Fellow travelers

     I hear a knock on the door- "Can you please get me a bottle of vodka? I want to get lit tonight. And then drink my way through tomorrow, too!" I gently dismiss the plea for alcohol from my 20-year-old friend. Personally, I view age as just a number, and think most age laws regarding firearms, drugs, and drinking should be revoked; however, how could I willingly benefit his desire to "get lit" for the next 36 hours? Such a common occurrence, I'd think they'd learn by now. So many men, drowning in despair and darkness.
     Another friend, falsely accused and in the stages of prosecution- he stops answering my phone calls and texts on the weekend- he too turns to liquor to phase out the dark terror he faces during the work week. I challenge him to not let this happen, to keep fighting, but he's more and more depressed each time I see him. And he knows better, too. But I sympathize- I too am persecuted on a regular basis, for standing up for truth and freedom, and human decency. Ostracized for not blindly following a path of a rote "yes, whatever you say" style of living. Outcast for trying to better myself and think critically, outside of the prescribed norms. It happens daily. We suffer for succeeding, and pay the price for being upwardly mobile in spite of the limits these small-minded tyrants put on us.
     Still another, voice shaking, tells me through the fog of a downed fifth of vodka that the painkillers he took from a friend of his to ease the pain of recent oral surgery will now be the downfall of his career, now that the labs report a drug in his system that wasn't prescribed. We hug several times, but I don't know if he is coherent enough to sense the care in my heart.
     I heard from another friend today, finally free of the grip of this slavery and tyranny. He's a free man now, but shackled to a relationship he and his wife failed to invest in while the distance apart became the norm. "Being apart really took it's toll, man- we have a lot of work to do." I offer a teary prayer for him and his wife, yet another casualty of a system that takes men and their families, guts them from the inside out, and leaves them by the wayside to bleed to death.
     One man confides in me, that after a successful early career, college education, and a beautiful wife, he too feels the overwhelming evil that besets us each day. "I want to go see a therapist- I know I have symptoms of depression, but I don't want them to flag me for when my contract is up and I'm a civilian again. The stress is just wearing on me, man." Forced into schools and jobs he never wanted, his heart and mind are breaking under the load of posing each day: each man is an actor, we all put on masks before we go to work. Not a single man enjoys it- our commanding officer's lengthy history of alcohol abuse testifies to that-
and we all live for the moment we're "allowed" to return to our homes for the day, a sort of twisted slavery.
     Some men kill themselves to end the pain. Many are heavy drug and alcohol users. Still others will chase after the myriad of broken women that are a side effect of broken men. Some pretend to not care, and stuff down the stress and anxiety. This isn't a type of worry that is circumstantial- this comes from knowing that what they are trying to mold you into is someone that you never, ever, even in your worst nightmare, could ever dream of being. You're afraid of the new outbursts of anger, of how you wish sometimes you'd sleep and never wake up. Most of all, we're afraid of becoming like the tyrants we're forced to serve under. These are the fellow travelers that I walk through this season with, each of us carrying separate burdens, and feeling very alone.
   

Difficult Memories

     It's funny how little things will bring you right back to places you don't want to return to. These memories savage a good moment in time, and ruin what is happening in the hear and now. They can turn light into darkness, and laughing joy into searing pain. Growing up, we were always one misstep away from bombs being dropped upon us, only one mistake from a living hell. The target we were supposed to hit was always moving, the bar always ever higher. I don't think he himself knew what he wanted from us, living life through a twisted and warped reality.

     Nothing good comes easy, at least that's been my experience. One of my mentors would fill pages with tales of broken young men, being led back to the pain, back to the terror of a boyhood gone wrong, brought there by a loving and faithful Father who knew that the only way to experience wholeness was to conquer the fears and horrors. Much like Yoda takes young Anakin back to face Darth Vader in a vision, I too have been mercifully pushed into the ring with a myriad of enemies, ones that I would have been too fearful to face without the gentle push from a God who hears my tears drip down on a sometimes heartless and awful earth.

     Last night was one of those nights, where I knew he was in the teaching, in the experience, there to heal. I'm learning to take him at his word, and when he talks about how he came to bind up the broken-hearted, he certainly wasn't kidding. For many years, especially as a rabid car nerd, I had longed for someone to teach me how to drive a manual. YouTubing things can certainly be of value in a pinch, but God intended for men to teach other men skills, iron sharpening iron, and much is lost in the relationless drudgery of typing a question into a phone. A friend recently purchased a 2012 Volkswagen Golf GTI, heavily modified to go faster than the dreams of a young soldier. He saw my instant delight in the car, and offered to show me how to row the gears in an empty parking lot.

     I was never shown these things as youngster- doing physical things or using fine motor skills, and so when I have a teacher or others are watching, I feel like I'm right back at 5 years old, attempting something both my father and I know I have no business doing. He would never take ability or age into account- there I'd be one minute, playing with legos, the next minute, being forced to help him cut wood on a shrieking table saw. It all comes rushing back, even at 25. Every damn time. I have no reason to complain- this was the hand dealt me; I could not choose my parents. But this is the hand I have.

     We chose an empty parking lot, empty save for a sleepy patrol car. Calmly, my friend would walk me through the launching procedure from stop to first gear: "Butterfly it, smooth clutch out, smooth gas in. Too fast, try again. C'mon bro, don't get flustered- it took me forever to learn how."

     Those feelings came back, as they always do. Stall after stall, and the hands sweat, adrenaline begins pumping, as all my Type A tendencies begin to echo the voices of my past. But that's never the end of the story. He coached me through my mistakes, refusing to let me get too anxious and quit. I finally got the hang of it, and was soon laughing my head off as we raced around post, tires shredding as the worked-over motor was given room to run.

     I've learned to expect a rush from the past during such times. Difficult memories, indeed. It comes with the territory, but the trade-off is a one-on-one with the maker of heaven and earth, someone who sees that 5 year old me, crying in terror, and refuses to let me stay there. He knows I was a victim, but is making me into a victor.