There are few things in this life I enjoy more than Saturdays in the Fall. In my forty-four years, so many of those days have been spent on the farm, helping daddy with some project in the morning and then eating good food and watching football with my family in the afternoon. Days like this are the perfect blend of work and play and truth be told, this pretty much describes my perfect day. Yesterday was lining up to be one of those ideal days. Jade and mama were in town running errands, college football was on tv in the afternoon, and daddy and I were two hours deep into clearing brush off the creek bank, removing a felled tree from the fence row and restringing the barbed wire fence it damaged. The air was cooling and the wind was picking up ahead of a storm blowing in, when it hit me…..literally. The “it” that hit me was a thirty pound, steel, fence post driver. One minute I’m basking in the joy of a day spent working with my daddy and the next I’m down for the count in a pool of blood like I’d just called Mike Tyson a sissy. I didn’t black out, but I did wake up.
Preachers aren’t supposed to talk about things like this — at least that’s what someone once told my wife — but the last six months have taken a toll on me emotionally and my faith had taken as bad a beating as my swiftly swelling scalp. This year I’ve preached to empty pews and computer screens as much as I have people. I’m at a new church but I haven’t been able to spend time with most of them because of quarantines and social distancing. A month back it was COVID-19 that knocked us off our feet for a good two weeks, requiring us to isolate from literally everyone. It was during that stretch of sickness that I did something I had not done in my adult life, missing three straight Sundays of being with the church and preaching. In the twenty-three years I’ve been preaching, I could count on one hand — with enough fingers left over to roll a bowling ball — how many Sunday mornings I have spent somewhere other than a church gathering, and suddenly I was missing three in a row. I miss worship, I miss my church family, I miss Bible classes, I miss fellowship meals, I miss standing around talking for an hour after services have ended and I don’t know how to do ministry in a quarantine.
My dear friend Captain Wes once took me twenty-three miles offshore into the Gulf of Mexico to go deep-sea fishing and I experienced a similar existential crisis. Sitting on the bow of his ship, I began looking around me in every direction and all I could see was the sea. Without the benefit of the land to orient me I had no idea which direction would lead me back to shore and which direction would lead me into seemingly endless water. Humans don’t do well without certain types of landmarks to keep us pointed in the right direction. For a Christian, worship, Bible study, fellowship melas, and fellow believers don’t define our faith, but they are normally present landmarks that keep us oriented in the right direction. Without them, I felt like a rudderless ship, drifting aimlessly with the wind and the currents.
Oddly enough, the blow to my head actually knocked some sense into me. My wife, my parents, and my son all rallied around me, to help me get up, get cleaned up, and get the cut sealed up. I said I could count on one hand the times I’d missed Sunday morning services, but I couldn’t count on both hands the number of people I love who love me. Sitting in the center of all these people, who stopped everything to take care of me, cleared the fog I was in. I haven’t lost anything. Sunday morning still rolls around once a week, and with it comes time with my church family, and let’s be honest, some of us look better with a mask covering most of our faces. I miss fellowship meals but my suit coat that won’t button is proof positive I have not missed a meal these last six months. I can’t say this was a perfect day but it was a perfect reminder of what I have and what I have not lost. In two weeks time this wound will have healed, but I am hoping it will leave a scar. Just a little reminder that I feel when I rub my head or see when I comb my ever thinning hair…a landmark that points me back home.
