The place of my childhood, Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota starts to become forbidding as August closes. I don’t know if it is the light or the change in temperature but the color changes sometime at the beginning fall season. It can seem almost black even with the bright yellow, red and orange of the trees that dances around it. The last gasp of summer is Labor Day weekend and in my twenty-second year, as I always had, I was spending the weekend on the lake, racing sailboats. Mott, good old Mott, friend fo many years, sailing buddy, wonders again what the hell I am doing. “You want to give up on all of this?” A beautiful sun coated day absurdly warm for early September in Minnesota. The last weekend is even more fun than usual. There are the usual parties, the aimless summer feel, the stupid chatter of boys looking for girls. It was my life, my paradise, and the end of my childhood.
A mustard seed thrown at the wind. I didn’t know then but I suspected that on some level my life was not real, then. I had an inkling of the darkness of that place. My mother and her helpless and hopeless isolation in alcohol. She was not in paradise. Her misery made me wonder and question. A professor at college with an idea about God and a reality that pointed beyond the lake, the nice homes, and the certainties of my childhood. There was a suspicion that the journey only began in Minnesota. So on the Tuesday following Labor Day weekend 1977 I headed east in a yellow Pinto. A mustard seed thrown at the wind wondering what the hell I was doing.
Years before I had thrown a mustard seed in howling desperation. I didn’t know anything about God. I had a Bible but the family didn’t go to church. The minister was to political, may parents said, then he ran away with the organist. So I didn’t know what to do or where to turn when my friend Suzy fell off a horse and ended up in the ICU. I couldn’t understand why this would happen to such a wonderful family. They had become almost my own because they laughed, and talked, and took time and care of each other. I wasn’t Suzy’s boyfriend, but I wanted to be a part of the family. There they were crying and agonizing over their little girl who at sixteen might not make it. I loved those people and was sure they did not deserve this. They talked about faith, they believed in God, they took time for prayer. from the first person I had ever seen close to death. (unconscious, stuck with tubes and wires, lying like a lump…nothing like Suzy.) I could not comprehend it. When I arrived home I dragged myself upstairs and fell into bed. Then I did something I didn’t do much as a teenage boy. I cried. I cried deeply. I also did something I hardly ever did. I prayed. “Not them O God, not Suzy, they don’t deserve that. Heal her….please.” I kept repeating something like it. And then in the midst of my despair and carrying on, a voice, the most comforting voice I had ever heard: “It’s all right. It’s all right.” Not “It will be all right.” or “Suzy will recover.” but a great big universal, “It’s all right.” Suzy got better and I heard the voice of God.
On that Tuesday after Labor Day 1977 wondering where I was and who I was I began to hear the radio stations broadcasting from New York City. I had never been there save once. What I was doing scared me. I was going to seminary school when I didn’t even go to church. As the sun came up and the radio stations continued to get louder I could not fathom that I had made decisions that landed me in this little yellow Pinto crossing over the Delaware water Gap just a few hours from New York City.
What was I doing?
Years later the emptiness of a teetering marriage haunted me through the Thanksgiving celebration at the home of my best friends. My wife went home early leaving me to the champagne and my friends. I clung to the children who were being allowed to stay up too late; they seemed to represent the future I would never have. When I arrived home later I was in deep need of healing. This marriage was ending. What was I going to do? I don’t remember falling asleep but I woke up in a room filled with light. And again, the most comforting voice ever “It’s all right. It’s all right.” And it was, in a very long while.
Divorce isn’t pretty and it leaves you in a place you never thought you would be (especially if you are a minister!) I was ashamed and making excuses….looking for a mate without youth or confidence, and not even sure if there was a life where I truly belonged. I was among the broken and the cynical who had given up on innocence and hope.
I threw my mustard seed at the wind yet again. A singles dinner. A silly singles dinner. I agreed to go to help someone out. “We need men.” she said. I agreed. I gave my word so the night before I was to leave for Central America on a mission trip to build houses in Nicaragua, I sat in a room filled with women older than I….wondering why I would waste my time. I tried to make the best of it. I joked with the unattractive but wealthy woman next to me. However, at the other end of the table there was a very pretty woman with shy laughing eyes drinking too much. She seemed to have the right attitude. I decided to lighten up. After dinner I had one chance to meet her. Not my strong suit: cold calls. I was going to call it a night without meeting her but then there we were int he parking lot not far from each other. “Gee your car is parked near mine,” I gulped. Perhaps it was the drink or the moment but she did not tell me how stupid I sounded. Her warm heart took pity and she spoke to me. I went home exhilarated, so dazzled I even got lost on the way home though it was quite familiar to me. She was to be the love of my life, I had met the love of my life!
In New York in 1977, on the first night of my new life, I spent hours sitting on the ledge outside my room looking down at 122nd street. The eerie yellow-orange lights gave the street a very alien look. And it was to me. Somehow though, I knew this was my adventure my journey and not alien. I wondered where it would lead.
More than twenty years after I left Minnesota and after more than thirty hours of labor my son Conner was born. He didn’t cry in those first few moments; a silence, a pause before the rest began, a sacred little hesitation where the world was contained and my life was recreated yet again. And then a weak little cry, a scream and a struggle to breath. I was home. I hoped the same for him.
