Will G picks me up at 8AM and we drive the couple hours up to Sylvania, just south of Toledo and the stunning 89-acre campus of Lourdes College. Founded and sponsored by Sisters of Saint Francis, the architecture and aesthetics reflect a settled honor of God and the Creation. I could have spent hours roaming the hallways and resting in the quiet places, marveling at the creative expressions and obvious delight that has been crafted into this place.
Quite the contrast to an little ugly building on the side of the road that Will pointed at as we passed it in Fitchville. Surrounded by farms and across from a Christian campground sits, ‘Expressions’, the only ‘Men’s Club” (strip joint) in a forty square mile radius. It is almost laughable, if it weren’t so sad. As we drive I do an hour interview with a newspaper in Grand Forks, ND, where I will be flying later today.
After Bob (the President of Lourdes and would rather be called Bob than Dr.) takes me on a tour, we stop to have an early lunch with truly delightful members of the faculty and the Sisters and the conversation ranges deep and wide over green beans, roasted potatoes, chicken and cheesecake.
I don’t know if I have tried to express the following to you or not, but if you had the opportunity to travel with me and just hang around the edges of what happens, one of the realizations that you would come away with would be an intense optimism for the human race. You would, as I do, just shake my head. I cannot begin to tell you what it is like to ‘constantly’ meet incredible human beings, and let me tell you, there seems to be no end to their numbers. I am often asked ‘What has been your favorite place to speak?’ and I am always stuck. Places are always linked to people and it like asking me which of my children is my favorite. People so uniquely created, traveling down such inimitably personal journeys, the fires of eternity pressed into the folds of holy humanity, so many making significant choices to ascend rather than descend.
And they come to … what … hear me? See me? Don’t they understand? I have been given this incomparable gift of being allowed to come and see them? And then they stand up and tell me their secrets and the ways the world has stolen from them, and how Papa had not abandoned them when they felt so alone, and they ask me to sign a little book that they tell me has changed their lives, and they are willing to give me their hug, and sometimes willing to give me their liquid prayers, tear cascading from the most precious places, and sometimes they let me into places no one has ever gone, and they say, “Thank-you”, over and over, “Thank-you, Thank-you”. And I don’t know what to say. I want to try and explain that they have let me on holy ground and invited me take off my shoes. I want to tell them how proud I am to be in the same family as them, and I find myself saying, “You are so welcome,” and “Thank you” and sometimes Sarayu gives me words and I tell them, ‘You matter!” “The choices you are making are changing the world.” “I am so sad with you in your loss.”
He stands in front of me, in his mid twenties, tall and handsome and says softly, “For the last 6 years, I was ranked in the top 2% of manic depressives in the US. My life was a horror. I have been to every kind of professional and been on every kind of drug therapy you can imagine. Nothing touched the darkness that has swallowed me whole…and then someone gave me The Shack. Everything changed. You need to know that you saved my life. Thank you!
I want to say, “I just wrote a story for my children and for whatever reasons God has chosen to climb inside of it. I really wasn’t thinking about you but about getting this done by Christmas. I am still learning to love the people around me and I don’t understand all of this. I cannot tell you how easy it is for me to humble myself in the light of how the Three are playing in human hearts through the words of this simple book. I am thrilled to participate, especially since I know I can’t heal anyone or save anyone. I just get to be your brother.” That is what I want to say. But as I hug him, I just say, “You are so welcome. I am so proud of you!”
I know why the elders cast their crowns before the Throne. They know the truth!
My time at Lourdes another treasure. Interview with sweet TV Anchorwoman Kathleen, followed by the event that filled Lourde’s 850-seat theater. Again stories of loss and hope; “My brother was kidnapped and murdered and I feel so guilty, but your book….” “This January our 15 year old daughter was killed and I can’t tell you how your book is ministering, not just to our family, but to the high school…” And then there is Cookie B, “Now you give me a call honey, if Queen Latifa decides not to play Papa in the movie, just remember the name Cookie. I’m loosing weight right now, but just give me some time and I can put it back on.” And then the ride with two beautiful saints, Dan and Jean, to the Detroit airport. We tell stories and jokes and laugh a lot as the miles slip by. Again, I am shattered by gratitude.
In the airport I have enough time to hit two Border’s bookstores and sign copies of The Shack. I do this whenever I can for airport bookstores. It is something special for them and a simple way that I can tell them thank you. I find my seat and am out like a light.
Flights to Minneapolis and then on to Grand Forks, North Dakota. Kathy and Todd are meeting me and as I approach baggage claim, I can see her huge poster board sign announcing to the world that “Paul Young” needs a ride. I laugh. Nobody else cares. Grand Forks sits about 70 miles from the Canadian border, and a stone’s throw from Minnesota. 100 miles in another direction sits, Minot, the birthplace of my wife, Kim. Thank you Minot! Thank you North Dakota.
We head into town and stop at St. Arbucks for fuel. Kathy and Todd live in the home Todd was born in. Having sold his dairy farm a year or two ago, they now plant crops on 700 acres. How often we forget that the food we eat is in one sense the congealed life of human beings, the life and energy farmers and ranchers, and their families who participate with God to gift us with life’s sustenance. Remember all these brothers and sisters when you pray before you eat.
Todd, at the urging of Kathy, tells me a story. You look into the eyes of this soft-spoken, wiry, strong-handed young man, and you know you are sitting in front of a truth teller. “Fifteen years ago”, he says, “my wife became a religious fanatic and because I am a farmer, I easily found excuses to say out of the house and all this Jesus stuff. I didn’t grow up around God. I grew up around ground and hard work. Not once as a child or a young man had I ever heard the words, “I love you” even accidently slip from the mouth of my father. And now my wife’s metal stability was in question because she had encountered Jesus. Problem was, I couldn’t help but notice that there seemed to be good changes in her life because of it, changes that were a benefit to me too. Three years later, I finally gave God a challenge, “You need to prove to me that you and all this is real?” A short time later, I was in the barn moving bales of hay with my tractor. I had them lifted high on the loader when they began to tip forward and fall away from me. Suddenly, a visible hand of light pushed the bales back onto the loader and light filled the barn so brilliant that it made the day outside look as if night had instantly fallen, and a gentle voice said, “Son, I am here.” He grins, “It took me weeks to even tell my wife or kids. I was afraid I would be committed.“
I love this story. Makes me want to be a farmer. I have never had an experience anything like this, never heard God speak audibly (I don’t need to anymore), but it makes me grin to know he does. I don’t understand why Papa would audibly talk to Todd and not to most of the rest of us. But, like most ‘why’ questions, it doesn’t matter to me anymore. To let me learn to walk by faith, is just as much love as talking to me audibly.
And I love that Papa called him ‘Son’.
I settled into the Holiday Inn Express, talked to Kim (she and girls are heading to a movie) and fell asleep, too tired to blog. I’ll do that in the morning. I did!
