Rapture Practice (6 page)

“Are you aware you’re driving down the street with your stop sign out?”

“Oh! Oh, no, Officer, I was not. I am so sorry.” Mrs. Paddle is flustered.

“Well, ma’am, you’re causin’ a little confusion among the motorists who are following you. If you could be a little more mindful of that, we’d all appreciate it.”

Causing a little confusion. The cop’s understatement makes me giggle, and as the sound of my own laughter rings in my ears, I know I’ve made a mistake.

“Are you a
girl
?”

Chad Paddle narrows his eyes and peers at me through his glasses. He’s the only boy in school who has more freckles than I do. I feel my cheeks sting and my stomach turn. I hate it when this happens.

The expressive vocal inflections that Dad says make me a good actor also apparently make my voice sound like a girl’s. I can’t hear it in my head when I’m talking, but I’m always shocked by any recording of my own voice. Mom says my voice will change soon, and telemarketers will no longer assume I’m “the woman of the house” when I answer the phone.

“No,” I say quietly to Chad, “I’m not a girl.”

I sit back in my seat, and stare down at my backpack to avoid eye contact.

“ ’Cause you sure
sound
like a girl,” Chad says. The mocking tone in his voice makes me want to crawl under my seat. I wish he’d turn around, but I’m trapped.

“And you have big girl lips.”

I’ve heard this before, too. I’m not sure why it’s so bad to have full lips. I’m not sure why it’s so bad to be compared to a girl. Why is that a put-down? I
like
girls. I like to talk to them and hang around them at recess. We play four-square a lot while the other boys are playing kickball and basketball. I don’t understand what’s so bad about having qualities that some girls have.

But it is. I know it is. It feels like I’ve been kicked in the stomach.

Chad makes up a song about how I’m a girl, and as he sings, I look around to see if anyone is listening. Most of the other kids are in their own conversations. My sister, Miriam, is up front with her friend Kelly. Josh is in the back with Kelly’s brother, Kevin. No one to hear.

Or to help.

Finally, the bus pulls up to our corner, and I cross the lawn and go into the house with Josh and Miriam. The smell of wet paint tickles my nose at the front door and draws me downstairs. I hear music coming from the laundry room, where I find Mom holding a wet roller and listening to KLJC.

Mom loves the laundry room. When people ask her if she has a job, she always replies with a smile and a twinkle in her eye. “Yes, I do. I work around the clock at home as a domestic engineer. I am a wife and mother, and my family is my full-time job.”

Mom quit college in her senior year to have me, and she doesn’t regret it.

“The work I do in the kitchen and the laundry room is the ministry the Lord has called me to. Even matching socks is very important,” she says. “As I fold each pair, I pray for the little feet that go into those socks.”

Today, the work Mom is doing in the laundry room does not involve laundry. She’s painting the gray cinder blocks on the wall behind the washer and dryer a startling shade of white, almost shocking in its brightness beneath the
fluorescent lights. When I ask her why, she fixes me with a knowing gaze and quotes a Bible verse.

“Aaron, ‘Men love darkness better than light because their deeds are evil.’ ” She turns and rolls a wide swath of pure white across the dingy gray.

It’s the way Mom quotes that verse—the tone in her voice. I know something is wrong. She reaches over and turns down the clock radio she’s listening to. It’s my clock radio, and it hits me in a flash: we aren’t talking about the random evil deeds of generic men in unspecified darkness. We are talking about
my
evil deeds in
my
dark bedroom.

“Aaron, I went and got your radio this morning so I could listen to some music down here while I painted, and when I plugged it in, it wasn’t tuned to KLJC.”

My stomach sinks. I’d forgotten to tune the dial back from KUDL when I fell asleep last night.

“Before I started painting, I was folding your socks,” Mom says, “and as I folded your socks I prayed, ‘Oh, Heavenly Father, help my precious Aaron to have feet that run after righteousness.’ Then I went upstairs and found your radio tuned to a rock-and-roll station.”

There is paint on her fingers and pain in her voice. She wipes her hands on a rag.

“My precious son, who are your feet running after?”

The answer is simple: Peter Cetera.

I know there is no way to explain this to Mom. How can I tell her that 98.1 KUDL isn’t a rock-and-roll station? How do I explain the difference between rock music and “adult
contemporary”? Peter Cetera is burning up the charts lately with a duet called “The Next Time I Fall.” His partner on this track is a singer named Amy Grant.

Even though she’s a Christian singer, they don’t play Amy Grant’s music on KLJC anymore. I read all about her in the manila folder I discovered in Dad’s file drawer. It is full of articles photocopied from magazines with parts highlighted, and notes about how ungodly Amy Grant is. She told
Good Housekeeping
about a time when she and a friend went to a topless beach, and in another interview she admitted she loves having a glass of red wine in a warm bath on her ranch outside Nashville. There were lots of other things highlighted, too, about her plunging necklines and penchant for leopard print.

When I asked Dad about it, he explained that if Amy Grant really was a Christian, she wasn’t showing the fruits of the Spirit. She was allowing Satan to ruin her testimony for the Lord Jesus.

“Amy Grant isn’t purposefully different from the world,” he said. “She wants her music to sound like rock music. Plus, she drinks and does things that aren’t a good example of Christ-like behavior.”

The clock radio has little white paint spatters on it—spray from the roller.

“Do your feet run after righteousness, Aaron?” There are tears in Mom’s eyes. “I called your dad at his office and told him you’d been listening to rock music. He is so grieved. It was like somebody had died.”

When Dad comes home, he and Mom call me into their bedroom. Dad doesn’t spank me. Mom doesn’t take away my clock radio. They simply ask a question:

“Why?”

I am no match for the disappointment in their eyes, and my own fill up with tears. What can I say to make this better? These are the people spending their lives trying to bring me up according to all the commands in God’s word. They follow all the rules Dad teaches other parents. Now I’m the kid who is proving to be the exception to their rules. They’ve done everything right—so why am I already straying from the path?

Dad has an answer for me, one I’ve heard before. “Rebellion.”

He brings up Lucifer again, and how God kicked him out of heaven for deciding to make his own decisions. As he talks, I feel anger beneath my guilt.

There are tears in Mom’s eyes. “Aaron, the only thing I want in the whole world is for my children to love Jesus, to be used mightily by God.”

Dad nods. “Son, God’s word says that when there is unconfessed sin in your heart, God can’t hear your prayers. Let’s pray together and confess your sin of deceit and disobedience to the Lord. Ask his forgiveness so that you can be a clean vessel he can use again.”

I can’t bear to see this hurt in their eyes. I want this to end. I nod, and bow my head. “Dear Heavenly Father, I’m
sorry for disobeying Mom and Dad and listening to rock music. Please forgive me and help me not to be deceitful.”

As I pray, I make sure to use the right vocal inflection, to give the right gravity to the words, to talk slowly and humbly. I try to sound truly sorry, but now I’m lying again.

I don’t want to disobey Mom and Dad, but the truth is, I don’t think what I did was wrong. As as much as they believe this music is rebellious, I don’t. That’s the funny thing about belief: no one else can do it for you. Turns out, no matter how much I want to, I can’t make myself believe something I don’t. It’s not that I
want
to lie; I don’t feel that I have a choice. I know I will always love songs like this. They don’t make me feel separated from God. These songs make me feel at peace inside, the way I’ve always been told the presence of God will feel.

“Next Time I Fall” is a song about being better at love, about trying again when you get it wrong. It doesn’t sound like the music of witchcraft or rebellion. It sounds like the opposite of war in the camp. It sounds like peace on earth.

When I finish praying, Dad starts. “Father, we love Aaron so much. Please give him a heart for you, Lord. Help him stand strong against the temptation of Satan, so you can use him to build your kingdom. Help Aaron see how much we love him….”

Mom and Dad make these rules because they love me, but this doesn’t feel like love. This is where I get confused. I know in my head they love me no matter what, but the look
in their eyes, the desperation in their voices, the tears streaming down Mom’s cheeks—all I can feel is their disapproval.

Dad loves to quote a verse in Hebrews that says how God is “the same yesterday, today, and forever.” My parents believe right and wrong are absolute, and I will never convince them otherwise. I know I will never change their minds about this music. I will never be able to share with them how it speaks to my soul, how it makes everything inside me feel a little bit better.

While Dad prays for me I know I am stuck. I can’t stop listening to these songs, but I can’t bear to feel my parents’ disappointment, either.
Will I always have to choose between the two?
The fear wells up in my chest as the doubt creeps into my stomach. I open my eyes and glance down at the clock radio.

So much trouble over a song
…

I get lost for a moment in the memory of Peter Cetera and Amy Grant singing in my head about doing better next time. The tune grows louder until it drowns out Dad’s voice and Mom’s tears, and suddenly I realize this song that is the problem holds the answer.

Next time, I’ll know better what to do.

I did it wrong this time. I got caught. Next time I won’t let that happen. Next time I’ll change the station back. I’ll be sure I don’t slip up. No more driving down the road with my stop sign out. No more confusion. From now on, I’ll take extra care to be the son they need me to be.

At least while they’re watching.

I can’t change what I like, but I
can
do a better job of loving them—of protecting them.

When Dad finally says “amen,” he and Mom hug me for a long time. Then I climb the stairs to my room with my clock radio and a new resolve.

“What are those pictures of the chicken on your bunk?” Jason asks. I’m fifteen years old, and we’ve just gotten out of the showers at the bathhouse near our campsite. He’s shaving while I put gel in my hair.

“It’s an object lesson I’m going to teach the kids at the campfire this week.”

“Object lesson?” he asks.

“Like a parable,” I explain. “An earthly story with a heavenly message.”

Jason is nineteen. He has blond hair and blue eyes. We’re both standing at the sinks wearing only shorts and flip-flops. He rinses his razor under the faucet, then lifts his chin and slowly draws the blade up toward his square jaw.

“And in this earthly story, a
chicken
has a heavenly message for us?” he asks.

“Well… yes,” I say with a grin. “Cluck-elujah, amen.”

Jason leans on the sink with both hands and laughs. “You’re hilarious, Hartzler.”

I’m the youngest counselor at Timberlake Ranch Camp this summer. Founded by a former student of my father’s, Timberlake is built around a Wild West theme in the sprawling woods along the Platte River bottoms and boasts many campsites. Some have cabins on stilts, while others are built like forts or shaped like covered wagons. In addition, there’s a working ranch operation with a stable full of horses, a three-story waterslide, and a team-building obstacle course called Armageddon Island, which features physical challenges based on scriptures from the book of Revelation.

All of the other counselors here this summer are in college, but when Gary, the camp director, called Dad last month looking for a student who could lead Bible time each night for the first and second graders in the covered-wagon camp, I got the job. I’ve taught Good News Clubs and vacation Bible schools with Mom for years now. I’m a pro. I haven’t stopped listening to KUDL, but if teaching kids about Jesus were an Olympic event, I’d be a medal contender. If God is keeping score, that’s got to count for something.

“Saw you talking to Allison again after lunch.”

Jason has been trying to get me to ask Allison out all week. She’s eighteen, tall and pretty, with bright eyes that narrow when she’s about to make a joke. Nobody but me seems to remember I’m only fifteen. Everyone treats me like I’m another one of the college students. The only dates I’ve ever been on were with girls from church to the banquets at my Christian high school in Kansas City. Maybe Allison would say yes if I asked her out. I’m curious.

What would it be like to kiss a college girl?

Maybe the reason I don’t have a girlfriend is because I’ve never really gotten to be alone with one.

“Did you know Allison’s the Nebraska state Suffolk queen?” I ask Jason, rubbing sunscreen onto my face. Being outside most of the week has made my freckles go crazy. “Her sheep won the blue ribbon at the state fair. She has a sash and everything.”

Jason snorts and shoots me a sideways smirk in the mirror. It makes me feel good when I crack him up. We’ve been sharing one of the covered wagons this week, and every night we lie awake and talk for hours before we fall asleep. Jason grew up in a little town way out in the middle of Iowa. His dad is a pastor, and we have a lot in common. He’s been telling me stories about how he used to sneak out to drink beer and hook up with girls when he was in high school. I know Mom and Dad wouldn’t approve of this, but it feels so good to meet somebody who grew up with the same rules I have and is making his own decisions.