Category: Jerry’s Reflections

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Recovery Road

Week after week our men’s step group gathered.

One by one, unhealthy elements of our lives found their way to the light. These elements (whether imposed by others or self-inflicted) defined the things that could now get brought openly before the Lord and one another.

As with the peeling away of onion skins, our interior selves gradually emerged. Confession – issuing from a humility of heart that only God  can bestow – buoyed our confidence in his trustworthiness.

Because of his astounding love for broken persons caught up in vices of sexual impurity (scripture’s listings are long and precise), Christ calls his sons and daughters to identify and renounce our self-justifying games. I was summoned by the Spirit’s drawing to call a spade a spade. Enough with avoidance! As put forward in the lyrics of the old spiritual, “It’s me, it’s me O Lord, standing in the need of prayer”.

Owning and confessing my personal moral wrongs was, I knew, necessary for turning toward and gaining freedom. Victory was in reach, but only through the strength of God’s promised Spirit and Word. This I had come to know. I longed for freedom as much as anything I could long for.

Frankly, I found it easier earlier on to open up about the bad things that had been done to me, than to come clean about my own repeated cycles of willful sinning. The process toward freedom was marked by the proverbial rhythm: “Two steps forward, one step back”. Factored in, was a continued revisiting of our compassionate God, calling out to him in fervent appeal. He did not disappoint. Not ever.

Of the various recovery communities spread across the North American landscape, the Step programs that seem to bear the more promising fruit are those calling for vulnerable, courageous action.

While (mercifully) my particular brokenness had not translated into outright infidelity (though heart iniquity was another matter), there was no side-stepping the element of straight-up confession. Not only before God and my brothers, but in contrition to my dearest and nearest family members – not the least, the precious wife of my youth. The distracting nature of a divided mind had far too many times deprived my family of a focused attentiveness.

STEP 8: We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.*

© 2024JerryLout                                                              *Celebrate Recovery

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Taste For Mischief

Crossbreeding a Chihuahua and Miniature Dachshund brings forth a hybrid.

The Chiweenie pup we named Tamu (Sweetie) became ours to the thrill of and by way of our daughter and husband. On most days Tamu proved herself to be a delightful wee companion. Today was not one of those days.

Not long after the tooth-loss drama preceding my unique but successful speaking experience (thanks to a make-it-yourself false tooth kit), I was called to my wife’s side. Ann and I were navigating the early days of her joint replacement. It naturally fell to me as amateur caregiver to offer up some simple service every little while.

When she called for me on this occasion, I happened to be cradling my make-believe front incisor in my right palm. I was set to reinstall it to its assigned spot at the lower front of my open mouth.

“Coming”, I called, heading her direction while momentarily postponing the tooth-insertion task at hand.

A square, glass-topped coffee table sits at the center of our living room. It is an elevated surface I had never witnessed our young Chiweenie visiting. Depositing the homemade denture atop the table, I pivoted and, in short order, filled my wife’s request. Seconds later I was blurting the command, “Tamu, give me that tooth!”

Too late.

Though the enamel-like article didn’t find its way to her throat, the damage to the small denture was done.

To my surprise, this mini-crisis (as with the genuine-tooth’s exit of the previous week) would enjoy a silver lining. To the credit of breakthroughs in plastics research, the properties comprising my artificial, homemade, fashion-it-yourself tooth, gave promise that my full-toothed smile might see another day.

Tamu would surrender her would-be morsel. The traumatized denture would, under my care – including some aggressive sanitizing measures – enjoy a reasonably impressive remake.

Now. To find that dentist.

©2024 Jerry Lout

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Sweet Tooth

NOTE to Reader. My apologies for last Thursday’s missed entry. A medical matter (referenced below) factored in. Also, a few of my posts for the moment are offering up a bit of  nonfiction levity, a momentary diversion of sorts. Thanks. Cheers!

You know something is amiss when you spy your Chiweenie puppy savoring your new false denture.

We had only acquired little Tamu (a name hijacked from the Swahili word for ‘sweet’) in February.

Ann and I could not have envisioned the odd string of happenings leading up to my terse command in the moment (uttered with a slight lisp), “Tamu, Give me that tooth!”

It started a couple days leading up to my wife’s surgical procedure last week – a joint replacement. Sparing my readers any unnecessary detail, it’s enough to say my standing as spouse to a ‘hip’ lady is affirmed. Ann’s post-op recovery is, thankfully, progressing well.

Meanwhile.

I had been earlier scheduled to offer up a public address for an event – a meaningful occasion before a modest-size gathering of good folks. Then came the surprise just a handful of days out.

A single tooth – lower incisor stationed right at the front of the mouth – quickly gave way during an evening meal. This tooth of mine had been jiggling about for several days, and now there it was, poised unceremoniously atop my dining fork.  What to do?

Google has a way of yielding up surprising finds. Still, a do-it-yourself tooth-building kit? Surely not. . .

I Googled.

When the Amazon delivery fellow showed up 18 hours later bearing a TempTooth (i.e. ‘temporary tooth’) parcel, I stepped into self-assigned Orthodontist mode.

While short on sophistication, the hastened experiment – to my wonderment – redeemed the moment. A gathered, attentive audience the following day was spared enduring forty minutes of puzzled distraction (What’s with the guy’s snaggletooth, is he short a dentist?)

Enter Tamu.

©2024 Jerry Lout

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Froggy’s Fateful Fourth

The Kevin Costner ‘Dancing With Wolves’ title sparks memories from my childhood days on our family’s acreage north of Okmulgee. My LIMP memoir* features a tweaked label, ‘Dancing With Snakes’. The pages capture a bladder-triggering moment when an unsuspecting serpent concealed in tall, meadowland grass suddenly spiraled its body straight up my blue-jeaned leg.

Meanwhile, at this Fourth of July season, I call up a different encounter – one mildly competing in terms of drama with that of the pastureland jig.

I was ten, and our family was enjoying an Independence Day outing at a modest cabin on the banks of the Neosho River. . .

“Come here you. Now stay put, little froggy.”

I was fishing with a simple cane pole and line, and had run out of worms when the frog risked hopping into view.

Threading it to my hook, I cast the line and waited for a fish to attack my new bait. I lingered a minute or two. Nothing.

Drawing the pole back, I retrieved the line and lay it and the pole down. The frog continued stirring.

“I’ll be back, frog.”, I called as I moved out of the clearing and headed for a potty break.

On my return I puzzled at the scene before me,

“Where’s the hook, the sinker? Where’s the frog?”

The far end of the fishing line no longer rested above the ground. It had vanished into a hole some feet away.

Raising the cane pole, I felt resistance. Hoisting it higher, I let out a short gasp. From the hole in the ground rose the sinker —and, to my wonderment, a snake – busy swallowing my frog. (a bad day to be a frog, laboring to free itself from both a fish hook and a highly focused snake).

While the hopping amphibian never made it to another sunrise, the snakes’ day likewise failed to end well. Armed with a couple decent-size sticks, my brother and I stepped up to our self-assigned task.

Here’s hoping for you a very special weekend. With gratitude for Liberty. And for you, my reader.

 

©2024 Jerry Lout                     *Living With A Limp. Amazon KDP.  Jerry Lout

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Owning It

I was about to discover that stepping from the shadows makes room for Christ’s light to catch its best chance at bringing forward his healing work.

Venturing out of the murky fog of Shadowland into sunlight’s inviting glow calls for one-day-at-a-time intentional living. Gritty, practical tools – in the grip of a handful of desperate, like-minded companions on the way – came to prove priceless in making headway.

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.

No truer maxim was ever cranked out when it came to my need for handles with which to navigate a viable pathway beyond broken sexuality. When a fellow is plagued by self-doubt and a sense of helplessness, he dare not (yet again) try to suck it up, marshal remnants of a fledgling willpower and soldier on.

Our evolving band of CPR brothers was supplying the flesh-and-blood community piece. And, the recovery program’s down-to-earth practices gave us those handles by which to prayerfully gain yardage.

On ‘Day One’ we went, each of us, to the mat to contend with a brutal concept. It was ours – within each of our own stories – to grapple with and embrace one harsh truth.

“We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable.”*

Reaching up with “quivering hand”, edging my protective mask of secrecy downward the few centimeters necessary to ‘come clean’, I drew a slow breath. From behind my eyelids, I felt the gathering of a tear. Maybe two.

©2024 Jerry Lout                                                       *Celebrate Recovery. Step One.

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Steps Forward

Sensing that another of life’s thresholds lay ahead for me – one of greater bearing than others – I texted my pastor, requesting a visit.

Not long after his ‘dumpster dive’ narrative (the lone part of the sermon I recall from that Sunday morning), Roger had begun laying the groundwork for a twelve-step venture fitting a specific niche of persons. Men serving in Christian ministry.

A Step program had already been serving our faith community for some time, yielding some beautiful fruit along the way. Through Bible-centered curricula facilitated by a compassionate, Christ-loving husband/wife team, Jim and Pam, a number of souls had – for their first time ever – drunk from springs of undiluted hope. The program, by now widely available and spreading, carried the label Celebrate Recovery (‘CR’).

Enter Roger, a “man the cloth”, who inserted a third letter, sandwiched between the C and the R. The result – a kind of hybrid version nicknamed ‘C.P.R.’ – the ‘P’ loosely representing the term ‘Pastor’.

Imagine. A recovery program concerned with hurts, habits and hangups of preachers, pastors, missionaries, youth ministers and the like.  Remarkably (or not so remarkably), Roger’s CPR groups – the first followed by another, then another – never lacked for signups.

In a study spanning a recent calendar year Barna Research noted that 42 percent of pastors had considered leaving full-time ministry. While a combination of factors can give rise to such troubling data, a common theme has surfaced. A high number of leaders in the Lord’s work suffer from a sense of isolation.

Yet, men (vocational churchmen included) connecting routinely with other men in honest, redemptive dialogue are finding themselves ushered into a place of oxygen. A doorway of hope starts opening. Wounds get disclosed. Fears and hiddenness get unveiled. Healing enters. Recovery comes.

Jesus occupies such settings. Men know the empowering presence, in the company of friends. This became my story and remains so today.

By the time of my first interactive session with a CPR band of brothers, much water had passed beneath the proverbial bridge. Some with murky currents indeed.  Here, in time, I would muster adequate courage to bring to light the account of a sexual assault, of unsavory influences, and a history of associated brokenness.

I was a child when *Lawrence took advantage. Hiddenness – my behavior default – had kept the incident sealed for beyond six decades.

I would learn afresh that from God there issues love that, as the hymn writer worded it, will not let me go.

©2024 Jerry Lout                                                                                *pseudonym

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Silent Treatment

“Is he going there?” I thought. “Are there men here in the Sunday gathering (myself included) poised in this moment to witness the unveiling of a familiar elephant in the room?”

As with fingers at a dimmer switch, the pastor was advancing the dial. In the moments following, Roger sensitively and with great compassion teamed with the Holy Spirit in lifting the lights. Illumining a pathway in the recesses of some troubled minds.

A while back I had glimpsed a flicker of hope through my counsellor-friend Steve. He had graciously labored to assure me that I was not alone, that I did not have a corner on struggles over impure thoughts and lust. Now, taking in today’s account of a fellow brother in the faith – of his struggles and his ongoing pilgrimage into wholeness – I sensed a rare, near-tangible assurance . Could far better days lie ahead?

The era of my growing-up years – the 1950s and 60s – were those in the cultural landscape marked by imperfect ideals and role models, like the ‘strong, silent male’.

While the ‘strong’ piece of that phrase might have been in question concerning some, the ‘silent’ ingredient among men was often palpable.

It might have been normal to wax eloquent over Gurnsey prices down at the local livestock yard or contesting the preferred mode of transport (Chevy vs Ford), or debating which team in a league would make the World Series cut. But confiding about personal topics – struggles over addictive behaviors and so forth – was a practice entered into rarely indeed.

Thus, I had deduced from a young age, it was best keeping my personal concerns – disturbing as some might be – close to my chest. Better to trudge forward in the company of secrets than of shame.

©2024 Jerry Lout

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Dumpster Dive

Wherever you go, there you are.

The adage packs a punch.

When a person relocates (whether across town or time zones) he encounters a lot of “New”. Things about the place are simply different. New.  The person himself, however – the relocated individual – has for the most part typically changed only a little, if at all. A hairstyle might alter, a wardrobe get tweaked, but the actual person at the core stays the same. We don’t get to don a sudden new-and-improved set of character traits in the way we might spring for an upgrade in workout sweats.

I had long ago ventured from Okmulgee County for employment in Cody, Wyoming. Afterward, accompanied by my young bride, I took up residence in far-off Africa. Decades later here I was, having landed on the campus of a local university. Still, the fact remained. In each instance I had brought “myself with me”. Jerry Lout – my cultural and character baggage (healthy and otherwise) moving about day by day in shoe leather.

But the tidewaters were about to change.

The routine Sunday morning found Ann and me at our usual place of worship. We had moved to a new church and had come to sense that we were home.

Stepping to the pulpit, Pastor Roger began his sermon. Minutes in, a delicate story of self-disclosure unfolded. This I had not expected, nor would have envisioned being shared within a Sunday morning sanctuary venue. Vulnerably but sensitively conveyed, the earthy account set a spark of hope flickering within me. For myself, a good serving of hope seemed overdue.

“Back when I was a teenaged kid in my hometown”, Roger began, “a buddy and I one day decided to go dumpster-diving. We came upon a Playboy magazine”.

The audience leaned in.

©2024 Jerry Lout

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Company Of Friends

Cradling the lifeless form of their newborn daughter, the couple could hardly contain their sorrow. Nothing fully prepares expectant parents for the trauma of losing the precious infant whose arrival had been joyously anticipated through the long months prior.

They were young in the Christian faith, and their shattered hearts needed all the mending “the God of all comfort” might bring.

Comfort them he did. Not in a magic display of immediate relief absent of future tears and void of sorrow surges that can erupt without a moment’s notice. Rather through the companioning presence of One who (though intimately acquainted with grief) embodies the singular kind of hope that “springs eternal”.

To the husband and wife and their young son, a handful of friends, American and international, remained available in respectful but easy reach. In the fortifying strength of intercessory prayer, the small band of the faith community supplied them with the embodied presence of the Lord of Life. Verbal expressions were rarely voiced. They were seldom needed. There are settings where Presence alone speaks volumes.

To the wonder of many – believers and non-believers alike who had filed into the sanctuary for the little one’s memorial service – the young father offered up tender expressions of gratitude to God the Father. Though weary with grief, our gentle=mannered friend, hailing from a land far away, had drunk from waters of grace issuing from the risen Christ.

From their shadowland valley, the family moved forward day by day, drawing often upon the Lord’s peace, his immutable Word, and a company of friends.

©2024 Jerry Lout

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Not Alone

The art of love is largely the art of persistence, says Albert Ellis.

The level of persistence marking English-Corner Volunteer Jeremy, yielded up both natural and spiritual fruit for his international friend.

Reading and gossiping Lewis’ Narnia allegories together, week after week, flipped the switch to the proverbial light bulb of Nguyen’s mind and heart. The roots of conversion to faith in Christ promised to run deep from early on. The engineer scholar, together with his sweet wife, soon shifted their postures from spectator to all out players in the adventure of a vibrant faith.

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Quotes such as this one uttered by Isaac Newton provoke mild envy (why hadn’t I said that?). One of Nguyen’s “friendly giants” was Tran.

The Tran family had years ago fled to America as refugees. Received by a loving Christian community in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma they gained first hand witness of the nature of Jesus lived out. The Tran family wholly embraced the gospel as Christ found a home in their hearts. So transformed by love, the household wasted no time throwing open the gates of their own hearts and home in Christian hospitality. (Tran family meet the Nguyens.)

Faith was never meant to be done alone. I first heard the phrase from Youth Pastor Jason Jackson. Attentive observers tend to marvel when seeing the pithy adage played out in real life.

Added players in the kingdom – common local folks yielding to Spirit-promptings – linked up with the Nguyen family. Beau and Mary Ann, Vicky, Debbie, Jeremy, Ken and Karen and others. Each adding a crucial link.

When heartbreak struck (that familiar occurrence in a fractured world) a small band of friends was in place to help cushion the blow. The Nguyens would not be going it alone.

© 2024 Jerry Lout