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- Chris Fabry
- Married to Andrea since 1982. We have 9 children together and none apart. Our dog's name is Tebow.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
The Andy Griffith Show began in 1960, the year before I was born. It ran until 1968 and I recall mixing up the man on the screen and the man who walked in the front door each day. They both were handsome, lanky, had striking voices, and walked with a confidence that came from some other place. As if the road had brought them and taught them something they wanted to pass along if you'd take the time to listen.
Andy settled most problems by being kind, generous, and thinking of others. At least on the TV show. This was another reason I confused him with my father. He seemed to be able to solve just about any problem with kindness and thoughtfulness.
My dad and Andy were only 6 years apart in age, wore their hair short, and had gentle hands.
When Barney wanted to sing in the choir, Andy helped the performance. When Aunt Bee was almost taken in by a suitor, Andy was there.
Opie: Cage sure looks awful empty don't it, Paw?
Andy: Yes, son, it sure does. But don't the trees seem nice and full.
I'm guessing there were others like me who confused their dads with Andy Griffith. Or didn't have a loving father and found one in the TV version. Andy Griffith made me want to be a better man, a better dad. Not a bad career synopsis.
The world is a sadder place because of his passing. But somewhere the birds are singing. And the trees are nice and full. Probably right outside the window.
Monday, July 2, 2012
My mother phoned before 6 a.m. and said she wanted to wake me the way I woke her 51 years ago. A little after 2 a.m., in a backwater hospital in a backwater town, I came into the world. I have been apologizing ever since. I apologize for this blog, in fact. It seems a bit presumptive, but here goes.
Ernest Hemingway committed suicide on the same morning. Morbid, I know. I like to think it was the same hour, that in some intuitive way Papa rose from his bed and made his way downstairs in that Ketchum, Idaho home, knowing there was someone to take his place. He could end his own life now, with assurance some other storyteller would pick up the mantle.
It was probably more of a drunken stupor or perhaps just the depression that propelled him. The illness his father died from. Maybe the fact that he couldn’t write anymore. He was only 61, about to turn 62. I’m only ten years from that age.
I’m going to ramble today without the constraints of a theme or topic. My apologies.
I got my haircut yesterday and had two thoughts: 1. I wish I could go back to that red, metal chair of my youth and experience another haircut from my father, something I hated as a kid. 2. I wish I could have a do-over with the hair stylist who worked in Barboursville, WV that I always went to after my father was summarily left behind.
Maybe the theme is what you would change in your life after 51 years. Or whom you would find and apologize to.
Back to the young lady in WV. I did not know how to get a haircut outside of sitting down and having my father scalp me, but I knew I needed to learn, so off to the beauty shop I went, meandering toward Barboursville for some reason. I walked into the shop and sat down in front of a strikingly beautiful young woman. She had long, flowing blond hair, kind of like Farrah Fawcett in the poster. Curls here and there. A pretty face. I told her how I wanted it cut and tried to relax as she went to work, her delicate fingers roaming, clipping.
After that, I went back to her each time, requesting her by name, though I can’t recall it now, or the specifics of her face, I remember she had two eyes and a forehead that creased every time I walked in. She began to passively aggressively cut my hair as her anger and frustration leaked. It was as if my very presence angered her and I couldn’t understand it. Perhaps I reminded her of someone in her past. Perhaps she’d had a troubled childhood.
My father never got angry at me, except when I’d hide when haircut time came. He let me go last in the haircut line, my older brothers going first, and by then the clippers were white-hot and ready for branding. I had sensitive ears. No, seriously, I could hear so well because they were big—like those radar things—the big dishes that scan back and forth for life on other planets. But noises next to my ear were painful, especially when Lou Anne Hayes screamed piercingly next to my head just for fun in the second grade. I was gunshy with girls after that day. It’s probably why I married an alto. Well, one reason.
By the time my hair was ready for shearing, the clippers my dad had, that weighed probably 40 pounds, would start to cack and buzz and fritz with a noise that stung like a hornet. I would jerk back and he’d tell me to sit still and I would try, I really would, counting the seconds there in the basement until this indignity was over and I could go outside and play.
My hair is gray now. Seriously gray. I watched it fall yesterday as the young woman with the pierced nose and the tattoos she delicately covered with a shawl leaked through. She was talking with her friends about the take-out they ordered and how much it would cost and if they should get the jalapeno poppers and who was going to pick it up. She didn’t ask me how I was doing or if I had anything planned for the 4th or how many children I had or if I’d been born on the day Ernest Hemingway grabbed a shotgun and I was glad. And I knew if she’d have started the conversation I would have spilled my whole life to her and then apologized.
Sandy. I think her name was Sandy. Or maybe Sandee. Or Saundeae and she pronounced it Sandy. If I had the chance, I would go back to her, find her. She’s probably in her 50s now with children and colitis. I don’t think she smoked, so probably not lung cancer. Probably married to a nice guy who made her happy who is not a writer but a doer, a work-at-life-with-your-hands kind of guy. Drives big machines or cuts lumber and likes to hunt on the weekends or fish while she gets her nails done and thinks of the dorky guy with the glasses as thick as coke bottles who never gave her a tip because he’d never been to the beauty shop before and his dad had always cut his hair. How could she know something like that? I would have been mad too. But I guess if I could tell her I’m sorry, I would. I’d apologize and tell her I simply didn’t know you were supposed to tip and that because of her I probably tip too much now because I think of her every time I get my haircut.
And I think of him, too, and that I never tipped him either. My dad. But he never got mad about it.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Fear. Gut-wrenching pain. Excitement. Freedom.
These are some of the feelings my friend is probably going through today on this first day of unemployment. We worked together for many years and then I was let go. Now, 13 years later, he faces the same fate.
Since I have walked this road before, though the circumstances were certainly different, I thought I would write a few thoughts that might be helpful to him and others who are going through some upheaval in life.
On this, the first Saturday of life without a job, it’s easy to despair. You have been untethered from something that gave you security and worth for a lot of years. But your worth doesn’t come from the place that employed you, it’s much deeper than that, and you have to mine for that as if for gold.
You were placed on this planet for a purpose. There are things God had for you to accomplish that you couldn’t have if you hadn’t been employed by your former employer. But the converse is also true. There are things God has for you to accomplish you couldn’t accomplish there. That’s why you’re here, in this barren place.
You will be hit in the face each day with the feeling that you have been cut off. Put out to pasture. Rejected. You have to fight this and overcome it with the truth.
You have been given freedom.
If you’ve ever seen The Shawshank Redemption, you know how hard it is for those who have been institutionalized to go back into the regular world. I know you won’t write, “Brooks was here,” on the walls of your house, but you’ll be tempted to think, “What would it be like to be back at the old routine?”
This is why you must begin a new routine. Go for a walk early in the morning. Keep a journal. Read the Bible. Do something at the start of your day that you didn’t have time for when you had to hop in the car. You have two hours a day that you don’t have to commute. That’s freedom. That’s wonderful!
Don’t forget the coffee. I know this is something you enjoy and I don’t have to mention, really. But now you can drink it with your wife at the shop around the corner, instead of alone in the car listening to NPR or whatever you listened to while driving. And forget the White Hen Pantry. Nothing against them, but branch out to a different brand. Do something java wild.
I think your wife is going to help you see this if you don’t already, and that is, she didn’t love you because you were employed. We don’t think you’re valuable because of what you can do. (Pardon me while I don the sweater and deck shoes.) You are special. There’s no one in the world like you. And while you have a great contribution to make as you move ahead, God didn’t just make you to do stuff or accomplish things. There’s much more to it than that.
Resist the urge to think you have to “settle” for something. Some job. Some new way of life. You’re not “settling” for something, you’re searching. And each day I pray you will find something you didn’t know was out there. Some factoid. Some new snapshot of grace.
When freedom comes, it has responsibility attached to it, as well as a healthy dose of fear. It’s as old as the children of Israel wandering in the desert, thinking how great it was back in Egypt. Look at American history and you’ll find those who were resistant to leave the cozy confines of British rule and taxes.
Freedom isn’t easy. It forces you to think harder about life and the future and where you’re headed. But for some reason, God has chosen not to let someone else tell you what to do with your life.
Good. There is life here, and health, and excitement. You’re going to find something here you didn’t want to look for. Abundant life. But abundant life is messy and hard and uncertain. Unpredictable. And there are questions that will pop into your head you never wanted to ask again.
Good. Great! You’re alive. You feel something inside.
You don’t need me to tell you this, of course. You’re a lot smarter than I will ever be. But truth is truth.
This new path of life will lead you to places of the heart you may never have been. (I know you’ve been without a job before, but not at this stage of life.) Places where you thought you trusted God. Places where you thought you knew the answers. And you probably do, at least on paper, but as you enter these dark woods and you’re tempted to give in to the fear, you’ll see the truth more fully because it’s not something you just know in your head.
This is your time to explore and rejoice and lament and trust and do all the things of living you may not have done while everything was neat and tidy and ordered. And here’s the really weird thing, if you stop fighting against that feeling, the gut-busting, whirling, churning feeling you get when you wake up and realize you don’t have anywhere you have to go, when you embrace that freedom and the possibilities, even for five minutes, you’ll be on your way.
I can’t wait to see what God will grow in your heart through this time of tilling and fertilizing. The best crops grow in the burned out places of life. Or where the manure is spread the thickest. I know it’s not where you want to be. But trust me, for some reason, it’s the place you need to be.
Why? I have no earthly idea. In my own version of the world, this never would have happened. But here’s the bottom line. God is sovereign and this wasn’t an afterthought. Perhaps you’ve just been thrown into a pit by your brothers. What they meant for evil, God meant for good.
And no matter what happens from here on out, you win. The end of this exploration can only be good since he’s in charge. (I’m sounding more Reformed every day. Go figure.)
Take a deep breath. Let it out slowly. Get the coffee. Hug your wife. Take a walk. Clear your throat. Trust Him. And repeat as often as is necessary.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
He paid $25 for it in January, this leather holder for his Kindle. My son, the voracious reader. It broke because the holder was plastic and he kept taking it out and then putting it back. To his defense, the thing wasn't designed well and I figured the plastic thing would snap a long time ago.
“You shouldn’t have taken it out so much,” I scolded.
“I know,” he said, his eyes downcast.
“We can tape it,” I said. "That'll hold it."
He looked at me like I had five heads. “Put tape on my Kindle?”
“I’ll see if I can return it.”
I went to the store where he bought it, a big box store. They get returns every day. There was a young girl working there, younger than most of my daughters. I had witnessed a scene at the counter the week before with people returning something. The process didn’t go well. There was yelling and accusations and hands thrown in the air. I decided I would not act that way.
“My son bought this here a while ago and I don’t have the receipt.”
“How long ago?” she said.
“Like, January.” I was trying to speak her language, with the “like” at the front of the sentence. She looked 12. Seriously. I was returning a broken Kindle holder to a 12 year old.
“Well, our return policy is usually 90 days, but if you can find the same thing over there we could switch it out by using your driver’s license.”
“Okay, I’ll go look for it.”
“The only problem is, we clearanced those holders. You have to find the exact same one.”
The most knowledgeable 12 year old I have ever met.
I went to the Kindle holder department and found them. She was right. They now made them without the plastic thing at the top and with a sleeve you slide your reader into because, I deduced, a lot of people broke that plastic thing at the top. It was flimsy.
I returned with the sleeve kind and showed it to her. She opened it, compared the two, and said, “Yeah, this is different.”
Then she looked up at me, looked me in the eye with something akin to the little Who girl who got out of bed and asked the Grinch for a drink of water. I think it was Cindy Lou.
“I’m sorry. I can’t switch these out.” She frowned, as if I had a disease she couldn't cure.
I could have stomped and fumed and fussed, and if I had, and offered to pay the difference, I probably could have gotten my way. The customer is always right and all that. But there was something pure and innocent and righteous about those eyes and her honest attempt to help me. And it's not fair that a store should replace something after 90 days that broke because it was used too much.
“I understand. I thought I’d give it a try. Thank you for helping me.”
She smiled and looked as if I’d just offered her tickets to see (insert whatever pop star Cindy Lou likes). Taylor Swift? Coldplay?
I went home, got out the Super Glue, and went to work. I had saved the plastic thing just in case. I glued it, then popped my Kindle out of its cover, which is exactly like the one my son bought but is in better shape, and clicked his device into my holder.
“There, good as new,” I said, handing it to him.
“I won’t take it out so much, Dad,” he said.
After the glue dried, I took my e-reader, gingerly pushed it into my son's holder, expecting it to crack...expecting the glue to give, but instead I head "SNAP."
Good as new.
Friday, June 15, 2012
As heard on Chris Fabry Live! on Friday, 6/15--here is a good list of films for dads and families. Viewer discretion advised. Thanks to Bob Waliszewski of pluggedinonline.com for many on the list, as well as listeners!
Ben Hur
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
UP
Father-ish movies:
Courageous (fatherhood is a calling)
The Rookie (Morris as good dad, tensions with own father)
Finding Nemo (overprotectiveness, passionate pursuit of a prodigal)
Searching for Bobby Fischer (support vs. competitive pressure)
Fiddler on the Roof (traditional dad and three dating daughters)
Mr. Holland’s Opus (musical dad trying to connect with deaf son)
October Sky (not a model dad, but father-son issues are core)
Fiddler on the Roof
The Lion King
To Kill a Mockingbird
Life is Beautiful
Field of Dreams
Hoosiers
Father Goose
The Sound of Music
Superman 1978
Swiss Family Robinson
Father of the Bride
Faith Like Potatoes
Summer Movies for the Family (check age-appropriate ratings):
Akeelah and the Bee
Because of Wynn-Dixie
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Charlotte’s Web
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
Dolphin Tale
How to Train Your Dragon
March of the Penguins
The Mighty Macs
Miss Potter
Nancy Drew
Nim’s Island
One Night with the King
Prince of Egypt
Sarah’s Choice
Secretariat
Soul Surfer
That Thing You Do
To Save a Life
The Ultimate Gift
War Horse
What If…
Ben Hur
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
UP
Father-ish movies:
Courageous (fatherhood is a calling)
The Rookie (Morris as good dad, tensions with own father)
Finding Nemo (overprotectiveness, passionate pursuit of a prodigal)
Searching for Bobby Fischer (support vs. competitive pressure)
Fiddler on the Roof (traditional dad and three dating daughters)
Mr. Holland’s Opus (musical dad trying to connect with deaf son)
October Sky (not a model dad, but father-son issues are core)
Fiddler on the Roof
The Lion King
To Kill a Mockingbird
Life is Beautiful
Field of Dreams
Hoosiers
Father Goose
The Sound of Music
Superman 1978
Swiss Family Robinson
Father of the Bride
Faith Like Potatoes
Summer Movies for the Family (check age-appropriate ratings):
Akeelah and the Bee
Because of Wynn-Dixie
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Charlotte’s Web
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
Dolphin Tale
How to Train Your Dragon
March of the Penguins
The Mighty Macs
Miss Potter
Nancy Drew
Nim’s Island
One Night with the King
Prince of Egypt
Sarah’s Choice
Secretariat
Soul Surfer
That Thing You Do
To Save a Life
The Ultimate Gift
War Horse
What If…
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Steve Saint was on the radio program two weeks ago. On Tuesday, 6/12, he was in an accident that left him paralyzed. For the Christianity Today article click here.
I’ve been praying for him and wondering what God is doing in his life. Hasn’t he suffered enough? He lost his father, he lost a daughter, he’s gone through health challenges, and now this?
Then I looked at Romans 5 today and envied Steve Saint. Not envying what he is going through, no one begs for this kind of suffering. But envying what God is still doing. That God counts Steve worthy to go through yet another trial.
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.
Steve can’t stand, though I’m praying he will soon. But he is standing in the grace that God has poured out through his Son. He was justified and given peace with God. This puts Steve in a place of perfect contentment because of what God has done and is still doing.
And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
Really? Rejoice? When you’re paralyzed? When you don’t know if you will be able to regain movement in your arms and legs? Yes, because the rejoicing doesn’t come in circumstances, it's revealed by the hope given by God.
Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
The hope God gives comes to life when we embrace the suffering we go through. The suffering can turn us away from God, but it can also turn us toward him. And this difficulty can be used to produce perseverance and a deep character that trusts even when it can’t see. And that character leads us to real hope. That hope is available to everyone, no matter our difficulty or struggle. That hope is available for Steve Saint, and I’m praying—no, I know he embraces it today, even with arms that can’t move.
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