Author unknown...

Not a normal post...but there is something haunting about it that I just can't shake...


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I don’t know what’s left.

I can’t tell what’s going through his head. “The leader meeting was the only impassioned thing I did yesterday!” he said after not being able to recall the other meetings, the worship…

“You can’t look at one day and write the rest off as worthless.”

I was in a room with him, the kids were there, and there were beds off to one side. The room looked something like our gym at camp. The youngest boy was there with his dad…I’d been asleep and had woken up. I spent part of the night listening to Father “teaching” son how to put things into the computer, but really, he was talking to himself. He was talking out loud to himself, I think to convince his mind, and his heart, that the decisions he was making were real…and were right. I’d woken up and had walked past the room they were sitting in – his wife was across the hall.

I know things aren’t right – but I also don’t know what I can do. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him speak his mind in front of his colleagues.

Damn you, Mr. Ed.

Oh yeah – then there were the rats…tons of them in cages like we were in one of the animal barns at the fair. There were chickens too – and a little palomino horse that was trying her damndest to get away. The janitor sat there watching. Knowing that what was going on wasn’t the way it should have been, but refusing to help any more than was necessary to keep chaos from setting in. The mother of the girl with the horse got up when the little mare started to panic and the janitor turned with an “I told you so” smirk of sorts on his face – but there was sadness there too. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen those two emotions together before. Is that what guarded contempt means?

And there was a storm. We were at a camp again – part of the youth there were my canoe kids, and three other younger kids – the pastors kids - were there too. I remember having each of their hands…edged up against the wall as the wind howled – when we’d looked out minutes before, there were at least three tornadoes headed straight for us. We sat and the wind got louder, the ground shook – I told the kids to put their hoods up, and I honestly thought that I was going to die. We were alright though – even after two rounds of it. I think I remember watching some of the walls in front of us fall.

And then, a roll of thunder pierced the silence of the cloudy morning, and I rolled over in bed. It was 8:11.

I will not make the same mistake that you did…