Tom Selleck Owes Me an Apology

March 13, 2014.Reading time 4 minutes.

Tom Selleck owes me an apology. Anyone my age knows the unobtainable standard he set for a teenage boy just coming into maturity. Why, do you ask, am I seeking contrition from him?

Good looks? No.

Suave disposition? No.

All the ladies? No…well maybe.

I’m talking about the hair…his stinking perfect hair.

When all of the girls had a picture of the Magnum PI in mind, how could any of us real boys measure up? Curly coiffure, bushy mustache, chest hair, leg hair… There it is! Leg hair. Recently, smooth has become stylish and I would have been perfect for this new generation. But that isn’t my generation. When I was in high school and college, the girls wanted hair and lots of it. Hair I didn’t have. Well, that’s not absolutely true. Science should study my leg hair because it is translucent like that of a polar bear. It’s there, just not to the naked eye. It only shows up if I have a deep tan, which is near impossible for someone of Swedish/Germanic descent. Undaunted, I went to the pool, laid out, and held my legs just right so that passing females might possibly get the proper angle to spot a few strands.

As a freshman in college, I went so far as to purchase a tanning package. I donned little glasses and laid on top of the plastic surface to bake. And bake I did. Remember the shorts Magnum used to wear? Not long like they are today, 80’s shorts came way up on the thigh. Hoping my tan would expose leg hair from the top of my leg to my toes, I even pulled them up higher. Oh yeah, I got burned in very sensitive areas. It hurt for weeks and didn’t help my hair stand out whatsoever.

We all have physical characteristics we would rather minimize or hide completely. Just the other day, I was talking with a friend who told me her 10 year-old daughter E had been called fat by another girl. My heart sank. Her sweet little girl is now self-conscious about something as irrelevant as my smooth legs. She is active and isn’t overweight in the least, but also isn’t waif-thin like so many women our society seems to put on a pedestal. Such a tragedy.

I want so much for her and other little girls to see what truly matters about themselves instead of what is fleeting.

Your beauty should not consist of outward things … Instead, it should consist of what is inside the heart with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very valuable in God’s eyes.

1 Peter 3:3-4

That’s what is important. I hope my daughters know that. I pray little E learns that too. We have to tell them they are beautiful and keep on telling them until they understand. That’s how God sees them.

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So Tom, whenever you are ready, it has taken 25 years, but I am finally over your provocation and prepared to accept your apology. It’s been a long time coming.

Photo credit to Alan Light

A Possum in My Bed

March 10, 2014.Reading time 6 minutes.

I love my truck. When I bought it a decade ago, I didn’t know how much I would love it. The first week I had it, I bought one bale of pine straw every day just because I could. It was so much nicer than trying to shove four bales in the hatch of my old Pathfinder.

I’ve ceded the garage to my daughter and my poor truck has to stay outside in the woods. I often find a stray branch or pine cone that has fallen in the bed overnight, but nothing prepared me for my discovery this morning. This morning I found a possum in it – an angry possum.

I didn’t notice anything back there until I got halfway to work and heard something banging around. When I parked it at the office, I took a look and found him in there. He hissed at me, obviously blaming me for the predicament. I tried to reason with him. I told him I didn’t know he had come along. But he just hissed at me and stalked me around the perimeter of the truck bed with what can only be described as very angry gestures. Having no idea what to do, I considered dropping the tailgate and letting him go. But that didn’t seem wise as I would have been in the path of his escape. Also, I work near the interstate and didn’t want to just leave him there, away from home in a new dangerous place. What if possums are territorial and I drop him off in Braveheart Possum’s domain? He’d get his poor, furry butt kicked. What if it was a momma with babies at home and I separated them for life? I’m no zoologist and don’t know if how to tell the difference between a boy and a girl possum short of a close examination and that didn’t seem like a good plan.

So I decided he or she needed to go home. Surely a day in the bed of a truck wouldn’t hurt. We have an office cat, so later I stood out of harm’s way and threw some cat food back there as sustenance for the day. I don’t think he touched it but he didn’t throw any back. I took that as a good sign.

When the work day ended, he was there and we had a nice drive home. I had a stroke of genius on the trip and when we arrived, I retrieved a VERY LONG limb and placed it into the bed so that the end of it stuck out. He climbed it and was gone in a flash. Fortunately, he wanted nothing to do with me. He hissed once, for good measure, and scampered off.

I am reminded that sometimes I feel like I am in the bed of God’s truck. There have been many times where I can’t see over the sides and have no idea where God is taking me. But there are things I can trust about God that the poor possum couldn’t rely on with me.

1. God has a perfect plan, while my plan for the possum was dubious, at best.
2. He knows the exact direction I’m going and planned it long ago.
3. He loves me relentlessly, whereas I had only a slight bit of compassion for the possum.
4. I’m not in the truck bed by accident or because I slipped out of a tree, I am right where God wants me.

I worry when I’m in the back of God’s truck. Mostly, I want to know where we are going and how long the trip is going to last. Instead of trusting the driver, I hiss and try to make my own plans to get out.

Psalm 46:10 says:
Be still, and know that I am God

I find that very easy when I am behind the wheel. Lord, give the peace to be still when I’m in the bed of the truck.

*This post was written on March 10th, 2014, while I was pondering a career change. Thirty days after I published it, I began a true journey in the bed of God’s truck as Kylie was diagnosed with the cancer that would claim her life. I am still riding blind and may be for the rest of my life. But every once in a while he allows me a glimpse at the map of this wild ride and I sit back and hold on tight.

Photo credit: anddoesitexplode via photopin cc