A Truth I Once Told my Brother-in-Law

My next-to next-to last Brother-in-Law once told me this story. You'll need a little background information to understand the whole thing.

My older sister and her then husband once worked for a couple of friends who ran a business called TableTenders. TableTenders was a company that supplied servers for banquets. If you were a caterer and you had an event and you needed people to take care of serving the food and picking up afterward, you called TableTenders. They were sub-contractors who helped caterers serve the food.

A friend of my sister's then husband (MSTH) worked for the company too. She was suddenly in huge financial trouble. Her husband, a KCMO Firefighter decided to divorce her. He left her and the home and he left her to fend with their three children. Suddenly she was living hand to mouth with her kids and didn't know what to do next.

This went on for a while, certainly long enough that she was in emotional and financial distress and he bought a big motorcycle.

One day, the Firefighter was out on his bike, lost control, and hit a wall. He was killed instantly. What he hadn't done though is finish the divorce proceedings. All of their property was now her property. She was the recipient of his insurance and pension too because he didn't change any of the paperwork.

As this was happening, one of the owners of TableTenders was selling their half of the business. She took the proceeds of the insurance and bought half of the business. Suddenly this woman went from living on the edge to becoming an entrepreneur. She went from being economically marginal to being a small business owner.

So, MSTH asked, "Paul, help me out here. What's the moral of this story."

I told him "The moral of this story is not for her, and it's not for him, it's for you and me: We will all have mid-life crises, we must handle them better than this."

Friends, we must all do it better than this.

Here's a Truth My Father Told Me, with a Side Note

Again, as an obese child, people made fun of me. I was bullied. But here's what my father said about that, "Sometimes, children are cruel." He said that not only to tell the plain and simple truth, but in a way that added we will grow out of it.

Can I add that I was a child, and I wasn't always kind and wonderful? It might actually make my point, sometimes children are cruel.

The Apostle Paul said "When I became a man I gave up my childish ways." Guess what? My dad was right, but on a side note adults are childish and cruel too. It's the difference between being who we are in a sin-sick world and behaving like the children our Heavenly Father calls us to be.

As Gump once said, "...and that's all I have to say about that."

Lies My Father Told Me, Mother's Edition

Not long after I found out about my Father's other family, my mother asked me how I was dealing with it. I told her that while there was a lot to chew on, ultimately it was all done. I love my father and he loves me. She was happy with that answer. It wasn't until her funeral that I discovered why.

As our mother fought on her deathbed, a fight that we knew would be fruitless, my sisters went looking for the will. They were trying to get all of the paper ducks in a row before the big moment. It was the right thing to do, but it doesn't come without its pitfalls. In fact, my older sister didn't find the will for another couple of days, but she did find some other paperwork. This is how she discovered that our father wasn't the only one who had a previous spouse, my mother had a first husband too. Now for the big question? The one that still causes us to scratch our collective heads? Who is my sister's father? Is it husband #1 or husband #2. She doesn't know. None of us know.

The day after my mother died we met with the pastor about the service. By this time my older sister was racked with questions but I was still oblivious. Pastor Terry asked if there was anything we wanted to tell our mother. My sister bit her tongue, but the thought raged through her mind, "Hell yes, I've got something I'd like to tell you!" She told me this story that evening... with a big bottle of whiskey.

So what's the lie? Your secrets die with you. Trust me, that ain't so. And by this little secret, my sister now wonders about most of the parenting decisions our folks made, and how it colored her parenting. Here's a hard truth, sometimes the truth sucks. Theologically I'd say that's the nature of sin. Any way the wind blows, it's lies and the nature of lies that gum up the whole system, especially when we think we can take the whole kit-and-caboodle all the way to our graves.

...and people wonder why I have trust issues.

Lies My Father Told Me, Volume 2

Here's an old chestnut, "We're all one big happy family." In a way it wasn't a lie, it was an omission of important facts. You know, a lie.

We were a model Johnson County, Kansas family--Dad, Mom, two daughters and one son.  Demographically, we were the perfect '60's family. Now, don't get me wrong, it wasn't all tea and cakes. The neighborhood we lived is was pretty nice. Residential, school right down the street, no real poverty, but we seemed to have less than everyone else on the block. Still, I had my bike and Lincoln Logs and baseball cards and the Boy Scouts, we weren't rich, but by no means were we poor. Still, we really had to stretch a buck. Dad worked a series of odd jobs along with his regular job at TWA. He took wedding photos, he cleaned businesses, he even worked on the railroad.

That cooled down after we all tuned eighteen or so. My dad and I would even take walks and stop for coffee and pie along the way. One night he told me the story of a woman he met when he was in the Air Force. He seemed to be far away while telling the story, kind of like a man and the one who got away. I asked, "So why did you marry mom instead of her?" I was curious, son to father I was curious.

I don't really remember what he said, he mumbled, he started off with "Well..." and there didn't seem much to hold onto. Curious, but it that's all I'm gonna get then that's all I'm gonna get. Then for my 30th birthday I got a dose of the truth.

You see, he did marry that woman, they had two sons. For my 30th birthday I got two half-brothers. Surprise!

There it was, the elephant in the room. Why were we the poor people in Johnson County? (BTW-there are many worse places to be "the poor people.") It's because we weren't a family of three, we were a family of five. Of course my dad had to work his ass off, but since my folks never shared those little facts we just thought dad was never home. It wasn't that he wasn't there for us, he was so busy taking care of our family and his other family that he wasn't there for anybody.

You see, he lied about his other family because he believed it wasn't good for either family to be enmeshed with the other. In the end what this lie cost me was two brothers and my father. He did it for the sake of the children, and in the end it did not.

My dad tried and he was wrong. Maybe that's one of the great lessons of parenting, you will be wrong. Then again that's the lesson of being a child, your parents tried not to screw up--even though they did they tried not to.

Ultimately the product of the lie is that I never got to know what was going on and am none the better for it.

Lies My Father Told Me, Volume 1

Let's face it, parents lie. Often it's because kids aren't at a developmental stage where the truth would make any sense. This is why there are so many different versions of "The Birds and the Bees." So not all lies are bad, per se, but then again, every lie is a step further away from the truth. One of the first lies my father told me is that people don't care what you look like, who you are trumps what you look like. Such a lie.

We live in a society where appearance is all important, and in my many job searches since 1984 I have found this to be true.

Here's a nice story: A member of the congregation in Marshall once told me a story about my first day in the pulpit. She said when I entered the sanctuary for the first time, coming in behind the acolyte, she thought "That is a whole bunch of man." Then I opened my arms and said, "May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all." That was when she told  me I could be her pastor.

So, in a way my dad was right, once I got in the door, I was judged for who I was. The difficulty now is finding another part of the Body of Christ, where the people will judge me for who I am, not how I look. Now that wasn't something my dad ever warned me about.

So what's this all about? Here's something I know: One day I will be judged for not being a good steward of my body. I am a fat man. This is a truth.

But I will not be judged  as someone who chose not to consider a possible pastor because of appearance. Those people are living my father's lies.