Brad Lawrence (12:34)
And this terrifies me because more than anything, I want to believe what these kids believe. And it may seem odd to want so much to believe in a God that wants to send you to hell for getting a little Hot in the pants during Charlie's Angels. But what you have to realize is that I am a fat kid. I am a fat kid with Coke bottle glasses, acne, braces and a mullet I do not realize is optional. All right? I am not popular. I am not popular at school. I am not popular at home. I am not popular at home alone. But Jesus can do something that no teacher, no guidance counselor, no principal can ever pull off. And that's that Jesus can make other kids be nice to you. These kids around me, praying in the darkness, they invite me out to movie nights and for Chinese food and to roller skating nights. And sure, Jesus told them they had to, but they still do it. And certainly they still make fat jokes at my expense. But unlike the kids at school, their fat jokes do not end in name calling and a swing at my face. So even if it seems very strange to be so desperate to believe in a God that would seem to hate you, what you have to understand is that I am hanging out with kids my own age. And it is not ending in my blood or in my tears. So that God has already performed a miracle in my own life. So when Augustus gets to me and puts his hand on my shoulder, I bow my head and I close my eyes tight and I vow right then and there that I am going to believe as much, if not more, than anyone else in the youth group. And real quick, about these other kids in the youth group. It should be said they are kind of a motley bunch. Uh, I don't realize this. I think they're cool. But if I knew anything but what actually took to be cool, I wouldn't be so far on the other end of the spectrum from it. But none of us go to the same school. We only see one another at youth group. And so none of us are really all that aware of what cliques we occupy at our respective schools or what status we have within those cliques. So a youth group, you can kind of be a version of yourself that you might wish you could be at school. Darren, he's a good example of this. Darren wears his letterman jacket to every single youth group function. Big jock baseball player. In reality, looking back on it, I realized that Darren was a painfully skinny kid with an enormous head and an even bigger mouth. And he never seemed to know when the joke had gone too far. Chances are, if anything, at school, Darren was more in the way of a baseball benchwarmer or Adam. Adam was a musician, a trumpet player in the high school band, a low status position. I'm sorry, band nerds, it's true. But at youth group, Adam was Augustus's brother in law. He was Gloria's little brother. And he never got tired of lording over the rest of us how much more godly he was than we were. Which is not a weird brag for a youth group, but it has no purchase at high school. Not even in the band. Then there were the girls. Some of the girls were harder to get to know because they were so much more over chaperoned than we were. Claire was an example of this. Claire. If we did a dinner and movie night, Claire could come to the dinner part. But the movie, not only could she not stay out that late, but Claire alone in the dark with other kids, going through puberty. Her parents were not doing that. But there are other girls, like Julia. Julia was the one we all had a crush on. Blonde hair, brown eyes, a clear complexion, which none of the rest of us could boast. And we also kind of thought of Julia as the smart one, the bookish one, because she read books. And by books we meant the Bible and books about the Bible. No sinful literature, mind you. But at some point, Julia started dating Adam. And this, of course, led to some makeout sessions, which then of course led to some over the clothes groping, which then led to hours upon hours of them praying for God to forgive them for their moral lapses. I heard about all of this because I was now occupying a strange place in youth group that I could never have occupied at school myself. And that was that. At youth group I was popular with girls. Not in a fun way, in a oh, Brad's so safe we can tell him anything kind of way. And they did. That was how I found out that at some point Adam's palm had brushed over a piece of sweater, under which was a T shirt, under which was a bra, under which somewhere was a nipple. These girls would just confess all these things to me and tell me all this personal stuff because I was safe. I was so far from being any kind of alpha male that I was no threat to them. But more important than that, more crucially I think, was that I did not make any of these girls a threat to themselves. I was not going to elicit any kind of untoward thoughts or sinful fantasies they'd then have to pray about for hours. I was safe. They could tell me things and get a boy's perspective and it would cost nothing of their immortal souls. And I. I do think these girls thought of us as friends. They were telling me all this Personal stuff. But I don't think they knew anything about my personal life or my inner world. They didn't ask. And honestly, I don't think they thought I had one. Except Jessica. Right now I'm going to tell you a little story that I think indicates the role that Jessica will someday come to play in my life. At some point, all the entire youth group went out to a movie. The movie is called the Great Outdoors. It starred John Candy and Dan Aykroyd. It was a terrible movie. John Kenny deserved better. Dan Aykroyd kind of got what he had coming. But as sort of the climax of this film, a bear has all the hair blown off of its ass with a shotgun. So the last thing you see of this trained bear is the bear running off into the woods. And someone from a props department and had to garment tape to this bear's butt. A plastic, hairless bear's ass. All right? And that's what you see as it goes off into the wilderness. And this scene really captured Darren's attention because when he sees it, he does have this little squeal. And he goes, look at those cheeks. And he turns and he looks at me and he grabs my face and he goes, look at those cheeks. And this makes everyone in the youth group laugh, which inspires Darren to drive this joke into the ground for the next two and a half weeks. Every time I see this kid, look at those cheeks, he just comes up, grabs my face, look at those cheeks. Pinch me. Look at those cheeks over and over and over again. And then finally one night, we are at the Chinese restaurant we always go to, and dinner is over and we're all just relaxing, sitting there, and Darren turns and looks at me and he grabs my face and he goes, look at those cheeks. And Jessica, sitting to my right, goes, I don't get it. And Darren says, what? And Jessica says, what's that from? And Darren goes, great outdoors. And Jessica says, I don't remember that part. And Darren says, well, it wasn't actually in the movie. It was just kind of. She's like, yeah, I'm not getting it. Can you explain the joke to me? And now all eyes turn to Darren as Darren contemplates the task that has now been laid before him, which is this. He has to explain to Jessica, who is older than Darren and I. We're 14, she's 17. She's older, more sophisticated. She has long, red curly hair, porcelain complexion, green eyes. She's very pretty. And she comes from this old respected family in the church. And so now Darren has to explain to this person who is looking at him just the picture of guileless innocence. He has to explain to her that the comparison he is trying to draw is between my face and a plastic, hairless bear's ass. And you actually see him try. He kind of sort of tries to find his way into this problem. Of course, he takes a couple passes at it, and then he gives up and he's like, oh, you know, actually wasn't. It's not really. It wasn't really that funny. Don't worry about it. And then he gets up and he moves quickly to the bathroom. And as he's going, I turn and look at Jessica. And Jessica looks at me, and she smiles and she winks and she reaches over and she squeezes my arm. And no one ever touched me at that age except Jessica and how we became friends. I mean, it's really. It's a nothing story. I mean, I said something funny at youth group one night. She laughed, we started talking, and then we just kind of slid into this natural, easy friendship. And that's what made it so weird, because in any kind of normal reality for me socially, a girl like Jessica should have been so far beyond my reach. For some reason, we just kind of slid into this friendship and started gravitating to one another at youth group functions and hanging out and making one another laugh. And then she started offering me rides home from youth group events because she had a card and I didn't. And this brought about another ritual, and that was that when she drive me home, we would stop at this place near my subdivision called Fritz's Frozen Custard. I don't know if you've ever had frozen custard, but it's like ice cream, but better, and your life is sad. But we'd stop at Princess Rose and Custard, and then we would go to my pediatrician's office. It was closed. It just shared a parking lot with Princess Frozen Custard. And it had in front of it this lit gazebo that was lit up all times of night and also this fountain that was never turned on. So we'd go sit under this gazebo on this dry fountain, and we would talk. And certainly, stopping for frozen custard two, three times a week was doing nothing for the acne or fat situation. But honestly, I think part of the reason we were able to form this easy, natural friendship was partly because I had no illusions this was going anywhere romantic. Certainly I would have killed for a girl like Jessica to show me that kind of attention. But I knew better. And I think that little bit of nascent teenage self awareness created this space for us to become real, true friends. That's what we were. We would go and talk about everything to one another. We'd talk about youth group gossip, a resource in which I was quite wealthy because all these girls were telling me all this crap. We would talk about things we were learning at church, the things that scared us, the end times which we were being told were imminent and inevitable. We talk about our lives, school, we think about our families. Like I said, Jessica came from an old respected family in the church, but she also came from an old family. She was a late in life baby. And so she'd been born as adorable as an infant as she was as a teenager. And she'd been born into this world of adults staring down at her in awe and wonder. And this had engendered in her a kind of easy, natural charm. She had this natural confidence that created a kind of magnetism that drew people to her. And people just, they wanted her attention, they wanted her approval. Adults, kids, everybody, just kind of, they were strolling to her. She was respected. She was, in our little faith community, honored. And I was the exact opposite. I did not come from an old respected family in the church. I came from a sprawling redneck shit show down in the Ozarks. We had moved up to St. Charles from the Ozarks when the mines closed and my stepfather was put out of work. St. Charles is kind of a suburb of St. Louis. My natural father had died when I was three months old. He's a long haul trucker and he died on the job. And then my mom met my stepfather when I was 3 years old and they got married. And when that happened, I went from being the youngest of two to the youngest of eight. And the mines closed down and my stepfather drags up to St. Charles to look for work. And what he did, some of the older kids decided to stay behind in the Ozarks, even though there was nothing to do down there. There was no jobs, no industry, nothing going on, except for a new thing called methamphetamine and that they promptly started doing. And then they would show up at our house in St. Charles randomly, unannounced, smelling of booze and weirder things with strange people in tow, bikers, girls I now realized were likely truck stop prostitutes hanging out with the drugs. And they'd be looking for a place to crash or a handout or something they could steal. And my mother, being a good Christian Woman, she felt some need to entertain all of this. My stepfather, however, he was a man of pure rage. He was an angry man. He'd been angry every minute of every day since I first met him when I was three years old. Now, initially, I thought it was because I existed, but I'm certain that his kids becoming a methamphetamine cartel did not do any favors for his mood either. But in the end, all of this chaos fractured my family. And at some point, we all started living like people, occupying our own separate foxholes, none of us in it together. And so my home life was lonely and frightening, and my school life was lonely and frightening. And I couldn't tell any of the other kids at youth group about this, except Jessica. I told her. Then one night, we're sitting on a fountain, we're eating our Fritz's frozen custard, when Jessica suddenly stops eating. And she sits very upright, and she gets this strange, distant smile on her face. And she's looking at my pediatrician's office, the office door, but it's dark. There's no one in there. She's kind of looking through it, like a thousand miles beyond it. And she says in this small, distracted voice, she says, I gotta tell you something. And I say, all right, what is it? And she says, it's a secret. You can't tell anybody. And I say, okay, I won't tell anyone. What is it? And then that little smile on her face crumbles and she bursts into tears. And then she tells me her big secret. And it's big, and she is telling it to me through racking sobs. And it takes a very long time for her to get it all out. And the crying lasts longer than the words do. And when she finally stops talking, I, in a second rare moment of teenage self awareness, say nothing. I just reach over and put my arm around her and let her finish crying it out. Eventually, when the tears come to an end and there's just sniffling, just drying her face, she turns and looks me in the eye for the first time during this entire ordeal. And she says, this is a secret. You cannot tell anybody. You have to promise me you will never tell anyone. And I look her in the eye and I say, I promise I will never tell anyone. And then a couple days later, we go back to youth group, and it's like none of this ever happened. This entire revelation never occurred. Certainly, I can see that Jessica is carrying an added weight, and I know what that weight is from, but we just kind of go back to being Brad and Jessica, we just kind of go back to normal, no discussion. And that normal lasts for almost a year until that family of mine, the family I had told Jessica about, rears its ugly head. And the head that it chooses is that of Jeff. One day I come home to find that my older brother Jeff was in the house. He had shown up on our doorstep, and my stepdaughter let him in, which you'd all regard as the first mistake. But when I got home, I was told that Jeff was going to be staying with us for an indeterminate amount of time. Information that I took in and immediately discarded as not important because Jeff was 35, I was 15. He had a wife and kids. Our lives had nothing in common. There was no reason for our twain to meet, as it were. So when I was told that Jeff's gonna be staying with us for a while, I just filed that under not my problem. Until a couple weeks went by and I realized that it was very much my problem. And that came about because whatever Jeff's plan had been for getting his life together when he came to stay with us, it quickly devolved into permanently occupying the lazy boy in front of the tv, usually just in a pair of stained tighty whities. And when you are permanently occupying the LA Z boy in front of the tv, that means you also have permanent control of the remote. And so now all of my TV watching hours are at the mercy of someone on methamphetamine. And he watches TV like somebody on methamphetamine, just skipping from channel to channel, lasting, like, no more than 30 seconds on each thing, skipping past good shows, shows I want to watch Manimal, the A Team, Miami Vice. Good stuff. And staying for slightly longer on things I don't care about, like wrestling and football games. But then he'll want to ask me questions about these things I've only seen, like a minute of, and be like, hey, what do you think of those Steelers? And I'm like, you run the football game for one minute. I saw one Steeler. What possible opinion could I have on one Steeler? And it gets so annoying that eventually I. Guys, I stopped watching television, which took care of the TV conversations that Jeff wanted to have. It did nothing for the other conversation that Jeff wanted to have. And that was the conversation he wanted to have every single day. When I came home from school at 3 o', clock, I'd walk in and Jeff would be there. Jeff, at some point, had appointed himself my personal greeter, I guess because it was a job he could do without ever leaving the La Z boy. But I would walk in at 3 o', clock, and every day Jeff would be there, he'd ask me some variation on the same question. And that question was, hey, are you getting any? Where am I coming from? The ninth grade, not coming from a Coke orgy. I come from the ninth grade where I am still fat, still have glasses, still have braces, still have acne, still have the mullet. So no one is lining up to give me any of anything. And I have been taught at church that if they did, I should immediately run the other direction as fast as possible. But none of these are conversations I want to have with Jeff. And so when he says this, I just stare at him, unsure how to respond to this. And he takes my silence as a reason to ratchet up the intensity of the question. And so over the course of the next couple of months, it goes from, hey, are you getting any? To, are you getting into that pussy? To hey, let me smell your fingers. And by that time, I have come to hate Jeff. I despise Jeff. I loathe Jeff. The thing I want most in this world is Jeff out of that lazy boy and out of my house and out of my life forever. Then one day I come home from school and I walk in and it looks like I'm getting a reprieve because Jeff is not a lazy boy. But then I see where he is. He's actually in the kitchen, hunched over something at the kitchen table. And this is kind of worse because it's a hot day. I'd like a glass of water. And I'm also a fat kid. I'd probably like a snack. But if I go in there, I have to deal with him. And it's like, you know. But at the same time, I can't be held hostage. I've got to be able to use my own kitchen, right? And so I'm like, all right, I'm going to go in there. You go right past him. Now look at him, acknowledge him. Nothing. Go right to the faucet, get whatever I need, and I'm going to get out of there just as quick as I can and just, like, not even pretend he's not there. And so that's what I do. Up the stairs into the kitchen, walk right past him, don't even look at him. And I'm at the faucet pouring a glass of water, when behind me, I hear him say, hey, what do you think of that? And I turn around to find Jeff standing up now, holding open before me spread out a porn magazine. And this is no Playboy. There's nothing soft, focused or Vaseline lensed about this. This is a skinny strung out girl in a motel room at two o' clock in the afternoon, gripping her lady with these three fingers, giving you an excellent view of her internal organs and the light from her nostrils. And he's holding this thing out to me. He's going, what do you think, huh? What do you think of that? And it's like, what do I think of what? My drug addled stepbrother looking at porn at the kitchen table at three o'clock in the afternoon. That's obviously not the question. He's like, what do you think, huh? What do you think of pussy? What do you think, huh? And what I think? I'm a 15 year old boy, I think more than anything I want to look at this naked girl. That's nature. But I've been taught at church that when I feel that desire I should drop to my knees and pray for salvation, which I do not want to do. In the kitchen with Jeff, she's holding this thing out to me going, what do you think, huh? What do you think of that pussy? What do you think man, huh? What do you think of this girl? And finally I break my paralysis and I shove past him and I leave the kitchen. I'm heading out of the kitchen and down the hallway when I hear him cough behind me. What's the matter? You don't like girls? And I get to my bedroom and I shut the door and I lock it and I sit down and it is there on the edge of my bed that I come up with a plan that is elegant in its simplicity. And it is simply this, that when my mother gets home that night, I am going to rat Jeff out. Because I know nothing is more important to my mother than the safe delivery of my soul into the loving arms of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And she's not going to appreciate Jeff trying to lure me off that path with his porn and his questions. So that night when I hear my mom come home, I leave my bedroom for the first time the entire evening. I and I make a beel line before her. I go right to her, talk about porn, talk about the questions, talk about all of it. And then I go back to my room and I go to bed. And the next morning I wake up and I immediately go to church because Augustus has arranged an overnight trip with the entire youth group down to Apostle University, a Christian college administered by our church, accredited by Jesus and He's arranged this trip so we can all go on and tour the campus, get an idea of what they have to offer, and it's gonna be very exciting for all of us. And. And as we're all in the band heading down there, I am hoping to myself that what's going to happen while I'm gone is my mom and stepdaughter will get together and confront Jeff and kick him out of the house. And that tomorrow when we're coming back, I will be coming home to a Jeff free house. And the next day, as we were driving home, we're all very excited. We've seen our future. Our future is here. It's obviously going to this Christian college. We're all going to go. We're all going to go, do we know this Christian college? And it'll be tempted by the sins of the outside world. And it can all go together. We'll all go together. It's gonna be amazing. And we're all very excited about this. And this is what we're talking about is the van is pulling back into the church parking lot and we're all looking out the window to see if our parents have shown up to pick us up yet. And I look out the window and see that my mom has not come to pick me up. It's actually my sister Amy is there to get me. But the church van pulls in and comes to a stop and all the kids pile up. And we've been cooped up in this van for like two hours now, so we got a lot of energy, a lot of pent up stuff, and we're just kind of, you know, horsing around and goofing off, when Pastor Rex, the head pastor of the church, comes over to me and he says, brad, Sister Amy to speak to you right away. And I'm like, okay, no problem. And so I go over where Amy is standing on the side of the parking lot, far away from the other kids, and they're on the edge of the parking lot. Amy tells me what I had wanted to have happen had happened while I was gone. My mom, over my stepfather's protestations, had confronted Jeff and told him it was over and he had to go and she kicked him out of the house. And Jeff's response to this. So he'd gone out, got in his car and started driving south from the interstate towards the Ozarks. And about halfway there, he had crossed over the grassy median and into the oncoming traffic lane, the northbound lane, and aimed his car at an 18 wheeler. But the truck driver was not on meth and he swerved out of the way. At which point Jeff enacted plan B. And plan B was he pulled over to the side of the road, got out of his car, opened the back door, and with traffic zooming by on the interstate and the traffic helicopter hovering overhead, he pulled out a shotgun, put it in his mouth and blew his brains across the top of the car. And Jeff was dead. He had taken his own life. And I. We didn't know if any of the other kids had heard this or were aware of what was happening. And we didn't stay to find out. We didn't say goodbye or anything. We just. Amy and I got in her car and we started driving south towards the Ozarks, where my mom and stepfather already were trying to figure out what arrangements they needed to make for Jeff. And then a few days later, we had a funeral. At the funeral, I saw Jeff's oldest daughter and she was angry. I didn't know if she was angry at me, but felt that way. And then he buried Jeff. And then it was time to go back to our lives in St. Charles. And for me, that meant going back to the youth group. And when I got back to the youth group, I arrived to find that a whole new controversy had erupted. And that was because Augustus King had decided that he wanted to have a tape and CD burning in the parking lot of the church where the kids from the youth group could bring their secular music and burn it in a barrel fire. And this had caused quite a stir. Not because anyone doubted the wisdom of a bunch of 16 year olds standing around an open barrel fire choking up the black smoke of burning plastic. No, the controversy was because no one could decide if U2 was a Christian band or a secular band. And this is a topic of much heated debate. And everyone was kind of trying to pick their sides and figure out where they were at on this big issue. And it would come up often. And one time it came up. And Jessica, she was also very involved in this. I think more she was concerned about the fate of her extensive Duran Duran CD collection, which was obviously doomed, than she was about Bono's fate. But when it comes up, she looks at me and she goes, what do you think? And what did I think? I mean, I guess if I was thinking anything about it, what I probably would have thought was I was raised on TV and movies in the 70s and 80s and from that you learned that only the bad guys burn books. But what I actually felt in that moment when she asked me was A sensation that it wouldn't be the last time I felt it, but it was kind of distinctly the first time I did. And that was a sensation you have when someone brings up something to you that is so trivial, so dumb, so beside the point that all you can feel is tired. Because in light of what Jeff had done, in light of this very life and death, very much death thing that I had just had a direct role in, all of these little sins, demon lust, mtv, Bono, all of it just seemed so small, so dumb. But these little sins were what bound these kids to one another. You know, having to navigate that narrow space, that narrow path that it takes to be a good Christian teenager and avoid all of these sinful things. That struggle was what bonded these kids to one another. And now I was on the outside of that bond. So much so that I don't even remember how I answered Jessica that day. I don't even know if Augustus ever got to have his tape and CD burning. If he did, it was after I was gone. Because in short order, I stopped coming to E's group and I stopped going to church. And when I stopped going to youth group and going to church, none of the other kids from youth group came around to find out what happened. To see where I went, they just let me go. Except Jessica. Jessica made several attempts to find out what had happened to me. But at 16, I just did not have the language to explain the loss of faith. And so as I let my faith go and as I let my God go, I also let her go. I would see her two more times. The first time was when I was 18, like three years later. And I. I have lost the weight and the acne and the braces. Still had the glasses, probably still had the mullet. But I had met this girl named Susan. At long last, I was popular with a girl in the fun way. And Susan and I decided we should go to our town's Fourth of July festival, held in the Riverfront Landing every year. And so we headed down there and parked the car and we crossed onto the parade grounds and just off the sidewalk, there's a big crowd of people there. But I saw this gaggle of people who I kind of recognized a few of them. And among them was Jessica. And she saw me and she waved me over, and I started heading over to her. And as I was going, I realized, oh, that's why people look familiar, right? Jessica would have graduated from the youth group and into the singles group by this point, but she wouldn't stay there for long. Because the first person she introduces me to when I get up to her is this guy with a mustache and glasses who she says his name is Steve and he's a youth minister and her fiance. And I shake his hand and introduce myself, and he seems very unimpressed to meet me, which is fine. And then Jessica and I make some awkward attempts at catching up, little small talk, until finally I feel like enough time has been put in that I can kind of make a head gesture meant to communicate that, you know, we should go and find Susan's friends who were coming down here to meet. And so we say our goodbyes and say it was good to see one another, you know, and then we part ways. And as I'm walking away from Jessica, it does occur to me that, you know, in the, in the church that we went to, kind of the highest level of respect that a woman could achieve was pastor's wife. And so I know that landing with this youth pastor, that must feel very safe for Jessica. And I genuinely am. I'm very happy for her. And that would not be the last time I saw Jessica, but it would be the last time I saw her alive.
