Thus far: a life story

Hitherto hath the LORD helped us. 1 Samuel 7:12b (ESV)

I’m turning 71 next week, leveling up as I see it. Looking back over seven decades, for this post I’ve collected 71 milestones, adventures, and experiences—not one each year, but one for every year, more or less in chronological order. Probably less. Memory fails. You are welcome to correct errors of fact.

1. Nicknamed “Sailor” because my mother was on a boat fishing when she went into labor.
2. Before he entered the ministry, my dad owned an outdoor advertising business and painted a picture of me as a naked baby on the beach for a sun tan lotion ad. It was on a billboard on old US 41 between Naples and Ft. Myers, Florida, before the more famous Copper Tone campaign with a little girl and a dog.
3. As a toddler, I rode a sea turtle down to the surf, back before it was illegal.
4. Skipped kindergarten and started first grade at five because my mother’s psychiatrist told her I was a genius, and she believed him.
5. Also at five, accepted Jesus as my Savior, under terrible conviction for not allowing a neighbor boy to play my piano.
6. Kissed Mary Ann, the landlord’s daughter, in a cherry tree. Age 6.
7. Once I rode to church on W-road on Signal Mountain in the trunk of a Studebaker with the trumpet player. We were taking 20 people to church, with a few people lying across the laps of the people in the back seat. Also, once bit into a fly in a piece of meatloaf but didn’t say anything because our hosts were poor mountain people. And I was a preacher’s kid after all.
8. Reluctantly buried a toad with full funeral honors at my mother’s insistence. I was 8. I still resent this.
9. Had a crush on my sixth-grade English teacher and actually learned about participles and other obscure aspects of English grammar. Australian, she had a lovely accent. And long legs.
10. Taught my first Sunday School class (primary boys) when I was 12.
11. While I was in junior high, I lived one summer on my maternal grandfather’s 40-acre watermelon farm near Marco Island. We would bust a watermelon over our knees and gorge ourselves. We would also take them to the beach and dip them in salt water while we were swimming. While we were at the farm, I lost my border collie to an alligator.
12. Wrote my first serious essay in eighth grade because my teacher encouraged my ideas regarding total depravity in Lord of the Flies.
13. Owned a pony named Sunday Star. And A boat named Sailor’s Joy Toy, after my sisters. I was a seriously spoiled, firstborn son of the South.
14. Never got into game fishing, but my paternal grandfather and I would go out in the morning and fill wash tubs with fish, mostly mullet, using a cast net.
15. I spent my teenage summers snorkeling and spearfishing with my cousins. And my Aunt Mary taught me how to find beautiful, colorful, and unbroken seashells, not like the faded ones the tourists picked up, and we used for driveways.
16. Mom rented a cottage on the beach all through my high school years, and my cousin Austin and I would wander down the beach on skimboards and swim in hotel swimming pools until we got kicked out.
17. Ate fish-head stew on a mission trip to Anguilla in the Caribbean. Eat what’s set before you. It was better than meatloaf.
18. Wore a George Wallace for President tie to class to annoy my high school sociology teacher. I wasn’t supporting him. Just annoying her. Even though I had the best scores in the class, she flunked me and the guidance counselor changed my grade without asking or telling her. I deserved it, though.
19. In high school, I played chess at lunch and helped after school writing position papers for a candidate for student body president. We lost.
20. In high school, helped my dad plant two new churches, the First Baptist Church of Marco Island and Calvary Baptist Church in Englewood. He later returned to Calvary and pastored there until he passed.
21. Skipped my senior year and started college at 16. Smart but immature, I devoted my intellect to learning and telling jokes. I met my future wife, but she didn’t like me much then. I’m not even sure I liked me much, although I projected insufferable self-esteem.
22. Before I married Katie, I dated a couple of her roommates. In a marriage and courtship class, one of her suitemates and I pretended to be engaged, over-dramatizing the course content: I’d bring her gifts to class, such as a wrapped can of sardines. She would wear bows in her hair. Lots of them.
23. At 17 was youth director at my father’s church in Hixson, Tennessee. My friend David was the junior school Sunday school teacher. We were once stopped for drag racing in downtown Chattanooga and had to go to driving school.
24. Spent two summers in college in Florida, roofing for my uncle. Paul Tucker was the first friend I made in college, and we both went down there one year. It was so hot, we started work at 4 in the morning and took 4 hours for lunch.
25. Spent the summer of my junior year in college on a mission team doing construction on a youth camp in the French Alps. I was stopped for running a stop sign with 14 college students piled into a Renault.
26. By the end of college, I picked up a Chattanooga New Free Press motor route with over 400 customers.
27. Engaged at 20 and married at 21 to the lovely and virtuous Katie Jones. Clearly, she needed a name change. And I needed her.
28. Traded a ’67 Camaro for a ’73 Gremlin. Don’t judge.
29. As a junior, transferred from the Christian college where I began to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and graduated with a BA in combined sciences (biology and chemistry).
30. My mom always thought I should be a doctor (Southern moms think that way) and I spent 4 years as a respiratory therapist. Which convinced me I would rather not be a doctor. Not that kind, anyway.
31. Enrolled in two graduate programs (psychology and theology) before settling on and completing a master’s in curriculum and instruction (English education) at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
32. In that program, took Old English as my foreign language credit and took an accelerated class one summer during which I read 14 of Shakespeare’s plays.
33. I also took a course about teaching high school students to write, which pretty much changed the trajectory of my life. In that class, I wrote my first published article: “Tips for Teaching English to Religious Fanatics” in the English Journal.
34. Almost lost my first teaching job at a private school in Knoxville because we wanted to have our first child at home. The board chairman was an obstetrician who meant well, I’m sure. Our daughter Margaret was born in a hospital with a midwife and the chairman paid the bill. Her middle name is Charity because we were trying to walk in love.
35. After I got my master’s I went back to the Christian college where I met Katie and taught five sections of freshman composition my first semester. Started a literary magazine for students, the Stone Table, where they could subtly make fun of the administration without anyone realizing it. Also published a poem in the Wittenberg Door, a Christian satire and humor magazine that the administration kept on reserve in the library restricted to seminary students. It wasn’t a very good poem, but I was proud of it.
36. While teaching at the Christian college, I taught a Sunday school class for over 150 local college students with my friend Michael. We once went through the book of Job, doing dramatic readings of his conversations with his friends. Started but never finished my first novel, the Book of Joe, in which a young pastor loses his entire Amway downline in a plane crash.
37. Had our second son, Christian, delivered by a midwife at a hospital in Georgia.
38. I uprooted my family and moved to Michigan without a job to work on my Ph.D. Lived with my sister-in-law Patsy for a year.
39. Worked part-time as a stringer for the Jackson Citizen Patriot in Jackson, Michigan, and taught a couple of sections of college writing at Jackson Community College. This was the year my wife fell in love. With me, fortunately.
40. Covered several stories about Spring Arbor University and made contacts that led to my taking a job there 38 years ago.
41. Had two more sons, Michael and Pilgrim. At home. Finally.
42. Advised the student newspaper for over 15 years and often took students to a journalism convention in New York City on St. Patrick’s Day. Gave presentations. Saw Broadway shows. Ate ethnic food. Made many professional friends.
43. For a couple of years, taught a poetry writing workshop in January at a remote farm in northern Michigan. Katie and I once tipped a canoe in the icy Jordan River with our infant son Michael. I am not sure if he has forgiven us yet.
44. Along the way taught workshops for homeschoolers and testified before legislative committees in Tennessee and Michigan back in the early days of the movement. We homeschooled four kids all the way through high school.
45. As a home-school dad, once helped my sons build a wigwam in a patch of poison ivy. My Indian name is “He-who-knows-not-three-leaves.”
46. I got interested in St. Nicholas after I began annoying home-school moms by telling their kids I was Santa. It’s not a lie.
47. Celebrated my 40th birthday in Jerusalem, touring Israel with my dad.
48. Picked up a gig as associate editor of a trade magazine serving the indoor tanning industry. Once, I wrote an article about tanning salon certifications and passed exams from two organizations, becoming the only double-certified tanning salon operator you will ever know. (I’ve never actually been in a tanning salon.)
49. Then picked up a different gig as associate editor of Guidepost for Kids, a national children’s magazine. At first, it was called Faith and Stuff. The cartoon mascot for the magazine was a turtle named Wally. Not me.
50. After the magazine, completed several work-for-hire projects for Publications International, including co-author of Children’s Book of the Bible (now out of print.)
51. Spent a Spring Break on the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. Our son Michael was there working in Visby, one of the oldest walled cities in Europe. It snowed.
52. Diagnosed with type-2 diabetes, like my mom and her dad. Also spent a few years dealing with severe ulcerative colitis, from which I have mostly —and gratefully—recovered.
53. Finally finished a Ph.D. at Michigan State University at the age of 42, with 4 kids and 2 jobs, while my wife was caring for her mother at the end of her life. Wrote my dissertation in one month while staying in the graduate dorm. The topic was how our worldview is represented through stories we tell in ordinary conversation.
54. Traveled to Hong Kong and China as the support person on a student trip. Hiked the Great Wall and brought home a sword in a cane I bought at a flea market in Beijing. One of the students and I wrote poems based on Chinglish we found in a travel magazine on the train. I also wrote about the train. Chinese college students we met there called me Dun Che Lao Ren. Old man Christmas. The Christmas Elder. They believe.
55. Katie and I traveled to Ireland with students when the faculty member who planned the trip was unable to lead it. We toured Northern Ireland in Land Rovers, which took us up in the bogs and down on the beaches. Circumvented the entire island and saw more Ireland than many Irish do.
56. After a lifetime teaching Sunday school, playing the piano and organ, cleaning the church, serving as a Sunday school superintendent, and deacon and other duties at various churches, I was ordained as a pastor by Countryside Bible Church at age 56.
57. Took students to Argentina, where our friends Ivan and Kim were missionaries. Tried, unsuccessfully, to learn tango. I was raised Baptist, after all.
58. Completed the Denver Publishing Institute. Also went through the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop. And picked up a certification in User Experience from the Nielsen Norman Group.
59. Later returned to Argentina on a sabbatical. Spent two of those weeks in Santa Rosa without knowing any Spanish. There were parrots. While there, we traveled to Uruguay to teach a workshop at a missions conference. I also wrote an “autobiography” of Saint Nicholas.
60. Began traveling with students to India with my colleague Jen and later with my wife Katie. I’ve been there seven times now and added the Darjeeling leg, where we do homestays at a tea estate.
61. Over the years we totaled seven cars running into deer on rural Michigan roads, although it’s been over 15 years. Our sons finally moved out.
62. My friend Robert and I launched an online-only master’s degree in communication. Directed it for 20+ years.
63. Began saving for our 50th wedding anniversary.
64. One summer I read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy on my iPhone. It lights up in bed.
65. Took students to Nepal in 2017. We went trekking in the lower Himalayas and rode elephants in the Terai region along the border with India. At a traditional Newari feast, we were seated from oldest to youngest male and then oldest to youngest female. Let’s just say I had a seat of honor.
66. First diagnosed case of Covid-19 in our county. Brought it back from a conference in California.
67. Spent another sabbatical in Nepal during COVID-19 and got locked down when flights out of the country were halted. For a couple of months, we could only leave our apartment to buy food for a couple of hours in the morning to buy food in the street markets. Had a lovely balcony on the 7th floor. Studied Nepali. Read good books. More parrots.
68. Before the lockdown, consulted on the graduate communication curriculum with Nepali colleagues at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu.
69. Returned to church planting when our church of 35+ years decided to plant a new church in the community where Katie and I hosted a small group with our friends Chris and Julie.
70. Took university students [slogging in the Everglades. Compared Cuban sandwiches from Tampa and Miami (Miami wins, although Tampa was probably first). Remembered my childhood. Homesick, maybe, for the first time in years.
71. Had my gallbladder removed. Lost some weight. Reduced my insulin from 40 units to 2. Bought plane tickets for our anniversary trip to Darjeeling.
    

So it’s on to new adventures. Describe one of your own in the comments below.