I didn’t tell him to be careful. I didn’t tell him to watch out for crazy drivers. All the things I didn’t say come flooding to mind. Not that it would have made any difference, in hindsight. He was safe, and careful, and he was on the lookout. He did everything right. It wasn’t his fault. But I still can’t help but wonder, what if I had said just one more little thing? Could that have possibly made a difference? I never taught him what to do if another driver crosses the center line. It never even occurred to me that I should, but I’ve had it happen to me before and I could have given him advice that could have made a difference. I know, deep in my heart and way at the back of my brain, that it wasn’t my fault. That it likely wouldn’t have made a difference. But I still can’t shake the thought that I could have done more for him. And then he’d still be here.

There are a lot of things I don’t talk about from that morning. I haven’t shown more than a small handful of people the pictures of his truck. I try not to talk about the wreck itself or coming up on the scene of the accident or any of that stuff. Not more than the initial Facebook post and the Substack that followed. I still think about it almost daily, but that’s not a burden for anyone else to have to bear. I haven’t talked about the other driver or any of the follow-up with the State Police or the local Prosecutor’s Office because it just adds layers of anger and pain that I’d rather not relive publicly over and over again. Everything brings up questions and anger and emotions that aren’t healthy to dwell on. I don’t want to tarnish the happy memories of his life and what he meant to everyone with things that just insight rage. I also can acknowledge that there is something healthy about getting all of that out of my head and off of my chest and making it public, especially now that legal proceedings are moving forward and there’s no legal necessity to keep those things private. So this will be all I write about it.

The other driver was a 19 year old from Kentucky. He was working the outage a the power plant here in Petersburg. He had a long history of speeding and reckless driving. His learner’s permit had been suspended for those violations, and he had never obtained more than an intermediate license from the state of Kentucky, and that too was suspended when he caused the wreck. Meaning he should not have legally been driving by himself at any point. Back in fall of 2025 he was arrested for failure to appear following similar violations. The week before the wreck he was pulled over in Princeton and had his truck impounded for driving on a suspended license. How he got the truck out of impound and was back on the road less than a week later is a question we’ll likely never know the answer to. A little over a month after the wreck he was back at it, and got arrested in Henderson for speeding while driving without a license or insurance. So the Pike County Prosecutor will be pursuing charges for driving while never having obtained a license and causing an accident that resulted in a death, along with reckless homicide. Both are Level 5 felonies in the State of Indiana and carry a maximum sentence of 6 years (which does not stack). He was arrested and is in custody in Kentucky awaiting extradition to Indiana, at which point the process for trial and everything else will start. There are a lot of questions in all of our minds, obviously. How and why was he still on the road? Why hadn’t he been in jail already? This never should have happened because he never should have been driving to begin with. As I said, it all just brings up questions and anger. And that’s something that’s hard to live with. And the more I talk about it, the more angry I get by it. It gets hard to differentiate the difference between wanting justice and wanting vengeance.

So, I focus on the good. I focus on the love and pride I had in my son. I’ve lived angry. I’ve lived hurt. I didn’t like that guy, and it wasn’t healthy. I like to think I have dealt with all of that and moved past that part of my life. I have an amazing family, a good job (despite how much I may complain about it sometimes), incredible coworkers (even if they might get on my nerves sometimes), and an all-around blessed life. So, in these moments I choose love. I still cry every day. I still think about the wreck every day. I still wait for him to text me back. I still watch for his truck to come pulling up to the house. I still expect to see his massive self laying in his bed when I walk over and look in his room. I see him so clearly in my thoughts. And I love him so much. I’m so proud of the young man he’d grown in to. I miss him. God, how I miss him. But in these moments, I have to choose to focus on how much he loved us and how much he brought to our lives. Because if I spend any time dwelling on who took him from us and how he was taken, I know that will only lead to a dark place that I cannot go to. That none of us need to go to.

As we move forward with everything, we will pray for justice. Not vengeance. And we will focus on the life that was lived and the joy it brought. Not how it was taken.

But the idea of writing a collection of stories about Sean’s life didn’t just feel like something that I could do, the more I thought about it the more it felt like something I should do. We may have only had 17 years…and the more I think about that, the shorter and shorter it seems, nowhere near enough time to spend with your first and only son…but they were years full of fun and joy and love and stories to be told! In writing my way through my grief with my Substack I’ve tried to share some of the moments and especially the things that have really stuck with me, the things that make me cry even though I know the tears come from a place of love and joy, and the struggles I’ve had trying to move forward with life without him…but I haven’t really gotten into a lot of the stories about the fun and silly times we’ve had over the years. All of the stupid and embarrassing moments, and the awesome ones that made us so proud! To write well, I think you have to write what you know. And I think the more you know, the more you’re going to write yourself in to your story. So, this is going to be a lot of things all rolled in to one. It will be part autobiographical, because a lot of my story with Sean is built from my own story and the stories of my own childhood that I shared with him. It will be part his story, to make sure I honor the memory I have of him, the pride I felt for him, and the love he had for everyone close to him. And it will also be some parts Bible study, social commentary, fun stories, and (maybe) inspirational. As I write I will put this out a chapter at a time on my Substack, and then maybe one day when I feel like it’s all finished and the story has been completely told as best it can be, I may look in to having it published. Granted, I would probably need someone to proofread and edit and give me notes and whatnot before it ever got to that point…but maybe I’ll get lucky and someone who reads the chapters along the way will be kind enough to help out with that. But for now, this is the start. I don’t really have a timeline or a plan… I know what my first chapter is going to cover, and that’s about it. So please, if you have Sean stories that you’d like included in this, fire up your inner writer and send it to me. I would like this to be a journey that everyone who called him friend, who knew and loved him, who was impacted by him in whatever way, can go on together and fill the pages of his book with a full picture of an incredible life.

Alright, let’s get after it.

God he was strong though! I never actually admitted it to him, but he was way stronger than me. I just happen to be a better wrestler. And to all of his friends, he was that gigantic strong kid. He would pick them up and carry them around. He-Man lift them as they called it. He’d pick Abby up and carry her on his shoulder. He was just massive. And he used that size and that strength to defend and protect his friends. I have found saved messages where some friends of his had problems with other kids picking on them or being mean or doing otherwise awful things to each other, and almost without fail just the threat of Sean stepping in to do something about it was enough to end it all. “Anyone who says violence isn’t the answer isn’t asking the right question” is a motto of mine I’ve half-jokingly told the kids, but at the same time the threat of violence can be a majorly dissuading force against otherwise bad behavior. And Sean understood how to utilize his size and strength to dissuade bad behavior that was directed at his friend group. A huge teddy bear, a gentle giant, but also a force that no one wanted to reckon with.

Strength is measured in a lot of ways. Just being physically imposing and able to lift heavy things is probably one of the more common metrics most people associate with strength, but that’s merely a surface-level measure. Strength is also mental and emotional. Having a strong mind being able to see, understand, and work through all of the crazy situations life throws at you. Having a strong will to keep pushing through. Being stable and steady and reliable. A lot of people have told me over the last couple of months how strong I am. And of course I give a little pained grin and say “thank you,” but when most days I still go through stretches of uncontrollable crying, when I go hide out behind the building to cry while I’m at work almost nightly, and then leave work early some nights because just holding it together through a whole shift is more than I’ve got in me for the night… I don’t feel very strong. I didn’t think speaking at Sean’s funeral was “strong,” I just thought it was what I needed to do, as his father, to make sure he got a proper sendoff. I don’t think writing about all of this stuff is “strong,” this is just what I need to do to get all of these thoughts out of my head and off of my chest…because if I don’t I’ll go crazy or they’ll crush me. I saw a quote, and now I can’t remember who it was attributed to (actually, I’m pretty sure it’s been attributed to a number of different people in different iterations), that effectively said “courage is not the absence of fear, but the choice to move forward anyway.” Maybe that’s how strength works too. Maybe it’s not the feeling strong that makes it so, but the just pushing forward and doing it anyway.

Sean knew he was a strong kid physically, but he was also shy and had a lot of insecurities. I doubt he would have acknowledged that he was strong in any way other than being able to He-Man lift his friends and be a symbol of brute force to dissuade bullies. What we’ve learned from all of his friends since he was taken away from us all way too soon, is that he wasn’t just a big body. He was an emotional rock. He brought comfort and support and encouragement. He truly was the best of us…even if he never knew it or would have believed it. He embodied strength in every way that it mattered for everyone who was closest to him. And that’s the most important strength a man can have.

It had a few dents and dings and little things that weren’t quite right, but he embraced all of that. And a couple of those dings he contributed himself. The very first time he drove to school after getting his permit, we got off of 69 and took Lynch Rd, down 41, to Diamond Ave in order to avoid the traffic and construction on the Lloyd (I realize if you’re not from Evansville none of that means anything, but if you ARE from Evansville you know what a nightmare the Lloyd is and why you’d want to avoid it like the plague). For some reason the boy apparently didn’t know how to get anywhere. We’ve only been driving on these roads the majority of his life, but I guess he’d never paid attention to where I was going, so once it was his turn to drive he needed turn by turn directions to get everywhere. He was in the middle lane on Diamond and he asked me if he should get over in the right lane. I told him no, that that lane would be ending up ahead, but that he could get over in the left lane at some point. Without a second’s hesitation or looking at all, he just started to merge into the left lane… with a semi right there next to us! Slammed the driver’s side of the truck into the trailer and put a small dent in the back door and a nice yellow scrape down the bed of the truck. Luckily he didn’t freak out or overreact (even though I might have) and got back in the middle lane without causing a huge wreck. Pretty sure the semi driver yelled some profanities at him and may have thrown a finger his way, but all in all no harm no foul. Luckily. And after that he was always super cautious and careful and observant when he was driving. Dylan said he was the best driver of all of them, always careful and paying attention to the road. Parking lots were his biggest enemy. He backed into a couple poles on a couple different occasions, so his rear bumper took the worst of the wear for his learning curve. One time he came out from work and noticed someone had clipped his front bumper and it had a little fracture in the plastic. Nothing serious or major, but he was so mad! Like I said, he loved that truck. It was his baby. And he worked hard to take care of it.

I taught him how to change the oil, and once he got his permit he always changed it himself after that. We changed the spark plugs together. I did the hard side that required some removing stuff to get to to show him how it was done, and then he replaced the three on the other side himself. There was something wrong with the latch on the tailgate and he figured it out and was able to get it fixed and working all on his own. His mom got him some nice new headlights and taillights since the originals that were still on it were old and kinda foggy. When he replaced the headlights he had some trouble with them not coming on right all the time. He pulled up YouTube videos and did some troubleshooting and figured out it was a problem with the fuses and told me what he needed so he could get everything working right. He never did get around to replacing the taillights. He needed to get the tailgate fixed first. Which he had done just a few weeks before the wreck. He told me what the problem was and how he had fixed it, and we had talked about swapping out the taillights after work sometime when he was at my house in the coming weeks. I’ve got the box with those taillights out here in my garage, along with a case of plastic push rivets where he was replacing missing/broken ones getting his truck all squared away.

And he loved to drive. Once he got his license, he wanted to be the one who drove everywhere. Sometimes it kind of upset me… I liked riding with him and listening to music and talking and hanging out. But he wanted to drive himself everywhere! If we were going back to Kentucky to visit my parents, he’d drive himself so he could go hang out with his friends there, and also because he just liked to be out driving himself. And I get it. When I was younger (and honestly, even still) I loved to just get out on the road and drive. Backroads, open highway, going somewhere or just driving nowhere at all, I love to be behind the wheel just going. There’s freedom and control and peace in being behind the wheel with the radio on.

I changed the oil in my truck and my work car (which will eventually become Nadya’s car once she gets up the courage to start driving and get her license). I used the oil filter wrench he got me for my birthday…because we always had problems getting our big hands in to get a good grip on the oil filters. They don’t put those things in convenient places. And the first time we changed the oil on the car it took both of us fighting with it before I finally got pissed off and just put a screwdriver through it and ripped it off. That was a wild learning experience for him…he didn’t know you could do that. 🤣 I replaced the spark plugs in the car as well. I found a YouTube video that explained step by step what needed to be taken out and what tools to use and did it without issue. He’d have been proud of me for that, I think. I used his tool set he was given after his summer internship working at WSI last summer. He had the tool set in the backseat of his truck the morning of the wreck. He was going to get his own toolbox at work and he wanted to get everything set up with all of his stuff.

I hope there are vehicles in Heaven. And I hope he’s got a truck he can work on and a shop with all of the tools he could ever need. Because if Heaven really is a place of eternal joy, I know how much he loved his truck and how much he loved working on it. And being able to do that would be something that would bring him a lot of joy. I know being able to work on our trucks together again, just one more time, would bring me more joy than anything.

Sean never had a whole lot of interest in school dances either. He did sort of the same thing I did, more often than not… no date, just go and hang out with friends. Usually he’d wait and tell me at the last second that there was a dance he was wanting to go to, knowing I always wanted him to give me some notice when he had stuff like this going on, because we don’t live even remotely close to the school so it’s a huge time commitment, not to mention gas, for me to take him and pick him up and so on and so on. Knowing all of that he would still wait till the last minute to tell me…and I’d still take him and grump about it the whole time. He never was particularly fond of getting dressed up until he and his buddy Dylan decided they were going to go to the dances their Junior year wearing a pink shirt. So I took him to get a nice dress shirt and some black slacks that would fit him properly so he didn’t look like a slob. And he had fun with it, and he looked good, and he found an appreciation for dressing nicely and wearing clothes that fit well. Even if 90% of the rest of the time he was in baggy shorts and a hoodie, when he wanted to look nice, he looked very nice. Not only that, but he wanted to look nice! That’s what surprised me the most. He text me once asking if I could take him to get a particular shirt… he had asked his mom to get it for him, but she found one that was similar on discount and got that instead because it was close enough. He knew I would understand and appreciate the need for the shirt to fit just right. What’s really funny about that is he and I had had a conversation about having a dress shirt that fits properly a few years before and he just didn’t get it…he didn’t care to dress up enough to care if the shirt fit right. Now, all of a sudden, he gets it and it was really important to him.

He and Dylan had decided they were going to go to Prom their Junior year with some other buddies. All just going stag and gonna hang out and have fun together. Naturally he didn’t think any of this through and just thought you could walk into a store the morning of and rent a tux. 🤦‍♂️ So I took him, almost running out of time, to get sized up and order what he was wanting so it would be in and ready for the day of Prom. We tried on sports coats and looked at shirts and ties and had a lot of fun. He picked out what he was wanting that would fit what he and Dylan had agreed on for their style and colors, and we got him all squared away. On the day of Prom we got the boys dressed and ready, and since neither of them had any money I told them I’d throw on my suit and take them out to eat. We went to BJ’s Brewhouse and saw a bunch of other kids dressed up for their own respective Proms, then we headed downtown to meet Sean’s mom so she could take pictures of the boys before I dropped them off for the dance. I walked with them to the venue, took a few more pictures, then sent them on their way for what ended up being a great night where they had an absolute blast. Pretty sure that’s where Sean got to really hang out with Abby, who would become his girlfriend maybe a month later.

And so, over this past year, he went to all of the big dances. With Abby, and with Dylan. He got dressed up, looked nice, bought flowers, had fun with all of his friends. I never did really like going to the dances. I went and I had fun with my friends, but I never looked forward to them. Sean really seemed to actually look forward to them, to get excited for them. They were an opportunity for him to wear a nice shirt, slacks, and a tie and really go big. To go over the top to make it a special occasion for him and Abby. And this past weekend should have been his last big opportunity to go all out for his Senior Prom. He had already graduated and was starting his new job, and he hadn’t said anything about it, so I’m not entirely sure if he was planning to go. But knowing him, he was going to wait till the absolute last second to tell me he wanted me to go with him to pick out a tux. And I can’t imagine he would have missed the opportunity to take Abby to his Senior Prom. He wouldn’t have missed that chance to dress up and show out for her and all of his friends.

But he did miss it. And I know almost all of them went. And it looks like they all had a wonderful time. I just wish he had been there for it. I know at this point, that’s the thing that keeps hurting the most. All of the memories and pictures and everything we have left from him; those don’t hurt. We cry when we see them, we cry when we remember those times we had with him, we cry when we stumble on something small and insignificant that marks part of his presence in our lives; but those don’t hurt. We’re sad because we miss him, and missing him is its own kind of emotion. It’s a loving and a longing…but I think there’s a certain happiness to missing him like that as well. Because those are all wonderful memories. We cry while we smile and laugh. But him missing his Prom…missing his graduation…not getting to go to work and learn and grow…not getting to see what he was going to do with his life… that HURTS! Because I can’t relive those missed opportunities in my mind and smile at how wonderful they were. I can’t cling to the things he didn’t get to do or the life he never got to see. All I can do is mourn that. And that’s a pain you can’t prepare for…I don’t even know how to understand it. I know when I walk in his room I’m going to see something that’s going to trigger memories of him and I’m going to cry. I know it! I can mentally prepare myself for it, and it's still going to hit me, but I know that they’re happy memories and I’m sad because I love and miss him. Even when random waves hit, I can weather those because there’s always that happiness at the end…even if it’s hard to find or to feel in the moment.

But I don’t have an answer to the hurt that I feel in my heart when I see these things that he should have been doing, would have been doing, would have been living up to the fullest with all of his friends… and he’s not there. And he’s not here. And he’s going to miss all of those core, big moments. And not only that, but the friends who were closest to him are going to miss having those moments with him as well. That might not hit all of them as hard as it does me; but I know for some of them it will. And I don’t know how to comfort them either. I’m supposed to be the strong one…but there’s nothing I can do. Just sit here and miss him and try to push through the worst pain I’ve ever known. And focus on the memories we do have. The happy ones of all of the good time and the fun we all had. The love we all shared. I can’t give him the moments he’s missing… but I will always cherish the ones he didn’t!

Because it’s not “just a room.” In a lot of ways, it’s where he really grew up. We moved a lot when the kids were little…any time a new job with a possible raise or promotion came up I jumped at it. So, while there are plenty of memories of the different rooms, he’s had at different houses over the years, this is the one he’s been in for the last several years…this is the one he grew from a little boy to a young man in. This is the room where he fell through the floor, and then he helped me lay new subfloor and put down new carpet to fix it up. He would put the little window unit I got for him in during the summer on his own, without needing me to help him. When he tore up the sliding fold-up door and suddenly didn’t have any privacy anymore, he asked me to put a new one up for him…instead, I told him I’d get one for him, but he had to put it up himself, and he did! He mounted his TV on the wall and had his gaming area set up with all of his stuff that he kept here. He helped me move furniture around when we had new windows installed in that house, and he was so excited about having a window that opened in his bathroom and in the kitchen. I had just gotten him new sheets and a new pillow for his bed that he had picked out. It was more than just a kid’s room with toys and games and cute stuff…it was a room he took part in actually building. Making it his personal space.

He didn’t really keep a lot of “stuff” here. He travelled with his Macbook and Steamdeck in a backpack, and when he was coming to stay for the week he would bring his Xbox X with him, then take it back to his mom’s when he went back there. So there isn’t a whole lot of stuff to go through…but the stuff that is there are the staples of what made that room his. And he didn’t keep a lot of stuff here because I have a big space that he could use as well. At his mom’s house his room is a gaming hub. His custom computer that he built and all of the gaming systems that he played on. He didn’t need all of that stuff here, because my garage/man-cave is already set up for all of that, and he was welcome to come out here and play whatever he wanted as much as he wanted…as long as I wasn’t already playing. He would go to the main house and snatch my extra key, then sit out here and play games. I’d come out and find him stretched out in my recliner passed out with the TV on. He would come out here and grab the next Chainsaw Man or Something Is Killing the Children book or dig through my stacks of comic books. We would sit out here and watch TV together, and even on super rare occasions work out together. So, he didn’t need to keep as much stuff in his room, because we had this shared space that I wish he would have spent more time with me in. Which isn’t to say he didn’t spend plenty of time with me out here…but now it just doesn’t feel like it was enough.

But at the same time, it’s a room. And I need to be able to go in there and clean and sort through his stuff and clean out the closet and put away the clothes. Then I walk in there, and I wish to the very depths of my heart to just find him laying in bed, napping or watching TV, facetiming with his girlfriend, or playing a game. And I’ll slap him on the chest and tell him to clean up and put away his clothes and come hang out with me in the garage. But he’s not there. And it’s not just a room. It’s his space. And the longer I stand in there knowing he’s not coming back to me, the more it hurts and the more I miss him. I never knew it was possible to miss someone this much.

I know everyone experiences dreams differently. Some more vividly, some without a clear memory of it. I’ve always had pretty clear, easily remembered dreams. Especially the ones that have some sort of emotional impact. And I know, in some ways, those important ones are real. I talked about my cousin Joe dying previously1 (I know, a lot of these kind of tie back to each other) but I never did dream about Joe after that… at least, not right away. Then several years ago one of Joe’s high school classmates who we played baseball with passed away. Not long after that I had a dream about Joe and Josh both. They were standing on some steps, which seemed like the front steps to our high school, smiling and waving at me. I ran up to them and gave them both hugs, and when I turned around I could see all of our friends standing behind us, from where I had run from. But I couldn’t go back to them. And I woke up crying. Stephanie made fun of me for crying about a dream. But it felt so real. And I missed my friends.

Last fall, right before Mamaw passed away, I had a dream about my grandad, Papaw. I had gone home to the farm for some reason, and as I normally would I stopped at Mamaw’s house first when I got there. Papaw was standing outside by a big black quad-cab F-150 and as I pulled up he told me he was heading down to the football field for the game, and that after I dropped my stuff off at Mom and Dad’s I should come down. So I dumped my bags and headed to town. When I got there I went to Aunt Carla’s house and was met outside by Uncle James, who told me Joe was already at the game, and said that he had been having some problems with his car and he would probably really like it if Nathan and I could help him work on it. So I drove over to the football field and I could see Papaw and Joe standing there as I walked up to the gate to go in for the game. And then I woke up crying. Within a week Mamaw passed away.

People believe dreams mean different things; have different significance or message or purpose. I don’t know about all of that…but I do think, to some degree, they’re a link to those we’ve lost along the way. They’re reaching out to us to comfort us when we need it; or just to visit and let us know it’s all okay. And I know Sean needed to go be with his friends. Because I know they’re hurting too, and they need some comfort…they need to know it’s all okay. That he’s okay. I hope in this last week he’s been visiting them. I hope they’ve gotten those big hugs and felt that peace that I felt after that first dream I had about him. I hope he’s assured them that he didn’t feel a thing, that he’s alright, that he loved them and he misses them as much as they’re missing him. I hope they feel that hug and know it’s him, and wake up with a sense of contentedness, knowing it was really him, and that he’s always with us. In our thoughts and memories. And in our hearts and our love for him.

I never dreaded Monday like that. Remember I talked about being prepared for the big things and handling those in stride,1 and that’s how I am with life in general. I’m always thinking and planning ahead. Thursday and Friday I would start planning and preparing for Monday, so when we came back from the weekend we were already ready to handle any of the new week hazards and pitfalls that might keep us from hitting the ground running. But Tuesday! Tuesday was always the worst day of the week for me. Because much like what I’ve been going through (and wrote about) lately, Tuesday was always full of little things that I hadn’t/couldn’t plan for. Weather the storm of Monday and everything you knew that would throw at you, then on Tuesday catch all of the little things that no one could have expected. It’s always the damn little things. But I haven’t worked a “regular” job for a number of years now (my schedule rotates four on/four off), and I don’t really have a Monday/Tuesday as far as work goes. So I had been able to get out of that pattern. For a while…

Now Tuesday has taken on a whole new identity. It’s not just a challenging work day that’s going to throw me some curveball… it’s become my nemesis. Because every Tuesday is another week without my son. It doesn’t help that somehow my body knows what time it is all the time, and every day at 7:14 AM Eastern I instinctively look at my phone. If I’m asleep, I’ll wake up. If I’m on my way home from work, I’ll look down. If I’m home visiting my parents or on the road and still in Central time, it’ll be 6:14. But every single day I look at my phone. I don’t even think about it…it just happens. And every Tuesday I get hit with a flood of random memories and thoughts and hear songs and see little dumb reels and just get overwhelmed by reminders of him. 5 weeks, and every Tuesday still hits me as hard as that morning. Sometimes I think maybe harder. And I don’t think it’ll matter if it’s 50 weeks or 500 weeks…I think, on some level, every Tuesday from now on is probably going to hit me to some extent.

I appreciate what a friend who lost a son several years ago told me… he said “I can lie to you, but it won’t help. He’s always going to be up here (as he pointed to his temple). But it changes with time.” And in some ways that’s comforting. I know I’ll always have his memories in my mind, and I’ll always carry his love in my heart. And so will everyone else who knew him and loved him. He’s been visiting us and encouraging us and reassuring us that he’s alright…all of us in different ways that don’t make it hurt any less, but give us some comfort that we’re going to be alright too. Eventually. And it’s alright that every Tuesday is going to suck. And I know, just like when I was working a job with normal hours, that nothing can prepare me for the little things that are going to hit me every Tuesday; I also know that every Tuesday will come and go, and for as much as they’ll hurt they’ll also remind me of all the good times and the love. And as long as I can focus on those, I can make it to next Tuesday too.

Papaw (my dad’s dad) died 4 days before my 15th birthday. That hurt. I’ve talked previously about my relationship with my grandparents back home on the farm. Papaw loved to watch me play basketball. Even on the rare occasion when my parents might have to miss a game, he would be there. The morning of his passing, we were supposed to have a game. It was a Saturday, and we were playing midday (which we didn’t do very often). It was an especially special occasion because there was a freshman team game first, followed by JV, then Varsity. I started for the freshman team and played a little JV. I woke up that morning to find out Papaw had passed, then I ate breakfast and I went and played. Push through and keep going. Plus, he would still be watching me, and he wouldn’t have wanted me to miss the game. He surely wasn’t going to miss this one. I went to school that week, even though the semester was winding down and there wasn’t a lot going on and my teachers didn’t ask much of me, I still went. And at his funeral I served as a pallbearer and carried his casket with the men of the church and stood there in the rain and quietly cried just a little. Glenn Nolan reached a big arm around my shoulder and gave me a little hug, and that’s all I needed. And I kept going.

PawPaw (my mom’s dad) passed the week of Valentine’s Day in 2005. He was a big man (almost my height and over 300 lbs, at his heaviest he probably would have made Sean look kind of average), and an even bigger personality. His passing hit a bit different. See, I had known for a couple of months that he was going to pass. I had gotten to Louisville early the week of Thanksgiving 2004 and stopped by his house first when I got to town…which is what I usually did when I went to visit. When I walked in the door he said, “oh good, you can take me to my doctor’s appointment.” I didn’t think anything of it, until the doctor walked in the room and asked if he wanted me to step out. “Whatever you’ve got to say to me, you can say to him.” The doctor then proceeded to tell him that the spot they had found on his shoulder was a melanoma, and that it had already spread to his vital organs. The doctor said, “we can do chemo, and you’ll be in and out of the hospital every week, and you might live another 6 months… or you can go home and make yourself comfortable and you might live another 6 months.” PawPaw looked at me and said, “let’s go home.” I had time to prepare myself. I had taken a year off school, and in January of 2005 I went back to college. Knowing he was going to pass sometime in the next few months. Push through and keep going. I was a pallbearer for his funeral too, and even though I knew it was coming, it still hurt. But he was proud of the young man I was growing in to and I needed to do what was necessary to keep growing and continue to be a man he would be proud of. And I kept going.

Early in March of 2016 Granny (my mom’s mom) passed away. She had been fighting a losing battle with Parkinson’s for several years and her mental state had deteriorated. The last time we saw her a month or so before she passed, I knew she probably wasn’t going to last a whole long longer, and I had made the decision that I wasn’t going to take the kids back to see her again. She had done really well with both kids, but especially with Kaydee, while we were there; but otherwise, you could tell the Parkinson’s was affecting her mentally and I didn’t want their last memories of her to be progressing into that deterioration. It was a sad occasion, but it was also a blessing. She wasn’t suffering anymore and her body and mind were healed. The kids had happy memories of Granny, as did I. I had also just changed jobs and took a position that paid significantly less than I had been making before in an effort to be more present in the kids’ lives. It was hard, and I was struggling financially. Unbeknownst to me (and I think to my mom and aunts), Granny had taken out a life insurance policy that paid out to the grandkids when she passed. It was a gift and a blessing that threw me the life preserver I needed right at the time when I was starting to drown. And so, I wasn’t going to waste that gift that she gave me. I had to take care of myself and my kids, because I knew how much she loved all of us. And that gave me the strength to push through and keep going.

And I’ve already talked about Mamaw’s passing in the post Shed a Tear.1

But the one I haven’t talked about… The week of Valentine’s Day 2008 my cousin Joe was killed in a car wreck. Life had not been going great… my first big job out of college hadn’t really delivered what I was hoping it would be. And at that time my first marriage hadn’t gotten off to a particularly strong start either. Joe hit extra hard. He was right between my brother and I in age and in school. We played football, basketball, and baseball together. We hung out and partied together. We did everything together. And he was big too! Not as big as Sean, but all of our family is big…and his personality and love of life were just as big! And that hurt in a whole new way. And I started drinking… a lot… and I couldn’t just push through that. It was hard to keep going. I was spiraling and really didn’t care. Then a couple months later we found out we were pregnant with Sean. And then I found my will again, found my purpose. I had someone who I had to be strong for; someone who I had to push through and get it together for. And now I had to keep going!

And here I sit, 18 years later, as that purpose has been ripped away from me. And it hurts in a way I never could have imagined anything could hurt. I still have a strong will and purpose in life. I have an incredible wife and daughters. My parents and aunts and uncles and my brother and his wife and kids. I have all of the reasons to push through and keep going. But the hole that’s been torn in me makes it hard to breathe, much less to push through. And instead of waking up every day telling myself to keep going, I find myself saying “just be alright.” I don’t need to be good, I don’t need to push, I just need to be alright. Because I know my will and my purpose are still strong…so if I can just be alright for a little bit longer… for just one more day, I’ll be able to keep going.

At the funeral I talked about Sean’s love of comic books. About the time we were watching one of the DC animated movies and Sean asked me “Dad, do you know Batman?” Of course, he just meant did I know who Batman was in terms of the comics, but I love good stories and entertaining, so I said “of course I know Batman, I used to be a Green Lantern!” I told him in college I was a Green Lantern, but after his mom and I found out that she was pregnant with him I gave up my ring because I couldn’t have bad guys coming after my kid to get to me. After telling him this, he ran upstairs and grabbed his little Green Lantern mask and light up ring and came back down wearing both, and said “well, since you can’t do it anymore, I’ll be a Green Lantern for you!” then he pushed the ring and made it light up. But it didn’t end there. He would tell all of his little friends how his dad was a retired Green Lantern and I would tell them about my “adventures” just patrolling Earth and trips to the moon, making sure everything was well and good with the world. I mean, when Earth already has great Green Lanterns like Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Kyle Rayner… and even Guy Gardner… there’s not really a whole lot that the “other Green Lantern” needs to do. I told them about that time when Superman died and Poppa disappeared for a while and came back as The Eradicator (the Superman with the yellow goggles who shot yellow lasers from his hands) and how weird that was for all of us; especially after Superman returned, beat him up, and then he came back to the farm to just be a normal guy again. The boys hung on every word and loved the stories. I think they were almost teenagers before they figured out it was all just me telling stories to entertain them.

Now, for the nerd out. Green Lanterns power is based on willpower. Willpower is “exerting control to do something (or restrain impulses),” which is something I’ve always prided myself in. Saying a child is “strong-willed” usually means they’re going to do whatever they’ve put their mind to, be that for good or bad. As an adult, that trait usually means you’re going to do whatever is necessary to make things happen, to move things forward, to get the job done. As I said, I’ve always prided myself in having a strong will, no matter what else is going on in life, to push forward and keep getting things done that need to be done. But these past couple weeks I feel like I’ve lost my will a bit. I’m still getting stuff done…but I just don’t have that extra push to exert myself beyond what is absolutely necessary. I’m still moving forward, but I just don’t feel the will to push myself. And I know it’s because I lost a huge part of what drove me forward…trying to live out the strength, values, and yes the will, that I wanted my son to see and carry over into his own life. My will was to set the example for him, so he would be the man I knew he was capable of growing in to.

But green isn’t the only Lantern in the DC universe. Every color of the color wheel represents a different Lantern Corp, and each of them represents a different element of the emotional spectrum. I did a whole lesson on the color wheel with the kids based on the different Lantern Corps.

So we’ve already established that green symbolizes willpower. And then we have red for anger, orange for greed, and yellow for fear (these are, obviously, the bad emotions/powers). Indigo is compassion, which I personally struggle with. Violet is the Star Sapphire Corp, which is powered by love. And finally, blue represents hope.

The cool thing about blue is it’s considered (by some lore) to be the most powerful of the emotions; but alone it can’t reach full potential. But when in close proximity to Green Lanterns (willpower), the Blue Lanterns become more powerful. Not only that, but they enhance the strength of the Green Lanterns nearby as well. And that’s what I’m working on. Finding hope again. Through my wife and daughters, my brother and nephew (and the new niece or nephew who’s on the way!), through my parents and aunts and uncles… through all of the incredible friends who have supported us through all of this. Through the willpower that I see in all of them to keep pushing forward, to keep living life to its fullest; to keep doing not just what needs to be done, but to excel in those things and be amazing! That gives me hope, and that hope fuels my will. Slowly but surely, I can feel it elevating me back to being the super hero my son thought I was for so long, pushing me to continue to be the man I wanted him to see and emulate and grow in to.

Everything, no matter how small, seems to make me think of him. And every time I think of him, I miss him. And the more I miss him, the sadder I get. And the sadder I get, the more I cry. Culminating in my second dream. Last night I dreamt about Sean again. It wasn’t anything grand or elaborate; he was just standing there, wearing a white t-shirt. We didn’t talk, there were only two words spoken in the whole dream, he just stood there. I walked up to him and grabbed him in a big hug. I put my forehead on his cheek, and I just held him. He was cold, but aside from that it felt like I was holding my giant little boy. I don’t know how long I stood there holding him…he put his arms around me and held me back…and we just stood there. In the kitchen. Where I stood and asked if he wanted a cup of coffee before he left for work that morning. I should have just made him sit down and wait 2 more minutes while I fixed him a cup of coffee for the road. But he was so ready to get to work and see what they were going to start teaching him. To start his life as an adult, for real.

I don’t even know what to write or why I’m even writing this. But I feel like I need to. Because if I don’t, I’ll just sit on the swing under the tree smoking cigarettes and looking at his pictures, listening to the music we loved, and cry all day long. And he would be so mad at me for all of that. I think, in this very specific case, he might be less mad about the cigarettes and more so that I’m sad. He was such a kind, good-hearted kid. He never wanted anyone to be angry or sad. Especially not on his account. And I really don’t think I’m sad because I miss him. All of the memories are happy and wonderful and just remind me over and over of what an incredible son I have. I’m sad because I’ll never get to make more. I’m sad because I won’t get to see what he was going to do with this great big life that was laid out in front of him. All the things we talked about doing, the fun and the games and the shows and the trips. Seeing him succeed and get married and have kids. Helping him with the struggles and the hard times. Giving him advice and lessons about the things you can’t teach someone until life reaches up and punches them in the mouth. And he had a tendency to learn those the hard way anyway. To be there for him when those hardships came along, to give him a hug, and tell him it’s gonna be alright.

And right now, I’ve been punched in the mouth. And the thing I need more than anything is for him to give me a hug and tell me it’s gonna be alright. It is going to be…I know it is. I know he’s alright. And he gave me my hug. Even if I woke up crying from it. The only two words in that whole dream were right before I woke up, as I pulled back from the hug that lasted all night, I put my hands behind his head and my forehead against his and I said “come home.” But he already went home. I know that. It just hurts so much…because like all of the other big plans and amazing accomplishments I’ll never get to see him do here in this life… I don’t get to see that big smile and feel the joy he radiated as he arrived home for the last time. But I know it is going to be alright. That I am going to be alright. Because he’ll be there to welcome me when I get home.

I spent his lifetime teaching him to be strong and independent. Showing him how to do things for himself so he wouldn’t have to rely on me for everything. I taught him how to change his own oil in his truck so he could just do it himself, and he took so much of a liking to it that he would change the oil in my truck and work car for me whenever they needed it. Now my truck needs an oil change…and I wasn’t prepared for how hard having to do that myself again, for the first time in over a year, would hit me. He was my computer geek. Anytime I had problems with a game or something on my computer I would just text him and he’d come out here to the garage, tap a few keys and click a couple things, and have it fixed in 30 seconds…then tell me I’m a dumbass. 😂 Now I find myself uninstalling and reinstalling a whole game because I did something wrong, having to consult multiple other friends to figure out what’s wrong and why certain things won’t just run like I think they should. I spent all of that time teaching him not to be reliant on me; I wasn’t prepared for just how reliant on him I was.

It’s all of the little things that keep hitting me like a ton of bricks. Since we moved to Petersburg and Sean got his license I haven’t had to go to a lot of places we used to go to in a while. Earlier this week I had to take some paperwork to his mom, and on the way back I stopped at Walmart…which doesn’t seem like it should be a big deal, but that’s the Walmart we went to all the time when he was little, and walking around the store just flooded back so many memories of doing nothing more than basic shopping with him. Going to the store I drove by the Azzip Pizza location where he had worked before getting the new job. He loved working there and they treated him so good! He was always so excited for me to stop by so he could make a pizza for me. Leaving, I drove by the old GameStop that we’d always go to…the store is closed now and they’ve taken the sign down off the building out front. Continue driving and go by a couple other pizza places he always wanted to go to, which brought back memories of his favorite pizzas and drinks at those places. God that boy loved pizza! I went to another store to see if they still had some workout equipment I had been looking at, and in the sports section I saw some tiny basketballs…the same kind that he dribbled around the house all the time when he was a little fella; then come home and go to put some things away and there’s the basketball he asked me to get him that he would take with him on the rare occasion he’d want to go somewhere to play.

And little by little all those strong walls I had built to get through this get chipped away and break me down. All of these little things that I never thought about that just keep hitting me over and over again. The things I never thought much of that were such big parts of our time together, that mean so much even though they never seemed to mean anything at all before. A Gameboy, a book I bought for him, the flashlights he got me for Christmas, a basketball, all of these little reminders of how much he was such a huge part of my life in a million of the smallest, seemingly most insignificant ways that now have more significance than I ever could have imagined.

This morning Stephanie said “I keep thinking ‘he’s just at Brooke’s house’ and he’ll be coming back.” And the more I come across the multitude of little things, the more I want him back for just a couple more minutes; to fix my computer or change my oil…to tell me if this new game sucks, to make me play a new song he found, to watch the new season of Invincible. Just to have some of those little things back. Because it turns out those are the things that really meant the most. Not the big, grand gestures… just a little flashlight and a hug.

I’ve cried a lot less these past couple of days. Not because I’m not still sad…I am. I don’t think I actually have words, and I’m not sure there are even words, that can fully describe how sad all of us are. But it’s not so much sadness that I’m crying over since we laid him to rest. The tears have been from overwhelming pride and love that come from hearing stories about what a great friend and young man he was. They’re tears of gratitude for the outpouring of love and support from family and friends and even people I never knew but who knew my son and thought the world of him. I think there are always going to be some moments, for the rest of my life, when I’ll feel the depth of pain of losing him that I’ll break down and cry, but for now I’m not as much sad as I am just amazed at what an amazing young man he was, and what incredible friends he had. At the breadth of his impact on the world around him.

To some degree I feel bad, or at least a little weird, that I’m not so sad as I was a week ago. And in that same way, I felt guilty that I wasn’t crying more at my grandmother’s passing. I loved her so much; and she loved me fiercely! Heck, I was her favorite grandkid and she didn’t even try to hide it. Or at least that was always the joke. I know (and I hope, deep down, my brother knows) that she didn’t REALLY love me the most. She didn’t actually have a favorite grandkid, she just loved all of us in her own way that was unique to every grandkid. When we were little, I’d get off the bus in the afternoons and walk to my grandparents’ house to watch Jeopardy and play cards with Mamaw. She’d always have some food left over from lunch waiting for me on a plate. When they were in the fields I would walk to whatever field he was working in and ride in the tractor with Papaw until the end of the day. I’d ride in the grain truck with him to the elevator during harvest. I just had a different relationship with my grandparents. That didn’t mean Mamaw loved my brother any less than she loved me. She mourned and grieved when our cousin died in a wreck (18 years before Sean’s wreck, give or take a couple of weeks) and I know she was still saddened by that loss for the rest of her life. It was just different for each of us.

And we had always joked that Kaydee was my favorite kid. She’s my clone, both in looks and personality. While Sean looks more like his mother’s side of the family and had a much softer demeanor than I’ve ever had. But I know he didn’t really believe I have a favorite kid. He just needed to be loved in a different way. We would talk about it then hug it out after I was tough on him. I had more deep, hard conversations with him about life and why I was the way I was with him than I’ve had with anyone else on earth. I was hard on him because the world is a hard place; and God love him, he was a soft kid. I was trying to raise him to be a strong, good man. And he needed someone to press him, to push him, to expect and demand more of him. To get him to see his potential and understand that living up to that potential would mean having to toughen up and have a hard exterior at times.

These days since his death have shown me that he was all of that and more. He was striving to meet that potential. He was stronger for those who needed him than I ever could have imagined. He was so good to everyone. He had a toughness that made everyone around him feel safe and loved. And he did it all without having to become hardened. I spent most of his life trying to raise a good man. In death, he’s shown me that it’s possible to be all of that while still being soft and sweet, almost to a fault. For all the lessons it’s become apparent I was able to pass on to him, I think the biggest lesson is the one I’ve learned from him. That it’s ok to let that softness be something people know you for. And maybe, with a little work, I can soften up a bit too and become more like the man I raised, the man his world needed, than the one I thought he had to be.

Yesterday, March 3rd, at 7:14 am, I got a text from Sean. I had just cranked Kaydee’s car to get ready to take her to school. It was his second day of his first real adult job, apprenticing as a mechanic which would turn in to an incredible career opportunity for him. The night before I had fixed him a lunch to take to work, and when I saw the notification I was positive he had forgotten to take his lunch and was asking me to bring it to him after I dropped Kaydee off. But when I opened the message it said “Crash Detected SOS” and that he had called emergency services after the iPhone detected a crash, and his emergency contacts were being notified. I called him immediately, but didn’t get an answer. I assumed he must be assessing the damage or maybe talking to the police or something, some reason he just couldn’t answer me right then. So I told Kaydee to grab her stuff, we had to go. Sean was in a wreck right down the road. As we pulled up to the scene I initially thought it looked like Sean’s truck was flipped up on it’s side… Kaydee immediately started to freak out. I told her calm down, stay put, and I would go check it out. As I ran up I could see that the truck wasn’t flipped, but the whole front was smashed and the truck was sitting in the middle of the road facing the wrong direction. I hoped as I got closer he would be standing next to the truck checking out how bad it was…but he wasn’t there. The airbag was deployed and the cab was caved in around him. I couldn’t see him, but I could see where he should be. There was another truck almost as badly crushed sitting off the side of the road on the north-bound side. There were only a couple of sheriffs there at the time, and as one approached me I told him I was the father of the boy in the white truck. He asked me to stay back (which I was anyway, I understand how a crash scene works and I wasn’t going to do anything to get in the way) and asked me for some information quickly, then told me EMS was on the way and asked that I go back and sit in the car and wait for them to get everything sorted out. As I walked back to the car the EMTs arrived, followed by the fire department and the state police.

Maybe 10 or so minutes later the sheriff I originally talked to, an EMT, and state trooper walked up to the car. I got out and shut the door so Kaydee wouldn’t have to hear what they said, because even though I didn’t want to know…I knew what they were about to tell me. I wanted to believe that he was just badly trapped and unconscious…but I’ve seen enough wrecks. They said they were sorry, but he probably wasn’t going to make it. That they would come back shortly to confirm and explain what all would be going on. 5 or so minutes later the coroner came back and told me that Sean was dead. The state trooper explained that they had to do a reconstruction of the crash scene to start determining what happened and then once all of that was completed they would extract him from the truck. Which began a long, grueling process of just sitting and waiting. While Kaydee had her mom on speaker phone and they cried and I sat there helpless, not able to do anything. I was a bad dad to Kaydee in that moment, because I couldn’t just sit there…so I’d get out, walk up to the scene and talk to the sheriffs and fire fighters and just watch and wait and hope every second that maybe, just maybe, they were wrong. That they were going to pop the doors off the side of the truck and he was going to be free from that death trap and he’d start to breathe again. It was a mistake! He was just knocked out and there was no way they could get to him to really know he wasn’t alive. By the time they finished the reconstruction and started the extraction his mom had arrived, so she stood there with me as we watched and cried and hugged each other. Just waiting for them to bring our baby out to us. The coroner let us know they were about to pull him out, and asked us to just sit in the car and wait a little bit longer. He said that he would get him cleaned up and bring him around for us to see, so we wouldn’t have to walk through the crash scene and see the chaos that I had already run up on when I first arrived.

He just looked like he was asleep. Like if I just gave him a little nudge he’d wake up. I knew that wasn’t true…he never woke up from a little nudge. I’d usually have to smack him on the chest or give him a big shake. But aside from a little bruising on his forehead and a touch of blood on his nose, he just looked like he was sleeping. I let the girls scream and cry while I stood back, trying to be the strong, stoic one. Then I walked up, put my forehead on his, and told him how much I loved him and how sorry I was. I was sorry, because it was my fault. He was going to stay at his mom’s house the night before… but I wanted to know about his first day at work and get to spend some time with him. So he came up and stayed the night at my house instead. It was selfish of me. And because I was selfish, my son was laying on a stretcher instead of pulling in for his second day of the rest of his adult life. All I could do was apologize, tell him how much I loved him and how sorry I was that he was gone, and give him a kiss on the forehead. And then step back and cry.

And it feels like all I’ve done is cry. Sometimes I think I’m doing alright…and then I’ll get a call or a text or I’ll see something or I’ll randomly think of something. My dad, brother, and I went to the wrecker yard and cleaned out his truck. We got all of his stuff out of it so we’d have everything he kept with him all the time. And we got a real chance to look at the wreckage. I’ve never seen anything so bad, upon closer inspection. He didn’t suffer, that’s almost certain. As awful as it sounds, he was crushed and died instantly. There was almost no blood at all, so at least I knew he was intact. He just got completely smashed. He had a little Gerber multitool that he always kept in the truck and carried around with him. I found it, and stuck it in my pocket. It hasn’t left my pocket since. And every so often I put my hand in my pocket and squeeze it and start crying. It will stay in my pocket for the rest of my life. I found his glasses. They were bent up and one of the lenses was out, which I found and popped it back in. I straightened them up, wiped them off, and gave them to Kaydee. He had $4 in the console. It’s now in the console of my truck, and that’s $4 that will never get spent. And so much more. So many little things that were just small staples of riding around with him, things that I always knew would be in the truck when I got in with him. The bible his girlfriend gave him, his little metal wallet that had his drivers license and debit card, his tool set he got from his summer job. All of these memories tied to little things that otherwise wouldn’t really mean that much…but suddenly meant everything.

We have been covered in prayers. We have had literally thousands of people reach out to offer prayers and condolences. We have more food than we’ll ever be able to eat, especially without his massive self helping scarf it down! I have a gaming community that has an ongoing tribute to him surrounding my city in the game and a support page for people to make donations and write notes for me. Sean’s own gaming community, led by his girlfriend and cousin, have done their own tribute for him. He has friends who have called and messaged me coming in to be here for us and for him. We have been surrounded by family and friends constantly. No one ever knows what to say, and everyone says they know nothing they say will help or will be right. But it does help. And whatever you say is going to be right. Because it’s support. And we can’t get enough support right now…but every single message and call and DM and comment gets us through to the next minute. And then another one comes in and we get to the next one after that. And that support will carry us through this horrible process, and we’ll lay him to rest. He’ll be with my grandmother who passed away in the fall, who I honestly think loved him more than she loved me, and I was her favorite grandkid! He’ll be perfect and whole and he won’t ever know pain or sadness again. And because he had the biggest heart of any human being I’ve ever met, he’ll be looking down on us and pouring his love down. Because the last thing he would ever want is for any of us to be sad or hurting either. And we’ll see him again. And I’ll hug him again. And I know I’ll miss him every single day until then. But until then, I’ll try to be the man he was growing up to be. A much better version of anything I’ve ever been in my life. With a heart and a smile that completely filled every space he walked in to. I don’t know where he got it from, because it certainly wasn’t from me… but hopefully I can take some of that from him and pour that out on the world that he was taken from.

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In the early 90’s John Gray wrote a (short) book that gave a basic guide to how men and women are wired differently, and how we can navigate those differences to better get along in our relationships and just in day to day life in general. The whole concept of the sexes being from different planets and looking at how we are different from each other spurred infomercials, seminars, audio and video books covering the subject matter, a television talk show and a sitcom, and 20th Century Fox even explored making a “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus” movie (but ultimately never moved forward with it). It was a cultural phenomenon and no one seemed to find it offensive or controversial at the time. It just made sense, right? I have to admit, being 8 years old when the book came out, I had never actually read the book; until I decided to write this piece. It’s basically a lot of the stuff my friends and I talk about daily with our interactions with our wives and mothers and daughters. Stuff that seems to be really straight forward. When you stop and really look at and think about just how different the sexes are from one another, it’s kind of funny and amazing how we manage to get along with each other at all sometimes. But it also makes us uniquely fit together in a special kind of way. So how could something so obvious to anyone who's spent any time interacting with the opposite sex become such a controversial topic? To the point that in modern society the politically correct position is to claim there is no difference between men and women at all!

Well, it all started in the early 2000’s, which seems to be a common starting point for a lot of what’s wrong with society today. A handful of mostly Jewish feminists, of both the female and ‘male’ variety, wrote a couple of different publications critiquing the book, and others conducted some surveys that they said definitively proved that men and women aren’t actually that different after all. They claimed that Gray painted the differences between men and women as too extreme (did these critics actually read the book?); that it narrows humanity down to stereotypes (hello, welcome to humanity, stereotypes exist for a reason); that the female depictions were off-base (only natural for feminists to say that). There were articles written encouraging men to lean away from the masculinity that Gray describes because it “dismisses feelings and downplays problems” in relationships (again, did these people even read the book?). They used every method available to try to convince society that men and women aren’t actually all that different, and that the things that make us different are actually bad things that men should be rejecting and moving away from. Not only that, but while Gray’s book was actually encouraging building communication and transparency between the genders to work toward strong relationships where both sides can understand each other, these critics (the feminists especially) actually push for more sexual freedom and independence and less relational coming together between the sexes (especially for females).

It’s probably not coincidental that around this same time we started to see the shift in male and female representation across mass-consumption media. The strong, competent father figure who worked hard, loved and cared for his family, and was always the cornerstone that grounded everyone, provided sage advice, and had a solution for all of the family problems very abruptly faded away a was replaced by a bumbling, buffoonish, slacker who hated his job, almost seemed to loathe his family, and always manages to make things worse even if he has good intentions and seems to genuinely be trying to help. And the loving, compassionate, homemaker of a mother got subverted in to an overbearing girl-boss type who had to drag the whole family along to do her bidding and keep things semi-stable and functional, all while carrying all the weight of bills and meals and housekeeping and yard work and and and… The age of the girl-boss had begun! Not only are men and women not really so different, not only can women do everything men can do plus everything women did anyway, but actually women are much better at all of those things than men! Trust us, Hollywood and the university “educators” say so!

Honestly, that became the predominant thought of society for the last 20 years or so. Most movies and TV shows have their own version of the girl-boss, to some varying degree or another. Strong and independent, knows everything about everything, capable of doing whatever she wants or needs to do, including fighting off men twice her size if it’s an action show. And the new sexual revolution of women “getting it all our of her system” in college and through their twenties. Which was also being portrayed across media, where those same girl-bosses get romanced and wooed by all of the hunkiest men they meet, who wine and dine and treat them to everything their hearts desire, all so they can bang them and then move on to the next hunk. Is it any wonder that young women have some warped idea of what life is supposed to be like after high school? And while young women dream of this fantasy they’ve been shown, young men become progressively more and more detached from a society that doesn’t seem to put any value in or have any use for the things that make them unique to this world, other than to be a sexual plaything for a female who will discard them and move on to the next plaything…assuming you meet the initial qualifications of being at least 6’ tall and having a 6 figure salary…

While all of that seems like a tragic doom spiral for society, it seems like some of the younger generation is starting to see the scam that has been this whole push to delegitimize gender roles for what it is. Because it’s almost impossible not to watch TikToks and Instagram reels and livestreams of people out in society and not see the striking difference between men and women. And as the men and women of this younger generation are coming into their own and realizing those differences on the front end; a lot of women from my generation, who were coming out of high school and hitting college during the mid-2000’s when the push was fresh, are starting to realize what a scam the whole feminist movement was for them as young women during their formative years. While the men of my generation are getting back to the gym, finding their masculinity again, and starting to move away from allowing society to tell them it’s bad to be a man. Or at least, I hope that’s what’s happening. I see it more and more all the time…but I also have a pretty tightly cultivated feed on most of my social media, so the algorithm is more likely to show that to me. Encourage young men that being masculine is a thing to strive for and be proud of! Encourage young women to accept their femininity without embracing feminism! Let’s all accept that the sexes are very different creatures, and those differences are what make us special not just to society, but to each other and to the relationships we should be building.

• Refugee (noun) - a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster

• The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees defines a refugee as: “a person forced to flee their own country and seek safety in another country. They are unable to return to their own country because of feared persecution as a result of who they are, what they believe in or say, or because of armed conflict, violence or serious public disorder.”

Now that we’ve gotten some basic definitions out of the way, let’s dig in!

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To start out with, there are two particular lines of scripture that are used to support the “Jesus was a refugee” statement. The first is from Luke 1:7 which says “⁷ And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” The second comes from Matthew 2:13-15 “¹³ Now when they had gone, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up! Take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to kill Him.’ ¹⁴ So Joseph got up and took the Child and His mother while it was still night, and left for Egypt.”

We’ll take these one at a time, starting with Luke, and then after looking at both gospel accounts we’ll discuss the historical context of the timeframe of Jesus’ birth as a whole. So for the scripture in question in Luke, it’s important to dial back to the beginning of Chapter 2 and look at why Mary and Joseph are at the inn to begin with. Caesar Augustus had decreed that a census was to be taken across the Roman empire (which included Syria and Egypt, amongst almost all of what we would know as modern day Europe and western Asia, as well as northern Africa). So Mary and Joseph are not refugees in this situation. It could be likened to (if a census was done in a similar fashion in modern times) me taking my wife and kids and traveling from Indiana back home to Kentucky to register my family with the government. Obviously, without the benefits of cars and hotels. Mary didn’t give birth to Jesus in a stable and lay him in a manger because they were outcast as foreigners or something of that nature… everyone would be traveling for the census and the place they were staying likely just didn’t have anywhere else for them to sleep for the night. It’s also highly unlikely that “inn” in this case meant a place similar to a motel, but more likely it was the home of a resident who was taking people in who needed a place to stay and was simply making whatever accommodations he had available for those who needed a place to stay.

Next we’ll look at Joseph fleeing to Egypt with Mary and Jesus to escape Herod. Now, this more closely fits the definition of “refugee” in the escaping “persecution” side, but again we need to remember that they wouldn’t exactly be fleeing to a foreign land, as Egypt was part of the Roman Empire at the time. In fact, there was a very large, mostly independent community of Jews who lived in Egypt and had a significant influence at the time. Also, they were fleeing from Herod, not from the Romans; so, going back to the original analogy of me traveling to Kentucky with my family for the census, this would be as if, once in Kentucky, we had to flee to another state to escape Andy Beshear. Joseph would have had community and long-established religious centers and readily available jobs in an effectively homogeneous community of his own cultural peers.

Of interesting note (though not necessarily of great importance), there is plenty of historical backing for Herod’s rule in Judea and the fact that he was a brutal and violent ruler, though there is no actual accounting of his ordering the “Massacre of the Innocents.” Which is not to say it didn’t happen. If I were a Roman historian and the guy who Julius Caesar named Governor of Galilee who later, through military strength, brutality, and execution of many of his own family members, rose to become the tyrant ruler of the entire region, as well as some other controversy with his rule; I might leave something like that out too. It is more important, of historical note, to mention that while Egypt was part of Rome just like Judea, Herod did not have any authority to “extradite” anyone from another region, such as Egypt. See, after the death of Julius Caesar, there was some Roman infighting during the transfer of power to Octavian (Augustus Caesar). Herod sided with Marc Antony during this conflict, and after Antony’s defeat Herod had to petition to keep maintain his title. And while Augustus allowed Herod to maintain his relatively autonomous rule of the region, he put restrictions on his ability to have any authoritative engagement with the rulers of the other Roman (and non-Roman) regions around him. So if (when) the mandate for “Massacre of the Innocents” came out, it would make sense for multiple reasons that Joseph would go to Egypt. It would have been the nearest large population of Jews that would be outside the reach of Herod (there would have been closer regions outside of Herod’s jurisdiction, but those were primarily Arabian and would not have had the Jewish community where Joseph and his family could be safe and have a normal life).

So, none of this really fits the description of the modern-day immigrants and refugees who those making these comparisons want to guilt-trip you in to believing to push their own political agenda while ignoring the actual historical facts of the Biblical story of Jesus’ birth. Was Jesus (or more accurately for this reference, Joseph and Mary) a refugee and an immigrant? No. They were Jewish Roman citizens moving through the different regions of the empire for different reasons at different times, all while completely following the laws of the governing body and adhering to customs and cultural norms of the places they went. Also, they made it a point to stick to communities of their own people (other Jews) with every move. They weren’t moving in to foreign territory, demanding that everyone else adopt their values and beliefs, and leeching off of the government and the people of those communities.

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I would like to preface all of this by saying that I do really like the pastor at the church. She is very kind and caring. She always asks how I’m doing and prayed over me prior to my surgery. And everyone in the church has always been very welcoming of me (aside from that one guy that one time who confronted me about my carry), even though I definitely stand out as a much more rural, conservative type in the congregation. As far as the actual messages go, I would not be giving an honest assessment if I didn’t admit that the pastor often does make at least one good point when linking the scripture to what it means for us as Christians and our lives. The problem I’ve always had is that she’ll make the point, and then from there the lesson devolves in to a sermon on some social issue with a political lean and an activist tilt and she loses the plot and I lose the purpose of what the lesson was supposed to be. I thought church was supposed to be recharging our batteries and giving us the tools to take Christ out in to our communities… but it seems like these sermons are usually a call to some form of political activism under the guise of the church. So, obviously, I was expecting something similar from the Christmas message.

The title of this week’s sermon was “Don’t Drop the Baby” and it covered Matthew 1: 18-25. So let’s start there, with the scripture itself.

¹⁸ Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ And her husband Joseph, since he was a righteous man and did not want to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. ²⁰ But when he had thought this over, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. ²¹ She will give birth to a Son; and you shall name Him Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” ²² Now all this took place so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet would be fulfilled: ²³ “Behold, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a Son, and they shall name Him Immanuel,” which translated means, “God with us.” ²⁴ And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took Mary as his wife, ²⁵ but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he named Him Jesus.

“How do we prepare for and handle what comes to us during the immediacy of an impending moment?” This is how we open up the discussion of the scripture. There is a very big impending moment coming for Mary, and by direct association for Joseph. But for Joseph it’s an even bigger moment in that “during” timeframe. Joseph is going to divorce Mary and send her away quietly without making a public scene of things, because he is a good man and doesn’t want to make a spectacle of her, but also probably to some extent to avoid being part of a spectacle himself. And after he has decided to do this, an angel of the Lord comes to him in a dream and explains the situation and tells him that Mary is still a virgin and has not been unfaithful to him and gives him instructions for how to handle the whole situation going forward. And this is where the opening question comes in… what do we do when things seem crazy while we’re waiting for what we know is coming next? We follow the example of Joseph and we trust God’s plan.

Joseph was given God’s instructions and given an imperative to be present in the moment and trust, through faith. He was told what was important and what his part was in the plan, he just had to have faith. We all have these “impending moments” that we’re waiting to happen. God instructs us, in different ways, to not be afraid of the moment, but to have faith in Him and His plan for us. Just as Joseph was told what to do and had to follow on faith that the plan would work out, we too are given our imperative to be present and trust. And Merry Christmas!

That was the message, and I found it to be very concise and on-point for a Christmas theme. There were a few moments where it felt like she was going to go off on a tangent and lose the plot, as I was expecting, but then those points actually ended up tying in well with the overall lesson. She started out by saying that there are “many ways to understand scripture” but that “some ways are better than others,” but then she never went and further into that thought. And that’s fine…I definitely agree that many people think there are a variety of ways to read scripture, and I definitely agree that there is an objectively right way to do so, so maybe we don’t need to go much deeper than that right now, especially not on Christmas. 😂 She talked about the wording of the scripture and how it can bring up points of contention for people who want to interpret things in different ways. How the term “virgin” in the Hebrew would have actually meant “any young woman of marrying age,” not necessarily virgin in the way we think of it from a sexual standpoint. Although I do have to disagree with her on this particular point… while she is technically correct that the Hebrew-translated word would be translated in that way, the original text of Matthew was actually written in Greek, and the Greek word that is used literally means “a woman who has never had sex.” Remember, those Greeks used very descriptive words. She also talked briefly about the fact that Mary was given a choice and bearing the Son of God was consensual (because the anti-religious woke mob often likes to make God out as a rapist in this situation); and she discussed the terminology of “engagement” and “divorce” and how those can be confusing for some because, why would you get divorced if you were just engaged? Of course “engagement” in that time was more akin to actually being married but during a time when the bride and groom would not live together or have relations…so they were technically married even though it’s called an “engagement” and thus, in sending Mary away Joseph would have actually had to divorce her. She brought up that some people may have issues with the idea of an angel coming to Joseph in a dream and all of that… I mean, who of us has ever had an angel speak to us. Does the scripture have to be taken literally? She brought up a lot of diversions to take away from what the point of this should be.

And she concluded from all of those something that should sound familiar following a dive in to Paul’s first letter to Timothy, that we should “avoid worldly, empty chatter and the opposing arguments” (1 Timothy: 20) and focus on God’s plan and message for us, to have faith that what He has given us is right and good and to understand what our purpose is in that plan. Pretty good stuff, huh? She didn’t make the direct 1st Timothy connection, but the wording she used brought the sermon and what I had been writing about with 1st Timothy directly in-line with each other. And isn’t it amazing how scripture and God’s message for and to us tend to align themselves even when we’re not expecting it.

As I said before, he’s not ACTUALLY a socialist. But he was a Bernie supporter for a long time, and he still believes in a lot of what Bernie Sanders said and stood for. And I get it! My wife was a Bernie bro around that same time as well. Bernie’s message was that the average, working class American was getting screwed over by a system that has been set up to benefit those who don’t need the help while it effectively punishes those who seem to work the hardest to have the least. The idea of Democratic Socialism has morphed in to some thing that I don’t think resembles what Bernie was preaching during and post the Obama years. But he had a message that resonated with a lot of young, working class people. We can disagree with his reasoning for what caused those problems, and we can disagree with his “solutions” to the problems, but it would be unfair to say he didn’t do a pretty decent job of identifying and calling out some pretty major problems. And that’s where my friend comes from with his political leanings.

And I’m not a right-wing extremist, contrary to the part I may play (sometimes a little too well) when trolling Twitter. I have sat down and had long conversations with my kids about my actually political ideologies as opposed to some of the crazy things I may say and post from time to time. Anyone who truly, sincerely knows me knows the difference between the trolling, rage-baiting, shitposting; and what kind of person I truly am. So when Charlie Kirk was murdered and leftists started getting fired for social media posts, and my normally pretty even-keeled personality went all the way to “f*** them, they did this to us (me!) so they get what they deserve!” …and then that went on for at least a week or so… he wanted to sit down and talk about what was going on in the world. Specifically, what had happened to me and how I felt the discourse in the country was going.

I won’t go play for play through the whole 2 hours we sat at a high top chatting while I picked at a sandwich, but suffice it to say we caught up! We haven’t seen each other since 2020, which was the last time we played basketball together. He had actually stopped playing not because of COVID (none of our group let that stop us from playing 😂), but because he was having some serious issues with his spine and had gotten in a place where he just physically wasn’t able to do anything physical anymore; and in our catching up I learned he went through a lot of what I’ve gone through in dealing with my esophagus… doctors missing or misdiagnosing what was wrong, feeling let down and disenfranchised with the whole medical system, then having a wonderful wife push to find a new doctor and get to the bottom of the problem before finally getting a good diagnosis and ultimately getting healthy! He’s had a kid and bought a home and grown professionally and gotten himself in a position where he’s financially stable and life is going, all things considered in the economy we live in, very well. He talked about the client base he works with in his job and the challenges and opportunities that gives him to reach people where they are and try to help them get to a better place, but also to understand them in the present as well. We talked about our disillusions with both the Democrat and Republican parties and how they manage to mismanage so much of what both claim they’re trying to do. How he doesn’t feel the Democrats actually represent him anymore in the things he thinks are important for fixing this country, they’re more focused on activism. And a lot of the time I feel like the Republicans are more interested in supporting Israel and fighting antisemitism than actually doing what the American people voted for last November. We talked about my suspension for social media posts and how that really created a part of me that has become (I will acknowledge) irrationally jaded toward the entire left. I also admitted that, after those Charlie Kirk posts, I ended up finding myself trying to pump the brakes on the witch hunt in a couple of instances where what someone posted may have been in poor taste, but it certainly didn’t cross a line in to “celebration of murder” or really anything inappropriate that would warrant getting someone fired for.

Ultimately, we both ended up reaffirming what we probably already knew before we sat down to eat. We have way more in common with each other than we have separating us; and the things we disagree on are less true disagreements and more different views based on our individual pasts and on who and how we interact with different people in our day to day lives just based on careers and other social situational differences. We’re normal guys with families and careers who are just trying to do the best we can to make a better life for them and hopefully help some other people along the way. Democrat or Republican, socialist or alt-right, none of that stuff really matters. We’re friends, and we care about our friends more than we care about politics. It really is a shame that’s gotten lost in society in a lot of respects.

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¹ All who are under the yoke as slaves are to regard their own masters as worthy of all honor so that the name of God and our doctrine will not be spoken against. ² Those who have believers as their masters must not be disrespectful to them because they are brothers or sisters, but must serve them all the more, because those who partake of the benefit are believers and beloved. Teach and preach these principles. ³ If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, ⁴ he is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a sick craving for controversial questions and disputes about words, from which come envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, ⁵ and constant friction between people of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.

I will start by saying that I break this opening section of Chapter 6 down a little bit differently than the NASB or NIV do. Both of them put verses 1-2 together, then put verses 3-10 together, but I see 1-5 being more directly connected in the way it is worded and in the Greek wording used for truth (in verse 5) and Paul’s warning against false teachings of how both slave and master should behave toward one another, while verse 6 going forward is where we get in to money and the rich members of the church and community.

So, truth is a common theme in Paul’s letters, and he talks about it in two different ways. One being The Truth of the life and message of Jesus. The other, which is the Greek form used in verse 5, being the way of a Christian life and warning against false and corrupt teachings that “christians” of the time would use for their own personal gain as the church was growing both in number and influence. And Paul is giving this message because he understands the importance of setting a good example in the community. In Ephesians Paul talks about Christian masters and instructs them not to be threatening toward their slaves, but to treat them with goodwill. Just as he instructs both in Ephesians, Corinthians, and here in Timothy that they should be obedient to the masters. This is similar to when Paul has instructed new Christians to pray for and be obedient to governors and laws. It is not acknowledging another authority over that of God, but rather to present ourselves, as Christians, as upstanding members of the community who are not trying to cause a fuss. Given persecutions in that time period, this is probably sound advice! Paul also encourages Christians not to sell themselves in to slavery if it can be avoided, and if they are already in slavery to try to find a way to freedom. He does not explicitly tell the masters to release their slaves…you have to understand that in that period of time it likely wouldn’t have legally been so simple as to just say “ok, you’re free.” Paul did not want the church to be a disruption of the commerce and culture of Ephesus. He wanted it to be something that showed a better example of living in that culture with Christ’s love and message as the primary focus, rather than exploitation for monetary gain. Which brings us to the next section…

⁶ But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. ⁷ For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it, either. ⁸ If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content. ⁹ But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap, and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge people into ruin and destruction. ¹⁰ For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

The first lesson here is contentment, which is criminal that that part always gets left out or underplayed in this section. Godliness and being content with what He has given you is a great gain! That’s powerful stuff. How many people completely ruin their lives out of a lack of contentment. Always trying to “keep up with the Joneses” and chase after more and more and bigger and better…and for what? We have brought nothing into the world and we can’t take anything out of it! Notice moving forward how these verses are worded…”those who want to get rich” fall in to a trap. The destructive and foolish desires that lead to ruin don’t come from being rich, it comes from the desire. Because that desire for wealth is placed above the desire to love, live for, and serve God first and foremost. “For the love of money” is a root of all sorts of evil, not money itself. This is so often misquoted as “money is the root of all evil” which completely misses the point of what Paul is saying here. Money cannot be evil anymore than a hammer or a knife or even a gun can be evil. They are all completely inanimate tools that are only as good or evil as the heart and mind of the hands they are in. The longing to be rich and the love of money are the things that drive people to abandon their faith and become an affliction, not only on others but, on themselves. How often do we look at those who are, objectively, truly greedy and selfish people, who have become absorbed by the pursuit of being rich; and they just look miserable? On the other hand, how many times can you look at other people who are considered wealthy by all standards who look sincerely happy and fulfilled? What’s the common element with those who still have life in their eyes and don’t look like a comic book villain? They don’t seem to be in love with the money or place pursuit of that wealth as their defining thing. They usually have rich lives and give generously and try to use the money to do something that will make a mark on the world, not just that will make a bigger mark in their portfolio. Even with people who don’t fall in the upper 1%, you can see a lot of the same things… the ones who pursue wealth and love the idea of it, and the ones who utilize it as a means to be something more than just “rich” people, but to have fulfilled lives. Think about how you view the pursuit of wealth… I know for me, when I was younger and chasing money and that’s what I thought was important…I was miserable. And then I stopped doing that. And it was hard, Lord knows it was hard…my wife and I caught some lucky breaks here and there that kept us afloat. But we weren’t pursuing wealth or chasing money anymore. We were building a happy, fulfilled life together and for our children and going to church and serving God and our community. And then, everything else just sorta worked itself out! …but that love of money drove me to a dark place in life for a long time… as Paul and Timothy both saw it do to many in the church and community of Ephesus.

¹¹ But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness. ¹² Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. ¹³ I direct you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate, ¹⁴ that you keep the commandment without fault or reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁵ which He will bring about at the proper time—He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, ¹⁶ who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen.

Read this part out loud like a black Baptist Gospel preacher who has the whole congregation on their feet and tell me you don’t get goosebumps! I don’t know that there’s anything for me to really explain or add to this section. Especially following up my personal dark places in the love and pursuit of money and coming out of those a much different man that I had been 10+ years ago. Or if you want to listen to me try to read it enthusiastically…well here’s this.

¹⁷ Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to set their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy. ¹⁸ Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, ¹⁹ storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.

Again, Paul doesn’t rebuke or talk down to those who are rich. Rather, he calls on them to place their faith and trust in God and the riches of heaven that he promises us. To be generous and do good works. To build up a treasure of a strong foundation of Godly living and faith so that they will have a fulfilled life. “Money can’t buy happiness” is a quote I absolutely hate…because the response is often something like “yeah but it can buy a boat and that would make me happy.” Which brings me to one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite TV shows, Don Draper in Mad Men saying "What is happiness? It’s a moment before you need more happiness.” But the fulfillment of a good life? That’s something you can’t ever fill with anything that can just be bought, and that’s not a moment that will pass while you wait for the next thing.

²⁰ Timothy, protect what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly, empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called “knowledge”— ²¹ which some have professed and thereby have gone astray from the faith.

And with that we close out the 1st letter to Timothy. Reemphasizing the need to stand firmly against false teachings, not to get bogged down in “empty chatter” and senseless arguments with those who are insincere and manipulative. And a punctuation on that for those of us in the modern Christian church, as we need to be every bit as diligent as Timothy had to be then to stand up to bad doctrine, twisted theology, and blatantly wrong teaching that comes from a broken world looking to drag all of us down into that brokenness with it.

Next week will be a little break from Bible studies as I recount having lunch with a friend recently. Then the first Sunday of December we’ll start diving in to 2nd Timothy.

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¹ Do not sharply rebuke an older man, but rather appeal to him as a father, and to the younger men as brothers, ² to the older women as mothers, and to the younger women as sisters, in all purity.

I thought this opening was important on its own, because of the particular wording and the message it directly instructs on. It gets back to the constant theme of the letter that we are all, as part of the church, like one big family. And notice this doesn’t say not to rebuke one another (which could be misconstrued similar to the way “judge not lest ye be judged is), but rather it instructs on how to go about such a thing. Making an appeal to the one you are confronting; either like a father or brother, or a mother or sister. How often does this get lost, definitely not explicitly within the church but perhaps often most egregiously within the church, when there are things that come up and someone who may be in the wrong (whether by intent or not) has to be confronted? We are to appeal to one another, charitably and familial, with love and concern. Not with a sharp tongue and an ax to grind. This should most certainly be applied outside of the church as well. How much more pleasant would daily discourse be if we applied this to every situation?

³ Honor widows who are actually widows; ⁴ but if any widow has children or grandchildren, they must first learn to show proper respect for their own family and to give back compensation to their parents; for this is acceptable in the sight of God. ⁵ Now she who is actually a widow and has been left alone has set her hope on God, and she continues in requests and prayers night and day. ⁶ But she who indulges herself in luxury is dead, even while she lives. ⁷ Give these instructions as well, so that they may be above reproach. ⁸ But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

This whole section on widows is very interesting, in my opinion. There are some Biblical studies that, when looking at other both Old Testament Jewish references and other mentions of widows in Paul’s letters, connect these statements not exclusively to the church’s handling and treatment of widows, but also to single mothers, divorcees, and those who find themselves in desperate need for a multitude of reasons; being linked to the Greek word for “widow,” which does not specifically mean a woman whose husband died but means “suffered loss” or “left alone,” which could be applied to death, desertion, divorce, imprisonment, and a number of other reasons in those times where a husband may not return outside of merely death.1 This also gives steps for how and where the care for the widow should come from. And it starts with the family. How often in modern society do we see children and grandchildren turn away from their family elders in need, because they don’t have the time or don’t want to deal with that extra burden? As Christians it is our duty to step up and care for those in our families in the times of need just as they cared for us when we couldn’t care for ourselves. Jesus even commanded this in Matthew 5: 3-6. But as the church that doesn’t mean we just throw those in need to their families for help and leave it at that. Sometimes that’s not practical or possible. And we are called to care for those in need…but we are also supposed to be discerning in the giving of that care. Those “indulging in luxury” receive a pretty sharp rebuke from Paul here, even after he encourages against sharply rebuking in the opening. And I’ll leave that at that, because I try my best to remain apolitical with these writings and I would rather not open up the can of worms that could come from that passage in the wake of the recently ended government shutdown and what we saw over the last couple of weeks of that with those “in need” losing their SNAP benefits and the surge of social media posts showing the extent of “need” some of those people were in, as opposed to the obvious luxury they were living in while taking advantage of that “need.”

⁹ A widow is to be put on the list only if she is not less than sixty years old, having been the wife of one man, ¹⁰ having a reputation for good works; and if she has brought up children, if she has shown hospitality to strangers, if she has washed the saints’ feet, if she has assisted those in distress, and if she has devoted herself to every good work. ¹¹ But refuse to register younger widows, for when they feel physical desires alienating them from Christ, they want to get married, ¹² thereby incurring condemnation, because they have ignored their previous pledge. ¹³ At the same time they also learn to be idle, as they go around from house to house; and not merely idle, but also they become gossips and busybodies, talking about things not proper to mention. ¹⁴ Therefore, I want younger widows to get married, have children, manage their households, and give the enemy no opportunity for reproach; ¹⁵ for some have already turned away to follow Satan. ¹⁶ If any woman who is a believer has dependent widows, she must assist them and the church must not be burdened, so that it may assist those who are actually widows.

This section calls back to Chapter 2, where Paul is explaining how the women of the church should conduct themselves. Without nitpicking specifics of what he says here, this is a continuation of how the women of the church should conduct themselves and how the church should handle women who find themselves widowed for whatever the reason at different stages in life. Behave like upstanding, Godly women of the community. Don’t be idle gossips and busybodies. Manage the household and assist other widows. The church should be focused on those most in need…not be “burdened” by those who can and should be caring for themselves. That sounds kinda harsh, but it also goes back to the verse about “indulging in luxury” and the need for the church to be discerning with those being cared for. It was just as true in Paul’s time as it is now that there are people who, if given the opportunity to take advantage of a situation to benefit themselves without having to put forth any effort for themselves, they will choke the life out of that life line. But again, I’m trying to not get political with this! Boy does it get tough with some of these sections though…

¹⁷ The elders who lead well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching. ¹⁸ For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle the ox while it is threshing,” and “The laborer is worthy of his wages.” ¹⁹ Do not accept an accusation against an elder except on the basis of two or three witnesses. ²⁰ Those who continue in sin, rebuke in the presence of all, so that the rest also will be fearful of sinning. ²¹ I solemnly exhort you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of His chosen angels, to maintain these principles without bias, doing nothing in a spirit of partiality. ²² Do not lay hands upon anyone too quickly and thereby share responsibility for the sins of others; keep yourself free from sin. ²³ Do not go on drinking only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments. ²⁴ The sins of some people are quite evident, going before them to judgment; for others, their sins follow after. ²⁵ Likewise also, deeds that are good are quite evident, and those which are otherwise cannot be concealed.

We’ve discussed Paul’s addressing of elders with the church at Ephesus before (in Chapter 3), and you’ll remember he is referring to the overseers or pastoral leaders of the church, not necessarily just older members of the church. But where in Chapter 3 he talked about how these church leaders should be selected and how they should conduct themselves, here in Chapter 5 he is giving instructions to the church on how they should treat and honor those elders. They should be given a station of honor (which the word Paul uses means “to support” and “show respect”) and should be rewarded for their good work. We are also to give them the benefit of the doubt, to some extend. Accusations against church elders should come with a degree of proof and investigation.

The next parts of this section are not meant as directly applied to elders exclusively, but this whole part gets sort of lumped in together. I wish I could read Greek and look at the original text…I feel like this segue is clunky in English and would make more sense in the original text, but I digress. How do we handle unapologetic and unchanging sin within the church? Yes, we love the sinner. We hear that all the time in this modern, “Buddy Jesus” “christianity” that has taken hold of much of society. But we also have to actually address the sin! And sometimes that means we also have to address the sinner! At which point they are to be rebuked publicly, for all of the church to see, to show that sin is serious and should be addressed seriously. Jesus laid this out in Matthew Chapter 18, and Paul reinforces here, that sin within the church must be confronted, and if it continues the person must be expelled. But Paul also tempers this with a call to do so without bias or partiality. We are to be sober judges of the situation and the person (people) involved. We don’t jump to conclusions without all of the facts of the matter; don’t lay hands on someone without having all of the evidence and make a sinner of yourself through a lack of faith and respect for your fellow Christian. Obviously, as in Matthew, there are steps to be taken and a right way to address sin within the church. But addressing it is something we are called to do. Not just leave it alone because “oh what are they hurting?” Good deeds will be evident. They will know us by our love and our works. The same is true of sinful actions. They may be immediately evident or they may follow later, but ultimately, as Paul says, they “cannot be concealed.” We have been called, as the church, to be a pillar in our communities throughout this letter. We cannot do that and be that if we are allowing sin to actively work within our own walls. God will have the final judgement, but that does not mean we are not to hold each other to His standards while we are here on Earth.

Next week we’ll wrap up 1 Timothy and also get to the often misquoted verse about money being the root of all evil. I’m looking forward to the next chapter and I hope if you’ve been reading along with these you’ve been getting something out of the breakdowns. Thank you for subscribing and reading, and I’ll be back next week!