Roux: I have my big purple ball! My ball makes me happy!
Jason: Roux, do you need to go outside?
Roux: I like to run around with my big purple ball…
Jason: Roux, do you need to go potty? Do you need to go potty?
(Jason runs to back door, and opens back door. Roux goes to her bed.)
Jason: Roux!! Ugh.
Roux: I will not obey.
Jason: Megan, she’s your dog!
Megan: She’s a feminist.
One summer in high school during our youth group’s Youth Sunday service I played a duet with my Aunt Polly. I on the trumpet and she on the organ. That Sunday was Mr. Paul Krupp’s “Come Back Sunday.”
Mr. Krupp and his wife had been absent from church for three or more months due to a horrible fall that he took replacing a clock in his workshop. That fall, which left him in the hospital for awhile, was just the beginning of his troubles. Physical therapy and then trying to get his Driver’s License back is what followed. The doctors never thought he would be able to sit up in bed after that fall, much less be able to drive a car again.
After the service, Mr. Krupp came up the aisle, followed by his wife of 50+ years, and he stopped by my side. His hunched back being supported by his walking cane. As his cane landed by my foot, he looked up into my eyes and told me he enjoyed the music. Mr. Krupp was a very talented musician and teacher. He played tuba in the community band for years. In addition, he fixed instruments for many of the students in the high school bands. He found any kind of brass music enjoyable, especially in worship.
Over the next week or so, Mr. Krupp took my trumpet into his workshop to give it a tune up. When he was done with he called to let me know it was ready. When I asked him how much we owed him for his time, he said, “Nothing at all. But, I do want you to come by.” So, I got my Momma to take me to his house.
After arriving at his house, I asked him again about a payment. He said, “Your playing in church was payment enough. I really enjoyed it. No matter how simple.” He proceeded to tell me what a great sound I can get out my Bach horn. And then, he brought out another trumpet and asks me to play it. So I doodled a few notes on the scale on it.
“Sounds good,” I said. He looked at me, and his old, worn, tired face smiled at me as he said, “It’s yours, and I mean it. It’s yours.”
I was speechless. I tried to form words, but I couldn’t. He chuckled from his old throat, and gave me instructions to use this horn for marching band as not to mess up the Bach horn.
When I was in middle school, a friend of my Dad’s brought a collie to our house. He had found her on the side of the road, hit by a car. He took her to the vet. He couldn’t keep her because of the apartment he lived in, so he brought her to us. He had named her Penny. Penny looked just like the famous collie, Lassie, just a lighter shade of brown.
Over the years, Penny would be there to see us get on the school bus each morning and to welcome us home each day.
My senior year, our marching band trip was to Walt Disney World. My Dad was going as one of the chaperones and we were leaving the house to go to the school. It was that part of the day when evening was coming on. The sun was slowly slipping away and the moon was slowly rising to takes its place. Penny was nowhere to be seen. I remember thinking that this was odd. She was always around. She always there to greet us or to see us off. But on this evening, she wasn’t.
Something deep within me knew that something wasn’t right.
I called her name, “Penny! Penny!” Nothing. No bark. No collie feet running through the woods. Nothing. The strange feeling I had that something was wrong wouldn’t leave me.
I called again. Still nothing. My Dad was urging me to get into the truck. We were going to be late. It would be ok, he said, she’ll find her way back. I kept calling. Then, I heard something. I asked my Dad, “Did you hear that?” He said he didn’t. I called Penny’s name again, and the sound of faint bark could be heard. Soft, quiet. Something was indeed wrong.
I took off running, despite the cries of my Dad telling me to wait or to get a flashlight. Back behind our house was a huge creek that would run into the Pamunkey River. There was a trail from our house to the creek and another trail that would lead to my grandparents’ home next door. I ran, stopping every so often to call Penny’s name again, listen for her bark, and then run in that direction.
I ran down the path, jumping over dead logs. I crossed the creek using the old oak that had fallen in just the right place to serve as a bridge. I struggled to get up the steep hill using weeds and branches to pull myself up it.
I reached the top and there was this old abandoned house. No one had lived here for years. Windows were broken. Doors were missing. It looked like something out of a horror film. As I ran around to the front of the house, I stopped to see Penny standing on the roof of the porch.
Without a moment of hesitation, I ran into the dark house, up the stairs, and found the room whose missing window, Penny had walked through. I called her to me, and she came back into the house and together we ran out of the house, down the hill, across the old oak bridge, and up the path back to my house. Somewhere in the midst of this running back, we bumped into my Dad would was coming after me with a flashlight. But, we didn’t stop, we both kept running until we made it home.
This month a new book by Dori Baker, a former seminary professor of mine, is being released. It is called The Barefoot Way: A Faith Guide for Youth, Young Adults, and the People Who Walk with Them. In this book, Dori invites young people and leaders to step out on a 21-day journey of experiencing God. Dori introduces in the book a methodology she calls “L.I.V.E.” that can be used solo or communal to exlore the stories of God encounters.
The book features stories collected by Dori from young people and youth ministry workers, including two written by myself.
I was a freshman in high school. It was Sunday evening and we were gathered upstairs in the youth room at church. There was a handful of us up there seated at various adopted couches. It was a typical night with lots of chattering and munching as we caught up with each other and passed the snacks around.
Finally our volunteer youth leaders settled us down and gathered us together. They explained to us that we had a task for the evening that needed to be completed before we left that night. Our task? Plan a Youth Sunday worship service.
As an introverted child, I never felt like I had much of a voice. Or at least not very loud or noticeable. So, here, I was a short, shy, skinny freshman participating in my first experience in youth group planning a Youth Sunday. So, I did the only thing I knew how to do, I quietly sat at the end of the table and said nothing. I waited for the conversation to come to a close, anticipating volunteering for something simple like collecting the offering.
My fellow youth groupers were naming hymns and prayer ideas over top of each other. Others were volunteering to be greeters or ushers. The youth leaders were busying writing all of it down, trying desperately to keep up with the flow of ideas. I thought I was in the clear. So far, so good.
Then we came to the sermon. Who was going to deliver the sermon?
One of the seniors spoke up and said, “Jason would be good at it.”
I was absolutely scared to death. I’m sure my face went through a few stages of red. The youth group discussed it quite passionately and all agreed I should do it. They started to give me ideas, convincing me it would be awesome. I reluctantly agreed. My youth leaders helped me through the process. And when Youth Sunday came along, I did it.
photo by J. Leckszas
“Are you getting married?” Ms. Clark quizzingly asked me.
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered, “in April.”
Ms. Mary Clark has been a LebCamp resident for the last three LebCamps. I had gone by her home a few days ago to check on something that was causing her some concern. After talking about her family and raising one of her nieces, Ms. Clark turns her wit and wisdom towards my future.
“Marriage is hard work,” she said. “You have to take a little and give a little.” As we stood around in her LebCamp-painted back room, she shared quite openly about her marriage and the struggles she experienced and the eventual divorce.
Ms. Clark then told me that it’s important to be patient in a marriage. “Womans . . . well,” she says as she begins to chuckle. “I am one, so I know,” she says. She began to pat her chest as she said, “We got a lot stuff going on in here, you just got to be patient.”
And I respectfully said, “Yes, ma’am.”
Our YG session this Sunday night is going to be on prayer. The following illustration is a great one that I like a lot. The author is unknown and I found it in Faith Weaver’s “Jesus the Champion” youth curriculum.
A little boy was sitting next to a grizzled holy man seated beside the Ganges River. “Will you teach me to pray?” the boy asked.
“Are you sure that you want to learn?” the holy man asked. “Yes, of course,” the boy replied. The holy man grabbed the boy’s neck and plunged his head into the water. He held him there while the boy kicked and screamed and tried to get away. Finally, after an interminable period, the holy man let the boy up. “What was that for?” the boy asked.
The holy man explained, “That was your first lesson in prayer. When you long for God the way that you longed to breathe, then you will be able to pray.”
Well, it’s Facebook official. I’m engaged! I popped the question to Megan this past Thursday while we were on a mini vacation to Washington D.C. We had been talking about the trip for over a year and finally our schedules let up to make it happen. And I thought, what better time to ask.
We left Thursday morning on the train out of the Ashland station. Once arriving in D. C., we hopped on the Metro (which we learned to love) and headed to Georgetown for an amazing lunch. After changing into more comfortable clothes, we walked to the Mall area. We headed first to the Lincoln Memorial. I have been to D. C. a few times, but never been to the Lincoln Memorial.
I was looking forward to standing at the top and looking out over the Reflecting Pool and imaging the millions of people who gathered to hear Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. I had looked forward to getting close to the water and imagine 
what it was like for Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump to run through the pool as he greeted Jenny in his open arms. But, that didn’t happen. The Reflecting Pool is currently under construction and there was not a lick of water to be found.
The Reflecting Pool was actually my original plan for the proposal. So, there we were standing near the pool, with the ring in my pocket, and there was no water. A huge fence was up and all you can see was a rectangle of dirt. So, we walked up the Memorial, took some pictures of ole Abe, read parts of the Gettysburg Address as its engraved on the wall, an
d then we walked around the Memorial. We got to the side where you could see the Potomac River and I took a seat and encouraged Megan to sit next to me. No one was around. It was a quiet and peaceful spot. We talked a bit about what we would go see next. And then beginning with two words (“So . . . Baby”) I asked if she would marry me. . . . and she said yes.
After spending the rest of the day roaming around the city, we had an amazing dinner and evening out at Founding Farmer’s (which we think everyone should check out).
A few weeks ago my grandparents went to a local Wal-Mart to pick up a few things. As they entered the store, my grandfather told my grandmother to go and get what she needed, he was going to walk through the store and meet her in the middle.
As my grandfather came down the center aisle of Wal-Mart, he saw a boy who was afflicted. His father was sitting on a bench with his head in his hands. As my grandfather walked pass the boy, the boy asked my grandfather to sit on the bench with him.
So my grandfather did. And he proceeded to have a conversation with this young man. Everytime the boy spoke, his father elbowed him, as if to say, “Be quiet!”. Despite that, my grandfather kept talking with this boy. Eventually, the boy begin rubbing my grandfather’s head as they talked and patting his hand.
After some time, my grandfather stood to go and explained that he needed to go find his wife, but that he would be back before he left. After he found my grandmother, he took her to meet the boy he met on the Wal-Mart bench. The boy saw my grandfather coming and became very excited. He had a grin that filled his face! The father, who earlier didn’t want his son speaking, approached my grandfather and expressed his thanks for my grandfather taking the time to sit on a bench in Wal-Mart with his son.
It turns out that this boy was around the age of 30 and had a mental disability. While many others had passed over this young man, my grandfather stopped and took a few moments to wit with this young man on a Wal-Mart bench.
