I want to get back to the topic of my last blog, but today I want to share a blessing. It isn’t a big deal except to me, but on this past Wednesday I had a tremendous weight taken off of me, and I want to share.

            Each one of us have things that make us different. We may never talk of these things because we might be embarrassed or fearful someone will think we are weird. Some of us have superstitions and some of us have had life changing instances that to other people seem small and incidental. One of those things for me is my irrational fear of heights. Ten years ago, I was on a plane going from Atlanta to Akron OH. I was sitting next to a young Army Sargent rotating home from Iraq. He was getting married when he got home and that was the topic of conversation while we sat on the tarmac waiting for the weather to clear. During a break in the rain we taxied out and took off. The Sargent got quiet and I was left with my fears. Then the storm hit us. We were battered and banged and tossed, and then we were struck by lightning. The Sargent was coming unglued, so I started talking to him, trying to calm him down. I didn’t think it would do anyone any good to see this battle-tested four striper go nuts. Quietly talked to him all the way into Akron. We got off the plane together and he gave me a hug, thanked me and invited me to his wedding. I laughed, turned it down, gave him another hug and walked away to the first restroom. Once in there and into a stall I nearly passed out. I really, really don’t like heights. Driving over the Eel River bridge in North Manchester makes me queasy. Just don’t tell anyone.

            Lots of people are afraid of heights, but I do have something unique to me. All of my ‘one’ years are very bad years. When I get to an age where my age ends in a ‘one,’ I know it is going to be a rough year. Now, you might say that is a silly notion. Every year is going to have its ups and downs, which is true. You could suppose that I see the downs during a regular year and simply shrug them off, while in the ‘one’ years I dwell on them. Or, perhaps, it is a coincidence that bad things happen in the ‘ones.’ But, I didn’t realize the significance of the ‘ones’ until I was forty one and I was looking back at my life and reviewing the hard times. I was surprised to discover that, while there were other times that were difficult, a lot of misery came down on those one years. Sure enough, forty one was a difficult year.

            When I was one I nearly died three times with the croup, which is a respiratory condition common in children. You may know it by its Latin name, laryngotracheobronchitis. If you know it by its Latin name, you have way too much time on your hands. Croup inhibits the ability to breath, which will send the child into a panic. In my case, it very nearly killed me. Less than 1% of children with croup have it as bad as I did. I was just a year old and I still remember one of the attacks quite well. When I was eleven my father started drinking, which started a long and dark nightmare. At twenty one I had so many jobs that when I filed my taxes the next year I had to pay extra postage. It was the beginning of the economic collapse that turned the Steel Belt into the Rust Belt. At thirty one I was pastoring a church in Warren OH that seemed to take great pride in the fact that they were paying me so little that I could have easily qualified for welfare. By the time I was forty one I was pastoring another church that was dealing with the news that their denomination, the Disciples of Christ, was completely leaving the Bible and moving in the same direction the United Church of Christ was going. When I went to the church two years earlier, I told the Elders that I had heard that the denomination was very liberal and I didn’t want to affiliate myself with it. They asked me to at least investigate the denomination. They were sure I would find that they were good folks. So, I investigated. The deeper I got the more garbage I uncovered and I reported that to the Elders. They had no idea. Many in the church were angry with me for uncovering the things I was finding. I know, why be mad at the messenger? It is a normal human reaction. I’ve seen it here. People were finding out they had been involved in something all along that was wrong. They were realizing that it was all pretty plain and if they had looked a little deeper they wouldn’t have been involved with it. So, rather than shoulder the blame, you get mad at the messenger. 1997 was a year of discovery, anger, hurt feelings and tension. Plus, the Indians lost the World Series. In 2007, my fifty first year, I was dealing with being out of church ministry for the first time in thirty two years. I was still doing ministry, but I was no longer ‘Pastor,’ which had been my identity for a long time. Marsha was no longer ‘the Pastor’s wife,’ which was very hard for her since she had been ‘the Pastor’s wife’ as long as I had been ‘Pastor.’ This was a horrible adjustment. And, then, in 2017 I was sixty one. Three different hospital stays, triple by-pass, rolling my car over at the end of a police chase, stunned by a sheriff deputy and handcuffed, the recovery from a big surgery and then, just a week before my birthday that would allow me to be sixty two, I tripped and fell, smacking my head so hard it still hurts.

            Some of those things may not seem like much to you, but for me at the time, they were the worst things that could have happened. When you are a baby and can’t breathe, when you are eleven and your life starts to unravel, when you are twenty one and married and find that jobs are disappearing, when you are thirty one and you are doing everything you can do for a church and they are trying to make you feel guilty because they are paying you so much when the reality was that it wasn’t even subsistence wages, when you are forty one and you find yourself pitted against your church and the denomination, when you are fifty one and the life you had known for over thirty years is gone and you have lost your identity and when you are sixty one and at the end of the year you have eight new scars that weren’t there at the beginning of the year, it is a big deal.

            The up side of this is that, so far, a ‘two’ year has followed. ‘Two’ years are great! I don’t remember my second year well, but I know I could breathe. At twelve I made the Little League All-Stars! At twenty two we moved to Miami FL for school and employment settled down. At thirty two I took my shoe off during a Bible Study and showed the congregation the hole in the bottom of the shoe, which led to a nice raise. At forty two our church came to grips with our wayward denomination and we finally began to move forward. At fifty two the new ministry, that of the funeral home and being staff clergy, began to expand in new and interesting ways. Now, I am sixty two. I am almost giddy. Will if be a year of good health? A year of growing ministry? A year of accomplishment for the church? I don’t know, but I think it will be a better ride.

            Blessings!