It's Always Darkest Before the Fridge Door Opens: Enjoying the Fruits of Middle Age (11 page)

You know what we mean. See how many of the following scenarios you can identify with:

Your new car gets hit at the mall. There’s a note on your windshield that says,
People think I’m leaving you my phone number. I’m not. Ha ha ha, sucker!

You fail the eye chart test you studied for all month. The guy before you who just winged it passed with a perfect 20-20 score. Why didn’t God give you perfect vision, too?

You finish a glorious morning of work, writing brilliantly about solutions to the world’s problems. This is the best and most creative work you’ve done in years. Your boss will be proud. Then before you can print it out, your computer crashes.

You are the most faithful parent on your daughter’s basketball team. You attend every one of the games and even the practices. But the entire season she only sits on the bench while the less faithful are put in the games simply because they’re better players. Or they’re the coach’s kids.

You’ve worked hard year after year in the same job, only to watch a lazy co-worker get promoted.

A loved one is diagnosed with a serious illness in the same year that your car gets repossessed and the bank forecloses on your house. Then you get a call from your boss that the company is downsizing and they’re laying you off.

You don’t get invited to the party of the year, even though everyone else you know does.

Someone lies about you.

Hurtful, unfair situations. In fact, that’s what makes them so painful. The fact is that you don’t deserve any of it.

But we can’t talk about life’s fairness without looking at the flip side of the coin. Sometimes good things do happen to good people. Even on the golf course.

Gene Perret, a fellow writer and good friend, once told Martha, ‘‘It’s like my golf: sometimes I’ll hit a poor shot that slams into a house along the course, bounces off the roof and back onto the course, hits a metal sprinkler head and pops way up in the air, lands in a tree and skids down one of the branches, landing on the paved cart path, rolls down the hills, falls off the cart path, and trickles onto the green about six feet from the hole. I accept that. But when I miss the putt by two inches, I complain that life isn’t fair.’’

Whether or not we play golf, we can all identify, can’t we? When life’s unfair and it hurts us, we hate it. When life’s unfair and it’s to our advantage, we’re loving it. So the next time we begin to complain, perhaps it will help to remember a few of the undeserved blessings that have come our way, too.

The guy writing a note for your windshield not only leaves you his phone number but says he noticed the For Sale sign on your car and will give you five hundred dollars above the price you had in mind.

You win a contest you didn’t even enter. A friend filled out the entry card for you.

Your son is daydreaming in left field, staring at his glove, when a deep fly ball miraculously lands in it, ending the game and giving your son’s team the win.

Your old car makes it another fifty thousand miles.

Someone gives you their perfectly good refrigerator simply because they’re buying a new one.

Your car comes to a screeching stop four inches from the car in front of you, the one you had been following too closely for the last twenty miles.

The IRS made a mistake. They actually owe you money.

No one invited you to the party because they are all coming to your house for a surprise party in your honor! And they are bringing the pizza.

One of the most glorious truths in all of Scripture is this: We don’t get what we deserve. How thankful we should be that God is not fair. If he were, we’d all be in a heap of trouble. Even the self-righteous who think their failures aren’t as bad as anyone else’s. Especially the self-righteous. The Bible teaches that the wages of sin is death. If eternal life were ‘‘fair,’’ if it were a reward based on our good qualities and the abundance of our good works, no one would ever see heaven.

So next time you’re tempted to observe that life is not fair, remember to thank God that we don’t get what we deserve. We get something far better.

God saved you by his special favor when you believed.
And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.
Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done,
so none of us can boast about it.
Ephesians 2:8–9
NLT

I prayed this morning, but I didn’t pray to win.
I just thanked God to be alive. You know, the everyday stuff.
I’ve never prayed to win a tournament. I don’t think that
would be fair. Why should he show partiality toward me?
Rev. Walter Jessup,
after winning his second straight clergyman’s golf tournament

¹
Even now that we’re all on diets, we still might do it, only we’re not as indignant over who gets the biggest carrot.

²
It’s a 527-yard par five. Golfers like to know these things.

³
This is another golfing term, which means that your hopes are about to be dashed.

The Best News Yet

Reflect upon your present blessings,
of which every man has plenty; not on your
past misfortunes of which all men have some.
Charles Dickens

I (Phil) visited a barbershop recently. My daughter asked me why. ‘‘There’s nothing happening up there, Dad’’ is how she put it. ‘‘There’s a recession going on right on top of your head.’’ Teenagers. They get a little older and they won’t know so much. I smiled at her. And cut her out of the will.

When I arrived at the barbershop, the hairdresser walked around my head once or twice, then squinted uncomfortably at me. I watched the ordeal in the mirror.

She said, ‘‘Um . . . do you have a part?’’

I said, ‘‘Yes, it starts at my left ear and goes to my right.’’

She was still squinting. She said, ‘‘Would you like me to dye it?’’

I said, ‘‘No, you look fine to me, you don’t need to lose a pound.’’

The squint vanished and she smiled, then chuckled softly.

‘‘Just a little off the top,’’ I coached her.

It was her turn. ‘‘That’s all you have,’’ she said.

Did you ever have a haircut you wished you could get a refund on? In Oregon a mother recently threatened to sue the West Linn-Wilsonville school district because her eight-year-old boy returned home one day with ‘‘next to nothing’’ on his head. An employee had cut the boy’s hair without permission. The mother said she tried to keep her son’s hair looking neat but ‘‘there was one stinking day, and I’m not lying, that I didn’t brush his hair.’’ The district’s insurance company paid a ten thousand dollar settlement.

I remember some really bad haircuts when I was a boy. My father used to start on one side of my head, then walk around to the other side and, relying on memory, try to even it up. I ended up wearing a hat for two weeks. Then my father would cut it again.

They say that the difference between a good haircut and a bad one is about two weeks. But surgery is another matter. Most major surgeries don’t allow you to go back and fix something. And you can’t just put on a hat and make the pain go away. My older brother Dan went through the horrible ordeal of a detached retina recently.
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Just before the operation, a nurse leaned over and said, ‘‘It’s your left eye, right?’’ Dan was stunned. It was his right eye. He knew this absolutely for sure. The nurse frowned and squinted at a computer printout. ‘‘It says here it’s your left eye.’’

‘‘No, it’s not,’’ said Dan, ‘‘I can see fine with my left eye; please don’t operate on it.’’

Of course, we’re able to laugh a little later about such things. But what about when the news is the worst possible? When a trip to the doctor changes everything we’ve taken for granted? While speaking at a banquet, I sat next to Ed, an oil executive, who told me his amazing story. One year earlier he sat in his doctor’s office listening but unable to process the doctor’s horrible words. At the age of forty-nine, he had colon cancer. The shock had only begun to set in as the doctor explained it to Ed’s wife. ‘‘The cancer is very advanced. I’ve seen other cases like this, and it’s highly unlikely that your husband’s body can fight it more than six months. We’ll do all we can to help him, but he had better get his affairs in order. I’m so sorry.’’

After a sleepless night, Ed called his office. For the first time in seventeen years he would not be at work. His work meant everything to him; what would he do without it? He wondered how he would tell his three grown children. Though they lived nearby, they were almost strangers now. And what about the grandchildren? Would they even care? Though he had his secretary mail them birthday and Christmas gifts of her choosing, he seldom saw them, and he’d never been able to get their names straight.
Should I call a minister?
he wondered. But church hadn’t been a part of his life since his wedding day. He hadn’t the time for it. Besides, who would he call? What would he say?

Thankfully Ed was wrong about all his apprehensions. His children were devastated by the news of his illness. For the first time ever they saw their father reduced to tears. And they heard the words he’d never told them: ‘‘I love you.’’ That night, an old friend from college called. He’d heard the news. He was a minister. Could they go out for breakfast? How did eight o’clock sound?

The next day after breakfast, Ed booked twelve tickets to Mexico, enough to take his children, their spouses, and all the grandchildren for two weeks. It was a Christmas like no other.

Though the doctor had done a painful colonoscopy, leaving Ed barely able to sit on the airplane, he had the time of his life. Surrounded by family, he began to wonder where he’d been all these years. He watched them frolic in the surf. He even went hang gliding.

‘‘It was the best two weeks of my life,’’ he told me. ‘‘I didn’t start living until I knew I was dying.’’

Back home he went to see his doctor. He had never been ushered into a doctor’s office so quickly. Seated behind a desk, the doctor’s face was the color of a snowball. ‘‘Ed, I don’t know how to tell you this, but we’ve made a terrible mistake. We . . . uh . . . got the files mixed up. You’re healthy as a horse.’’

Ed couldn’t bear to hope that the doctor’s words were true. He sat still, unable to utter a word.

Finally he said, ‘‘You’re probably wondering about a lawsuit, aren’t you?’’

‘‘Frankly,’’ said the doctor, ‘‘we are.’’

Ed smiled.

‘‘How could I sue?’’ he asked. ‘‘You see, Doctor, I was a workaholic. The only thing I valued was money. It was all I could see. Then came your diagnosis. It changed everything. I’ve made things right with my kids. I know my grandchildren’s names now, and they know mine. I’ve made things right with God, too. I’m going to church again. I’ve never been more alive in my life. I can’t thank you enough. The worst news I ever received was also the best.’’

Getting up from his chair, he embraced the most surprised and grateful doctor in the history of medicine. Health is a gift, to be sure, but forgiveness, and a new grasp on what’s truly important in life, is even better.

Adversity can make us better. We must be challenged to
improve, and adversity is the challenger.
John Wooden

I thank God for my handicaps for, through them, I have found
myself, my work, and my God.
Helen Keller

¹
Complicated by the fact that the NBA playoffs were on.

Ten Lessons Learned in the Kitchen

1. When showing your house to a potential buyer, avoid cooking sauerkraut, fish, eggs, or brussels sprouts.

2. If left to themselves, cats will not make a kitchen any cleaner.

3. If left to themselves, children will not, either.

4. When it comes to hot dogs, the less known about the preparation, the better.

5. Leftovers will sometimes be leftover. Don’t let that stop you from disguising them in something else.

6. Any casserole with the word
surprise
in the title (e.g., Tuna Surprise, Seafood Surprise, Church Potluck Surprise, or Surprise, Surprise) should be approached with caution.
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