God, Grace, and Gooseberry

1

Petrified

       Scott Peck said it in that opening sentence of The Road Less Traveled:  “Life is difficult.”  But I learned a long time ago that we create a lot of our problems.

I was in the sixth grade when I won that essay contest.

Grand prize—five bucks!

As Martha Stewart says, “That’s a good thing.”

But I had to stand on the stage in front of the whole school on awards night to get my money.

That was a bad thing.

I was a country kid.  This seemed like big-time show business to me, standing up before the whole school.  

I was petrified.

I knew I would make a mistake.  Look stupid.

But I was a smart kid.  (Hey—I won the contest!)  I would devise some foolproof plan to get me through this.  

As I began devising, my plan centered on the old pot-bellied wood stove in the school auditorium.  (Am I dating myself?)  It was right in the middle at the back.  While I was on stage, I would focus on that stove—concentrate all of my attention on it.  I would think about nothing but that stove.

Makes sense, doesn’t it?

If I didn’t think about where I was, I wouldn’t be nervous.

So on awards night, I made my stage debut, eight or so other kids around me, all of us getting some prize as each name was called.

All of my family was out front.  It looked like maybe every other family in the world was out there, too.

But I watched that stove.  I watched it like there was nothing else in all the world but that stove.  

And my plan was working.  I wasn’t nervous.  I was in another world—one that was serene and quiet.  Absolutely quiet.

I didn’t hear the principal call my name.

He was two feet away from me.  I didn’t hear him.

He called my name many times.  

Some kid finally had to shake me.

Oh!—I looked stupid.  My worst fear!  I looked like a fool.  My reputation was shot.  My life was over.

My family did all they could to argue me out of my despair.  “Nobody noticed,” they said.  “Don’t worry about it.”

But Linda Mae Harper, sitting behind me in first period the next day, could hardly wait to get the words out—the absolute and terrible truth as only a sixth grader can tell it.   

“Max, I saw you last night.  You looked so stupid.”  

And that was it.  My life was over.

But it wasn’t.

That was half a century ago.  I’m still here.

The night I turned to stone right in front of everybody I knew simply brought me one of life’s lessons.

Life goes on.  And I needed to know that.  I’ve needed to know that a hundred times since then.

We live and learn.  

Sometimes we make a mess of things.

But life goes on.  

Thanks be to God.

Philippians 3:14

This one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining toward what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.