“It’s a cow elk. Shoot!” said Dad. “No wait, I can’t be sure. Yep, it’s an elk all right. Dang, hold fire, I don’t think it is.” Just then the brown beast that looked exactly the colour of a cow elk walked out fully into the open meadow followed by a big white horse.
Dad and I had been hunting deer out on Bummer’s Flats when the pseudo-elk showed up. We were both on our bellies behind a log, me with my rifle poised for a shot, Dad with his field glasses scanning the fringe of the forest and the huge natural meadow that was Bummer’s Flats. We both had elk tags in our pockets so that when the brown beast wandered into the forest fringe at last light, we were both more than willing to convert our deer hunt into an elk hunt.
“Bummer!” said Dad. “We almost shot a horse.”
“You mean, I almost shot a horse,” I said. “Thanks Dad. No telling how much time I would have had to serve in jail if I had pulled the trigger on that farmer’s horse when you told me to. It’s a good thing I am slow on the draw.”
Fast-forward a couple of years. Linda and I are cuddling in the front seat of Dad’s ‘68 Volkswagen Beetle parked overlooking Bummer’s Flats. The moon is out and it is wonderfully romantic as we drink in the moonlight and one another’s company. We are teenagers, newly engaged, and thankfully, deeply in love.
“Oh how I love this spot,” I say. “Me and my dad always used to hunt deer on these flats.”
“No kidding,” says Linda. “Our horses used to be pastured on these flats.”
“Oh? What colour were they?”
“Well mine was a sorrel mare, about the same color as a cow elk, and Dad’s was a big white Tennessee walking horse. I used to worry all the time mine would get shot during the hunting season, but Dad always insisted that only an absolute moron would make a mistake like that.”
“Interesting,” I say. “I think we better go on home, I feel a little weak in the knees.”
“My mom says love will do that to you,” Linda says.
“Ya, that must be it,” I say, as my face began to twitch.
That knee-shaking, face-twitching disclosure happened more than 44 years ago. My knees are shaking again today as I write this confession. Can you imagine what would have happened had I pulled the trigger when my dad said shoot? I am sure Linda’s dad would have had me prosecuted to the full extent of the law, and that would have been extremely hard to take as a 16-year-old boy. I am sure I would have never hunted again in my whole life, and that would have been a shame. And I am absolutely sure Linda would never have entertained the idea of a single date, let alone a lifetime saddled with the likes of me in marriage.
Besides a bad case of Saint Vitus’ Dance, the above story causes me to ponder a whole bunch of questions not the the least of which is: Does God have a plan for my life or is my life orchestrated by a whole variety of circumstances including my own inept choices? As I reflect on my 62 years, including the discovery of and commitment to an enchanting, magnificent and amazing spouse (who often reads over my shoulder as she passes behind me and who has mastered the head slap to an art form) it seems to me there is a divine plan that will not be frustrated by my good or bad choices. Maybe this plan even includes influencing apparent off-the-cuff decisions that could have consequences far beyond my ability to predict.
I realize that my question risks kicking off the age-old “sovereignty of God—freedom of choice” debate and I really am not at all interested in going there. My mental acumen is such that anything along those lines makes my head hurt. Reflecting on my own past experiences in the dim light of my adult children and the lame-brain choices they sometimes make causes me to wonder and ponder. I often truly worry about my wonderful adult children and their choices. No, that is not quite correct; they often drive me absolutely nuts with the choices they make. Frequently I feel like the mother robin who hatched a brood in our spruce tree last summer; she nearly drove herself mad trying to stuff them back in their nest when they all chose to fly at once before any of them had the foggiest idea about flight or the intentions of the neighbor’s fat flatulent feline. I tried to help out mother robin by stuffing baby robins back in the nest, and though I think she truly appreciated my efforts, I had to quit. I couldn’t risk another nervous breakdown. But honestly, how are my children ever going to survive some of the choices they make?
Well, I never shot my wife’s horse, which I think is to say that my life turned out fine—usually in spite of me. George Santayana put it much more eloquently in Dialogues in Limbo: “Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.” The Apostle Paul insisted that we not only are saved by grace but that we live by grace as well (Romans 5:1-2 and 7). What I think this all boils down to, as far as my kids are concerned, is that they make their lame-brain choices, and their good ones too, within the brackets of God’s grace. Certainly there are consequences to poor choices and rewards that flow out of good choices and some choices that seem to be ineffective in spite of our best intentions. But when all is said and done, I am with Santayana. My faith points me towards the dignity to have the courage to live by grace. And the faith of my kids should give them the same dignity.
And so I have resolved to live by grace, and to let my kids live by grace too. I have resolved to recognize that the foolishness that I sometimes see going on in their lives is really God at work, and that He will work it all out in their lives, just as He has done in mine.
