CHAPTER ONE

The Break in the Sidewalk

There is a break in the sidewalk two houses south of Lila Jean’s house on 12th Street in my hometown. Somebody took out several sections to make a temporary driveway. No pavement of course. Someone just cut out a section of the curb and threw in some gravel. My spiritual journey began on the section where the sidewalk ended.

I was walking home from school by myself when I was in the second grade, thinking what all little seven-year-old boys think, when I had some kind of an encounter with God. I cannot describe it, nor can I explain it, but suddenly a presence overwhelmed me, and it seemed like God and I formed some kind of connection. I still have no idea how to explain this encounter. I have never counted it as my conversion since I went through the Baptist version of that at age nine.

I do not see that as some kind of special anointing or calling, for I do not believe God has special pets who get exclusive gifts and possibilities. I honestly believe whatever God has to give is available to everyone and there certainly is nothing special about me as these writings will attest.

A year or so ago, my daughter helped me find that very spot and, not surprisingly, it is still there over eighty years later, and it is still a “temporary” driveway. When we found the place, I stood there once again, not in any effort to remember because I had never forgotten that place nor that experience. Since that first day I have always had a sense of God’s presence. I cannot claim that I have always followed or pleased God. For many years that presence was more like Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio, some kind of conscience trying to keep me straight when it was evident mine could not do the job. But God was always there even when I am sure the surroundings were not comfortable. Thank God for the presence and coming in the nick of time, for at this same time I was in the process of building some terrific feelings of inferiority and fear.

My mother came from a large family, most of whom lived in my hometown. These were wonderful, fun-loving, and caring folks who would never under any circumstances do anything to hurt me, but they loved to tease.

Evidently my older brother Tom was the most beautiful baby ever born and, quite literally, I must have been the ugliest baby that was ever allowed to live. Every time the family got together someone would tell me what an ugly baby I was, and everyone would laugh. I really expect to hear that in the grand reunion of heaven. Yes, it was a joke, and I would laugh with them, but no one ever told me that I got over being ugly so, with never an intent, they programed me to believe I was ugly.

I have a picture of my brother and me hanging in my house. My brother was six and I was four. In my teens that picture was too old to display but it was hanging in a closet. I would often go there and stare trying to figure out why they thought I was so ugly.

At the same time, I had begun noticing how my mother doted over my brother Tom and bragged about his accomplishments to anyone who would listen. Then one day I overheard such a session, and I heard her say, “Well Doug has to work for the grades he gets in school.” That day I became dumb to go along with ugly and everything changed. Another brother came along, and I became the unblessed middle child in the home who felt unworthy of even being there.

Looking back, I can see how hard I tried to finally earn the blessing. I helped do the family wash, hung out the clothes, took them in and did a great deal of the ironing. I was the one called upon to repair things and do the work my brothers did not want to do.

I got a job in a grocery store, or rather my mother got me a job in a grocery store, when I was twelve. The store was owned and operated by a couple and the wife was an especially close friend of my mother’s. I worked for that store until I went to college, but always was made to feel like I only had the job because of the friendship.

Often turning points in our lives happen so naturally we do not notice and, most of the time, do not recognize their impact until many years later. From junior high on, I somehow had a terrible reputation that I had no idea how I got it or why anyone would think that about me. Looking back many years later, it made sense.

In seventh grade, the school administrators announced they were starting a junior high football team, and any-one who wanted to play was to be at a meeting that day. I attended and was excited at the prospect. The coach laid out the plans and then told us to show up the next day with our cleats and we would have our first practice. That was the first I had heard about having to furnish our own football shoes and, of course, I did not have enough money to buy my own. So, I did not show up the next day. My lack of self-worth made it seem impossible for me to ask my parents to buy the shoes for me.

The result was all the “good” kids were on the team and running around with their teammates and I was the outcast kid with no friends. I made friends with the other outcast guys, some of whom were pretty tough characters. I did not become a part of their gang, but somehow was seen as being a part by many people. That group of guys came by my house one night to see if I wanted to go with them, but I made some excuse and did not go. Evidently my father saw them there and that very night they were all arrested for stealing hub caps and somehow, I was guilty by association.

I finally found a group to be a part of and they were not the top of the line. Most were a year older than I and we were kind of scrubby, I guess, and looked down on by some. Funny thing, later in life, three of us became ministers.

Since they were older than I, they became members of a Sunday School class taught by my father. I cannot count the number of times when the members would come out of the class laughing and telling me that my father had used me as a bad example again that morning. It always baffled me trying to figure out how I was a bad example. All I did was go to school and work. Dad seemed to be fixated on my bad reputation and perhaps was trying to reach me through the class. He never tried to discuss it with me, nor offer the guidance he must have thought I needed. We never talked.

When I was fifteen, I happened to walk into a room where my father and the superintendent of schools were visiting. They were great friends and had a side business together. When I walked in, my father suddenly needed to leave the room for some reason, leaving me with the superintendent which seemed like a set up. It was. He talked with me for a while, then said what I remember as these exact words: “Doug I have been giving a lot of thought to you and your life and I must admit that about the only thing I can come up with that you would be good at is a pimp.” That’s a helpful thing to say to a kid who already thinks he is dumb and ugly.

None of this matters to me at all now. I write it not to find sympathy but to show how deep and how powerful finding the love of God can heal our lives. You need to know where I have been in order to see the truth that all that I have been and all I have done came as a gift for which I can never show enough gratitude.

I am not a victim of bad or cruel parents. I have never blamed who I am or what I have done on my raising. Looking back, I must say that I grew up in a very unusual family setting and style. My brothers and I had very little of what would be considered as normal parenting. There have been times when I resented some of the lifestyle, but then I explored the lives my parents lived and began to understand. They were not good parents, but they were as good as they knew how to be. Neither of them came from what would normally be called a home.

My mother was the oldest of seven children. Five girls followed by two sons. When the youngest was nine months old their father contracted blood poisoning and died. He was a tenant farmer and did road grading for the county, so they were far from wealthy.

Mother dropped out of school her sophomore year and found work in a bank and became the sole support of the family. She held that role until she married at which time the next sister in line was out of school and went to work at the phone company. As each sister married, the next in line took over and all of them worked at the phone company and supported the family. After marriage my mother and father continued to contribute to the support of his parents and her mother until their deaths.

Mother loved to work. She evidently felt a deep sense of value and independence in having her own job. She stopped working at the bank to have her three children but returned to work as soon as the youngest was in school even though working mothers were not looked upon with pride in that day.

She worked in a clothing store for many years, but then found a very unusual job in the office of cattle auction sales in three different towns. She loved keeping books and records and making friends. Many of the professional cattle buyers would hand her the tickets for the cattle they had purchased and depend on her to add them up and write a check on their account. Cattle sales usually meant she did not get home most nights until we were already in bed, so three nights a week she was not at home. To some that would look like failure as a parent, but when her past is considered, it is easy to realize that taking care of her family meant putting food on the table and clothes on our backs. That had been her life since she was fifteen years of age.

She knew very little about family life, she had never had one. She had very little knowledge about the role of mother to her...