Chris Fabry's Blog, page 16

Basketballs on the Wall

Even after we left the home, they wouldn't dare paint over our basketball wall.

Illusions

My wife, Andrea, was asked last year to be part of a devotional project and I'm excited that the book is available now. There are many great authors/writers/thinkers included, but I am partial to her one-page devotional on "Illusions."

Andrea and I talked about this topic on the 3/29 Chris Fabry Live! program. If you missed it, click here to listen to the podcast or stream.

Check out the resource and begin your own 90-day Tending of the Soul!

Telling Secrets Email

Here are a few responses we received to yesterday's Chris Fabry Live! conversation about admitting infidelity.

I am still dumbfounded about your program today... nothing there convinces me one should "confess" their infidelity after 10 years... It is cruel!!!

That last caller made me upset to say that it's terrible to let your wife know about the adultery. It's a selfish act in and of itself and then on top of that to not confess your sin is horrendous. You cannot have a relationship built on lies and deceit.

I was there 35 years ago. Some overzealous Christian told my husband to tell me. Thanks a lot!! Now it became also my problem?! We had come through a hard time and had solved all that and were doing well. I forgave him and we continued but even now 35 years later when the question comes up it hurts my soul. LET IT BE!!

Things that are done in the dark will come out in the light. God has given John a chance to come clean on his own, if he believes the whispers of the enemy to stay quiet, and that in doing so he is protecting the so-called nice relationship he and his wife have, he is basing his reality on a lie.

I would have to say that if the person has confessed the affair to the Lord, and repented, then they should trust in God's forgiveness and not let Satan use this mistake in their life to destroy their marriage and their family. Satan is the destroyer and he will destroy as much as he can using guilt to do so. Every situation is different, but if at all possible confess to a trusted, faithful friend who can keep it confidential. We are all responsible for our own mistakes, but don't let Satan take advantage of them by doing horrible damage to your loved ones.

Didn't our Savior Himself say, "You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free?" I've been on both sides of the issue of unfaithfulness, and I believe the truth should be made known! An unfaithful mate is living a lie, and has broken vows made before God and witnesses. The best way to kill a lie is to blast its soil of secrecy away with the Light of Truth! Truth frees! Truth heals!

I enjoy your show, but sometimes wish you wouldn't tease us along with "I have a 5 word question to pose, but I'm not going to ask it yet"... After yesterday's question about the infidelity, I was determined to start listening to past programs on the internet, because I desperately want to hear how this discussion plays out.
(I apologize—the 5 word question that I never gave you is, "What does love look like?")

As the wife of an unfaithful husband I wanted to comment on John's email. I believe his unease with keeping his affair a secret is the work of the Holy Spirit. While it would be easier on him to not confess and just move on, I don't believe the marriage can be truly healed without confession. Trying to just move on is like putting a bandaid over a dirty wound. The only way to heal a festering wound is to go thru the painful process of opening it up and cleaning it all out. It is an ugly, painful thing to go thru but it is the only path to healing.

I have been through the situation put forth in your discussion today. My opinion is that, unless the guilty person is asked or it is very likely that the incident will come out, the information should not be shared with the "innocent" spouse. I am not a weak or emotional person, nor is my walk with Christ weak. I can forgive and did that with all my heart but forgetting is another thing. I remember thinking many times, his burden and guilty feelings seem gone - they've been passed to me. I believe that telling a spouse simply passes a burden from one to the other.

I've been told that most men have thoughts of sex on a regular basis. In the New Testament, Jesus addresses that sin ("in the heart," which may be somewhat different) as unfaithfulness. Would you tell your wife every wayward thought you have? Or, would your wife tell you of hers?

I speak from personal experience. As a woman whose spouse was unfaithful years ago, I find this to be a very traumatic experience. I believe he should confess to his pastor or a spiritual friend in order to heal personally. There are days that I pray and tell God I wish I never found out about this.

Please, never discourage confession of a sin to the one who has been offended. God cannot bless a marriage where sin is kept in the dark and Satan has the authority to use it to steal, kill and destroy!

Have been listening today and I don't think you need to "hang out your dirty laundry" after so many years. What good is it going to do? Except make you feel better. What bothers me -- is if this man confessed this to our Lord--then why hasn't it been pointed out to him that Satan is the accuser. God has forgiven and "cast it into the deepest ocean and hung up a No Fishing sign."

I was appalled at the various callers who "justified" the lies in their marriages regarding their infidelity by "protecting" their poor fragile spouse, or for the betterment of the marriage. There is NO scriptural basis for lies in a marriage. On the other hand there is an abundance of scripture supporting confessing sin. The notion one is protecting the spouse is nauseatingly self-serving.

It all boils down to this... you have to want to be right with God even more than you want to be right with your wife. God is able to sustain your marriage and make it even stronger after you both work through this together.

I am a Christian Marriage and Family counselor. One of my areas of focus is working with couples where there has been one or more affairs. What I heard you say was something like- if a person is only telling their spouse the truth about a past affair to ease their guilt and put it on their spouse, that this is a selfish reason and they should not do it. What I would say is that all of us develop complicated systems of rationalization around the thoughts and behaviors we have that we don't want to bring out into the light. God tells us to confess. He does not tell us to wait until our motivations are pure. The truth has a way of opening us up to the realities of what is going on inside of us. Without confession our relationships have barriers to healing and we are at risk of repeating these behaviors because we don't experience the pain of consequences nor do we shift our personal boundaries that might strengthen our marriages and our relationship with God. Pain is the greatest motivator for change. Spouses do fall apart, there is anger, and sadness, and distrust, and grief, and shame, and finally hope. It starts with the truth. I feel strongly about this because I have seen God do mighty work in relationships that have been so completely devastated by affairs.

In the Market

I'm going to be appearing on Janet Parshall's program this afternoon at 4:00 Central Time. We'll talk about the radio program, my book Almost Heaven, and whatever else Janet brings up. If you've listened to Janet, you know what a grasp she has on issues and her heart for communicating truth in the marketplace of ideas. Which raises the question, "Why is she having me on?"

I guess we'll both find out, and if you don't hear it live, you can listen to the podcast. We'll probably talk about Christian radio, connecting with people, writing, stories, and Almost Heaven. I believe in the power of stories. I think they can change lives. This one seems to have captured the imagination of some people who need some encouragement.

Fiction is hard to do on a talk program. There are only so many ways you can ask, "How do you come up with your stories?" But Janet is a pro. She can make reading the phone directory interesting, so I'm hoping it will encourage some listeners.

Many hearts are heavy for the people of Japan. In a strange way, Almost Heaven begins with a cataclysmic event that reminded me of their pain. The Buffalo Creek flood happened in 1972. There was no radiation leak, but many houses, cars, homes, and lives were washed away because of a breached coal slurry dam at the mouth of the hollow. It's as close to a tsunami as you get in West Virginia. The thirty-foot wall of water ran down the hollow for 17 miles leaving death and destruction. This is how Billy Allman's story began. Through it all, God was walking with him.

I wonder if there are Billy Allmans in Japan right now who feel like life is stacked against them? I wonder if there are people there who feel like giving up? My prayer for the Japanese people is that they will rise above all of the mountains that stand before them. May this tragedy lead them to an eternal relationship that can't be taken away.

Pippen and Socks

I'm speaking at a men's conference/retreat in a month. I know the message but the illustrations are hard to choose. Today some things came together and one strong memory returned.

The message is about dropping our nets and following God. The example is of our dog, Pippen. I hadn't remembered this until the other day when we were talking about socks. Pippen, when he could still see, would go through the house and pick up our socks from the floor. I have no idea why. He just loved to pick them up and carry them in his mouth. Maybe it's a dog thing.

I used to find socks outside where he would carry them and drop them in the yard. At first I couldn't understand why the kids were so irresponsible. Then I watched Pippen closely and discovered his secret sock stealing. When I found him with a sock in his mouth, I would say, "Pippen, drop it." Sheepishly, he would put his mouth to the carpet and let the sock go. Just as quickly he'd pick it up again.

When he tried to run with my socks in his mouth, dangling, he'd get tripped up. When he needed to drink or to eat, he had a hard time deciding whether to get nourishment or keep the sock. Even when Pippen went blind, he managed to find socks and carry them around. It affected his ability to follow us or come when he was called.

I'm so much like him. There are things I hold onto tightly that aren't good for me. There are good things I hang onto that I shouldn't. They slow me down and keep me from running, keep me from being free, keep me from following more closely to my master.
It's not just a dog thing, I guess. It's a people thing, too.

The Scent of Insulin

I hate the smell of insulin at 1:30 a.m. I hate the smell of just about anything that early, but especially insulin. It smells like something stored in an army footlocker. Maybe old combat boots. Perhaps a textbook on WWII tactical weaponry.


At 1:14 this morning Colin awakened me, his face close to mine. "I feel low."

I hate those three words, too. Not because I have to get out of bed but because I know what it's doing to his body. How ravenous he will be. I'll need to act counterintuitive to that.

Okay, I won't lie, I hate getting out of bed. It's a long way up from the air mattress and my bones want to stay close to the ground.

So we do the pancreas dance. He trudges from the room and slumps in a chair, his jaw slack, panting. He gets out his insulin case, opens it, retrieves the poker, gets up, washes his hands, goes back, pokes, gets blood, inserts the strip into the meter, waits for it…waits for it...

I stumble into the kitchen without glasses and stare at the green numbers on the microwave.

1:14.

I hate diabetes.

"Beep."

"58," he says.

Normal people have a pancreas that works. Normal people take their pancreas for granted. You eat a bag of Doritos or a Snickers bar and never pray your pancreas will produce insulin. Your pancreas regulates your body's blood glucose levels to remain steady somewhere between 80 and 120. Don't hold me to that, it's early. But that's basically where you stay. Fall below 70 and you feel it. Fall below 60 and you shake. Keep going down and you'll eventually pass out. Some people don't feel it any more, they can't tell they're getting low, but Colin can. Sometimes I think that's God's gift to us.

He has a spoonful of organic honey that organic bees have been spitting into organic buckets on organic bee farms somewhere in Organicville. That will bring him up a notch and take the edge off. But we've only begun. He has 3 little mini-peeled carrots which aren't approved by the organic bee society, but I don't see anybody from that organization in the kitchen at 1:40 and their 800 number isn't staffed at this hour. So he eats the three mini-peeled carrots.

I've been known to make a stir fry at this point, chopping onions and cabbage and mixing with an egg or two. It's protein and will help him hang on until morning. I grab two eggs from the refrigerator in the garage and Colin meets me there, pulling out a special drawer.

"I was thinking this," he says, holding out a Granny Smith apple. The organic kind with the orange ring around it.

I roll my eyes like it's fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We haven't had fruit for a long time but apples are slowly being reintroduced to the diet. I have no idea what this is going to do to his levels. His body will react wildly to the fructose. You will say, "But it's an apple, leave the kid alone."

Exactly. Its just an apple. That's why I hate diabetes. I have to dose him for a stupid apple.

I hate dosing a shaking kid who gets up in the middle of the night. I hate drawing up the insulin and handing him a needle he shoves into his skin. But if I don't, his number will rise above 120, above 200, above 300.

So I write all this down in his book I also hate that says when he went to bed he was 111. And I see how much insulin I gave him to keep him in range overnight. We obviously overdid it, but when I compare the number from the previous night that was exactly the same, I wonder. Did he have more exercise? Did he not have something right before bed to hold his levels steady? Am I supposed to click my heels three times and say some magic incantation to keep him above 80? How does a pancreas do it?

I make the eggs, but get shell in the pan, so I have to get a spoon to scoop out the shell, but since I don't have my glasses on I bend low to see it and I bang my head on the hood above the stove. He eats the apple and watches all this, as if it's a Disney sitcom. I'm not thinking words they say on Disney.

I hand him the eggs and get out the insulin bottle. We have determined that there were 24 carbs in the apple. There were also a few in the honey and the mini-peeled carrots.

"How much would you have for just the apple?"

"Mom would give me 2 units."

My wife would give this dose without thinking. She rattles carbs in her brain like a supercomputer. I am right brained, more creative, which is wonderful if you're writing a song or a book or an essay on civility, but if you want to keep a kid's glucose meter from saying "HIGH" and playing Mozart's Requiem at 1:55, you need the left hemisphere of your brain and I do not have as much as my wife does.

I can't give him 2 units. I do not want him shaking in an hour or two. But I don't want him to go high either. That is my conundrum at a.m. 45 minutes ago I was under the covers. I'm beginning to think I won't be going back to bed.

I decide on 1.25 units. I feel good about that. It's a safe dose. I hand him the needle and he puts it in his thigh. Was it enough? Probably not.

He looks in the refrigerator again, the light reflecting off his face and the robe that makes him look like Hugh Hefner's son. He sighs, closes the door, and rubs his eyes on his way back to bed.

"Goodnight," he says.

"Goodnight."

"I love you," he says.

It won't be long before he's doing all of this by himself. It won't be long before he's staring into his own refrigerator in his own house or apartment. I'll be asleep somewhere, oblvious to all of this.

"Love you, too," I say.

And I do.

No matter how much I hate diabetes and organic bees and sharp needles and writing down statistics of a little boy who didn't do anything to deserve this, I love him. And that's what will keep me up until 4 when I'll check him again.

*Addendum*
4:20 a.m. It took me five minutes to wake him, but we tested. His level is 148. Within the acceptable range. Sigh.

The Moment

This is my friend, Phil, or as we knew him, Phillip. Our friend from Shoney's knew how to operate his camera phone better than he did.

Early Retirement

I did something yesterday I never thought I'd do. I took a set of 5 contracts to the bank to have notarized. A young man, probably in his mid-20s, invited me to sit down and sign where all the sticky labels said, "Sign here."

"Is this a real estate deal?" the young man asked.

"No, it's an option contract for a book I wrote." Whatever that means. I have no idea. They tell me it means some day in the future a movie might be made of my book, June Bug. It's taken more than a year just to get the contract signed. I can't imagine how long it would take to write the script and hire actors. And then you have to order coffee and cater the movie set. I could be old and washed up by then. But signing the contract was exciting. I never dreamed anyone would be interested in making a movie out of something I wrote.

Wait. That's not true. I've dreamed it about everything I've ever written. I dream they'll make a movie out of my grocery lists. I just never thought the opportunity would come. And here I was, in my shorts and Ohio State hat, in my hour of triumph.

"Cool," the teenager with the notary stamp said. "Are you retired?"

I stared at him, too dumbfounded to answer. When I gathered my wits I said, "No, I work every day. I write every day." Retired? I had my two youngest with me. Did he think they were my grandkids? Retired? I should have whacked him with my cane. Whippersnapper.

My father's birthday is today. He's 91. He's retired. He uses a walker now. He was 41 when I was born. You can do the math.

I signed the pages and explained the book's plot. He was so interested he forgot to stamp one of the contracts. So I handed it back to him and then put a gold star on it when he finished. And gave him a red sucker from the counter. He was excited.

Retired? I'm not even 50. (For those who can't do the math.)

My wife, later, suggested that because we live near a military installation there are people who are retired at younger ages, which makes sense, but I didn't have the heart to ask her if she thought I looked like a retired military man. General Patton didn't have all this sagging skin and underdeveloped muscles.

Maybe I need a haircut. That's what it is. When it gets longer, it looks more gray. It ages me. If I could only find my bifocals to read the phone number of the local Supercuts.

Retired?

Maybe the next time I get my dentures resized or have that prostate exam I can ask them to give me a trim.

Retired?

You've heard of laughing all the way to the bank. This was the opposite. I was limping away, weeping. Gnashing the teeth I have left. Just to show him I drove straight to FedEx but couldn't remember why I was there. Lucky I had my grandsons with me.

Dixie

This is Dixie, the Australian Shepherd we heard on Chris Fabry Live! last Friday, barking at all the cows along the Florida roadside. Thanks to her owner, Lindsey, for sending us this shot!

A Cry at Christmas

I've been thinking a lot lately about being grateful for where I am rather than where I'm not. And I've realized that leaving things behind means freedom. Facing the truth about yourself and whatever situation you're in can be difficult, but it doesn't mean you have to obscure the truth. Being real is not hiding or forgetting. Wholeness means you can equally embrace the past, present, and the future and the truth about all of them.

For example, I was writing a scene today where a man goes into a Subway restaurant for a drink of soda. The face of my son, Colin, flashed in my mind and I had a pang of regret and nostalgia. He used to love getting a little cup of Sprite with a sandwich. Now that he has Type 1 Diabetes, those days are over. Yes, he could have diet sodas, but the health risks outweigh the upside, we think.

What he eats or drinks isn't the point. The point is his life has been forever altered. He'll never go a day the rest of his life without thinking about the fact that his pancreas doesn't work. That's sad. That's a loss.

However, thinking about his life now and the way his health has turned around makes me grateful. He gets lots of exercise and enjoys really good food now, not the junk you get in a fast food restaurant. Today we'll play some basketball and get our heart rates going. Somehow, to say that I'm grateful for this, feels like I'm snatching something from the loss. I'm not giving pain its full due if I see the bright side. But both are true. Colin's life is altered and he has experienced a great loss. But it's also true that he's on a good path.

Perhaps the reason I'm thinking about this is that plaintive baby's cry in the manger. The cry of a newborn from the pain of birth. Hunger. Was there something more to the cry? They say a mother knows her baby's cry. Andrea has always known if our kids are hungry or angry by their cries. Did Mary sense something different about the wails of her firstborn son? Perhaps this was part of what she pondered in her heart.

This little baby had stepped from heaven's shores and the glory of that peace-filled land. In fact, the creator of everything had flown from a land that knew no sin to a landscape where sin had touched everything. The one who had fashioned the stars now lay helpless under starlight. The one who had spoken a word and scattered the angelic host, was now proclaimed as the Savior by those he had created. The earth he had formed held him in that dusty, Middle Eastern village.

Jesus had given up much in order to become man. There was more than divine desire that compelled him on the road he was to travel. It was deep desire from the heart of God to love, to give, for it was in the suffering, the struggle, the laughter and tears and nails and wood and blood that he would do his greatest work. Spit and dirt opened eyes. A touch of his garment led to healing. If he had never made the trip, there would not be redemption or salvation or as much glory due to his name. His mission was rescue. His life was ransom, fully paid.

That story spills over us. Dust and sand and dirt and rocks and trouble everywhere. The past and all the idyllic visions we had about what will be, might be, could be. Today I am listening to my own heart cry for something more. Something that says the past is real and full of loss, and that the future is filled with questions and hardship, but also something good. Indescribable. Whole.

In the suckling child of Bethlehem, in the stillness of that starry night, you and I sit in wonder at the mercy and grace of a God who did not grasp, but who let go of his Father's hand and grasped the finger of a young mother. He knew there would be such agony and pain. And he did it anyway. He came to us not in spite of our sin and "lostness," but because of it.

That's what makes me cry this Christmas. They are tears we share with that baby. That man. With God himself—God with us.