Going Back In

Some thirty years ago, my very first pastorate was in a community so tiny that part of its name included the word, “burg.” Forestburg had two stop signs that slowed anyone down going through. A post office, one school for grades 1-12, a grocery store where the clerks would pick out your groceries for you and three churches rounded out the cultural structure that some 300 families called home.

My parsonage was a single-wide trailer that was dated beyond repair even then. It kept the rain off but not the rats out. What I caught with cheese under the kitchen sink could be classified as big game. In the summer, it was a thermal conductor sucking in hot air like a starving furnace. It the winter, you could have hung beef, literally. But, it was almost like a camping adventure and it was my home for two years.

Sometimes, I got so bored that I’d actually go visiting total strangers in the community. I mean, visiting anyone whose porch light was still on after dark. This one young couple lived at the edge of town in another single wide. One cold winter night I pulled my 1974 Caprice onto their graveled drive. The young man was sitting outside smoking cigarettes non-stop in the cold early winter chill. Something was obviously wrong.

I’d no sooner told him who I was than he began making his confession. He and his wife, who was still inside and whom I never met, had just had a horrible fight. He wouldn’t tell me what about and I didn’t ask. I’d never been married and had the good sense not to presume to give him marriage advice. Even then, I seemed to have a sixth sense that anger that deep represented an even deeper pain (a lesson too many never learn about why people they love are so angry). Whatever they’d fought about had stripped him of his masculinity and dignity for the night. All I knew was that the frost-bitten air didn’t hurt as much as what he feared back inside the house. (Remember, I never heard her side of the story).

I just listened as the night air grew frostier by the minute and our breath blew whiter into the dim yellowish light that came through the kitchen window giving us a flashlight view of reality. I must have stayed the better part of an hour. For whatever reason, I never knew the outcome of that fight. At some point, even if for no other reason than to collect his things and leave, that guy must have gone back in and faced reality. Maybe they made up and found a way of making marriage meaningful for the last three decades.

The church and I had this pretty serious spat over the past year. Not all of the church, mind you (you’ll have to ask her about her side of the story). But, enough spatting went on to make sitting out in the cold for a few months seem more attractive than being inside. So, I’ve sat outside for a while. It looks like someone is about to invite me back in. There is someone inside that Nancy and I love very much. I’ve pondered my options. I think I’m about to go back in.