Accept the fact that there will be moments when
your children will hate you. This is normal and natural.
But how a child handles hate may determine whether
he will go to Harvard or San Quentin.

ANN LANDERS

Abounding grace is the hope of mankind.

A. W. TOZER

Have you ever wondered if there’s hope for the next generation? I certainly have. They’ve got more earrings than brain cells. They’re confused. They don’t know which way to point their hats or how high to pull their pants. They have problems with their eyesight. They can’t find a thing to eat in a fridge full of food nor a thing to wear in a closet full of clothes. They’re glued to their cell phones—when they’re not chatting online in brief, meaningless sentences.

Whenever I share such thoughts with my wife, she just grins. I worry about the kids, she tells me, because they’re a lot like me. And she is right. Not a lot of grownups lit up with hope when they saw me.

I was a skinny child. So skinny that I had only one vertical stripe on my pajamas. So skinny that I needed suspenders to hold up my Speedo. So skinny that I was swimming in a lake one summer and a dog came out to fetch me—three times. My mother used to scrub laundry on my rib cage. People looking for a toothpick at the dinner table would grab me. You get the picture.

I wasn’t a particularly bad-looking child—my father did not spank my mother when I was born, as my older brother claimed—but I was uncommonly thin, and it took me years to discover any humor in it. I remember as if it were an hour ago the time a beautiful girl in our school rode past me on her silver bicycle and shouted, “Hi, Skinny!” as if that were my given name. I would rather she had leveled a potato gun at me and pulled the trigger.

I suppose I became a writer partly as a response to the enormous humiliation of being teased as a child. A sense of humor and my ability with words were the only weapons in my arsenal. So I kept my wit sharp and my tongue forked.

In elementary school a classmate broke my thumb with a hockey stick, threw snow in my face, then laughed as I cried. His name was Ken, but I called him other things, things I’m not proud of. I told him things of which he had no idea. Things involving his family history and his future.

I knew he was going to break my other thumb. Instead he quickly skated away. I realized something wonderful that day: sticks and stones can break bones, but words can shatter something far deeper.

In high school, an upperclassman named Larry approached me in the hallway and said, “Callaway, you’re so skinny, we should slide you under the door when we need stuff.”

I couldn’t think of a gracious response, so I said, “Well, you’re so fat, you broke your family tree!” He was stunned.

I was on a terrible roll. I said, “You’re so fat, when you bend over, you cause an eclipse on three continents.” I couldn’t stop myself now. I had thrown my tongue into gear before engaging my brain. “You’re so fat, you beep when you back up.”

I thought he would murder me and the jury would unanimously acquit him. Instead, the color drained from his face as he turned and walked away.

That same year I discovered writing. I was about ninety pounds at the time, which was just enough to make the keys on the typewriter go down. My first critical review came from classmates in response to my essay, “A Day in the Life of an English Student,” in which I pointed out various physical characteristics of our teacher and just how boring it was to be in his class. I believe his reason for reading my essay publicly was to humiliate me. To show the class that using his name in an assignment was improper and unwise. That ridiculing his teaching habits would not go unpunished.

It backfired big time. The students clapped. They cheered. They loved me. A few rose to their feet. One saluted me.

The teacher stopped reading and wrote across my essay in red ink, “Composition poor. Grammar bad. See me after school.” He gave me a D.

As I sat at my desk that afternoon, I began to dream. I dreamed of becoming a writer. Of penning hugely successful novels jammed with humor, sarcasm, and revenge. I dreamed of the day Ken and Larry would want me as their friend, would beg forgiveness for not treating me better.

Two things stood in the way: A mother who prayed for me every day of my life. And a father who promised me a watch if I read one chapter of Proverbs each day for a month.⁹ I began to encounter verses like “Reckless words pierce like a sword” (12:18) and “The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life” (15:4).

I remember reading once that the singer Karen Carpenter’s fatal obsession with weight control began when she read a Billboard reviewers comment in which he dubbed her “Richard’s chubby sister.” At the age of thirty-two, Karen died of heart failure.

The tongue can be an ambassador of the heart. Or a deadly weapon.

Somehow the Spirit of God took hold of me. I realized the devastating power of reckless words. And I began to pray that God would transform my tongue and use my words to bring healing and hope.

I believe it is one of the prayers God loves to hear and that He answers it for all of us. I have seen Him do so in the most surprising ways.

I was speaking about God’s grace at a large convention recently, and when I stepped off the stage, guess who was waiting for me? Ken. I kid you not. He gave me a bear hug that made my kidneys hurt. There were tears streaming down his face. Ten minutes later, guess who elbowed his way through the crowd? Larry. There were tears in his eyes. Mine too. Two bullies and a skinny kid. On even ground at the foot of the cross. Amazed by grace.

As parents we do what we can, but we always fall short. And God’s grace comes in. Surprising each new generation, captivating us, meeting us where we are but never leaving us where it finds us.

“Isn’t God good?” said Ken, taking my right hand and squeezing it a little too hard. “How’s the thumb?”

“Never better,” I said. “Never better.”

Author’s note: Names have been changed in this chapter because these guys are still bigger than I.