- but I believe that, despite all that, the responsibility for my actions lies with me. What I became later and what I did in the desperate acts of self-destruction rest on my shoulders, not on Daddy's or Mr. Hooten's, both really only transitory visitors to my life. But I do know that in the mix of the me I came to be are the shaping memories of trains along Texas Street, a small boat on a star-lit pond, a grimy Continental Trailways bus racing down the road to Fort Worth, dark movies, camping tents and a punch on the shoulder. Things that add up.


Some of us keep our secrets too long, thinking it is our burden to bear, unaware that we share it with others in our very actions, in the way we live as we hide and dodge and hurt the ones we love, even as we destroy the goodness of our selves.


In the span of a year I had lost my father, found Mr. Hooten and lost him also.


I would learn through the years that rejection is one of my significant “triggers” for acting out on my same-sex attractions. When the need to be wanted is not met in a child, he or she often does not develop the level of self-confidence that makes gender-identity more natural to move into. Does that mean that all the little boys Mr. Hooten bent with his seeking of self-satisfaction grew up to struggle with same-sex attraction? Did they become gay because of his wicked use? Not necessarily. I will never know.


The accepted “side effects” of childhood sexual abuse are many: guilt, shame, fear, anxiety, self-blame, a feeling of powerlessness, an inability to say no to others in relationships, difficulty nurturing self, a lack of trust in your own feelings, an emotional shut down or 'numbing', an inability to see your positive aspects, a desire for perfectionism, a need to control at all costs, a feeling of being invisible or of being a non-person, problems giving or receiving affection, difficulty relying on others. Each of these side effects can produce a new wave of guilt, an inner question that goes unanswered: “Why can’t I just get over it?”

The question is punctuated by the advice of others: "Get over it."


The anger the adult feels at himself for acting out on something that happened to him as a child is furious and frustrating. We are allowing that person to maintain control long after he has moved on. Depression is familiar.


Some of the children abused by Mr. Hooten and the other predators who prey upon the innocent may emerge, through the grace of God, to lead completely normal lives, unfazed by their brush with evil. Others may not survive at all, driven by self-doubts to self-destruction, seeking solace in things that lead them no-where and merely compound their lostness until they can no longer find themselves at all. Others may move into some form of sexual abuse themselves, seeking power over spouses or, heaven forbid, repeating the misdeeds done to them. Others may just retreat into themselves and live behind a wall.


That’s a lot of baggage to take home from movie night.


I appreciate the fact God made each of us “wondrously.” I just wish people would leave His work alone so it can manifest itself in the way He intended. That little boy who wandered into the community room dreamed of being like his dad, only better. Even 8-year-olds can look beyond rockets and rifles to being daddies. I was going to do it perfectly. And in my perfect world, I would be the best Daddy. There would be no end to the zoo trips, the campouts, the fishing, the storytelling, the listening. I would rescue. I would have had nothing to hide; my children would never have been confused.


If only we could see what lies ahead. If only there were not so many twists and turns and hills and valleys obscured. We could carve out a road to overcoming instead of laying down stones for a pathway to succumbing. We would know we were being swallowed up before we plummeted so far into the depths of the struggle that all our energy goes into flailing instead of climbing.


It would take many years and a great deal of pain before someone would lead me down the better path of forgiveness for both Daddy and Mr. Hooten . . . and myself. Forgiveness would be the only way to begin to unzip the dark tent and emerge into the clearing.

It would require rescues that are real.


In Him,


Thom


(Note: If you think this story would be helpful to anyone you know, an expanded version of this story is available for download for only .99 cents at this link: Amazon.

The Summer of the Bully in the Barn

 

He is jealous for me
Loves like a hurricane
I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden
I am unaware of these
Afflictions eclipsed by glory
And I realize just how beautiful you are and
How great Your affections are for me

          -- John Mark MacMillan

Summer is upon us again. Hurricanes and thunderstorms, sleeping late and stargazing, sunburns and swimming pools, watermelon and homemade ice cream, lazy days where sameness feels like security and days that change us forever, slipping in beneath the haze of heat to catch us unaware.


It was in summer my father left me, my molester met me, my temptations first bested me. In truth, momentous days can beset us at any moment -- hence the word momentous -- but it is a score of summer days I find so hard to forget.


This is a story about a kid named Spike. He was, for me, a great affliction.  I have asked for forgiveness for thinking of him as such, but I will never forget the "Summer of Spike."

Jonathan Edwards, preacher and missionary to Native Americans back in the 1700s, and widely acknowledged to be America's most important and original philosophical theologian and a great intellect, included affliction among his famous resolutions about how to live his life, which he wrote in 1723.  There it was, number 67 out of 70:  

Resolved, after afflictions, to inquire, what I am the better for them, what good I have got by them, and what I might have got by them.  

Jonathan Edwards read his resolutions every week . . . as if afflictions need a reminder. Jonathan Edwards never spent a summer with Spike.  

One encounter with Spike and you would never forget him, no matter how resolved you might be to do so.  And though my encounter with him took place only over the span of perhaps three days, I call it the Summer of Spike because I really don't remember anything else about that summer.  He was an impactful kind of kid.

The Summer of Spike might be more aptly remembered as the Summer of Shame.  It followed a winter of abandonment and a spring of seduction.  Winter being the season of my father's separation from my life and Spring being the following season of sexual abuse at the hands of the evil one who presumed to take my father's place as my protector and mentor.

As I moved into that summer, I was a much-too-wise eight-years-old and a bearer of secrets. Secrets deep within me were going through the metamorphosis that would convert them into scars.  Silence like a cancer grows?  In me, it was more like silence like a cancer flows.  I had turned into a bed-wetter. The shame I hid during my daytime interactions with "normal" people seeped out of me at night and multiplied itself.  I would try not to drink.  I would try not to sleep.  I would have tried anything.  None of it worked.  The stain that had taken hold of my life, which I buried out of sight, would find its way out in the midst of a sad dream and show up in the morning as a stain on my sheets.  It was just another reason to wish I had never been born.

I would soon wish someone else had never been born.

My new stepfather's parents lived on a farm near Stroud, Oklahoma.  It was picturesque.  A fading red barn with implements and tractors all around, big horses and rowdy cows, bins full of cornstalks, a sawdust floor, an owl in the rafters, ropes hanging from the beams for uses I couldn't imagine, a rooster in the second-floor window, a weather vane on the peak.  And a sorta' cousin named Spike, whose parents -- for some odd reason -- had sent him there to spend the summer with his grandparents.  

I never caught my step-grandparents' names and knew them only as "Mom" and "Dad," which is what my stepfather called them.  I caught my cousin's name right off.  I'd never known a Spike and I wonder now how his parents could have been so prophetic in naming their child. 

I was a skinny little eight-year-old bed-wetter in the hands of a twelve-year-old bully pursuing perfection for his chosen calling.  I wasted no time inviting affliction upon myself.  Spike was a farm boy, and by the end of the first night I was so exhausted from all the things he had done to me trying to turn me into his little farmhand, that I fell fast asleep . . . deeply asleep . . . in the same bed as Spike.  He woke up yellowed and yelling.

"Mom" chased me into the bathroom on the hall where I ended up standing naked in an old claw-footed bathtub while she poured cold water on me and pronounced me as lazy and stupid. Spike stood outside the open door pointing and laughing.  

It gets worse.

  

The original plan had not been for me to stay at the farm that day when we had visited, but Spike had begged and my mother relented and left me there . . . with only the clothes I had on, which were also the clothes I had later slept in.  My clothes were now in the wash and I was stuck wearing a pair of Spike's shorts.  He was not a little 12-year-old by any stretch and my legs looked like they were extending from dual parachutes as we headed to the barn to feed the horses and play in the hay in the rafters.

About halfway up the ladder, I heard Spike's laughter and looked down to see him pointing.  He could see up my --well, his -- shorts and was ridiculing me in a way that an experience-damaged little boy can't just accept as teasing.  It was torment and torture.  Spike had already wrestled me into surrender on a dusty floor, thrown me into a near-stagnant stock pond, bludgeoned me with a pillow, offered me as a human sacrifice to a bunch of hungry cows and mocked me in a bathtub.

I heard years later that Spike had dived into a shallow swimming pool later that summer while showing off and cracked his burred head.  I never saw him again, but heard he had survived, yet would always have a nasty and permanent scar.  So did I.

Even after we survive our childhood, I think there are times when we just give in and see ourselves as others sometimes see us, as less than them, as somehow not put together quite right, as willingly astray, pleasurably-broken, struggle-embracing, skinny little creatures paralyzed on a ladder, ridiculed and diminished and deserving to be so.  

We need to see ourselves as Jesus sees us.  Jesus see us as complete.  He doesn't toss us into stock ponds; He picks us up and wraps us in His arms and simply loves us.  He doesn't wrestle us into forced surrender; He invites us to surrender and soothes us with grace and peace.  He doesn't point and mock, reducing us to shame; He holds and hears and builds us back up with hope.

Jesus doesn't exploit our weaknesses; He turns them into our strengths.  He never makes us wish we had never been born; he makes us rejoice to be born again.

I wish all the afflictions which serve as such fertile soil for the morphing of experiences into the scars that so taunt strugglers could vanish into the night like the hoots of the old barn owl that no longer haunt me.  Rather than manifesting themselves into such burdens, I wish these afflictions could be as distant a memory for you as Spike is now for me. 

But . . . what of Jonathan Edwards and his resolution that such afflictions are to be turned into good?  And, what about Joseph, sold into slavery by his very brothers?  That was certainly worse than being roughed up in a hay barn by a crazy cousin.

You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people.  -- Genesis 50:20

I know it is tough to "count it all joy."  I know it is hard to see how God can intend it all for good.  But if we allow ourselves to be trapped inside the vision that others have created for us and wear the label they have fashioned for us, and limit ourselves to their diminished hope, we empower Satan. If we trust God and take Him at His word and obey Him and surrender and find our hope in Glory, we confound Satan. 

Our afflictions are eclipsed by Glory.  Our earthly afflictions are no match for His heavenly affections.  Oh . . . how He loves us.

I rarely think of Spike.  He's probably a kind grandfather somewhere.  Maybe when he sees "shortcomings" in his grandchildren he thinks of his "Summer of Thom" and cuts them a little slack.  He usually only comes to my mind when  a sportscaster notes the futility that leads a quarterback to "spike" the ball.  I always think of Spike diving into that pool.


Ahhh . . . summer. 


It was in the summer, when I was but a few weeks old, sleeping soft beneath a lullaby, that God loved me. 


It was in the summer, waving goodbye as my father drove away, that God loved me. 


It was in the summer, lured into a tent with a malicious molester, that God Loved me. 


It was in the summer, surrendering my life to Christ, that God loved me. 


It was in the summer, first succumbing to homosexual temptation, that God loved me. 


It was in the summer, marrying my wife and declaring the past behind me, that God loved me. 


It was in the summer, letting the past overwhelm me and pull me into darkness, that God loved me. 


It was in the summer, finding freedom and once again, the light, that God loved me.


It was in the summer . . . every summer . . . that God loved me. 

Be strong.  Be courageous.  Be obedient.  And when you find yourself being less than what God intends and trapped somewhere in what man pretends, remember how much He loves you.  Vanquish the bully in the barn and walk with the One who really knows you.


This is the summer of 2012. And God loves you.

God Bless,

Thom -- BridgeBack Ministries

(Visit my Amazon Author Page for a list of books available.)