Off in the Distance
The singer had stopped singing, but the band was still playing. Their instruments played softer, but the notes still floated into the sky. The beat of the drums matched the beat of my heart. The senior pastor drifted onto the stage as he does during most services. This is the moment he uses to set the pace of the worship experience. His voice lowers to reflect the seriousness he wants us to make of this occasion.
This part of the service starts no different than almost all the services he begins. He mutters a few inspirational words and relates a quick Bible story or verse to back up his efforts. He then turns excitingly to the audience and shouts for the singer to sing that last song one more time. This timeless effort seems to work every time despite its repetition.
Lately, I have really been inspired by the pastor’s messages. When most people think of inspiration in a church service, they think of conviction. Something in the service touches their heart and calls them to change something. But for me, I’m in a different place, and that inspiration touches me a different way.
Lately, I have been a little down. I’m not too sure many of those around me even understand my sorrow. When you are a confident, enthusiastic individual, who doesn’t want to be a bother to others, it’s almost easy to put up a front that nothing is wrong. So I turn to my prayers in the morning and I do my best to tell myself to, “Stop feeling sorry for myself.”
Usually, after I pray, I feel so much better because those prayers allow me to vent my hurt and frustrations without my words being held against me. God knows I will figure things out and that process usually involves saying things I don’t really mean. God never walks away or says, “Come on, you old fool, we’ve been through this enough that you should know better.”
Still, as the day wears on, my thoughts drift away because I don’t hear His voice audibly. Sure, I know He is there, but sometimes it just helps to hear a voice letting you know you are headed in the right direction. That’s what these Sunday services have become to me lately. It’s like God letting me know, “Look, you are headed in the right direction. Reflect on how far I have taken you. Cover yourself with the blessings from those past storms which have blown in and I have carried you through. Know that I am there holding your hand and I will never let go.”
This week the pastor took his inspiration moment, before the singer led us, and told part of the hardest story in the Bible for me to hear. My first reaction was that I did not want to hear it again. It breaks my heart every time I hear it. Its words stab me in the heart and then twist the knife to make sure I feel its effects.
The pastor began by telling of the wayward son. He said, “You know the one. The son who demanded his inheritance from his father. Demanding his inheritance was the same thing as the boy saying he wished his father was dead.” I did everything I could to hold back the tears.
This President was one of those who you might say was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. In a strange coincidence, he was born just up the road from another individual who would become President, too. This might have been one of the closest, in distance, two Presidents have been born near each other.
This future President would be one of eight children born to an aristocratic father who was both a state court judge and a governor. Their six-room mansion sat on the 1200 acre Greenway Plantation. His father would also be a college roommate of Thomas Jefferson and his dad would serve in the House of Delegates with the father of the other man, just up the road, who would also become President.
In the early days of our republic, in order to be taken seriously, from a political perspective, you almost had to come from a family that was well off, or at least, from a family that took education seriously. In that sense, he was a perfect fit. His family was very well off and had almost a royal pedigree. His family had the means, in a time when education was not free nor was it available to the average person, to provide him with the opportunity to get the best education of that day.
When he was just twenty-one years old, he was elected to the first of five straight terms as a Delegate to his state’s House of Delegates. During that time the British began their advances in the midsection of our country in the War of 1812. Like most Americans of that day, he hated the British. When the British captured one of his state’s port cities, he organized a militia company to defend one of his state’s largest cities. He was given the command as captain and, although the British attack never came to that city, he was given a land grant near Sioux City, Iowa as compensation.
He would then serve his state for two terms in the US House of Representatives. As a diehard states-rights representative, he became deeply discouraged by being in the minority. He decided enough was enough and he would head back home. Besides, the job of Representative paid poorly and he wanted to be able to fund his own children’s education.
I have loved kids for as long as I can remember. Even though I have gotten older, and my memory has faded a little, I will never forget the day I was in the delivery room and I witnessed my little boy being born. It was evening and I turned to the clock hanging on the wall. It said ten minutes before seven o’clock. It was perhaps the proudest moment of my life.
I remember bringing him home and placing him it his crib. His grandmother, my former mother-in-law, had painted a rainbow on the wall and it dropped into his crib. He was our little pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
I remember, when he was a baby, and he would get his carrots and peas baby food for his meal. I would excitedly turn to him and say, “Carrots and peas! Carrots and peas! Oh, I love my carrots and peas!” He would get excited and hold his hands in the air and he would repeatedly open and close his hands until the treat was in his mouth. It was like he won the lottery.
As he got older, I remember putting him to bed and reading to him. He loved Good Night Moon and Where the Wild Things Are. I got him a flag book that had the state flags in it. We would go over them time and time again. He just couldn’t get enough of it. He would learn about half the state flags. When he was little, we went on a trip and as we were driving, all of a sudden, he pointed at the sky and said, “West Virginia!” I looked up and sure enough, there was a West Virginian flag. I was so proud of him.
When his mom and I separated, he took it very hard. It was so hard for me to make him understand because I didn’t really understand it myself. Since he spent most of his time with his mother, I became the villain. That role really hurt, but I would never say a bad word about his mother to him. I realized that a little boy really needs his mother and it was not my role to inflict my personal feelings and hurt about her onto him. I loved him more than I loved my feelings.
I would have one week of vacation a year with him, when I was a single Dad, and I made sure we would go somewhere nice. I really couldn’t afford much but I saved as much as I could to make sure it was a nice trip. Once we went to Chicago and Minneapolis.
I would call our trip to Chicago-Minneapolis the transportation trip. We flew in a plane, his first airplane trip, to Chicago. I had arranged a chauffeur, both of our first times in a limo, to pick us up at the airport and show us around Chicago for a couple of hours. We took a train, his first time on a train, from Chicago to Minneapolis. We rode the L, Chicago’s subway, took a ride on a water taxi, rode in a real taxi, and we returned home in a plane again.
Despite my efforts and my love, my son seemed to get madder and madder at me. He also became more controlling. Reasoning to him didn’t seem to be something he was interested in. Talking with him usually resulted in him talking down to me. I thought having a little break, two to three weeks, from me might let him refocus on the value of our relationship. Instead, it just made him madder at me and soon our relationship completely broke off. Even the Christmas present I mailed to him was returned. I was left out of his graduations, his wedding, and his life.
Our future President would get bored of being a lawyer and a couple of years after he returned home, he was elected again to the House of Delegates in his state. Then he was appointed by his state’s legislature to be the state’s governor. This was the way his state chose its governor at that time.
Being the state’s governor, at that time, was not as impressive as it sounds. The position was pretty much powerless. He didn’t even have the power to veto anything. His most famous act as governor was probably delivering the funeral address at Thomas Jefferson’s funeral.
The next step on the future President’s path to the presidency was the US Senate. As the 1828 Presidential election approached, he was really torn about who to support. He didn’t like either of the candidates, John Quincy Adams or Andrew Jackson. He thought both wanted to expand the federal government, at the expense of the state governments, too much.
When Andrew Jackson won the election, he seemed to have a love-hate relationship with him. He loved the fact that Jackson opposed a national bank, but parted ways with him on issues like national infrastructure, spoil system appointments, the protectionist Tariff of 1828, and most other issues where he felt state rights were in danger.
Where the future President really became at odds with Jackson, though, was the Nullification Crisis of 1832-1833. In November 1832, South Carolina passed the Ordinance of Nullification. Basically, the law stated that a state, South Carolina in this case, had the right to void or not enforce a national law. South Carolina even threatened to secede if their “rights” were not respected.
Jackson was furious. He, in turn, threatened to send in federal troops, which he would command himself, if South Carolina did not get back in line. The future President supported South Carolina’s stand. South Carolina would back down, though.
As I turned to God on the issue of my son, three Bible stories crossed my path to help me deal with it. The first one, the hardest one for me to hear, was the story the pastor started with to “inspire” us. The story of the prodigal son tells of a young man who is tired of his father and decides he wants to go his own way. I feel the hurt that the father felt so deeply. To have a son who doesn’t want anything to do with you, hurts.
The prodigal son story is the first story that helped me deal with my hurt. To me, at first, it was a story of hope. The son figures things out and comes back to the father. The father holds no grudges against the son. No, the father is so happy to see the son that nothing else matters.
I figured that time would cure my son’s bad feelings about me. Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months. Months turned to years. This hard story just didn’t seem to be working for me.
Back in the days when our future President lived, choosing a President was a lot different than it is today. The person “running” for President did not campaign himself. When the Vice President was chosen, it had very little to do with how much that person’s beliefs lined up with the Presidential candidate’s beliefs. The Vice President was usually chosen to broaden the appeal of the President-Vice President team.
Usually the Vice President was from a different region of the country. Often the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates had different views on key issues. Again, this was to broaden the appeal of the “team.” Someone might not like the Presidential candidate’s view on this issue, but liked the Vice Presidential candidate’s view. This gave the appearance that the Presidential candidate would at least listen to opposing views.
This “appearance” of the Presidential candidate looking like he would listen to opposing views was just a decoy, of sorts. In reality, when someone became President, his Vice President slipped behind the curtain rarely to be heard from again.
When our future President was nominated to be on the ticket as a Vice Presidential candidate, it probably didn’t seem that odd. The Presidential nominee was from the North and he was from the South. Very little was probably known of the Presidential nominee’s beliefs, but I assume most people would say many of them were the opposite of the Vice Presidential candidate’s views. But if you wanted a ticket that could appeal to everyone, this was probably it.
A second Bible story came to me. It is the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham, like me, wanted a son so bad and the rest of his story also sounded like mine. It seemed like his wish would never be fulfilled. Then the most amazing thing happened. When it seemed impossible, God sent Abraham that son. All seemed perfect.
Then God ask Abraham for his son back. I’m sure Abraham was shocked. I found comfort in Abraham’s story because he totally trusted God to take care of his son. To Abraham’s surprise, though, and unlike mine, he got to keep his son.
The third story I found was the story of Hannah and Samuel. Hannah was barren and wanted a child so much. She prayed and prayed to God for a child. Everyone around her was having a child, which only made it worse. Finally she promises God that if He gives her a child, she will give it back to Him.
God answers Hannah’s prayers and when Hannah weans the child, Samuel, she takes him to the temple and gives him to the priest. Samuel’s numerous stories in the Bible are almost always inspiring. His wisdom seems almost unsurpassed in his days on earth. God’s gift to Hannah became Hannah’s gift to the world.
Hannah would go on to have other children, but I’m sure none touched her heart like the first one. I’ve read stories that suggest that Hannah did have some contact with Samuel, but there are none of those stories in the Bible to suggest that. Other than the story of Hannah giving Samuel away, their relationship never gets mentioned again.
The strange part of John Tyler being chosen as William Henry Harrison’s running mate in the election of 1840, is that, although they are 17 years apart in age, they were born just up the road from each other in Charles City County, Virginia. Harrison would move away and become a war hero in the War of 1812.
Harrison would eventually settle in and live in North Bend, Ohio. Tyler would stay pretty close to where he was born. Tyler’s strong state rights opinions were far from Whigs’ (which basically would transformed into the Republican Party) stand on that issue. Tyler, although he often had trouble with both parties, more identified with the Democratic Party. This was really never a major issue because a Vice President really didn’t do anything and rarely had any influence on Presidential decisions. There were never any plans for Tyler to be involved in the administration.
But things changed on April 4, 1841. William Henry Harrison, about one month into his term, died. Never before in our history had a President died in office. No one was absolutely sure what or how the transfer of power should take place. So the battle began.
Congress, especially the Whigs, felt that Tyler was not really the President. They felt he would just be an “acting” President until the next election and that the wisdom of Congress should rule the land until then. I don’t believe the Democrats were too fond of Tyler’s elevation either. After all, Tyler betrayed their party when he joined the Whig ticket.
Tyler had no doubts. He was President and he would assume the role just as if he had been elected to serve it. This was a very unpopular choice. Both parties would eventually abandon him and he would never even be the nominee of either party for President in the future.
But as unpopular as Tyler’s decision was, it set the precedent for the transfer of power from the President to the Vice President in the event the President dies in office, resigns from office, or is removed from office. Because of this, even though Tyler is one of the lesser known Presidents, his presidency has had one of the most far reaching effects on the presidency.
One of the main reasons for Tyler’s absence from our list is probably Tyler’s turning his back on America and becoming a Representative for the Confederates States of America when Virginia seceded from the Union and the Civil War had already begun.
John Tyler would live just five months after he started his term in the Confederate House of Representatives. He would die at the Ballard Hotel in Richmond. His flag would be draped with the Confederate flag and neither Washington nor the Northern newspapers recognized his passing.
With three years still left in the Civil War, President John Tyler would never return to the fold of the nation he served as President. The memories of John Tyler were tarnished by the return he never made. The tenth President of the United States is hardly ever mentioned in Presidential conversations.
One of the hardest things for a father or for a nation to recover from is the departure of one of their sons, especially when it is not under the best of terms. Lincoln, the prodigal son’s father, and myself all understand the hurt when someone we love departs our lives. The glitter of light has dimmed and our eyes constantly wander into the distance hoping that our son will return holding the candle that will relight our life. There are no hard feelings, only hope.
But there is someone who knows that hurt even more than I do. God, Himself, feels the same way with His children. We walk away from Him. His heart breaks when He never sees us returning in the distance, but His heart rejoices when we return to Him.
Prayer: Dear Mighty Father, Thanks for the many memories You have given me with my son. Please continue to take care of him and bless his life. I completely understand he is in Your hands and I know those are the best hands to be in. Thanks for taking care of him. Amen.
