God? (eBook)

CHAPTER TWO :: A JOURNEY BEGINS

Go Time

When one jumps into a body of water from the top of a tall tower, unexpected things can happen. Sadly, I know this from experience.

During the first week of my sophomore year in college, I went swimming at a quarry with friends, including my suitemates from the year before, Todd and Keith. If I had only learned one thing during my freshman year, it would have been that these guys never seemed to run out of ideas about fun things to do on a given day.

For my younger readers, hanging out with those two was like hanging out with Phineas and Ferb: I know what we are going to do today.

The quarry had a small beach-like area fronting a lake. Not too far out, in what turned out to be deep water, was a concrete tower that rose, I would guess, somewhere between 25 and 40 feet above the lake. My memory suggests it was closer to 40, but I don’t know for sure. The height of the tower in my memory might be like the length of the fish that was caught, but somehow continues to get longer as time passes and the story of the catch is retold.

When we arrived, we watched several kids climb up a metal ladder attached to the tower as other kids jumped from the top and into the water. It didn’t seem particularly tall or scary; it looked like fun.

A little more than halfway up the ladder, a rope hung down that you could grab to swing out over the water and drop in. The first time I climbed the ladder, I grabbed the rope, swung out, and let go. It felt like a trial run, of sorts. It was fun.

I swam back to the ladder and confidently began to climb.

When I got to the top and managed to get close enough to the edge to peek over, I realized that my confidence was suddenly missing in action. From the ground, I had vastly underestimated the full height of the tower.

Standing at the top, I recalibrated and saw that we were, by my new estimation, approximately 47,000 feet in the air. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I must have been aware it wasn’t that tall and that my mind was playing tricks on me. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that if an airplane flew by, we’d be looking down at it.

The top of the tower was flat and formed a decent-sized platform. A couple of kids had brought lawn chairs and beer up the ladder and were making a day of it. One guy, perhaps with alcohol-fueled courage, did a double flip on the way down. Another kid did a handstand at the edge before taking the big plunge.

I, on the other hand, was thinking about how different the view had looked from the ground. The good news was that all the kids who were jumping seemed to be surviving. The bad news showed up in a form that was actually far scarier than the drop itself.

Lightning.

One of those late-afternoon summer storms that seem to come out of nowhere was approaching. You’ve seen them: a bright blue sky in three directions and an ominous black sky in the fourth.

The storm was not far away and was closing fast. It occurred to me at that moment that I was the tallest guy, on top of a tall tower, above the trees, standing near a wet metal ladder, in the middle of a good-sized lake. I was soaking wet. In my mind, lightning had never seen a better target.

The fact that there were cute girls at the quarry eliminated any thought of climbing back down the ladder. A lesser man might have been paralyzed by fear at this point. I knew it was go time.

I jumped.

Half way down, everything was good. I felt stable in the air and was maintaining my balance nicely. It was a thrill, and at that point, I was blissfully unaware of what was about to happen.

Before I jumped, someone had said I should try to remain as vertically upright as possible while entering the water. That made sense. Other tips were shared. Nobody, however, had bothered to mention what perhaps was obvious to everyone but me: “No matter what happens, keep your legs together.”

Then I hit the water. More accurately, the water hit me. My legs were not together.

Let’s just say that the water scored a direct hit. Every male who is reading this might be cringing right now. Or tempted to laugh. Laughter in the face of this sort of pain seems to be a guy thing.

In addition to the obvious reason I was experiencing pain, something else had happened that I had not expected. When I landed, water was injected into me in a way I had not previously thought possible. Water I had not swallowed seemed to now be present inside my stomach.

Somehow, I simultaneously surfaced, managed to tread water while curling up into a ball, let out a long groan, and started laughing, even in the midst of the pain. There’s that guy thing again.

People say you learn valuable life lessons in college. I learned a few that day, as I often did when hanging out with Todd and Keith. In fact, it would not be an overstatement to say that a couple of the most profoundly influential things I would ever learn in life, I first learned through the two of them.

+ + +

When I arrived on campus as a freshman, I didn’t know a single person apart from my orientation weekend roommate, a tennis player named Sonny. I remember thinking, as my parents were leaving after dropping me off, that I had exactly one friend at the entire school: a guy I had known for two days.

My freshman roommate, Mike, showed up in camouflage army fatigue long pants (on a very hot day) and a Sex Pistols “No Future” t-shirt. He wore earrings and a mullet before either was considered particularly cool. It turns out he was simply ahead of the curve. He was a musician and an artist, and he was into bands I’d never heard of. In one of our first conversations, he said, “I hate sports.”

Uh oh.

Growing up, I played a ton of different sports. When I wasn’t playing, I was watching, reading about, or talking about sports. Sports occupied a huge percentage of my mental space.

This could be a long year.

Our two suitemates, Todd and Keith, let us know pretty quickly that they were Christians and that their faith played a big role in their lives.

Yep... This is definitely going to be a long year.

I remember thinking I had heaven on one side and hell on the other, but I wasn’t ready for either yet.

During the first weeks of school, I jumped into campus life with both feet. I checked out Greek Row, made friends there, and was encouraged to consider rushing.

I made other friends by getting involved with the yearbook and school newspaper. I had done some sports photography in the past and had always enjoyed it. I discovered that both publications paid their photographers. I could get sideline passes to any sporting event, use the school’s expensive lenses, and get paid to do it.

On top of all of that, I got access to a great spread of free food in the press room at football and basketball games. It may have been the best college job ever; I probably would have done it for free.

The guys who lived upstairs were also incredibly fun. We played a lot of pickup basketball, and their weekly Shoot-Tennis-Balls-with-Lacrosse-Sticks-Down-the-Dorm-Hall-and-Directly-at-Each-Other-at-Midnight tournaments were epic.

It turns out, though, that the most fun guys I was able to find on campus were my suitemates. Todd and Keith really did have an endless supply of ideas for adventures. They had a fantastic group of friends, most of whom sought out the kinds of weekend fun they would not regret the next morning. That alone made them different from some of my other college friends.

But there was something else that made them different. They had a sense of purpose and direction that was different from anyone I had ever met. They drew strength and peace from their faith and really cared about people. That stood out; I did not know a ton of kids I would have described as selfless. I wouldn’t have described myself as selfless.

I had never known guys who would have called themselves committed Christians until I met them. That’s not to say there weren’t any of those kids in my high school. If there were, I just didn’t know much about their faith. A friend I really liked did invite me to his youth group—and I went once—but I had always thought, “I’m not religious.”

I had always assumed that some kind of God must exist. Our family went to church occasionally on Easter or at Christmas, but I had never thought much about spiritual things.

As I got to know my suitemates, it occurred to me that somehow, and I wasn’t sure why, I had formed a mental image of what a Christian who believed the Bible must be like.

It was not a flattering picture.

Looking back now, I’d say it was a caricature, based more on my imagination than on any specific people I had known. That caricature led me to assume that anyone I met who...