Broken Roads

by Ira Wagler

  And over time, we relaxed a bit, Reuben and me. There was still some tension there, depending on what might come up or what might be triggered in my mind. There were a whole lot of moments like that in my head. But we worked hard at it, he and I, to reach a new dawn. And I have to say, it was all pretty seamless when he returned to the daily operations of his building-supply business, where I am employed.

  It was tough for him, outside of my own issues. And no, this is not a sob story about the poor guy. We all pretty much deserve what comes at us, that way. But still, it was tough. There came a whole heck of a lot of judgment out there at him. Totally deserved, I’m sure. But still. At what point does one begin to lower the walls a bit? Even for such a wicked sinner as he was?

  There’s always a light that comes shining through in a story such as this. Or the telling of it probably wouldn’t be happening. And that light came the following November. Reuben and I had taken to hanging out after work every couple of weeks or so. We sipped scotch and talked. (When we reconnected, I swore I would never drink with him. It took more than a year for that little oath to fall by the wayside.) And it was mostly good, always.

  One day after work, he seemed a little excited. He had read some article on some website, written by some progressive woman who worked for Fox News. I don’t remember her name, and it doesn’t matter. But she was pretty well known. She came from the highbrow crowd. She was way too smart, way too educated to believe in such a thing as God. Faith was for hicks. And she wrote about how she came to know Christ. She lived in New York City. The center of the world. And somehow, she was drawn to attend a church there. Redeemer Presbyterian. She heard the sermons of Pastor Tim Keller. And eventually, she wrote, the hound of heaven hunted her down. Jesus stood by her bed in a dream. And asked her to come to Him. And now she knew. Now she believed in Jesus. And she wrote very unashamedly of her journey, of where she was right then and how she got there.

  Reuben was fascinated by that article. It was so open and so honest, especially coming from a mainstream media personality. And he followed the link the woman posted to Redeemer Presbyterian. And in less than a week, I saw the change in him. He was listening to those sermons. He told me about it. I had never seen the man more excited. He sent me a link or two. And one Sunday, when I couldn’t make it to Chestnut Church, I pulled up that link and listened. Tim Keller is a very dynamic speaker. And no, I don’t mean he yells and carries on. He doesn’t. He talks very calmly, infusing his message with little stabs of humor. But it’s always, always grounded in Scripture. And his message was inside out, from all I ever heard, growing up. Not that I hadn’t heard it before. It was right along the same veins that Pastor Mark Potter had been preaching at Chestnut Church for the past number of years. The same stuff. Powerful stuff. Life-changing stuff. It doesn’t take you long to grasp the real truth, what real freedom is, when you hear Pastor Mark. And it doesn’t take you long when you hear Tim Keller.

  Reuben listened and listened to those Tim Keller sermons. I know that because the man wouldn’t stop talking about what he was hearing. Always, in every conversation, it got woven in somehow, what he’d heard. And it changed him, too. His personality. He had always been a driven man, as you’d have to be to build up a business like he did. And he had a tendency, sometimes, to let the pressures get to him. He’d get all snappy and uptight and loud. That part of him disappeared almost completely and very soon.

  And he told me early on, “Every morning when I get up, that’s the first thing I do. I drink coffee and listen to a sermon.” Well, what do you do with that? You cheer the man on, in this case. As I did. I was hearing the same stuff at my church, just at more of an entry level. It’s preached for people like me, people who come from a guilt-ridden background like the Amish. Here is the path. It’s upside down, from all you ever heard. That’s what Pastor Mark preached. So I could connect with what Reuben was telling me about what he was hearing.

  I thought the whole thing might fade for Reuben. He was living pretty loosely in some areas of his life back in that time. Just like I had lived pretty loosely with my scotch for a long time. And I saw him ponder and reflect on what was and wasn’t right. Not as a lost person. But as a child of God, awaking to the light, struggling to grasp, to see, to accept the gift that was there for him. And the next thing I knew, he was driving to New York City every Sunday morning to actually attend services at Redeemer Presbyterian. Right into the big old evil city he went. Week after week, and Sunday after Sunday. And he wouldn’t stop talking about what he was hearing. The gospel.

  And no, it didn’t happen as you’d expect it to in any feel-good Christian story. Where everything suddenly gets all cleaned up and everyone is reunited and singing happy praises. And now everything is perfect. It didn’t and it’s not. Life is messy, and it’s just as messy for Christians as it is for anyone else. At least it is if you’re honest. Which a lot of Christians aren’t, because they think they have to act all happy and bubbly all the time about what Jesus did for them. That kind of pressure is an awful thing. So this little story doesn’t end like that. Reuben did not return to his wife. They are divorced. They remain divorced. I don’t judge that. How can I? I’m divorced, too.

  And time passed on. A few months later, he told me that he’d love to start a men’s group of some kind. A Bible study, although he didn’t call it that. He had in mind that a few guys could just hang out upstairs in the conference room at work. And listen to a Keller sermon. They’re only forty minutes long. And then there would be discussion. “Sure,” I said. “If that’s what your heart’s leading you to do, then just do it.”

  “Ah, I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not sure anyone will come if I invite them.” I told him to try. And he texted a few friends a few weeks after that: “Next Tuesday evening at six thirty. I’d love to see you here for a little get-together. We’ll listen to a sermon.”

  “I’d come,” I told him when he asked, “but this week is full. I don’t go out evenings much. But go ahead.” And that Tuesday, I asked him, “Anyone committed to coming yet?”

  “No,” he said. “I guess I’ll just go and wait and see if anyone shows up.” And that was what he did.

  The next morning, I asked him, “Well, who came?”

  “I had a very nice time,” he said bravely. “All by myself.” I felt bad for the man. Here he was, all excited. Wanting to just get together with a few guys and share what he had found. And no one came.

  “Have one again next Tuesday night,” I said. “I’ll come if no one else will.” And he scheduled the next meeting for the next Tuesday. As that day came, I asked him, “Did anyone commit to come?”

  “No,” he said. “Are you still coming?”

  “I plan to,” I said. And I got to thinking. Who could I invite? This was Lancaster County. Everyone was busy all the time. It was tough to get something like this going. I called one friend. He’d like to, but he had other things planned. “That’s totally OK,” I said. “I just thought I’d check.”

  Then I thought of another friend, Allen Beiler. He and his family had been coming to my church for some time. I knew he was a market guy, a vendor. Late in the week never suited him. He was at market. But this was Tuesday. So I texted him. “Would you like to come to a Bible study here at the office tonight?” I figured he would have something going.

  But he texted right back. “This is a little weird. I was just going to text you to see if you want to go hang out at Vinola’s tonight. So, sure, I’ll plan on being there.”

  Great. There will be at least three guys, I thought. That’s better than one, and it’s better than two. I texted Reuben. “My friend Allen’s coming. He was going to text me to see if I want to hang out at Vinola’s. He’s coming here instead.”

  I just puttered around at my desk after the others left at five. And right at six, Reuben walked in. He had brought snacks and bottled water. He trundled everything upstairs and set it out. Way too much food. And we sat there, talking, the two
of us. We kept glancing out toward the road. A few minutes after six thirty, Allen’s big old dually pulled in. He parked and walked up to join us. I made the introductions, and we sat and visited for a while. And then Reuben pulled up the sermon he had in mind for that first night.

  We sat around the table and listened and took a few notes. Keller’s theme. Is God love or is He judgment? One side claims He’s all love. The other side focuses pretty much on judgment. And Keller asked, Does God judge us? Oh, yes, He does. He judges every single thought, every single action, every second of every day. Not that He’s standing there with a big old sledgehammer to whack you with if you make a mistake (my words, not his). But He definitely judges everyone, all the time. Keller gets a lot said in forty minutes. He had several closing points. The one I remember was this: if God is the judge, that means we have no right to be. Not saying you don’t judge people’s actions—this is me speaking again, not Keller. We have to. In business, for instance. If you’ve given me a bunch of bad checks in the past, I’ll insist that you pay cash for any materials you buy from me. Things like that. There are ten thousand more examples.

  But we never, never have any right to judge another person’s heart. Never. That’s God’s job. We have no right to be resentful or unforgiving of anyone who’s wronged us, either. No matter how deep that wrong was. And yeah, I know a little bit about all that. It takes time, often, to get over a wrong, to heal from a wound that sliced deep. Lots of time, sometimes. And it takes light that can come from only one source. Time. And light. I guess it can all be broken down into two other things Keller kept talking about, too. Forgiveness. And love.

  And those two terms don’t mean anything close to what I was brought up thinking they mean. Forgiveness isn’t so much consciously forgiving someone else for the wrong they did me. It’s more like trying to get some small, small grasp of how deeply depraved my own heart is (yes, is—not was) and how much I have been forgiven, simply as a gift, by grace. And love? That’s simply loving God.

  After the sermon was over, we sat around and talked. And it was open and honest talk. Good stuff, spoken from our hearts. And no, there was no closing prayer, although there certainly would have been nothing wrong with one. We just didn’t think about it. By soon after eight or so, we were fixing to leave. And we talked about it. This was great. When can we do it again? We checked our schedules. We settled on the following Tuesday evening. Right there at my office at six thirty p.m. Allen agreed to pick the sermon we’d listen to. Let’s try to get a few more people over, we agreed.

  And with that, for the first time in my life, I could say I was excited about going to a Bible study. And we put the word out. The invite. If you’re a guy, you’re welcome to attend, too. We don’t care who you are or what you believe. You can be someone who sees things just like we do or close to it. Or you don’t have to believe anything about whether or not there is a God. You can be an agnostic or an atheist. You’re still welcome. And we’re not just saying that. You really are. Yeah, you’ll have to listen to a sermon. That might be a negative thing to you. But it’s only forty minutes long, and I think you’ll be intrigued. And no, you won’t get clobbered or ganged up on. You will be totally accepted.

  That’s the message we wanted to put out. We came up with a couple of rules, and I mean only two. Every person who came was expected to be cordial in speech and conduct, of course. That’s always a given. But the only two real rules were this: No drinking at the Bible study. (You could go to the bar afterward, if you wanted to. But you couldn’t drink there.) And if you smoked, you had to step outside to do so. It doesn’t get much more open than that.

  And that’s the story of me and Reuben.

  Mom’s Funeral

  The spring of 2014 came bumping in a little rough. Winter had faded, and new life was sprouting from the earth. Mom had been way under the past few years with that cruel and brutal curse that is Alzheimer’s. She hadn’t been here, with us. Not in any sense, except for the occasional twinge of coherence. She was out of it in every way. Except her body clung to life. Stayed and lived and breathed. Her condition deteriorated to where we thought she couldn’t get any lower, that it couldn’t be very long until she got called home. It didn’t happen, though. Through it all, she still held on. Held on to life and to this earth. It was a brutal thing to watch.

  And it’s kind of funny, too, I’m thinking. Writing about traveling home to a funeral while writing about traveling home to another funeral. I think of the prophet Ezekiel in the Old Testament, proclaiming a certain vision he had. Many believe the man saw a spaceship. He described it as a wheel within a wheel, floating up there in the heavens. Here, it’s a funeral within a funeral. Well, the connection makes sense to me. But anyway, back to Mom.

  She had been real sick, too, now and then. Not talking about the Alzheimer’s, here. She was sick with that, all the way through. That was her condition, her burden, the Alzheimer’s. I’m talking sick as in having a fever or some such thing. She was there, so often. And every time that happened, the news trickled out to the family. And every time that happened, we grasped for some small sense of hope. Hope that she could go now. And we prayed that she would be released from all the pain, all the suffering that she could never tell us. We could see it, the state she was in. But she had no voice to tell us. So we simply prayed. That’s what you’re supposed to do, that’s what the preachers tell you. Lord, take her this time. She has nothing left here. And we prayed that prayer without guilt.

  And we prayed and prayed and prayed some more, those last few years. Prayed that she could go home, that she would be released from her misery, the dark night she was in. All to no avail, it seemed like, as the months came and slipped on by, then the years. And it got to where I despaired of even asking God to take her. It seemed so futile to pray and so utterly senseless that she remained. It just seemed useless to believe that God even heard anything we asked of Him when it came to Mom. To me it did, I mean.

  I heard it through all the noise around me. I had just come through another tough March. And now Mom was sick again. It sounded serious this time. Sure, I thought. It’s been serious every time. But this time, it might be different. This time, she had the flu. A serious flu. High fever. And she couldn’t cough. She had no strength to. That was where Mom was. That’s a pretty cruel place to be. Lord, take her soon. Take her now.

  And we stayed connected, the family, as that week closed in around us. They were busy, my sister Rosemary and the others in the community. It is a huge burden to take care of someone in Mom’s condition at home. It’s a constant struggle, a tough road. Get her up. Put her back in bed. Feed her. Get her up again for a few hours. And on and on, over and over. Day after day, week after week. And as time rolled on, year after year.

  And every day, we heard the updates on the family chat line. Every day that week, the message was the same. She’s sinking. But still, she’s hanging on. Thursday and Friday rolled around. She’s still sinking. She hasn’t been able to take in any food or water since Wednesday. She probably won’t last the night. It was an extremely tense and troubled time, that week. Your emotions get yanked around, all over the place. Today her fever is better. And today it’s worse again. In the state she was in, no food or water. God, just take her. That was the prayer of all her children. And still she hung on. Her heart beat strong.

  By Friday, the end seemed imminent. This time, she would go. Very soon. That night, probably. My brother Stephen called me. He and Wilma were heading out that afternoon. They’d arrive tomorrow, on Saturday. I wished him a safe trip. And told him I’d come when something happened. “Those are decisions we all have to make for ourselves,” I said. “By all means, go. Give my greetings to the others. Tell them I hope to see them soon.”

  You only get one mother. And there are all kinds of emotions involved in letting her go when death comes calling. She can leave only once. But in a sense, Mom had already left us long ago. First into the twilight, then into the sheer and brut
al darkness that is Alzheimer’s. What do you do when those opposing emotions collide? You want her to be released from all that pain and crap she’s going through. But your heart doesn’t want to release the woman who gave birth to you, the woman who brought you into this life.

  That week, as she sank lower and lower, my emotions bounced all over. But the strongest one was a deep longing to see her released from this earth. Maybe I’m a bad son. I don’t know. But that’s what I felt, and I would bet that’s what all my siblings felt, too. It was just so frustrating as each day came and went. Lord, please call her home to You. Please. And yet He wouldn’t. Day after day after day, as she sank into a weaker and weaker place, her heart still beat, strong as ever. It was all pretty maddening.

  Saturday crept by, then Sunday came. And that morning, in church, I talked to my pastor, Mark Potter. Told him of Mom’s condition. How she was clinging on. And how we were praying for her release. Mark jotted down a few notes and included my prayer to open the sermon that morning. He spoke Mom’s name. “Ira’s mother, Ida Mae.” Her age. Her condition. He prayed for her peaceful passing.

  And I told my friends at church how it was. They’d all known. “Still, we think it’s getting close,” I said. “We just don’t know. Pray that she’ll leave us soon.” And all that day, no news. That night, I sat at my computer, writing. And right out of nowhere, all at once, I just got real mad.

  Pastor Mark had always preached, “God is your Father. A father wants to hear what’s in your heart. If you’re not happy about something, if you’re angry about something that’s going on in your life, just tell Him. He wants to hear it. Tell Him.” And that night, sitting here, I did just that.

  I was pretty mad. And I let Him know that. I told Him. “You are God. Why in the world are you keeping this poor woman here? She’s suffering, just as she’s been for years. What purpose can you possibly have to let her linger and waste away like that? Come on. You can call her home anytime you’re of a mind to. Call her to you. Now. Tonight. Why, why wouldn’t you do that? It’s such a simple thing. Call her home. Take her to you. All it takes is one word from you, one breath of your command. Call her home. Now.”