NO PITY PARTIES!

“Don’t bother scheduling a pity party,” Jesus said. “No one will come anyway.”

I had just woken from a dream. My eyes were wet and my nose was beginning to feel stuffy.

“Get a grip,” I told myself. “Once you start weeping, your nose starts plugging up. Next thing, you can’t even breathe.”

So I settled down, becoming gradually aware of my pillow, the covers, and the still-silent cell phone that I use as an alarm clock on the edge of the headboard.

I had been riding in a car with some other teachers. I felt the urge to urinate but we hadn’t yet parked, so I held it. We were headed for the teachers’ lounge at our school; paychecks were being doled out. My son, Brian—whom I didn’t yet have when I was teaching, so the circumstances of the dream were a bit off—was with me. When I got to the lounge, there were two doors opening from it, one on each side. One, with a sign upon which was emblazoned the silhouette of a person wearing a dress, was clearly the women’s restroom; the other, with a similar sign bearing the silhouette of a person wearing pants and a jacket, was just as clearly the men’s restroom. We entered the second door.

Once inside the men’s restroom, there were two more doors. Each led to a separate stall within one of which was a urinal and within the other of which was a john. I went to the first; Brian went to the second. As I was peeing, the teacher who had been driving the car called out to me.

“Mike? Are you in the restroom?”

“Yeah,” I responded. “Brian’s in here with me.”

“With you?” He sounded incredulous. “In the bathroom?”

“Well,” I hedged, “Not in here. I’m in one stall, peeing and Brian is in the other...doing whatever he’s doing, I suppose.”

“Oh.”

I heard some doors opening and closing. At length, I finished my business and apparently Brian finished his, for we emerged into the common area of the restroom to wash our hands. My colleague who had been driving the car was also there. Considering our earlier dialogue, through closed doors, I began to regard him with suspicion. I turned to Brian.

“Did this guy show you his wiener? Did he show you that he doesn’t have a wiener? Did he show you his tattoo? Did he touch you in any way that didn’t seem wholesome?”

Brian’s answer to each question was ‘no’; I wasn’t so sure he was telling the truth. He tends not to speak up in the company of adults with whom he isn’t completely comfortable. Sometimes even I am included in that group.

Now my colleague was eyeing me suspiciously. “Are you all right?” Now he looked as incredulous as he had earlier sounded.

“It’s just the way you...” I began but abruptly stopped. “Never mind,” I said. I just wanted to drop the whole thing. But my colleague didn’t let it drop.

“Just the way I what, Mike? Just the way I asked about Brian? In my place, wouldn’t you have asked?”

I thought about that. If Bob had been with his own son in the men’s room, no, I thought, I wouldn’t have asked. People don’t molest their own children, I thought. Or do they? I wasn’t sure. However, my sense of fairness won out in the end.

I replied, “No, I don’t think I would have. Brian is my own son. I wouldn’t do anything improper to him. I love him. If you had been in here with your child, son or daughter, I would assume that you were helping him or her to go to the bathroom and I wouldn’t suspect you of anything.”

“So why do you suspect me now?”

“Because you raised the question by sounding suspicious when I said that he was in here with me! Why did you do that?”

“I was just trying to show you what I’ve been telling you all along about the Color of Suspicion.”

Then my mind went back to when I had been a teacher’s assistant at a local high school. Then I remembered being an instructional aide at a junior high school in another town. Finally, I thought about when I had been a learning-disability specialist at yet another middle school in yet another town. In each place, the administration had warned me about being alone with children. They had warned me about the Color of Suspicion. I had never taken their warnings to heart because I knew that I would never molest a child, and I figured that no child would ever accuse me of so doing. I guess I was wrong because I was eventually let go and after that I found it impossible to find another teaching position.

I recognized the territory. Jesus Christ was taking me on a sort of travelogue through my life. He was showing me what had gone on before by way of introducing me to what may happen next. I couldn’t or wouldn’t believe back when those people had warned me not to be alone with a child, especially a girl, at any time. I protested my innocence but they always rebutted my protests with this “Color of Suspicion” thing. What had they been trying to tell me?

Now I knew. The Lord showed me a girl, whom I never touched in any way, cringing as I passed her in a tightly confined, somewhat darkened corridor. She wasn’t cringing because I was doing anything to threaten her. She was afraid of me because I am tall. Tall! Not guilty, just tall! Like I can help being tall!

“What are you trying to tell me, Lord?” I was once again on the witness stand, pleading my case. “That I lost my career in teaching because kids were afraid of my stature? I can’t help being tall! I didn’t ask to be tall! I’ve never felt tall! I was a good teacher! I cared about my students! I loved them! They knew I loved them! Did I lose all that just because of my height?”

I was crushed. I’d wondered for years why people had blacklisted me from the teaching profession. I’d wondered who’d fingered me. I’d assumed that it had been some vindictive bitch who didn’t like my choice in literature or the kind of car I drove. It had never occurred to me that a girl whom I’d never even had in a class would accuse me of making her “feel uncomfortable”! Yet, isn’t that precisely what the New Age counselors were telling kids in those days? “You have the right to tell someone when another person, whoever that person is, makes you feel uncomfortable. You have the right to say ‘no’ to any touching or any other behavior that makes you feel something is wrong.” Apparently, my being too tall and in too tightly confined a space had made that girl uncomfortable. She had told her counselor, and I had been placed under a Color of Suspicion! I hadn’t done anything wrong; I was just too tall!

This was when my eyes began to moisten. I was feeling sorry for myself. Apparently, I was very ‘works oriented’ in my concept of justice, for the essential unfairness of it all was what I couldn’t get over. I began to wonder what other innocent people had suffered similar fates. I recalled the trials of the McMartin and Buckey family members whose Manhattan Beach preschool had been shut down by court order after a disgruntled parent had made allegations of misconduct, all of which were eventually proven false. However, by then many family members and other employees had been imprisoned, property had been confiscated, and careers—and lives—had been ruined. Then there were my friends, Dale and Sharon Akiki. They had been falsely accused—because they had mental and physical disabilities—of being “monsters”. They had been accused of doing such things to children that anyone who knew them well would never believe them even capable of doing—physically or mentally—because of their disabilities. Yet, accused they were. Dale spent over a year in county jail, awaiting trial. When he was at last tried, he was found innocent of all charges—the charges against Sharon, to whom he’d been married only a month or so before his arrest, had since been dropped—and his lawyer, who had served him pro bono, sued the county for damages including gross miscarriage of justice. She won, and Dale and Sharon were awarded over two hundred thousand dollars. That was the last I ever saw of either of them.

Then, as if to drive home His point with final authority, Jesus reminded me that He had been crucified for crimes that He had never committed. He was innocent of any wrongdoing, yet He was crowned with thorns, beaten, scourged and then nailed to a cross to die.

“You said that you wanted to share in my suffering. This is how the world treats the innocent." That word, “innocent”, drew my mind back to yet another episode. I had fallen in love with a woman a decade my junior. She was not particularly beautiful in a classical sense; she was beautiful to me, though. She asked all the right questions and she loved God. That I could tell. On top of all that, she was a student nurse! I loved nurses! They helped people feel better. And her figure made me feel worse and better all at the same time. Her cheeks were so soft and smooth, and her hugs were therapy for all that ailed me. I wanted to marry her and I told her so. However, Nancy—for that was her name—had just broken up with a boy to whom she’d been engaged to be married for nearly a year. When I told her how I felt about her, after having known her for only a few weeks, she sat down and penned a letter. In it she told me, among other things, that I was “sweet and innocent”. I had scoffed at her words, thinking myself to be worldly and experienced. Yet today, looking back at us, I can see what Nancy Elise Sunday had meant. I had been sweet and innocent and I was led as a lamb to the slaughter.

“I planned your life precisely as it has progressed,” Jesus confided. “I needed you to be equipped for what comes next. A person who had not endured such heartache earlier in life could never withstand the trials and tribulations that still lie ahead for you.”

He showed my friends, Randy and Laura Wion, and their son, Jonathan, with whom I’ve been sharing burdens of late. Then, he showed me my wife, Suzanne, whose health woes may eventually bankrupt us as a family. My tears flowed anew. Suzanne has long derided the fact that I am not stably employed in some profession or other. She thinks it a particularly bad witness that I am dependent upon my parents for income when they should be able to depend entirely on me at this stage of their lives. If she knew that I was kicked out of my profession for no fault of my own, would it make any difference to her? To have her believe in me as I have always believed in Jesus would be immeasurably precious to me. But we live in that kind of world. People are blinded by what is before them and they do not see things as they are. Suzanne is not stupid. She is merely blinded by her emotions. What seems odd to me is that, when she is in the presence of a person she’s never met in her life, she can discern the spirit of that person. However, she has lived with me for more than fifteen years and raised a child with me, yet she doesn’t know me as well as she does complete strangers! That’s weird. Outer Limits weird!

“No one will notice the good that you do apart from a few close friends and your Father, who is in heaven,” Jesus continued. “Yet you will have ample opportunities to serve Him, if that is what you really want. You will share in My suffering more than you’ve ever believed—or now believe—yourself capable of doing. At the end of it all, you will be crowned with immortality and righteousness. You will share in My glory as you now do in My suffering.”

Yesterday, just before I went to Kaiser Hospital to visit my ailing mother, I sat in a friend’s house, holding our Pastor’s daughter. At two years of age, Julianna Miller is a precious little bundle of life. She reminds me of the daughter that Suzanne and I lost to miscarriage about a year and a half before Brian was born. Holding her sleeping form in my arms and feeling her sweet head rest on my shoulder, I was in heaven already. I had somewhere to go and something to do, so I was ready to relinquish her care to her waiting mother. Had it not been so, I may have protested her desire to go on sleeping in my arms. It is in such moments of grace that I catch a glimpse of eternity. God will never make life easy. He will always make it possible. I was ministering to Julianna by providing her with the refuge that her parents were then unable to provide, being busy with their respective jobs. At the same time, she was ministering to my need to share in that grace that only a baby girl could provide. That’s the way God’s kingdom works. That’s what we all have to look forward to.

Welcome to His adventure!