Chapter 2: Dalhart

Carving broad lines into the dirt, he circled the tractor at the edge of the field his father farmed as a hired hand, straightened it out, and started anew. Plowing one endless furrow after another, Joel stole a longing glance at the cars speeding past on the adjacent road, each headed anywhere but here. Family duty held him firmly in the driver’s seat of the tractor’s cabin, though he would gladly relinquish it for a ride in the backseat of even the slowest vehicle escaping this dry and dusty patch of land outside of Dalhart. While he would later appreciate the work ethic instilled in him by his father, who expected him and his brothers to do their part by participating in the family trade as long as they remained under his roof, he derived no pleasure in farming and anticipated after graduation a life outside of such a town that offered few, if any, other means of making a living, even to this day.

Granted, there was nothing to discredit the modest, deliberately-paced community of Dalhart, so named for its establishment between Dallam and Hartley counties in the Texas Panhandle. Then again, there was nothing much to its credit either, in Joel’s opinion. Living in a small agrarian town suited men like his father, who had spent his entire life there, was devoted to his trade, and knew as much about the world outside of it as he wanted to and nothing more. In a way, Dalhart was a refuge from the busy, chaotic world beyond beyond its borders. Even my grandfather’s television, a veritable window in one’s living room opened to the wider world, was, as I recall in his later years, rarely tuned to anything other than golf or the weather; there was little else that captured or required his attention, and this by choice. I once asked him if he had ever considered living anywhere else, myself having recently arrived for a visit from the sprawling, noisy metropolis of Houston. “What?!” he exclaimed. “You’d have to be crazy to want to leave this place!”

My father shared no such sentiment, a fact that did not evade the attention of his own father. It isn’t a stretch to say that the numerous years David Johnson had spent working the land as a matter of necessity had become stitched inseparably into his very identity. To have a son who did not find equal meaning in this respectable form of labor was to suffer a personal affront. He was not an emotionally demonstrative man, however, though his departure from his childhood home as a teenager was contentious, to say the least. He made a rebellious escape of his own from a father with whom he didn’t see eye to eye and never once looked back in regret. Exiting the dust-bowl era, he found a way to make life work for him in spite of an unfinished formal education, eloping with his teenage bride, Zola Faye McBrayer, and focusing his life’s labor on tending the land. Five kids were to follow, Joel the fourth in line, preceded by Peggy, Nancy, and Steve, and trailed by Don.

Zola Faye’s fourth was an unplanned pregnancy. To make matters worse, conception was discovered following a procedure his mother had undergone known obstetrically as a “D and C,” which involves clearing tissue from the uterine lining. No viable pregnancy is biologically equipped to withstand such a procedure under the best of circumstances. Upon learning of the mistake, the doctor counseled abortion, convinced the fetus either would not survive or would be born unhealthy or severely disabled. Zola Faye refused. Defying the odds, the baby would be born to term, alive and healthy. She would give him the prophetic Biblical name “Joel,” meaning declaratively “Yahweh (the Lord) is God.” The improbable birth would be documented in medical literature. I would first hear this story many years later in a sermon delivered by my father, who shared of his mother’s conviction that it presaged a life determined for a special purpose or moment.

Whatever that purpose might be, this story would lend Joel a profound sense of God having miraculously intervened in his life long before he possessed a formed mind to perceive it. The words of Psalm 139 might as well had been penned by him, who, incidentally, was given the middle name “David” by his mother and father.

“Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

Central to this sense of meaning and purpose was the church, and for the Johnson household, attendance was routine and expected for all in the family. His father, David, arrived early every Sunday to open the doors of the First Baptist Church of Dalhart, his deaconly duties extending only insofar as gatekeeper and collector, namely offertory contributions and attendance numbers in Sunday School classes. Aside from this, he characteristically could be relied upon to shutter his eyes during the service not in meditation or prayer but in slumber. Yes, the pastoral message was important; he diligently brought his family each week, after all. It seems, however, he was simply a man who was at his best and most alert when moving, and a sermon afforded little opportunity for that. Zola Faye, by contrast, kept conscious and active attention, teaching the young married’s class, singing in the choir, and occasionally serving as pianist and, for several years, church secretary. As for Joel and his brothers and sisters, they were present and accounted for given the doors were open — Girls in Action, Royal Ambassadors, childrens and youth choir, Sunday evening church training, vacation Bible school, etc. Religious or not, one’s best social opportunities in a small town at that time were often provided by an engaged church, and the Johnsons’ extracurricular activities would imply it was practically a second home for them.

Growing up, Joel’s interests inclined toward literature. His oldest sibling, Peggy, unwittingly practicing for her eventual career in education, taught him to read before he ever set foot in a classroom. Once children’s stories were covered, he moved on to the family encyclopedia, an educational staple of many mid-20th century American homes. Further along than most by the time first grade began, he and another student were permitted in their reading class to occupy a corner of the classroom and lose themselves in any available story that seized their interest. He acquired a library card at the earliest opportunity and pored over every book on the shelves detailing the history of World War II and the Civil War. The daring adventures penned by Alistair MacLean were his favorite. When these were exhausted or unavailable, Readers Digest bound and abridged novels that amply lined his mother’s shelves would do. To this day, my father’s preferred posture is seated comfortably in a recliner with an open book. Conscious of it or not, he was building habits and forming values that would extend to his own children years later. My own career choice of librarianship undoubtedly began its formation during those early reading lessons decades ago between my aunt and father. For those of us led to believe we are the masters of our own fate, I would argue that nurture and influence stretch much further back into our familial past than we might imagine.

At 15, a friend loaned him “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. “It’s a dangerous business,” Tolkien writes, “going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” Joel would spend hours discussing the volumes with his friend, enthralled not only at the exploits of the nine but, more importantly, moved by the spiritual themes undergirding the patient, expansive story, which, like many others he read, depicted places, real or imagined, dissimilar to the one he inhabited, fueling a desire to tread his own path into the unexplored world once given the opportunity. Something greater and deeper than the adventures he had read about continued to stir within, inspiring him soon to begin taking his first steps into a vocational life of faith.

Whether it was the stress of this call that weighed upon him or simple adolescent immaturity, Joel found himself during his senior year succumbing for a season, due to the influence of friends, to more than a passing interest in alcohol, a developing habit that he managed to conceal from his abstinent parents. Late in the academic year, he would pass evenings several times a week with friends overindulging. He didn’t relish the taste, but it did the job and did it well. Certain evenings passed out of memory entirely; the manner in which he made it home on these occasions were left a mystery.

There are few times in life that bear stronger potential to form both our best and worst habits than adolescence, and at his rate, alcoholism could thereafter have grasped and held him captive with relative ease if left unchecked. Had it succeeded, the story told here would read differently or, perhaps, not be read at all. To our great fortune, however, resourcefulness is one of God’s most enduring though often overlooked qualities. Every tool is at his disposal to shape our circumstances and character as he sees fit. He would recognize in due time what awaited him without an adjustment and would, thankfully, quit cold turkey. He would never touch another drop. The lessons learned would be put to good use, as they should for any seasoned minister. There is no shame in possessing a past, especially if it offers a personal education on the meaning of grace. And who better to comprehend and appreciate the lessons of one’s past in humility than those committed to professional ministry in the service of others, each with their own pasts? Christ saves us all from something.

Joel had spent abundant time pondering these and other spiritual matters for much of his brief life thus far, which led him eventually to consider whether it hinted at a call to a career focused wholly on God’s work. But to what, exactly? The works of Scripture, especially in the Old Testament, do not always describe the “call” of God in precisely the way many of us understand it today. Then, the Levites fulfilled the “professional” function, but primarily due to bloodline; it was a “default calling,” if you will. Many of those “called” who we read about were tasked with a very specific job in mind that did not necessarily carry a socially- or culturally-defined title that limited their role and responsibilities: be fruitful, build an ark, father a nation, lead my people, conquer, save my people, be anointed as king, rebuild the city, etc. All were called of God, but to an ordained task, not a defined title. I have met those who pursued a call in seminary who did not belong there, and I have known instructors who shared that observation. While there is no clear fault in following a call in the best way we know with the information we have, it’s wise to consider that we may limit God to think he can work with us only within the confines of professional ministry, though it most certainly has its place.

As best as Joel could surmise, just as many others do, his call should be pursued as a leader and shepherd of a congregation much like the one of which he’d long been a part, so he duly set out to obey prayerfully in the best way he saw fit. Consulting with his church’s pastor as well as select deacons in the body, he was approved and officially licensed into ministry. The duration of his first sermon barely gave listeners time enough to warm their seats after only seven minutes in the pulpit, but the brevity was no discouragement to him. Joel would continue in that direction.

At long last, graduation arrived. He summarily struck out on the road leading from town, blazing past furrowed fields over which he’d once driven. From here, there would be no stolen glances toward the tractors carving the dirt hours on end, though perhaps the metaphorical but fitting words of Christ, to whom he had pledged himself, echoed in his mind as he fixed his gaze forward and forged ahead.

“No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Just as the plow prepares the ground for the growth it will foster, Joel was unknowingly headed not yet into a life of career ministry but rather one of patient preparation for a task God had designed for him years later, a task which he would share with another. Her story began many miles southeast of the quiet farmlands spread across the Panhandle, nearer the noisy, steam-pluming refineries stretching along the lengthy coasts of the Gulf. Hers was a different hope for the future they would soon inhabit together.

Altitude

For the record, cell phone reception works relatively well when flying 1,100 feet above a major metropolitan area in an aeronautically snail-paced PT-17 Stearman. Soaring above as a front-seat passenger in the bright yellow biplane, used originally as a trainer for aspiring WWII pilots, I spotted our subdivision below. I texted my wife to let her and our kids know that the pilot and I were directly above our tree-obscured neighborhood. “We saw you!!!” came the thrilled reply. Months before, she had purchased the 30-minute, open-cockpit ride as a birthday gift for me from the flight museum practically nestled in our backyard at the adjacent airfield. On this day, incidentally the 20th anniversary of 9/11, I made time for the change in vertical perspective and presented my ticket. It was brief as flights go, but it was an experience I won’t soon forget.

If you’ve ever coasted far above the earth on a pair of wings and an engine or two, looking down through the window in the pressure-sealed passenger cabin, you can’t help but observe how different your local haunts below appear. For one, at this altitude, you can see many of them simultaneously, and the distances between seem much less distant; my sphere of day-to-day influence on the ground isn’t quite so expansive. Moreover, while my family pinpointed me in the plane, I never could find them on the ground. They weren’t even on the scale of an ant I often spot on the sidewalk in front of our house. The four of them might as well have been invisible, as any other human below.

Maybe it was the effects of the altitude, but it put me into a reflective mood. Down below, where gravity binds us to the earth, it’s easy to feel important when you’re blind to the big picture. Far above, however, every self-important person on the ground disappears. As we glided along for the half-hour ride, I considered this, the nature of ambition, and the sometimes misguided pursuit by certain of us to rise above it all.

If you keep up with the news even remotely, regardless of your source of choice, you’re likely to have come across the name “Elizabeth Holmes.” Presently, she is on trial facing multiple criminal charges of fraud involving Theranos, a company she started in 2003 at the tender age of 19. Once touted as the next Steve Jobs, Holmes took this to heart and deliberately fashioned her likeness in the image of the storied tech titan, even going so far as to sport the black turtlenecks for which he was famous. Her management style, it is said, bred more fear and anxiety in the workplace than a spirit of teamwork or cooperation. To say she was task- versus people-oriented was an understatement.

Some of these tendencies might have been excusable if there were a world-changing product to unveil. Holmes’s single-minded pursuit was to develop a comprehensive blood testing device requiring only a few drops of blood rather than multiple vials. For years, her staff attempted to achieve what was known by others more knowledgeable to be impossible in this physical universe, but she plowed on nonetheless, opting instead to fake-it-till-you-make-it. While scientists and developers behind the scenes in her company for years experienced little more than failure after failure, Holmes ordered the results buried or whitewashed, opting for smoke and mirrors with the public and investors, brazenly lying about the success of her “Edison” device, as it was named. When the pressure mounted and the Edison continued to fall short of expectations, samples taken from patients and volunteers were secretly run through traditional 3rd-party machines and diluted to the required volume, repeatedly returning inaccurate results. When the Edison did work, it was not even remotely comprehensive in the number of tests it was claimed by its founder to perform. In some cases, actual patients made critical health decisions based on the information provided by either method, only later to find they had been duped. Holmes, blindly ambitious to a fault, would rather have let others believe she had a revolutionary product than patiently test it before releasing it or admitting defeat and moving on. Even after whistleblowers blew her cover, she ultimately saw the collapse of her company, and found herself a defendant in the dock, she stubbornly would not admit to any wrongdoing.

Then there’s the story of Stephen Glass, one of my favorites. In the mid- to late-90s, the young writer earned a spot in the offices of “The New Republic,” which, at the time, boasted of being the official in-flight magazine of Air Force One. Glass’s gifts as a journalist were evident almost from the start; it seemed he had a special knack not only for narrative but also for finding unique sources for his fantastic pieces that strained credulity but were nonetheless entertaining to read. The truth, however, was far more interesting.

Reading Glass’s article “Hack Heaven,” journalists at Forbes magazine couldn’t help but wonder why they hadn’t heard of Ian Restil, Jukt Micronics, or the “Uniform Computer Securities Act.” Upon closer inspection, and after grilling Glass and TNR’s editor, it became abundantly clear to the writers that the article was about as rock solid as a marshmallow. The facts were hollow, and Glass was forced into a corner. Rather than confess his sins, Glass invented further fiction to support the fiction. Long story short, Glass lost his job, the majority of his published work in the magazine was found to be completely or partially fabricated, and TNR was compelled to apologize to its readers and struggled to regain its integrity and reputation.

What’s of greater interest and relevance to me about either of these tales, however, reaches further back, long before the very public, colossal fall and even beyond the early expectations of great things to come in their youth. It’s a very young Holmes who came from a once well-endowed family, whose parents felt and applied pressure to make a name for herself. It’s Glass deciding to study law while while penning his articles for “The New Republic,” because it wasn’t enough for his parents that he was employed by a highly-successful, nationally-recognized publication as a writer. In short, it’s the expectations we foist upon our kids and the manner in which they choose to fulfill our hopes for them.

Our oldest did not inherit our lack of athletic prowess, fortunately for her. Rather, she arrived to us at almost 9 years of age with the skills of a natural at any physical activity. Learning to ride a bike took all the painstaking effort of less than half an hour. We first encouraged and nurtured her abilities by enrolling her in gymnastics only to be told a year or two later that the instructors had nothing left to teach her. What she did learn and had opportunity to practice would serve her well in middle school, where, by the time she finished, she had competed successfully in multiple sports and made the cheer team her final year.

Transitioning into high school this year, she wisely chose to limit herself to one or the other and opted to try out for cheer. Much to her pleasure and not to our surprise, she not only made the team but was asked to join varsity, and this as a freshman. She dutifully cheers at weekly games and is one of their few featured tumblers. If this weren’t enough, she made the team’s elite competitive performance group, again, as I mentioned, as a freshman. I’m still amazed at how she can tumble and twist end over end given only a long, open patch of ground.

Before opting out of gymnastics, we discussed what it would mean for us to be the kind of parents who raised the stakes and our expectations to transition her from casual hobbyist to serious contender, as was encouraged. We learned this would involve greater financial resources, daily hours-long practices after the school day, regular weekend competitions, etc. The sacrifices made would also redirect time away from her younger brother and sister as we focused our attention on her God-given talent.

In the end, we did not choose that route, and she was happy not to. We can see she is better for it. The instability and stress of life before her transition into our home was, in part, enough to persuade us that her life could still be great without the overwhelming pressure to be great, so to speak, at just one thing. Had we charged ahead, however, regardless of wins and accolades, I have wondered the impression we would have left on her had we pushed her.

We all need to encourage our kids to be at their best, as should we. I could never dispute that. I’m reminded of the quote from the actor portraying British runner Eric Liddell from the famed movie “Chariot’s of Fire”: “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.” These words speak truth to the direction in which our aspirations should be pointed — towards the One who gave us our gifts. As I reflect on the impression our choices have on our children, I’m convinced it’s the only way our and their ambitions can remain pure and admirable.

Stories such as those of Glass and Holmes are instructive about our ambitions. When we strive merely to be better than, all bets are off; ethics and fair-play fall low on the list of priorities. There will always eventually be someone better than us at whatever we do, even it if it takes a little time to discover it, and especially if we are dishonest in our pursuit. When we strive instead simply to be better with an audience of One, we’re truly free to be at our best. I pray our approach with our kids reflects this in their efforts.

I can’t help but hope that folks such as Glass and Holmes might consider this as well next time they find themselves peering down at the ground below.