Chris Fabry's Blog, page 13

How Much Will a Sand Dollar Buy?

I was writing the story I've been given today, rolling along, mining the relationship of two different characters, when a memory that is not my own flew past and I followed.

He thought of the handful of times his family had even taken a vacation when he was little. He vowed that would change when he was married and had a family, but it hadn't. What was learned early on stuck.

I wasn't satisfied with his memory and I didn't want to use something from my own experience. I wanted something fresh. Which took me back to Fripp Island in the summer of 1994, I think. Walking the beach, looking for Pat Conroy, and finding a sand dollar. I kept it as a memento of that stroll.


A memory of his brother at the beach flashed through his mind. The boy laughing at him for thinking he could spend a sand dollar at the local grocery.

That feels real to me. An older brother capturing a snapshot of naivety and laughing. Innocence, pure and unhindered by commerce and the rules of finance, bartering the heart and being crushed.

If I had that sand dollar today, I would not save it in a Zip-lock bag. I would invest it, spend it on something that will last.

Maybe that's why the thought sparked. We all have sand dollars to invest, things unmade by human ingenuity, worthless rocks or wood or clay, but priceless still. Memories waiting to break through the laughter and tears and pain.

A rabbit trail from where I was going with the story, but a good one.

New Marriage Technology©

Some of you know I write fiction and nonfiction in addition to my radio/voice work. I'm expanding my horizons and have begun secretly collaborating with a certain computer company to come up with new technology that will aid marriages.

Specifically, this device will help in the following cases:

1. I've fallen out of love with my spouse.

2. My spouse does things that irritate me and I can't stand it anymore.

3. My spouse is sick.

4. My spouse is not the same person I married.

5. I'm not happy in my marriage and I want to be happy.

6. I love my spouse, but I've met someone else I love more.

7. Marriage is too hard, I want to quit.

8. I wasn't prepared for all the pain and hardship.

9. I have no hope for my marriage.

The program is fully functional and available in a beta version. Our hopes are that married people who are experiencing any of the nine situations above will be able to move forward together rather than splitting up.

The new device will be called…


Drum roll, flashing lights, music up…


** ** ** The iDo. ** ** **


Smaller than all of the other "i" devices, actually invisible, the iDo, with the patented "iCommit" operating system, will help an individual stay with their current marital situation so that true happiness might be achieved in the long-run.

Patterned after painstaking integrated systems software research, the iDo uses the experience of couples who have been married for decades who have said it was worth the struggle to stay together and work through differences rather than running from the marriage.

The iDo is the most innovative technological breakthrough in history and is being offered FREE for a limited time. Simply use the voice activation program at your marriage ceremony and mean it. And when you experience any of the nine situations above, reboot the iDo through verbal or non-verbal recommitment to the original voice command. (For maximum effectiveness, use the iCommit program with God prior to using the iDo with your spouse.)

The new iDo. Good for your marriage. Good for your heart. And it takes no space on your hard drive.

(For a fictional look at this technology in action, read A Marriage Carol , a Christmas story for anyone who's ever fallen out of love.)

Success

I woke up this morning thinking about success because my life FEELS so far from it. When I compare, I always lose, whether I pick a person who seems more or less successful than me because...well, they're not me.

Here's my new definition:

Success is becoming who you were created to be. It's not measured by externals, income, home size, newness of cars, awards or praise from others. It's not measured by my happiness or ease of life in the current situation. If I am allowing God to change and conform me every day into the image of his Son, then I am moving tward becoming who he created me to be. That is success.

My marriage, parenting, my work, play--all of it will be enhanced by this exercise of allowing God to change and mold me.

The better word for this, of course, is "faithful." Am I being faithful to the call of God on my life--to walk where he says to walk, to run when he bids me to follow. Will I have the kind of faith that shows God I really want him more than I want "things" or "an easy life?"

Success is not something I achieve, it's something I submit to.

Success is not having to know the plan and allowing God to work however he wants to work.

Success is realizing I don't have a better plan.

Success is surrender.

Uncle Johnny

Today the third brother will be laid to rest in the fertile West Virginia soil he loved. We commit him to this rich, loamy harbor, meant for pumpkins seeds and cantaloupe that grew under his tender care. He is no stranger here.

The three brothers knew that death would come, that in the cycle of life there is this cold season when leaves turn and fall and trees become barren sentinels on hillsides. This is the way of the earth, the way of every farm. They did not know it would come for the three of them within the span of one year. Death does not give notice.

Unless the seed falls and dies, there is no life. Grass withers and flowers fade. This is the way of it. They knew that and lived in light of it.

These three did not seem old to us, those of us who watched them grow. Though hearing and eyesight and teeth failed, though joints ached and hearts slowed and blood pressure rose, they seemed able to spring from each setback, delay each fading moment that told us the end was near, or at least coming.

My memories of Uncle Johnny are vivid and encompass bowling lanes, foreign to me in childhood. I would never have learned to score a game had it not been for his instruction. He was more excited than I when I broke 100. I remember long, rubber boots up to the hip, and his tall, lanky body wading deep in the creek, into dark crevasses I would never go for fear of snakes or creatures that might lurk within those shadows. But he with seine in hand captured minnows and crawdads, wriggling and fighting as he brought them into the light, and in the capture provided bait for a day of fishing at the pond. Life for life, taking from one tributary to give to another.

I remember his voice at the front door in the evening, his unannounced arrival. I recall his delight at the offer from my mother of a piece of cake or pie, and long, humorous games of Rook. Uncle Johnny would instruct me, oh so carefully and subtly in the presence of my parents, our competitors, not to play a particular card in my hand if I happened to possess it. A wink and a nod and a smile could be interpreted many ways, however, and I was not always adept to his guidance. He taught me through his laughter that games are not always to be won. And that we learn more through losing, at times, than we do through winning.

There is one scene, a harrowing and fearful affair, when Uncle Johnny climbed aboard a mini-bike and took it for a ride, and in the end, it took him for one because he did not comprehend the brake/gas schema of the vehicle. He roared toward us, picking up speed as he raced downhill, toward the hickory nut tree and those gathered to watch. At first I thought it was funny, that look on his face, that white-knuckled fear and the way he bounced over the uneven terrain. Then, when he laid the bike down in the grass so hard the handles broke, the fear was mine, he had transferred it to me as he stood and smiled and walked away unscathed.

Of course he was not unscathed by life or loss. He had known hardship in his youth with his mother's death. He had lived through lean days without much food and watched the Depression kick into full gear until it roared at him over the uneven terrain of his own life. I never connected any of this with his casual demeanor. He was simply Uncle Johnny. A tight-lipped character ambling through the story of our lives, smiling and enjoying the scenery.

And now the three of them are gone, John, Robert, and William Fabry. All three are planted firmly in the fertile soil of the hearts and memories of those who love them. They are not strangers here.

The Choice

I'm struck anew by how simple the Christian life is, how simple God makes it for us, but how complex it feels. From the first response we have to God's call, to the offer of freedom and love, we have to choose whether or not to believe. Does he mean it? Will he do what he says? Will I trust him?

Faith is not a blind leap. Faith is resting in what is true no matter what. No matter the feeling or experience. In the day-to-day series of mountains we climb, with all of the uncertainties and financial/relational/spiritual pressures, we have to choose again and again. Will I trust God? Will I believe in his faithfulness? Will I rely on myself? Will I find something/someone else to trust that makes me feel better?

Without faith it's impossible to please God. With faith, placed correctly, it's impossible not to please him. Whatever is on my horizon that presses me toward unbelief and worry is actually a potential opportunity to please the one who made me. And the bigger uncertainty, the more reliance on him I can have.

When I come to the end of myself I catch a glimpse of the beginning of God at work. Today I choose to believe not in myself, but in him.

small spaces

I met a writer last Friday, Ann Voskamp, who has a very successful book, One Thousand Gifts. There is a reason it is successful, and I don't think it's because someone has branded her or she has a Facebook account or that the cover of the book is elegant. God honors content. He shows himself best in the simple beauty of truth told well.

Here is what she told me that most encouraged me. During the interview she related that her husband doesn't read much other than the local farm newspaper and his Bible. But he built her a cabin on the edge of a cornfield. It's a 10X10 space where she comes empty each evening and pours out her heart on the page.

I'm encouraged by that because the space where I do what I do is small, on the edge of the desert, at the back of the home we're renting, in a place that is not holy or glitzy or glamorous. It's plain and mean and hot when the sun beats against the outer wall.

Yet, in this space, I ask God to inhabit every day. And he does, because he has made his dwelling in me. Unbelievable. That God would become a man, the infinite in a small space. That God himself would suffer for me, all powerful Creator, bearing my guilt on two crossed beams.

I think God delights in using our small spaces. Small tasks. Small minds. When God looks our way he does not see how small the space, he only sees the possibility of what might happen in that space. The little boy's lunch that fed a few thousand people. That's what I have at my disposal every day.

So I'm trying, again, not to look at the small space I have been given, but at the big God who wants to inhabit it.

May Jesus inhabit the small spaces of your life today.

My Mind, The Mine

My mind is a cavern waiting to be mined, with treasures in darkness.

My mind is my friend, but once it is stirred, it waits like a specter and will not relent.

I'm working on a new story. In the middle of the night I awaken, as I have these past few months, put on my hat with the flashlight duct-taped to it, and wander to the kitchen and retrieve the instruments I will use to call forth blood from my son to see where his blood sugars stand. If a test is all I have to do, I can wander back to bed and perhaps fall asleep. But more often than not, my mind begins to whir as I fumble for a needle and the insulin that will stabilize him. Or a spoonful of organic honey to raise him in his sleep, as happened today.

And it was in that single dot of light coming from my hat that helped me make the connection between my grandfather and my own life today. My grandfather was ten years old when D.L. Moody died. He was born in the old country, in what was then Austria-Hungary, where the seeds of world conflict were first sown.

When he came to America, to avoid that conflict, he worked his way south and wound up in the hills of West Virginia, or better described, inside the hills. He was a coal miner. My father was born in a little town called Omar, WV in 1920. His father was 31 at the time. I can imagine, with a newborn baby, what life might have been like to awaken on some cold, West Virginia morning and strap on his headlamp and walk to the mine and descend and dig in the darkness of the earth for coal. Digging in darkness and paid pennies for the company.

My grandfather was too smart to remain a coal miner. He saw what it could do to a man, to a family, the hardscrabble life wed to the company and the store. So he traveled north and settled in the town where I would eventually be born when my father was 41.

And that is where my own seeds were sown. Every man has a conflict, a retinue of discord that he must grasp and use each day to propel himself forward. This is the momentum of life, a gift and yet a curse. Some weathered tool he uses to strike the earth and pull stones and gems and ballast. My grandfather worked hard in the earth. I do not toil as he did, but I work at a different mine.

***

I've been working on a new story for more than a week. Usually the first
fourteen days are easy and fun. Daunting at first and filled with doubt that I can keep all the plot plates spinning, I dive in, propelled by the hook of the beginning, that twist of life that I believe will grab readers and pull them into the mine of the story. This beginning process propels me for at least 100 pages. And then the fun stops and the hard work of Act 2 begins. The weather gets colder. It starts to rain and the leaves fall and bones ache early in the morning. This is where the resolve is tested. It's where you learn the most about your characters and the depth of your story. The light begins to shine on your own soul here.

I tried going back to bed at 2:45. I really did. I thought, if my grandfather had the chance to crawl back to bed instead of trudging through mud into that mine, he would have. But my mind wouldn't still. So I prayed. I thanked God that I was not a miner, that I did not work in a job that physically taxed me. I thanked him for giving me meaningful work each day that made sense to me and perhaps encourages others. And then I prayed for my family and friends who are going through difficulty. I thought this would allow me to sleep, but it did not.

So I turned on the computer and walked the few steps to the mineshaft that is my office, a long, cramped room filled with books and radio equipment and towels and covers hanging that knock down the noise. I came here to meet my characters again, to find out what will happen on page 60. To hear their voices and smell the musty air they breathe driving in an old truck through the desert, hoping the man who is hunting them will not find them. These are people without defined faces and pasts who I am trying to call forth from the darkness, and I will not find them or paint them if I am not with them. This is a good story, perhaps my best, and I am praying their tale will make readers squirm and laugh and cry and want to run into the arms of God.

My mind is a cavern waiting to be mined, with treasures in darkness.

My mind is my friend, but once it is stirred, it waits like a specter and will not relent.

And I am grateful for the one who calls me from sleep to help my son, and in doing so, help myself.

Campaign

As reported on Chris Fabry Live today, 8/19, Brandon Fabry ran for President of his fifth grade class. We waited all day with anxious anticipation to hear the voting results.

As predicted by this pollster, demographics torpedoed the candidacy of the Brandon/Max ticket. The new president is Kara along with VP Jadyn. They were in a dead heat with Molly and Peter. With a predominantly female class make-up, I told Brandon that he had an uphill climb.

"Girls will always vote for girls, unless you're extraordinarly cute," I said. I suggested he consider wearing a Justin Bieber mask but he decided against it.

Brandon reports that he will fully support the new administration and do everything he can to make the president's job easier. Such is the nature of the political world. It is a harsh, cruel profession. But I say the victor is the one who participates and never gives up, as long as his platform is to make the vinegar in the classroom smell better.

Eulogy

I told some family members that I would write down what I said about my father on the day of the funeral. This is close, without the emotion. I hope it encourages you. Sorry it is a bit long, but it's from the heart.

You know what my father would say about this gathering?

Horse collar. Shoodley-poot. Poodledog and apple butter. Let's get this show on the road.

These are some of his Fabryisms. We would ask him, "How you doin', Daddy?" He would respond, "I'm no problem."

He would say about my mother today, "She's prettier than a speckled pup."

My brothers elected me to speak today and told me if I didn't, they'd beat me up. I've been pushed from the porch too many times not to believe them. But it's dangerous to give me an open microphone, an audience, and not give me a time limit.

In the obituary we put together for my father, we highlighted three things that seemed to form the structure of his life. Farming, Family, and Faith. And my father was probably the most "integrated" man I ever knew. Integrated in the sense that he was the same person he was on the back of the tractor as he was sitting in the pew. He was the same wherever he went, whoever he met. I long to be that type of person.

My family was not able to be here but my children wrote some things they'll never forget about their Pawpaw.

The joy he found in his garden.
Playing croquet with him.
Feeding us grapefruit.
When he talked and thought no one was listening he would start talking to the wall.
Mommadee Mommadee Murder Buck—hitting us on the back while he said those words.
He always showed me his garden and taught me to identify the trees.

I remember how he used to come home from work, eat a bite of dinner, and go out and work on the farm in the field or with the cattle. It seemed to give him energy to work, to mow, to plow, to be up on the hill. But in the evening, as the sun slipped behind the hill, he would join me in the front yard and put on his old glove and we'd toss the ball back and forth, ball in hand, throwing, ball in glove, ball in hand and back again. It was how he said he loved me, other than when he said, "Love every bone in your body." We'd listen to the Cincinnati Reds together on the radio and watch the lightning bugs ascend. He'd smoke his pipe. Those are the tender memories of my childhood.

Some people have a problem with viewing God as their father because theirs was abusive or stern or vindictive and mean. I've never had that problem. I'll be in Bible studies with other men who will talk about their fathers as drunken men who knocked them around the house. I sympathize with them, but I cannot relate.

Tell me God is loving. I believe. Tell me he is kind and compassionate. I understand. Tell me God has my best interests at heart. I've seen that in action.

When Jesus taught his followers to speak to God as "Abba," their heavenly "Daddy," he was talking about a radical concept. No one had ever approached God this way. But that's what I've experienced.

One of the great triumphs of my life came in answering the phone as a child. We had one phone that hung on the kitchen wall like an anvil. When it rang, I usually got there first and answered. "Hello?"

Until about the age of 13, I invariably got this response. "Kat?" Or, "Kathryn?"

"No," I would say dejectedly. "This is Chris."

"Oh Chris, I'm sorry."

But then the day came when the phone rang, I ran, and answered.
"Robert?"

That was a good day. To be mistaken for my father's voice was a triumph.

My father was a tactile, hands on person. I'm convinced his love language was physical touch. You couldn't be around him without him touching your shoulder or giving you a hug. I remember early on holding his hand as we went to the feed store.

"Who you got with you today, Robert?" the man at the counter would say.

"This is my helper."

It felt good to be a helper, though as it turned out, I wasn't much of a help around the farm because I was different than my father. I did not have the closeness to the ground that he had. I tried, I really tried. In fact, I almost shot my foot off going squirrel hunting with him once. And I think he knew, intuitively, that I was not meant for the farm.

When Johnny came along and he went into the military, my dad was proud. He loved his country and to have a son serve made him beam.

Then Dave came along and studied chemistry and worked in a lab with petroleum. Having worked at a chemical plant for 30+ years, he could grasp that. And he was proud.

And then I came along a few years later. I was not a farmer. I was not military. I couldn't understand chemistry and calculus. I could barely understand consumer math. Instead, I wrote songs, talked on the CB radio, dressup our dog and took pictures (canine pornography), and memorized lines from Marx Brothers movies. I was the three-headed monstrosity. I was foreign to him. But even though he couldn't understand me, even though I was so different, he loved me.

I remember we used to watch TV programs together and he would cry at the Star Spangled Banner and schmaltzy commercials that touched him. One episode of The Walton's sticks out. The father was away at Christmas and all the kids were nervous about whether they would get presents. Finally, the father shows up and for his eldest, he gives him a writing tablet. It's the gift that finally tells the son it's okay to be a writer, it's okay to be who he was.

There's a scripture often quoted from Proverbs. Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it. Some take that to mean that you need to guide a child in the path you think he should take. But my father knew better. Though he didn't understand the path, he trained in the way I should go. And I'll always be grateful.

On Sunday mornings, if he wasn't working at the plant, he would wake me early and ask if I wanted to go for a walk on the hill. This was partly our alone time and partly his way of helping me lose weight. I was 15 before I knew Little Debbie wasn't related to us. He would unleash Shep, our old collie, grab his walking stick, and up the hill we'd go. Along the way he would show plants, trees, flora and fauna, just like my children said.
That easy walk is what I compare his faith to. There was a time when he dutifully served God, where he went to church and did things FOR God, to make God pleased with him, happy with his efforts.

Then came an awakening to the grace and mercy of God. I can still remember him getting an NIV Bible—we found it the other day. From Ephesians on it's totally gone, just worn out. And I remember him devouring Knowing God by J.I. Packer. My father encountered the truth that we don't earn heaven or favor, but God's grace is received. Forgiveness is not merited, it is offered freely to all who ask. Righteousness is not earned or worked for like a well-tilled garden, it is imputed. By His stripes we are healed.
So there became this long, easy gait of a man forgiven and made new because of the work of Jesus on his behalf. And every day was a walk with God. Every seed planted, every row hoed, every ear shucked, every cow fed, every boy's hair cut.

I remember the haircuts. I dreaded it like Sunday evening church. This was the late 60s, early 70s when crew cuts were anathema. I wanted long, flowing hair. He would drag us down to the basement and sit us on that red, rickety chair and proceed to lop off every bit of hair we had. In later years, he switched from the crew cut or buzz to a little longer style, and I remember him using his hands instead of a comb to get my hair to stand up straight. His hand going back on my head felt like a blessing.

(I also remember when Dave and Johnny told me about the jugular vein and how, if it were cut, you would die within minutes. And my father nicked my ear one day and I saw blood and ran screaming from the basement to say goodbye to my mother, thinking my jugular had been cut.)

My father's life, his work, his devotion to God all came from a heart of thanksgiving—not out of obligation. And my dad's faith grew deeper as the incline increased. The steep, uphill struggle yielded a deeper life for him.

A week or so before he died, one of his care-givers asked, "Mr. Fabry, if you could have anything on this earth, anything at all, what would you want?"

According to my mother, he paused and looked off, contemplating the question, struggling to process the information. Finally he answered, "Jesus, my Savior."

Those were the last words he spoke. The next few days were spent being loved well by his wife of 61 years, who was committed to helping the love of her life spend his last days in the house he had built with his own hands. His daughter-in-law was there to administer the complicated mix of medicine that would keep him pain free and stay up with him and comfort him and speak so kindly to him even though he didn't respond. And David was there in the bed beside him, watching, waiting, grieving, and trying to make his last days more comfortable.

I like to think that last Thursday, my father got up early, before any of us could tell him to stay in bed. And he said to himself, "Let's get this show on the road!" He grabbed his walking stick, but realized he didn't need it. His knee that had given him such problems felt better than it had ever felt before.

And he headed alone for his final walk. He walked all the way to the back fence on the hill and it felt like he could walk forever. And he can.
He's not coming back. And we love him too much to ask him to. But we will meet again. This is our sure hope in Christ.

Tribute

On today's Chris Fabry Live, Hour 2, I'm going to pay tribute to my father and I'm hoping many will be encouraged by his life and struggles. People at the funeral said they never knew what he went through and that his story was similar to their family's journey.

If you would like to see the video my sister-in-law, Kim, put together of his life and the beautiful job the funeral home did, click here. You'll see photos of my brothers and me and two old love birds, married more than 61 years.

Here's a photo of my brothers and me with my mother, Kathryn (center), and his surviving sister, Elizabeth.