High School!:The Dark Ages with Points of Light

There's an old story of three pastors sitting at dinner one night talking shop. They're talking about their bat problem. They all have bats hanging out inside their bell towers.The first pastor shared his plan, but the bats kept coming back. The second did the same, but with a different plan, but the same results. They can't seem to get rid of these bats. The third pastor bragged that his plan has worked perfectly. He simply Baptized and Confirmed them, and he hasn't seen them since.

What is it about those high school years that seem to create the dark ages as far as spiritual and church things go?

For me, it was a combination of my parents dying and a low view of myself. By December of my freshman year, my mother was experiencing headaches. They didn't go away, and in March,  she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She had surgery and the doctors told us that she would not live long. It was heart crushing news for the family and especially my father. She would live two more years and passed away right before the beginning of my senior year. The hardest part for me was the fact that after the surgery she was no longer the mother that I knew. She was no longer the strong matriarch of the family, but only a shadow of her former self. It was as if she was already dead. She spent part of the last year of her life in a nursing home in Glendale Heights. Every time that I pass that facility, I think about my mother. The biggest regret of my life was not spending more time with my mom near the end of her life. I was too caught up in my own life or too afraid of death. I still remember the last night of her life and wondering if each breath would be her last one.

In July of 1977,  my parents took a long delayed trip to Hawaii that we gave them back in 1973 for their 25th anniversary. While hopping islands, my father died from a massive heart attack. I can still remember the moment my brother told me. I can still recall the feeling of the blood draining from my face and the spot in the store where I was standing. It was a moment that rocked my world and still does even to this day. I can recall sitting by myself at the funeral home looking at the body of my father completely numb. I couldn't even cry. It would be years later while watching a Michael Keaton movie about a dying father that the tears would begin to flow. His death forever changed my life. I looked at life differently from that moment on to this day. I have a sadness inside of me. I have a hole in my heart. I have never really gotten over his death. It has impacted my reaction to my own fatal  illness. I want my children not to have my experience so I talked to God for many years about living a long time. It has been a great struggle with God over the last year.

In the darkness was many points of light. First, I love baseball. I love to play it and watch it. I started playing baseball at the age of 7. Over the years, I was on many All-stars teams. In high school, I played on the varsity all four years. Before you get overly impressed, our school had to rebuild the baseball program my freshman year. We had only two juniors and the rest were sophomores and freshmen. Our coach was awesome. Mr. Jones came from a school in Iowa where he won several state championships. By the time I was a junior we were one game from the state championship semi finals. We lost to Providence High school who were the eventual state champions. They had a pitcher who was drafted by the major leagues right out of high school. My brother, the garbage disposal, eventually married one of Mr. Jone's daughters, so I got to see him several times over the years. He was fun to be around. In retrospect, I think he put me on varsity so he could keep an eye on me. He was also my Freshman Biology teacher. He used to make jokes about his wife. He would say "My wife is so fat that she sits around the house. I mean around the house". It wasn't till I met her later that I come to find out that she is a tiny skinny petite woman. He was funny, but serious about baseball. He once told our first baseman that "You have to sacrifice your body for the team!! " 
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Another point of light.  A huge one. A point of light that would change the course of my life. When I lost both of my parents, it helped to have other people in my life who were looking out for me. This ended up being the Wahrman family. This crazy funny caring family that moved from Oklahoma to the frozen tundra of Chicago. I don't remember who I met first Jeff or Ken. I met Ken playing baseball. He was one year ahead of me in school. Jeff was in my same grade, so I had Jeff in classes. He sat behind me in Mr. Leonard's algebra class. He had fun torturing me! He would hide behind me and hit me in the back or he would flick my ears with his finger. Of course, if I tried to retaliate I would get in trouble. By the time we were seniors, we were best friends. We were in every play together.  We were in choir's bass section. Jeff played football, so I led the cheers from the stands. Any time he touched the ball, a chant of  "Wahrman ooo ah!" would ring out. We decided to be crazy and attend every basketball game after raiding his mother's closet. Yes, we wore women's hats to every game. Picture the fancy hats women used to wear in the 50's and 60's and you get the picture. On top of that, we would join the cheerleaders and dance team for their halftime routines.

I could fill up this blog with stories of other things we did. In trying to be brief, I will share my favorite one. The movie, The Blues Brothers, was filmed in various locations all across the Chicago area during our senior year. One night after final dress rehearsal for our play, we found out that one scene was being filmed a couple of miles from our high school. So, Jeff and I decided to go check it out and see how close we could get so that we might get a glimpse of Jim Bleushi and Dan Aykroyd. So, we got in our car right after rehearsal not even taking the time to take our makeup off. There is a scene in the movie where this female character is waiting in front of a seedy motel. So, we found the motel. Sure enough, there were bright lights, cameras, etc in front of this motel. Jackpot!! We drove past it, and parked on a dark side street . We got out of our car about a block away from the scene. It was dark and we were wearing sun glasses. We got a break in the passing cars and scurried across the highway. There was a line of trees and then a field between us and the house next to the motel. We pretended to be a swat team and literally crawled across the field and next to the house situated next to the motel. We hid in the bushes and watched the scene in front of us which was a bunch of bright lights, equipment and people standing around doing apparently nothing. After awhile, we got bored and decided to leave. We decided to leave down the street behind the motel. We suddenly ran into a police officer sitting in a car. Trying to play it cool, we waved at him as we walked past. He rolled his window and asked us how the movie was going. We said great and kept walking. Later, we remembered that we still had our makeup on from the play.He must have thought we were part of the movie. It was quite an adventure!

Another point of light was the choir and plays that I participated in my junior and senior year. I was in Hello Dolly, You Can't Take It With You, Fiddler On The Roof, Cinderella, and some one act plays. My junior year, our choir tried out for an international choir festival to be held in Mexico. We were chosen. The festival was held in June at the end of my Senior year. We spent all year trying to raise money for it by selling pizzas. Jeff and I went throughout  his neighborhood and mine and sold over a hundred pizzas. Great, right? Well, we made a critical mistake. We lost the list of who we sold pizza to during our sales blitz. We had over a hundred pizzas. Great! Jeff ' s mom stuffed them into their extra refrigerator in the garage and they had pizza for a long time. It was during choir practices that I got to know the most important person in my life, my wife, Jan who just so happens to be Jeff's younger sister.The best moment happened when Jeff and I totally embarrassed her by singing happy birthday to her in front of the whole choir. No wonder she didn't start dating me for another five years.

Another point of light was youth group. I didn't start attending one until senior year. Jeff talked me into attending St. Michael youth group in Wheaton. We also attended some regional youth events called Salt Company. It started the building blocks of my experience of God in a more personal way. I met leaders and young people who seemed to make God a priority in their life. I wasn't ready to do that myself at the time. Reflecting back on my own experience, it fueled my passion to never give up reaching out to teens and college students. We never know when a person is ready to invite God into their lives.  We can never stop inviting people into a deeper relationship with God. The Wahrman family exemplified this attitude to me throughout high school and college. They constantly invited me into their lives and never gave up on me even when most other people would have done so.

There were other points of light. Friends made. Ed and I had running feud so to speak. We, along with other people at our lunch table, had a smash in your face cake war. We would sit down next to an unsuspecting person with a piece of cake purchased from the cafeteria. While eating the cake, we would complain that it smelled funny. If the person bent down to smell it, we would smash the cake in their face. I found out that Ed was moving to Georgia after the school year. I had a plan of attack. I waited till the last day of school. I waited till the last minute of the lunch period. I went up, and bought a piece of cake. I came up behind Ed, and said "Smell this!!" I smashed the cake into his face and walked out of the lunch room. Yes!!

Another point of light. Bill was pretty quiet guy in school. He is a good person and someone I enjoyed hanging around. Bill and I decided to be industrious. We started a lawn care business. I don't remember cutting very many lawns. I think Bill may cut have a lot more than me. There were other friends made: Tom, Phil, Marlena, Patti, Jim, Paul, and many more. Tom had awesome hair and played the drums like no other. Phil was smart with a wicked sense of humor. Anne, Denise, Jessica, Sue, Amy, Nancy, Jerry, and Don. Jim and I spent New Years Eve driving around in a snow storm doing donuts in his '66.
 
I am not sure if it was a point of light or darkness. After my senior year, we took the Choir trip to Mexico. It was an interesting experience. It was a poorly chaperoned event. It shaped much of the way I would eventually not run youth ministry events and trips. Our trip took us from Mexico City to a little town of Taxco to Acapulco. The first night our whole floor never went to bed and no chaperone ever came to check on us. Two members of our group were sent home early for bad behavior. The highlight of the trip for me was our pilgrimage to see the tilma of St. Juan Diego. It has the image of the Virgin Mary but it is not paint. It was miraculously put on there. It happened 500 years ago, but it has not faded. My roommate for the trip was Jeff. So, of course, there were really crazy things that happened like late night escapades on the beach.  Some how, we made it home without spending time in a Mexican jail.

High school was a great four years during a time of great difficulty. It reminds me as a youth minister that every teen has a story to tell, and some of it is suffering. Many teens come from divided homes. Many teens have lost loved ones. Many teens have low esteem and need to be encouraged.