Guest Blogger - "Life and an Old Stone Bridge"

For the first time EVER, we have a guest blogger today at the Cafe, my brother David.  David is just before me in the birth order and a gifted writer.  His work as Eexcutive Director of Human Resources at a hospital in Kansas as well as his final work on his MBA leaves little time for a personal blog, so I gladly relinquish the keyboard to him and this piece he wrote recently.  David and his wife Laura live back home in Kansas with their three awesomely awesome kids.  Enjoy!

I grew up in a cash-strapped, blue-collar family, with a dad who always placed a Christ-honoring emphasis on doing the Lord’s work and whatever it took to reach people for the cause of Christ – in the name of Christ. Mom is an exceptional example of refined-as-gold, Christ-centered living and forever the perpetual “mother of mercy and grace”. I have three sisters and a brother for whom I would take a bullet without giving it a second thought. I love my family roots.

I love how my dad received and witnessed excruciating maltreatment in his own home as a child, then determined to give his wife and kids a far better life than the one he had before he accepted Christ as his personal Lord and Savior at the critical age of seventeen. I admire his courage in the face of family adversity; honor him for his commitment to follow God in total surrender; respect him for the difficult road he traveled for years as God cleaned out his closet of all the filth and trash from an abusive past (The Light of the World dispels all darkness when He enters a life); I understand that he is an imperfect, sin-natured clump of dust-made-into-man. I love him and will always admire him for his life and legacy.

I love my mom’s history. The stories of growing up on the Kansas prairie south and east of Atlanta, Kansas (named after Atlanta, Georgia), of down-home cookin’ from my Grandma – Devota, of jams and preserves, outhouses, one-room schoolhouses, cows, chickens, and “mean ole dogs”, of long walks down a country road lined with trees that created a beautifully shaded canopy of green for the dirt road beneath. These long walks were with a boyfriend who would later become my dad, her husband for over 50 years now and counting. Romantic is what she calls it. Historic and nostalgic is what it has become. They talked of family plans during those long walks. Plans of creating a better life for a man and the love of his life, of children and what their names would be.

The Old Stone Bridge

The walks would usually end on an old stone bridge built back in 1917 and still standing today, a quiet pristine creek runs under that bridge. Dad and I spent many a weekend fishing, shooting his .22 caliber pistol at old pop bottles and cans, and camping out under the one-hundred-plus-year-old oak that has since succumbed to termites. To this day, I take my children there to fish and hike. It’s the only place to go for good, pan-sized blue gill. If you go further back off the road you can always manage to snag a two- or three-pound large mouth if you are patient enough. To this day, the aged stone, arched bridge, the rippling creek, the scent of the prairie, the sound of the wind whipping through the tall prairie grass cause me to gather my belongings and disappear for a while. The bridge and creek aided in the discovery of love and formation of a family. Too, it brought solace to a distressed man who had gone astray and nearly lost his family and life at one point.

I was going to end my life on that bridge one day when the law of sowing and reaping finally caught up with me. Depravity and addictive poor choices had backed me into a corner. Had it not been for the God-led phone call of a dear friend the night before, the fond memories everyone in my family has of that bridge and creek would have become eternally tainted by a selfish and single gunshot to kill the pain of Godless decisions and selfish, manipulative living.

When I drive by the ole homestead these days I am reminded of life – prized, precious and inimitable. And, I am still reminded of the barn that I would sneak into (just because I was told not to), of the small pond behind the barn - home to a gigantic catfish that always seemed to elude the fishhook of my cousin, Robert. I am reminded of my first kiss behind grandpa’s John Deere combine, forgettable only to my cousin Gayle. It was an innocent peck on the cheek from a boy who thought she was so pretty – I just had to kiss her! I was four or five, I think. That pretty girl became a beautiful woman with a beautiful family.

The farm now owned and operated by my Uncle Mike, mom’s youngest brother, seems even busier than in the days of my youth. I don’t know how Uncle Mike does it. These days, as in times past, family farms are going to the highest bidder. Seems big ranch aristocracy persistently seeks to enlarge their cattle kingdoms. I have always admired the hard-working farmer and his/her family. Working in the field of healthcare human resources, I would take a hospital staff full of people like my uncle and cousin Rick any day, people with extraordinary moral fiber and work ethic. I love holding on to traditions like this and will loathe the day when fat-cats take the living history from us.

Don’t get me wrong. I have great memories of every place that I lived as a child, but no place will ever call to my innermost being as the place where my parents and their parents, and their parents used to live.

Thanks for dining at the Cafe' today!
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