The Deranged Farmer

I came in from the morning chores sobbing. I had just seen inside the evil heart of man and was sick to my stomach. I reported it, but I don't know if justice was ever served in his lifetime or if it followed him after.

At 6:00 AM every morning, I was up and out in the barn ready to begin the milking. On this particular morning, I had what should have been the wonderful privilege of watching the birthing of a calf. The mother moaned and groaned and the hooves of the calf appeared. She was definitely struggling and so the old farmer tied some rope around the hooves and began yanking and pulling trying to help the mother with her delivery. She was moaning real loud now and it began to look like this wasn't going to be a normal delivery. Eventually the calf slid out onto the floor of the barn and the relieved mother began licking the wet slimy body. The calf was a little slow standing up and before I knew, it the farmer had grabbed the calf and was forcing his head into a can of milk cussing under his breath. The calf wasn't catching on and the farmer gave the calf a swift kick in the ribs. "Drink you sorry SOB", he shouted. I had just turned fifteen and wasn't sure what I should do.

This was my first real job. My dad had met the farmer in the market and had felt that the farm would be a great summer experience for me. "I'll pay the lad $60.00 per month plus room and board" the old guy had said. It meant I got to live on the farm with the farmer’s son and help with the haying and drive the tractors and all kinds of cool things.

Growing up I loved farming. A farm set was the only thing I had asked for Christmas after Christmas, at least a half dozen years. The farm set always looked so amazing in that Sears and Robucks catalog but even the small sets were more than mom and dad could afford. Our typical Christmas stockings were a large orange and apple with some candy and a pair of socks. There were some good years too, like the year we got a new toboggan and the year we all got skates, but mostly we got a new set of long johns and a fresh supply of underwear and socks. On my thirteenth Christmas my folks heard about a used farm set through a radio call in trade show. By then I had really out grown the desire and it had been a couple of years since a farm set had been anywhere near my wish list, so when I opened my gift hoping for a new suit, I was a little disappointed. But I knew it had come with great sacrifice and I staged a big smile. While my desire for the farm set might have faded, my excitement for farming never did.

I had the opportunity of a life time, and with $60,00 per month for two months, by the end of summer I could buy me a brand new suit, maybe even a three piece suit with a vest. It was a 6AM to 9PM job with every other Sunday off and most of the days were filled with sweat and adventure. I loved driving the tractors. Haying was a blast and when we were combining my days were spent loading, driving and unloading bags of oats. Once we had emptied the combine I would swing down off the bed of the truck bed into the cab and I would head off to the barn to unload. Then quick, back out to the field just as the combine was filling up again. All day, I drove the truck back and forth from the barn to the combine.

I went to bed exhausted. All night long I would wake myself up, running into the wall on the side of my bed and discover that my pillows were stacked neatly at the front of the bed. In my dream I was filling the bags with oats from the shoot on the combine, tying them and stacking them at the front of the truck bed, apparently at the front of my bed. After about the fifth time of waking myself by hitting the wall, I just stayed awake until dawn. That was the morning I got to witness the calf being born.

It wasn't the first time I had witnessed the farmer beat up on the cows; in fact all of the cows tails were twisted and crooked. If the cows responded poorly to his cold hands or gruffness, he would grab their tails and twist them. I had never seen such cruelty to animals and that early summer morning I had the wretched experience of watching that evil man kick that new born calf to death. To this day I regret that I just stood there and watched. I wished I had taken the steel bar that he used often on the cows and given him a taste of his own medicine but it wouldn’t have solved a thing. He was obviously a brocken man who understood little of grace.

I know now that when we live less loved every one and every thing around us suffers. As I've grown older I have come to know that when sin is left unchecked in us - those inside and outside of the church walls – we and all of creation around us, suffers. Scripture says "The earth is crying, groaning as in birth, waiting for the manifestation of those who have learned to live loved - God's true children.

But Thank God for Church

My folks left the local Pentecostal church after hearing about a new church called Peoples Revival Center. It was on the hill across town and we would walk three miles there and back as many nights as it was open. It had those comfortable theater chairs with a heavy cushion on the seat and a curved back, not the long hard pews that were at the old church. And the music was good. I even got to play a snare drum and once all of the guitars got cranked up we could whip those people into a frenzy. You knew, the ones that were dancing in the spirit because their eyes were closed and if they fell over and hit their heads they didn’t bruise. If any body fell out under the power we would be quick to put a sheet over their legs so none of us boys would get distracted.

It was a very interesting place to go to church, seldom a dull moment. Brother Gillam was my true to life hero. Before he became a minister, he drove a grey hound bus and as far as I was concerned that was almost as important as being Prime Minister. He was a wonderful and Godly portrayal of every thing I wanted to be when I grew up. If I could just preach like him, and fix a broken down car like him; or build a camp like him, or even let go a fart like him, I would be the happiest person on earth. He would pick us up in that old International and carry us places where dreams came true. We laughed, played, cut down trees, got head rubs, tore down old buildings, set up tents, made maple syrup and traveled the country together. I was the same age as Crock, short for Davie Crocket, short for David, his son. Being his sons’ age gave me a second dad that always was doing something adventurous.

And man could he preach. He would emphasize his point by throwing his handkerchief up in the air at just the right time so he could time it and reach our with a swift jab and catch it on the way down without even looking up. There was a wire strung across the church on which we would sometimes hang a sheet to separate the room in order to have two classes going on at once. One time we watched him throw that hankie into the air and it didn’t come down. It got struck on that wire. It was the funniest thing about the whole sermon. He thought so too. He was a man who loved to laugh.

We had a lady who would visit from out in the country somewhere who had a whole set of false teeth. I remember seeing her lose her teeth and get into a laughing fit that would get the whole church laughing, Holy Laughter we would call it, and Brother Gillam would hold his gut laughing with the most joy you could imagine for a preacher.

We had visiting preachers, usually from the Deep South who sang through their noses and played the fiddle, banjos and guitars. Most of them could shout it out till the Holy Ghost fell. One guy from Australia or somewhere used to wake us all up by throwing his drinking water on us while preaching. And if we got sleepy again, he would smash the glass on the wall behind him. That sure got our attention. He wasn’t mean; he was just long-winded and good at putting us to sleep.

I remember Brother Hardy preaching on hell, all red faced and running back and forth screaming into the microphone. That scared me some. One time he got happy and took off running around and around the church. A few ladies began to chase him and then all of us joined in until we were all out of breath.

The worst sermons were the ones about the rapture. I remember many occasions coming home to an empty house and searching desperately for my mom. Considering what we were up to in our club, I was totally convinced on several occasions that I had been left behind.

It was always fun when Tovio Seppo’s family visited from Port Huron Michigan. All five boys would get up and sing in harmony. They were like stair steps and Tommy, the youngest was the showstopper, much like me in our family. Mom Seppo would play the piano and then it was Tovio’s Seppo’s turn. He was the most fun to watch. He was a big thick man with short stubby fingers and when he sang, it was opera, but not ordinary church opera. He’d take all of his teeth out so he could hit the high notes and then sing on his tiptoes swinging his arms wildly around. By the time he was done the whole church would be in stitches.

And my favorite was Big Norm. Let me tell you about Big Norm. He had to be about three hundred pounds. I just remember it was a long hot ride to Alabama with Big Norm in half of the back seat and Bob, Crock and myself all intertwined on the other half. But he was always a hoot to watch and especially when he got blessed. Every part of his round body would jiggle. He could play that tambourine. I remember one time as he led the song service just jiggling away up there having himself a party. Problem was, his zipper was down and out came the tails of his shirt. Brother Gillam noticed and danced inconspicuously up beside him whispering in his ear. Talk about a deflation. That big old balloon just deflated into a small little ball behind the podium for the rest of the sing along.

We would some times have real Holy Ghost times, but most of the time we would just have a good old hyped up Pentecostal time, rolling on the floors and swinging on the chandeliers. But when God did show up, powerful things happened. I saw demons come out of people right in front of me. I would see Brother Gillam break some bodies’ glasses under his foot and watch them go out of church seeing. He would spit on his finger and stick it into some old ladies ear and she would start to shouting, “I can hear, I can hear.” He would break their canes and they would go out walking.

One time Sharon, the mother of friends close to our age, came in on a mat. She was dying of cancer and when they prayed over her she got up and ran around that church laughing and looking just like an angel. She died a week later.

Another time Brother Gillam believed that a young boy would be healed and the parents decided not to see a doctor. The boy died and friends of the pastor sued on their behalf. I saw Brother Gillam go into a 40 day fast, become skin and bones, wasting away in grief over the young boy. Crock was in my bedroom the night my dad came in and told me his daddy had died while preaching a revival in Alabama. He had a heart attack and died slumped over the pulpit.

This was the first time I experienced death of a vision. Well maybe not exactly the first time. Once we had all dreamed about building a trailer that my dad could pull behind his Hillman. We were planning on going camping and fishing and have lots of adventures. We worked every day building in faith, dreaming, planning, and believing like you naturally do when you are a child. We made the wheels out of wood and finally the day arrived when we had it finished. We planned on pulling it out of the garage and hooking it up to the car and taking it for a spin. The only problem was that the garage doors weren’t big enough for us to get the trailer out of the garage. It was disappointing and the recovery was quick. But when first Sharon died and then Brother Gilllam, so did my heart, my dreams. My hero had died and in his place were the haunting questions, Why? It was an echo of question about mom too, I suppose. Where is God when you really need Him?

Prelude

I was shouting as loud as I could and only got the attention of a few of the people around me. My mother had died of cancer a few months earlier and we, my siblings and I were traveling through Chicago with my dad on our way east to meet our new mother. My dad was planning on marrying his first sweet heart, the girl he had never had the courage to follow through with the first time around. She was now fifty and had never married and she was to become our new mother.

We had been riding the rail from the west coast and decided to take a break in Chicago. Dad had taken us to the old historic Gospel Mission. It was testimony time and I had a testimony. I was asked to repeat it and then I was told to get up and stand on the chair and say it again as loud as I could - so I bellered out "I love Jesus and Jesus loves me". That time it worked. The crowd applauded and nice comments were made from the stage, people wanted to shake my hand and I was hooked. I was going to be a preacher. It felt good, really good. But I needed a great story, you know, the kind of story that makes people cry and want to get right with God. For many years I grieved about the smallness of my story....Christian kid, Christian home.

A few weeks later with our new mother, we were again at a revival meeting some where in Ontario. I don't remember much about the service, but when the alter call was made I slipped out of my seat and by myself made my way through the stadium to the front. From there I was ushered into a side room where counselors were waiting to pray with those wanting to give their lives to Jesus. I was only five years old and went completely undetected. In a corner all by myself I fell on my knees and invited Jesus into my heart. The tears flowed freely and the warmth of His presence filled the room and I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that I was loved and forgiven. I now had the real story and I was going to be a preacher some day just like Billy Graham and Oral Roberts, two of my real life heroes.

My birth mother, Ruby, was the first born in a family of preachers. My heritage is rich. Looking back over these past 55 years since that day of new beginning, I have done my share of preaching and have enjoyed the applause of men and God. But my story has undergone much tribulation and trial along the way. I have had to fight for it. It didn't come easy, but this is my story ... this is my song. "He loves me". I fulfill a longing in His heart, as does He in mine. He is satisfied in me and I am satisfied in Him. Day after day the revelation grows. He loves me isn't just a chapter in the book. It is the book and every chapter is a spin off of that one central truth/revelation. He loves me is the center and the focal point of life.

And that is the legacy I leave for my kids. That is my ceiling and their floor. Knowing that I am so loved by God is the best gift I could give them. Not that we love Him but that He loves us. They will have to fight for that one like I had to but hopefully not as hard. I pray that Mary and my legacy will be an extention of our Fathers. A legacy of love. And my heart is that His love will be released through our lives in our kids, their kids and grand kids. And that this love will color and flavor thier world. This testimony (God's love story) is the Power of God to Salvation to everyone who believes.

After Mom Died

After mom died we kids were all split up for a few months. I remember visiting my Uncle Bob in Trail BC. My brother Bob was living with him at the time. That was our first introduction to TV. We sure enjoyed seeing the Lone Ranger and his white horse racing across the desert and then Roy Rogers would come on and then our neighbor would close the curtains. We never did get to see the end of Roy Rogers. The nose prints on his glass probably bothered him.

We were quite the bunch of hooligans. Discipline wasn’t dad’s strength and when Grandma wasn’t around, we pretty much ran the place. Although I do remember the one time dad spanked me. Byron caught my friend and I in the back house. That’s what we called our out door plumbing. Every Halloween our neighbors back houses would get knocked over but not ours. My dad was smart enough to give ours a foundation. We were always proud of dad the day after Halloween. Anyway, me and the neighbor kid had undressed each other and were doing what little boys do. We were discovering ourselves. Byron told dad and dad found a pine needle branch and my totally bare and exposed bum was beaten with that branch until it was red as mom’s lips. Shame on me! Obviously l had committed something seriously wrong. I don’t ever remember getting spanked by my dad again. It must have pained him worse.

Looking back, there were plenty of other things dad could have spanked me for. I lit the largest field fire in town and all the fire engines were called to put it out. It started small but all you had to do was grab a handful of dry grass, set it ablaze and run like hell dragging it behind you. That’ll do it every time……and then run to the house and never show your face until all is over. The secret kept until I found it could be a good opener in conversation, especially if you were feeling a little irrelevant. Little did I know at the time, but that story would become one of my kids super dad favorites.

And my sister Ruth, well I don’t have many child hood memories of Ruth. She was a teen-age girl and as such wasn’t much fun. She had boy friends and always seemed to be in trouble. I remember dad and mom staying up late worrying about her. It seemed harder for her to adjust to a new mother. She was embarrassed to ride in the Hillman, always keeping her head down in town. She had some very worldly friends who liked rock and roll music and so did her cool boy friend Tim. One day he even pulled us behind his soupped up truck with the straight pipes sticking up behind the hood, around the field of snow on our toboggan. I remember that Ruth sat very close to him in the front seat. It must have been for the warmth. What fun with the windows rolled down and that amazing rock and roll music filtering out over the night air. But she left home one day unexpectedly to live with our aunt Ea out in California somewhere. I never saw her again until the day of her wedding, years later. I just knew that she, and Byron and Bob worried my mom and dad a lot.

Oh I forgot this part. This is so amazing. We got a new mother.
Oh yeah, we did. We took a train from British Columbia to Ontario. It was the kind of train with the exposed top cars where you can look out and see the country passing by. Dad left us with our Aunt Florence, a tiny little woman with a hearty laugh and sweet temperament. And it was a farm with real live animals and haymows etc. One day dad showed up with our new mother. I immediately took a liking to her. How cool is that… we got a new mom.

I guess it was a little harder for the rest of the siblings. But me and her, we got a long like old friends, Story goes, she had been my dad’s first sweet heart and he had never had the gumption to follow through and marry her until Ruby convinced him on her death bed that he might need a little help raising the four of us. She was an amazing woman. In fact she had spent many days after my dad left wondering why God didn’t have that for her. He was the love of her life and for some odd reason he didn’t have the courage to follow through way back in his twenties after he’d popped the question. She had never married and instead stayed on and served the Bible School (Elim) by raising the founder’s children. She eventually became the dean of women. In the years after she married dad, whenever we visited Elim she was like a celebrity. Everyone told stories of her heroism and greatness. In fact one of the buildings was named after her and still is to this day. Not her new name but her maiden name. Watson Hall. We had a new mom and we were now doubly blessed and wealthy beyond measure. Actually dirt poor, but yes, wealthy beyond measure, we were loved.

Mom died

Mom Dies

I have very few memories of those days. Living in small communities, where dad could get work. I do remember Mom began staying closer to home. In fact she began spending more and more time in bed. I remember a few occasions where she would get up out of bed and she’d have a moment of unusual strength. One evening after coming home from a local Rodeo that my brothers and I had snuck off to, we sat around the table reliving what we had seen. My favorite story of the day was the one where the cowboy’s pants fell off after he was bucked from the horse and drug around the arena hanging on to the horses tail. The story didn’t go over well with mum however, and before I knew it, my mouth was being washed out with soap. Some how for mom, it wasn’t as funny as I had remembered or maybe it was in the telling.

Once I fell out the door of our car into a snow bank. Dad would have driven on oblivious of my absence but my mom noticed I was missing and had dad stop the car so I could get back in. I was running like crazy, “Wait for me”, Wait for me”! Afraid I was lost forever. I sure loved my mother. She thought about stuff like that.

One other time when I had fallen off the marry go round and split open my head, she jumped out of bed and came to my recue with as much care and compassion as she could muster. But she was growing frailer and frailer. Near the end we said our good byes through the window of the hospital and I went to live with Grandma. Why did she have to die so young with so much to live for, God?

After the funeral, Grandma picked us all up and took us down to Vancouver. We had never seen such amazing sights and most of the ride our heads were out the window. And there was lots of pointing and yelling. Grandma was a very stately woman - she had pride. She walked head held high, chest out, shoulders back, stomach in. She was a Dalgaty and that name carried with it, especially among Pentecostals, a demand for respect. - Most of her sons and one of her daughters being ministers and such. I think she was a little embarrassed by our behavior.

Grandma was a disciplinarian. There was one spot on the neck that she would grab and tweak real hard when she thought you needed a lesson in something or other. Even worse was when she got a hold of your ear and twisted it real hard. You were at her complete disposal when she had you by the ear. We respected her. She was the monarch.

And I was arguably her favorite. I was cute. I was little. And I was innocent. I knew that because she would call me her little Lloydy boy or better yet her little preacher boy. Byron was the rascal and Bob, well he was in the middle and he and Byron fought like two rabid dogs. When they were young, their fights consisted primarily of fist throwing and yelling. As they got older the fights sometimes involved knives and guns. They would have murdered each other if I hadn’t got in the middle. That was my place. I was the peacemaker and the good son. At least that is how I remember it.

Prince George

A couple years later we moved to Prince George. Our lives were rich and full. Uncle Orville got dad a job at the sawmill where he was able to earn his fourth class engineering ticket. Now we could afford our own four-room house with a build out for a future bathroom.

There was a pump in the kitchen and a gas cooker that mom used to heat up the bath water. Saturday night was bath night, whether we needed it or not. Because I was the cutest and the youngest, I got to bathe first. Being first meant I got the clean water. By the time it was dad’s turn the water was so muddy that he some times went without. Saturday night, that was the night when all of the preparations for Sunday happened. As I just mentioned, we all got baths, then our shoes were shined and our clothes mended. Sunday was church day, the highlight of the week!

In the early summer dad would buy a large block of ice and we would dig a deep hole in the back yard and bury the ice with wood shavings from the sawmill and on hot summer days we would dig up large chunks and use it in our new ice cream maker. It was the best of times.

One-day dad took us all down to the Frazer River for a swim. Byron made me a tin can with holes in one end so when you filled it up, the water would come out of the bottom like a shower. The current in the river was running pretty fast and all of a sudden the can was swept away from me into the deeper water. When Byron saw me crying, he decided to go out after it and before he knew it he was in over his head fighting for his life against the current. Ruth saw him struggling and dove in after him. Now both of them were in over their heads and loosing their struggle against the current. Thankfully two older experienced swimmers saw what was happening from the shore line and went in after them and pulled them to safety.

But nobody rescued my tin can. It was overall a very sad summer day.

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Chapter One - The Beginning

Mom and Dad

I was prophetically birthed into this new and amazing world. Mom and dad already had three beautiful children and one day in mid October, before my dad left home for his winter stint in the one room school house some where deep inside northern British Columbia, he and mom made a special appointment. It went well. He had to make it quick because winter was fast approaching.

I can’t imagine how lonely that must have been, winter that is in the interior of British Columbia, living in the basement of the one room schoolhouse paid for by Canadian tax dollars to provide a grade school education for the Indian tribes children in that region. His job was to keep the fires burning and to pass on the fundamentals of arithmetic and spelling and science, a full and rounded out education.

My dad was the smartest man I knew. He knew every constellation in the night sky, every bird’s song in the forest and could name every tree. “This is the mighty Douglas Fir tree Lloyd” He’d say. Yeah, that’s how it happened. Me. I am the direct result of a very romantic father who believed God had told him to have one more child and to dedicate him to the Lord for the “ministry”. And so one early fall night dad obeyed.

When he came home in the spring, freshly shaven and gaunt with hunger, I was sitting there waiting for him. What a day of rejoicing that was. And his name shall be Lloyd, hmmm, Lloyd as in Lloyd’s of London, or just maybe my uncle Lloyd. His middle name will be Douglas, after the mighty fir. And here I am Lloyd Douglas Clark, an amazing miracle in all of my Glory.

My birth mother was even more amazing. She had been the first in her family to get the Holy Ghost. It was the early nineteen hundreds and the Holy Ghost was being poured out all over America and He had even made His way up to Canada as well. I was told it started in Azusa St California – the Holy Ghost Revival. Mums family had been solid up standing members of the now post revivalist, respected, local Methodist Church. When the Holy Ghost was poured out, people would do some very strange and wonderful things and the Methodists would have none of it. In fact they were the first to throw the tomatoes and to call the Pentecostals fanatics, and Holy Rollers. Fanatics and Holy Rollers they were and they began to wear the title with pride and boldness. As I said Ruby was the first of her family, but before long, her whole family became holy rollers.

Three of her brothers ended up as preachers and she would not be intimidated by those who tried to convince her that God did not approve of women preachers. Thankfully there were already role models for her to emulate, Aimee Semple McPherson being among the most recognized. So Ruby and a friend hit the road and were soon traveling the country of Canada preaching wherever God would open doors which was primarily on Indian reservations. She would grab her guitar and sing and dance until the Holy Ghost would fall and people would come running to the alter wanting the anointing that she was carrying. Grandma tells that when she would return home her shoes would be warn flat with cardboard for in soles and her clothing had to be burned in the pot belly stove to get rid of the lice and fleas.

My dad was turning forty, still single, working on a farm when one day he was invited to a revival on an Indian reservation where two young women were headlining. That was how they met and some how they got married and began to have babies. Mom settled down to a local pastorate in Fort St. John BC. And dad taught school to support the new and quickly growing family. Four in total. Ruth was first, then Byron and Bob and finally little Lloydy boy me.

My Dog Molly

“Not Carloe again!”I was tired of the name Carloe…

Dad had come up with the name the first time around. The pup was so cute and we couldn’t come up with a name that stuck until dad called out “Carloe” after one of his child hood pets. I always wondered why he called his dog Carlo because they had few cars in those days.

About a week later Carloe was prophetically hit by a car in the front of our home. She died as we all stood around her. I’d never seen anything like that before and the shock about ripped my heart out. Carloe was gone.

A few days later another pup appeared and again we were stumped for a name. Dad called out “Carloe” and again it stuck. Carloe the 2nd. It wasn’t but a month or so and Carloe the 2^nd was also struck by a car and didn’t survive.

It was a few dead Carloes later when a friend of mine offered me a pup. “No dad, his name isn’t Carloe.” It was past time to change the name. Besides she didn’t look any thing like a Carloe. She was a black longhaired mutt with some cocker and who knows what else. I named her a good dog name. “Molly, that’s her name Dad, Molly.” I had my own dog and couldn’t be happier.

By the time Molly came along I was probably ten or so and had experienced my share of misfortune with pets. You see, it wasn’t just a bunch of dead carloe’s, I had watched dad ring the kittens’ necks, and chop off the hen’s heads. We watched our friend Bud shoot one of our cats. When the last Carloe got distemper, Byron, sticking with the car theme, tried to asphyxiate the dog in his Buick. He rigged the exhaust so it would blow back into the car and the dog eventually kicked the bucket. Byron thought it would be the most humane way to die.

And that’s when I decided that the most humane way to die would be of some thing no one has to watch. So the next time we had to practice pet euthanasia with some of the cats, we decided to put them in a bag of rocks and throw them in the river. That gave me bad dreams also.

By the time we had to put Molly to sleep, we were all out of ideas. She was foaming at the mouth now and dad said she had a temper or something and felt it was too dangerous to have her around the house any more. Dad said he’d take care of her and I went off to school.

It had snowed hard all night and the back yard had a fresh 12 inches. I looked forward to playing fox and goose and making angels in the snow when school was over, but when I got home the whole back yard was red with the blood of Molly. She had moved as our neighbor took aim and had been grazed with the bullet and then ran crazed around the back yard until she bled herself to death.

From then on I never wanted another dog. I couldn’t imagine how our neighbor’s dogs lived such long graceful lives and all of ours had such horrible endings. Only our mother calico mother cat named Kitty managed to live a long life. It must have been in the name.

The Cult, I mean club

Have you ever been a part of a club? It’s great, especially once you are in – an insider. There are special favors for the special ones and punishments for the ones who aren’t as precious. We had a club. We were also religious and in my experience religion and clubs can be a terrible mix. We had some very important rules like no smoking, unless it was grass or maple leaves rolled in brown paper and we were all in it together. No lying, no filthy stories or jokes and no swearing.

Now swearing was the worst offence. Swearing was like, well it was like matches to gasoline. We were Christians - from birth - and as such never heard a fowl word come out of our mothers or fathers mouths. They were saints of the most High God. I used to think they didn’t know any swear words until the day we came home from school and were coughing into our hands “Kuhn, Kuhn, snicker, snicker”. My mother, who wore her hair in a bun and had a very meek and mild temperament, understood what we were trying to say and immediately put a stop to it. Surprise! Surprise! Of course, we had no idea what we were trying to say. She had to let us in on it. We learned that day that we Christians, never swore!

Our friend from out in the country had a swearing problem and yet really wanted to be a part of our cult, I mean club. We did some pretty cool things like float rafts down the Thames river in flood stage, and put firecrackers in frogs mouths, and build forts, and go carts, and have camp fires with great story telling. His parents were alcoholics and swore like bloody what do you call its. The rule was that if you swore we would pull down your pants and brand your bum. Needless to say some where in the country is a guy about my age with a big red scar on his behind. He swore that day like a bloody …sailor and then was excommunicated . We weren’t having any of that in our club. We were a Christian club with rules

Now some times Playboy magazines appeared suspiciously in our club and that was always by some kind of miracle. They had the most beautiful pictures in them that could be imagined. Actually very little was left to the imagination. Little by little the tenants of faith were being watered down and corruption was setting in. We would find extreme pleasure in the little things of life like hiding in the bushes and waiting for the car brakes to squeal as hand full’s of stones would be thrown in the air and come pelting down across the hoods of the cars. I remember the pleasure we found in sitting high up in our perch in the dormer of our attic shooting kids in the bum with our bb guns as they walked past the front of our house. Or the BB gun fights we would have in the fields behind our house. We knew all of the bible stories, but some how the fact that we were Christians didn’t seem to impact many of our decisions. Or maybe we liked some of those bible stories too much and we were game for a reenactment.

One day on our way home from church Bob and I decided to climb up on the roof of the store fronts on Main St over looking the sidewalk below. It was great fun as we rolled up large snowballs and lobbed them onto the heads of unsuspecting window shoppers. We heard a noise and decided we needed to call it a day but on our way to the back alley below a man who lived up in the apartments above the stores caught me by the arm as I was making my exit. Bob had escaped and was now yelling at me “Lloyd, don’t look him in the eye”: Hide your face” I had no idea why that was important. He told me later it was so the man could not give a description of us to the police. Bob was my bigger brother and he was looking out for me. I was able to shake free and while we ran home, the man ran to the police department. We hid in the bushes all the way home as the police cars went up and down the streets shining their spotlights.

Bob and Shopping for a suite

My summer work had yielded the $120.00 it had promised and my biceps had grown at least an inch. The view in the mirror was tanned and taunt and getting handsomer and handsomer...plus my mind had been occupied every minute of every day. It had, over all, been a great summer.

The $120 was more money than I had ever earned. It should be enough for a suit. Yes, that’s what I really wanted, a suit. Bob offered to take me to London, the closest big city, to go suit shopping. Bobs car was a 1955 Ford and Bob thought it made for a good street racer. As a result, Bob’s car burned as much oil as it did gas. Black smoke would billow so thick out of the tailpipe, the kind that’s responsible for the Global warming we’ve been hearing about. It got so bad that he would ask for the used oil at the gas station. It was a lot easier on his wallet.

On our way to London, we got to pretending that our car was a get away car with a smoke screen hiding any would be trackers. There was certainly plenty of smoke. . Bob wasn’t speeding as usual. He had said he wanted to take it easy for a change and we were Sunday driving like as if we going to church . As we were driving through Brights Grove, I noticed a guy walking along the side of the road who seemed to find us quite amusing. As we passed by I pointed him out to Bob. “He thinks we have a get away car Bob”. Bob turned in his seat to get a good look just as we were rounding the curve. All I remember was seeing a shiny new 1965 Buick chrome grill and then darkness, complete darkness. Apparently I wandered around outside of the car but I couldn’t see - at the time I vaguely remember thinking some one had pulled the plug on the lights. Somebody laid me down on a blanket and I lay there wondered what was taking the ambulance so long.

The next day in the hospital Bob came by with a big grin and his front tooth missing and passed me a mirror so I could see my damages. This was better than Halloween. My forehead had been completely torn off and sewn hurriedly back together. My handsome face was bruised beyond recognition. It was covered with the longest criss-cross of stitches I had ever seen, The doctor had tried to pull the gaping cuts back together. No wonder it had gotten so dark. The skin from my forehead had fallen over my eyes after going through the windshield.

I found out later that my doctor had died after sewing me up. The new Doctor came by in the morning and when he first saw me he had such a look of astonishment on his face. He had never seen such a poor patch job. Bob had a great sense of humor and from then on nicknamed me scarface.

My brother Byron

Byron was my older brother… still is. He was the oldest of us boys and mom’s death messed with his head some. She was worried about Byron. She felt he would have special challenges ahead and both Ruby and Eva spent a lot of time on their knees for him. It is a good thing they did.

He was a loner but I don’t think it was by choice. Something was eating at him. He needed to think original thoughts and take roads no one ever traveled. This only made life lonelier.

One of my favorite Byron stories that best illustrates both the need for prayer and answered prayers happened shortly after he left home. He moved out west by himself a couple of years after high school and was traveling along one evening on a lonely winding road through the mountains. He noticed a young native lad with his thumb out and screeched to a stop. The lad hesitantly jumped into the car. “Come on in son, I’ll give you a ride.” The young man had no idea of the “ride” potential stored up in Byron. Not being a rules kind of guy, Byron hit the gas throwing the young lad back in his seat. “Nothing is more fun than a ride in a race car through the mountains,” Byron thought to himself. There were straps in the Buick LeSabre, that were seldom worn but the young man understanding the gravity of the situation quickly employed his. He was in for the ride of his life.

Byron looked over at him as he dug his fingers into the leather on the seats. It was a nice car, power windows, power everything and especially power under the hood. “How’s it going?” he asked the young lad. The boy seemed to have a stuttering problem and Byron knew the cure. Fear is a great motivator. - fear of hell, fear of dying. “Son, Do you know Jesus?” Still all he got was stuttering. “You know he died for you. When you stand before the pearly gates, do you know the password? Son, it’s Jesus. Do you want to meet him?” The young man seemed to be having trouble speaking and his eyes were practically bugging out of his head. He was also shaking uncontrollably.

There was no traffic to speak of and Byron hit the pedal screaming around the curves with little to no concern for oncoming traffic. It was dark now. The thought of wildlife on the road didn’t even cross his mind until he rounded another curve and there she was, standing in the middle of the road, looking down her long nose with a similar look to the one on the lads face. He hit the moose dead on at about seventy miles per hour. The last thing he remembered was seeing the young lad scrambling to get out of the car and running off into the darkness.

The LeSabre was totaled and the miracle of the story was the result of mothers’ prayer’s no doubt. The moose lost its hooves in the middle of the road, totaled the front end of the car, flew over the cab and landed on the back trunk. Thankfully Byron was speeding or he might never have lived to tell the story. There was no sight of the young lad to get his version of the story. We assume he met Jesus and that Byron was the instrument of grace in his heart that night. No telling though.

In the beginning

Where do I start?

I could go back to the story behind the Clark Story, way back to Adam and Eve or even further back to a place far away, long ago even before time, like where we were in the thoughts of God before the world was made. Now that would be an awesome place to start.

Can you believe that before the world was created God was thinking about me, my design, my looks of coarse, my story and my screw ups and all of the modifications He would have to make on the finished product, in fact everything about me, where I would be born and to whom and their story and before them how He would get us out of England and into Canada where we belonged and on and on… He was also dreaming about the relationship He would have with me and how much pleasure I would bring Him. He placed such value in me, even to the point of sonship.

And the biggest part was that he also planned for my screw-ups. He planned for me in the sending of His Son to earth. He thought about what it would take to bring me back to my original created value because He already knew what sin would do to me and how messed up I would be.

He wasn’t surprised by my sin. It didn’t catch Him off guard. His plan already incorporated my full redemption and what it would cost to restore me. You see He knew my sin would so impact my identity, destroying everything He’d dreamed about in His original plan for my life.

He knew what giving me freedom would do; to me and to the relationship He imagined having with me. He also knew what it would cost Him to bring me back to my original created value.

So He planned the cross….the place where my sin would be carried on His marred body on a tree some where outside of the walls of Jerusalem in a land far away. Two thousand years ago He became sin for me. He became my sin, the sin that so easily besets me and in His body, marred beyond recognition, There, representing the marring that sin had so caused to my identity, He destroyed it’s power over me once and for all, making me a brand new person, renewing all of the potential and promise of which He had originally dreamed.

Now this isn’t a religious story I am writing. This is just my story and it’s really cool.

Disclaimer

Since every reader is also in the middle of their own story and since all of us, every person on this planet is at varying degrees of living loved, I’ve decided it would be best to change some names, especially of those who at the time of my writing haven’t yet been able to come clean with their past as it relates to embarrassing parts where our stories intersect. I left other names intact for people who over the coarse of this story were impacted by heaven’s touch.

Every man alive is living at varying degrees of security in their truest God ordained identity. We all respond and react to life from our own context of malnutrition or nutrition…insecurity or security. And since all earthlings suffer in one area or another it becomes illegal to point fingers as though we are not also infected. Sin in us is what it is, evil and ugly. But now because of the cross every man woman and child on this planet is in the middle of his or her own personal discovery and revelation of this love. Some fail to believe they are even in the story, some never make it out of kindergarten…but also very few graduate with honors. It is not my place to point out the weaknesses in others but to share in a way that you can relate with and begin to see yourself as the one He loves. Then you too will leave Heaven’s mark…heaven’s color, flavor and fragrance on the generation to follow.