Today, April 26, is our son’s 36^th birthday. I guess, if I had thought about it before he was born, I would have thought that the 36^th would have just been another birthday in a long line of birthdays. But when you are a parent, any birthday of one of your children is a special day. When you only have the one child, it is even more so. With the surgery I have just endured, we got to see Adam and his wife, Kim. They came in from Ohio the day before and stayed several days. The surgery itself was on Kim’s birthday, so the night before we had a joint party. But I was distracted, to say the least. My mind was elsewhere. Now it is his birthday and I am letting my mind wander.

          As I said in this blog a couple of days ago, I often use situations as learning experiences. This didn’t always set well with Adam. One day when he was a sophomore in high school, I was eating breakfast when he strolled into the kitchen. Like a lot of teenagers, he was pretty well convinced his parents didn’t know half of what was going on in the world. At least, not the important stuff.

          “Dad, what do you know about the lottery?” Apparently, because he had never heard the lottery talked about at home, he figured I hadn’t heard of the wonders of the lottery.

          “Well, Son, I’ve heard about it. Why do you ask?”

          “Well, Dad, the lottery is this thing where you can buy tickets for a buck. Each ticket has a series of numbers on it and if those numbers come up at the weekly drawing, you can win a LOT of money.!”

          “OK, that’s kind of what I have heard, too. Long odds, though. Anyway, what brings this up?”

          Now he got real serious. This was something he had been practicing, I think. He reached into his pocket and pulled out three dollars.

          “I know you probably wouldn’t want to risk any money on the lottery, and I’m still too young. But, I will give you these three dollars and you can go down and buy the tickets. Then we can split the winnings. No risk to you and I still get to play.”

          Pretty good thinking, especially for a 15 year old. I reached over and took the three dollars.

          “You want to play? Follow me.”

          We walked down the hall and turned into the bathroom. I have always wondered what he thought was going to happen in the bathroom. There was a safe in the wall in the bathroom. Maybe he thought I was so enlightened now I was going to get more money. (I know. Why was there a safe in the wall in the bathroom? I don’t know. It was a parsonage. Parsonages can be weird places. I do know we kept no money in the safe.) So he followed me into the bathroom. I walked to the toilet and threw the three dollars in and flushed.

          “WHAT!??! YOU JUST THREW MY THREE DOLLARS AWAY!!! WHY??!?”

          “You just played the lottery, Son. And, you have virtually the same chance of winning.”

          He wasn’t amused.

          It didn’t always work out that well. Adam wanted to put a computer in his room in the basement of that same parsonage and he wanted to be able to hook up with the internet. We had dial-up back then, as did most people, so the biggest hurdle was running a phone line into the basement. He was helping me. A small hole in the floor was all we needed and I was able to put a line into the basement. Once there, I ran the line into a junction box just in case we ever wanted to put something else phone related down there. To do that, back in those days, you opened the box and cut open the line and splayed out the five little wires and attached them to the leads in the box. Adam, being inquisitive, asked what the five wires were for.

          “Specifically, Son, I don’t know. They are color coded, so they are easy to hook up. Mostly, I assume they carry all the data to a phone or a computer. One of these wires, though, carries an electrical current. That’s what makes a phone light up when it rings.”

          I was on a step ladder ready to attach the box up high. One hand had the wire, one the box. I needed both hands to attach the box. The smart thing, actually the normal thing, would have been to hand the wire to my son. But not me. I am too smart for that. I have three degrees. I’m a thinker. I had just told Adam that one of those small wires carried an electrical charge. Rather than hand him the wires, I put the five ends into my mouth. I am really fortunate that the electrical charge wasn’t a full 110 volts. As it was, it knocked me off the ladder. Adam looked down at me and said, “You want me to go get Mom to finish this up?”

          You do things for your kids, things you wouldn’t do for yourself or for anyone else. In Cleveland, Ohio the is a large building called the International Exposition Center, or I-X Center for short. It is massive. The complex started life just after World War Two started and was the facility most American tanks were made in during the war. After the war, it was repurposed several times until it was made into the current I-X Center. It is one of the largest such buildings in the United States. The same year of the lottery tickets my son brought be a newspaper ad that talked about a big computer show at the I-X Center in February. He really wanted to go. (He was really a geek.) He really wanted me to go with him. My mind started to whir through the reasons to say no. 60 miles away. February in Cleveland. Snow, ice, a computer show. Ugh!

          “Sure, Adam, we’ll go.” It was the least I could do. I had already flushed his dream of wealth down the toilet.

          That Saturday was cold, snowy, miserable. Marsha felt that we needed to just be two guys, so she stayed home. We fought the horrible weather all 60 miles there. I was a little shocked to see the huge parking lot packed out. We had to drive around to find a place. For a computer show? How odd.

          I found out why when we got to the door. Big letters, mammoth letters, “WELCOME TO THE ANNUAL RV-OUTDOOR SHOW---MAIN FLOOR.” On a small sign right next to the door and written in chalk, “Hewlett Packard Computer Show---Basement.” Just so you will understand, the I-X Center hosted this outdoor show every year in February. After a hard, unforgiving Cleveland winter it was the most amazing place to go. RVs, boats, fishing gear, a one acre pond you could fish in…..you name it, whatever you might need to camp or fish or hunt. It was all there! People would come from all over the Mid-West and spend a couple of nights to see it all. I had always wanted to go, but something had always come up. But now, here I was at the I-X Center on the same day of the Show!

          You do things for your kids, things you wouldn’t do for yourself or for anyone else. “Come on, Dad, the door’s over here.”  "Right, Son, lead the way.” Five hours in Geek City. It was worth it.

          Happy Birthday, Son.

          Our son was around 13. I don’t remember what had happened, but I was using the occasion to teach a valuable ‘life lesson.’ Adam turned to me suddenly and interrupted. “Dad, why does everything have to be a teaching opportunity for you?”

          He caught me off guard and made me laugh. I hadn’t started out in fatherhood to be Ward Cleaver, but I guess I just kind of evolved into the Beaver’s dad. I am, however, still the same. It applies primarily to me. So, with that in mind, I have considered what the recent events in my life have taught me.

          Triple by-pass heart surgery is almost routine anymore. A lot of people are walking around with the tell-tale scar on their chest. But when it happens to you, it doesn’t seem so routine. It is extremely invasive, it is extremely painful and it is extremely personal. The first thing I learned, I guess, was how my personal ordeal affected those around me. First in that group were my caregivers.

          My nurses in intensive care were awesome. I was in ICU for a day and a half. I had two nurses during that time, 12 hours on, 12 hours off. They were caring and compassionate ladies. One is to have a child in September. Both are married. Both are dedicated to the principles of their careers. Starting with these two ladies, I began to find out just how deep the pastor thing runs with me. Just a few casual questions from me and they both began to tell me their hopes and plans and fears of life. One of the ladies apologized to me for going on, but I told her it was OK, this was what I did and it was very important to me to do it right then. Before I left ICU I got to pray with both ladies. Once I was in step-down, they both made it a point to pop in on me.

          My nurses in step-down were another story. Marsha even has one she would like to meet in a dark ally. These were the nurses to who triple by-pass is routine. Mostly, they just didn’t have that compassionate gene in them. One walked in early one morning and introduced herself. “Just so we understand each other, I’ve been doing this for 24 years and I am doing it for the 401K.” We talked a bit and laughed about something and she really was a good nurse with a sense of humor. But the others, just putting in their hours. Until my last day and a half. For 24 of those 36 hours I had Sabrina, who was great. However, while the nurses were not impressive in step-down, the aides were amazing. These are young people, male and female, who are in nursing school and are working as aides for school credit and for a paycheck. There were two of these young people who I worry may not make it as nurses. They have too much compassion, too much caring. They worry. A nurse has to be able to walk out of a room and leave that patient behind and go on to the next. But, they were almost too involved.

          That was the nurses and the aides. As a whole, housekeeping at Lutheran was pretty sad. I would rather not go into that. Just sad. All the people that drift in and out were just doing their jobs. My step-down room opened up to the nurses’ station. Nurses and other ‘health care professionals’ sat there and talked about their love lives, what they had for dinner, told raunchy jokes (those were told most by the doctors, I believe), talked about patients and so on. Even with my door shut I could still hear them. I don’t much care for watching TV, but I started keeping mine on and turned up.

          So, what I learned about the people around me was that people are people, regardless of their profession. Some are really fine people, some not so much. But I did not meet one single person in the hospital who refused me praying with them. That is the big lesson. People are people, and they all need Christ.

          Another thing I learned about; pain. I have always had a high tolerance. I am the guy who, when I was going to have my eyeballs cut open, requested not to be put to sleep so I could see my vision return. They went along with it and I was fine. This time, though, I discovered pain. In any medical situation they ask you to rate your pain level, from 1-10. I have found a new 10. This surgery requires three separate incisions in your leg, a medi-port in your neck, four different drain tubes and, of course, cutting your chest open. So many opportunities for pain! Of course, they give you some really potent pain meds, but those affected my mind so badly that I started refusing them after four days.

          Yet another lesson is that medical professionals ‘practice’ medicine. I have diabetes. It is sort of a family tradition on my mother’s side. Those who have faced it have done well. Those who have tried to ignore it have died. I have done pretty well. I have been on oral medication for years and all has been well. In the hospital, though, the endocrinology people descended on me like buzzards on road kill. I needed to be seriously tweaked. I really didn’t. All of my numbers are acceptable. But endocrinology needed something to do. Among other things, they have put me on insulin. I can live with that if it makes me better. If I can stay away from endocrinology, I might get better.

          On Easter Sunday I was feeling pretty lousy. I was attributing that to the fact that I was not in church that day, preaching then Resurrection. I just felt terrible. Around 1:30 Marsha took me for a little walk outside the house and I went back inside. Next thing I knew I was looking at the ceiling lights in the dining room and the urgent voice of a man trying to rouse me. There was commotion all around me. In a few minutes I was placed on a wheeled stretcher and put into an ambulance. Back to the hospital, where I spent two more days.

          In the hospital they had to give me sugar water via IV for almost 20 hours. I couldn’t retain enough sugar to sustain life. How could such a thing happen to a diabetic? Endocrinology. When the endocrinologist finally came to see me, he admitted to me that they had intended to take me off one of my oral meds when they put me on insulin. The two together nearly killed me.

          But it did lead to another lesson. When I passed out, Marsha called 911. Wabash FD EMTs responded. While everyone else was at home with family on Easter, these guys were out doing their jobs. However, while I was coming out of it a little, I realized that the house was full of people. I began to recognize men in the church. Men who left their family celebrations to get to the parsonage to be with Marsha and to help me anyway they could. All of them had a hand on the stretcher as we went out, all of them had words for Marsha. I will forever be touched by the concern and the outreach. In my entire ministry, I have never experienced that level of caring directed toward me or mine.

          Two last lessons. The first is that something may happen in your life that causes everything to stop for a bit, but the world keeps spinning. Bob and Judy was a ministry couple with whom we served in the same town in Ohio for a number of years. They were in their 50s when Bob went into the ministry and the church Bob pastored was the only church he pastored. Marsha and I were already in town and we all became friends, a friendship that still lasts, although Bob is retired and living in Arizona. Judy told me once that her desire was to be a pastor’s wife like Marsha, but she just didn’t feel she was ever there. Her own worst critic. The day before the surgery, Bob and I talked on the phone. At one point, Judy called out, “Good luck, Larry!” This past Friday, Judy died from pneumonia. The world keeps spinning.

          The final lesson. Real pain requires narcotics. It turns out that narcotics affect me psychologically. I am OK while awake, but once asleep I am in a pure state of terror. Sheer fear. The only thing that helped was Marsha standing by my bed, rubbing my hand or neck, speaking to me to calm me. All night. In a swirling maze of darkness and light, Marsha was there to ease me through. When you are young and getting married, you are doing so for a variety of reasons. You make vows that are pretty much meaningless at the time. You are going to conquer the world! You are as much in love as you can possible be. When you are young and getting married, it never occurs to you that the love you feel will change. It will deepen, it will bend and flex. Instead of a fast moving river, it will become a steady, permanent course of water. When you are young and getting married you don’t think of life in 40 years. You don’t consider that the hand you are placing a ring on might well be the hand whose touch keeps you from insanity. The final lesson? I married the best.

Blessings. 

            On Thursday, April 6^th, I will have a cardiac by-pass operation. Mary Earle, the lady who coached me on how to do this blog thing, told me two weeks ago that there was a way I could write my blog ahead of time and allow this website to hold it and then publish it on a prescribed date. Therefore, I wouldn’t miss sending out any blogs. This is a cool idea since, if all goes well, I will not be writing for at least ten days. However, I have not had the time to write ahead, so this blog will be the last for a while. I would ask you to go to Mary’s blog at http://mary-marysmoments.blogspot.com/ and give her blog a read. Then, when I come back, you will have two blogs to follow.

          I have been in the ministry for a long time. Literally decades. I have sat with many families as a family member went through the procedure I will be going through. The very idea of open heart surgery is frightening to people and it helps (I think, anyway) to have their pastor right there. There is tension, fear and anguish there in the waiting room. But it almost always works out well. Heart by-pass surgery is the single most common surgery performed in the United States. (Something I didn’t know until mine became necessary.) They have it down. An incredible number of people are walking around with a long scar down their chest and extending across their bellies and are living great lives. I feel confident.

          But not overly confident. Of all those many surgeries during which I have been with the families, all have turned out just fine except for two. Both were church members, both had minimal issues, both made it through the surgery, but both died from complications. Although I was friends with both, one was a really close friend. His death twelve years ago still bothers me.

          So, while I have a calm assurance that everything will be fine, I also know that it may not be. I have a wonderful church full of people praying for me. I have dear, dear friends praying for me. I have people I don’t even know praying for me. However, it may suit God’s will more for me to be one of the small percentage of people who do not survive. Believe it or not, I am fine with that, too. I think heaven will be a lot better than this place. If the Lord were to take me (after all, we all must die) He would see to the needs of Marsha, my wife. So, no matter which extreme it goes to, I am prepared.

          If you have been reading this blog over the last few weeks, you will have noticed that much of it has concerned the past years of the life of my wife and me. Funny stories, touching stories, weird stories. We have had an interesting life. I suppose it is human for me to be thinking in these terms as I face this surgery. In looking back, I have very few regrets. Most of those regrets are over the little things in life. It has been a life devoted to ministry, and it has been pretty cool.

          Honestly, though, it is not the life I envisioned back forty odd years ago. As a very young man I saw myself becoming a great, great preacher, someone who would shake the world for Christ. In my mind’s eye I saw the great river of Christianity running through history. In places along that river there were great rocks rising from the swiftly moving water. One of the rocks was the Apostle Paul, another was Charles Spurgeon. Another was Myles Coverdale and still another William Tyndale. D.L. Moody was one of those great rocks and Billy Graham was another. All great men of the faith, all gave a dynamic message to the world. In my mind, I could do that. Not for my glory. I really never wanted that, but I always wanted it for the glory of the Lord. For that I would devote my life.

          When I was a boy my father and I would start at one bridge that spanned a river or creek and walk in the water to the next bridge, fishing all along the way. My father taught me to look for rocks that protruded up from the river bed and broke the surface by no more than a foot. Those rocks broke the flow of the river and in the shelter of those rocks, fish would gather. They would feed on whatever the river brought to them while they sheltered. Eventually, they would move on and more would come and take their place. One day, as we walked a river with high shale walls, there was a small landslide. Some of the shale broke free and made a dash for the water. A mighty splash and a small tsunami washed over to the other side where we were. It made my heart race. I asked my father if big fish would gather amongst the big chunks of shale. No, he told me, the shale would wash away eventually because shale is brittle, and until then it would make the water around it to toxic for the fish.

          I guess it was the time spent on rivers and creeks as a boy that shaped the image in my mind of the river of Christianity flowing through the ages of history. Now, all these years later, I have had the pleasure of meeting some great Christian leaders whom I consider the great rocks. I have also known quite a few people who were like that shale slide. Made a big splash and thought a lot of themselves, but who washed away after a while and polluted the river for a bit. But in my mind’s eye now, knowing that my life may dramatically change shortly, I see myself as one of those smaller rocks. Firmly attached to the bedrock. Eroded some by years and years of disturbing the flow just enough to let a few shelter there with me. Nothing big, nothing flashy. Just steady, serving the needs of the fish of the river.

          I hope you didn’t expect anything profoundly theological in this edition of the blog. Today, all you get from me is this; I am profoundly grateful to the Lord God for letting me be that small disturbance in the river. I am so humbled that He has allowed me to minister as a pastor to three different churches that blessed my life in so many ways. I am awed that when He led me out of the pastorate for a period of time He allowed me to do a different kind of ministry, working with people I came to love and cherish. I tremble in His presence when I think of how He took a sixty year old man and allowed him one more opportunity with a new church to do the very thing he loves the most. And I am grateful for the woman He has put beside me to experience it all.

          I imagine I will be back with you in ten to fourteen days. But know, regardless of what happens, you have blessed me more than I have blessed you. God is a great and a mighty God, worthy of praise. So many cannot get that simple fact. He is awesome.

          God bless you all.

          To most people, 'jail' and 'prison' are one in the same. Somebody will talk about their sister's daughter's husband who has been in jail for the last four years. Actually, they were in jail till their trial and then they were sent to prison. They are not at all the same. Jail is temporary. Very short term sentences or awaiting trial. There is still hope. The magnitude of what could be coming hasn't really sunk in yet, especially to the new criminal. Prison, by contrast, is a different ballgame. Prison is a harsh reality. By the time someone emerges from prison, the world has changed. Their family dynamic has changed. They themselves have changed. Unless something has happened while in prison that has fundamentally changed their outlook on life, they are hardened in a way that the regular folk in the world cannot begin to understand. Prisons will have various programs that are meant to rehabilitate an inmate, but the only thing that consistently works is when an evangelical Christian organization has a prison ministry that presents the Gospel to to the inmates. Then, lives can be changed. 

            I have never been involved in that kind of prison ministry. I have never lived close enough to a prison to make that feasible. And, being a pastor, I have never really had the time such a ministry demands. As a pastor, I have been to prisons, though. A wayward church member or someone in the church who has a wayward family member. I have carried the Gospel into prison. But more often, I have been active in the jails of the areas in which I have pastored. At one time I had my own little jail ministry. Just me and an agreement with the local lock-up. I didn't 'preach' to the prisoners. I would go from one cell to the next, trying to talk with these men who didn't yet realize the fullness of their situation. Often, they were arrogant and boastful because they were sure they were going to beat the system and get out. Once in a while I would get to talk to someone who had been sentenced to prison for an extended period, but they had not been transported yet. That person would be scared and confused. They were receptive to what I said. One thing I did learn was that no two jail visits were going to be the same.

          I say I would talk to the men only because this particular county jail didn't allow men to go on the women's side and talk to them. There was a local evangelical group that provided women for the purpose of talking to the women prisoners. It worked out fine and I never had a problem with it. Then, one day when I came into the jail the senior corrections officer (we called them ‘guards’ back then) came to me and told me that there was a woman on the female side of the jail that really needed to see a minister. She didn't want to talk to one of the ladies, she wanted a 'real' preacher. Could I go over? I told him that this woman would just have to have one of the ladies talk to her. (It had not been a good day of visiting. A prisoner had thrown a cupful of the contents of his toilet at me.) He told me that she didn't trust 'women preachers' and she really did need to talk to someone. I told him I would go over.

          The women’s side was different from the men’s side. On the men’s side there were two solitary cells, one padded room and a huge cell block where each cell was separated only by bars. On the women’s side it was a series of cells that had solid walls between them and a solid front. The only way you could talk to a prisoner was to talk through the slot in the door where the food trays were passed. Two prisoners per cell.

          I went to the door I was told to go to and knelt by the food slot. I called for the woman who had been wanting to talk to a preacher and a scared young woman came to the slot. I say young woman because she had to have been at least eighteen to be in that jail, but she really looked to be twelve. She had been caught smoking a joint of marijuana. Her folks were going to let her ‘rot in jail’ for bringing such shame into the family. I would find out later that a boy she was trying to impress had talked this girl into smoking the joint. When the police broke up the late night bonfire she was the only one who heeded the command to stop. The other kids, including the boy in question, left her to take the heat. Now she was in jail with little or no chance of ever getting out until her trial. So, she was more than a little scared.

          She didn’t tell me her story, though. I got that later from another source. She was terrified that because she had smoked a joint she would go to hell. Her mother had told her as much, and they were good church going people. I explained to her that we are all sinners. There were no degrees of sin. Jesus offers the free gifts of forgiveness and salvation if we will just ask Him. Over a period of time I got this across to her, but it was what was going on while I talked to her that was really unusual.

          When she crouched down by the slot and began to talk to me her cellmate shouted, “Is that your preacher man, little honey?” I was looking through the slot so I could make eye contact with the girl. I could hardly avoid seeing her cell mate.

          The cell mate, in for prostitution, began to sing the tune to the music normally associated with a striptease. As she did this she started to take off her clothes. Meanwhile, the distraught girl in front of me was so intent on the questions she had she didn’t even notice the other woman. She probably had endured this and worse by that time. When I dropped my eyes she asked me not to look away. She needed to see my eyes to see if she could trust me. So, while a professional striptease was taking place in the background I was able to share the love of Christ with a scared young girl. And, before I was done, the prostitute had settled down and was listening, too.

          People have their perceptions and their preconceived notions. But remember; there are bad people in this world, true. But they need Jesus. Maybe you are not one of those people who can go behind bars to talk to them, but you can support those who do go behind the bars, and you can pray for the ones receiving the good news. God bless.