God Beyond My Periphery | Front Porch Forgiveness


My school days were good, but they were uneventful.  I did not standout in school.  I was not a standout athlete.  I was not a standout student.  I was not a standout rebel.  In a crowd I stood-out only because I was six feet, five inches tall.  I was a back row guy and my style blended in with all the other back row guys.  By the time I graduated I was ready to stand out. 

The thing about life after high school is all bets are off; slates are clean.  Reputations rarely precede you.  You can be who you always have been or you can be someone who you never were.  I decided to be someone who I never was.

My Dad had offered to pay my tuition had I decided to go to Multnomah Bible College in Portland, Oregon.  I think he wanted me to be a pastor or something ridiculous like that.  Instead I moved into an apartment with three other guys in Mt. Vernon, Washington.  I enrolled in a vocational engineering program at a community college and got a job at Target.  I was far enough away from home that I felt independent, but close enough for my Mom to do my laundry every other weekend and pick up a check from my Dad for living expenses.

Within months my independence began to wane.  I lost my job.  I lost interest in school.  I lost roommates.  I lost friends.  I lost control.  I lost happiness.  The only thing I had found was a particular level of despair that was altogether foreign to me and may best be described as “lostness.”   And after a year of increasing “lostness” I was broken and broke, and had only the option of moving home.

The drive home felt like an eternity; an increasingly distant idea in those moments.  I was riding with two buddies in an old Dodge flatbed farm truck with a spring loaded bench seat and dually wheels in the rear (which I am certain were not spring loaded).  Tony was driving.  He and I shared a bedroom when I first moved to Mt. Vernon.  We got to know each other pretty well.  He was just helping with the move.  He had found a girl in Mt. Vernon, so he was staying there.  Dave was next to Tony straddling the long gear shift handle.  He was one of the guys I first moved in with also.  The two of us stuck together even more than me and Tony.  Maybe that was because neither of us found a girl.  More likely though, it was because neither of us had found ourselves yet.  I was next to Dave with my face propped up against the cold window.  My eyes were as distant as my heart, staring at the blur of September color along the freeway. 

We were the truck you don’t drive behind.  Top speed was 50 mph and everything Dave and I owned was perilously tied down…  A couple mattresses flapping in the wind, dressers, old TV’s, several garbage bags full of dirty laundry, some boxes of canned food and ramen noodle soup, a halogen lamp, and a deer sign with a bullet hole in it that we stole off the highway one night.

I remember it was appropriately raining for much of the drive.  I don’t think I cared much about my stuff getting wet.  Rather, the drizzle made it difficult to distinguish me from the other two guys in the truck if you were on the outside looking in.  It also made it difficult to see any emotion on my face.  So went the days of the life I had lived that previous year. 

By the time we arrived at my parent’s house the sun was out.  When we pulled into the driveway I noticed my Dad sitting in my Grandfather’s old chair on the front porch.  My stomach felt sick.  I wanted to cry.  Surely he knew why I was back.  Surely he knew I had squandered everything he gave me on wild living and now…now I had no place to go.  I tried to keep my lips still while I rehearsed my apology.  Dave looked at me, then back at my Dad as my Dad stood up. 

The brakes screamed for mercy as the truck came to a stop.  The old engine snored more than it purred, and it let out a startled yelp when Tony shut it down.  The rusty door cried out for grease as I shoved it open and hopped down.  Tony and Dave didn’t say a word.  Maybe they felt the awkwardness of the moment?  Maybe they perceived my fear in the moment?  Maybe they sense the holiness beneath the surface of the moment?  None-the-less, I lifted my chin, threw my shoulders back and headed toward the porch.  By the time I crossed in front of the truck I had slouched back to a defeated position.  My feet felt like cinderblocks and my knees felt like plastic.  Again, I wanted to cry.

The porch was a small space.  There were two steps up to a concrete platform where there was room for a single chair that sat behind the swing of the screen door.  I noticed my Dad step forward to the edge of the top step.  When I got to the steps there was no room for me to step up, so I toed the bottom step and kept my head down.  I noticed my shadow cast toward my Dad.  I noticed the worn leather on his work shoes.  I noticed the thick veins on his hands that hung near his pockets.  I could barely stand the moment.  Then my Dad stepped down. 

The steps seemed really crowded all at once.  I stepped back slightly as he stepped down another step to my level.  It was like a dance.  It felt intimate.  We knew which way to move. 

Finally I began to cry and I looked up at him.  He put his arms around me and pulled me in before I could see his face; before I could see any disappointment in his eyes.  I could hear him breathing right by my ear.  His breaths were gentle.  They did not sound like anxious breaths.  It did not sound like he was upset.  Then I heard his dry lips separate.  He took a breath like those breaths we take when we are about to say something emotional and do not want to cry. 

“Welcome home son.  May I help you unload your stuff?”

Until that moment I had never known forgiveness could be more than words.  I thought the script went something like, “I was wrong.  I am sorry. Please forgive me.”  To which the receptor replies, “I forgive you.”  I had no idea forgiveness was a posture that perfectly complements the posture of repentance, and that these postures fit together in an embrace; a union of emotional petition and affectionate appeal.  Without an explicitly stated apology and without explicitly stated forgiveness, there at the foot of the steps to that porch I was forgiven; a Father and a son reconciled.


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