Coming Home was a really long story. I think there were three basic lessons in it, for me at least; one for each part. Maybe two. I'm not really sure. I decided to include my outline for each of the parts so that you can more easily remember what was going on in the story without having to reread the whole thing.
Part One
* the rain
* the morning
* the drive part a
* the bridge
* the car
* the police escort
* the woman
The lesson here, for me, is that though my heart is growing, I haven't yet gotten to the point where I'm really applying that correctly. The internal struggle seems like a good sign that I'm moving toward the ultimate goal of perfect love, but the outcome of the struggle really illustrates how far I still have to go.
Part Two
* the tow driver's story
* the dealership
* the book part a
The tow driver's story is what most impacted me from this section. While it, at the time, just really seemed to be a story about listening to God, reflecting on the situation now makes me think it's more just another example of my self-focusedness. I mean, the guy told me his whole life's story, even the most tragic parts of it, and I never even learned his name.
Part Three
* the dinner (vaguely)
* the night
* the breakfast
* the drive part b
* the casino
* the dinner
* the storm
* the star
* the book part b
There are lots of lessons in the storm and the star about hope and perseverance and God's grace through struggles, but I thought those were pretty clear in the main text, and I'd rather talk about the book anyway.
What made Blue Like Jazz such a phenomenal book for me, I think, is that the author's faith is obviously not motivated by fear. So much of what we do as Christians is completely motivated by abject terror; while I was sitting in the Saturn dealership in Tulsa, Pat Robertson spoke on TBN about how the secret to having a healthy marriage, from the perspective of the husband, is to follow three rules: never be in a room alone with a woman not your wife, never be in a room alone with a woman not your wife, never be in a room alone with a woman not your wife.
While there may be some real practical value to that kind of advice, it seems like it's just another form of bondage. What this leads to is a ridiculous level of insulation which deprives us of much of what God has for us. I think.
Donald Miller, on the other hand, seems more willing to be free and active within the context of his faith.
That's where I want to be, but it seems like I can't be free...I'm just too afraid.
I'm working towards it, though.
Peace, love, and joy to you all.
Showing posts with label coming home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coming home. Show all posts
Monday, May 21, 2007
Monday, May 14, 2007
Coming Home (Part 3/3)
This post is part three of my story. Parts one and two can be found here and here, respectively.
There are roughly 684 miles between my spot in upper lot and my parking spot on the road alongside the house across the street from my home. It's a journey I've made at least a dozen times in the past few years; I thought that I knew every last stretch of road I would come across. But as it turned out, God had plans for using that very same road to stretch me.
This story is all true.
***
I sat down on my bed and I read the book. And I stopped for dinner out with friends, an unexpected second chance to actually say goodbye (which I had apparently neglected) and hang out one last time before the social winter of summer.
As vaguely as I can, I want to explain a perhaps peculiar belief of mine. Growing up, I never really understood why we pray over every meal. It was cultural in my family; that is, it was what we did. I couldn't imagine a meal without it anymore than a meal without plates. Each of us kids would take turns praying over the meal, an honor which had a lot to do with my salvation from a dead-end life of debauchery at the age of four.
I've always been a thinker, though, and this was one of the first beliefs passed down from my parents that I began to question and examine within any sort of what I would now call a theological construct. When I was in junior high, I linked this practice to the description in Daniel of Daniel's thrice daily prayer routine. "This has been misapplied," I thought, and felt smarter than everyone around me, peons still chained to this belief in prayer before meals.
As it turns out, that's actually in the Bible a little bit later as well. I think. I can't really find it right now. I did find that we should definitely pray over our meals if we suspect they may have been offered as pagan sacrifices. Anyway, with the biblical knowledge of the four of you who read my blog, I'm sure I'll soon find out where every proof-text for the necessity of praying over a burrito is in the Bible.
And it's a good thing, I guess. It fosters an attitude of thanksgiving and fellowship with God and all. And that's all really good. I don't know, it's just, it feels like posturing to me. And that's really difficult for me. I approach these things from the mentality that I would rather be known by people as the worst heathen and known by God than seen as a spiritual giant among men and yet not actually possess any sort of meaningful relationship with God.
This was supposed to be a short tangent. What I'm getting at, I guess, is that I'd rather show a waitress that such a thing as Love or Charity is with a great tip than be remembered as the guy who prayed ostentatiously over the meal and also made a huge deal out of being gratted--as if the server's decision. It's difficult for me to write about this without using terminology that is unnecessary--or at least improper for a future youth pastor--so I'll end by saying that God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of this crap. Everyone in food service knows that Christians are cheap and rude; could we possibly more reflect the antithesis of Christ, who gave his all in loving service for us?
But dinner was good.
I returned to my room and spent the rest of the night more or less alone, reading. I woke up the next morning, and read more. When I got the call that my car had been finished, I was honestly a little bit disappointed. During the quiet times of my ride over to the dealership, I tried to imagine a way to drive and read at the same time. I was that hooked on this book.
I started my drive and successfully navigated the craters sprinkled along the first twenty or so miles of 412. I stopped for lunch at about one o'clock; I bought a box of Ritz crackers and a liter of Mountain Dew from a Conoco that was built into a Subway that shared its space with an Indian casino. It was one of the more disjunctive experiences of my life, and disjunction is my chief delight, so that's really saying something. A woman won $72 from a nickel slot machine while I was waiting in line. Actually, I was just standing behind someone who was standing at the register, talking to the clerk. Which, while it sounds like standing in line, was actually just wasting time, since the old man I was standing behind was the casino/restaurant/gas station's security guard.
And Kansas was.
I'm very proud of that last paragraph. It almost substitutes for those five or so hours of driving in a remarkably straight line through Kansas without actually missing anything of my experience. Amazing.
One of the real highlights of my drive westward comes when I hit the town of Genoa, Colorado. According to wikipedia, my source for basically everything, a little less than 200 people live in Genoa. Holding my I-70 in Colorado speed of 80mph, it takes me less than half a minute to enter and exit the town. Main Street is only three-tenths of a mile long.
But the town is 5500 feet above sea-level and most everything between it and the Rockies is lower than that, so on a clear day you can actually see the Front Range from Cheyenne Mountain to Pikes Peak, even though you're still about 100 miles out. It's pretty exciting and a good way to get me excited about the drive about 8.5 hours in. I looked for a picture, but I couldn't find one. So you'll just have to take my word for it.
Anyway, that's what happens on a clear day. On this day, though, storm clouds billowed over Limon (a major junction town in the plains of eastern Colorado) and so, instead of mountains, I could only see a thick sheet of rain between myself and my home. But what's a little water, right?
Wrong. As it turns out, by the time I hit Limon right around dusk, a tornado warning had been issued and marble sized hail was pelting my car. I couldn't really see anything so I pulled off I-70 and hung out under an overpass for a while. I listened to the seventh and eighth innings of the Rockies-Reds game texting my family to try to find out what the forecast was for where I was. The conversation went something like this:
Me: weather limon?
Them: oh well it looks pretty dark out there. might rain.
Me: def raining and hail. any forecast?
Them: im at mall
At this point I broke off communications and waited for the storm to let up, which it did shortly thereafter. I started down the home stretch of my long journey, a two-lane highway numbered 24. About a mile into the road, I received two text messages from my mom and a call from my dad, all telling me to wait in Limon. Apparently, the storm I had just been in was only the first round in a powerful two-punch combo, the second of which was already raising all sorts of hell south west of me, traveling toward me up the highway I needed to use to get home. So I went into my second Subway/gas station of the day, reclined in a booth facing the window, and read some more of my new book.
The hail started small, but it was golf-ball sized within a dozen seconds or so. An old deaf man came up to me and we had a whole conversation about the hail and driving in it and tornadoes. I only kinda know what we said. I think he probably felt the same way. All those years of charades-esque theatre exercises really come in handy every now and then. My phone rang--or buzzed, since my phone is almost never audibly on--and I tried to excuse myself from the company of my new friend in a way that wouldn't seem rude. He quickly understood and wandered off to discuss the weather with someone else. I kinda felt like I was showing off, holding my phone up to my ear and gloating before a deaf man "Look what I can do!" But I wasn't and I don't think he felt that way. I just worry, I guess.
My dad was on the other end of the line. They had transformed my house into a veritable storm tracking bunker, and he instructed me to start my drive home right then. The first storm had left Limon, the second storm would be north of 24 by the time I intercepted it, and a third storm (which had just recently appeared) would remain south of 24 until I made it to the Springs. With all the excitement I could hear in his voice, I felt bad telling him that the wrath of God was still being poured out on Limon outside. But I did promise him that I would leave as soon as it let up, and I reminded him that I don't get cell phone service between Limon and the Springs, so if anything changed he would need to let me know right away.
Within a minute or two, the hail moved out. The tornado warning was still active, so nobody else left the truck stop with me when I dashed out to my car and sped out onto 24. In fact, as I got going on the highway, it became clear that I was the only one trying the run right then. As Limon faded in my rear view mirror, I began to feel alone and afraid. I cataloged the towns I would pass through to get to the Springs, trying to engage my mind on something other than the storm. Matheson, Peyton, Calhan, Falcon, Simla. I couldn't shake from my head the fact that, prior to all my trips to and from Tulsa, the only times I ever heard of these towns were when the meteorologist on TV would be frantically pleading for the people of these towns to seek shelter from tornadoes.
Because of the way that the storms were configured that night, there was constant lightning all around me. I should have mentioned this in the prologue in part 1 of this saga, but I'm also kinda afraid of lightning. I know, I know...not really a grown up fear. And I know that many of you see the wonder and power of God in it, and blah blah blah; but, for me, any time something is both wildly unpredictable and nearly certainly fatal, I get a little wobbly-kneed. Oh, and thunder's loud and loud noises scare me too.
I've never felt so completely alone as I did that night. Probably. I mean, I've never felt so actually alone as I did that night; the plains were pitch-black, no one else was in sight, and my cell-phone couldn't even provide me with the potential of human contact. But I've felt more lonely, I guess--hopefully that's a distinction that makes sense outside of my head. Either way I couldn't help but think of the stories where the disciples are out on the boat in the storm and then Jesus shows up in some way and calms everything down.
And we're so hard on the disciples. "What an idiot! Peter steps out on the water and then gets scared...I mean, Jesus is right there!" "They hang out with him all this time and they still don't realize what kind of power he had..." But you know what...forget that. It's scary being out there in a storm, all alone and dark and exposed. And they were way more exposed than I was.
It was intense, and there were portions where I was driving through two and three inches of hailstones lying on the road, pooling the water into the two narrow channels which the tires of the few intrepid somewhere before me had cut through the ice. I stayed hunched over my wheel until--a few miles before Falcon, I guess--I noticed that the lightning in front of me had kinda subsided. I started to examine the sky to check my assumption. And then I saw it.
That star was probably the most beautiful I've ever seen. It meant the sky ahead was clear. It meant that the rain and the hail was over. It meant that I was actually going to finally get home.
That star is a lot of things.
I was home with my family within twenty minutes. And I was happy and at home again.
After everybody else went to bed, I sat alone on the couch in my parents' living room and I finished the book.
***
Peace, love, and joy to you all.
An epilogue? Hasn't this been long enough already?
keep watch
There are roughly 684 miles between my spot in upper lot and my parking spot on the road alongside the house across the street from my home. It's a journey I've made at least a dozen times in the past few years; I thought that I knew every last stretch of road I would come across. But as it turned out, God had plans for using that very same road to stretch me.
This story is all true.
***
I sat down on my bed and I read the book. And I stopped for dinner out with friends, an unexpected second chance to actually say goodbye (which I had apparently neglected) and hang out one last time before the social winter of summer.
As vaguely as I can, I want to explain a perhaps peculiar belief of mine. Growing up, I never really understood why we pray over every meal. It was cultural in my family; that is, it was what we did. I couldn't imagine a meal without it anymore than a meal without plates. Each of us kids would take turns praying over the meal, an honor which had a lot to do with my salvation from a dead-end life of debauchery at the age of four.
I've always been a thinker, though, and this was one of the first beliefs passed down from my parents that I began to question and examine within any sort of what I would now call a theological construct. When I was in junior high, I linked this practice to the description in Daniel of Daniel's thrice daily prayer routine. "This has been misapplied," I thought, and felt smarter than everyone around me, peons still chained to this belief in prayer before meals.
As it turns out, that's actually in the Bible a little bit later as well. I think. I can't really find it right now. I did find that we should definitely pray over our meals if we suspect they may have been offered as pagan sacrifices. Anyway, with the biblical knowledge of the four of you who read my blog, I'm sure I'll soon find out where every proof-text for the necessity of praying over a burrito is in the Bible.
And it's a good thing, I guess. It fosters an attitude of thanksgiving and fellowship with God and all. And that's all really good. I don't know, it's just, it feels like posturing to me. And that's really difficult for me. I approach these things from the mentality that I would rather be known by people as the worst heathen and known by God than seen as a spiritual giant among men and yet not actually possess any sort of meaningful relationship with God.
This was supposed to be a short tangent. What I'm getting at, I guess, is that I'd rather show a waitress that such a thing as Love or Charity is with a great tip than be remembered as the guy who prayed ostentatiously over the meal and also made a huge deal out of being gratted--as if the server's decision. It's difficult for me to write about this without using terminology that is unnecessary--or at least improper for a future youth pastor--so I'll end by saying that God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of this crap. Everyone in food service knows that Christians are cheap and rude; could we possibly more reflect the antithesis of Christ, who gave his all in loving service for us?
But dinner was good.
I returned to my room and spent the rest of the night more or less alone, reading. I woke up the next morning, and read more. When I got the call that my car had been finished, I was honestly a little bit disappointed. During the quiet times of my ride over to the dealership, I tried to imagine a way to drive and read at the same time. I was that hooked on this book.
I started my drive and successfully navigated the craters sprinkled along the first twenty or so miles of 412. I stopped for lunch at about one o'clock; I bought a box of Ritz crackers and a liter of Mountain Dew from a Conoco that was built into a Subway that shared its space with an Indian casino. It was one of the more disjunctive experiences of my life, and disjunction is my chief delight, so that's really saying something. A woman won $72 from a nickel slot machine while I was waiting in line. Actually, I was just standing behind someone who was standing at the register, talking to the clerk. Which, while it sounds like standing in line, was actually just wasting time, since the old man I was standing behind was the casino/restaurant/gas station's security guard.
And Kansas was.
I'm very proud of that last paragraph. It almost substitutes for those five or so hours of driving in a remarkably straight line through Kansas without actually missing anything of my experience. Amazing.
One of the real highlights of my drive westward comes when I hit the town of Genoa, Colorado. According to wikipedia, my source for basically everything, a little less than 200 people live in Genoa. Holding my I-70 in Colorado speed of 80mph, it takes me less than half a minute to enter and exit the town. Main Street is only three-tenths of a mile long.
But the town is 5500 feet above sea-level and most everything between it and the Rockies is lower than that, so on a clear day you can actually see the Front Range from Cheyenne Mountain to Pikes Peak, even though you're still about 100 miles out. It's pretty exciting and a good way to get me excited about the drive about 8.5 hours in. I looked for a picture, but I couldn't find one. So you'll just have to take my word for it.
Anyway, that's what happens on a clear day. On this day, though, storm clouds billowed over Limon (a major junction town in the plains of eastern Colorado) and so, instead of mountains, I could only see a thick sheet of rain between myself and my home. But what's a little water, right?
Wrong. As it turns out, by the time I hit Limon right around dusk, a tornado warning had been issued and marble sized hail was pelting my car. I couldn't really see anything so I pulled off I-70 and hung out under an overpass for a while. I listened to the seventh and eighth innings of the Rockies-Reds game texting my family to try to find out what the forecast was for where I was. The conversation went something like this:
Me: weather limon?
Them: oh well it looks pretty dark out there. might rain.
Me: def raining and hail. any forecast?
Them: im at mall
At this point I broke off communications and waited for the storm to let up, which it did shortly thereafter. I started down the home stretch of my long journey, a two-lane highway numbered 24. About a mile into the road, I received two text messages from my mom and a call from my dad, all telling me to wait in Limon. Apparently, the storm I had just been in was only the first round in a powerful two-punch combo, the second of which was already raising all sorts of hell south west of me, traveling toward me up the highway I needed to use to get home. So I went into my second Subway/gas station of the day, reclined in a booth facing the window, and read some more of my new book.
The hail started small, but it was golf-ball sized within a dozen seconds or so. An old deaf man came up to me and we had a whole conversation about the hail and driving in it and tornadoes. I only kinda know what we said. I think he probably felt the same way. All those years of charades-esque theatre exercises really come in handy every now and then. My phone rang--or buzzed, since my phone is almost never audibly on--and I tried to excuse myself from the company of my new friend in a way that wouldn't seem rude. He quickly understood and wandered off to discuss the weather with someone else. I kinda felt like I was showing off, holding my phone up to my ear and gloating before a deaf man "Look what I can do!" But I wasn't and I don't think he felt that way. I just worry, I guess.
My dad was on the other end of the line. They had transformed my house into a veritable storm tracking bunker, and he instructed me to start my drive home right then. The first storm had left Limon, the second storm would be north of 24 by the time I intercepted it, and a third storm (which had just recently appeared) would remain south of 24 until I made it to the Springs. With all the excitement I could hear in his voice, I felt bad telling him that the wrath of God was still being poured out on Limon outside. But I did promise him that I would leave as soon as it let up, and I reminded him that I don't get cell phone service between Limon and the Springs, so if anything changed he would need to let me know right away.
Within a minute or two, the hail moved out. The tornado warning was still active, so nobody else left the truck stop with me when I dashed out to my car and sped out onto 24. In fact, as I got going on the highway, it became clear that I was the only one trying the run right then. As Limon faded in my rear view mirror, I began to feel alone and afraid. I cataloged the towns I would pass through to get to the Springs, trying to engage my mind on something other than the storm. Matheson, Peyton, Calhan, Falcon, Simla. I couldn't shake from my head the fact that, prior to all my trips to and from Tulsa, the only times I ever heard of these towns were when the meteorologist on TV would be frantically pleading for the people of these towns to seek shelter from tornadoes.
Because of the way that the storms were configured that night, there was constant lightning all around me. I should have mentioned this in the prologue in part 1 of this saga, but I'm also kinda afraid of lightning. I know, I know...not really a grown up fear. And I know that many of you see the wonder and power of God in it, and blah blah blah; but, for me, any time something is both wildly unpredictable and nearly certainly fatal, I get a little wobbly-kneed. Oh, and thunder's loud and loud noises scare me too.
I've never felt so completely alone as I did that night. Probably. I mean, I've never felt so actually alone as I did that night; the plains were pitch-black, no one else was in sight, and my cell-phone couldn't even provide me with the potential of human contact. But I've felt more lonely, I guess--hopefully that's a distinction that makes sense outside of my head. Either way I couldn't help but think of the stories where the disciples are out on the boat in the storm and then Jesus shows up in some way and calms everything down.
And we're so hard on the disciples. "What an idiot! Peter steps out on the water and then gets scared...I mean, Jesus is right there!" "They hang out with him all this time and they still don't realize what kind of power he had..." But you know what...forget that. It's scary being out there in a storm, all alone and dark and exposed. And they were way more exposed than I was.
It was intense, and there were portions where I was driving through two and three inches of hailstones lying on the road, pooling the water into the two narrow channels which the tires of the few intrepid somewhere before me had cut through the ice. I stayed hunched over my wheel until--a few miles before Falcon, I guess--I noticed that the lightning in front of me had kinda subsided. I started to examine the sky to check my assumption. And then I saw it.
That star was probably the most beautiful I've ever seen. It meant the sky ahead was clear. It meant that the rain and the hail was over. It meant that I was actually going to finally get home.
That star is a lot of things.
I was home with my family within twenty minutes. And I was happy and at home again.
After everybody else went to bed, I sat alone on the couch in my parents' living room and I finished the book.
***
Peace, love, and joy to you all.
An epilogue? Hasn't this been long enough already?
keep watch
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Coming Home (Part 2/3)
This post is part two of my story. Part one can be found here.
There are roughly 684 miles between my spot in upper lot and my parking spot on the road alongside the house across the street from my home. It's a journey I've made at least a dozen times in the past few years; I thought that I knew every last stretch of road I would come across. But as it turned out, God had plans for using that very same road to stretch me.
This story is all true.
***
Tulsa is a bizarre place. I suppose it's because of how incredibly Christian the whole city is, but you can't seem to do much of anything without dealing with folk who are in the ministry.
Even so, I'm still always a little wary of telling people I go to ORU. ORU is a really polarizing place, for anybody who's heard of it--which, in Tulsa is everybody; they seem to either love it or hate it, both with very valid reasons. Nobody is knowledgeably indifferent. So when I got the smiling "Oh yeah?" that's always the response from the tow truck driver as we were pullling out of the QT parking lot, I thought that I might just be beginning a very long and uncomfortable ride.
Then the driver (I hate me referring to him as "the driver" and "the tow truck driver," too; the truth is I just never caught his name, or if I did I didn't care enough to remember it. Either way is a strike against me, not him) said, "I used to--back when I was in high school here--I used to go up to 41st and Harvard, up at ...'s--" He paused.
"Oh yeah?" I responded, faking like I belong in Tulsa and can actually communicate with anyone who really knows the city. Apparently, he was in the middle of a sentence, as he just kept going.
"...and it seemed like every time I went up there Brother Roberts was in the chair next to me getting his hair cut." A longer pause.
"That's funny," I said, sounding every bit as clever as I'm capable, I'm sure.
It was at this awkward pause in the conversation that I first noticed that we were listening to the country-western-Christian radio station...a combination I've stumbled across only in the bizarre milieu of Tulsa's brackish waters of cowboy and charismatic.
And so then he asked me what I was studying. And I told him that I'm a youth ministry major.
An aside is necessary here: I have no shame about my major (I can hear Prof Spears doing his "I am not ashamed of the gospel!" pastor impersonation here, which, if you ever have the opportunity, is completely worth hearing), but I really do prefer to live in peace with people and not hear them tell me about how I'm wasting my life or hear them tell me how teenagers are just all going to hell or hear them patronize me with a "Well, I suppose somebody has to reach out to them, too." It's gotten to the point where I've seriously contemplated manufacturing semi-pseudo-majors to tell people, especially people who -gasp!- I know that aren't Christians. Like maybe I'll tell them that I'm an Ancient Near Eastern Lit major. Or something.
Anyway, it was here that he told me that he was in the ministry as well, something which I still don't really understand his meaning. But, regardless, I asked him how he'd gotten here. Or there. I guess it all depends on how gripped by my story you feel at this point.
He had grown up in Tulsa. He was born in Birmingham, but only because his dad had traveled down there on the thin hope of finding work. All of his extended family, on both sides, lived in Tulsa at the time and, before his memory began to record everything, his immediate family returned. He had gone to school at OU for a time before enlisting. He served some eight years in the military before he became a golf pro. Seriously. Somewhere in Tulsa, there is currently a tow truck being driven around by some guy who probably still could beat the crap out of you and anyone you actually know at golf. And probably miniature golf, too.
Anyway, he worked as a golf pro (which is not the same as a professional golfer) in Tulsa for twenty-five years or so before he felt like God had called him to give it all up to enter the ministry. He served basically as an intern or a disciple to some local Pentecostalish evangelistish guy, signing up for a year-long commitment. About halfway through the year, one of the guys who was supporting the ministry he was working for offered him a job working for him.
Another aside. I know lots of y'all probably watched Friends or Seinfeld or ER or something else hip and relevant in the 90s and early 00s, but while I was in junior high and high school I watched a lot of Matlock. It's a great show. You can actually game plan the show based on what time it is. "Oh, we're at 30 minutes in, there's about to be a red herring and a black dude (whether it's Tyler or Conrad) is about to get beat up." Recently, while it was still on the air, I was heavily addicted to The First 48, which is a documentary show about homicide investigations.
All this to say that I love trying to solve mysteries. So when the driver got to this point in his story, I assumed that the job was somehow going to be related to driving a tow truck. Maybe some of you made that same assumption. Maybe some of you have already skipped a couple of paragraphs down to see how this all ends.
I was wrong, as it turns out. This man--not the driver, but the one offering the position--had invented the world's fastest workstation computer. "Wow," I said, pretty genuinely impressed.
"Yeah," he replied, smiling. "I was the only one who ever sold one. The guy fled the country before any of us could figure out that it was all just a scam. We had all invested, too; my wife and I had put in $200,000, our whole life's savings."
"Oh man," I tried to sound sympathetic. Don't get me wrong; I totally felt bad for the guy, it's just that that amount of money doesn't sound real to me. I can't remember the last time that I had $200 in my bank account.
"Yeah," he continued. "Once the money was gone, that just led to more problems, which led to the divorce." The ease with which he said this part was the really really troubling part. I didn't know how to respond. Divorce is awful for everyone involved, is about all I can figure. I tried to exhale.
"Look at that!" he half-shouted. His excitement was palpable. "That guy's lost his whole wheel!"
There was, in fact, a car stranded on the side of the highway with only three wheels and a distraught looking man standing outside of it. I guess when you're around this kind of stuff all the time, it just becomes a game to see the craziest stuff.
We never got back to talking about his life. I have no idea how this amazing golfer who had savings in the six figures ended up driving around in a diesel powered behemoth, running chain under cars and taking those who could pay from places of brokenness to somewhere where there was restoration, in some sense or another. Within minutes we were at the Saturn dealership.
The waiting room was long and narrow with a TV at one end, a row of windows along the long wall connecting the service area to this holding cell, a row of chairs opposite and facing the windows, and a dining-type table with chairs that rocked slightly in the other end of the room. The lights only worked on the TV half of the room and a woman was sitting, reading some romance novel at the table. Another college-aged looking guy was standing up close to the TV, his backpack in the chair closest to it. He was talking on his cell-phone to someone from church. Well, I don't know that he was talking to somebody from church, but he did call him brother a lot and use a bit of other Christianese, and I watched so much freaking Matlock that I'm pretty sure I'm right. Oh, and the TV was on TBN; this is Tulsa, after all.
And so I sat down, pretty near the center of the room and pulled out the other half of my sandwich and ate and watched them push in my so so sad car. This lasted precisely two minutes and 47 seconds, at which point I needed a new stimulus. I watched the TV for as long as I could before I thought my eyes would start bleeding. (That lasted not so long.) So I pulled out a book and began to read.
An interlude goes here. I want to put in a separate title, that would say something like "The Story of the Book," but I'm afraid that that will be too confusing. So just imagine that there's a big bold title here. Unless that confuses you. In which case, imagine a happy place, take four deep breaths, and continue reading.
It was wrapped in newspaper with some sort of marker writing scribbled onto it. I think it said "From: K.... To: Tim" but I'm not sure, I didn't actually read it. (PS, not really a fan of including names of other people on my blog. it kinda feels like i'm outing them or something. just kinda realized that just now.) I wonder what that says about me. I mean, I can't even emotionally invest enough in an interpersonal relationship that I read what the other person hands to me?
Anyway, it felt like a book...and I was confused. What book could it be? The irony in this moment is that this was one of those we've-had-conversations-about-you-getting-me-this-gift-and-I-still-am-surprised moments I seem to have frequently. It's a good thing that I enjoy surprises because otherwise my absentmindedness would get really annoying really quickly. I tore the paper off. I smiled. She smiled back. This was supposed to be my last night in Tulsa til August, and she tried one last time to persuade me to come partake of 31 cent scoop night at Baskin Robbins with a large group of our closest friends. She was successful in this pursuit, though that's completely irrelevant to the story.
The book was Blue Like Jazz, and it was about three o'clock on Thursday afternoon when I started it. I kinda didn't want to like it...I don't like liking cool things. But it was just so freaking cool.
I couldn't put it down. Every minute it took the mechanics to figure out what was wrong with my car was just giving me more of a chance to read. When they finally came out, they had bad news. I needed two wheels, and they only had one. Another would be coming in the next morning. My RA came and picked me up, and I returned, a little defeated, to my now empty dorm room.
***
Peace, love, and joy to you all.
Part 3/3 should be up by Monday. Oh, and it's probably going to be even longer. Sorry.
There are roughly 684 miles between my spot in upper lot and my parking spot on the road alongside the house across the street from my home. It's a journey I've made at least a dozen times in the past few years; I thought that I knew every last stretch of road I would come across. But as it turned out, God had plans for using that very same road to stretch me.
This story is all true.
***
Tulsa is a bizarre place. I suppose it's because of how incredibly Christian the whole city is, but you can't seem to do much of anything without dealing with folk who are in the ministry.
Even so, I'm still always a little wary of telling people I go to ORU. ORU is a really polarizing place, for anybody who's heard of it--which, in Tulsa is everybody; they seem to either love it or hate it, both with very valid reasons. Nobody is knowledgeably indifferent. So when I got the smiling "Oh yeah?" that's always the response from the tow truck driver as we were pullling out of the QT parking lot, I thought that I might just be beginning a very long and uncomfortable ride.
Then the driver (I hate me referring to him as "the driver" and "the tow truck driver," too; the truth is I just never caught his name, or if I did I didn't care enough to remember it. Either way is a strike against me, not him) said, "I used to--back when I was in high school here--I used to go up to 41st and Harvard, up at ...'s--" He paused.
"Oh yeah?" I responded, faking like I belong in Tulsa and can actually communicate with anyone who really knows the city. Apparently, he was in the middle of a sentence, as he just kept going.
"...and it seemed like every time I went up there Brother Roberts was in the chair next to me getting his hair cut." A longer pause.
"That's funny," I said, sounding every bit as clever as I'm capable, I'm sure.
It was at this awkward pause in the conversation that I first noticed that we were listening to the country-western-Christian radio station...a combination I've stumbled across only in the bizarre milieu of Tulsa's brackish waters of cowboy and charismatic.
And so then he asked me what I was studying. And I told him that I'm a youth ministry major.
An aside is necessary here: I have no shame about my major (I can hear Prof Spears doing his "I am not ashamed of the gospel!" pastor impersonation here, which, if you ever have the opportunity, is completely worth hearing), but I really do prefer to live in peace with people and not hear them tell me about how I'm wasting my life or hear them tell me how teenagers are just all going to hell or hear them patronize me with a "Well, I suppose somebody has to reach out to them, too." It's gotten to the point where I've seriously contemplated manufacturing semi-pseudo-majors to tell people, especially people who -gasp!- I know that aren't Christians. Like maybe I'll tell them that I'm an Ancient Near Eastern Lit major. Or something.
Anyway, it was here that he told me that he was in the ministry as well, something which I still don't really understand his meaning. But, regardless, I asked him how he'd gotten here. Or there. I guess it all depends on how gripped by my story you feel at this point.
He had grown up in Tulsa. He was born in Birmingham, but only because his dad had traveled down there on the thin hope of finding work. All of his extended family, on both sides, lived in Tulsa at the time and, before his memory began to record everything, his immediate family returned. He had gone to school at OU for a time before enlisting. He served some eight years in the military before he became a golf pro. Seriously. Somewhere in Tulsa, there is currently a tow truck being driven around by some guy who probably still could beat the crap out of you and anyone you actually know at golf. And probably miniature golf, too.
Anyway, he worked as a golf pro (which is not the same as a professional golfer) in Tulsa for twenty-five years or so before he felt like God had called him to give it all up to enter the ministry. He served basically as an intern or a disciple to some local Pentecostalish evangelistish guy, signing up for a year-long commitment. About halfway through the year, one of the guys who was supporting the ministry he was working for offered him a job working for him.
Another aside. I know lots of y'all probably watched Friends or Seinfeld or ER or something else hip and relevant in the 90s and early 00s, but while I was in junior high and high school I watched a lot of Matlock. It's a great show. You can actually game plan the show based on what time it is. "Oh, we're at 30 minutes in, there's about to be a red herring and a black dude (whether it's Tyler or Conrad) is about to get beat up." Recently, while it was still on the air, I was heavily addicted to The First 48, which is a documentary show about homicide investigations.
All this to say that I love trying to solve mysteries. So when the driver got to this point in his story, I assumed that the job was somehow going to be related to driving a tow truck. Maybe some of you made that same assumption. Maybe some of you have already skipped a couple of paragraphs down to see how this all ends.
I was wrong, as it turns out. This man--not the driver, but the one offering the position--had invented the world's fastest workstation computer. "Wow," I said, pretty genuinely impressed.
"Yeah," he replied, smiling. "I was the only one who ever sold one. The guy fled the country before any of us could figure out that it was all just a scam. We had all invested, too; my wife and I had put in $200,000, our whole life's savings."
"Oh man," I tried to sound sympathetic. Don't get me wrong; I totally felt bad for the guy, it's just that that amount of money doesn't sound real to me. I can't remember the last time that I had $200 in my bank account.
"Yeah," he continued. "Once the money was gone, that just led to more problems, which led to the divorce." The ease with which he said this part was the really really troubling part. I didn't know how to respond. Divorce is awful for everyone involved, is about all I can figure. I tried to exhale.
"Look at that!" he half-shouted. His excitement was palpable. "That guy's lost his whole wheel!"
There was, in fact, a car stranded on the side of the highway with only three wheels and a distraught looking man standing outside of it. I guess when you're around this kind of stuff all the time, it just becomes a game to see the craziest stuff.
We never got back to talking about his life. I have no idea how this amazing golfer who had savings in the six figures ended up driving around in a diesel powered behemoth, running chain under cars and taking those who could pay from places of brokenness to somewhere where there was restoration, in some sense or another. Within minutes we were at the Saturn dealership.
The waiting room was long and narrow with a TV at one end, a row of windows along the long wall connecting the service area to this holding cell, a row of chairs opposite and facing the windows, and a dining-type table with chairs that rocked slightly in the other end of the room. The lights only worked on the TV half of the room and a woman was sitting, reading some romance novel at the table. Another college-aged looking guy was standing up close to the TV, his backpack in the chair closest to it. He was talking on his cell-phone to someone from church. Well, I don't know that he was talking to somebody from church, but he did call him brother a lot and use a bit of other Christianese, and I watched so much freaking Matlock that I'm pretty sure I'm right. Oh, and the TV was on TBN; this is Tulsa, after all.
And so I sat down, pretty near the center of the room and pulled out the other half of my sandwich and ate and watched them push in my so so sad car. This lasted precisely two minutes and 47 seconds, at which point I needed a new stimulus. I watched the TV for as long as I could before I thought my eyes would start bleeding. (That lasted not so long.) So I pulled out a book and began to read.
An interlude goes here. I want to put in a separate title, that would say something like "The Story of the Book," but I'm afraid that that will be too confusing. So just imagine that there's a big bold title here. Unless that confuses you. In which case, imagine a happy place, take four deep breaths, and continue reading.
It was wrapped in newspaper with some sort of marker writing scribbled onto it. I think it said "From: K.... To: Tim" but I'm not sure, I didn't actually read it. (PS, not really a fan of including names of other people on my blog. it kinda feels like i'm outing them or something. just kinda realized that just now.) I wonder what that says about me. I mean, I can't even emotionally invest enough in an interpersonal relationship that I read what the other person hands to me?
Anyway, it felt like a book...and I was confused. What book could it be? The irony in this moment is that this was one of those we've-had-conversations-about-you-getting-me-this-gift-and-I-still-am-surprised moments I seem to have frequently. It's a good thing that I enjoy surprises because otherwise my absentmindedness would get really annoying really quickly. I tore the paper off. I smiled. She smiled back. This was supposed to be my last night in Tulsa til August, and she tried one last time to persuade me to come partake of 31 cent scoop night at Baskin Robbins with a large group of our closest friends. She was successful in this pursuit, though that's completely irrelevant to the story.
The book was Blue Like Jazz, and it was about three o'clock on Thursday afternoon when I started it. I kinda didn't want to like it...I don't like liking cool things. But it was just so freaking cool.
I couldn't put it down. Every minute it took the mechanics to figure out what was wrong with my car was just giving me more of a chance to read. When they finally came out, they had bad news. I needed two wheels, and they only had one. Another would be coming in the next morning. My RA came and picked me up, and I returned, a little defeated, to my now empty dorm room.
***
Peace, love, and joy to you all.
Part 3/3 should be up by Monday. Oh, and it's probably going to be even longer. Sorry.
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Coming Home (Part 1/3)
Before I begin, I want to apologize for the length; I'm not going to cut it down any more than this, though, because this is the first bit of writing I've felt good about for some time. Take your time with it if you need to, parts 2 & 3 won't show up for a few days.
There are roughly 684 miles between my spot in upper lot and my parking spot on the road alongside the house across the street from my home. It's a journey I've made at least a dozen times in the past few years; I thought that I knew every last stretch of road I would come across. But as it turned out, God had plans for using that very same road to stretch me.
This story is all true.
***
First and foremost, I have some slightly embarrassing confessions to make. If you try to corner me on any of these in real life, I will deny that they are true. But we'll both know that they're true, because you just read them and I wrote them and we'll feel just like spies or bank robbers or two children who've stumbled upon a great and mysterious faerie land that we want so badly to tell everyone else about. But we won't. Get it?
One, I am a very slow reader. And I'm not talking about the technical, making letters into words and words into sentences part of reading, but the sitting still and focusing on something in front of me for hours on end part of reading. The last book that I read of my own volition was The Ragamuffin Gospel, which I loved. It took me nine months.
Two, I am kinda sorta afraid of the dark. Like not a lot, and not if anybody else is around, but it just takes me a few minutes to get accustomed to being alone in the dark.
Three, I don't actually know how to change a flat tire. I mean, I'm aware that there's this whole jack up the car, use tire iron, put spare on process to it--but I've never actually done it. I don't think it'd be that hard...I mean, they make directions, right? I'm really good at following directions...
OK, I think that's all that's really necessary at the start of all of this. Now we can descend gracefully into a story of coming home.
***
This story actually begins at the start of last week, but I don't really want to tell it from there. So instead, I'll start in the middle.
It was raining. I don't mind rain, I even kinda like it, but I absolutely hate being wet. It'd been raining in Tulsa pretty heavily off and on for a couple of days and the ground had already had its fill of water. Puddles were forming everywhere, and since I was rocking my Chucks, walking from the GC to Saga had never been so difficult. I arrived, ate some breakfast, and prepared myself for what was already shaping up to be a long day.
It was 8.25 when I poured the green Tabasco sauce (my most recent love affair) onto my eggs-and-other-various-breakfasty-things plate, and I still had to load my possessions into my Saturn Ion, clean (fervently) the room, and procure the Holy Grail of finals week (an RA's signature on my dorm check-out sheet) before noon. The morning was pretty stressful, but thanks mostly to the work of DW, my roommate, I was able to get signed out at 12:15, and on the road by 12:30.
I picked up my foot long BMT at Subway, as is my custom, with a bag of Sun Chips and a root beer and settled in for ten hours of pure joy behind the wheel of my car through some of the most consistent terrain God ever designed on this Earth.
In order to leave Tulsa, I have to do this weird etch-a-sketch type maneuver where I start by heading north on 75, then go about a mile east on 244, before turning west onto 412, which takes me most of the way out of Oklahoma. I remember it as a dance step. Anyway, right after merging onto 412, which is under construction, I found my way into a vacuous cavern of a pothole hungry for tires along the right side of the right lane.
Eight inches doesn't sound like much. At 70 miles per hour, it sounds like you broke the whole passenger side of your car off. Then the grinding noise starts. I never lost control or even felt like I was close, which was pretty incredible considering I was holding my sandwich the whole time. Also, I never even thought about swearing. But I was scared. Mainly of having to change a tire. I credit my hours of running from cops in Grand Theft Auto for this; say what you will about murder, drugs, prostitution, and profanity, but that game gave me a serious leg up when it comes to driving through difficult situations.
As I pulled over, on a bridge (which is totally not what you're supposed to do), I joined a line of about eight or nine other vehicles who had also hid the pothole-o del muerte. I looked into the passenger side mirror of my car, seeing if I could see any damage. The fact that I could see warped edges of the rim stretching inches out away from my car was my first clue that something was more wrong than a spare could fix.
I called my mom. She put my dad on the phone. I got out of the car and surveyed the damage: both passenger side tires, rims, and wheels were done. Finito. The police were now on the scene, blocking off the lane which had claimed two perfectly good wheels from my now forlorn looking car, so I walked over to them to see what I should do. They wanted me off the bridge, and said that they would come down and escort me off the highway once the road crew arrived.
Devoid of any other options, I retrieved the rest of my sandwich from my car, sat down on the guardrail halfway between my car and the cops, and had a picnic.
About twenty minutes later, one of the patrolmen drove up to my car and, with the words "You ready to try this?" sent me to my car to get it to the QT at the next exit. As it turns out, mucho difficult to drive without tires on half your wheels...it seems like everything's going to explode at about 30. I made it to the QuikTrip, there in North Tulsa, at which point the officer literally said "You're safe here, but I wouldn't go too far in any direction." I thanked him for the advice and, for the first time, examined my surroundings. A chain link fence surrounded the QuikTrip. A chainlink fence with barbed wire at the top. I locked my doors.
It was shortly after this that she drove up and parked in the space next to mine. I had heard her engine making strange noises as she used the same exit I had just used to leave 412, distracting me from my reading; I watched her the whole way in. There was a baby in the car with her, in whatever it is that you put a baby into while in the car with a blanket over the handle, making a little tent. And I smiled, I felt comforted with the knowledge that people--rich, poor, black, white, North Tulsan, Springfolk--are all the same.
But she didn't get out at first. I thought that was odd. She had parked quite a way from the store. I tried to focus on my reading. She was out of her car now, looking under the hood. There were tears in her eyes. Just when I was beginning to debate offering help of some kind, she got back into her car and got out her cell phone. Surely she has help on the way, I thought.
She rolled the passenger side window halfway down. It was warm and humid by this point in the day; not hot like August, but not weather for sitting with your infant in a car. I tried desperately not to notice. My car was hermetically sealed; I had my A/C running. I had a drink. I tried again to focus on my book. I tried to send my mom a text message that the tow truck would be another half hour.
Just then, the loud, terrible beeping of a truck in reverse captured my attention. The tow truck had arrived. I got out of my car and greeted the very nice, older gentleman walking toward me. We chatted about how quickly he had gotten there (he had been downtown filing some paperwork) and how I had gotten myself into this predicament. And then there she was.
She was standing outside her car, now, with her baby in her arms, tears streaming down her face. She called out for help. She asked the tow truck driver to help her. She asked how much it would be; she didn't have insurance, so the driver told her that the rate was something a mile. I don't remember what it was, but I know now and I knew then that it was too much. She pleaded; the auto shop was just up the road a block or two. He said OK.
I sat there. I wanted to say "Take her first, then come back for me. She has a baby. She needs help." But I didn't. I couldn't? No, that's not it. I just didn't. And I hated myself for it. And I still hate that part of me for it.
The tow driver lifted my car onto his flat bed. I kept my back to her and her car. Before we left, he went over to her and said one last thing. I couldn't hear him over the idling engine, and his back was turned so I couldn't even read lips.
I hope it was good news.
Then I climbed into the truck and we were on our way.
***
Peace, love, and joy to you all.
Part 2/3 should be up by Tuesday of next week.
There are roughly 684 miles between my spot in upper lot and my parking spot on the road alongside the house across the street from my home. It's a journey I've made at least a dozen times in the past few years; I thought that I knew every last stretch of road I would come across. But as it turned out, God had plans for using that very same road to stretch me.
This story is all true.
***
First and foremost, I have some slightly embarrassing confessions to make. If you try to corner me on any of these in real life, I will deny that they are true. But we'll both know that they're true, because you just read them and I wrote them and we'll feel just like spies or bank robbers or two children who've stumbled upon a great and mysterious faerie land that we want so badly to tell everyone else about. But we won't. Get it?
One, I am a very slow reader. And I'm not talking about the technical, making letters into words and words into sentences part of reading, but the sitting still and focusing on something in front of me for hours on end part of reading. The last book that I read of my own volition was The Ragamuffin Gospel, which I loved. It took me nine months.
Two, I am kinda sorta afraid of the dark. Like not a lot, and not if anybody else is around, but it just takes me a few minutes to get accustomed to being alone in the dark.
Three, I don't actually know how to change a flat tire. I mean, I'm aware that there's this whole jack up the car, use tire iron, put spare on process to it--but I've never actually done it. I don't think it'd be that hard...I mean, they make directions, right? I'm really good at following directions...
OK, I think that's all that's really necessary at the start of all of this. Now we can descend gracefully into a story of coming home.
***
This story actually begins at the start of last week, but I don't really want to tell it from there. So instead, I'll start in the middle.
It was raining. I don't mind rain, I even kinda like it, but I absolutely hate being wet. It'd been raining in Tulsa pretty heavily off and on for a couple of days and the ground had already had its fill of water. Puddles were forming everywhere, and since I was rocking my Chucks, walking from the GC to Saga had never been so difficult. I arrived, ate some breakfast, and prepared myself for what was already shaping up to be a long day.
It was 8.25 when I poured the green Tabasco sauce (my most recent love affair) onto my eggs-and-other-various-breakfasty-things plate, and I still had to load my possessions into my Saturn Ion, clean (fervently) the room, and procure the Holy Grail of finals week (an RA's signature on my dorm check-out sheet) before noon. The morning was pretty stressful, but thanks mostly to the work of DW, my roommate, I was able to get signed out at 12:15, and on the road by 12:30.
I picked up my foot long BMT at Subway, as is my custom, with a bag of Sun Chips and a root beer and settled in for ten hours of pure joy behind the wheel of my car through some of the most consistent terrain God ever designed on this Earth.
In order to leave Tulsa, I have to do this weird etch-a-sketch type maneuver where I start by heading north on 75, then go about a mile east on 244, before turning west onto 412, which takes me most of the way out of Oklahoma. I remember it as a dance step. Anyway, right after merging onto 412, which is under construction, I found my way into a vacuous cavern of a pothole hungry for tires along the right side of the right lane.
Eight inches doesn't sound like much. At 70 miles per hour, it sounds like you broke the whole passenger side of your car off. Then the grinding noise starts. I never lost control or even felt like I was close, which was pretty incredible considering I was holding my sandwich the whole time. Also, I never even thought about swearing. But I was scared. Mainly of having to change a tire. I credit my hours of running from cops in Grand Theft Auto for this; say what you will about murder, drugs, prostitution, and profanity, but that game gave me a serious leg up when it comes to driving through difficult situations.
As I pulled over, on a bridge (which is totally not what you're supposed to do), I joined a line of about eight or nine other vehicles who had also hid the pothole-o del muerte. I looked into the passenger side mirror of my car, seeing if I could see any damage. The fact that I could see warped edges of the rim stretching inches out away from my car was my first clue that something was more wrong than a spare could fix.
I called my mom. She put my dad on the phone. I got out of the car and surveyed the damage: both passenger side tires, rims, and wheels were done. Finito. The police were now on the scene, blocking off the lane which had claimed two perfectly good wheels from my now forlorn looking car, so I walked over to them to see what I should do. They wanted me off the bridge, and said that they would come down and escort me off the highway once the road crew arrived.
Devoid of any other options, I retrieved the rest of my sandwich from my car, sat down on the guardrail halfway between my car and the cops, and had a picnic.
About twenty minutes later, one of the patrolmen drove up to my car and, with the words "You ready to try this?" sent me to my car to get it to the QT at the next exit. As it turns out, mucho difficult to drive without tires on half your wheels...it seems like everything's going to explode at about 30. I made it to the QuikTrip, there in North Tulsa, at which point the officer literally said "You're safe here, but I wouldn't go too far in any direction." I thanked him for the advice and, for the first time, examined my surroundings. A chain link fence surrounded the QuikTrip. A chainlink fence with barbed wire at the top. I locked my doors.
It was shortly after this that she drove up and parked in the space next to mine. I had heard her engine making strange noises as she used the same exit I had just used to leave 412, distracting me from my reading; I watched her the whole way in. There was a baby in the car with her, in whatever it is that you put a baby into while in the car with a blanket over the handle, making a little tent. And I smiled, I felt comforted with the knowledge that people--rich, poor, black, white, North Tulsan, Springfolk--are all the same.
But she didn't get out at first. I thought that was odd. She had parked quite a way from the store. I tried to focus on my reading. She was out of her car now, looking under the hood. There were tears in her eyes. Just when I was beginning to debate offering help of some kind, she got back into her car and got out her cell phone. Surely she has help on the way, I thought.
She rolled the passenger side window halfway down. It was warm and humid by this point in the day; not hot like August, but not weather for sitting with your infant in a car. I tried desperately not to notice. My car was hermetically sealed; I had my A/C running. I had a drink. I tried again to focus on my book. I tried to send my mom a text message that the tow truck would be another half hour.
Just then, the loud, terrible beeping of a truck in reverse captured my attention. The tow truck had arrived. I got out of my car and greeted the very nice, older gentleman walking toward me. We chatted about how quickly he had gotten there (he had been downtown filing some paperwork) and how I had gotten myself into this predicament. And then there she was.
She was standing outside her car, now, with her baby in her arms, tears streaming down her face. She called out for help. She asked the tow truck driver to help her. She asked how much it would be; she didn't have insurance, so the driver told her that the rate was something a mile. I don't remember what it was, but I know now and I knew then that it was too much. She pleaded; the auto shop was just up the road a block or two. He said OK.
I sat there. I wanted to say "Take her first, then come back for me. She has a baby. She needs help." But I didn't. I couldn't? No, that's not it. I just didn't. And I hated myself for it. And I still hate that part of me for it.
The tow driver lifted my car onto his flat bed. I kept my back to her and her car. Before we left, he went over to her and said one last thing. I couldn't hear him over the idling engine, and his back was turned so I couldn't even read lips.
I hope it was good news.
Then I climbed into the truck and we were on our way.
***
Peace, love, and joy to you all.
Part 2/3 should be up by Tuesday of next week.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
