The Flog – The Fabry Log

I said it out loud and to no one in particular during the NCAA tournament. “I miss Billy Packer.” It wasn’t because I didn’t like the commentators, necessarily. It wasn’t because Billy Packer was always right about all of his analysis. I remember Billy Packer and Jim Thacker announcing ACC games when I was a kid. Billy Packer was the first person to introduce me to the intricacies of basketball. So I miss Billy Packer because of his connection with my childhood.

I miss Adrian Rogers. You can still hear him on the radio, but I miss his voice talking to me on the phone. “Hello Chris,” he would say with that deep bass of his. “And how is your family?” He said “family” “Famly.”

I miss the sound of my dad's tractor early in the morning.

I miss the excitement that sports used to give me. How exciting opening day of baseball was. How exciting the pennant races. They don’t hold the same fascination with me that I had as a child. Maybe because I don’t have my father to share those games with or Joe Nuxhall, the old left hander, rounding third and heading for home.

I miss Donald Cole, Radio Pastor at Moody. Pastor Cole had the warmest, kindest, least-hurried delivery of anyone I’ve ever known. He was a second father to many of us. He would parse Hebrews 6 or speak at a fundraiser with the same intensity. The same resolve. And I miss his wife, Naomi.

What we miss says a lot about us as human beings because human beings long for things that last and, in this life, nothing does. Tiger Woods looks old and he’s still a kid.

I miss the covered bridge in my hometown.

I miss playing records at the radio station. I miss how everything was done live and how not much of anything is live these days. I miss singing hymns in church and all four stanzas in four part harmony. (That doesn’t mean I hate worship songs, it just means I miss hymns.)

I miss being able to have an opinion about something and then having to think through whether it’s worth it to express that opinion in fear of a lawsuit.

I miss Mike Sullivan. Mike was an outstanding student and athlete at my high school. Everybody wanted to be like Mike. Until he was diagnosed. And he lived his final days well. I didn’t talk to him after high school, but I miss Mike Sullivan. Tim Alford, too.

I miss hearing people on the radio and wondering what they look like and then seeing their pictures and saying, “That’s not you.” First time I saw Larry King I was shocked. You can’t be like that anymore.

I miss pushing a stroller and watching people make faces at my children. I don’t miss diapers and runny noses and having to tie shoes over and over again, but I would probably endure that for another chance to parent better.

I miss the wide-open expanse of life that seemed to stretch out forever and go on past the hills and across rivers and lakes. I live in a time-ravaged world now and I miss the one that had no such limitations.

I miss the illusion that everything, with enough time, is going to work out okay. Because everything does not work out okay, at least in this life. You lose your health or your mind. Friends betray. Lovers wound. And even worse, you’ll do the same. You won’t live up to your own expectations, and if you do, you’ll have aimed way too low.

I miss the blissful ignorance of youth, where all you needed was a little air in your tires and a bottle of pop and a candy bar.

I miss Chuck Colson.

I miss the silence between people before smart phones. Now there’s silence but no connection, just heads down and living somewhere other than where we are.

What do you miss? And what does that hole in your heart say about you and the world around you and the God who is there?