I used to think I could shape the circumstances around me,
but now I know Jesus uses circumstances to shape me.
After high school, I went to Humboldt State University because I wanted to be a forest ranger. Actually, I took one of those aptitude tests in high school and slanted all of the answers so the school would report to my parents that if ever anyone was born to be a forest ranger, it was me. What I anticipated most about being a forest ranger is that you live in the woods, you get a green truck, you get a badge, and, to top it all off, you get a hat with a wide brim. After reading the test results I had rigged, my parents had to agree that I was meant to be a forest ranger, and my mom took me to the mountains where the forest rangers live. Where are the girls? I thought. This was the first indication that my research had perhaps been flawed.
Forest rangers didn’t live in the woods the way I had envisioned either. They lived in green concrete dormitories with cots lined up in rows under fluorescent lights. Their greatest adventure, it seemed, was giving tickets to people parked in the wrong places. They played cards a lot and ate TV dinners. I had envisioned something a bit woodsier and manly, I suppose. Guns, moose heads, snowshoes leaning up against a large stone fireplace, a pile of beef jerky on the table . . . something along those lines. What I learned is that most forestry majors at the university go to work for forest products companies like Georgia Pacific or Weyerhaeuser and manage the cutting down of the forests to make paper or wrappers or those sorts of things. I was discouraged, but it was too late to change schools, so I went to Humboldt as a forestry major.
Shortly into my first year at Humboldt, disenchanted at the lack of girls and the business of harvesting forests in general, I decided it was time to make a change. I decided it was time to make a change, move to San Diego, enroll at the university, and take up surfing. There would certainly be a future for me in that. What made even more sense to me is that my high school sweetheart, Kathy, was going to UCLA and I could be near her. What I didn’t count on, however, was getting my first “Dear Bob” letter in short order.
In her brief letter, Kathy said that after arriving at UCLA she had become “romantically involved with her big brother.”
“She’s involved with her big brother?” I gasped as the limp paper dangled in my hand. “Isn’t that against the law or something? Besides, I didn’t even know Kathy had a big brother. What’s his name, anyway?”
What I later learned is that Kathy had joined a sorority and that a “big brother” was Greek-speak for a guy from a fraternity the sorority sisters pair up with. I was so hurt—I almost wished for the other version I initially understood to salvage my ego. I vowed never to love again. I also vowed never to join a fraternity or be part of the Greek system. I started a list of other Greek things I would boycott. On my shortlist were gyros, olives, and the removal of my Achilles tendon.
When I got Kathy’s letter it seemed that my whole brief life had evaporated. So I did what all lovesick young men do. I got in my VW Bug and drove twenty hours from Humboldt State at the northern end of California to UCLA at the southern end. My assassin friend Doug came with me, and after two flat tires, lots of coffee, and several Jolt Colas, we made it to Los Angeles. I dropped Doug off somewhere and headed over to Kathy’s sorority house, which was just off of Sunset Boulevard near UCLA. It was an immense house with stone creatures lining the front walk to intimidate any and all dumped boyfriends who approached.
I timidly took step after step, grabbed the door knocker, and tapped on the austere double door that rang with an air of impenetrability. I could hear the hollow reverberations inside, and from all appearances the house was utterly empty. But then, just as I was about to turn on my heels and retreat, I heard the faint sound of footsteps approaching the door. The door handle moved as I gulped and stood up tall. The door swung open, and there, like it was a perfect movie moment, was Kathy.
“Bob Goff?” she gasped in a mortified half shout, half moan.
Apparently, she was the only girl in the sorority house at the time and I had obviously caught her by surprise. Actually, her body language gave off kind of a combination plate of surprise, alarm, and I think I saw her throw up a little bit in her mouth.
“Come in,” she stuttered, almost trying to retrieve the words as she spoke them. I knew it was over, but I went in anyway. You don’t waste a twenty-hour road trip like that.
As I walked in, I was immediately taken by the grandeur of the huge sorority house. There was a marble entryway with bronze accents, marble walls with bronze fixtures, marble and bronze statues spread out like sentries in every direction. I guessed that the founder of the sorority must have invented marble and bronze or something. Just off the entryway, which we quickly transited, was another huge room anchored by a fireplace and a crackling fire and punctuated by a life-size bust of someone set on a table behind the couch. I figured it must have been a president or a prime minister but wasn’t sure.
Kathy quickly and nervously ran me through the house for a quick tour—she always was polite. I fleetingly wondered how odd it must have been for her to have me there. As Kathy whisked me toward the front door again I passed the fireplace room, and what struck me as strange was that the bust in front of the fireplace was gone. It was just gone. Really? I thought. What happened to the bronze bust? Los Angeles was indeed an even more unusual place than I had originally thought. I was still scratching my head and puzzling over what was missing when Kathy hurried me out the door.
We walked to campus, where Kathy pointed to one building after another and told me about all the amazing experiences she was having and all the amazing people who went to UCLA. But we never really got around to the “why did you dump me?” conversation. This was not by accident, of course, because what I gathered later had occurred was this: Kathy and her “big brother” were the only ones at the sorority house that day and were snuggling on the couch in front of the fireplace when I knocked on the door. When Kathy said my name, the guy immediately froze and struck a chiseled pose as I walked by. Later, as Kathy was touring me around the house, he must’ve slipped out the front door. The chap kept looping around and passing by the two of us as we walked around campus. I guess the guy who ends up with the girl sometimes is just as insecure as the guy who gets dumped by her.
Later that afternoon, Kathy walked me out to my Volkswagen and I opened the door. I didn’t really know what to say. I finally got out, “Did you really mean what you said in your letter about us?” It wasn’t one of the deep, thoughtful, and probing questions I had practiced all the way down to Los Angeles, but it was all I could come up with at the time. “Yep,” she confirmed as she patted me on the hand, stepped back, and muttered something about how she had to run to class.
I drove away dejected as I left UCLA and Kathy in the rearview mirror. Kathy married bronze boy, and I never really found out why I got upstaged. The fact that he was more handsome than me, had more potential than me, was smarter than me, and wasn’t angling for a career that involved living in the woods, sleeping on a cot, eating TV dinners, or surfing may have been more than a feather in the balance. Nevertheless, it’s still hard to come in second.
I’ve learned that God sometimes allows us to find ourselves in a place where we want something so bad that we can’t see past it. Sometimes we can’t even see God because of it. When we want something that bad, it’s easy to mistake what we truly need for the thing we really want. When this sort of thing happens, and it seems to happen to everyone, I’ve found it’s because what God has for us is obscured from view, just around another bend in the road.
In the Bible, the people following God had the same problem I did. They swapped the real thing for an image of the real thing. We target the wrong thing and our misdirected life’s goal ends up looking like a girl or a wide-brimmed hat or a golden calf. All along, what God really wants for us is something much different, something more tailored to us.
It’s in my nature, maybe all of our natures, to try to engineer things. So I skew the answers to get what I think I want. But when I do that, I also get what I don’t want too, like a cot and a room full of guys. The first time I wanted someone to care for me as much as I cared for her, she picked someone else and I tried to talk her out of it. If I had been successful, I wouldn’t have experienced love in the unique way that I have. I wouldn’t have found who and what God tailor-made for me.
I’m kind of glad I didn’t end up being a forest ranger or a surfer. I’m even glad things turned out the way they did after I drove away from UCLA. While painful at the time, I can see now, many years later when I look in the rearview mirror of my life, evidence of God’s tremendous love and unfolding adventure for me. I’ve received many letters since then in my life that started out “Dear Bob.” Some were letters so thick they had to be folded several times to fit in the envelope. They left me feeling as folded when I read their words with shattering disappointment. Still, whatever follows my “Dear Bobs” is often another reminder that God’s grace comes in all shapes, sizes, and circumstances as God continues to unfold something magnificent in me.
And when each of us looks back at all the turns and folds God has allowed in our lives, I don’t think it looks like a series of folded-over mistakes and do-overs that have shaped our lives. Instead, I think we’ll conclude in the end that maybe we’re all a little like human origami and the more creases we have, the better.