“A picture is worth a thousand words,” so the saying goes, and I might add, “It lasts forever when it’s on the internet.” I have no idea if Rielle Hunter or the eighth grade girl whose boyfriend allegedly sold the nude pictures of herself she sexted (sending sexually explicit messages or photos by mobile phones) him, thought about the implications of what they were doing when they posed, Reille before a professional photographer, the girl before her own cell phone.
If they didn’t then, they have now.
According to Hunter, when she saw the racy photos of herself in GQ magazine, she cried for two hours and found them “repulsive.” Why then did she do it? She claims she went with the flow of the photo shoot and didn’t realize they would publish them. Hmmm. There may be something to her being in the “flow.” After all, she also said it was the “mysterious force” of their “magnetic fields” that brought her and John Edwards, (irresistibly, of course) together.
The eighth grade girl’s boyfriend faces more than unwanted publicity; what he did—selling the pictures for $ 5 a shot---constitutes a violation of child pornography laws. Maybe his girlfriend, like Reille, got caught up in the moment, or was responding to a dare from friends, or was just being plain eighth grade silly---really silly. Whatever she was thinking, I seriously doubt she said to herself, “I’ll send this cool picture of myself naked to my boyfriend so he can sell it to all the other boys for $5, and then the police can come and investigate for child porn, and someday, when the picture is floating out there in cyberspace, one of my own children can look at it and gasp, ‘Mom, you in the eighth grade? This is sooo embarrassing!’”
The fact is, these two incidents remind us of how easy it is to get caught up “in the moment,” disregard consequences, and make poor choices.
We’ve all been there. We didn’t know, did we? We weren’t thinking, were we? We didn’t even realize, did we? Caught up in the moment, the moment got away from us. We’re like Moses, in the Bible, whose brother, Aaron, when asked why he allowed the people of Israel to create the golden calf idol, shrugged his shoulders and responded, “They took off their jewelry and gave it to me. I threw it in the fire and out came this calf!” Caught up in the moment. The magnetic fields. Into the flow.
So, before we condemn these two and others like them for their not-so-admirable actions, we should remember all of us have made foolish mistakes. It doesn’t have to be a photo shoot for a glamour magazine, or selling nude pictures. It can be a suggestively worded text message (“hey, hot stuff”; “how ‘bout it babe”---Jesse James to tattoo model, Michelle “Bombshell” McGee), or a misplaced love note, or an inviting gaze. When we see it for what it truly is, we too, like Rielle, are disgusted with our narcissism, and like the eighth grade boyfriend, we too have capitalized on the mistakes of others.
And for all of us, there is still the hope of healing.
Roy Hobbs, the lead character in The Natural, said, in regard to his shaded past, “I guess some mistakes you never stop paying for.” And he was probably right. Some mistakes can’t be erased. Like an old athletic injury, they hang around, nagging us from time to time.
But, while some mistakes cannot be forgotten, they can be forgiven. And, God, who can sweep up the mistakes of our past and throw them into eternity, allows us, despite our fallenness, to walk straight up on the path he has for us, the path that is often rocky and seldom smooth, complicated and rarely simple, unpredictable and rarely static, the path that because it is shaped by our own mistakes, is uniquely our path, the true path for us, the one we were meant to walk.
Some mistakes you never quit paying for, but it’s often those mistakes that make us uniquely us.
Life Matters by David B.Whitlock, Ph.D., is published weekly. You can visit David’s website @www.davidbwhitlock.com or email him at doctordavid@windstream.net
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Life without Lyrics
Life without Lyrics
All I needed were the lyrics to go with the title of my country music song.
I am not a country music song writer; I have no illusions of being one; and I definitely have no musical talent. Although I’ve never been a fan of the music itself, for years I’ve been intrigued with the titles and lyrics of country music songs: “All My Exes Live in Texas,” “Holding Her, Loving You,” “If it Weren’t for Bad Luck , I’d Have no Luck at all,” just to mention a few, and for me, most memorably, the song that helped me make it through my senior year of high school football (1974), “If We Make it Through December.” Life events must surely evoke those titles in somebody’s hurtin’, achin’, breakin’, heart. Okay, not all the songs are the result of emotional trauma, job loss, or a broken heart: “Get your biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in Bed,” is a case in point.
But these titles and lyrics reveal something real about life. For those millions who have been jilted, or the millions more who know first- hand what it is to have lost and even feel like losers, and for the rest who have slid down the slippery slope of concealing sin and covering shame, there is a country music song that soothes the pain with words and melody.
So here’s mine: it came to me as I was sharing with my daughter, in a by-the way moment, that I had discovered the reason for the ache in my hip: it’s called “degenerative disk disease.” (The problem was not in my hip but in my lower back.) Her response: “I think my hip hurts just like you describe.” And now the comment that gave me my country music song title: “Everything I don’t want, I got from you” That’s it! I could almost hear the voices crooning in the shadows of a smoky bar. She went on, bless her compassionate heart, to explain herself, “You’re short, so am I; you are not good in math, neither am I; you can’t sleep much, neither can I; and now this degenerative disc disease thing. I’m sure I will inherit that from you too.”
She had given me my title; now all I needed were the lyrics.
No lyrics would come. Maybe it’s because I haven’t retained enough misery to substantiate the words in my title. Life can change, no doubt, in an instant. And life goes on with or without us. And yet something is given that enables some to keep stepping, swinging, and seeking--- despite their stumbling blocks, strike outs, and setbacks—something that keeps them inhaling the breath of life even as they gasp for one more opportunity, cry for one more chance, and hope for a little more time to cross the finish line with chest stretched out and head held high, something that is received only by those who recognize they don’t have it: grace.
I have more life to live with other lyrics, but not the ones that would fit my title.
But should the circumstances of life change---should my four children become rotters, should my wife run away with, well, should my wife run away, should my work become boringly repetitive and the people I work with cutthroats, exploitive to the last person, should the climate I live in become unbearable, should my dreams of a better place evaporate in the heat of the desert sun, and as a result of it all, should I become a broken down drunken sot, floating aimlessly through life like a released helium balloon, bouncing from bar to bar, hoping finally to land, perhaps in Luckenback, Texas, with the hurt, with the alone, with Willie, Wayland, and the boys---then I, filled with powerless resentment that my ship left without me, my wife jilted me, my children forgot me, my job disappointed me, then I might find some true grit to accompany my country music title. I would announce my song and bellow the lyrics, addressing us all, all of us who are different but the same: the details of our disappointments differ; the site of our defeats change; the complexity of our weaponry intensifies. But the pattern remains the same: we trust; we hurt; we retreat--- to the bar, to the closet, to anonymity.
Until then, I’ll enjoy my life without the lyrics…and hope they never come.
Life Matters, by David B. Whitlock, Ph.D., is published weekly. You can visit David at his website www.davidbwhitlock.com or email him at doctordavid@windstream.net.
All I needed were the lyrics to go with the title of my country music song.
I am not a country music song writer; I have no illusions of being one; and I definitely have no musical talent. Although I’ve never been a fan of the music itself, for years I’ve been intrigued with the titles and lyrics of country music songs: “All My Exes Live in Texas,” “Holding Her, Loving You,” “If it Weren’t for Bad Luck , I’d Have no Luck at all,” just to mention a few, and for me, most memorably, the song that helped me make it through my senior year of high school football (1974), “If We Make it Through December.” Life events must surely evoke those titles in somebody’s hurtin’, achin’, breakin’, heart. Okay, not all the songs are the result of emotional trauma, job loss, or a broken heart: “Get your biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in Bed,” is a case in point.
But these titles and lyrics reveal something real about life. For those millions who have been jilted, or the millions more who know first- hand what it is to have lost and even feel like losers, and for the rest who have slid down the slippery slope of concealing sin and covering shame, there is a country music song that soothes the pain with words and melody.
So here’s mine: it came to me as I was sharing with my daughter, in a by-the way moment, that I had discovered the reason for the ache in my hip: it’s called “degenerative disk disease.” (The problem was not in my hip but in my lower back.) Her response: “I think my hip hurts just like you describe.” And now the comment that gave me my country music song title: “Everything I don’t want, I got from you” That’s it! I could almost hear the voices crooning in the shadows of a smoky bar. She went on, bless her compassionate heart, to explain herself, “You’re short, so am I; you are not good in math, neither am I; you can’t sleep much, neither can I; and now this degenerative disc disease thing. I’m sure I will inherit that from you too.”
She had given me my title; now all I needed were the lyrics.
No lyrics would come. Maybe it’s because I haven’t retained enough misery to substantiate the words in my title. Life can change, no doubt, in an instant. And life goes on with or without us. And yet something is given that enables some to keep stepping, swinging, and seeking--- despite their stumbling blocks, strike outs, and setbacks—something that keeps them inhaling the breath of life even as they gasp for one more opportunity, cry for one more chance, and hope for a little more time to cross the finish line with chest stretched out and head held high, something that is received only by those who recognize they don’t have it: grace.
I have more life to live with other lyrics, but not the ones that would fit my title.
But should the circumstances of life change---should my four children become rotters, should my wife run away with, well, should my wife run away, should my work become boringly repetitive and the people I work with cutthroats, exploitive to the last person, should the climate I live in become unbearable, should my dreams of a better place evaporate in the heat of the desert sun, and as a result of it all, should I become a broken down drunken sot, floating aimlessly through life like a released helium balloon, bouncing from bar to bar, hoping finally to land, perhaps in Luckenback, Texas, with the hurt, with the alone, with Willie, Wayland, and the boys---then I, filled with powerless resentment that my ship left without me, my wife jilted me, my children forgot me, my job disappointed me, then I might find some true grit to accompany my country music title. I would announce my song and bellow the lyrics, addressing us all, all of us who are different but the same: the details of our disappointments differ; the site of our defeats change; the complexity of our weaponry intensifies. But the pattern remains the same: we trust; we hurt; we retreat--- to the bar, to the closet, to anonymity.
Until then, I’ll enjoy my life without the lyrics…and hope they never come.
Life Matters, by David B. Whitlock, Ph.D., is published weekly. You can visit David at his website www.davidbwhitlock.com or email him at doctordavid@windstream.net.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Life after Suicide
Life after Suicide
Neither of my high school friends let me in on their secret: they planned to commit suicide. They succeeded.
Not at the same time. And by then we were miles and years apart. But it still shook me to the core when I heard the news. “Death by suicide.” My friends, they were, at least for some fun years. Football. Friday night school dances. Parties. Cruising. Hanging out.
Back then, now years ago, when I learned of their demise, I couldn’t help but think: “What if I had only? When did the turn happen? Why didn’t I?” Some questions beg for the unanswerable.
That’s why I couldn’t imagine the pain that Marie Osmond, or any parent, experiences when their child commits suicide. Michael Blosil, Osmond’s son, was a first-year student at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, when he took his own life by jumping from his high rise apartment building in downtown Los Angeles. He was an outstanding student who like most teenagers, had experienced some trials. For years he had battled depression.
Depression is a common symptom among those who commit suicide. But, it’s not just depression (often indicated by changes in sleep patterns, diet, or difficulty in focusing) but the severity of those behavior changes that make predicting suicidal tendencies problematic. What’s severe for one may not be for another. It’s much easier when a child tells the parent (as did one of ours), “I’m feeling sad.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen.
Any parent can miss it. It’s virtually impossible to discern what is in the child’s mind. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, suicide is the third leading cause of death among older teenagers. And boys are four times more likely to commit suicide than girls. Family therapist Tony Real, author of “I Don’t Want To Talk about it: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression,” says in regard to youth suicide, “It just makes you shake your head…It’s very hard to predict.”
Difficult to predict, indeed. We miss it. And it’s not just in older teenagers. According to the National Institute of Heath, Senior Adults accounted for 16% of the suicides in 2004.
The Apostles missed it in their comrade, Judas. Even their suspicions of him didn’t sensitize them to his piercing question, “Rabbi, am I the one?” How could they have missed it?
But they did. It’s easy to see it from the after-side, the too-late side, the grief- side. And what we miss haunts us. As Swiss physician and philosopher Paul Tournier said, “There is no grave beside which a flood of guilt feelings does not assail the mind.”
Life and death are hard to predict; they are so closely attached. Where one discovers life, another is caught by death; where one embraces death, another finds life. Where does one end and another begin? Jesus reminds us that we truly live life by dying to it; we find it by losing it: “If you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it,” he said.
Centuries ago, when monks chose to come to the Scottish island of Iona, before making their final vows, they were required to build their own coffin. It was a way of coming to terms with death, not someone else’s death, but their own. They were not truly ready to live until they had died. As one of their monks said, sometime in the 8th or 9th century, “If death should be my fate/merciful would be that taking/I know not beneath blue heaven/a better spot for death.”
A better spot for death? Ahh, beneath blue heaven. In that suicide of death—this side of eternity--- we find life, and in it our hope for those who ended their life is kindled, those whose lives and deaths too often catch us by sad surprise, a surprise that may invite us, in another realm of time, to another life--- with them, in that blue heaven.
David B. Whitlock’s “Life Matters,” is published weekly. You can visit Dr. Whitlock at his website, www.davidbwhitlock.com or email him at doctordavid@windstream.net.
Neither of my high school friends let me in on their secret: they planned to commit suicide. They succeeded.
Not at the same time. And by then we were miles and years apart. But it still shook me to the core when I heard the news. “Death by suicide.” My friends, they were, at least for some fun years. Football. Friday night school dances. Parties. Cruising. Hanging out.
Back then, now years ago, when I learned of their demise, I couldn’t help but think: “What if I had only? When did the turn happen? Why didn’t I?” Some questions beg for the unanswerable.
That’s why I couldn’t imagine the pain that Marie Osmond, or any parent, experiences when their child commits suicide. Michael Blosil, Osmond’s son, was a first-year student at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, when he took his own life by jumping from his high rise apartment building in downtown Los Angeles. He was an outstanding student who like most teenagers, had experienced some trials. For years he had battled depression.
Depression is a common symptom among those who commit suicide. But, it’s not just depression (often indicated by changes in sleep patterns, diet, or difficulty in focusing) but the severity of those behavior changes that make predicting suicidal tendencies problematic. What’s severe for one may not be for another. It’s much easier when a child tells the parent (as did one of ours), “I’m feeling sad.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen.
Any parent can miss it. It’s virtually impossible to discern what is in the child’s mind. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, suicide is the third leading cause of death among older teenagers. And boys are four times more likely to commit suicide than girls. Family therapist Tony Real, author of “I Don’t Want To Talk about it: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression,” says in regard to youth suicide, “It just makes you shake your head…It’s very hard to predict.”
Difficult to predict, indeed. We miss it. And it’s not just in older teenagers. According to the National Institute of Heath, Senior Adults accounted for 16% of the suicides in 2004.
The Apostles missed it in their comrade, Judas. Even their suspicions of him didn’t sensitize them to his piercing question, “Rabbi, am I the one?” How could they have missed it?
But they did. It’s easy to see it from the after-side, the too-late side, the grief- side. And what we miss haunts us. As Swiss physician and philosopher Paul Tournier said, “There is no grave beside which a flood of guilt feelings does not assail the mind.”
Life and death are hard to predict; they are so closely attached. Where one discovers life, another is caught by death; where one embraces death, another finds life. Where does one end and another begin? Jesus reminds us that we truly live life by dying to it; we find it by losing it: “If you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it,” he said.
Centuries ago, when monks chose to come to the Scottish island of Iona, before making their final vows, they were required to build their own coffin. It was a way of coming to terms with death, not someone else’s death, but their own. They were not truly ready to live until they had died. As one of their monks said, sometime in the 8th or 9th century, “If death should be my fate/merciful would be that taking/I know not beneath blue heaven/a better spot for death.”
A better spot for death? Ahh, beneath blue heaven. In that suicide of death—this side of eternity--- we find life, and in it our hope for those who ended their life is kindled, those whose lives and deaths too often catch us by sad surprise, a surprise that may invite us, in another realm of time, to another life--- with them, in that blue heaven.
David B. Whitlock’s “Life Matters,” is published weekly. You can visit Dr. Whitlock at his website, www.davidbwhitlock.com or email him at doctordavid@windstream.net.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Back it Up
I stood before the computer tech with my laptop in both hands, as if I were offering my firstborn into her care. “Dr. David, have you backed up your documents?” she asked.
I shamefully lowered my head, guilty again. “No,” I answered. I could hear the words of my son, Dave, echoing in the background of my mind: “Dad, how many times do I have to show you how to back up your documents? How is it that you can explain Blaise Pascal’s writings on faith and reason, and you can’t remember how to back up your documents? I just don’t get it.” I didn’t either, that’s why I fail to back up my documents. (I have since learned you can go online and receive instructions on how to backup your computer using an external hard drive, called a flash drive.) But now I was in trouble. My computer had crashed, and the hard drive was scrambled, which meant it had to be replaced. And worst of all was the news Kaylene Poff, my website manager and computer tech, broke to me, “If you don’t have it backed up, it could be lost. I hope we can save it.”
“Lost, as in vanished, irretrievable, gone…forever?” I hesitatingly asked.
My mind reeled, recalling just a few of the documents I not backed up: at least three chapters ( I couldn’t’ remember, it may have been more, I was too embarrassed to entertain the thought) of a manuscript I have been working on, numerous sermons, articles I have submitted, scripts of radio messages, syllabi, exams, poems I had written, not to mention pictures only in my possession---the picture of my son’s high school football team kneeling in prayer after a game, Lori and me on the beach, Lori and me in our garden.
At this point, I anticipated a deep, dark, foreboding funk overshadowing my future as I recalled a story from my days at Princeton. Dr. J. Christiaan Beker, Professor of New Testament Theology, was on a train in Germany with his doctoral dissertation in hand. He got off the train, realized he had left his dissertation on board, rushed back, only to find it was too late. The dissertation was gone. Beker descended into a deep depression, or so the story goes, and it took him years to come out of it and redo his doctoral thesis. Then there is author and Professor of Creative Writing, Andrew Porter, who came home from work one day to discover thieves had stolen his computer, briefcase, and disks containing everything he had ever written. After trying unsuccessfully to rewrite his material, he left his agent, sought another career, and didn’t write another word for three years.
Losing pieces of our work, which is a part of our life, easily extends beyond frustrating to depressing. The pictures lost in a divorce, the scrapbook burned in the fire, the children’s finger paintings left behind in the fifth move, the love notes forgotten somewhere in the attic of another house, all remain in the recesses of our memory until we want them, and find… they’re not here. No retrieval. No recovery. No redemption.
My grandmother Whitlock’s mind faded; I watched her memories of life disappear uncontrollably like letters on a word document being erased by a stuck delete button. Some things you can’t backup. Life flashes like a comet into eternity, too quick, too ethereal to backup.
It’s then that we have to trust those memories, the essence of our life, with the Someone to whom we pray will hold them securely in the eternal hardrive of the heavenlies.
“Good news, Dr. David. We were able to backup all your documents.”
“Thanks, Kaylene…for now.”
David B. Whitlock’s Life Matters, is published weekly. You can visit David at his website, www.davidbwhitlock.com or email him at doctordavid@windstream.net.
I shamefully lowered my head, guilty again. “No,” I answered. I could hear the words of my son, Dave, echoing in the background of my mind: “Dad, how many times do I have to show you how to back up your documents? How is it that you can explain Blaise Pascal’s writings on faith and reason, and you can’t remember how to back up your documents? I just don’t get it.” I didn’t either, that’s why I fail to back up my documents. (I have since learned you can go online and receive instructions on how to backup your computer using an external hard drive, called a flash drive.) But now I was in trouble. My computer had crashed, and the hard drive was scrambled, which meant it had to be replaced. And worst of all was the news Kaylene Poff, my website manager and computer tech, broke to me, “If you don’t have it backed up, it could be lost. I hope we can save it.”
“Lost, as in vanished, irretrievable, gone…forever?” I hesitatingly asked.
My mind reeled, recalling just a few of the documents I not backed up: at least three chapters ( I couldn’t’ remember, it may have been more, I was too embarrassed to entertain the thought) of a manuscript I have been working on, numerous sermons, articles I have submitted, scripts of radio messages, syllabi, exams, poems I had written, not to mention pictures only in my possession---the picture of my son’s high school football team kneeling in prayer after a game, Lori and me on the beach, Lori and me in our garden.
At this point, I anticipated a deep, dark, foreboding funk overshadowing my future as I recalled a story from my days at Princeton. Dr. J. Christiaan Beker, Professor of New Testament Theology, was on a train in Germany with his doctoral dissertation in hand. He got off the train, realized he had left his dissertation on board, rushed back, only to find it was too late. The dissertation was gone. Beker descended into a deep depression, or so the story goes, and it took him years to come out of it and redo his doctoral thesis. Then there is author and Professor of Creative Writing, Andrew Porter, who came home from work one day to discover thieves had stolen his computer, briefcase, and disks containing everything he had ever written. After trying unsuccessfully to rewrite his material, he left his agent, sought another career, and didn’t write another word for three years.
Losing pieces of our work, which is a part of our life, easily extends beyond frustrating to depressing. The pictures lost in a divorce, the scrapbook burned in the fire, the children’s finger paintings left behind in the fifth move, the love notes forgotten somewhere in the attic of another house, all remain in the recesses of our memory until we want them, and find… they’re not here. No retrieval. No recovery. No redemption.
My grandmother Whitlock’s mind faded; I watched her memories of life disappear uncontrollably like letters on a word document being erased by a stuck delete button. Some things you can’t backup. Life flashes like a comet into eternity, too quick, too ethereal to backup.
It’s then that we have to trust those memories, the essence of our life, with the Someone to whom we pray will hold them securely in the eternal hardrive of the heavenlies.
“Good news, Dr. David. We were able to backup all your documents.”
“Thanks, Kaylene…for now.”
David B. Whitlock’s Life Matters, is published weekly. You can visit David at his website, www.davidbwhitlock.com or email him at doctordavid@windstream.net.
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