The Gate (15 page)

“God knew, but Abraham didn't,” Herby explained. “The point was not that God would learn whether Abraham was committed to him; the point was that Abraham would learn how committed he was to God. He needed to know the depth of his own faith. And like with Abraham, sometimes prayer simply reminds us who's in charge of the universe. Acknowledging that God is still God helps us stretch our faith around the things we don't understand. Prayer changes things, and when it doesn't change our circumstances, it changes our heart. You have to believe that! Don't give up, don't quit, keep believing in yourself, and keep believing in God.

“Ultimately, the victory isn't up to you. God has a plan, and he's working his will in the world, even when we don't see it. Sometimes the flames of hope flicker in the winds of life, and the darkness looks like it's going to have its way with the world—but it won't. So when things start to look bleak, you need to stand a little taller, a little stronger, and a little braver than everyone else. People look to you for encouragement, so you need to take the lead, to be the example, to set the table for hope.

“Trust me, one day you'll see it all more clearly. Here there's no more pain, no more crying, no more doubt, and no more dying. Everything makes sense. All the pieces fit together. But until you get here, you need to be a champion for hope.”

Herby ended with, “Tell my boys what I said, and tell them that I love them.”

He was getting choked up, and so was I, but I could tell that they were tears of confidence and optimism.

“When did you get to be such an expert on hope?” I asked.

Herby responded, “A few months before the cancer finally had its way with me, I was trying to make sense of it all. ‘Where are you in all this, God?' I asked. ‘Why did this have to happen to me, why did Gerry get Alzheimer's, and who's going to take
care of her when I'm gone?' I was talking to Ahbee about it, and I wasn't pulling any punches.

“Then suddenly I heard a voice say to me, ‘Herby, my son, you're not God, I am. You don't have to worry about the things you can't control. That's my job. Have I ever failed you before? So what makes you think I will fail you now? I am the hope of the world, and I am your hope too.'

“I realized in that moment that although I could not see him, God saw me, and he had things well in hand. I guess when there seems to be no hope, you suddenly realize that God is our only hope.”

As they drove away, Gerry waved and I heard one last
Ahuuuuga!
as the Buick disappeared into the trees.

I seldom think about my limitations and they never make me sad. Perhaps there's a touch of yearning at times, but it's vague, like a breeze among the flowers.

Helen Keller

A
hbee was cordial but quiet at breakfast. “Have you thought much about what we talked about yesterday?” he asked.

“Not as much as I need to,” I admitted.

“Well then, maybe today would be a good day to just sit and think things through.”

I sensed that our conversation had ended, so after a breakfast of French toast and smokey links and a little conversation with Michael, I spent the day sitting on the beach, sailing the Hobie Cat buoyed out front, and thinking about what Herby and Ahbee had said. There were things I needed to change, I knew that. I needed to be more confident, more hopeful, more of a tower of strength for those who stumble, and I needed to be less concerned about performance and more concerned about people. The question was, how?

Up until that point in my life, my formula for living had come off a Mercedes-Benz brochure I'd seen in the seventies. “The best or nothing,” it read, and I liked it. It was very German, very concise, very goal-oriented, and it gave me a target to aim for. Like they say, “They give silver medals to first losers,” and I wanted
to win. It's funny how your attitude can affect everything about the way you live.

Work as though everything depends on you. Pray as though everything depends on God.

For too long I'd been looking at life as though it were a competition. When I was a boy, my dad gave me a handwritten note. It was printed in the clean, crisp, block capital letters that reflected his trade as a tool and die maker. It said, “Work as though everything depends on you, and pray as though everything depends on God.” I had always tipped the teeter-totter toward the work side. But now I was starting to believe that I had it backwards: that if life was a competition, then the goal was not so much to finish
first
as it was to finish
well.

It was time I came to grips with the fact that I'm not a kid anymore. In fact, I'm on the downward slide. I can't see the finish line, but I know I'm probably closer to it than the starting blocks. If adjustments were going to be made in my life, now was the time. I set the jib on the Hobie and headed for the buoy.

The sun hung low in the sky as I buoyed the sailboat and swam back to shore. I made my way up the front steps of the cottage, and that's when I saw it—a rusted lime-green Chevy Vega was parked in the driveway. The rear bumper was crumpled and the right taillight was broken. Clearly the car had seen better days, but I recognized it immediately. It belonged to DL, my uncle David Lee. Actually, it was titled in my name, but it was DL's nonetheless.

———

DL was my mother's youngest brother. He was a trailer born to Jack and Esther late in life, almost twenty years after Mom and Don. Everyone always knew that DL was different, but nobody wanted to admit it, much less talk about it. So for the first fifty years of his life, DL went without being diagnosed as autistic.

As we grew up, my siblings and I heard little bits and pieces
whispered from time to time by my parents in another room, but no one ever said much in front of us. When they did, it was basically about how smart DL was as a toddler until he fell out of that swing and hit his head. Grandma Jacobs insisted that he was never right after that. The rest of us never really bought into all that, but we kept our opinions to ourselves around her.

The goal of life is not to finish first but to finish well.

After Grandpa Jack died, Uncle Don and my dad were able to get DL a driver's license so he could cart Grandma around, but he never should have been on the road. The man drove by feel. He'd pull up to something ever so slowly until he felt a thump. The bumpers on every vehicle DL owned would be bent up within a month. He banged into street signs, fire hydrants, brick walls, light poles in parking lots, and of course, other cars.

If the autism wasn't bad enough, DL started drinking after Grandma died. Every week my mom would give him money for food, which he would spend on beer and cigarettes, and before long he was hooked.

Once when I was a kid, the phone rang at two thirty in the morning. A few minutes later my dad stood in my doorway and said, “Get dressed. It's time you saw this.”

We drove over to Grandma's house. DL was sitting in his boxers leaning back in Grandpa's recliner, wide-eyed and whimpering. “Do you see them?” he shouted, pointing into the shadows of the dining room.

“See what?” Dad asked.

“The demons! They're coming for me!”

Unfortunately, they already had him. Darkness has a way of dredging up old doubts and fears, and DL was totally out of touch with reality. He wildly shadowboxed his demons and yelled, “Look out! Look out!” Then he turned his rage on Dad and screamed, “You're with them!”

Dad tried to assure DL that he wasn't with them, but by this
time DL was seeing demons everywhere. He started throwing empty beer bottles, smashing them against the wall, and eventually one crashed through the living room window. Dodging bottles, Dad finally tackled him and held him to the ground.

“Give me your belt,” he said, in a voice I remember thinking was way too calm. I gave Dad my belt, and he strapped DL's arms behind his back.

By this time, ol' DL was kicking and screaming and yelling, “Don't let them take me, Jesus! I'll be good, I promise, I don't want to go back to hell!”

Darkness has a way of dredging up old doubts and fears.

From what I could see, DL was already in hell, at least in his mind, and seeing him like that scared me.

“It's just the alcohol talking,” Dad explained. “He doesn't mean it, and he can't help it. He's out of his head right now. Tomorrow he'll sober up, and he'll be his normal self.”

At some point DL passed out, and we unceremoniously carried him out to the car. We buckled him in the backseat of the Vista Cruiser and took him down to the Salvation Army Rehabilitation Center's drunk tank. There DL got loved sober. He lived at the Salvation Army for a couple years under the watchful eye of his guardian angel, a man by the name of Major Metts.

Dad had to sell Grandma's house to pay for DL's treatment, and when he was released, we moved him to a room at the Lighthouse Mission. There DL played piano for their meetings, and he also guarded the shower room door whenever the women went inside to make sure that no unsavory characters went in after them.

There was a lot about life that DL didn't understand. Life had treated him unfairly. He was autistic and an alcoholic. When God was passing out talents, DL only got two. First, he had a thing for numbers, particularly days and dates (if you've seen the movie
Rain Man
, you know what I'm talking about). If you told DL your birthday, he could tell you what day of the week you were born.

“November eleven, nineteen-eighty—one, one, one, one, eight, zero. That was a Tuesday, yes, a Tuesday, I'm sure of it.” Or suppose you wanted to know the circumference of, say, Mars or Pluto, or its distance from the sun—well then, DL was your man.

But his other talent, his real talent, was music. The autism giveth and the autism taketh away, and what it gave DL was the piano. If he heard a song once, he could play it. And he'd play it over and over again. Since playing piano was his one and only usable talent, he used it whenever he could.

Life isn't always fair, but God is always good.

Life isn't always fair, but God is always good, and he even used DL in his broken condition. He played twice a week at the county jail, every Wednesday at the Christian Businessmen's Luncheon, every other Sunday night at Grand Avenue Christian Reformed Church, and every Saturday night for the recommitment service at the Lighthouse Mission where he lived.

It sounds real nice, and it was, but the problem was that DL was short on social graces. He was rough and gruff and not easy to be around. Because of that, he didn't have many friends. My sister, brother, and I were as close to him as anyone, but honestly, it was a duty for me. It was a promise I'd made to my mother to look after her little brother. So when he needed Aqua Velva, or new socks, or another electric razor, I'd get it for him. My sister was more of a reflection of my mother, and so when she'd stop by, she'd bring cookies and conversation. As for Ben, he had the patience of Job. He never seemed to mind DL's peculiar ways, and sometimes he'd let him wash cars at the lot for a little extra spending money.

As a family, we always had what my kids called “DL's Christmas.” We'd go over to my mom and dad's a couple nights after Christmas Day, and we'd all get him something. Mostly it was clothes, but we'd get him cookies, and candy, and passes to the movies too. We'd sit around and watch him open his presents,
and then we'd eat dinner. DL would always tell us that this was his third or fourth Christmas dinner. He had one at the mission, another one at the jail, and sometimes he'd get invited to somebody's house who used to live at the mission.

The stories that affect us most are the ones that are about us.

Every Christmas, my daughter Kate would get him to tell the shoe polish story. “Once I knew a man,” he'd start, “who was so addicted to the liquor that when he couldn't get any, he'd pour shoe polish through a loaf of bread, and then he'd drink it. I know you don't believe me,” he'd say, “but it's true.” And then he'd get all misty. We knew that someone was him, but we acted like we didn't know. The stories that affect us most are the ones that are about us, and that's why we keep coming back to the stories of the Bible. Christmas is a story of redemption, and so after DL would tell his redemption story, we'd all say “Merry Christmas” and go home. The rest of us would go home to our nice houses in the suburbs, but DL would go to his room at the Lighthouse Mission.

I was with him the night he died. By then he was living at the Good Shepherd home, and the nurse there called to tell me that his time was short. I went by one last time to say good-bye and to read to him from Luke's gospel. It was his favorite, and hearing it soothed his soul. He lay quietly with his eyes closed while I read, and his breathing was so shallow that I thought maybe he'd already passed.

“You know God loves you, don't you, DL?” I asked.

“I know. But don't stop. Keep reading. I like to hear it.”

I did as he asked, and a few minutes later, very faintly he whispered, “Do you hear it? Do you hear the music?” I didn't but said I did, and he died a few minutes later. I have no doubt that when DL knocked on the door of heaven, he heard the Master say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

———

That was three years ago now, and here he was sitting on the steps of the back porch. As I walked up, DL greeted me with the line he always used whenever he'd call my house in need of something. “IS SKY THERE?” he would say, loud and gruff and teetering on the edge of anger. But then he smiled. “Hello, little brother,” he said in a gentle voice that neither I nor anyone else had often heard him use before. It was DL, but it wasn't. He looked different. First off, he had curly blond hair. I'd seen him with that hair in old pictures, but for as long as I could remember, he was as bald as an eagle.

Second, he didn't have glasses. DL always wore thick Coke-bottle glasses that were often taped together in some way because he'd broken them. If he broke a lot of cars, he broke even more pairs of glasses, and between visits to the eye doctor, he would tape the frames together with white athletic tape.

Third, he seemed taller and certainly thinner. Once, when my wife wanted to buy him some new pants, she asked him what size he was. DL said that he was a perfect 40-30. A 40-inch waist, 30-inch inseam. My girls said he looked like a Weeble, the little round toy dolls that bounced back up when you knocked them over.

———

One year when I was in junior high, my parents rented a cottage up at Stony Lake, and because they knew that if they didn't take DL on their vacation, he wouldn't get a vacation, they invited him along. My siblings and I were mortified at this thought, but when Dad said, “Family is family,” we knew it was final.

Mostly DL stayed by the cottage, but one afternoon while I was talking to my friends down at the public beach, he came walking down the road. “Who's that weirdo with his pants pulled up to his armpits?” someone asked.

I did my best to pretend I didn't know him until he walked up and said, “Hi, Sky.”

At times I was embarrassed to be his nephew, but he was always
proud to be my uncle. Whenever I'd visit him at the mission, he'd always tell everyone that I had to call him uncle. Then he'd look at them as if to say, “That's right, I'm his uncle.”

No matter what you do, God will never pretend that he doesn't know you.