My reflections, perspective, of the very soon to be 60 years have included my favorite 20 songs. In three days, I will pass through the fog of the end of my 59th year and head right on into my 60th.
Kris Kristofferson wrote
in Me and Bobby McGee, …”Busted flat in Baton
Rouge
Stevie Nicks wrote in
Landslide …”Well, I've been afraid of changing, 'cause
I've built my life around you ,but time makes you bolder, children get older,
I'm getting older too …”Led Zeppelin wrote about buying a stairway to heaven, an entire lineup of folks produced disco music that I danced to nightly in my early 20s, Glen Campbell sang about the loneliness of the Wichita Lineman, David Gates wrote about giving everything he owned in an effort to reacquire lost love, the Youngbloods sang about Getting Together, Michael Jackson talked about the Man in the Mirror and danced the night away in a Thriller mode, the Temptations sang about Papa being a rolling stone and a runaway child running wild and on and on and on the music played.
Delbert
Ross McClinton and Jackson Browne wrote, “Lighten up while you still can, don't
even try to understand, Just find a place to make your stand and take it easy.”
And
Don Henley got us lost on that dark desert highway, cool wind in our hair, that led to the Hotel California.
I was always
programmed to receive. I was always, always about the next stop, the next job,
heck the next drink. I was always about, well, me. Adopted, only child,
ego-pressed, pride shaken, always about me and mine.
Till God broke
the hard exterior and let his mercy drip into the gaps.Have you ever examined who you are and what you’ve done and where you’ve been and come up with no easy answers, no complete thoughts? As I approached my 42nd birthday, I had everything a man could want, certainly could need. I owned a house, a couple cars, had a wonderful family, a great career. And I wasn’t happy, as I understood happiness to be.
In
just one of the many strange occurrences around this time, for some reason I
listened to a country radio station one day and heard the song Much too young
to feel this damn old by a singer named Garth Brooks. I had never heard of him,
much less the song. The words ripped open my chest and flayed my heart. That’s
exactly how I felt.
At
just about the same time, one of my two favorite baseball players of all time,
Mickey Mantle, was dying of liver cancer. At one of his last appearances in
public, he said, “God gave me all this talent, and I wasted it all.” That’s
exactly how I felt.
So,
on my 42nd birthday, I walked into a place recommended by The
Times-Picayune – the newspaper in which I was Deputy Sports Editor – and told
them I felt I was an alcoholic and needed help. Later that day, I told my boss
and the friends I had at the newspaper that I was going to be locked away for
up to 30 days as the process began.
Two
days later, I had my last drink, my last bottle. I checked into Oschner Hospital
I
began a journal that next day, July 30, 1995. I wrote this:
“Dear Kids:
“Is this the beginning of
my salvation or the beginning of my insanity? Being a man of no discipline
whatsoever, I do not know. I put myself in this position quite on purpose. I love
to drink, but I know it is wrong.
And deep in my being, I
also know I can’t stop by myself. So here I am.”
I got out early, not because of good behavior but because a hurricane was
storming in the Gulf. But as I began to look at all the things I needed to
correct, change, fix, one of them was my 20 year absence from church.
Mary
and I went looking for a United Methodist church. The first one we tried had
changed its time from the published one in the phone book so we were going in
as the congregation was coming out. Embarrassed, I decided on the spot this
wasn’t going to be our church.
The
following Sunday, we went to a place called Gretna UMC. It was warm, welcoming, and a dear soon to be friend latched on to us and
took us into a Sunday School room. That room, those people, directed me not
just toward Christ, but toward what I now know was my true calling, the
ministry.
The
writer of Ecclesiastes says, “Who can straighten what he has made crooked? When
times are good, be happy, but when times are bad, consider: God has made the
one as well as the other. Therefore, a man cannot discover anything about his
future.”
One
day I was driving to the newspaper. I was searching for music on the radio
dial, and completely by accident, I came across a station playing a song called
Sweet Glow of Mercy. I listened and marveled at the words, words that seemed to
speak to who I was at that time in my life. I listened to the next song, then
the next, and I began to understand that these songs were all Christian songs,
different than any Christian songs I had ever heard certainly, but Christian.
Turns out there was something called Contemporary Christian music, something I
had never heard of.
And
a guy called Rich Mullins was featured on many of the songs on the station at
the time.
I
came back to Christ, a Jesus of my youth but a completely new understand of
him, in the strangest of places.
Mullins,
music, re-birth. Late summer 1995 was the incubator of my new life. When my
favorite baseball team, the Atlanta Braves, won the World Series that October,
I figured my whole life was suddenly blessed.
It
was, but the sweet glow of mercy was something different that that. I began to
understand just what grace was for the first time in my life.
Now,
clearly I didn’t relinquish all my sins. Eighteen years later, I still sin. But
I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t curse. All signs of a new heart, a
longing heart, a grateful heart.
But
what’s more important is what I do, not what I don’t.
I
do love.
Because
He loved me first.
MUCH TOO YOUNG
GARTH BROOKS
And the white line's getting longer and the saddle's getting cold I'm much too young to feel this damn old All my cards are on the table with no ace left in the hole I'm much too young to feel this damn old |
SWEET GLOW OF MERCY
GARY CHAPMAN
I've seen the darkness
And it saw me
But here in the light
Where the dark can't see
There is a sweet glow of mercy that
covers me
Now I am found
But once was lost
And there in the gutter
Where the wheels came off
There was a sweet glow of mercy
that covered me
GARY CHAPMAN
I've seen the darkness
And it saw me
But here in the light
Where the dark can't see
There is a sweet glow of mercy that
covers me
Now I am found
But once was lost
And there in the gutter
Where the wheels came off
There was a sweet glow of mercy
that covered me
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