Grace, Part 2

I am a venomous bastard of ungrace.

There comes a point in everyone's life when they have no choice but to face the sickening, garish, schismatic, decaying image of themselves. It may come in a mirror. It may come in a conversation. It may come in a quiet moment of personal contemplation. But the day will come. And when it does, there are only two options: confront the image with truth and grace, or close your eyes and forget what you saw so plainly a few short moments ago. After all, how easy it is to miss what you aren't looking for.

My father was a "mean drunk." That says nothing to the beauty that I am convinced must have been at rest within him—tied up, ball-gagged and made to acquiesce, but present nonetheless, I am sure of it. And there were moments of immense surprise; Knott's Berry Farm, Disneyland, trips to the zoo, and the times that he administered my ear medication after my first surgery. "Mean drunk," however, was the image most visible to those who knew him best—or perhaps to those who saw him explode in a random Sacramento grocery store.

To his credit, I cannot personally remember a time when my father ever raised a finger with the intent to physically harm me. I can, however, remember the times when I wished he would have. At least then I would have been assuaged by the fact that he thought enough of me to want to abuse me. As it was, when I did not provide any amusement to him, I fell completely off his radar.

For the amusements, I can remember my father serving alcohol to me very early on and in a variety of situations, though little else of those moments. I can remember being terrorized by that damn green sea-monster mask he loved to wear and chase me around the room with. I can also remember my sister and I traveling with him to the houses of strange women and watching bizarre movies and eating Ritz crackers while the adults disappeared to destinations unknown.

For the abuses, I will suffice it all by saying that watching random household objects being used as weapons was a common occurrence. I can also vaguely remember a firearm being held to my mother's face as my father shouted something indiscernible and with great intensity. My sister often found herself in the middle of those situations, whereas I was on the outside looking in from a distance.

At least she knows he loves her.

I had never known what love really was up to that point, and for many years struggled with its meaning. But there was no struggling with the reality and definition of the blood-curdling, explosive, embittered, seemingly limitless rage that I lived with on a daily basis.

I was terrified of my father, though always desired to be close to him. But to be close was to experience the sting and discoloration that his anger would surely leave. It was a few short years into their marriage before my mother knew this truth to be irreversible. Despite all of the Christian advisors that told her to “stick it out” because “God hates divource,” she knew that it was only a matter of time before there would be no time left, and his violence would claim us all in its decent into nothingness. It was life and death, and the cost of staying would be our very lives.

In December of 1988, when I was nearly seven years old, my mother took my sister and I on a grand adventure; on a covert operation to escape the tyranny of a dictatorial state; we were refugees in search of a new land and new opportunities. She told us we were “going for a ride.” She didn’t say where. Through the next year, we lived like we were in witness protection. There were men of ill-repute sent to discover our location. It was shortly after the divource was finalized that our need for hiding was obsolete.

January 20th, 1990. I will never forget. That is when my life ended. I just didn’t know it yet.

In a drunken rage, my father left a bar with his then-girlfriend. Speeding and with great stupidity, the two began arguing. In the course of events that followed, my father was ejected forcefully from the vehicle. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. The car landed on him, crushing him instantly. It was my father’s father that decided to pull the plug. "No, he won't wake up. He's gone. He won't be coming back."

What does that mean? What does that mean?

I was emotionless. I had never been told how to react to news of this sort. Should I be sad? Should I be angry? Should I cry? My default reaction was the same it had been every time news of my father’s behavior reached my young ears: Stillness. If I remain still, I thought, then he won’t see me. And if he can’t see me, he can’t yell at me. And if he can’t yell at me, I'll be safe. I clearly misinterpreted the significance of the news I was given. And so, with tears in her eyes, my mother communicated all that I could not.

From that moment on, a deep bitterness and hatred of God overtook me. It was almost a night-and-day transformation. I was told to “shape up and fly right” by those who genuinely loved me. I was ignored by everyone else. I was sent to many counselors and therapists and psychoanalysts, though none proved of any use to me. I was inconsolable, and worse yet, I didn’t know how to tell anyone.

In my pride, I remember thinking, If only he had lived; I would have grown so big that I would have punched him out for all the things he did. Silly logic, to be sure. But the sentiment was as white-hot as the rage broiling within me. I told myself, I will never be like that rotten, venomous, son-of-a-bitch-bastard. With every once of inner fervor, I dedicated myself to the hatred of the man, and by proxy, of God.

God is dead. There’s no other excuse.

It was a divine irony that befell me thereafter. In my attempts at secular humanism, I came to resemble the vestige of my patriarchal chromosomes all the more. The more I looked into the mirror, the more I saw my father glaring back at me, and the more I had to lie to myself to avoid what was obvious to everyone else. Slowly I became wax, and my identity melted the hotter the rage became. I was, as Nietzsche put it, an Immoralist, in the truest sense. Yet it became an immorality that I could not escape; that left me feeling more chained than ever. None of the vices of this world ever filled the emptiness that fed upon itself like a wolf gnawing at its leg caught in a hunter’s trap. I was trapped. And there was no way out.

I remember consuming a bottle of Kettle One and some unknown amount of Johnny Walker. I was writing in my diary the following words:

I never fail to fail. . . I never fail to fail. . . I never fail to fail. . . I never fail to fail. . .

The words had barely been scrawled before I found myself drowning in the hopelessness that made its presence felt in my eyes. And as the moisture spilled, my thoughts drifted to the only thing I hadn’t tried to end the pain.

I remember gripping the knife so tightly that it dug grooves into my strong hand. And as the blade passed through the layers of dermis, a feeling just as white-hot as my sorrow overtook my wrist. Then all became dizzy and dark.

Finally. Nothingness.

So it was with great soberness and vehemence that I awoke the next morning. I failed at failure. Divine irony. Bastards. I can’t even die right.

It was very shortly thereafter that I received a call from my mother. Desperately, she asked if I would go to church with her. Finally, and with great trembling, my pride had melted away with the wax of my arrogance and I accepted her offer. It was there that I found hope. It was there that I found healing. It was there that I understood for the first time what my mother had shown me all along.

It was in a church that I encountered GRACE.

It was then I knew in the depths of my soul that GOD loved me; that JESUS CHRIST was as close to me then as He was infinite in dimension. It was at church I discovered that God had never abandoned me; that a God who would allow Himself to suffer and die was a God who understood anything that I had gone through. It was then I knew that no matter what my propensity for sin was, God’s readiness to forgive was surpassingly greater. It was then I knew that the cost of discipleship would be my very life, but it would be an undeserved method of payment; an unequivalent exchange; my filthy rags in exchange for God’s glorious riches; my fractured, violated, depraved, mangled, numb, nocuous, mutilated, impeachable heart, in exchange for the eternal NESHAMAH of RUACH ELOHIM. I was given a new life empowered and sustained by God’s very Spirit. And I now serve God with the unrestricted fullness of the heart He has given to me.

So then, I guess one could say that, as children of God, we are all ambassadors of GRACE to a world Philip Yancey aptly defines as trapped within endless cycles UNGRACE. And it is within this context that I will attempt to articulate and give shape to the inarticulable, all-surpassing nature of GOD’S GRACE:

GOD will never stop loving us. GOD will never leave us or forsake us. God desires to make us whole, complete.

These truths epitomize the whole of the scriptures. More than that, God knows that we are all, at the very core of natures, unrepentant venomous bastards of ungrace. And He doesn’t care. He loved us so much that He performed the physically impossible in order to satisfy His need for both justice and relationship with us. Jesus was more than a scapegoat for a pitiable, violent breed of superapes; He was and remains the very expression of God’s unfathomable love for us.

So then, how does one broach the subject of living within the grace of God? What precisely does grace afford us? How do we live our lives propelled by grace yet compelled by righteousness? What role does grace have in our personal sanctification? Maybe I’ll come to a conclusion or two before I celebrate my thirtieth birthday. Here’s hoping. ome to a conclusion or two before I celebrate my thirtieth birthday. Here’s hoping.