On Time

Do you often feel like time warps around significant events in your life? For example, I hardly remember anything significant from late 1993-2001. I was self-employed. I contracted every job imaginable we had two new kids. Life was mostly work, play, and routine. That was seven years, and time moves on.

When I was in transition from teaching in 1991-1993, time slowed into a big warp bubble. I changed careers. I can recall the most insignificant details of my life because the setting was new. That was two and a half years, and time moves on.

Dad’s career at Lewiston was four years. I have had the same pastor for thirty-one years. It seemed like an idyllic eternity, but in reality, it was just four years, and time moves on.

A paving company got the contract to hot tar spray gravel on West Lewiston road. Within a day, Dad was driving a steam roller for them in his coveralls, grinning like a mule eating briars. I think their contract only lasted for four weeks. In his old age, he would describe like a career, but I kind of get it. It was almost the last time anyone compensated him for hard work. This was a career in the span of a month to Dad, and time moves on.

When we left Lewiston, we only lasted about a year and a half in any place he tried to minister. It was just awful. Every year, a new house, a new school. Every bad situation left another scar that changed Dad, and us. Slowly, as kids, we lost our faith and became the new bad kids in every school, and time moves on.

Dad got tired of being forced out of ministry jobs. He did something different. He bought a ministry. I grew up and moved away, and he stayed put till he died there. That was about forty years. My paradox is that I was always forced into moving, but I could never get him to move. Forty years slipped away, and time moves on.

His heart never left the church he cut his teeth on nearly fifty years before. He and mom are buried in the graveyard. His impact of a life well lived as part of a community was so much greater than the sum of short careers. Fifty years was a career, and time moves on.

I have wanted to write about the bad years, but the time wasn’t right. I needed to heal enough to be objective. No one needs to be castigated. I am not venting. It is cathartic to just tell the story and move on. It is finally in my heart to do this in a way that respects my parents and doesn’t belch black bitterness from an angry soul. It happened. It is alright, and time moves on.

Our next stop, “Summit Mississippi.”