The land, Scarlett, the land

I’m sitting on the porch, watching the sun rise over Lay Lake. Last night, it was a near-full moon reflecting on the water just beyond my back porch, and the sounds were those of frogs and the occasional squawk of a bird. It’s quiet, peaceful; I can see the stars and feel the breeze.

I’m in the country.

My mom grew up in the country - Powder Springs, Georgia, well before the time when Powder Springs joined the rest of North Georgia as part of the seemingly endless sprawl of suburb that Atlanta has become. It was rural, and she lived on a farm. My grandfather was a lumberman, but he apparently also raised crops and had a few animals; I don’t really know, because by the time I came along they’d left the farm and moved to East Point, back then a blue-collar town that was named because it was the eastern end of the Atlanta & West Point Rail Road (the western end being West Point, Ga.).

The way I remember the story (you know how family histories are) is that my mother couldn’t wait to leave the farm and move to the city and live a city lifestyle, whatever that meant to a girl in the 1930s. Honestly, I’m not sure of the timeline, but I know at some point my mother moved to Atlanta, got a job, went with a some of her girlfriends to attend the “Gone With The Wind” premier at the Lowe’s Theatre in Atlanta hoping to see Clark Gable.

Hers was always a desire to ‘better’ herself – to wear nicer clothes and eat in white-table cloth restaurants. I have a picture of her in my mind – the real one exists somewhere in a scrapbook – of her sitting at one of those restaurants, her long graceful fingers holding a cigarette, looking glamourous in a way she never would have if she’d stayed in Powder Springs.

She joined the Woman’s Auxiliary Volunteers in World War II, which was the women’s Navy (the WAVs). Her father was not happy about that, saying that was no place for a proper woman and he would disown her. Maybe “disowned’’ her is not accurate, but clearly my mom did not go in the direction he thought was appropriate.

She met my father, who was in the Navy (actually the Coast Guard), and both were stationed in Charleston, S.C. They married either within a few weeks or a few months, depending on which of my siblings tells the story. My father wanted to go back to the homestead in New Jersey where the Melicks had lived for over 200 years, but for all her desire for sophistication my mother was not going to leave the South (they’d lived, for a time, on Staten Island when my father was stationed there and apparently, she saw realized that a civilization without fried chicken, fried okra, grits and sweet tea was not a civilization she wanted to be part of).

And so, she spent the rest of her life living in the Atlanta area, working full time, putting up with her husband, and teaching her kids to read and dream and think and want a life beyond what we knew.

But when she got older, when she’d retired and all of the kids had left home, and she and my dad had spent a year in Liberia as missionaries and come back to find that her cancer had gotten worse, she often talked of wanting to go back to the farm.

There is that great line in “Gone with The Wind” when Scarlett O’Hara’s father, Gerald, admonishes her, saying “Do you mean to tell me, Katie Scarlett O’Hara, that Tara, that land, doesn’t mean anything to you? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin’ for, worth fightin’ for, worth dyin’ for, because it’s the only thing that lasts.”

My mom loved that movie. Certainly because of Clark Gable, but maybe because she recognized Scarlett’s desire to get off the plantation and live a life of “more,” whatever that meant. But I think the line about “that land” resonated with her as well. As she got older, mom talked often of moving to a place in the country, of finding a place to get back to the land, as if she were trying to go back to the farm.

She never did.

My wife, bless her heart, knows how that speech about “land” in Gone with The Wind resonated with me. Every time we looked at buying a house, I was always drawn to the one with the biggest yard, the most space, with “land.”

I never lived on a farm. I am smart enough to know that the reality of owning several hundred acres of pasture and/or forests requires more work than I’m inclined to give it. If I could buy a nice house in the middle of somebody else’s plantation and let them care for it while I just enjoyed the view, that would be ideal.

Yet a few years ago, we bought a place on Lay Lake, with a Wilsonville address even though it’s not really in the town limits of Wilsonville. We’re on a point, and the views from three sides of this house is of water or trees; on one side I have a neighbor, but the house was designed so that is not part of the routine view.

It’s quiet. At night, if I go out the front door, I hear the chorus of hundreds or maybe even thousands of frogs from the inlet across the street. If I go out the back and sit on the porch, I can see the moon rising and reflecting in the water, and hear the occasional screech of a bird. We have bunnies and turtles and frogs and lizards and all kinds of great birds.

It’s quiet, except for the early mornings when there is a fishing tournament and the boats are racing to their favorite spots and my end of the lake resembles the start of a Sunday race at Talladega.

I never thought I’d own a place at the lake. I never thought I’d really want a place at the lake. I always thought of myself as a “city boy.” I don’t hunt or fish or do those outdoorsy things that most of the guys of my age do. I certainly don’t farm, although I did plant and care for two blueberry bushes that produced a nice ‘crop’ of blueberries; and I don’t garden, although I did manage to keep a pretty bougainvillea alive for almost two years, until a summer storm broke it in half.

But perhaps there is that part of my mom still in me, that longs to return to the land, because maybe, as Gerald O’Hara said, it’s the only thing that lasts.

The waiting room

 I was checked in at the doctor’s office the other day – the chiropractor, really, because I’d been rear-ended by a truck on I-459 and my back was feeling it (but that’s another story for another day) – and the receptionist told me they’d get to me as quick as they could, but they were running a bit behind.

I took my seat in the waiting room.

There were no magazines.

That may not seem odd these days when everyone carries access to reading material in their pocket computers (known as cell phones), but for decades, old magazines were a staple of waiting rooms anywhere you had to wait for something – seeing a doctor, a dentist, getting new tires, even waiting for a bus. It was just courtesy, I guess; a way for businesses to help you pass the time and forget how long it was taking to get the service you were waiting to receive.

When I say “old” magazines, that’s what I mean. You’d find publications like “People” and “Popular Mechanics” and “National Geographic” and “U.S. News and World Reports” that were months, if not years, old. I never understood why, because you could look at the little label on the front and see that the doctor had a subscription, which means he must have received current editions. Maybe he took the current editions home to read first, and only brought them in when everyone in his immediate family was through with them.

I sat there the other day and watched the other people doing what people do now: look at their phones. Maybe they were reading emails, or playing games, or catching up on Facebook or twitter or Instagram, or news sites – all the stuff that I find myself doing whenever I’m in a position where I have to wait.

The thing is, when you go to your phone, you can download what you want to read, what you are familiar with.

In the old days of waiting rooms, you went through the stack of magazines – there never seemed to be one that you’d normally want to read – to try to find one that looked remotely, possibly interesting.

I actually enjoyed flipping through “People,’’ because there was always this section dedicated to paparazzi shots of supposedly famous people caught doing stuff. The thing is, invariably it would be someone “famous” that I had never heard of – some woman who because famous by being on a reality TV show who was caught coming out of a New York City workout class in sweat-stained tights and sports top, or an actor from a popular movie I knew nothing about who got caught leaving a Los Angeles nightclub at 3 a.m. with his arm around the daughter of some millionaire and an embarrassing trail of toilet paper caught on the bottom of his shoe.

Or maybe there would be a shot of a minor royalty from a Mediterranean country laying in the sun on a yacht. Or a drummer for a rock ‘n roll band trying to be inconspicuous while browsing through a used bookstore in some midwestern city.

The point is, I always learned something I didn’t know. If it was People, inevitable the next week I’d come across the name of that same “celebrity” in a dozen news stories and realize they really were famous after all. Or maybe I read about a tribe of Amazonian indigenous people whose lifestyle was being threatened by wildfires in the Brazilian jungle, or the history of some ancient kingdom in India, or an unusual combination of cheeses, combined with bits of bacon and some flavoring, to make “the perfect” macaroni and cheese.

In short, I very often learned something I did not know before. Maybe it even challenged me to want to learn more or re-think the things I had grown comfortable believing.

It further struck me how the more access to information we have, the less we really consume. It allows us to just read or watch what we want to read or watch, information brought to us by people we know we’ll agree with. Nothing is pushing us out of our comfort zone; very rarely are we confronted with a story that we read because we’re bored and there’s nothing else to read and it actually gives us something we didn’t know and maybe even raises our awareness or alters the way we think.

I mean, when is the last time you went to the search part of your cell phone and called up an old edition of Popular Mechanics or Archeology Magazine?

In the “olden days” we were limited in access to information. We had three TV networks (oh, there was a fourth: PBS, which nobody regularly watched), and two local newspapers, and maybe a magazine or two that your parents subscribed to. And you learned by talking to people about current issues or events they’d lived through or just hearing stories.

We live in an age when we have access to more information in that palm-sized device we carry with us everywhere than any time in the history of the world. But that also means we’re being lied to more than any time in the history of the world, with “fake news” and fake web sites and pictures that have been altered so well you don’t know what to believe.

We all laugh, knowingly, at the line “I read it on the internet so it must be true,” yet I’m as guilty as anyone of reading something on the internet and not challenging it to see if another source agrees or if there is a site that debunks the incredible story I just read and find hard to believe but feel I must share anyway.

The irony is, I could just as easily go on my iPhone and search for months-old versions of the magazines that used to litter every waiting room (if those publications still exist).

 But that would put the responsibility for my education back on my shoulders. And if there is one thing all my years of public education taught me, isn’t my education the government’s job?

Trick or treat

In my old neighborhood, we approached Halloween with the planning and precision of the D-Day invasion.

This was the old days, when you could get out and walk the streets of your neighborhood without your parents, because you most of the houses were owned by the parents of the kids you went to school with, and the occasional house that had old people with no kids in them either had a kindly old couple that gave out the best treats or else a spooky old man of whom we made up the most blood-curdling stories.

 As we got older and our parents let us roam further, we’d plot a course that often had us hitting multiple neighborhoods within the time-frame we were allowed to be out, and even involved cutting through the woods and across creeks to get to the “good” houses, the ones that had the reputation for just leaving candy out in baskets on the front porch in the belief that the honor system would work with a bunch of kids wearing masks.

 Masks – that was about the extent of our store-bought Halloween costumes. You could get a mask of Superman or Batman or a skeleton or a cat. Some were supposed to be scary; some were supposed to be funny; some were cute. Usually, the masks were so hot (this was October in the Deep South, where the temperature could still be in the 70s at night) and the eye-holes so misaligned you had to push the mask up on the top of your head between houses, adding additional strain to that piece of elastic that went around behind your head to keep the mask tight; a piece of elastic that invariably broke after about the hundredth push to the top of the head-pull back into place, and then you were forced to either hold the mask in place with one hand or tie the ends of the elastic around your ears in an effort to keep the illusion of identity in place.

 Beyond the mask, it was up to us or our moms to fill out the rest of the costume. Ghosts were easy, of course – you just got an old white sheet and draped it over your head so that it hung loosely down around your ankles. It could be held in place by the appropriate “Casper” mask, but boy was that hot – a sheet over your head, clamped in place by this mask-and-elastic contraption wrapped around your head. Some moms made costumes – red and blue Superman pajamas with a red towel cape, or a vest and holster if you were a cowboy, or even sticking cotton balls all over a white sweatshirt to try to resemble a sheep.

 If you played on a sports team maybe you just wore your football or baseball uniform or, if you were a girl, your cheerleading outfit but changed up the logo to a professional or college team. Part of the tradition was that when the parents answered the door, they’d exclaim “Oh, look! Superman and Casper and a Georgia Bulldog!” and act like they didn’t know who you were.

 I once decided I would go out dressed up as a “hood” – that’s what we called tough guys back then – and so wore what I thought was a convincing get-up of jeans, boots, a leather jacket, and white t-shirt. Much to my chagrin, we’d get to a house and the mom would answer the door and say, “Oh, look! Superman and Casper and a baseball player and – oh, Ray, you decided not to wear a costume this year?”

 But they still gave me the candy, which was all that mattered.

 When you got home, you emptied the sack to look at this amassed treasure, eat a few pieces, then decide to save the rest for later. The next day you compared notes on which houses gave the best candy and which ones gave out the dreaded apples and bananas (you avoided those houses the next year), and what houses you wanted to make sure you got to early the next year.

 Sometimes you hid your Halloween candy so well you forgot where it was; sometimes you would find your candy gone and your dad would swear he didn’t eat it even though you found candy wrappers in his bedroom waste basket. 

Somewhere along the way, Halloween became a holiday for single adults. Costumes got more elaborate or more risqué (otherwise prime and proper schoolteachers would dress up like hookers or sexy witches or nurses). I remember one year, after college, going to a local club on Halloween and there was this guy who was wearing a ring over his head like a halo, but he had a shower curtain hanging from it and a shower nozzle somehow strapped to the ring that actually could spray water. He was wearing a bathing suit and kept inviting these sexy witches/nurses/hookers to “take a shower with me.” 

There was no candy involved.

Then again ... 

 There were those people who told us that celebrating Halloween was an invitation for Satan to send his demons in to steal your soul. I don’t know about that. I only know a few of the kids I grew up with that I suspected of being demon-possessed, but I never made the correlation to their Casper the Friendly Ghost costume. 

Then came the time I forgot it was Halloween. I was sitting in the living room of the house I was renting with a couple other guys (this was right after college; the other guys may have been out chasing sexy witches for all I know) when the doorbell rang. I opened it, and there was a gaggle of boys, in costumes of some Japanese anime characters that I knew nothing about, who shouted the age-old greeting “Trick or treat!”

I had nothing. I was completely unprepared. I ran to the pantry and found a box of chocolate chip cookies. I came back and said, “Here, take this box of cookies. Don’t tell any other kids where you got it. I’m going to turn off the lights and pretend I’m not home.”

 Maybe that’s what they mean by “trick or treat.”

Celebrating our diversity all the way to war

We are a society that celebrates our differences.

Man-woman. Gay-straight. Progressive-conservative. Black-white.

And those are just the more obvious ones.

And that's OK. We are different. And sometimes those differences are worth celebrating. Heaven knows the world would not be a very attractive place to live if everyone was like me. There wouldn't be any electricity, because while I understand the principle of how electricity works, it would never occur to me to invent it. We wouldn't have telephones for the same reason (much less cell phones or hand-held computers).

But at the same time, there are enough people who have something in common with me that we can enjoy books, ideas, sports, faith, cowboy boots, movies, long drives (both in a car and on the golf course), music, well-turned and thought-out phrases ... you get the idea.

I have always believed that all of humanity shares the same characteristics. It's just that we share them in such wildly disparate degrees that at times if feels like we have nothing in common.

But we do.

I thought of this while I was thinking about the current state of division in this country.

"Different" has always sold well, which is why we're constantly bombarded with new styles of clothes, cars, computers, homes, TVs, music, medical care.

And in the last few decades, what we refer to as 'the media' (which is perhaps better identified as "the news business") has found that building up our differences is a successful business model. One side is going to agree with whatever position the news business takes, while the other side objects. But both sides read (or hear, or watch) for the same reason people slow down to see a wreck on the highway. Outrage sells - or creates clicks. But it's not just outrage. In the face of outrage, hearing a voice that supports my view also sells.

Thus the success, for example, of the widely divergent Fox News and MSNBC. We can't help but be drawn to a certain amount of outrage, so the viewers of one will sometimes turn over to hear the views of the other - in small doses - just to reinforce their opinion that they are right and the other side is wrong.

We often talk about having raised kids who earn participation trophies and don't really understand winning and losing, yet we get into things like politics and you see the outrage that occurs when one side loses. In the past, there didn't seem to be that much difference between Republicans and Democrats, but not any more. While there may still not be that much difference between the men and women who are elected to office representing those parties, these days it almost seems fatal to suggest maybe they have something in common, that maybe they are not that far apart in their views.

Moderation does not stir the masses or bring in donations or create movements.

So Candidate X is a lying cheating racist who is trying to keep minorities down, while Candidate Y is a lying cheating bigot who is trying to turn the country into a Soviet gulag where only the rulers have anything and the majority is left with nothing.

I have said this before and it's not original to me, but we are a people with incredibly easy access to more information than any people in the history of the world; yet at the same time we are the most lied to people in the history of the world because not all of that information is correct. However, if what we read agrees with my views, and reinforces my belief, then I keep coming back for more.

It's not that the "facts" are all that different. It's how we interpret those "facts" and make the connections between then. We get a piece of a quote from a leader and suddenly decide that one sentence defines the true character of that person. Then we get snippets of other sentences, maybe even what was meant to be a joke or a private, off-hand remark, and add it to that first sentence we heard, and because we don't like that leader anyway it all adds up to that person being a lying, cheating, bigot, whatever-phobe.

Meanwhile, there is often just as much evidence about that person to the contrary, but because it doesn't fit with what we want to believe, we don't pay attention to it.

But then we hear people on both sides say, "He could be a hero if he'd just reach out to the other side and compromise!" That always seems to come from the supporters of the party that is not in power, however; the people who conveniently forget that it takes two to compromise and as soon as one of their leaders actually seems on the verge of "giving" something to the other side, he is branded a traitor and is threatened with being voted out of office.

The question is often asked, "Why are we so divided?"

Maybe because we're so caught up celebrating our differences.

And forgetting how to appreciate the differences in others.

I think we used to spend more time on trying to find what we had in common. This country - the United States of America - is unique in that it was not formed by people who based citizenship on speaking the same language or worshiping in the same church or having the same ethnic background or being bound by geographic boundaries - the things that turned people into "people groups" since the beginning of time.

In the United States, people left behind the folks that they looked like and sounded like and worshiped like and who enjoyed the same foods and music and traditions, and decided to put all those things aside for an idea.

It had never been done before - a nation formed on an idea rather than some physical or geographical commonality. It resulted in a brand new creation of a group of people called "Americans."

Yes, people came to this country and lived with people who were like them. That's why, particularly in the Northeast or the far West, you had the Italian neighborhood or the German neighborhood or the Polish neighborhood or "Chinatown." But even with that, the longing was for the children of those immigrants to become something new: Americans. And even though they were not all equal, they believed those words that said that "all men are created equal" and they couldn't actually go on to becomes whatever they dreamed of being, perhaps their children could, or certainly their grandchildren.

I fear that one of the problems we face today is that we're hyper-focused on our differences. We're told to celebrate what makes our neighbor different than ourselves, and if we don't then we're bigots or racitss or small-minded or "deplorable." Don't get me wrong - we do need to accept people who are not like us, and welcome the traits they bring that can make us all better.

But the goal to become that one thing that is unique in all the world; to take our genetic and geographical and language and religions differences and blend them into something new, something we call being an "American."

When we have no basis for agreement upon what that means, though, then we are simply fighting with no resolution in sight.

Over the river and through the woods

One of the true joys of Christmas – at least for me – has always been spending time with family.

When my own children were little, we had a Christmas day routine that might sound horrible but actually worked out quite well. We’d get up Christmas morning, open presents at our house, then load up and drive to Memphis for Christmas with my wife’s family. While you might think kids would be unhappy at just opening presents then being told to pack up and leave, you’d have to understand that my wife is one of 10 children, and my kids knew that going to Christmas in Memphis meant tons of presents plus the absolute fun that was the chaos of Christmas with the McGowan clan. And, when we came back home, all their presents were there and it was like Christmas all over again!

I was thinking about this the other day, and how when I was a child we’d load up the car and make the drive from my home in East Point, Ga., and go to see my grandparents in Phillipsburg, N.J., directly across the Delaware River from Easton, Pa.

This was in the days before the Interstate system was finished, which meant we had to take Highway 29 most of the way. Highway 29 was also Main Street in East Point, but it was a highway that ran from Pensacola, Fla., to near Baltimore, Md.

My father was a beast. I never appreciated it when he was alive, but now I marvel at his stamina and the sacrifices he made for his family. After my mother passed away, he came to live with me. Our first house had an attic that we decided to finish into two bedrooms. This attic had no heating or air conditioning, and I was working full time for a newspaper which meant I didn't have much time to work on this project. So my dad, who loved building, would be up there in that attic almost every day, in a closed space where the temperatures may have reached 100 degrees for all I know (I don’t know; it was always too hot for me!), hammering and sawing and putting up studs.

I supposed it reveals how self-absorbed I am, but it never occurred to me until years later that my father was in his 70s up there doing all this. I can’t imagine how hot it was, and physically draining it must have been. Perhaps it was just that trademark of the “Greatest Generation” to face the task at hand, no matter what it was, and tackle it head-on.

The routine for these trips to Phillipsburg were further evidence of that. He’d work a full day, come home, load up the car, and then start driving. His theory was, I guess, that the rest of us would sleep while he drove, lessoning the distractions to him. My mother did not share in the driving (a trait that I have picked up in that I do all the driving in my immediate family). I would say I don’t know how my dad did it, but I have found myself doing the same thing.

The internet says it’s an almost 13-hour drive from East Point to Phillipsburg today, using the Interstate system. I have no idea how much longer it took back then, staying on highways and going through towns and stoplights and twists and turns. I know this: we didn’t stop for the night. My parents could not afford a motel room along the way. Maybe we stopped for my Dad to take a quick nap, but if we did I don’t remember it. It seemed like we got into the car in my driveway at night, and something the next afternoon we’d be pulling in front of my grandparents’ house in New Jersey.

It could not have been an easy trip. There are turns even staying on Highway 29, and at some point you had to get off Highway 29 to continue the journey. We didn’t have GPS to tell us turn by turn. We had maps, but I doubt my father used them.

Here’s the thing:

I was completely confident that my Dad would get us where we were going. I never asked, “Dad, do you know where you’re going?” because he’d have said, “Yes, son, I’m going home, to my father’s house.”

I never asked, “Are you sure you know the way? I mean, there’s a lot of twists and turns, and we’ve got to cover a lot of miles” and he’d have said, “Yes, son, I know the way by heart.”

I never rode along with him, questioning his turns or timing. If I had, I’m sure he’d have said something like, “It’s OK, son. Here’s what you should do – look for these signs along the way that will let us know we’re on the right road. Sometimes we’ll go a long way without a sign, but they will be there when we need them. About the time you’ll think we’ve gotten lost, we’ll see a highway sign or something that lets us know we’re on the right path and haven’t lost our way.”

My Dad was a very patient man. One time, after my grandparents had both passed away, he and I made the trip by ourselves, to close down the house. We didn’t talk a lot, because I tend, even now, to get lost inside my head sometimes. I was older by then, in high school, and like most teenagers I’d had doubts about my father. We didn't talk a lot, but when I did start a conversation (and it had to be me starting it, because when my father would ask a question I'd usually give that teenager one word reply that kills further attempts at talking), I could tell he was grateful and we'd talk for awhile. Later he even told me how much he appreciated just riding with me, being with me, even in silence.

Whatever doubts I had about my father, I never doubted his ability to find his way to the house he grew up in, to his father’s house.

It occurs to me how much this is like what Jesus said when he said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe in Me as well. In My Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and welcome you into My presence, so that you also may be where I am.…”

I started this journey with Jesus many years ago. I know where I am going – to Jesus’ Father’s house. The only part of the route that I know is to trust in Jesus, just as I trusted in that father knew how to get to his father’s house, just as my children know their way back to my house.

Sometimes along the way I feel lost, like I’ve made a wrong turn or this road can’t possibly be the right one. And sometimes I find I have taken a wrong turn. But inevitably, somewhere along the way and very often at just the right time, there will be a sign. Sometimes when I’m ready to give up and turn around or sit down, something happens to remind me of where I am going, and that I’m either on the right path or here’s the turn to get back on the right path.

I am thankful for the many lessons my father taught me – most of which I wasn’t aware of at the time.

Like this one. A son knows the way to the father. A son knows his way home.

Trust him, and he will get you there despite all the twists and turns and stoplights and slowdowns that occur along life’s road.

On just saying "No"

Maybe you’ve had this kind of conversation.

“What do you want?”

“Nothing.”

“You look like you want to ask me something.”

“I was going to, but you’re only going to say ‘no.’”

Maybe you’ve been on both sides of that dialogue. I know I have. Usually it’s between a parent and a child, with the child taking that tactic of “I was going to, but …” trying a kind of reverse psychology, putting you in a negative light in the hopes that to prove them wrong you’ll say “yes.”

We are a manipulative breed, aren’t we?

But that got me thinking about “no.”

It is only a selfish, unloving father who always says “yes” to his children. More than likely, he’s one of those fathers who is trying to be “friends” with his kids, so they’ll “like” him. Or maybe he’s trying to make up for some inadequacy he feels about himself.

Loving fathers don’t always say ‘yes’ to their children, because children’s desires are often immature and may ultimately be harmful.

Very often, the most loving thing a father can do is say, “No;” be willing to be the kill joy, the bad guy, take the tears and screams and scorn from that child that they love when it’s for that child’s protection or own good. A loving father is willing to take the pout or the anger or the tantrum in order for that child to be safe, learn, grow into a mature and wise adult.

If you’re over the age of 25, you probably know that. You know that if you had gotten everything you ever wanted, your life would be a disaster right now. And guess what? It doesn’t change as you get older – there are still times when I’m thankful I didn’t get what I thought I wanted (and times when I’m sorry that I got what I thought I really did).

Recently I spent a lot of time reading and praying what we call “the Lord’s Prayer’’ – you know, the “Our Father, who art in Heaven …” In this, Jesus tells us to pray for our “daily bread.” Our daily bread is not asking for God to give us everything we want, but to give us what we actually need.

And no matter how smart, how successful, how admired and respected you are, you are not smarter than God; particularly when it comes to what is best for you. You may think you know, and you may be able to see all kinds of ways that this thing you desire could work out for God’s glory as well as yours; how it may provide for your family or “just make sense.” To God, those kinds of arguments must be like a five-year-old trying to talk their father into getting them a pony. It’s cute. But it’s dumb.

Unless, maybe, you live on a farm or a ranch.

King Solomon, considered the wisest man to ever live, wrote this in Proverbs (30): “Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: remove far from me falsehood and lying.” Good request, right? But then Solomon goes on to say, “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.”

Or, as Jesus said it so succinctly in the New Testament, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

As a kid, I wanted everything. My Christmas list would have been endless if I had actually made Christmas lists. I’d go through the Sears catalogue (pity that children today don’t know the joy of the Sears Christmas catalogue) and could pick out at least one thing on every page. In fact, that was a game I used to play: I’d tell myself I “had” to choose one thing on every page, now what would it be?

I’m long past the Sears catalogue, but I’m not beyond wanting at least one thing from every page.

But learning to not want everything is actually good for us.

The Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 10:23, “I have the right to do anything’ - but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’– but not everything is constructive.”

Truth be told, we’re not easily satisfied. We say, “Of, if I get this car I’ll never want another one” or “If I get this house, I’ll stay in it forever.” And then the new model car comes out with this feature or that feature; or you see a house with a better kitchen or yard or with a pool.

Years ago, I decided I would really simplify my life and would not need any clothes other than a pair of khaki pants and a blue oxford button-down collar shirt. It’s a combination I could wear to work, to play, to church. Then I realized I probably needed a tie and a navy-blue blazer to make it a bit more formal. And a white shirt would be good as well. And then tennis shoes for casual wear because I couldn’t wear dress shoes or loafers everywhere.

You get the picture.

There is nothing wrong with having a nice car, a house, multiple options for clothes. What I’m saying is that we’re never satisfied. It’s human nature. If I have the ability to get something more, chances are really good that I’ll take it.

So when I was reading the “Our Father who art in Heaven’’ and got to “Give us our daily bread,” which is another way of saying “Just give me what I need for today,” it reminded me that I have far more than I need, and the things that I don’t have that I really need (if there are such things) teach me to be thankful when I get through that day despite not having it, whatever “it” is.

Once, when I was in college, I decided to put God to the test. I had five dollars. I didn’t get paid until Friday (because I worked through college). So I decided to “test” God and say, “I know you’ll give me just enough money to get me through this week.” And on Monday I drove to class. I went to lunch. Someone didn’t want to finish their lunch and offered it to me, so I didn’t have to spend anything there. I drove home. There were leftovers in the fridge. The next day someone asked me to ride with them to class, because they were running late and needed to be dropped off because they didn’t have time to park, so we took their car. And I didn’t have time for anything at lunch except vending machine food, which back then was 50 cents for a Coke and 25 cents for a pack of peanut butter crackers.

Every day I prayed for that miracle, that check that showed up unexpectedly in the mail box or that debt that I’d forgotten about being repaid or whatever other miracle that I knew was coming because God was going to provide for me, take care of me, give me what I needed.

The next thing I knew it was Friday. I'd never gotten that unexpected windfall "blessing." But on Friday, I got my regular paycheck.

And it hit me – I had gone through the entire week and not even spent all of my five dollars. I had not missed a meal; I had not failed to get to class. Something unexpected always happened to get me exactly what I needed for that day. And I realized I was telling God what I thought He needed to do to take care of me, when in reality He was taking care of me in His way – and teaching me a lesson in the process.

These are good lessons, the lessons of “no.” We learn disappointment. We also learn we survive without the things or activities that we thought we couldn’t live without. In time, we discover that six months or a year or 10 years later we don’t even remember what it was we wanted so bad.

So never be afraid to be the “bad” guy, to say “no,” and put up with your kids saying you don’t love them or don’t care for them or you’re not as good a father as so-and-so. A loving Father is not afraid to be the ‘bad’ guy, because he knows sometimes ‘no’ is the most loving thing you can say.

Now, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about having the ability to say “no,’’ and that comes across as negative.

Here is the positive: remember what Jesus says in John 10:10? “The thief comes to kill, to steal, and to destroy, but I have come that you might have life and have it to the full."

Hear that? "To the full." That is not a “no.” That sounds incredible, doesn’t it? Jesus comes to give us life to the full – who doesn’t want that? Who is going to say, “Oh, I’ll just take three-quarters. I don’t want to be selfish, just give me half a share.” No, as I said before, we’re never satisfied and its human nature to always want more.

So if there's more joy to be had in my marriage because of Jesus, I want it. If there's more joy to be had as a parent, then I want it. If there is more joy to be had in my job, then I want it. If there is more joy to be had in continuing to learn about who Jesus is, I want it.

I want all the life there is to have. But not in some immature, ridiculous, "just give me the new car and house and supermodel Stepford wife” kind of joy. No, I want all the life there is to have. And Jesus said, “You want full life? I've come to give you full life. I’ve got it, and I’m offering it to you. Come to me for that full life."

It’s counterintuitive, but the truth is, we’re happier when we know the boundaries, when we know the limits. Psychologists have said that children are more creative when they have boundaries and can explore the area inside those boundaries more completely, when they are forced to use their brains to devise entertainment and excitement within the limits put around them. It’s when there are no boundaries that they become unfocused. They get easily bored and go on to the next thing, and the next thing, and nothing is ever enough.

Sometimes “no” is the best answer of all.

"Joy" to the world

We all want to be happy.

It’s part of our DNA as Americans, right? Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? And boy, we have taken to that pursuit like dogs to a meat bone, like pigs to slop, like me to a chocolate chip cookie.

When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was play ball. I was happy playing football or basketball, and when those options weren’t available it was any other kind of competition we could find or create: basement basketball with tennis balls and trash cans on rainy days when we couldn’t go outside; whiffle ball with some of the most elaborate rules created to accommodate the back yard that a Yale lawyer might have trouble deciphering; choosing sides and going to war with a variety of weapons after discovering “bang bang, you’re dead” didn’t work (so we found berries that could leave a stain to prove you’d been hit; to golf-ball sized hickory nuts that increased the range of your firepower, to a misguided use of b-b guns – classic escalation theory that has put the world on edge many times over).

Then it became cars, music, movies, books, girls, concerts, clothes, tennis shoes, sporting events, houses, neighborhoods, bigger paychecks, vacations that went from off-season trips (mountains in the summer, the beach in the winter when rates were lower) to the Caribbean in winter.

Opening presents on Christmas morning. Recognition and increased demand for my work. Season tickets to sports and plays. Enough books for a small library.

But always, the games ended, the season passed, I returned home from the vacation, the curtain went down on the play, the book ended, the Christmas tree was taken down and thrown out along with the boxes and wrapping paper that, for weeks, had been so enticing.

My guess is, even if the details differ, this sounds like your life, too.

Not that I’m complaining. I’ve had a life far beyond anything I deserved. I’m happy, through the ups and downs. I’ve got great memories, and still have great expectations.

Has it been everything I dreamed? Not hardly. I had some pretty big dreams; some impossible dreams. I wanted to play in the NBA, to pitch in the major leagues, to quarterback the Atlanta Falcons to a Super Bowl title. I wanted to write books that generations would cherish. I wanted enough money to never have to worry. I wanted … more.

But even in those dreams, reality assures me that had I achieved any or all of those dreams, they’d have been fleeting, too. Eventually, athletes can no longer play the game. Having made a living as a writer, I know the pressure is always there to follow up one award-winning piece with another, to prove it wasn’t a fluke. And money – the old saying goes, “how much money is enough? One more dollar than I have.”

I also know I’m hardly alone. Wanting more is as old as Adam and Eve (“You shall be like gods”). Solomon summed it up in his work, Ecclesiastes, when he wrote, “All is vanity, a chasing after the wind.”

Philosopher after philosopher reminds us that all of us seek happiness, without exception. Some seek it through excess, some by self-denial; some seek it through danger, others by self-preservation. Even those who are so miserable they commit suicide are looking for a way out, a peace they can’t seem to find in this life.

Because down deep, we all carry the uncomfortable idea that somewhere out there, there is more.

In the end, what we’re all looking for is not happiness, but joy.

They are not the same thing. Happiness, as we know, never seems to last. But joy is a state of mind that carries you through all the anticipations and disappointments of the pursuit of happiness.

For me, that joy comes in my relationship with something outside myself. It comes from something I have never physically seen or touched or heard. It comes from something that many find so abstract as to be considered absurd.

It comes from a pursuit of God.

The Bible tells us in story after story how when we abandon ourselves, we find peace. When we die to ourselves and our wants and desires, we find satisfaction. When we turn our guilt over the wrongs we’ve done to someone else who can forgive us, we can forgive ourselves.

I may be theologically way off base, but I believe that the fall of Adam and Eve was not that they ate a fruit that gave them some supernatural knowledge of good and evil, but rather that the act of taking that fruit that God had commanded they not take gave them self-awareness, which led to self-centeredness, which led to the longing to make oneself happy.

The focus left God and centered on “self.”

Before what we call “the fall,” I imagine the first people (Adam and Eve) walked with God. They lived for those moments of his presence. They went about the responsibilities to care for the earth and the animals and each other the way God has prescribed, but it was totally with a sense of being God-focused. God loves me. God is coming to talk to me. I do this because it makes God happy. Isn’t it wonderful that God gave us nature, the animals, laughter, adventure, companionship …

And then one day, Eve and then Adam realized they could make their own choice. It was not about God anymore; it was about me and what I wanted and what I thought would make me happy.

If you remember the story in Genesis, no one told Adam and Eve they were naked. No one told them to be ashamed. But with one simple act of “self” they suddenly became aware of their own nakedness, their own faults and flaws, and became ashamed.

I always wonder, did they ask God for forgiveness? I don’t see it anywhere in the story. I doubt they even knew the concept of forgiveness because it had never been part of their consciousness before. They had never done anything to offend God. They may have never even realized forgiveness might have been possible.

But God did. And in doing so set in motion the act of ultimate forgiveness that millions of us depend on for our eternal destiny.

One thing I have learned about the pursuit of happiness – I am happiest when I’m not thinking about it. It’s like the old saying about no longer being humble once you realize how humble you are; I’m not sure happiness doesn’t start to fade the moment you realize “I’m really happy.”

Happiness is a constant pursuit. Joy, on the other hand, is defined (in at least one primary definition) as “the emotion evoked by … the prospect of possessing what one desires.” Joy is “an emotion that’s acquired by the anticipation, acquisition or even the expectation of something great or wonderful.”

C.S. Lewis once wondered “whether all pleasures are a substitute for joy.” In his book, “Surprised by Joy,” he wrote “I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again... I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and Pleasure often is.”

James wrote (1:2) “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.” This helped Jesus endure the cross “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2).

Paul writes to the Philippians “complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” and considered this church his “joy and crown” even though he was not with them, not physically in their presence.

In the Old Testament, Nehemiah wrote (8:10) “the joy of the LORD is your strength.” The Psalms are full of joy-phrases, like “all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy” (Psalm 5:11), and that God “put more joy in my heart” (Psalm 4:7) and in God’s “presence there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11).

None of this “joy” has to do with present circumstances, but in the confidence that there is purpose, and that the end of the matter has been settled.

It’s not an easy concept. Jesus says as much in Luke (9:23) when he says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? …”

Denying yourself is not easy. Easy is going after all the stuff that we’re told will make us happy. But we also know there is no end to seeking happiness. On the other hand, knowing how it ends gives us the peace – and joy - to live with whatever condition we find ourselves in at any given moment.

My brother tells the story of when he was a student in seminary. He and some of his friends were playing basketball late one night, and the janitor came in to lock up but let them finish their game. While they played, he sat in the bleachers reading his Bible.

When the game was over, the seminary students came over to thank the old man for letting them finish, and asked, “What are you reading?’’

The old man said, “The book of Revelation.”

The seminary students said, “That’s a pretty involved book, what with all these signs and dragons and lamp stands and blood and imagery and allegory. Do you understand what you’re reading?”

The old man answered that he did, and of course the seminary students said (with, I’m sure, a bit of doubt in their voices), “tell us what it means” (as if this old janitor could explain a book like Revelation to these best and brightest seminary students).


“It means,’’ the old man said, “that in the end, Jesus wins.”

And that is where joy comes from, knowing that no matter what we endure today, what we’ve endured yesterday or may endure tomorrow, in the end, Jesus wins.