2. My Childhood
March 1965 - July 1972
My Formative Years
So much of life is packed into the years from age eight to age fifteen. Seven years seems short, but to a child, those years define his or her life. My formative childhood years, then, were from March of 1965 when we moved into our home against the foothills of the Cascades, until July of 1972 when I turned my back on the knowledge of God to spend three-and-one-half years inside an awful darkness.
Now, there is no value for the testimony of Jesus Christ for me to share all I can remember from these years. Rather, I will first give an overview, then I will attempt to include a perspective of those things that are pertinent for my walk with God since those years.
As you will see, there is nothing in this history that is remarkable, let alone interesting. What I hope to do, however, is to give a sense of the milieu in which I grew up, the person I was inside that environment, and the more influential factors affecting me through those years.
I had wonderful parents; that is, I can assure you of that now. To a naïve boy growing up in the 1960’s, I had no idea of that. My dad worked a rotating shift, which meant he often slept during the daytime. But though my dad was always kind to me – I think he whupped me only twice (well-deserved, though I did not think so then) – yet as I have grown older, I know my dad from the inside and understand the difficulties that bound his heart.
My dad never shared of himself with me. Yes, I worked with him many long hours clearing our property, building sheds and barns, and taking care of the farm animals he bought. But he never once shared of himself with me except that little bit he told me about seeing Mom for the first time – that came years later, when they visited me at the Albuquerque community. I knew that Dad worked at Wah Chang, but I did not even know what he did.
I now know how difficult it was inside for my Dad to share of himself. I came through the same difficulty with far more help than he ever knew.
My mother grew up in a very strict home and did not know herself how to speak words of encouragement. Yet both my mom and my dad loved us children with their lives, even though they did not really know how to communicate.
In actuality, my parents had no thought of “parenting.” (I think that parenting is a modern invention.) Basically, I grew up like Topsy, mostly on my own. I did not know anything else. My mom worked hard at home, growing a large garden, preserving our food, stretching every penny dad brought home as far as it would go. Even in the late 70’s, she was shocked when the pastor of the Assembly of God church they were attending held an elder and wives’ meeting at a restaurant. Such a shocking waste of money, when Dad was required to buy a meal for the two of them at a restaurant!
I grew up in paradise. Let me describe the setting.
Growing up in Oregon
Our property just northeast of Lacomb was situated right on the western edge of the Cascade Mountains, where jumbles of ridges and hills punctuated the flat and richly soiled Willamette Valley. From the north windows of our house, the ground sloped down to the little valley of Crabtree Creek against the backdrop of Buzzard’s Butte a thousand feet high. Through our eastern living room wall of large picture windows, Snow Peak, 4000 feet up, was framed in clear view, five miles away.
Following is a map of my dad’s property of 29 acres and adjoining points. Writing of these things draws up just how real and deep the love of this area, this climate and vegetation, goes inside of me. In fact, if you type 34769 E. Lacomb Road, Lebanon, Oregon into Google maps set to “terrain,” you can get an idea of the slope of East Lacomb Road towards Crabtree Creek below or up towards the crest above. [Google has removed the street view.] That slope in both directions features greatly in my childhood memories. We made full use of it with bicycles, motorbikes, go-carts, wheelies, and whatever else would carry us fast. Of course, the property is no longer ours, but that part of the story will come much later.
The climate of the western slopes of the Pacific Northwest is West Coast Marine, similar to the British Isles and Northwest Europe, mild and wet. Our location was more like Ireland in that the up-slope of the Cascades meant that much of the rain dropped right on us.
Rain is part of life to me, except our rain was rarely heavy, typically a light drizzle. Only in the summer months did it slack off. In the springtime it came in great waves from the coast range and in November it never stopped. Years later, I saw a twelve-year-old boy standing by the side of the road in the rain, waiting for the bus. He was hunched up, with water dripping steadily down his face. I was looking at me. No self-respecting boy in rural Oregon would be caught dead in the rain with any raincoat or hat or umbrella or any such nonsense. Rain was our life.
And because of the rain – green. Green of every shade and hue. Growing things, abundance of growing things. The logging road out of the mountains ran along the bottom edge of our property. I often watched log trucks driving by. When I was younger, a truck with one log on it, just the first part of one tree, was fairly common. Rarely did we see more than three or four logs on a truck. Trees grew big and full and green. And flowing streams were regular features. You could not walk half a mile without crossing flowing water. The ditch along our property ran year long. I loved to build dams and waterways, shaping the flow of the water to my pleasure. I loved finding a little stream and hiking down its course, finding every turn and spill and variation in its flow over rocks and around trees.
And berries. Let me give you the panorama of fruit from the earth in the life of an adolescent boy. The fruit season began in May, with cherries. I would climb up into the cherry tree at the edge of our yard and put away cherries like nobody’s business. The goal was to keep a steady stream down one’s gullet. My stomach was rock iron; I never got sick from unripe or too much fruit.
Then strawberries came in June. I did not like strawberries. We got in a bus that took us to the strawberry fields each morning. Strawberries hug the ground. There is no shade and you have to bend over on your knees to pick them. I would fill one carrier of berries, that is, six little boxes, worth thirty cents in wages. Then I would eat about the same amount; then I would sit in my row in the heat while my sister, Cheryl, picked my share on ahead, waiting through the long morning hours until the bus would take us home. I did not like strawberries.
Raspberries came in July, as well as plums, and huckleberries in the Coast Range and blueberries in the fields along the Roaring River. I liked raspberries, both their flavor and the fact that you could pick them standing up. The raspberry field was just at the top of the hill above our property. We picked through the morning, earning up to five bucks, then we sailed down the hill on our bicycles all the way to Crabtree Creek where we swam and explored and ran on the rocks all afternoon. I was very skilled at running fast across fields of boulders tipped helter skelter, without ever stumbling. We would climb way up Buzzard’s Butte, not quite straight up from Crabtree Creek, about 500 feet above. There we turned around, sat down on the ground and slid the 500 feet back down as on a slide. It was just steep enough to go really fast, but not quite too steep. There was almost a trail seemingly made just for us, so that there were no trees or bushes in our path. We tried sliding on burlap, but that did not work. Penny’s jeans would last one trip down, but Levis would go three times before they were shredded. It was such fun.
August was blackberries, my favorite. There were vast blackberry wildernesses covering acres on our property and everywhere else. But no one grew them for money, so we bussed to the bean fields, to pick pole beans for money. A kid could earn the most picking pole beans, but I preferred raspberries. Also in August were the thimbleberries, elderberries, and salmon berries. In September came the apples, apples of every kind, although I always started eating apples when they were not ripe. But for money, I picked up filberts in the hazelnut orchards just up the road. I enjoyed the shade under the trees, even though you had to work on your knees.
Finally, in October came the grapes. I can eat grapes. I squeeze the grape so that the flesh pops out of the skin, then I swallow it whole so that I don’t bite on the bitter seeds. I put away a lot of grapes, fast. We had three kinds of grapes, pink, white, and blue. Lot’s of blue grapes, at the neighbors and at home. Grapes are the one fruit I love tending the most. I have maintained a Concord grape arbor here in Houston, even though the climate is too hot. I wanted my children to know the pleasure of picking grapes off the vine and eating them fresh.
I went camping outside in the woods just off the driveway, first at the age of nine. Going camping along Crabtree Creek became a regular feature of my life. I ventured down to Crabtree Creek by myself at age nine as well, and there I taught myself how to swim. I was always safe because I was never foolish of danger. Even when caught in very difficult water when I was older, I would pause, calm myself, and proceed sensibly. Half of my summers was in the berry and bean fields and the other half was along or in Crabtree Creek (although I did work with my dad on our property quite a bit as well). The creek would become a raging torrent during the rainy months, but in the summer it was a just right, a good size for a “creek,” but with many deep holes in which we could swim and with many channels in the solid rock through which we could slide.
I never knew of camping or having a picnic either with family or friends, that was not next to running water. The sound of water running over rocks is the sweetest music I know.
My Animals
I must include mention of some of the animals I raised and took care of growing up. My first dog was a little female mutt that I named “Mickey.” I was working in the garden one day when the little thing came bounding towards me in front of my grinning mother. Mickey had a litter of puppies, but I did not have them long. Other than giving some of the puppies away, I don’t remember what happened to them. My next dog was Topper, another mutt. He was my companion through most of these years until a neighbor's dog tricked him into going after a porcupine. Neither Henry nor I could get any of the quills out of his mouth, so I had to ask another neighbor to dispose of him.
My favorite dog came later, however, a full-grown Chesapeake Bay Retriever who came wandering in one day half-starved. He was the best of dogs; I named him “Gollum.” All of my forays into mountains and woods and creeks were always with my dog. I had Gollum when I could drive up into the mountains. Exploring the mountains, just Gollum and me, was one of the most satisfying chapters of my life.
My first farm animal was a female goat, named Phoebe, who then had two little ones. I milked her until I got tired of goats and we sold them. Then I had a pig; I called her “Mama Pig.” I would sit on her back until she woofed and ran off and I went flying. Dad liked to buy and raise calves, so I would take care of them. One year he brought home a milk cow, which I milked daily for a year. Then she broke into the feed bin and ate herself to death. Twice I raised ducks from little ones. Both times the foxes and weasels got them, one at a time.
Working with My Parents
We moved into our home at the beginning of this time period when it was finished enough to be occupied. For that reason, I grew up in the context of a house being built around me bit by bit. Dad more than doubled the size of the original three-bedroom house of around 1500 square feet, adding large extensions on each side. Towards the mountains, he built a large living/dining room with large picture window on three sides. Towards the road, he built a two story with a large basement/garage below and a second floor above containing two more bedrooms and a large “playroom.” This made the house a split level, as the front of the “basement” was level with the drive.
I did not help much during my younger years, but as time went on, I did contribute a bit to the house construction. It was only natural that, when my friends were all building crude tree houses, I wanted to best them by building a real “house” on the ground in the woods just behind our house next to Henry Miller’s property line. My little house was 8 feet by 10 feet with a loft; I was fifteen, but already taking full charge of my life. My bed was in the loft. I put in two windows and a wood stove. That was my bedroom, then, for several months.
Dad wanted to farm on the side. We worked together to clear about ten acres on the slope down from our house. I have done a lot of brush clearing. Dad had originally dynamited the huge stumps left on the property by the loggers. Some were several feet across. The ground was filled with rocks. I have done a lot of rock hauling. We loaded them into a little trailer behind the tractor and then took them down to a drop at the bottom of our property. We would clean an area entirely of rocks, many trailer loads, and in a few weeks, the pigs would pull up as many rocks again. This growing of rocks out of cleared ground never really ended.
I also worked with Dad building sheds for the animals and putting a barbed wire fence all around the property. Dad always included space for my animals as well. In fact, our first little “barn” was for my goats.
Through these years I worked in my mom’s garden. I also tended a good-sized garden of my own. One year I grew Indian corn, but the caterpillars ate the corn before it ever matured. I waged war against caterpillars for a while after that. One year I raised pumpkins that grew so big. I carved out one of the smaller ones and wore it on my head to school for Halloween dress-up, along with a white sheet. I thought it looked pretty cool, but I did not win the prize. Getting much of our food from our own garden was a large part of our lives.
I will talk more about my relationship with my parents in the next chapter.
My Friends
I was friends with a number of boys in my class at school. I would bike quite often up to Lacomb, to the school grounds two miles away. Or they would bike down to join us at Crabtree Creek. Rodney Gable and his younger brother Wade lived right next to the school property. Some of the most enjoyable times of my life was in their hay barn. Their dad had allowed them to create a system of tunnels deep under as they stacked the hay bales to the roof. We would snake through those tunnels or swing from a long rope into a deep mound of loose hay. One time, the chubby boy in our class was coming my way at the lowest point furthest back. He went over me, and got stuck. Yeah – “two boys suffocate to death under a pile of hay bales!” We kept wiggling, though, and eventually came free to continue on our way.
My best friend in my grade school years, however, was our next door neighbor, Henry Miller. And this was very odd, for Henry was the same age as my mom, that is, forty-two, when I first befriended him at age eight. Henry was a peculiar part of my life and a big part of my growing up. Henry was not retarded, but simple-minded. I understood that in his younger years he had rolled a bulldozer and knocked his head. Henry abhorred work, except when I made him help me. He lived, first with his mother, and then alone after she passed on. They were hill-billies, supported by meager government handouts. Yet Henry’s mother owned their property, and it passed to his brother, Roy, when she died.
Henry was my friend. For that reason, I include a picture of him as well as a fuller description, a paper I wrote in college composition class, a character sketch.
~~~
Henry Miller is probably the strangest and most astonishing person I have known. To must, he would be repulsive, but to me, as a child, he was my friend and companion. Henry lived next door to the place to which my family moved when I was eight; he had lived there with his mother in a ramshackle little house for most of his life. At that time, he was forty two years old.
Henry was a simple-minded man with a bushy read beard and long, stringy hair. He usually wore a cap to protect his partly-bald head from the sun. He dressed simply in work pants and shirt; often he would wear a plain suit-coat. The most noticeable thing about Henry, through, was that he was dirty. His cap was dirty, his face was dirty, his hands were dirty, his pants and shirt and suitcoat were dirty; though, occasionally, his pants and shirt would be washed. In all the years I knew him, he never washed his frying pan or the blankets on his bed. To sweep his house every few months was quite an endeavor for him, usually, that task was left to me. To take a shower once a month or two or three was an accomplishment to him, something to boast about. He did wash his plate ever couple of weeks or so, but carrying out the trash was nearly impossible. I once carted a year’s worth of trash out of his kitchen for him. The trash filled my dad’s pickup to the top of the stock racks. It was a formidable job.
Henry was simple, and he was lazy. I would try on occasion to get him to help me with my work at home. He would do well the first day; the second day – not so well; on the third day, he would not show up. Because I knew him well, though, I could talk him into doing most anything for a little while. However, his favorite occupation remained watching television.
Henry was strange and obnoxious to most people, but my boyish eyes saw none of that, because Henry was my friend. From the time I was eight to the time I was nineteen, I spent many long hours with Henry. We hiked through the woods and went on picnics together. We built go-carts and worked on bicycles together. It would take a book to record the number of projects and contraptions we came up with to work on. I remember the time we attempted a bicycle built for two. This was one of many unsuccessful undertakings. It worked fine part way down the hill, but when we tried to turn a corner, it sort of folded up on us. Undiscouraged, we soon went on to our next brainstorm.
Well do I remember our wagon converted to a coaster-cart. Picture, if you will, stopping at a stop sign and looking up the hill to your left. The oddest sight meets your eyes. A twelve-year-old boy and a forty-six-year old man are perched precariously on a careening contraption made of a child’s wagon with wooden sides. Behind them on the road are the strips of rubber that were the wagon tires before it started down the hill. As they go sailing by you on rubber-less tires, the old man’s hat comes flying off his head and lands in the road directly in front of you. His long red hair blows freely in the wind as the two of them clatter past on down the road, unable to stop. The young boy leans eagerly forward, his hands gripping the steering rope. Such was my relationship with Henry.
I learned much good from Henry, but much that was not good as well. Henry had a weakness; he loved to drink. Drink turned him into a fool and made him totally obnoxious. Though I loved Henry sober, over the years, I learned to dislike Henry drunk. Henry sober was my friend, but Henry drunk I did not like at all. I could maneuver Henry drunk, but, at least in my earlier years, that was not often.
~~~
Sometime in these years, I led a sober Henry to ask Jesus into his heart – which he did. Then, my mother told me that the next morning she heard him singing, “Jesus loves me,” as he was tending his chickens. That was the extent of his “Christian” experience, but I have the right inside of God to call those who belong to me into salvation.
My best friend during my adolescence was Larry Jensen, from southern California. He came with his family to a property about a third of a mile away, up Cut-off Drive, in the summer before I entered ninth grade. We were the same age, but he was a year below me in school, since his birthday was in November instead of October. I was mucking about in the ditch half way to his house when he came walking by. He joined me mucking about, and, until we went separate ways years later, we did most everything together, especially camping and hiking, biking and motorbiking, exploring and arguing as boys do. Once he got his license, I rode with him to school every day. We even worked for the same employers. Yet we were never in classes at school together.
One time, Larry and I biked down to the very small town of Crabtree to visit his cousins. We hiked over to Crabtree Creek just north of the little town. Here, in the wide valley, it was a slow river with mud banks, not at all the way we knew it. There was a raft there, which we climbed onto fully clothed; we did not intend to swim. But we were boys, and so, pretty soon, we were rocking the raft back and forth until Larry’s cousin, Bob, fell off. Only then did we remember that he could not swim. Bob lost his mind in full blown panic, screaming and flailing. Larry had no interest in expending himself to help someone in need, ever. So, what could I do? I jumped in, fully clothed, to “save” him. Only – once his hand touched me, he went straight up onto my shoulders and I went straight down under the water. I still had my boots on, so I could hardly tread water. I saw my whole life, in a flash, as they say, and I saw the headlines, “Two Boys Drown in Creek.” But before it was too late, I found the bottom slope of mud under my feet and could then push up out of the water. Later, in high school swim class, we learned how to rescue correctly. I did not know that Bob was fine, so long as he was making noise.
Then, in my second year at high school, I became friends with Andy Wyatt, who lived on the south side of Lebanon. Andy would play a large role in my life, both through the “time of darkness” coming up and later, when he gave his heart back to the Lord at the same time as I, and we went to Church doings together. During my high school years, I disconnected from many of the fellows my age from Lacomb, spending time with Larry and Andy instead. Lebanon Union High School was large enough (1600 students) that we sifted out according to interest, and I sifted into the literary and intellectual group.
School and Church
Schol and church worked the same woe in my life. The greatest influence in the life of any child growing up in the modern world is the kids their same age with whom they are stuck inside the walled boxes of school or Sunday school and with whom they learn to function in every wrongful way. No kid has ever learned “social skills” from kids their own age. Instead they learn to bully and to be bullied, to shame and to be ashamed. Playing and learning with kids your own age is an important part of growing up healthy in the Lord, but only when such is balanced by about an equal time of interaction with adults in work and in fellowship. We learn the meaning of life from adults, and from the whole range of interaction with others, with other men besides our father and other women besides our mother, with old folks and little ones in daily life together. Only here is wholeness found, that is, belonging and purpose, giving and receiving.
My parents had no knowledge, in the sixties, of evil in this world. And when I turned towards darkness, it caught them completely unaware. Yet from my own trajectory, inside the arena of kids my own age in school and church, it was the only possible outcome.
Nonetheless, as I look back now, I call all of it by Christ, and I see Him alone utterly together with me through every moment. And I see, now, His purposes in shaping me through every difficulty and every dark pressure. You see, Jesus lived in my heart. And through every part of my life, my Father was shaping my heart to fit His, though I knew it not.
I attended school for eight years at Lacomb Elementary School. School was always easy for me, so I never thought much about it. I never really “learned” to read. They gave me a book in first grade when I was five and told me what reading was. I read every type of book from then on. I saw a map when I was five as well and knowing the geography and the workings of the world became my all-consuming passion from then until now. When I was around twelve, I had the idea to write to every state capitol and ask for information and maps of their state. For weeks, our mailbox was filled with packages to my great delight. Texas sent me the most, and only Massachusetts sent me nothing. My parents had a set of geography books, and I absorbed them.
I need touch only a few highlights from my elementary school days. I started playing the trumpet in band in fifth grade and continued through my senior year in high school. I did not like to practice at home, however, so I was never really good. I just liked being part of the band. My most memorable learning experience was in fifth grade when Mrs. Sisson, “the tyrant teacher,” read an entire book out loud to us, Seven Alone. In my teaching career, I have always read a book out loud to my English classes, one day a week. I know from the feedback that listening to the teacher read a story with full expression means a lot to them. I joined sports because I like being with the action, but I was never good enough to be sent out on the field or court, except when the score was 80 to 20 in our favor. Basically, my first two years at Lebanon Union High School ran in the same vein, except for no more failed sports.
Through these years we attended church at the Albany Mennonite Church, right across the freeway from my dad’s place of work, Wah Chang. Church potlucks and having individual church families over for dinner after church was a big part of my childhood. I was taught good Bible things, but the people at Albany Mennonite were hardly born again, let alone knowing anything of the Spirit or of a relationship with a personal God. We were Mennonites, and so most of the young men served in the Mennonite Voluntary service, including my brother, Franz. I remember one “rebellious” young man who joined the army, went to Vietnam, and came back a hardened drug addict.
The Bible was important to us, and we were taught Bible things. I believed that it was God’s word to us, but I did not know it that well. When I was eleven or twelve, I had the bright idea of memorizing the three chapters of the Sermon on the Mount, just for fun. I would rattle through it to anyone who cared to listen. One time dad told me to chop down some brush trees, but I chopped down the wrong one. It affected me deeply that I had sorrowed him, so I sought the Lord earnestly, believing Him to raise the tree back to life again. To my great disappointment, it was still there, chopped down, when I went out to the bus in the morning.
But the general church environment is not what influences a child, and neither is it the general school environment. You can “fix” anything in school or Sunday school, and so long as it is a bunch of kids together, they WILL work their woe on one another, regardless. It was not the kids at our large public high school that pressed me towards drugs and rock music, but the kids at church, none of whom I really liked anyhow. I think that only one other kid in my age group, a girl, was born again. And the teacher simply followed whatever the “popular” boys demanded.
Throught these years I attended many week or week-end-long summer camps. Most of the time it was at the Mennonite campground in the Coast Range above Siletz, Oregon, called Drift Creek Camp. Two summers I went to a second, music camp there as well. I also attended nearby non-Mennonite camps on occasion. On the one hand, these were hyper out-of-control times for kids at that age. Mennonites were naïve and would bend over backward to satisfy kids. But on the other hand, those were deeply shaping experiences of togetherness in many activities, indoors and out. Mountains, woods, flowing streams, exploring, these things are written so deeply all through me. I have no idea how it is that I am living in Texas. I have never been able, in my estimation, to give my sons something similar.
When I Was Twelve
I am coming back now and filling in this little bit after I have completed this account and understand much better what was consequential to the unfolding of my life story.
In the summer and fall when I was twelve, which would be between seventh and eighth grades, I had three marked experiences that I now know were part of the whispering of God calling to me and to the song He had written in my heart.
The first experience was at Drift Creek Camp in June. We had all climbed into mini-busses and gone to the coast for an outing. On the way back I was sitting next to a black boy about my age, unusual in Oregon when I was young, This boy began having cramps and was doubled up in pain. He found some relief by pinching my leg just above the knee. In myself, I felt a sense of inclusion, that I was gathering him into myself that he might find some help. I would now call what I felt a Spirit of intercession.
After we had arrived back at Drift Creek and the boy was feeling better, the counselor who was with us remarked to me of the compassion and kindness that he saw in my expression. Yet outwardly, and for the most part, I was just a boy having fun.
The second experience took place in July in the raspberry field. I was picking raspberries in a row next to a girl about my age whom I did not know. She was that type of girl that likes to talk to boys and doesn't need a lot of responses back. In her stream of yakking, she asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I always take a question like that seriously and to the deepest levels. I had only one response, "I want to be married."
Yes, this was a desire for a wife and a family, something nearly impossible for me, yet I think it was also coming out from something far deeper, something I could not yet know.
The third experience came in August or September, with my brother, Franz's return from his Mennonite service in lieu of the military and Vietnam. I found on his little bookshelf a set of books titled The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. I was always a voracious reader and read widely even by that age. Yet there was something unique in this great story that touched the depths inside of me, and I could not stop reading it all the way through four times a year for the next few years until my dad, in concern, took the books from me.
He and I both thought that it was "fantasy" that intruged me, and that was true outwardly. I loved to escape into wondrous dream worlds. I know now, however, that it was much deeper than that. The primary point of Tolkien's story is that victory comes through weakness, through stumbling and failing every step of the way. I know now that this was God calling to me.
And so my God marked me, even at the age of twelve, despite all my continued outward foolishness, with a heart of intercession for the sake of others, with a longing for the deepest levels of fellowship and community, and for the set of a journey stumbling through weakness, a path prepared, that others might be free, that I would come to know my God through weakness.
Trips and Other Events
I also want to include several road trips that we made as a family together through these years. Many events from these trips are marked vividly in my memories.
When I was younger, dad drove us down into southern Oregon on a weekend trip. We visited primarily the sand dunes on the southern Oregon coast, the Oregon caves, and Crater Lake National Park. I picture these things so clearly. We went often to the Oregon coast, but I never liked the ocean view, I always preferred mountains and deep valleys hidden away.
In the summer of 1968, also when I was twelve, we went to Michigan to visit mom and dad's brothers and sisters and all my cousins. We went again in the summer of 1972. Dad must have been like me, because he took a different route across the states coming and going each time. I really enjoyed playing shuffleboard with my grandpa, William, and I loved Grandma Marie's sweet smile. I enjoyed cousin Wally the most because he was always welcoming to me. I drove Uncle Orville's riding lawn mower all around and secretly "fell in love" with his cute daughters. I remember Yordy Drive and the grave stones where my two brothers were buried.
The trips were very long and tedious. I was confined to the back seat in-between Frieda and Cheryl. There was no air conditioning, and I had to be still or they would pinch me. The view out the windows was first mostly sage brush and second mostly corn fields. On one of our returns, I fell asleep in the front seat next to Mom as we drove down from Portland towards home. As the car went over the little hill on Meridian drive, I woke up. As my eyes opened, I saw the line of trees that was our property. Even though it was dark, the knowing that we were HOME went all through me instantly. I knew home; I knew what it looks like.
Then, in October of 1972, we drove a second time to Nebraska for Franz and Audrey's wedding in her home church and with her family, the Kennels. On this trip, I rode with Tim and Frieda who had been married a few years earlier. I think we went in Tim's 1965 Buick, which I would buy from him a few years later. I did not like the flat corn fields of Nebraska, but I remember Mr. Kennel saying to me, "This is how I make my bread and butter." He could not understand how anyone could stomach living in the mountains!
My Quirkiness
I did not know that I was Asperger’s until I was 53 years old. I just thought I was peculiar. I was not outgoing, rather I was quite introverted, and I almost never talked to girls. Yet I loved being with other people and with my friends; I loved doing things with others. Although I didn’t like working for my dad, I worked my tail off for Larry’s dad, John Jensen, or with Henry, doing all the things I persuaded Henry to help me do.
So what did it mean, that I was what is called “high-performing” autism. First, from an early age, the most terrifying words I heard were, “Look me in the eye.” It is something I never did.
Then, an Asperger’s boy feels too much. For this reason, in order to cope, he must shut off and re-direct the overwhelming feelings and all the “noise” of external things. One way is to “feel” something else. And so I might smile or laugh when i hear or speak of terrible things; it's just how I place things away from myself. Another way to cope is by putting on “blinders” and focusing on pursuits that are fascinating to the boy. Those fascinating things for an Asperger’s boy are typically related to patterns of some sort.
From the time I was twelve and first grabbed The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings off my brother’s bookshelf, or even earlier, my pattern was fantasy, creating complex fantastical worlds in my imagination. Now, a big part of this quality has given much benefit to my present readers, in that I am able to see and envision the things of God and of His kingdom. Nonetheless, in the years of my youth, a quality that God intended to use for good was turned into not-good directions. Nonetheless, I often draw from things during this time in order to share the good things of Christ with you.
Outwardly, I went from one nervous tick to another. For awhile I flapped my hands hard. Then for a while I made loud noises by squirting bubbles behind my lips. Then, I took to spitting all the time. This became embarrassing because it did not slow down well into my adult years. I drove my older sisters bananas. I really have no idea what my parents thought of me.
I drew endless maps in my bedroom. I conquered the world, one country at a time, many, many times. I built great cities and kingdoms and empires in my strictly ordered imagination, step by step.
I am a strange fish to bullies. They are drawn to suspect me as being an easy target, and, beginning with my grade school years, bullies have done much emotional and psychological harm against me. Yet they always found that I never come under control. I never play their games. I am never subject to any “dare.” I could care less. I am astonished though, how many years of my life have been with bullies of all sorts, young and old, as my common companions. Yet greater than that, I have known many wonderful and kind friends whose friendships far exceed the norm.
Reading through this account, one must conclude that I grew up in tremendous abundance and blessing, and I did. I truly did.
Where Is Christ?
After I had completed the rough draft of what you have read thus far, I felt uneasy as to why I was providing this account to my readers. I looked through and thought, “There is no life in this.” I felt as if I was “puffing myself up.”
I did not want to abandon this project as one more “egg-on-the-face” experience, so I justified this to myself by the thought that, if I am to give God’s people hope, as He instructed me to do, then they must know that there is NO “mark of God” or “signs of great calling,” or anything like that by which “great men of God” show themselves to be superior to “lesser Christians.”
I was just an ordinary boy growing up through the sixties right along with millions of similarly ordinary boys all across the country and the world. Regardless of the environment in which any child grows up, providing there is some degree of safety and stability, boys are interested in very similar things all across the board. If I dare to know my Father, then anyone can do the same.
But then I realized what was really going on inside of me.
The Lord has taken me over the years into specific and painful things inside this time period and showed me that it was not my fault, and that He was with me through each difficulty. But I had never gone with the Lord to look at the whole picture.
Writing this account takes me back into a bubble of feeling that is overwhelming to me. On the one hand, I loved that area around our house so much, but on the other hand, the feelings of a possessiveness it held over me had become stultifying. I do not come under the control of anything; for that reason, I have mostly stayed away from bringing these memories back.
The problem is that I have called large chunks of my life by “not-Christ.” Through every moment of my childhood, I was coming out of my Father through the good speaking of Jesus. I walked as His revelation, that is, as the image and likeness of God. The problem is that we knew none of that. Rather, Christians have preferred to call themselves by “sin in the flesh” rather than by Christ.
It has been an exercise, now, of bringing the Lord Jesus into the strong emotions of these times and bringing that entire package of strong emotions and memories into the Lord Jesus Christ, as Paul commanded us to do – Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. I am no longer seeing a vain little boy, in spite of all my lack. Rather, I am seeing Jesus living as me through every moment. As I do that, all separation, as well as the twisted union of self-exaltation and self-condemnation, vanishes away into the peace and goodness of Christ.
Christ was in me, and inside of Christ was my Father, reconciling me and all my way unto Himself.
I have never been alone.