When Giveth and Taketh Leadeth to Hideth

8/8/2019 When Giveth and Taketh Leadeth to Hideth

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and staying, loving and hurting, pain and joy, dark and light, rest and fight.Why this mix? And, important to myself, where was I in that mix? Just grey?

My earliest memories of God as being something different and bigger thanman had come in the cavernous sanctuary of the old First Baptist Church inDenton. When we went there, my mother wore her best dress, highest heels,finest fake jewelry and widest smile. She would sit between me and myyounger sister to try to keep us separated, but we would peek at each otherfrom in front and then behind my mother's perfect church posture until thegiggling would begin to overtake us. Only Mother's brightly-polishedfingernails with nearly skin-piercing pressure could quiet us down. She wouldnot have done that anywhere else; God must be something.

A few years after Denton, when my stepfather moved us to Shawnee, beforehe moved us to Houston . . . I discovered that God is . . . in people. I didn'tunderstand it, but I saw it. I was 10. Ironically, it was here that the first flickerof hope grew in me that there were indeed good men. My mother took me toVacation Bible School at a Shawnee Baptist Church. I was in a big room withlots of boys, laughing and building things. My mother had dropped me off soshe could look for a job.

We all had two curved pieces of wood, a coat hangar and a pair of wirecutters . . . and we were going to make a harp. All except me. I was gaugingwhether I could get to the door and out without being caught. I had not had afather to teach me such things. I was so all-thumbs and lost. . . until this guycaught me eyeing the door and walked across the room and sat down acrossthe table and picked up the wire cutters and the coat hangar and startedsnipping the coat hangar . . . and talking to me . . . and we built a harp. And Iwas back there tomorrow. I had been rescued. It impacted me that he wasprobably unaware of his impact on me. He expected nothing in return. Hegave me some hope; he planted a seed. In the midst of all the brokenness of Houston, the seed would grow and God would move into me.

It takes a while to learn that while God is good all the time, the world in whichHe places us is not. Abiding in us, God giveth and God taketh and he isgenerous in both actions, but neither are always easy to understand. Givingoften seems to come when least expected; taking often claims when leastdeserved. I feared His taking; I doubted His giving.

I knew that He had taken my third-grade friend who was accidentally killedwhile wrestling in the front yard with his older brother. A misplaced hand-move or arm-lock and my friend was gone, a family shattered, an olderbrother trapped in guilt and sorrow, a mother who would drive around for therest of her life with a lonely flower of memory on her car antenna and afather who retreated into his work. They faded.

I knew that He had taken a fourth-grade friend who -- dashing across a not-so-crowded street after school -- met the front bumper of a passing car andwas thrown to the curb where he lay still and gone. I remember the tears of his baby-sitter, who also worked with my mother at the office supply. In her


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bitterness, she dismissed my pain with a "you don't understand. you're toolittle." I went to my first funeral, saw my friend in his quiet dashless rest, andhe faded.

I knew that God had taken away three young friends of my little sister whoturned a slumber party into a nighttime fire, probably with tipping o fa simplecandle. Their bodies were found huddled together in the corner of what hadbeen a pink-filled room of stuffed animals and ruffles and Tiger Beat posters.

They faded.

And yet, God had given me a stranger who could help me make a harp, a busto a church, an evangelist who could connect with my longing, and the wordsto " Softly and Tenderly ." Before then, God had been little more than polishedshoes and a hard church pew and whispers to hush. He had now becomemore than just a reason for Papa to abandon Solitaire, Nanny to slip out of ahouse dress and mother to shine her nails. Now, He could whisper to me. Inthose first days after Meadow Wood, I wanted to believe that God waseverywhere, but the bus would take me home and I could not find Him there.It would take a while for me to try to put him on my hiding list . . . and evenlonger to learn I could not.

We don't always know at the moment if God is doing His greater workthrough the giving or the taking, but these are all events that I've neverforgotten, early events that add their bulk to the weight of who I am. He knewthen what I just now know . . . and He knows already what I may never knowin this life, but will know with Him. And He already knows about all the lossesto come and the gains that remain. Someday I would be able to look back onmy life and His intricate balancing of the giveth and taketh and see the fullforce of grace, but as a boy I was less impressed about God's abilities andmore concerned about what seemed to be His limits. I held back.

I picked up one more thing in Houston, something that even in the pastuncertainty of life I had never experienced much before, not as a little boybarefoot running the peaceful streets of little towns, pausing beneath brightstreetlights to dodge clouds of summer June bugs.

It came in winter, which in Houston was often not much more than just anexcuse to wear a jacket in the colder humidity. My stepfather had planned aChristmas Eve poker party. The liquored chocolate-covered cherries were inabundance, the best whiskey shot glasses were out for the Black Crow flow,the poker chips were stacked, the Marlboros ready to fire up to create aproper smoke-filled environment.

"Where's the damn egg-nog?" Michael bellowed. That would be my signal toscurry through the darkness to the U-Tote-Em to get it home so it could beproperly spiked in time for a midnight toast. I was happy to go, knowing I was

just to be trapped all evening in the dismal back bedroom, unable to drownout the deafening profanities of the drunken guests he called his friends.

Dollar bill in hand, I began my trek through the dark streets of the jungle of


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apartments. It was a cool night with a gentle breeze and only a sliver of amoon. I decided to walk, leaving the bike behind, knowing it would takelonger and make my stepfather even more angry, an anger he would have tohide because guests were coming.

Halfway down the sidewalk in front of a neighboring building, I heard ascream, loud and long and fading into silence. I stopped and stood in front of the building until a man -- dressed in total black -- came running out of thebuilding on a sidewalk set to merge with mine. He also stopped and stood . . .and it was suddenly my time to run.

I knew the alleys and all the shortcuts and soon the bright neon lights of theU-Tote-Em glowed like an island of safety. I browsed the comic books, driftedup and down the candy aisle, wandered eventually to the cooler, selected theeggnog, paid, paused at the door and headed home. The man in black wasno-where and I was soon safely home in the comforting chaos.

About an hour later, our doorbell rang. I had heard the Christmas carolersmaking their way down the street and I hesitantly looked in my stepfather'sdirection through the haze of the smoke-filled room as the bell rang again.

"Give them this damn dollar and let 'em sing," he laughed.

My sister and I through open the door and stepped out onto the apartmentlawn to the strains of "O Little Town of Bethlehem," and I came face-to-facewith the man in black, singing, yes, but wringing black-leather-gloved handsand staring straight at me. My mind was racing: "He knows where I live."

No, nothing happened. A stronger breeze blew a plastic bottle filled with mysister's bath powder out of the window in the middle of the night producing ascream from her that rivaled the one I had heard earlier when walking by thebuilding next door, but I never saw the man again. Still, I had come to seethat good and evil are often intertwined and in constant collision with eachother. Sometimes evil just stands and mocks; sometimes when we answerthe knock it comes in and has its way.

The afternoon of the front-lawn underwear protest had been the early-warning signal to us all that we would soon be leaving Houston, and not longafter Christmas, we did. I said goodbye to the bulldozer, George, the Jewishdeli, Meadow Wood and, at least for a time, even my stepfather. Despite adesperate near-death faint into the carpet in his stringy bathrobe, we weremoving without him, this time to Lewisville, Texas. My mother was finding hervoice and her worth.

I was searching for my voice and worth as well, looking among the men whocarry harps of compassion and those with black-gloved hands bearing harm.

(Note: The first four chapters of The Weight of Who I Am are posted on my blog at http://thom-signsofastruggle.blogspot.com/ )
http://thom-signsofastruggle.blogspot.com/http://thom-signsofastruggle.blogspot.com/


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When Giveth and Taketh Leadeth to Hideth