He's My Brother

Sunday’s Monday This was my week to come extra close to my two main loves, my God and my Pat. God touched me deeply during our Brother Night meeting this week and I feel so blessed to have been there. My Pat has had the flu this week and I have gotten to show her a little more love and nurture that usual. In which she has repaid my kindness by sharing her disease with me. I’m not sure it’s the flu but I am sick. No worries; I give it to God! I watched the Boys Town Movie this week which was released 9/9/1938 and even though the story is largely fictional, it is based upon a real man and a real place. Boys Town was founded on 12/12/1917, as an orphanage for boys. It was founded by Edward J. Flanagan, a Roman Catholic priest working in Omaha, Nebraska. One of the quotes from the movie that grabbed me by the soul and squeezed the life into it is, “there is no such thing as a bad boy!” This set off every bell and whistle within me! I was tagged as a bad boy growing up and I hated it! I was always the smallest guy all the way through school and for all you normal size people this meant that I had to literally fight my way through each grade and even though the loses overwhelmed the wins, my pride dictated it had to happen. I became (in my mind) the poster child for Proverbs 13:24 ESV, who ever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. The key word here is love, my mother loved me a lot according to her rod. But it just wasn’t enough! It wasn’t the same as coming from a man! My dad was small in size and yet big in stature (heart) but this didn’t help me at my age. I couldn’t get 2+2 to =4 in my mind, I continually came up with 2+2=short and that ain’t good when you’re 16 years old standing 5 feet 3 inches tall weighing 135 pounds. My last year in high school I was stuffed in a locker and who could I (in good conscience) tell of the embarrassment? I struggled with a boat load of self-reliance and truck loads of fear and doubt, I carried the weight of my world on my shoulders (24X7X365). But thank God He kept sending men for short seasons to influence my thinking through their lifestyle. It became apparent in my early 40’s that I was living Proverbs 29:15 (NLT), To discipline a child produces wisdom, but a mother is disgraced by an undisciplined child. She gave me he best she could for our circumstances at that time and I had filled her life with shame. With this revelation came another, my favorite scripture was not to be misused and misquoted any longer. 2 Timothy 1:7 (NLT), For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline. This revelation bit me right in the posterior, especially when it says self-control. I see the sadness, the hopelessness in my thinking back then and it breaks my heart still today. I had no outward fear for others to judge, but inwardly my strength was equal to that of Jell-O, my power was in the concealing of my fear and self-control went off the chart to become what others expected. I spent years painting myself in a corner! I didn’t know about 1 Timothy 4:12 (NLT), Don’t let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity and I didn’t understand how or who to turn to with my fallacy as I had finally come to the wisdom that my way was wrong. As I struggled, jumping in and out of church, I couldn’t see God always gave me a nugget (a scripture) to help me better understand, how much He loves me! There was always an older gentleman to example God’s goodness toward me. Now there were always women to help me but that is not the same for a boy as having a man accept me for who I am. Little did I know at the time but none of the men that God brought me to accepted me for who I was because they could see who I could become. Every child has God given potential with a God given plan for their life and God is directing men in being that conduit toward His helping them achieve it. As I was writing this I felt God impress me with this thought, not all the lost boy’s will be in young bodies, let me lead! I would like to end with another fact that I learned from history; In 1943 Boys Town adopted as its image and logo a sculpture of a boy carrying a younger boy on his back, captioned "He ain't heavy, Father ...he's my brother." Our youth hasn’t failed us, it is us who are failing them!! HAVE A BLESSED WEEK BY BEING A BLESSING TO OTHERS! COMMENTS WELCOME…pal249@hotmail.com…02/18/2018