Why My Evil Sister Is Responsible for My Good Life

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine asked me to tell about how I became a Christian. As with all things, no good story is worth breezing through unless you can build the right tensions and climaxes. Before I barely got the first word out, we were interrupted, which has turned into a blessing. It occurred to me that 1) I haven't reflected on the momentous improbability of my salvation in a while and 2) I've never processed all the details fully myself. It was a perfect opportunity to write, and write I did. (The following is nearly 2500 words, totally inappropriate for a blog post, I know. But it was worth it for me to write, and I hope it's worth it for you to read.)

Why My Evil Sister Is Responsible for My Good Life

It could be compared to a water slide: the twists and turns feel at once wild and unpredictable but tame and designed to make you feel caught up in the safe chaos of the thing, exhilaration to be had without losing the sense of complete security.

***

I had been a younger brother all my life at the time this story takes place. A younger brother to an older sister. Now is not the time to recount how an older sister can so stunt and hinder a young boy’s quest to manhood, as she is so cruel and standoffish and will not let you flirt with her friends, who, she reminds you often, are much cooler than you’ll ever be and you better not even look at them.

My family had just moved from the mid western city of St. Louis to the southern hub of Memphis. I was ten then. The day we left I sat cross-legged on my bedroom floor, expansive without the bed, desk, or dresser, throwing cheese balls into the air and trying to catch them in my mouth. I couldn’t force myself to eat the ones that I missed, a decision I now interpret as intentional distancing with the room whose floor was once perfectly fine to eat my junk food off of.

It was a tough day for all of us; we had lived in St. Louis our whole lives. And my sister took the difficulty out on me in spades during the ride to Memphis. Her teasing was especially cruel; her only form of healing was transference. But like a callous formed from so many years of rubbing, I was accustomed to her sisterliness and got on with my life, my Gameboy, my great solace in the shared, small backseat for hundreds of miles.

We had seen our new house before and liked it quite well. Arriving lacked a certain tension and anticipation. Still, though, we were excited to be out of the car and noticed immediately that people noticed us with our big moving truck. A car passed by and a teenage girl with wiry brown hair stared at me a full 180 degrees of a swiveling head as the car drove past. I held her stair for as long as I cared to and followed the family into our new reality. Three years later we would kiss, and I wouldn’t know any good technique. In the house, the rooms were roomy, the backyard full of trees, the street full of neighbors, and the side yard—the one that wrapped around our corner lot—would become the platte of land where I would set my all-time soccer juggling record. It was a normal sort of place, so normal that you’re not even triggered to think of how normal it is.

These were the new hallways, this the kitchen, that the porch, and this the bathroom where my sister would find new environs through which to abuse my young, developing self. And the same goes for school, which was a particularly luscious bed for her because it involved the delicious multiplier of on-looking peers. Ignoring me at school and (I’ve always suspected but could never confirm) spreading rumors about me were her two most practiced weapons. People would snicker and point while I stealthily hugged the lockers during my brisk walks from class to class.

This went on for some time, my sister exploring her new territory and the natural resources available to belittle me, when an interesting twist happened. A new friend of hers, someone who seemed benign enough and would prove to actually be so, was a Christian. (Looking back I wonder if this friendship wasn’t some evangelistic crusade initiated by the friend via the local Girl Scout chapter to reclaim evil older sisters for the Kingdom of God.) This new friend convinced my sister of the merits of church, dangling the benefit of older boys in front of her, the perfect tactic, recruiters were told, to entice new membership in the youth group. My sister attended church from that point on, every Wednesday, religiously.

Maybe it was osmosis, associating with people who were genuinely nice and caring, that my sister began treating me a smidge better. Not enough, mind you, to be called a transformation but enough to give me some relief in my irrecoverable “social life” at Junior High.
Perhaps the lessened attack at school emboldened my sister to think herself in good standing with me and started inviting me to church using the same selling tools that were familiar to her, the promise of cute girls beyond my wildest imagination and friends, lots of friends, and the ability to dunk a basketball, which I desperately wanted to do. She was the devil showing me the extent of my prepubescent kingdom—if I would but attend church.

***

I imagine it could be compared to orbiting the earth in a space suit. You feel like you’re floating somewhat not at all though you’re moving, technically, at thousand of miles per hour. You glance at the earth and know the immutable properties of physics will keep you safely in orbit. You actually scientifically believe that you could float here in this same track, uninterrupted, until the end of all things unless, of course, you’re struck by a meteor. But you look around at the expanse, the lack of firmament, and can’t stop the instinctual switch from sending fear-triggered adrenaline.

***

For a year and a half her church invitations continued. It’s hard to express how annoying my sister was, how desperately I wanted her to disappear and stop asking me to come to church. Every week—every week—for seventy-eight weeks this conversation or some variation occurred:

“Hey Bryan, wanna go to church this week?”

“Nah,” I blandly grunt, playing Nintendo.

“There are gonna be girls and you can meet my friends,” she pitches with an inflection ascending through the appeal as if, by the end of it, her offer would be beyond refusal.

I sit silently, concentrating on Mario Brothers.

She stands there, falsely cherubic, until she realizes I don’t give a rat’s you-know-what and her demeanor changes in a way that even surprises me with its complete grimacing metamorphosis. She storms off, the Doppler effect coming to my aid as her litanies of my younger brother stupidities trail off in the distance. There were seventy-eight weeks of this. Seventy-eight. It’s annoying to recall even now.

I am sorry to say that on the seventy-ninth week my spirit broke. I don’t know why I’m sorry. I think it’s because I never wanted my sister to think her attempts to ruin my life had any affect on me. My annoyance at her offer was peaking, and I struck a deal with her.

“Hey Bryan, wanna go to church?”

I’m playing Nintendo and fuming. The usual long pause takes place after the offer is given, and as soon as her weekly pshaw of dismissal was about to fly, I speak up.

“I’ll go . . .” I murmur, my chin in my chest as if dejection and defeat were weighing me down, my eyes staring just under my eyebrows to show that wild beast in me that, if pushed one more time, will go absolutely lord of the flies, and I continue “under one condition. If I go tonight, you can never, ever ask me to go again.” I’m staring her straight in the eyes. “Deal?”

“Deal.”

A thin smile breaks over her face and she about faces.

***

For the longest time I was deeply convinced that my true name was Felix. My birth name is Bryan, but I don’t think it says much about me. Felix, however, means “happy” in Latin, which I could translate quite fluidly long ago but can’t now. I really liked the thought of having a name that meant “happy,” that by virtue of having an adjective as a name I could somehow get a directly tapped into the power of the word. Encountering God is like learning your true name. Except when you mention this “true name” to people they won’t tell you that it’s the name of a famous cat.

***

You would think after seventy-eight weeks of build-up that I would have some anticipation for the first time I went to church “willingly.” But there wasn’t. I was most eager to get it over with and move on with my life.

Going to church was sorely disappointing. The harem I had been promised and the popularity were especially underwhelming. My sister had oversold and under delivered. The “girls” was really just one girl who I had known from school (who I would also kiss three years later). And the “friends” were my sister’s friends who accomplished the amazing feat of annoying me more than my sister did. Going to church that night felt like an amplified continuation of my torturous junior high life. Factions, cliques, the searing and unspoken judgment that inevitably comes when you don’t dress right . . . church had it all. And part of me was glad. I was getting great ammunition for my argument to never return.

The Wednesday night youth group, like most youth groups I’ve ever attended, began with contemporary Christian songs that had the potential to make kids sing (rather than the Sunday morning ones that were targeting adult Christians, the ones you needed the hymnal to sing because the old-school tunes had way too many notes peppering the clef). I remember everyone else singing “Our God Is an Awesome God.” But I had never heard that or any other youth group song before. So when we were all directed to stand and sing—and at times perform mild choreography—I just stood there, awkward.

Following the songs comes “the talk.” You have to call it a “talk” to rhetorically differentiate it from a “sermon,” which all teenagers are gifted at ignoring. The youth minister’s talk was forgettable, which I know experientially because I can’t remember a thing. Listening to him was like sitting in a class whose subject held no interest. The only redeeming feature of the man was his full mustache and wavy hair that made him look like Keith Hernandez, the New York ball player, but only if he were less famous and a tad more bohemian. Keith finished his forgettable talk. And it was just after when the trajectory of my life completely changed.

Just after his talk, Keith undertook what I now know is a very common Baptist recap of the gospel of Jesus Christ—the “when we were sinners, Christ died for us” bit that follows every sermon and talk. It lasted two to three minutes and ended with a call to action, to “accept Christ into your heart and if you have, please pray this prayer with me.” You could almost say it was an afterthought of the evening, a perfunctory obligation a highly evangelizing denomination feels compelled to do. The led prayer began, “Dear Jesus, I invite you into my heart and life now” followed with some platitudes of promised obedience, etc, etc.

But what is so hard to capture is how arrested I was in the two to three minutes that Keith’s suburban doppelganger explained who Jesus was, what he did for the world, and how that relates to me. It reminds me of how the kids in the Narnia books get swept away to the other world from the real one. It’s unexpected, unstoppable, and complete. The difficulty in the language to capture a moment like when you encounter Christ is similar to Shelley's challenge of capturing the instant her creation is brought to life. Listening to the Gospel, I found myself in a river of truth when, for the evening, I had been wading ankle-deep in the weak stream of social Christianity. When I heard the gospel story, something in my heart leapt and belted “Yes!” It was equal parts of God’s love for me, my acknowledged need of him, and the stunningly unconditional and proactive love of Jesus to do for me what I could not do for myself. In those two to three minutes, tectonic shifts were happening in the way I was willing to understand the world and myself. It took me completely by surprise.

As a social reject with no prospect of upward mobility, you live inside your own head quite a lot. And when something strikes you, whether it’s a cute girl, a good movie, your favorite video game, or a spiritual proposition, you take it to your familiar, internal, reclusive place. You extend it a personal invitation because it meets the criteria that the majority of your life doesn’t. It’s beautiful, affirming, enlivening, strengthening, engaging, challenging.

During the explanation of the Gospel, my heart and mind immediately recognized the goodness of the Christian story and invited it in. I wanted it, not as a consumer wants a gadget but as a human wants connection that taps into the great capacity for beauty, truth, and love. It was a very significant snippet of time where I felt, believed, and acknowledged that I had somehow encountered the God being described to me. And in a rash boldness, I accepted the offer of accepting Jesus into my heart and life. The acceptance was not a tentative you-have-to-prove-yourself beginning. No, the facts of the Gospel coupled with the actual encounter with God had sealed the deal. I was simply giving voice to what had happened, like closing on the house you already bought and know without hesitation that you want it. In that moment, I became Christian.

***

Becoming a Christian is a rather uneventful event. It’s almost confusing how normal things remained in that moment. I don’t know what I was expecting. Visions maybe, or superhero powers as a “sign-up” gift like the pen you get when you open a new checking account. But nothing happened (though later I learned I did receive the Holy Spirit, which is most like a superhero power). If the evening prior to this moment had been any indication, I was still going to be me and I would still be largely invisible to those whose criteria for acceptance I fell laughably short. Though, I know inside I was a different me. And I was right.

My night at church ended with a confession to some adults in the room that I had accepted Christ. They grilled me with a few questions to confirm my experience was legit—I mean, you can’t up your church’s salvation stats without due diligence—and I rode home in silence. Upon my arrival, I approached my channel-surfing mom and casually announced “Mom, I became a Christian tonight.” She replied in the fatigue following a day’s work, “That’s nice, honey.” A Murphy Brown re-run was on.

The day after my conversion and many days after, all days after, I began working out my salvation with diligence and a deep desire to know what I had gotten myself into. That process is a different story altogether that’s even more uneventful than this one. But like a long novel whose overall story will bring you tears and elation both, each sentence along the way strikes you as somewhat unimportant. Except, like every story worth reading, my encounter with Jesus were riveting opening lines. The moment God found me was not only the beginning of my story but the moment I was edited in as a new character into His ongoing story.

The Opportunity Door

I'm in a LA this weekend, Memorial Day weekend. The powers that be, that is, the non-earthly powers that express themselves from time to time through my boss, Brian, opened a door of opportunity for me.

I'm in LA to meet with a new key author our company has just struck a relationship with, Marcus Buckingham. He's an immense guy. The story board of his life is fantastic, following the seemingly insignificant turns and twists of any given life. He moved from England where he went to Oxford--so, definitely not the dullest knife in the drawer--to join a polling and analysis group based out of Nebraska. Talk about following your gut. Would you trade London for Lincoln?

Doors opened for him as a result of his decisions (or, one could conjecture, just waiting for his decisions) and now he's a best-selling author with a message to change the world to boot. (Ps, I don't mean "boot" to indicate the trunk of a car.)

In my own small way, this weekend is a door opening for me, a chance to use my skills in publishing to speak into the life-changing work we partner with our authors to accomplish. Marcus and I will meet tomorrow, briefly, to talk about his next book and chat about ways to hit the market where the greatest clamber is chorusing for a life built on strengths that creates passion and purpose. In the grand scheme of things, his message is a big deal. Not a way to make money or stroke egos but a life-honoring reorientation of a more powerful way to live. Don't you want to join the cause already? I see my hour-long meeting as a door ajar to move forward in my own contribution to our world in need of hope and direction.

The following day, tomorrow, I'll connect with another author, Donald Miller, to do something similar but totally different. I am attending a weekend retreat he's leading that I believe has something to do with a core message he's developed over the previous year or two. And that is, the power of story. The overarching premise of his thought is that everyday folks can apply the proven mechanics of story--the things that Sophocles, Aristotle, Shakespeare, and Stein developed and perfected--to an individual life in such a way that will compose more meaningful living. As Don is brilliant at doing, it's a message where you say, "Well, yeah. Duh." But you could've never thought of it on your own nor expressed it quite the way he does, with vulnerability, insight, humour, and power.

And that's what gifted authors do. They tell you the the belief you've always believed but could never articulate. And this honor is mine: I get to help them, these gifted authors, articulate. This weekend, the open door is one of meaningful arm-hooking with Marcus and Don to find the most powerful articulation of the realities they help others to see. It's amazing to be among such great company charged with such a task.

Each of us comes to a door of opportunity. This door does not lead to a realm of receiving but one of giving. Great communicators with life-changing messages exert their lives giving. And those playing supporting roles--like myself and my colleagues--get to give to them while they give to the world. It's a great economy, this ceaseless giving. And like any act of charity, God designs giving to feel more like receiving where you physically have less but spiritually and relationally have more.

When you come to your door, whether it's Willy-Wonka- or Sistine-Chapel-sized, give everything you can. Both God and the world recognize the goodness of giving ceaselessly and selflessly, unconditionally, powerfully for the benefit of others with no expectation of tangible return except the immeasurable joy and an overwhelming sense of meaning that awaits.

The Viewmaster Life

The Viewmaster: A Brief Thought on Sin Cycles

For me, sinning is like clicking through the images in a Viewmaster with images of Jesus and temptation alternating in the interchangeable ferris wheels. I pick up one and put it in the viewer. In the first image, life seems pretty good. It’s a normal day, I’m showered, I head to work, I talk gently to my wife. Click, next slide. Life goes lagging; I’m tired with too much to do. So, I pick up smoking. Click. Jesus comes, wooing me into his sweet company and life. But like a kid eager to zip through the magazine, I click again. The checking account bounces; I freak out. Click. Jesus comes. Click. Balancing work, marriage, and home ownership requires more than I can give; I drink more. Click. Jesus shows me how much more deeply dependable he is. (Sometimes it feels like I just have sin ferris wheels with no Jesus mixed in for the respite. Except I know that’s not true. He’s there, a faint double exposure.)

I am sitting my friend Matthew on his porch on Douglas, and we’re talking about life. A city bus passes by. I’m telling him about my cyclical medications, my small sociable addictions that find their way into my life. He says to me with a sarcastic lilt, “Oh yeah, Bryan, you’re the only one who does that.” He’s such a jerk, but right, and a good friend for saying it. There’s no sin committed that the world is not accustomed to, and Jesus knows me.

I know my sinfulness is not unique. So far as I’ve read, there’s only one person who gets immunity. But it’s that I can’t kick the habit. Not any one habit, just the habit of coming back to sin like a sad co-dependent relationship, the kind that all your friends know is bad for you, pity you, and love you anyway. When life goes stressful, it’s like I want to outdo it. I want to poor accelerant on the circumstances.

I've concluded that the inability to leave sin is the root of sin. It is the compulsion to lean on earthly things at the expense of our friendship with God. The joy and hope of the Christian life is God’s commitment to help me switch out the sin slides for holy ones more and more, incrementally, over a lifetime.

Layoffs, etc.

Last week my company laid off several people in its workforce. The number was comparatively low, less than 10 percent of the total. But for those let go, the percentage was much higher, 100.

I've concluded that there is no way that such a large body of humans can sync up their recovery process from such an event. Some teams were hard hit, losing half of their players, others were not impacted at all (like mine). Varying degrees of pain on the front end equal varying rates of healing on the back end.

Or do they? This morning while reading Anne LaMott's Traveling Mercies, I found myself thinking intently on the layoffs and the pain they caused. The challenge, I think, is becoming a bit more porous to life, internalizing the experience in a way that authenticates the human experience. It's so easy to place the perpetrator of pain far from yourself in order to deal with it safely. And in this case, those perpetrators are things like "the economy," "the state of the industry," and "myself."

When pain hits, it's a bit like deep-sea diving except totally unexpected. You're humming along with the rhythmic thwump all boats have and the surface tension of the water breaks, physics goes haywire, and you're forced to go under. Pain is what happens when life won't let you gloss over a thing. And there's something noble and beautiful about going under, even finding the ocean floor. Me, I have a primal fear of the water. If I were sitting in a dingy on the open water, I'd be more concerned about the statistical probability that something murderous lurks within killing distance--and is hungry--than the beauty of a horizon or the sound of schwapping waves. When life forces you to go under, you're instantly put in a place of factual crisis.

But it's what you do with the crisis, the descending, and hopefully the ascension that shapes you. Some people are excellent, perhaps too good, at the deep dive. In fact, they seem to have continual reasons for staying underwater, not the least of which is their new found friendship with the crabs. Than there are others, and I am of this group, who see the briny deep, the darkness, the unknown, and decide to stay where the sunlight still penetrates close to the surface.

The layoffs caused considerable sadness at our company. It's been revealing to see how people process an experience like this. Some head so fast for the ocean floor you would have thought they performed a pencil dive from an orbiting satellite. Others up the throttle on the boat to keep moving toward a distant and seemingly imaginary shore, unwilling to get wet. It seems to me that a middle way is best, taking my cue from my rudimentary knowledge of deep-sea diving. You have to descend slowly and ascend slowly so as to not get the bends.

On Smoking Cigarettes

This morning I found the bravery to admit that I like smoking cigarettes. I know that there is an entire cultural conversation about why I like smoking cigarettes, the nicotine, and why I shouldn't like smoking cigarettes, the cancer. I agree that both exist in every pack and puff.

But I've watched a lighted cigarette whisper and wind its way around my fingers. I imagine it, beautiful, winding its sinister way through my lungs like a dark Russian novel. There's something about the act of smoking, the way it accompanies my pensiveness and my coffee.

I have discovered that you can smoke and still successfully train for a half-marathon. This past fall, I answered a company-wide challenge at the publishing house where I work to run my city's half-marathon. Since leaving college, I've been singing a gradual lament about my sagging ability to burn calories without exercising. I thought the half-marathon would be a perfect double whammy. I'll kick smoking and get in shape. I even signed a pledge to this effect.

For months things were fine. But you walk through some second-hand smoke, you hang out at a bar with friends, you grab coffee with some smokers. My life, it seemed, was never more than one or two degrees removed from bumming. It did me in; my self-discipline is very selective.

This morning, after months of training and resistance, I've decided that I can't keep my pledge. I'll be emailing HR in a moment to tell them.

It's not that I'm throwing in the towel on better life habits. But when there's an institutional expectation, I live with more guilt than I care to. I need to get my own institution in order rather than bullying myself with another. I know I'll keep training--the half-marathon is next weekend. And I know I'll continue to struggle with not smoking. I say "not smoking" rather than "smoking" because I'm still on the "not" track, but I need to go at my own pace.

Pulling Weeds

I’m white, middle class, and work in a cubicle. Put this way, some would say my life is part of the problem. I’m propelling this thing we call “the man.” I’m a perfectly well-intentioned guy, but the façade of my life could be reduced to a carbon copy of so many other lives, a window on a condo high rise gentrifying the grittiness and goodness of life.

That’s why, whenever I get the chance, I find reasons to sweat and get dirty with manual labor. I don’t do this as a character building activity but for the sake of joy. I love a day of hard work, soreness, something accomplished when dusk comes. So, this past weekend, when my grandfather asked me to help him in the garden, I gladly accepted.

It would be sloppy if I tried to capture all the complexes and issues this man has passed down the generations to me and others in my family. He singularly makes me believe in the concept of generational sin and the desperate need of Christ’s power for redemption from the things encoded in our genealogy.

Here’s a quick look at his more amazing accomplishments.He has completely shattered his wife’s sense of self through a lifetime of verbal abuse. He bosses her around in every task, menial or otherwise. Then he berates her for not having any gumption to do a damn thing on her own. He sends soft porn to me and other men as jokes, objectifying women mercilessly. (Seriously, think about your grandfather sending you soft porn.) He tries to lasso me into his misogynistic, women-bashing jokes in front of my wife. A dandy yesterday in front of her, my grandmother, and my niece: “Women are a necessary evil, hey Bry?” To add insult to injury, my niece’s mom, my sister, is going through a divorce. I wonder how that comment mixed with my niece’s utter confusion about why she’s moving, why her dad hasn’t been around for weeks, why her world is falling apart. Am I the necessary evil that made this happen? I imagine her young psyche synthesizing from that comment and her life’s circumstance. God have mercy.

If you have a sensible picture of this man, now imagine this: my brief paragraph is a snapshot from last Saturday only.

I love G. K. Chesterton’s thought about the family, that they’re the only people in life we don’t choose. I have relished the thought of a grandpa swap. It could be a nationwide, flea market affair. But I wonder who wouldn’t offer their family members in the transaction? It would be one crowded event.

Because of all this, I’m always looking for redemptive bonding moments with my grandpa, something to offset the lifelong narrative of his asshole-ness. Gardening seemed like it had potential. In side-by-side silence, with the occasional faint humming of songs that clearly shows our age-influenced preference for music, I get to share his love of this plot of ground, the arrangements of this garden he loves, that he built from scratch. It's quite extensive, his green-thumbed venture. Beds all around the house with fruit-bearing trees, annuals, perennials, creeping vines, steeple-like miniature pines, fallen palm fronds, and a few pieces of garden art. And weeds. A helluva lot of weeds. For two hours we pulled them, sweated together, and drank beer.

Sometimes it takes something simple and physical to sweep you away from the historical and internal. I could fill a very sad book with all the things I wish were different about my grandfather and myself, with wonder about how life would be different, how happy my grandmother could’ve been. But for now, we’re just pulling weeds, getting our hands dirty with life, together.

Anne LaMott's Traveling Mercies

I bought Radioheads’s OK Computer in 1999, three years after it was released. I traded my white trainers for hip Steve Maddens in 2004. In so many words, my habit: to arrive fashionably late to fashionable trends. At least three years late.

So, in good form, I’m just now reading Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies, nearly a decade after her copyright. Her message: God’s pursuit of humans is in the muck of living. Anne’s story shows that there’s nothing laudable in us to prompt God’s interest. And that’s not to say she’s despicable. Her writing is so beautiful, you could only imagine she is the same. The way you’d imagine Tom Hanks if you met him, consistent. Or Don Miller.

I’m chewing on the ideas of her coming to faith, wrestling with the messiness of it, finding myself more willing to admit my own addictions and favorite sins because she’s so unconcerned with my thoughts of her life. Maybe I should be less concerned too. She knows who she is—or is okay with not knowing—and I’m just a spectator invited to engage in, as the subtitle says, her thoughts on faith. Through the first hundred pages, her emotive power has been the most moving part of my experience. There are lines where I felt so strong a desire to weep, my chest would tighten and my lungs draw close to each other. I felt short of breath and inwardly convulsing, like what I suspect would happen if you applied a heart defibrillator to someone in no need of it. I wouldn’t be upset if everyone on the planet read the scene where the black woman held the AIDS victim like a crow, sang, and wept, this after a year of lifelong stereotypes about gay people. But don’t skip to it. Let her take you there. So beautiful.