Family Squeeze (8 page)

Dear Lord, never let me
be afraid to pray for the impossible
.

D
OROTHY
S
HELLENBERGER

T
he earth is divided into two groups of people: those who like
The Lord of the Rings
and those who don’t. Ask my eldest child which book of earth is his favorite, and he won’t skip a beat. Ask him about a moment when his prayers seemed silly, and he just might smile broadly.

Without a doubt, Steve’s favorite book is a story of hobbits and Bilbo Baggins. All 23,000 pages of it. To my utter amazement, he had read all three books in the Rings trilogy by the age of ten. Before we celebrated his fifteenth birthday he had read them thrice and was gearing up for a fourth voyage.
Crazy
; I thought. He should be cleaning my car. He read them between playing basketball and ice hockey and table tennis. He read them in the evenings when he should have been studying. He read them late at night when he should have been snoring. The day I informed him that Peter Jackson was bringing the stories to life on the silver screen, he ricocheted around the living room, pumping his fists.

The filmmakers should have used my son as a consultant. From beginning to end, he can tell you more than you want to know about
Middle Earth, about hobbits and goblins, about the “one ring to rule them all.”

Shortly after we attended the first movie together, Steve turned sixteen. This is an age when fathers and sons have whispered conversations about life and love and being all grown up. One night during one of those discussions, I spoke to him about the importance of reaching this milestone of manhood. How, like his favorite hobbit Frodo, he would be faced with great temptations and great opportunities as he journeyed through the darkness of this earth. I said I would like to present him with a small gift as a covenant between him and me that he would walk the way Frodo had walked, choosing to do the right thing, though it cost him everything. I talked of putting God first. Of faith. Of purity. He nodded his approval.

“What’s the gift?” he asked. When I told him, he smiled.

The next day I ordered the first item I’ve ever ordered on the Internet. Scary thing for me. Even scarier price.

On the evening the package arrived, we convened for a family ceremony. The children leaned in, wide-eyed, as I opened a small box. “Hey! It’s a Callaway golf ball! Just kidding,” I said, then pulled out a wooden box. Inside was a genuine replica of “the one ring.” White gold, complete with Elvish engravings.

“What about ours?” whined the other two.

“You wait,” I told them.

I read a short verse of Scripture: “‘So fear the L
ORD
and serve him wholeheartedly,’ Joshua 24:14. For sixteen years that’s been our prayer for you, Steve. That you would honor God and serve Him.”

We prayed together, committing this child and his future to God. Then I took the ring, hung it from a gold chain, placed it about his neck, and kissed his forehead before he squirmed away.

There the ring stayed.

Until the night Steve arrived home from school carrying small pieces of the chain. He could scarcely bring himself to tell me.

It had broken, he knew not when.

The ring was gone, we knew not where.

We searched everywhere. Along sidewalks and hallways. Through classrooms and cars. Then we began looking in ridiculous places, like the toolshed and heating vents. Nothing. It was permanently gone, I knew. Hanging about someone else’s neck. Adorning another’s jewelry case.

So Steve began to pray.

His younger sister and brother joined him too. At suppertime, they prayed that we would find the ring. At breakfast they prayed, believing. I hated to doubt, but I am a grownup. I’ve gotten very good at it.

“There’s more chance of the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series,” I told my wife.

“They’re not even in it,” she said.

“Precisely.”

We had other things to pray about too, of course. Things that seemed just as impossible. Decisions related to Mom and Dad and life and work.

Steve told his grandparents about the ring. They didn’t know what a Frodo was, but they too began to pray.

Months passed. Winter came and went. The dazzling white snow that covered the field through which my son sometimes walks to school began to melt. And one evening as we sat down to eat together, I noticed a particularly broad grin on Steve’s face. As we ransacked a roast chicken, he told us he’d been walking home from school when a glint of reflected sunlight caught his eye. He then held his hand out and opened it.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. The ring. White gold, with Elvish etchings. As good as new. Back from Middle Earth.

Oh me of little faith.

Do you know what my prayer had been all this time? That he wouldn’t be too disappointed when his prayers weren’t answered. Here I was, praying that God wouldn’t dash the boy’s hopes too badly. There he was, asking God to do the impossible, something He has delighted in doing since the dawn of time.

The ring hangs about Steve’s neck from a sturdier chain now. I hope it will serve as a constant reminder to honor the Lord and serve Him wholeheartedly. I hope it will remind the rest of us that those who seek find, that those who ask receive, and that grownups of little faith sometimes get another chance.

Accept the fact that there will be moments when
your children will hate you. This is normal and natural.
But how a child handles hate may determine whether
he will go to Harvard or San Quentin
.

A
NN
L
ANDERS

Abounding grace is the hope of mankind
.

A. W. T
OZER

H
ave you ever wondered if there’s hope for the next generation? I certainly have. They’ve got more earrings than brain cells. They’re confused. They don’t know which way to point their hats or how high to pull their pants. They have problems with their eyesight. They can’t find a thing to eat in a fridge full of food nor a thing to wear in a closet full of clothes. They’re glued to their cell phones—when they’re not chatting online in brief, meaningless sentences.

Whenever I share such thoughts with my wife, she just grins. I worry about the kids, she tells me, because they’re a lot like me. And she is right. Not a lot of grownups lit up with hope when they saw me.

I was a skinny child. So skinny that I had only one vertical stripe on my pajamas. So skinny that I needed suspenders to hold up my Speedo. So skinny that I was swimming in a lake one summer and a dog came out to fetch me—three times. My mother used to scrub laundry on my rib cage. People looking for a toothpick at the dinner table would grab me. You get the picture.

I wasn’t a particularly bad-looking child—my father did not spank my mother when I was born, as my older brother claimed—but I was uncommonly thin, and it took me years to discover any humor in it. I remember as if it were an hour ago the time a beautiful girl in our school rode past me on her silver bicycle and shouted, “Hi, Skinny!” as if that were my given name. I would rather she had leveled a potato gun at me and pulled the trigger.

I suppose I became a writer partly as a response to the enormous humiliation of being teased as a child. A sense of humor and my ability with words were the only weapons in my arsenal. So I kept my wit sharp and my tongue forked.

In elementary school a classmate broke my thumb with a hockey stick, threw snow in my face, then laughed as I cried. His name was Ken, but I called him other things, things I’m not proud of. I told him things of which he had no idea. Things involving his family history and his future.

I knew he was going to break my other thumb. Instead he quickly skated away. I realized something wonderful that day: sticks and stones can break bones, but words can shatter something far deeper.

In high school, an upperclassman named Larry approached me in the hallway and said, “Callaway, you’re so skinny, we should slide you under the door when we need stuff.”

I couldn’t think of a gracious response, so I said, “Well, you’re so fat, you broke your family tree!” He was stunned.

I was on a terrible roll. I said, “You’re so fat, when you bend over, you cause an eclipse on three continents.” I couldn’t stop myself now. I
had thrown my tongue into gear before engaging my brain. “You’re so fat, you beep when you back up.”

I thought he would murder me and the jury would unanimously acquit him. Instead, the color drained from his face as he turned and walked away.

That same year I discovered writing. I was about ninety pounds at the time, which was just enough to make the keys on the typewriter go down. My first critical review came from classmates in response to my essay, “A Day in the Life of an English Student,” in which I pointed out various physical characteristics of our teacher and just how boring it was to be in his class. I believe his reason for reading my essay publicly was to humiliate me. To show the class that using his name in an assignment was improper and unwise. That ridiculing his teaching habits would not go unpunished.

It backfired big time. The students clapped. They cheered. They loved me. A few rose to their feet. One saluted me.

The teacher stopped reading and wrote across my essay in red ink, “Composition poor. Grammar bad. See me after school.” He gave me a D.

As I sat at my desk that afternoon, I began to dream. I dreamed of becoming a writer. Of penning hugely successful novels jammed with humor, sarcasm, and revenge. I dreamed of the day Ken and Larry would want me as their friend, would beg forgiveness for not treating me better.

Two things stood in the way: A mother who prayed for me every day of my life. And a father who promised me a watch if I read one chapter of Proverbs each day for a month.
⁹
I began to encounter verses like “Reckless words pierce like a sword” (12:18) and “The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life” (15:4).

I remember reading once that the singer Karen Carpenter’s fatal obsession with weight control began when she read a
Billboard
reviewers comment in which he dubbed her “Richard’s chubby sister.” At the age of thirty-two, Karen died of heart failure.

The tongue can be an ambassador of the heart. Or a deadly weapon.

Somehow the Spirit of God took hold of me. I realized the devastating power of reckless words. And I began to pray that God would transform my tongue and use my words to bring healing and hope.

I believe it is one of the prayers God loves to hear and that He answers it for all of us. I have seen Him do so in the most surprising ways.

I was speaking about God’s grace at a large convention recently, and when I stepped off the stage, guess who was waiting for me? Ken. I kid you not. He gave me a bear hug that made my kidneys hurt. There were tears streaming down his face. Ten minutes later, guess who elbowed his way through the crowd? Larry. There were tears in his eyes. Mine too. Two bullies and a skinny kid. On even ground at the foot of the cross. Amazed by grace.

As
parents we do what we can, but we always fall short. And God’s grace comes in. Surprising each new generation, captivating us, meeting us where we are but never leaving us where it finds us.

“Isn’t God good?” said Ken, taking my right hand and squeezing it a little too hard. “How’s the thumb?”

“Never better,” I said. “Never better.”