Family Squeeze (12 page)

How could I disagree? I started reciting my list, but Ramona had drifted off already, so I lay there with my hands behind my thinning hairdo, gazing up at the stippled ceiling. My smile had subsided a little. It wasn’t like I’d been baptized in lemon juice, but you get the picture.

Most nights Steve brushes his teeth outside our bedroom door. If the door is open, he comes in. Boys are easy to talk to when there’s toothpaste in their mouth. Suddenly I missed those talks. I missed him pretending to wipe out as he came thumping down the stairs, just to see the horrified looks on our faces. I missed the music he would crank up about 11 p.m. in the room below us. Even if it sounded like someone killing chickens with a jackhammer. I missed him rolling on the floor with the dog and sometimes me. I missed standing at the fridge together about midnight talking about our day and wondering where Mom hid the mayonnaise.

Grandpa and Grandma missed him too. “We pray for him every night,” they said.

Even the dog missed Steve. I went looking for her one night, thinking the hound was lost. She was lying on Steve’s bed, her tail in the downward position. And try as I might to be brave and manly and a positive thinker Robert H. Schuller would admire, there were tears on my cheeks there in the dark.

I know there are far worse things than hugging your firstborn goodbye as he goes off to Bible college, but I missed my son.

“Lord,” I prayed, “take care of this boy. I know he was on loan, but we got pretty attached to him. Wherever he is and wherever he goes, go with him.”

And I thanked God that He loaned us two more kids. I’m so glad they’re around. They’re bright kids. I think they’ll make good lawyers. They can buy my medication.

There is not a heart but has its moments
of longing, yearning for something better; nobler;
holier than it know now
.

H
ENRY
W
ARD
B
EECHER

The older you get, more it take to fill your heart
with wonder… and only God is big enough to do that
.

R
AVI
Z
ACHARIAS

S
ometimes friends ask questions that make me smile. Like “If it’s a TV set, why do you only get one of them?” But other questions stop me dead in my tracks; some even make me think. Like the one my friend Andy Andersen was honest enough to ask one muggy June night in Florida.

Back in 1993, Andy was enjoying life as a U.S. Navy commander, serving as executive officer of a naval aviation squadron out of Jacksonville, Florida. His Cary Grant smile and gentle strength endeared him to those he led. One day a sailor began asking for financial advice, and Andy responded with a few questions of his own—about the mans own philosophy of life and debt. Soon the two were lost in discussion, barely realizing that twenty others were eavesdropping on their conversation.
Andy invited them to join in. “They were begging for more information,” he says. “Some had creditors beating down their doors, others were watching money problems ruin their marriages.”

Andy decided to put together a financial management seminar and soon found himself speaking to other squadrons in the Jacksonville area. News of the popular workshops spread as far as Washington DC, where he was asked to join the board of a billion-dollar corporation and launch the navy’s financial management program on C-SPAN live from the Pentagon.

By 1998 he was on top of the world, promoted to captain and serving as an executive assistant to the secretary of defense, Bill Cohen. But deep inside there was a nagging emptiness. “I was the first guy with a lampshade on my head at parties,” he recalls. “I went to church but had no relationship with Christ.” One April night he uttered a desperate prayer asking for some kind of sign. He drifted off, and the sign arrived in a vivid dream. “I awoke in a huge cave with a crack in the ceiling and beams of light shining down on an old rugged cross. I could see a man on the cross, his head covered in blood and sweat. I approached the cross and saw that it was Christ, that He had been crucified and was dead. Suddenly His eyes opened, His hand pulled away from the wood and stretched out to me. He said, ‘I am God. I love you. I did this for you.’”

Andy awoke knowing he would never be the same.

In October he noticed my book
Making Life Rich Without Any Money
in a Pentagon bookstore and read it on a flight to his twenty-five-year high school reunion. According to Andy, God used the book “to change my life forever.” He began writing me letters, asking honest and refreshing questions that young followers of Christ long to know. The first was this: “Will Jesus still love me if I buy a Mercedes convertible?”

I smiled at his question, then wrote him back. “Jesus will never leave you,” I told him. “He will love you even if you drive a Ford.” But I asked
him to consider what he could do with the money he saved if he were to buy a used car. I reminded him of the message of the book: that money makes a lousy master but a great servant.

The day Andy received my letter, he was walking past a bulletin board when a picture caught his eye. A red Mustang convertible, good as new, but half the price. “I’d always wanted a Mustang,” he told me. “Besides, it was thirty thousand dollars less than the silver Mercedes.” So he bought it.

Andy began investing in others. And God began to bless him.

Soon he was selected to command the navy’s largest squadron—over twelve hundred sailors. “I knew I had a wonderful opportunity to impact all those lives,” he recalls. “I wanted to show them that happiness has nothing to do with the materialistic pursuits that kill the joy of so many.” He modified his financial seminar, basing it on my book. I sued him and made millions. Okay, not really. But as Andy warned listeners about the pitfalls of a stressful and selfish society, the seminar had a profound effect. “People were happier and more motivated. They felt a greater sense of worth. Within six months we had a complete reversal in squadron performance.” He even began selling my book afterward for a nominal fee, watching thousands of them go into the hands of navy personnel who wouldn’t dream of opening a church door. Today Andy’s platform continues to grow as he conducts his workshops all over the country.

One muggy June evening as we sampled seafood together in a restaurant near Jacksonville, Florida, Andy talked of those days. “I worked with a few ladies you may have heard of,” he grinned. “Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp. Most of what I heard I didn’t believe—until I read it in the newspaper.” While the world learned of the scandal brought on by selfishness, money, power, and lust, Andy felt inspired to up the stakes of his workshop, teaching the lasting benefits of integrity,
faithfulness, and helping others. But as he encountered the stresses and strains of middle age, Captain Andersen admitted that he was having a crisis of faith.

Leaning toward me, he asked, “Why are you still a Christian?”

I was midway through a fistful of shrimp from the buffet, but I managed to ask, “What do you mean?”

“Well, since I gave my life to Christ, things have gotten worse. I’ve been beaten up and robbed. I’m being sued for no good reason. Things aren’t great on so many fronts. What about you? Why are you still a Christian?”

I’m usually silent in the face of such questions. Or I try to hide behind people who are brighter than I—and thankfully my high school buddy Kevin was along on this trip. Kevin spoke wisely of the resurrection of Christ, of the lack of viable alternatives. Andy’s wife, Cindy, was there too. She talked of the change in her own life. And then the three of them looked at me because I am wise and witty and would surely have an answer.

I ate more shrimp. I mentioned the fact that no other belief system had satisfied my craving for truth. I talked of people in my life who have no earthly reason to rejoice but whose lives are filled with joy. But what came next from my mouth was not what I intended.

“You know,” I said, toying with my fork, “I’ve traveled in limousines, stayed in the finest hotels, eaten the fattest shrimp. And I’ve had this strange feeling I can’t properly explain. I remember one night in particular, sitting on a powdery beach in Maui—an absolute paradise for a Canadian. My children were throwing the Frisbee nearby and actually getting along. I kid you not, this happened. I was holding the hand of the one person in all the world that I love the most.”

“Who was that?” interrupted Kevin.

“The girl I’ve been stark raving mad about since the age of fifteen,”
I answered. “You know, the thought hit me as I held her hand:
This is as good as it gets down here, but it’s not enough. There must be more than this.”

Surprisingly, Andy and his wife leaned forward. I told them of C. S. Lewis, the brilliant thinker who went from avowed atheist to follower of Christ. “Lewis wrote, ‘If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.’“

“I’ve never heard it put that way,” said Andy. “That’s really what led me to Christ.”

The Middle Ages often usher in a time of doubt. What I want are answers, and sometimes I just get questions. But sometimes it’s the questions that keep me moving forward, stumbling heavenward.

Deep within each of us is a voice that we will hear if we just get quiet enough to listen. A voice telling us that nothing in this world will entirely keep its promise, that what we want most cannot be had down here. The best marriage, the sweetest salary, the flashiest car—nothing will ever entirely satisfy this longing.

On my bulletin board is the picture of the man with the Cary Grant smile, grinning up at me from his red Mustang convertible, his faithful Labrador retriever, Dusty, by his side. Andy’s picture reminds me never to stop asking questions. It reminds me of integrity and truth, of a longing for Home.

I’ll tell you how to beat the gambling in Las Vegas.
When you get off the airplane, walk right into the propeller
.

H
ENNY
Y
OUNGMAN

I do not read advertisements.
I would spend all my time wanting things
.

F
RANZ
K
AFKA

O
ne morning our remaining son, Jeff, held up the newspaper and said, “Dad, look!” It was a full-page advertisement for a wide-screen HDTV. A TV that would fit perfectly along our south basement wall. Bold numbers were scrawled across the TV: $44.

“Dad, look, we can buy one.”

I said, “Read the little print below the big print. That’s forty-four bucks a month until the year 2349.” His eyes grew wider as he read the small print. His dad was right.

I thought to myself,
Of all the bad habits we are teaching our young, few are worse than the notion that they can have it all now. That good
things come to those who pounce. And borrow. And max out their credit cards
.

We’re paying our Visa bills with our MasterCards so we can impress people we don’t like with things we don’t need and get air miles that we can’t use thanks to blackout dates. When money enters the equation, our brains short-circuit. We get dumber than a sack of hammers. I once saw an advertising slogan in a bank: “We will lend you enough money to get you completely out of debt.”

For the first time in world history, Americans and Canadians are spending more than we make. But what culture of any worth loves its economy more than its children? Remember the word
wait?
.

Flying into a beautiful city in California, I looked out my window at all the massive houses. Many of the garages would dwarf entire houses of thirty years ago. The average American residence now has three more rooms than the homes of twenty years ago. I think I know why. We need bigger houses because we’re having so many kids. Whoops. Maybe not. Fifty years ago the average couple had twenty-seven children, give or take a dozen. They had to issue nametags. Not anymore. The average couple now has 1.7 children. My daughter points at my son and says, “Him. He’s the point seven!”

We need bigger houses because we want to impress others, and we’d like more room for our stuff. We’ve never had more stuff in the history of mankind or womankind. We’ve become stuffaholics. We measure success with a stuffometer. We have pants that talk. They’re made in Great Britain. They simply say, “Zip me” (maybe some of us need these). We have cell phones that work underwater. What an answer to prayer! We have clocks to shine the time on our ceilings in the middle of the night. They’re an insomniac’s dream. At some point each December most of us, me included, scratch our heads and ask, “What do we get for the person who has everything?” Here’s a radical answer: How about
nothing? How about an arm around their shoulder, a kind word, and a glass of iced tea together?

New York writer Liz Perle McKenna decided on a most unusual way to declutter her life. For her fortieth birthday party, she invited friends to come to her house and take one thing of their choosing.
¹³
Most of us are thinking, I’d sure like to be her friend.

Would someone please explain to me who convinced us that we would be happier chasing stuff than enjoying relationships? Because that’s what we’re doing. We have more shopping malls than high schools now. We spend more money on pet food than missions. As Richard Swenson says, “The good life now means the
goods
life.”

But how can we know if we have enough stuff? Thankfully, advertisers, who really care about us, have a handy little form we can fill out. It’s called:

(Sponsored by the same guys who brought you the slogan “You’re worth it.”)

   How much stuff do you have right now?

   WHAT? Are you COMPLETELY INSANE? Do you have sawdust for brains? It’s not NEARLY enough.

   We’ll be right over.

The advertising industry is waging a nonstop bombardment on our minds. They spend billions creating discontent, convincing us that we are miserable creatures.
You poor thing You do not have a water filter for your cat dish. How do you live without one? Buy one today, and well throw in a free nose-hair trimmer for your gerbil.

I saw an ad on TV recently for a beautiful luxury car. A well-oiled narrator said softly, “The only cure for temptation is to surrender to it.”
And I thought,
Now there’s a noble creed to live by. Does that mean I can scratch your car?
I was tempted.

Buick once tried to sell us with the slogan “Buick: Something to believe in.” Hmmm…we can now worship at the First Church of the Buick. Take out your Owners Manuals, and lets sing together from page 33.

Then there’s the ad with a guy holding a beer can. Without slurring his words, he says, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” Pardon me? If this is as good as it gets, we’re a miserable lot.

I prefer the old ads. Like the one I once saw in a newspaper. It said, “Used Cars. Why go elsewhere to be cheated? Come here first.” Here are a few more of my favorites:

• Free: Farm kittens. Ready to eat.
  

• Our sofa seats the whole mob—and it’s made of 100% Italian leather.
  

• For Sale: NordicTrack. $300. Hardly used. Call Chubby at…
  

• Kittens, eight weeks old. Seeking good Christian home.
  

And so we are left with a choice. Store up for ourselves treasures on earth where they need fixing, storing, insuring, painting, maintaining, rustproofing, and constant attention. Or we can follow Jesus’ advice in Matthew 6:20 and store up for ourselves “treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.”

Here are a few ideas to start us down the road to debt-free living and a place called Peace.

   Take a child by the hand and go for a walk. Make sure it’s your child.

   If you are in debt: (a) make a budget, (b) pour lighter fluid on your credit cards, (c) light them, and (d) then
use cash for all purchases. Ask older people about cash; they know what it is.

   Buy bottled water every twenty-three years. At the corner store near us, you can buy “a taste of paradise” water from Fiji on sale for $1.50 per bottle or $11.36 a gallon. We spend less than one-third of a cent per gallon for water that comes out of a tap twelve steps from our bed. If you buy two bottles of water a day, you can save $1,095 a year by taking along your own plastic bottle and filling it up with tap water—water that most of the world would give just about anything to drink (by the way, Pepsi recently admitted that Aquafina comes from…are you ready?…a tap).