part0022

O ne of the only things that was fun to do in our town was to go to the mall. We weren’t allowed to go see movies or go to dances or talk to girls. Becky was an odd exception and it was only made for me and only because I was the pastor’s kid. Honestly, if it wasn’t for my mother, my friendship would have come to an abrupt halt around the time we hit puberty. Whatever part of my youth wasn’t being wasted getting disciplined by my father was spent walking up and down the halls of our local mall. It was the nicest thing that had ever happened to this town. I’m not even 100% sure why they picked us. Probably because property was cheaper and the mayor said they wouldn’t have to pay property taxes for twenty years. My father called it highway robbery. The irony of his distaste for companies not paying taxes while living on tax-free land was lost on my adolescent brain. I didn’t really care anyway, it gave us something to do and somehow avoided the ire of my father yelling about how it was, “part of the world!” so I took what little reprieve I could get and just enjoyed it.

I only had three friends growing up, Richard, Jamie, and Becky. I mostly stopped hanging out with Jamie after the whole Playboy thing. We had a hard time looking each other in the eyes after discovering how our plumbing worked in front of one another. Richard got grounded the summer we turned fifteen. He stole his grandpa’s truck and totaled it on his farm, so he had to work it off. Becky and I couldn’t be seen at the mall together. It wasn’t proper, my father would say. So I had to go with Joel.

Joel was not on my list of friends.

He was a snot-nosed little liar and a brat. All us preacher kids were supposed to have some kind of allegiance with each other. His dad was the associate pastor at our church when I was growing up. He eventually became one of the elders. Joel had no loyalty to anyone but his father. My dad and his dad forced us to spend time with each other. I hated it because it was like a Marine having to hang out with a Russian spy. Everything I did he was going to report back to the Motherland. What was the point of getting away from the church if all the rules were going to follow me ?

We went to the food court and ordered some Chinese food and pizzas. We went to the arcade, but the whole time Joel just told me that each game was immoral, which was what made them fun! But it sort of took all the joy out of it to have him blathering on about how each game was designed to desensitize me to “the ways of this generation” and all that business. Who can concentrate on shooting a bunch of zombies when you’ve got the regurgitated words of your father being shouted in your ear? It was embarrassing. Ultimately we always just ended up walking around for half an hour as Joel told me which kind of demon would attach itself to me depending on which game I chose to play. After a while, this got boring and so we would make our way to just doing laps around the second story like retirees.

That’s right; this mall was two whole stories of sin and degradation. On the top level were all the fancy stores and kiosks. They sold cool yoyos and some sold sausage and cheeses in the winter. The food court was also on the second floor. The movie theatre and more scandalous stores like Spencers and Gadzooks were on the bottom floor. You had to choose to go downstairs to see them. We were about to get a Holisters and I had heard that they had naked girls in their catalogs.

Joel and I leaned over the banister. We had reached that point of boredom that only youth can provide, and we thought that maybe if we stared at something long enough it would produce some sort of entertainment. I stupidly thought that this was going to be the highlight of our day, sitting there watching for nature to ultimately try to break through the large tile flooring. It was like watching grass grow but as an extreme sport. There was a man directly underneath us. He was rather large and wearing denim from top to bottom. He had a shiny bald head directly on top and then hair growing around the sides as a perfectly little half circle just like Friar Tuck.

Joel looked at me. “Wanna bet you can’t hit the top of his head with a nickel?”

“Why in God’s name would I want to do that?”

“You don’t have to blaspheme. I’m just saying it could be funny.”

“I don’t think so at all. That’s stupid.”

Just then, I saw a flash as Joel pulled a brand-new shiny coin out of his pocket. He asked if I double-dog-dared him; I assured him that I most certainly did not double-dog-dare him to do anything. This was just like Joel too. He spent all day ruining all the fun we could have had, waxing on about morality and the righteousness of God and then, suddenly, without warning, he decides to come up with some stupid idea that was about a thousand times more immoral than playing some silly video game ever could be.

I looked at him sternly and said, “Don’t you dare. You hear me, Joel?”

He just looked me straight in the eyes, never blinking or looking down at his intended target. He slowly moved his arm over the banister and, without warning, he dropped it anyway. I turned my head downward and watched as that shiny little coin fell in slow motion. After what seemed like a lifetime, it landed flat on top of that man’s head with a thud. The man let out a helpless little yelp and then grabbed his scalp, wincing in pain, and looked directly up at us, waving his fist so hard that he caught his body off balance and fell on his hip. Now he lay there on the ground rolling back and forth holding on to his side. A security guard arrived and looked up in the direction the man was pointing and locked eyes with us.

Next thing we knew, we were sitting in the security office. It had a full wall of cameras just like in those rooms you always saw in the movies at a major headquarters of some important building that was about to be robbed or something. We got banned from the mall for the entire summer for using a “missile from blue side balcony.” I wanted to knock Joel’s teeth crooked.

When we got home, he told his father I had put the idea into his head, that I had double-dog-dared him. That little rat lied about me to his dad and his dad went to my father. I took a whooping for it.

I never liked Joel. Not then, and especially not now. The thing about snot-nosed little brats is that they often tend to grow up into brown-nosed little dweebs. That was certainly the case with Joel. He lacked any conviction or spine.

Church politics being what they are, the elders had made Joel the associate pastor after his father retired. His father elevated up to being one of the church elders. So here we were, two pastors’ kids now watching over our fathers’ flock. In my absence, Deacon Joel was doing everything he could to elevate himself to the position of apostle.

Penny wasn’t kidding that they were trying to take the church from me. I had spent so much time trying to get my life back in order and break the habits I had formed to cope with decades of pain that crescendoed with what felt like the final act of my life, the loss of my wife. But it wasn’t the final act; that was just grief playing its wicked game. I had a lot of things left to live for, lessons left to learn and daughters to raise. I didn’t want to play politics, but I couldn’t afford not to. Too much was at stake here.

I went to my first church service at The River two weeks after I returned. I had been invited to sit up on the altar with the elders and deacon. For whatever reason, it didn’t feel right. I wasn’t ready to just jump back in. Part of me had been hoping that this would be the response, that they would just act like everything was normal and then, presumably, that was exactly what was happening and I didn’t want it. Part of me wondered if it was self-flagellation. Maybe I wanted this to hurt a little more? Like I needed to swim up river. I needed an altar call. I chose instead to sit in the back of the church like a penitent. I had yet to shave my beard or color my hair. My grays were showing. I hadn’t had a beard since I was a much younger man. I had not known that it was now nearly half white. Honestly, I hadn’t thought about the way I looked in months. Suddenly, in this place, I could feel the grips of needing to put on appearances again. I noticed it and pushed the feeling down. Even though many of these people had known me my entire life, they didn’t recognize me now. Not at first anyway.

I just sat in the back and listened. I listened as the familiar music rocked my soul to sleep. I meditated over the sounds, the tambourines, the cymbals, and the angelic noise of the people of God raising their voices in unrehearsed unison. I was transported into the throne room of the Almighty.

Deacon Joel gave a powerful sermon. It ripped straight through everyone in that room. Only I knew those words. I could have recited every word like a liturgy. These were just echoes of my father and his father. Nothing he said was original, but he spoke it with such a sense of showmanship that he owned them as his own. Then something happened I wasn’t prepared for. The elders stepped out to the front of the altar. They brought out The River, the blue cloth with “FAITH” written across it; the one that was supposed to heal my Rebecca and keep her with me until the end of days.

I wanted to steal that church right back out of Joel’s hands. That little liar. How could we still be doing this? It had already been proven that Rebecca’s healing had been false. Somehow, with all our technology and record keeping, something went haywire. Her miracle was nothing more than a misstep that wasn’t supposed to happen in the 21st century world of medicine. A false report, a mix-up. Not the hand of God but the failures of the echoing fall of man, from Adam’s transgression to someone in a little medical center, maybe tired, maybe overworked, making a minor little error that reverberated through the lives of thousands of people and shattered the faith of so many.

Somehow her records got mixed with someone else’s. So Rebecca walked around thinking and believing she was healed, that her life was restored to her by the grace of God, while on the other side of the state a woman was living with the weight of the world on her. She believed she had a terminal diagnosis. The day after Rebecca died, the error was discovered, and that woman was given her life back in the same way that Rebecca’s was stolen from us. Could we have done things differently if we had known? What would we have done with those months? Would we have gone on a vacation? Would we have seen the world? Made love more intentionally? Read more stories to our daughters?

Maybe I would have been a better man. Maybe I wouldn’t have.

That woman sued the doctors because she had quit her job, sold her house, and was beginning to travel the world with her few remaining months. She even divorced her husband. The story went viral. Apparently, she just walked right up to him, sitting there reading his paper, and she said, “I’m dying. And I don’t want to die unhappy with you.” I heard she won over $300 million dollars in that lawsuit. I can’t say I blame her for it, not one bit. I would be lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind to do the same, to try to get vengeance and some recompense. But, in the end, no amount of suing anyone would bring Rebecca back. It only seemed like I would be forced to relive my pain over and over again and drag my daughters along with me, stuck in potentially unending court battles, staying in the past, never moving forward. I ultimately decided that the only thing to do was to take each step, each day, like it was a gift. Like I should have done all along.

Suddenly, Joel’s voice cut through my thoughts and straight into my brain. “There are some, people of God, there are some who doubt the power of this River that our Lord gave us.”

He had my full attention. I was one of those. I didn’t just doubt it; I knew it was a falsehood entirely. There was no doubt in my mind. I had seen the evidence and there was no confusion. I wanted to shout out. I wanted to say something. I wanted to walk, to stand up, but I was frozen. I couldn’t move. Everything was spinning around me and the only thing still in focus was Joel.

“Some who discount the power of its healing,” he continued, slamming then raising his fists, “some who will look and say, ‘See what happened to some who were healed? See that they aren’t healed now!’ Have you heard these things, faithful people of God?”

A distrustful murmur of yes and amen lulled through the congregation.

“THE DEVIL! God gives us an opportunity. He sure does. He can heal us. He can empower us. There is nothing God can’t do. But we are the one who choose to take that gift. Sometimes He heals us and we squander that gift. Sometimes we sin after that healing; we backslide into the temptations of this world. Anyone can do it, even pastors, and when they do, the Almighty God lets that tribulation, that sickness, right back into our lives. He lets it come back a thousand fold. It don’t matter who you are, president, line cook, or apostle.”

My blood boiled. This coward, this liar, he was throwing me under the bus again, just like he did when we were children. He was willing to now cast doubt about me and Rebecca. He was planting the seed that her healing was legitimate all along and that her cancer returned because of my transgressions. I watched as people nodded. People I had visited in the hospital when they were sick, people whose weddings I had officiated, people whose babies I had prayed over, people I had given all my life into. Families that knocked on our doors all hours of the night to share their fears as Rebecca gently made them a cup of coffee, our favorite show paused in the other room.

“We will finish it tomorrow,” she would say with so much grace and love and understanding. I gave them all my tomorrows until Rebecca ran out of them and now they were nodding their heads that she died because of some sin in our lives.

In that moment, I felt a small intimacy with Jesus as he walked down that alleyway being crushed under the weight of his cross—my cross, my shortcomings—and he looked into the faces of the crowd. Did he see people he loved? Did he see people he healed and fed? Did he see those who waved palms at him the week before? I was nothing like Jesus. It was unfair to mentally compare the two situations, but making this connection didn’t fill me with a sense of equality with his suffering, it made me instantly remorseful to my Big Brother that I had been, at certain points in my own life, just like that crowd. Just like this crowd. How many times had I used moments of failures of my fellow Christians to kick them while they were down? I used it to advance ground instead of to reach out to a fallen solider in the Army of God. No, we just shot our wounded and went onward.

It is hard to let go of an ideology or belief. Once people believed in the power of The River, it seemed easier to believe that God hated us than to believe that their healing might not be coming. People of faith were still traveling far and wide just for a moment to walk under that cloth, for a chance that the Holy Spirit may touch them or their sick mother or dying child. No one wanted to believe that they had been a fool and sent money to something that had no power. So it was just easier to buy Joel’s lie and follow blindly in spite of all evidence to the contrary, hoping we were just sinners who brought damnation on ourselves.

My time at The Center had made me forget how quickly people can turn. After that first night when Christian took my hand and I promised not to listen to those that judged me, I had kept that promise. But that was easy to do cut away from my phone and computer. Now I was able to read the blogs and tweets and statuses, and even here, in real time, people, my people, were latching on to what Deacon Joel had to say about me.

It was broadcast live to hundreds of thousands of people. Before the chicken was done frying for Sunday brunch, people began debating the theology of it all online. Could it be that God let Rebecca die because I had sinned? People found it easy to justify both the yea and nay, both sides using the same Bible. Both sides throwing stones and condemning the other. It was all just a game to them, theoretics and debate, forgetting the very real people on the other side of their computer screens, suffering and missing someone they loved. The reality didn’t even matter to them. All that mattered was winning. And the trophy that Joel was looking for was the little empire that my grandfather built out of sweat and tears and that, good, bad, or ugly, was the Thackery legacy.

I stayed up all night long. I tore apart my office as the hours got later and later. I found a bottle of pills I had hidden inside a hollowed-out book that I kept on the shelf. After nearly three months of sobriety, I had a standoff with those pills. I placed them on my desk. I looked at my phone and thought about calling Christian or Mary. I convinced myself that I might trigger one of them into a relapse if I depended on them. I knew full well that, if the roles were reversed, I would want them to reach out to me. I snarled at those pills until, in an instant, I flashed my hand across that desk and put those pills in my mouth with the speed and accuracy of a gunslinger. I enjoyed the sticking pain of them lodging in my throat as I attempted to swallow them dry. I found a small travel bottle of rum and sent them down the rest of the way. I passed out onto the floor.