DEFCON 1: Personal Armageddon

The military has an alert system it calls DEFCON or defensive readiness condition. Most people mistakenly think that the highest and most dangerous level is DEFCON 5, and that is when the stuff is about to hit the fan. However, that is actually backwards. Five is the least serious level while one is the most serious---essentially a declaration that nuclear war is immanent. I don’t know about you but I have a similar alert system for my own countdown to personal Armageddon.

Irritation would be the equivalent to DEFCON 5. This is generally signaled to anyone paying attention by a tightness in the jaws and curled corners of the mouth as words are enunciated with precision in an even tone of voice and ending the statement with emphasis on the last word. This level of alert happens with some frequency but can almost always be observed anytime I have a mission to accomplish.  This will signal everyone within five miles of me to line up and inquire into the nature, duration and reason for the mission thereby impeding the mission and potentially moving the alert level to Agitation.  

The Agitation alert (DEFCON 4) includes all of the indicators of Irritation coupled with a withering glare meant to stun the agitant (not a word according to spell check which in and of itself is an agitant but the word is serviceable in this context none the less). Every moment in this level is likely to see increased volume levels with a slightly more malevolent hiss to the voice. On occasion I simply stalk away and the alert level begins to fall as the distance from the agitant is increased. However, some days I just want to fight.

The desire to fight of course leads to Pissed (DEFCON 3). Pissed removes any possibility of retreat and a potential decrease in alert status. Pissed manifests itself with a suddenness of movement and requires some object be forcibly slammed to a hard, preferable resonant surface, making a startling, explosive bang. Objects may be thrown but not always. The stance is erect and the deep drawing in of breath results in an expansion of the chest and the head and neck are tilted slightly back so that the glare can be directed downward and to the side. The withering glare is thus intensified to the level of death ray and there is usually a cessation of verbal expression as the brain begins to be slightly fogged.

Sick and Tired (DEFCON 2) begins with the declaration that I am “sick and tired” of the agitant. It should be noted that the agitant need not be an animate object and more times than not the inanimate objects of this world provoke this alert level. At this point a verbal barrage is immanent. It does not necessarily include profanity, but if it does, it is the garden variety type with no real art behind it. A great deal of pacing about accompanies the soliloquy as I enumerate all the wrongs I have had to endure and the complete injustice of the situation. The rising level of frustration is not stemmed by ANY kind words from anyone and certainly not my spouse. Any introduction of reason and logic into the situation by ANYONE only increases the rapidity at which Sick and Damned Tired (DEFCON 1) is reached.

Sick and Damned Tired  is essentially the melting of a nuclear reactor. The chief indicator that this utterly destructive level has been reached is the maniacal, seething, lamentation “I am sick and damned tired of…”. It should also be noted here that depending on the level of despair, several appropriate expletives can be inserted into the phrase before tired . This is of course where the artistry that was lacking in Sick and Tired comes into play. The soliloquy devolves into mindless raving, volume increases at intervals to the level of shrill mad man. Objects are slammed, thrown and condemned to the nether regions. Dogs are kicked, cats are kicked, chickens are kicked, and eventually an immovable object is kicked shooting searing pain into my brain and leaving me crumpled in the dust a blubbering, incoherent, but utterly spent heaving lump.

I must admit I was somewhere between Sick and Tired and Sick and Damned Tired to day. A nut started me down the path of destruction. It was “A nut on the end of a bolt on the bottom of the mower.” It should have been a routine operation. I have done it many times before. However, the repair shop must have used some kind of nuclear adhesive when they put the blades back on this time. A special trip to Lowe’s, a gallon of Liquid Wrench and a broken ratchet along with some busted knuckles sent the hammer into the barn wall and launched the soliloquy of a thousand words, very few of which are repeatable. Tools were strewn about and my wife attempted kind words. Having reached Agitation in record time, she went back in the house.

I have come to the conclusion---again--- that this world is fraught with troubles and frustrations of all kinds. How could so much of this life meet with frustration at every point? And how can I be so felled by those frustrations if I were not indeed Fallen myself? One nut on one bolt. What ridiculous madness if this were really the way things are supposed to be.

This frustration highlights my brokenness and spurs my yearning for rest.

It calls me Home. 

The Decline of Masculinity: a Remedy

I have long maintained that a boy cannot properly be prepared for manhood without having owned a real dog. By real dog, I of course mean one whose breeding, or lack thereof, makes it worthy of respect. I think it goes without saying that dogs with handles like Mall Tease, Shit Sue, and Pro- Iranian can contribute nothing to a future man’s growth and development. For that kind of work, a boy generally needs a dog more in line with Labradors, German Shepherds, Hounds or a  good Mutt of no little heft. This does not necessarily leave out the smaller breeds, but they need to be breeds with grit. I prefer the Dachshund or Rat Terrier or almost any terrier for that matter so long as their coat is too short for bows.

One of the reasons a little boy needs a dog of considerable size at some point in his childhood is so that he can crawl inside Fido’s house and see what the view from the inside is like. This will be helpful once he falls in love and marries the woman of his dreams because if the boy turns out to be anything like most of the men I know, it won’t take him too long to dash her dreams and find himself in The Dog House. Luckily, having spent plenty of time in my dog’s house as a little boy climatizing myself to cramped quarters, fleas, and ticks, I was more than prepared for extended stays in The Dog House during the early part of my marriage.

Another advantage for young boys growing up with real dogs over those who don’t is a greater understanding of the definition of loyal, friendship. Rare is the occasion that a boyhood dog turns out to be traitorous. A boy’s dog will stick to him through even the most thunderous tirade of a father who has just realized the two of them have transformed the smooth, green surface of the backyard lawn into a moonscape in their quest to dig to China to feed all those starving kids. Neither is a boy’s dog  daunted by the irate mother raining down threats of being Sick and Tired of filthy foot prints, and once clean sheets being used for capes and tents for the army. A good dog sticks closer than a brother---who is usually found squeezing under the fence and heading for the hills at the first hint of trouble.

Boy’s need real dogs to teach them courage. A big dog can teach this, but they generally need a full blown, immanently dangerous, death at the door step kind of crisis to really shine. On the other hand, I have found that the smaller breeds can teach this lesson with something as simple and handy as a coon in a hole. Nothing shouts courage more to a boy than watching his gritty little dog plunge head first into a dark, mysterious, coon filled hole in the ground. And nothing stirs the pride in a young boy’s heart more than watching that same little dog coming grunting and growling out of that hole with a mouth full of coon hind end. But doubly blessed is the boy that has a pair of dogs--- one big and one small for crises of all varieties.

Perhaps the decline of masculinity can be traced to the absence of real dogs in the lives of our boys. Every boy should have eaten after his dog on occasion and likewise had his dog eat after him when dinner proved too healthy. Every boy should have to scoop poo and fill water bowls and pull round, glossy ticks from his best friend. And in turn a boy can expect to wipe his tears away in a warm friendly coat and have his picked scabs licked clean to prevent infection.

It doesn’t take a village to raise a young man, just a good dog. 

I am Quite Satisfied with my Life

In most regards I am quite satisfied with my life. I don’t really waaaant anything. That is to say that all the stuff that I am currently living without has proven to be remarkably easy to store and maintain and not the least bit taxing on my time. Nor has any of it been an economic drain since having not purchased it has proven to be considerably less expensive than purchasing it would have been.  

Don’t get me wrong, there are things that I often declare that I want. I mean I wouldn’t turn down a new truck if one was offered. But on the other hand, just the other day when I was considering just such vehicular infidelity, I couldn’t help but think how I would miss my old two-toned, copper colored, ’94 Ford F-150 XLT Lariat if we ever parted. Yes, Rusty leaks fluid from all of its orifices at varying rates, but it has character, a character born out of adversity.

 My farmer neighbors know when I am coming because for the last few years Rusty has emitted a low, whining roar from somewhere down in the bowels of his drive train. He is addicted to brake fluid. He smokes a little too. His driver’s side window will still respond to the down command just not the up. I have trained myself not to let it all the way down, that way I can still grip the top of the glass and tug it up, then push hard in and up against the glass to finish closing it. I can reach down and rub my fingers across the crusty upholstery on the front of the driver’s side seat and recount all those hasty gas station fried chicken dinners as I rolled down the road to a fishing hole or deer stand and the seat served as my napkin. How could I part  with a truck whose console houses everything from old chewing gum, Vienna sausages, various caliber rifle cartridges, shot gun shells, a bottle of coon urine, a spool of 12 pound test,  and a crow call. The chances of accumulating a collection like that in a new truck console would take years. I don’t really waaannt a new truck.

I really think I don’t really waaaant anything. My four-wheeler runs fine now. I got a new tire for my tiller so now it won’t just plow in circles. My lawn tractor makes a funny noise but is still cutting. I have all the guns I need to shoot what I want to shoot. I have a squirrel dog and a dachshund that will drag a coon out of a hole. I have more fishing rods than I have arms so that’s plenty. I don’t really need another knife. And my son has 35 chickens, give or take.

My house is just the right size. It’s cozy. We live close. I love my wife. I adore my daughter. I’m proud of my son. I have a great job. I’ve got all the stuff that really matters.

Sometimes I wish I made more money, but you can only use it to buy stuff. I’d rather have treasure. It’s impossible to lose. 

The Dad Longing

I would maintain that even a bad dad stirs the hearts of their boys. One of my earliest memories is of my nose pressed to the glass of our front door on a frosty evening, wiping the fog off the pane, watching and waiting. Waiting for my dad to pull up in his truck. Waiting for the physical man, but waiting too for that something that was Dad. Waiting for the Dad feeling, that feeling of celebration that his arrival would prompt. I am certain that my father never actually considered his station, his deity in my eyes. He was Dad, and when he came home it was good. Not even the screaming and shouting and fighting with Mom that often shocked us boys out of our dreams could destroy the Dad longing.

They divorced---he drank and beat her--- he moved away. He would show up and make promises, big promises to a 6 year old. “Gonna get you that 30-30 this Christmas.” Santa didn't get the letter, but I was sure it was coming. Santa never got the letter. Damn Santa.

The Dad longing dies hard. That joy of the celebration of Dad coming home lingers well into adulthood. I don’t think it can be eradicated. It haunts the heart that has done without it. And those whose hearts have basked in its joy only to have it stolen away groan inwardly for its return. That longing can turn to bitterness in a boy, but is best turned to resolve, a firm resolve to always be the source for that celebration in our own children so that they might fully understand the real source for that Dad feeling, the Lord Jesus. 

Despite the nonsense that some would have us believe that fathers are optional, I firmly believe my longing to celebrate at my father’s arrival home was a type for the real celebration of the Father’s love. We were made to know a father's love. I was reminded of that again this morning in church when we sang “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us”. It is that love that is the cause of real celebration in our lives, even in the lives of broken hearted little boys with their noses pressed to a window pane.

How Deep the Father’s Love for Us

Stuart Townend

How deep the Father's love for us,
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure

How great the pain of searing loss,
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the chosen One,
Bring many sons to glory

Behold the Man upon a cross,
My sin upon His shoulders
Ashamed I hear my mocking voice,
Call out among the scoffers

It was my sin that left Him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
I know that it is finished

I will not boast in anything
No gifts, no power, no wisdom
But I will boast in Jesus Christ
His death and resurrection

Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer
But this I know with all my heart
His wounds have paid my ransom
(REPEAT)

Changing the World an Egg at a Time

Sometimes teaching at ECS makes me feel like a little kid with his nose pressed to a giant window pane, looking out at the world on the other side of the glass in wonder. In my mind’s eye that’s me … only bigger,  my nose and forehead pressed against the glass of the window of my corner room in Eagle Hall, straining to look out at the wide world and at what some of my former students are doing.  

The view can be breath taking. One day I looked out and saw that quirky former 7^th grader trekking Bibles in Nepal, going to law school, and waging war on human traffickers. Then another time it was the kid who played third team defensive back … at best, and is now a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps planning convoys in Afghanistan, coordinating air strikes on really bad guys, and keeping the men in his care alive. And just the other day I mashed my nose a little flatter against the window and looked out to see Sam Holcomb.

Sam Holcomb, class of 2005, is going to sell eggs. Thousands and thousands, if everything goes well. And he is going to raise 6,000 chickens. And get water from point A to point B. And help little kids learn. And help provide jobs for their parents. And share the Gospel … in Rwanda … Africa. Not Arkansas. Not America. Africa. For the next two years.

To tell the truth, I had to wipe the fog off the window pane. This proved almost too much to believe. Sam Holcomb, going to Rwanda for two years to manage a chicken farm and to work on a hydroelectric plant to supply water to these same chickens and the people in that town? Sam Holcomb, the kid with the suspect academic work ethic and impulsive personality? The guy who almost didn’t get to play in a state football championship his senior year because he…get this… barked in the face of an opposing player. Yep, like a dog. And got ejected from the game. I found him after the game that night behind the field-house weeping bitter tears over his ridiculous mistake. It wouldn’t be his last.

This same kid I half-expected to one day call me asking for bail money had finally thumped his compass and gotten his heading. Over the course of our recent conversation, I realized that like Captain Jack Sparrow, his compass was now pointing to what he most desired, a mission bigger than himself.

 I love his story because it is decidedly not the caricature some people have of the “good” little ECS student who goes off to college to study hard in yet another Christian school and become a missionary to pygmies.  Sam still needs about 20 hours to graduate from Ole Miss. Listening to him talk, it was pretty obvious he came off the rails more than once in his college career. At one point he decided to join the military because he thought it would give him the discipline he needed, but couldn’t pass the physical because of allergy issues. He dropped out for a while. Went back and messed it up again.

Until just a few months ago, he had settled into the idea that he would be the tour manager for his brother Drew Holcomb (ECS class of 2000) and his band, Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors. He was working with Drew, making decent money and had decided he was going into the music business. And then, for the lack of a better explanation, God moved, or better yet, continued to move things in the direction He had ordained from the day Sam was born into the family of Hamp and Nancy Holcomb.

It had long been Hamp’s habit to expose his kids to lots of options, and one of those was to meet lots of people doing kingdom work. “I always encouraged my kids to talk to lots of folks and meet lots of people and have lunch with people who I thought were doing interesting things.” It was Hamp who prompted Sam to have lunch with Tom Phillips, the president of Diversified Conveyors Inc., a company that donates at least one third of its profits to charity. And it was that lunch which helped him plot this course for Rwanda.

According to Hamp, after having lunch with Tom and his wife and hearing about the One Egg Project they were supporting, Sam came home from that meeting and for the next few days had a tough time sleeping. He couldn’t get that One Egg thing out of his mind. It was then that Hamp urged his youngest son to accept the opportunity to go to Rwanda with Tom for a tour of the projects his company supports.

 Within a month Sam was on a plane bound for Rwanda to tour One Egg Project sites with Tom. A week into the trip “I knew I was going to come here. There’s no way to explain it. Maybe being the youngest in the family, I’m just not used to making decisions. It didn’t feel like a decision, I just knew,” he laughs. “ I mean, man, I was talking to these interns working on their masters in engineering from Dartmouth at one of the project sites, and they keep telling me how much they would love to have this job, and all I can think in my head is ‘I already have it and I don’t even have my degree.’”  He is laughing the whole time he is trying to explain the unexplainable, but that’s Sam. I have known him since he was a middle schooler,  and this sort of ridiculously absurd kingdom adventure just fits him. He is just living up to his father’s defining question for deciding how his kids should pursue kingdom opportunities: “Why wouldn’t they do it?” That same question freed Drew to pursue music and Clare (class of 1999) to be a missionary with her husband in Panama.

Apparently Sam couldn’t come up with a good reason not to do it, so, he’s going to head off to Rwanda in March to manage a chicken house for the One Egg Project. His 6,000 chicken operation will provide jobs and skill training for adults, food for children, and a product for the market place that will in turn impact others in the community.  According to the One Egg website:

            These businesses, employ local workers, are locally owned, use local materials and purchase local    supplies. In addition to job creation and food to children suffering from malnutrition, eggs and chickens from OneEgg partners are also sold within local markets. This will help to further the development of food markets, ultimately impacting the overall health of developing regions by providing affordable sources of high quality protein.

I read this and realize that Sam has indeed found a mission bigger than himself. But I also realize that his quest had its roots in Christian parents whose response to questions about their kids always ended with “… and we’re still praying for Sam.” It involved a community of believers at church and in the community. And according to Sam, it involved coaches at ECS who “let us into their lives” and modeled what it looked like to invest in people. Together this threefold cord helped bind up in his heart the need for meaningful work. Work that would last for eternity.

Thanks to Sam Holcomb the view from my window in Eagle Hall makes the world look a little wider. From it I can see all the way to Africa.