flashBANG part 2: teethMARKS
So we discover the thing inside that has made us flashbangs. And we work within God’s plan to pluck it out.
But won’t that leave a hole?
Of course. You have to fill it with something.
Teethmarks?
That’s not the filling. It’s just the next step.
Where will these teethmarks actually be left?
You expect me to spoil the ending?
If you do, I won’t have to read the whole thing.
Exactly why the answers won’t come until after another lengthy anecdote.
Oh goody. Please use more flowery language. I can’t get enough of that.
The faction of people who have fallen out of a car and landed on their lips is not a very large club, but I am proud to have become a member at the tender age of four.
To be completely accurate (of course, why start now), it was a few days before my fourth birthday. This is important to the story.
My family and I were about to depart for the airport in our station wagon that had fake wood paneling on the side. In those days, children were not obligated to be strapped into the torture device called a “safety seat.” We were allowed to free-roam the vehicle, eventually leaping out the side window in timeless homage to Bo and Luke Duke.
In this particular instance, I was leaning against the back gate of the vehicle, which I had been unable to close securely due to the fact that I was almost four and the door weighed 812 pounds. The scenario that unfolded was not helped by the fact that our driveway was at an incline that resembled the number seven. Before the car began to back out of the driveway, I leaned on the door—or gravity merely sucked me toward it—and fell face first out of the car. I swiftly smashed down onto my bottom lip or, as my family called it a few moments later, “a plate of gristle.”
I was rushed to the emergency room where the doctor took a thorough look at my lip, removing the random parts of driveway that were wedged between cheek and gum. His determination was two-fold: I did indeed need stitches, but I was four years old and would therefore chew them out in my sleep. Evidently, lips are the snack standard for sleeping preschoolers.
The bleeding had stopped. The doctor assured that, though extremely unattractive, I would be more than fine. The concern was that the scarring would leave my mouth disfigured or at least the size of Mount Vernon.
However, there was nothing that could be done. So my family and I decided to head back toward the airport and celebrate my birthday on vacation anyway.
A vacation on the beach of Jekyll Island. Where my broken mouth could frolic in the painless abandon of the ocean’s salt water.
Evidently, the things people own in third-world countries are fairly important to them.
And by things, I don’t mean what you and I might call things. You and I might own things like a souvenir Smurf mug or a chess set carved out of the bone marrow of a yak.
In third-world countries, the term “things” refers more to the necessities: The bicycle that takes the owner the twenty miles to work. The sometimes cardboard walls the owner finds shelter between. And these things are quite important to the owner. Not in the status way that our things are important. In the life-or-death way.
In 1991, I lived for six weeks in Timisoara, Romania. This was only a few years after the Berlin Wall fell, and the bullet holes of the Revolution had not yet been cemented over in the central square. The bloodstains of the children who had lined up holding hands in front of the tanks to stop them had not been scrubbed away with bleach. The secret rooms in the graveyard where ministers of the Gospel were tortured with hot wax in their bullet wounds had not yet been dismantled. We were one of the first groups to arrive during the first month American groups were allowed inside. And we discovered the hard way that the things people own in third-world countries are fairly important to them—but not very important to us.
** THIRD PAUSE FOR IMPORTANT BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION **
I had never realized of what little importance the things I own are to me until I was robbed. Or, I should say, until I was robbed twice.
In early autumn of 2003, I was away from home for one of the more excruciating weeks of my work year—a job that I could not choose to return from early without serious financial ramifications. It always seemed to be during this particular week of the year that things would happen back at home in my absence—things that I needed to be there for:
• My wife falling ill.
• My daughter’s first time as a flower girl.
• My son’s head splitting open and needing stitches.
These are pivotal moments for a father, but even more so for a family. They need their husbands and daddies at these crucial moments. To hold them. To reassure. But this was always the one week that I could not quickly return.
And this was the unfortunate week that the carnies invaded my home.
It was never actually proven that it was the employees of the carnival, but the rash of break-ins that smothered Tulsa, Oklahoma, over the course of that two-week period mapped out a perfect circle around the fairgrounds and came to an abrupt halt when their caravan drove out of town. Also, neighbors reported that the getaway car was selling corndogs.
The robbery scenario would actually seem funnier if it had not first been discovered by my six-year-old daughter Morgan, who had, before that moment, not yet been introduced to the feeling of an unsafe home.
Kaysie drove up the driveway and was perplexed to find that the clothing that had been in her closet was now strewn across the yard. She thought perhaps I had returned home early and was pulling another unfunny joke. Kaysie was on the cell phone with her mother when she approached the front door (which was already open) and saw what had once appeared to be our living room. Electronic equipment was now ripped from the entertainment system, cords hanging askew, clothes and rummaged remains everywhere, mud tracks throughout the carpet.
Kaysie wasn’t sure what was going on. But in her spirit, Morgan was certain. She began to cry and wail, “I want my Daddy,” as Kaysie spoke into the phone repeatedly, “Someone has been here!” and her mother yelled back, “Get out of the house! Get out of the house now!” Kaysie hurried the kids back into the car and drove away quickly to a friend’s house nearby where she was able to contact the police.
I, on the other hand, was in the throes of my job a state away. I had been up almost all night for several days straight when my cell phone rang. On the other end was my friend, Matt. He uttered two of my least favorite words.
“Don’t panic.”
And, of course, I did. Because why would anyone tell you not to panic unless those words were about to be followed by information that would, without the qualifier, be certain to make one panic? Matt explained to me that the police had just burrowed into our home with drawn weapons only to discover that whomever had been there was now gone, but that they had kicked in the back door, destroying part of the kitchen wall.
They had also vandalized our bedroom, ruining some personal items like the children’s birth certificates. Many items had been stolen, including my wife’s wedding ring and our checkbook. But the thieves had not only taken. They had left something behind: a seed of fear that was now being watered inside of my family.
So don’t panic.
I tried to find a way to resolve the job quickly and get home. I had a need to console my wife and kids. I had a need to be there, to see the damage, to have a thief’s face to direct my anger toward. But there was no way out. Not without substantial damage to my company’s reputation in business.
As painful as it was to stay, it would be worse to enter the season of fixing the damage with even more working against us. So my wife pulled away from the police to speak to me on the phone. She hid herself in the closet for privacy, and we cried. She felt that her home had been stolen—not a house or things—but a sense of belonging. And she wanted it back.
When I did return home a few days later, it was clear to me just how much a part of God’s plan the Church is when it behaves properly.
And by that statement, I refer to the people in the Church. They had rallied around our family, temporarily repairing what had been broken, immediately cleaning, taking care of our children, bringing meals, even sleeping over to make Kaysie feel safe. Love quickly invaded our home with a greater ferocity than fear had and swiftly drove it out. We rallied together as a family, prayed, embraced, and listened as our children described the happenings to me in great detail, reliving what was now an enormous adventure and omitting the scary parts.
Our family began to slowly heal with a bit of paranoia mixed in as the week soon dissolved into our normal crazy schedule.
One week to the day after the house break-in, I was at the office, and Kaysie was at Morgan’s ballet practice. As Kaysie sat inside, a woman came running into the lobby.
WOMAN: Does anyone here own a blue van?
KAYSIE: I own a blue van.
WOMAN: You’ve just been robbed.
(An elongated moment of stunned silence.)
KAYSIE: NO WAY!
The admittedly ridiculous truth was—we HAD been robbed. Again. Twice. In one week. Kaysie ventured out into the parking lot to discover that—in a completely filled lot of cars with ours smack in the random middle—OUR van had indeed been burglarized—the only vehicle in the entire parking lot, in fact, to be burglarized. The driver’s window had been smashed in, and Kaysie’s purse had been stolen.
For those keeping score, that’s two stolen checkbooks in one week. For those who have never experienced this unfortunate coincidence, allow me to paint the picture accurately.
1. Realize first checkbook is stolen.
2. Cancel first checking account.
3. Cancel first savings account.
4. Freeze all finances to make certain no checks were forged before accounts cancelled.
5. Contact Social Security for potential identity fraud.
6. Unfreeze finances.
7. Open new checking and savings accounts.
8. Receive new book of checks.
9. Have second checkbook stolen.
10. Realize second checkbook is stolen.
11. Return to cancel second checking account.
12. Return to cancel second savings account.
13. Freeze all finances again.
14. Recontact Social Security to watch for second, separate potential identity fraud.
15. Attempt to unfreeze finances.
16. Be accused of money laundering by bank. Because as difficult as it was for us to believe this story was actually happening, it was even more difficult for the bank to believe. In fact, they did not. Th ey suspected foul play on our part. Th is required several follow-up items on the to-do list:
17. Weep uncontrollably in front of bank representative.
18. Visit City of Tulsa main office to receive Police Report numbers.
19. Discover Police Report numbers are not available as insurance adjusters are taking their sweet time.
20. Call insurance to encourage finishing of claim.
21. Return to City of Tulsa main office to receive Police Report numbers.
22. Take numbers to bank.
23. Revel as bank regretfully believes us.
24. Scream “In your face, Communists!” at all bank employees.
25. Open new checking and savings accounts.
A full month later, we were finally aware of how much money was in our bank accounts and were able to move along, returning to ordinary life. We were grateful that our family was safe, our home was resuming normalcy, and that the only real loss was the minor one we referred to as our possessions.
Wait just a second.
OUR POSSESSIONS?!
Suddenly, the truth began to germinate. My leather jacket! My video camera! My 35mm still-photo camera! MY XBOX! All gone! All of the creature comforts at the end of the day dissipated into smoke only to be replaced by something worth 60 percent of the original item’s value because, evidently, we just don’t seem to pay our insurance company enough on the months that nothing is stolen to merit them replacing every bit of what we have lost when the time comes.
Now, I was truly irate. Not only did the robber in question invade my privacy and my safety—he invaded my PLEASURE! My possessions. The things that I possess or perhaps possess me had been erased in this tragedy, this crime.
And that, indeed, made me very, very angry.
Upon landing on the tarmac in Timisoara in an airplane built by Tarom Romanian airlines, I knew our team was in for an uphill battle. We were fourteen members strong, including myself, my brother Dav, eight women, and a nine-foot-tall German theology major named Claus—pronounced like the Nazi, not the Santa. Each of us brought two pieces of luggage for our six-week stay. This, of course, equals twenty-eight bags.
Only four of them made it to Romania on that plane.
The next plane would arrive in seven days. It would take an additional three days beyond those to negotiate our clothing back. That gave me ten days to wear the one outfit I was currently wearing: a wool suit. It was 102 degrees outside. It was going to be a fun week.
Little did I know at the time that regardless of how difficult Romania made things on us, we were going to accidentally make it a whole lot harder on them. The loss of our own things created an unfortunate necessity. We, a team of clumsy Americans, would be obliged to borrow their things.
This would not seem to be a problem unless one considers the fact that Westerners only assume that they actually take care of the things they utilize. I can personally attest to the reality that we, in fact, do not use much care at all.
The joy began the very first day when our hosts invited us into town with them. Though I was wearing a thick suit, I agreed that our team would accompany them, ignorant to the fact that we were all going to hike four miles, and that it was about to rain very hard. I remain finely attuned even now, thirteen years later, to the precise scent of six parts wool, two parts rain, two parts human flop sweat. This was the good news.
The bad news, which I did not discover until I was wringing out my necktie by hand, was that I was going to be preaching the service that evening—or in layman’s terms, in eighteen minutes.
To make a long story short, the evening went very well from a ministry standpoint while going very poorly from the vantage of my own comfort.
Cold moist wool chafes absolutely everywhere, but God fell in the midst of it, and many were healed, restored, and affected in powerful and spiritual ways. I chalked it up as lesson number 1: I don’t need to have everything go my way in order for things to go God’s way. I don’t need to feel right for Him to move.
The primary problem with lessons numbered “1” is that they are quickly swept aside and forgotten. Th is is what makes rules numbered “2” through “317” necessary—and unfortunately all of these lessons in Romania were at least partially named “Claus.”
Claus was a clumsy German. And tactless. Trust me, these are understatements. And I can say this now in good conscience because Claus is currently a very mature and godly leader, living permanently as a missionary abroad. But he was not mature and leader-like in Romania. In Romania, he was learning—or, more accurately, refusing to learn or change or keep his mouth shut or just for one second not BREAK SOMETHING IMPORTANT!
Again, the things that are important to Romanians are not always the things that are important to Americans because we are petty and born with a sense of entitlement—but I believe it is safe to say that the “things” Claus had a hand in breaking were, indeed, important on a worldwide scale. Claus broke the sorts of things that instigate international conflicts.
There were six things broken in all. And the list reads like a frightening children’s book.
T H I N G S B R O K E N :
1. The chair.
Claus broke a chair by leaning back on its hind legs. This is not uncommon unless you consider three important and applicable facts:
1. The chair was two feet tall.
2. Claus was seven feet tall.
3. Claus was warned.
This bothered the Romanian family. We were no longer allowed to sit.
2. The washing machine.
Claus broke the washing machine by leaving something sharp in his pocket. This is not uncommon unless you consider three equally important facts:
1. The washing machine was Romanian and had exposed thin rubber hoses that could be ripped on the inside.
2. The entire team was warned and required to pull the pockets of their clothing inside-out for this very purpose.
3. Claus’ clothes had to go through a security inspection stage before being placed in the washing machine due to the incident with the chair.
It was never actually proven that the sharp object had been in the pocket of Claus—but, deep down, I knew it had to be him because Claus sneaked a pair of shorts in past the checkpoint. He didn’t check the pockets. He didn’t think it should be that big a deal to wash his clothes.
This agitated the Romanian family. We were no longer allowed to wash.
3. The van.
A petite girl on our team rested her feet on the dashboard of the rental van from Germany. The moment she touched the windshield with her toe, the glass suddenly splintered into shrapnel. This may not directly be Claus’ fault, but I regard this as his responsibility for three reasons:
1. He was staring at the windshield intensely when it shattered.
2. The breaking of the windshield (being an accident) would not have been a big deal without the two previous breakings.
3. The van and Claus were both German.
This prompted fury from all surrounding Romanians. We were no longer allowed to ride in automobiles.
4. The contact.
Claus broke the heart of the contact in the city of Baia Mare while Claus, the contact, and I were canoeing together on a lake. The conversation went something like this. Keep in mind that the contact was sitting eight inches away from Claus and that the contact was the pastor of the local church.
CLAUS: I don’t like this city as much as the other cities.
ME: Claus?
CLAUS: Don’t take that the wrong way. All I mean is: of all the cities we’ve been in, I like this one the least.
ME: Stop talking.
CLAUS: It’s not that I hate it—well, okay. Yeah. I hate it.
ME: CLAUS!
CLAUS: Oh, no, no, no. Don’t misunderstand me. It’s not that it isn’t pretty. It’s beautiful.
ME: Oh. Okay.
CLAUS: It’s the people I don’t like.
ME: CLAUUUUUUUUUS!
CLAUS: Well, not all the people. Just the people in the church.
ME: You can go back to America now.
CLAUS: Mainly this guy in the boat.
But all four of these destructions pale in comparison to the queen mother of items destroyed. The most unbelievable belonging we undid was so large that it literally changed the life of eight Romanian families. And not for the better.
Inconceivable. Implausible. This can’t be right.
So went the responses from doctors when they reexamined my bottom lip a week after the accident. The expectation had, of course, been at least a little scarring, if not slight facial disfigurement.
Instead, my bottom lip looked exactly like a bottom lip.
The expansive time my four-year-old mouth spent in the salty ocean had cinched the wounds up and caused them to heal at a remarkable rate. The concern the doctor had that I would bite at my stitches is actually what helped form them back into the shape of a lip. My chewing on them helped mold them back as they healed.
The most remarkable aspect of all is that—while having the appearance of a lip—the lip is, in fact, a large lump of scar tissue. It is thick and calloused. If you were to pull my bottom lip away from my teeth, to this day, you would feel a mountain of lumps and scars. There is no shortage of evidence that my accident took place. But, for some heavenly purpose, all of that proof is hidden on the inside of my mouth, where it goes unnoticed without further inspection.
Well—not completely unnoticed. After all, my lip is currently 65 percent larger than your average bottom lip. If writing doesn’t work out, I could always become a spokesperson for collagen injections.
We actually felt like we were on an upswing. In the streets of Timisoara, ministry was beginning to bear fruit. We were seeing hardened hearts return time and time again to hear us speak about our spiritual experiences, and we were seeing hearts soften and lives changed. These were not quick and easy fixes. These people wanted to know first that we meant business. That we were living what we were saying. That we had learned our lesson and were not going to carelessly destroy the things that matter to them anymore.
We were on the drive to lunch after one such successful ministry day when a gypsy woman physically stopped our van at an intersection. She began screaming into the driver’s window in her mother tongue. Our translator kept saying, “Slow down. You aren’t making any sense.” Finally, the translator turned to us and said, “I don’t understand her.” I replied, “Well, what does it sound like she is saying?” “She asked if we were the Americans, and when I said we were, she kept repeating the strangest thing.
She keeps saying we drowned her home.”
Faucets in Eastern Europe are a funny thing, of course. So funny, in fact, that upon arriving at our Romanian apartment at the beginning of our trip, we were all given a crash course—a verbal lecture—on the proper way to turn the faucets on and off . In America, to turn a faucet on, you turn clockwise. In Eastern Europe, it is, of course, the opposite. This evidently has something to do with Parliament and the position of the equator and is very confusing. Nonetheless, a rule was set that I—the team leader—would go to every sink before departure each morning and turn all of the sinks off That way, there would be no confusion.
And no one to blame but myself.
The particular day in question, the city’s water had been cut off by the government in the middle of the night. I watched as different team members fiddled with the faucets in vain. I took note that I would need to make certain everyone had exited the building before I turned the faucets off correctly, then lock up immediately behind me. This is what I did, and I was certain—CERTAIN—that I had turned every faucet securely clockwise, then locked up the apartment. This new gypsy woman’s news was disconcerting. We immediately sped back to defend our innocence. When we approached the apartment building, we knew something was amiss because most every resident of the building was standing in the street threateningly slapping a bat and/or chain against their open palm. I hurried inside to discover literally inches of water gathered all about our apartment. Every single faucet was turned on full blast—hot water—and the flooding and steam had ruined flooring, walls, paint, carpeting—but had not stopped there.
You see, our residence was on the third floor with one apartment to our right and another to our left, leaving us in the corner. The flooding was so severe that it literally destroyed not merely our apartment and the two beside, but also the three beneath on floor two AND the three beneath on floor one. In other words, the fifth belonging our team destroyed was ...
5. Nine apartments.
This would be bad news in the Hamptons. In Timisoara, Romania, it was a burgeoning international crisis. The Wall had fallen. A group of fourteen American Christians were allowed inside. And now, their bacchanalia of water-wasting had rendered eight Romanian families homeless. We were now slightly less popular than Adolf Hitler.
It was our responsibility to pay for all of the damages. So I looked into our team fund, which I had managed with frugality. We were able to foot the bill for all nine apartments and still have forty dollars left. Of course, there were still three weeks left in the trip to feed fourteen people. After a lengthy day of reparation on every level, we finally shut the door, and I retreated head-in-hands to my bedroom to soak in my own inadequacy.
It was perhaps an hour later when Claus appeared.
CLAUS: Mark?
MARK: Not right now.
CLAUS: Okay. It’s a funny thing, though.
MARK: What’s a funny thing?
CLAUS: You know how you told us that you would turn all the faucets off every morning?
My eyebrows began to smoke.
MARK: Claus, why do I not think this is going to be a funny thing?
CLAUS: Well—I was pretty sure that you had turned them all the wrong direction, so I used the other key, came in after you left, and turned every faucet in the apartment full blast the other way.
I believe, at this moment, I could actually taste my own blood.
CLAUS: Isn’t that a funny thing?
From this point on, every moment of every day felt like an eggshell dance. We were doing our best to focus on ministry while simultaneously keeping our eyes in the corner of our sockets to avoid anything we might potentially damage. The other thirteen members of the team were assigned perpetual Claus watch—meaning he was never to be left alone—and we were to remain alert, watching out for swift flailing clumsiness on his part. Any spastic Claus motion was to trigger the immediate sound of a whistle blow, to which all thirteen on the team were required to dogpile Claus, regardless of what we were doing or how far we might be from him at the time.
This seemed foolproof, and, as the final weeks progressed, we matured with much success, connecting with the church and community. We eventually earned back the right to sit in chairs, wash our clothes, and ride in moving vehicles. The eight Romanian families in question were enjoying newly renovated homes. Our bad fortune seemed to have dissipated.
Until it was time to leave.
Did I say we were robbed twice? I meant to say that we were robbed three times. I failed to mention the robbery by the insurance company.
The agent (as insurance people are called so that they can pretend they are spies) arrived and was immediately genial with a detached air of “been there, paid for that.” Dealing with victims of robbery was so old hat to him that nothing we had to say phased him. This is not his fault—he was merely doing his job—but we NEEDED a “representative.” Someone to see the busted doorjamb and, on the line next to its question of worth, state the words—
How do you place a price tag on fear entering a home, on dignity being smeared on the carpet like so much backyard mud from a stolen sneaker? How do you give financial compensation that equals the destruction of a family’s haven? The dinner table where they gathered for meals and prayers was now splattered with the debris of a broken-down back door. How can that be paid back?
But, of course, instead, he took the lowest estimate for repair and reduced it by 40 percent. He had to. It was his job. He had done it a thousand times. Witnessed the aftermath of a thousand injustices. Stopped empathizing somewhere in the middle of that thousand. And reduced our remedy to a mathematic formula that would heal our wallet by 60 percent and grant the agent free movie tickets if our evaluation of his time with us was at least eight stars out of ten.
In his hurry to evaluate, he wasn’t healing at all. He wasn’t hearing. He had a formula. A device. The same method of fixing for everyone he encountered with no variation. He smiled and paused for emotion because the agent handbook said so. But we were not moved. We accepted the check. We had resigned ourselves to the fact that it was the best recompense available. But the entire experience left a knot of disillusionment in our stomachs. Because, for weeks, we had struggled with having no face to place on the invisible invader of our home and, therefore, lived with a latent hopelessness. And, as hard as I tried for it not to be so, that intruder now had a very specific face.
And that face looked very much like the face of our insurance agent.
Six weeks had come and gone. Ministry had been completed. It was now time to reassess what had been done and bond together as a group. I had orchestrated an entire open afternoon in our schedule to debrief as a team and celebrate—to give our team of fourteen what every family needs after a challenging ordeal: closure. A time to genuinely say goodbye. We only had one errand left before we could begin: we had to go to the travel agency and—for the fifth time in six weeks—reconfirm our flight. A pleasant female travel agent (there’s that word again) helped me confirm the details.
WOMAN: That’s fourteen passengers all the way through to Chicago, Mr. Steele.
MARK: Thank you so much. You’ve been a great help.
WOMAN: One other thing, though.
MARK: What’s that?
WOMAN: You’ve waited awfully late to purchase your four tickets to Bucharest.
Throughout history, there are many statements that have been labeled as “haunting,” depending on the person to which the statements are made. Three of the most haunting statements are, of course:
• “How about a night at the theater instead, President Lincoln?”
• “Get a little closer to that iceberg, Captain.”
• “I think you should propose to Jennifer Lopez.”
But, slightly lesser-known is the ominous phrase: “You’ve waited awfully late to purchase your four tickets to Bucharest.”
MARK: What four tickets to Bucharest?
WOMAN: You do realize that four members of your team do not depart from Timisoara. They depart tomorrow from Bucharest.
MARK: What do you mean depart from Bucharest?
WOMAN: Did the American travel agent not inform you of this? You must arrange for these four to get to Bucharest immediately, or they will be unable to return home.
MARK: What do you mean immediately?
WOMAN: If you buy the tickets right now, they will have to get on that plane in three hours.
And that did it. Devastation. We would be completely out of cash. Four members of our team—two girls, Claus’ roommate Jared, and my brother Dav—would not be allowed to debrief or say goodbye to six weeks’ worth of relationships with the church and contacts. We would not be able to relax. Instead, we would have to purchase the tickets, hurry back to the apartment, and pack hastily. It would then be time to hurry once again to the airport and see Dav and the others off to the terminal in Bucharest.
Once there, they would be required to sleep in the locked airport overnight in order to make the flight the next morning that would, ironically, lay over in Timisoara—where we would then join them. Due to Romanian law, it was impossible for them to simply begin the trip at the layover.
In a hurricane of activity, our plan succeeded, and the remaining ten of us found ourselves back in our apartment at midnight—exhausted and emotionally spent—but still needing to pack. As I sat in my bedroom, filling my suitcase, Claus entered. At that moment, he began the conversation that would—before the evening ran out—break the only thing remaining to be broken.
6. My spirit.
CLAUS: (laughing)
MARK: Why are you laughing?
CLAUS: A funny thing.
MARK: NO! No more funny things. You are banned from all funny things. Forever. Or at least until I don’t know you anymore.
CLAUS: Okay.
MARK: You’re still smiling.
CLAUS: It’s still a funny thing.
MARK: Will I regret asking you?
CLAUS: No. It’s not really a big deal.
MARK: Will you leave my room if I ask you?
CLAUS: Okay.
MARK: What is this funny thing?
CLAUS: I can’t find my passport.
Not a funny thing. No. This is not a funny thing. And I know funny things. Milk flowing uncontrollably out of one or both nostrils. This is funny. A man in a bee costume bursting through a drywall while yelling in Spanish. Margaret Thatcher performing lambada: the forbidden dance. Funny. But to be in Eastern Europe? To have angered families and pastors and government officials? To be six hours from leaving for the airport and Claus has lost his passport?
Not funny.
MARK: WHEN DID YOU SEE IT LAST?!
CLAUS: You’re yelling.
MARK: I ALWAYS YELL AT FUNNY THINGS!
CLAUS: I saw it not too long ago. In Brasov.
MARK: (silence)
CLAUS: Why are you not saying anything?
MARK: We were in Brasov two weeks ago.
CLAUS: Yeah. It was in my lap, I think. At some restaurant. No—wait. I saw it in my room here since then. Maybe. I’m not too good with details.
MARK: Claus.
CLAUS: Your face is turning purple.
MARK: That’s what a heart attack does to the face. Do you know what I need for you to do?
CLAUS: No. I don’t.
MARK: I need for you to go BACK TO YOUR ROOM and NOT COME OUT until you have FOUND YOUR PASSPORT!
CLAUS: Right now?
MARK: YES!
CLAUS: But—I’m sleepy.
MARK: CLAUUUUUUUUUS!
At this point, the word “Claus” was becoming a profanity of sorts. I was livid. So Claus retreated to his room where he found all sorts of interesting doodles in his notebook, but no official papers of any kind. Over the next two hours, Claus had short, fraudulent epiphanies that he had left his passport at the following locations with the following consequences:
1. THE GIRLS’ HOUSE. Upon phoning them with the news, the girls on our team spent the next two hours unpacking and uncleaning absolutely everything they had packed and cleaned in order to discover that the passport had actually never been in their home.
2. THE CONTACT’S HOUSE. Upon receiving the news by phone, the contact’s family stayed up into the wee hours dismantling everything they owned, thereby breaking many new things—all in order to discover that the passport was not there either.
3. THE HOST CHURCH. As no one stayed overnight at the church, two of the guys on our team RAN the twenty-five minutes to the church, BROKE IN, and RUMMAGED through everything in the building to discover that—no—the passport was also not there.
The remaining few of us overturned every belonging in the men’s apartment. The only bag, in fact, that I discovered intact and still packed was Claus’ bag sitting neatly on his bed.
MARK: Why haven’t you dumped this out?
CLAUS: I just packed it. Why would I want to mess it up?
So, I messed Claus’ bag up for him—taking great joy in doing so. I took one item out of the bag at a time, checking it thoroughly and hurling it across the room and, in several cases, “accidentally” out the window—but alas, there was not a passport to be found. It seemed that Claus had, in fact, managed to misplace the passport somewhere that could not be checked overnight.
CLAUS: Oh well. Can’t fi nd it. I’m going to bed.
MARK: You’re going to what?
CLAUS: Bed. I’m so tired.
MARK: You do realize that you are making my brain seep out of my ears.
CLAUS: For crying out loud, just chill out and let me sleep.
MARK: How can you possibly go to sleep?! Without your passport, you can’t leave tomorrow!
CLAUS: Come on, Mark. They don’t take it that seriously.
You know the part of the cartoon where the character’s head turns into a very loud train whistle, and then his body actually explodes into liftoff like a rocket with a fuse. Th en, upon leaving the atmosphere, the cartoon character actually erupts into fireworks?
I didn’t take this quite that well.
MARK: CLAUUUUUUUUUS! THIS IS NOT AN ISSUE OF THE MOOD OF THE PEOPLE AT ROMANIAN SECURITY! THEY DON’T SELECT WHO GOES OR STAYS VIA PAPER, ROCK, SCISSORS! IT IS LAW! PURE COMMUNIST EUROPEAN LAW! NO PASSPORT—NO CLUMSY GERMAN MAN GOING HOME! THAT IS NOT OPINION! IT IS FACT! LIKE THE FACT THAT WINDSHIELDS BREAK AND THE FACT THAT ROMANIAN PASTORS HAVE FEELINGS AND THE FACT THAT FAUCETS IN EUROPE TURN OFF CLOCKWISE!
I’m not certain if my incessant screaming at three in the morning caused some slumbering synapse to fire inside Claus’ brain, or if he merely began to actually engage in the passport hunt—but for some reason, amid my lunatic ravings, Claus had a personal epiphany.
CLAUS: I GOT IT!
MARK: You got it?! You found it?!
CLAUS: No. Not “I found it.” I got it! I figured out where my passport is.
MARK: REEEEALLY?! Where?
CLAUS: I must have accidentally put it in Jared’s bag.
Let’s review, shall we?
Jared was one of the four teammates who, earlier that same day, needed to hurry to Bucharest, the capital of Romania. He was presently locked in the airport two hours away with no means of communication. He would not be allowed to get off the plane in Timisoara, and we would not be able to get on to retrieve the passport from his bag, because odds are, it would be checked luggage. In other words: it was the worst possible place the passport could have been.
I contacted the host pastor immediately, and a plan was devised. The church had a contact who lived approximately one hour from the Bucharest airport. He would be wakened by phone to drive to the airport with a few minister friends. At that point, they would run to every window and door in the building, banging loudly until someone, anyone responded. That someone who responded would then be asked to find the four Americans in order to communicate the need to rummage through their luggage. If the passport was found, a negotiation would then be made with cash to smuggle the passport off the plane in Timisoara by aid of a flight attendant, who would then get it into the hands of Claus in the airport. Within a half-hour, the plan was in action. It was now almost four. We would leave at seven. It was our only hope.
Having had his first epiphany in twenty years, Claus was completely exhausted and begged to be allowed to sleep. I resolved to permit this, but with the one condition that if, in fact, his passport failed to be in Jared’s bag, Claus would be learning a new permanent language.
Claus responded with the double-edged politeness of “thanks—finally” and retreated to his bed.
I was undone. I could not sleep, so I stepped out onto the porch awning. Deeply troubled, I attempted to process what had gone wrong. The team had made such a fine comeback. We had won the Romanian people back over after off ending and hurting them so badly with our destruction. We had bonded as a team. I had gone this far and not exploded. And then tonight. Tonight. Tonight. Tonight. How did this one evening, this one incident, seem to undo all that we had worked so hard to accomplish?
I began to pray, attempting to find the answers amidst my confusion and hurt. If we had fulfilled God’s plan, why did I feel so badly now, at the end. I gave this thought to God in an act of desperation. Why me? Why this? Why Claus? I turned around, to walk back into the apartment. This is when I found him, standing in the doorway, with that sheepish smirk on his face.
MARK: What is it now?
CLAUS: A funny thing.
MARK: (silence)
CLAUS: I found it?
The question mark at the end of what would otherwise have been a statement from Claus led me to believe that, though I would appreciate the result, I would not actually like the details of what he had to say.
MARK: Where. Was. It?
CLAUS: Well—
MARK: Claus—where did you find the passport?
CLAUS: When I lay down to go to sleep, I moved my bag over, and it was there—sitting on the bed, underneath my suitcase. I forgot that I had been looking at it earlier tonight. It was in my room the entire time.
MARK: Why is that a funny thing?
CLAUS: Because if you had just listened to God and let me go to sleep the first time I said I wanted to, none of this would have happened!
I spent the next hour attempting to reach the contact (or anyone, for that matter) by phone to stop the expedition to the Bucharest airport. But, all I received were busy signals. Everyone in ministry in Romania was awake and on the phone—searching for a single German passport that had always been nestled snugly in the owner’s bed.
We departed the next morning after bidding farewell to a Romanian ministry staff that was exhausted and at the end of its rope. They loved us. They would miss us. They wished us well. But they were very, very glad we were flying away in the opposite direction.
As I watched the land disappear from the window of the plane, I began to realize that I was leaving Romania with much more inside of me than when I had arrived.
But I began to wonder: At what expense did our betterment come? Had we fulfilled our reason for traveling so far: to indeed bless these people? Or had we taken much, much more than we had returned?
Was it possible that, in my eyes, the ministry had succeeded—but in the eyes of those we had come to reach—a robbery had taken place?
Perhaps a robbery did, indeed, take place. And perhaps it was not our team who was robbed. Perhaps it was our team who did the robbing. In our attempt to bring the truth to the hurting, we had made the fatal flashbang mistake. We had assumed that bringing the truth mattered so much that nothing else we did would matter at all.
In our hurry to evaluate, we weren’t healing anyone. We weren’t hearing. We had a formula. A device. The same method of fixing for everyone we encountered with no variation. We smiled and paused for emotion because the ministry handbook said so. But we were not moved.
Well, no, that isn’t exactly true. We were moved. We made lifelong relationships. We felt for them. But we were not moved enough for our habits to change.
I had a heart for the people. A heart for ministry. But somewhere in the middle of six weeks, I stopped allowing their plight inside my heart, and I, instead, began playing the part of the insurance agent. As I witnessed the hardships and grew closer to those around us, I realized that things were about to break. Things inside of me that had been cold and selfish. Dams and devices that held in passion and kept me proper. But just as the cracks were forming inside, I made an unconscious decision.
The decision to do it all myself. To reach these people my way. In my strength. Within my experience. And, without knowing it, the spackle inside of me began covering the cracks, sealing the bricks, and keeping those walls from falling.
The problem is: when cultures clash, something is bound to break. And with the reinforcements growing within ourselves, the only breakables left were on their side.
We broke their things. We broke their trust. We broke their confidence. We broke their belief that we had come, in fact, to be broken. And, in that process, as the first team of Americans to arrive, though we brought and did many wonderful things—we left the remnants of a robbery behind us.
It was not until a decade or so later that I realized that the destructive decision came at the very beginning, when the plane first arrived. We saw their faces. Heard their stories. Lived in their world. At that moment, a decision was made. A decision to view our job there as one of two things:
1. An opportunity to make their problems our problems.
2. An opportunity to allow their problems to only affect us temporarily.
We had inexplicably chosen the latter. In the end, there was much noise made. Great clang and clatter and billowing clouds of smoke. But it was only a flashbang. Because we did not leave a crater of love. You can’t set off a true explosion if you are afraid to get caught in the blast. We, instead, left behind splinters of a chair, remnants of a washing machine, and water stains where there used to be homes. Nothing that said, “Jesus.” Only things that said, “America.”
When our own home was burglarized twelve years later, we needed someone else’s heart to break for us more than we needed our broken things fixed. A decade certainly has a way of putting you in the other guy’s shoes. Just like Morgan, we saw our broken world and cried aloud, “I want my Daddy.” We found Him in the members of our church. We did not find Him in our insurance agent because you don’t go to the heart that’s hardened if you need the blood inside. The people of Timisoara had looked for their Daddy inside of us and found, instead, souls who wavered between what should be done and what would get us in and out safely. We were, at times, the Church, and at others, the insurance agent.
Somehow, the mixture of the holy and the human smelled too much of the latter. We wanted to mend their brokenness, but we were afraid to break.
Because breaking can cause scar tissue. Breaking may not heal back with the same appearance.
Breaking. Tearing. Falling face first.
It could make the face somehow different—somehow less than it had been before. It was plausible that being the thing that was broken in order for others to be healed would change us forever—in a way with which I was uncomfortable.
It was plausible because I felt I would be broken for the people, but I would be required to heal myself. And in my lack of understanding, it seemed most logical at the time that there would be no way to come back from brokenness with greater strength.
Unless...
...Unless I would not be required to do the healing myself at all.
I would only be required to run into the ocean and play in the healing salts.
That, somehow, in an action that caused me to forget my wounds completely, they would be most prone to healing. That in the obedience of hurting and bleeding for someone outside myself, a special grace would be placed upon the new gaping holes in my soul.
That, somehow, outside of logic and reason, my very teeth could chew and mold away at the damage inside my mouth, smoothing the scars by grace back into shape.
The shape of what they were originally meant to be, only with greater strength to endure future breaking.
Those scars would lead me to a place greater than I had been before them due to the combination of three powerful forces:
The sacrifice of being broken.
The healing of His grace.
And the results of my own teethmarks.
NEXT: Continue the “Flashbang: How I Got Over Myself” journey with chapter “(2v): unwrapping.”