18

Sometimes it’s hard to hold that two seemingly contradictory things simultaneously can be true.  

But it’s a thing. If it wasn’t, would there even be a “mind blown” emoji for it?  🤯. So there you go. 

I’m sitting in that space this morning. It’s April 17, you know what that means. Well, maybe you don’t, but I do, my family does. Life is marked by the impacts of trauma on it. Jimmy died 18 years ago.  I don’t need to recall what happened, or what we went through in the seasons following it. My body, my very being knows the score.  Turns out, the trauma of losing him wasn’t the first, and certainly hasn’t been the last that have left lasting craters in me.  

I’m sure it won’t be the last. 

Life is full of surprises.  Some are wonderful. And others are the opposite of wonderful.  Two things…

Each crater has a story.   Learning that story, telling that story, not having that story be the sum of what defines you but rather the work of resilience through it, that’s the thing. 

How’s that happen?  Well the first and most important thing is to be willing to acknowledge that work doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and you can’t do it alone. You need somebody to hold space for you as the inner battle is joined to no longer let the trauma define you to make room for the story of how you endured it. 

Please understand…I’m a continuing work in progress on these things.  The pace of progress can be maddeningly slow. But it’s worth it. I bear witness. 

Two things… right. It’s April 17. And this year it’s Easter.  Resurrection. Oh, and I’m about to leave to drive to Mayfield, where I was a boy, where I was first told I’d be a preacher at the age of 8, and share a word of resurrection to the community of faith that confirmed me, a community of faith working to not let the trauma of a tornado define who they’ll be. And I haven’t preached in 2 years. Haven’t wanted to, and believed the church surely didn’t want to hear from me. 

In so many ways today is 🤯.   But today isn’t about what I think, what I believe or even what I can prove.  If you can prove resurrection then faith isn’t necessary. 

Jimmy. 

Easter. 

Mayfield. 

Preaching. 

Maybe the things that are seemingly simultaneously contradictory aren’t at all.  On this side of Grace another emoji defines the day:

❤️

Home Is...

Robert Frost said, "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." It's Maya Angelou's take on Frost that resonates more with who I am..."Home is that place that when you go there, can't nobody put you out."

My weekend in Mayfield far and away validates Frost via Angelou.

Despite what I've thought and preached about "home," as it relates to me in my own story, I've lived too long with the thought that it's Thomas Wolfe who was correct..."you can't go home again."

I'm here to tell you that in this instance, Wolfe's wrong, and so was I.

The sequence of events that brought me to Mayfield on the occasion of the Class of '82's 30 year reunion is not nearly as significant as the keen sense of knowing that I was welcomed and remembered.

In that one openly wounded chapter of my life for which there seemingly could never be closure I found grace--grace in the celebration of memory. Now some memories are those I'd just soon forget, but to have them recalled in the company of those who knew, who were there, it was a remarkable thing.

While many of the people with whom I reconnected I had seen around my senior year (thus, the aforementioned utterly unforgettable episode), most I had not seen in 37 years.

"Hey, I remember you!" I heard that quite a bit...which was wonderful because with the exception of a few folks whom I knew were interested, I was expecting "And you are?
What are you doing here?"

I also heard, "I thought that was you!" Wonderful!

On seeing people I thought I'd never see again - Yes, we're all older. And yet through the signs of age, of life lived and sometimes lived hard, I could see the spark of people as I remembered them. The curiosity of what ever became of someone was present but the gladness of just being together was stronger.

A number of people live in Memphis. Who knew? One in particular lives not too far from my Church. So knowing who I am and what I do, he had no qualms about asking me to pray for the gathered bunch before the party really got started.

"Really Arthur? They don't know me like that, I'm just Johnny."

Well, actually for a number of them I was JJ. It was the early 70s. "Good Times" was a hit TV show...you do the math. If "Dyno-mite" means anything to ya, there you go.

So I prayed, and it felt right because the emergence of the "me" I've long sought has found joyful passion in reclaiming that what I do is who I am. And to be who I know I'm called means that I'm bringing the fullness of who I am, without fear or worry, into what I do.

I was taken aback by the table on which many candles burned reflecting the memory of those no longer with us. It was so many. I remembered most and some very well. Car wrecks, drugs, violence...all of it was sobering reminder of life's fragility and the consequences of choices made that yield results never expected.

While there I had occasion to walk the old neighborhood, to see the places I used to live in Mayfield. Surprisingly, the walk didn't take me nearly as long as my memory would have me believe. The place is small, and as a community Mayfield struggles to find a viable way through amidst the exodus of industry across the years.

My old school isn't a school anymore. It's the County Health Department. That was an odd thing. But the new elementary school is a sign of progress, right?

I saw my first grade teacher whose name I had never forgotten (you always remember your first grade teacher's name, right?), but that was a long time ago, would I even recognize her?

Answer? Yes. Not even a question. And even more surprising was that she seemed to remember me. Evidently, I was quiet and sweet in the first grade (what happened there, I wonder?) "Yes, ma'am" came out of my mouth automatically when she spoke to me.

I saw and spoke to the first girl I ever called on the phone.  Age 6.  Thank you.

She gave me about as much time as she did back then, too.  Seemed about right.

I owe much to my friends who really wanted me to come back. Kenny, Liz, Elaine and so many others. It is a good thing to be wanted, no?

Because I have a gig on Sundays I didn't stay as late Saturday night as I would have preferred. But as I drove away I had this strange feeling. What I expected to be closure wasn't. The journey isn't complete, it's ongoing. No more than my leaving in 1976 left relationships undone only to realize closure in 2012, for a number of these people, my friends, who know me only as Johnny (ok, or JJ), it's just the next thing in relationships that last a lifetime.

As I was saying my goodbyes, my friend Michael (apparently he's Mike, now), says, "See you in December?"

"For?" I ask.

"For when Mayfield goes back to State. See you there?"

"Would not miss it."

And why wouldn't I? It's my hometown team.

Catharsis in Baltimore

I've written much over the years about my life and times in Mayfield, Kentucky.

In fact, I guess this blog has given space for thoughts and feelings to be processed and considered.  As an old friend is want to remind me, all things unresolved always resurface.  As I've alluded in previous posts, I think that much of who I am comes from my understanding of what of me was left unresolved from those years--

• Friendship, and the fierce loyality attached to those you dare call friend.  The truest since of that for me is probably a confusion between loyalty and desperation that the friends you have are friends you'll lose.
• Living in the balance between self worth and self loathing.  That's probably always been there, but is exacerbated by not being able to process what it means to be "me."  Am I loved for who I am?  Do I even love me for who I am? 
• Saying goodbye to the world you know when you're not ready - but truth be told, when are we ever really ready to leave the comforts and protections of the world that is safe to venture out into the great unknown?
• Curiosity of what happened to that world you left with you no longer in it.  It's not like people you leave behind will never be the same without you, I mean, really.  But there is something about knowing you've been remembered, especially in your absence, that brings a depth of meaning to what you once knew.

I've called those years my "wonder years."  It's a romanticized past. I've enough self awareness to be honest about that.  It's a romanticism born from what never could be given my leaving it.  Feel free to peruse previous posts for my musings of that time and place.

And there's the tie....the worlds I've left, from childhood to the present moment.   For most of my life, those chapters never interact or overlap.  They are sequestered pieces of the overall puzzle of my existence.

Part of my own issue about what of me I'll reveal to another, and the biggest part of me that I won't is impacted by this realization.  It is part and parcel of being an itinerant family.  And almost literally from the day of my birth (the family mythology goes that the day I was born was the day dad got his first appointment - it's no "brand plucked from the burning," mind you, but it is something to hang your hat on), to this moment in time.

I've not known anything other than itineracy.  While my experience of it, and my reaction to it may not be that of others (and I certainly hope it's not), I can only claim what the impact of that covenantal life has had on me.

Just because you promise something to God, and honor that promise, doesn't mean it stops being hard.

So I've had this fascination with my life in Mayfield in recent years.  I think it may have been brought to the surface when Jimmy died.  Nothing like the recognition of mortality to make one look across the broad expanse of one's life and wonder what if?  And, what now?

A month or so ago I was asked to represent the Memphis Conference Board of Ministry at an event in Baltimore.  Apparently, no one else but the chair could go (which I take as no one else wanted to), but I was willing.  Because I value the work of that body so much, if there was something I could glean from representatives across the church who do similar work, it seemed well worth the effort.

That, plus my expenses would be paid.

As soon as I knew I was going, I was reminded that someone I knew lived there.  Someone from my Mayfield childhood.  Someone with whom I had reconnected on "the" Facebook.  Elaine.

So I wrote her, told her when I was coming, and wondered if she'd be available for a visit.  She was.  She and her husband were going to pick me up and take me out for crab--in Baltimore.  Not too shabby.

I was shocked by how excited I was to reacquaint with her. I had not seen her in over 35 years.  Me, whose emotional shield is usually always up, was venturing into something I never thought I would or even wanted to.

What would I say?  Would she recognize me?  We spoke on the phone to arrange pick up times and she said "you sound just like I remember you sounding."  And I thought, "really?"  I was like 11 or 12 when I left and now I'm 46.  Could that be right?  And all the while I was thinking "you do, too."

I sat outside the hotel to wait for her to come by after her work.  I saw her, and of course it was Elaine.  We smiled and hugged and sat to visit for awhile waiting for John, her husband to drop by and pick us all up.

We talked about our lives.  Where we'd been.  I asked about old friends and if she still goes home to Mayfield.  We small talked for awhile as I mustered up the courage to do something I could no longer avoid.

Make a confession.

Now some of you reading this will have heard my sermon in which Elaine is an illustration.  It has to do with growing up and she was always the one who'd score just one point ahead of me on a test.  For every 10 grades I might eek out a "win" on 1 or 2 of them.

Hmmm.  Maybe that's while I'm a Tiger fan?  Another post for another time.

I was the Methodist preacher's kid.  She went to the Baptist church...blah, blah, blah.
I was "confirmed," she was "saved."  You know, that old chestnut.

And I've told that story of my competitive engagement with her several times in ministry.  Why wouldn't I?  I'll never see her again.

Ooops.

Preaching 101 - don't tell stories about other people without their permission.  I'm just saying.

You should have seen her face when I said, "I need to make a confession to you."

And I shared my story.  She was most gracious.  Even laughing a bit.  I don't know if she needed to hear what I said, it's no big deal, really.  But I surely needed to say it.

John picked us up, and took us to Nick's Fish House.  We sat outside on the water, learned how to eat crab, and had a wonderful time.  We reminisced.  We laughed.  I heard about her life and I told her about mine.  She's always been brilliant, and her work career bears witness to that.

One of the first things she said to me was "so, you followed in your dad's footsteps, huh?"  Her inquiry came from a point of reference that few have.  She knew me for what I was and now sees me for what I am.  There was also a sense of "really?  you?  a preacher?"  I get that curiosity, bordering on surprise....I really do.

Resolution.  It felt like grace.

It was as profound a couple of hours as I've had in many a year.

I have no idea what our reconnection meant to her, but I know what it meant to me, and I was so glad.  I felt like I had a claim on the lives of that bunch of people with whom I shared a childhood.  Trapped no longer in the past, it now has new life and perspective.  The chapters of my life are no longer sequestered from each other.  And this word rarely (and sadly) comes from my lips--it makes me "happy."

Because the occasion that had me in Baltimore kept me in a hotel conference room, I didn't get to see much of the city.  She told me I'd have to come back one day, and they'd show me around.

I told her I'd want to see Lovely Lane Church, the birthplace of Methodism in America.

"Oh really," she said.  "I didn't know that."

Ahhh.  Score one for me!

Didn't Beaver Cleaver Live in Mayfield?

I lived in Mayfield, Kentucky, from June of 1970 until the second day of January, 1976.

I turned 6 a month after moving there and moved away in the middle of my 6th grade year.

Mid-year appointments...ahhh, ain't they great? Especially on the psyche of children who change schools in midyear?

Did I say that out loud?

Anyway, as I've alluded in other posts, those years were significant for me. Those were my Wonder Years.

Whatever Mayfield really was back then, it was the place I grew up. I knew it for what I could get from it.

Hill's BBQ ( I went to school with Molly and Mary)
K&N Rootbeer in Frosty Mugs brought to your car.
Summer days at the club swimming until water logged and learning to play golf (preacher's family had a membership).
Mayfield Cardinal Football games at War Memorial Stadium.

Friends and neighbors always near.
An easy walk to and from school.
A quick bike ride to almost anywhere that mattered.
And I was the preacher's kid at Mayfield First Church. Or, at least one of them. Dad was the Associate, and Mayfield was our home.

It’s what I knew.

I've rarely gone back over the years. I'm not sure why that's the case. Well, that's not entirely true. Initially it was the case because clergy don't go back to the places they've left---right?

It's just not done, and if you grew up with Jeffords as your last name, you're darned right it wasn't done.

And that was hard for me. I had a niche' of friends with whom I went to school and church and often those two groups were one, but not always. Whatever code of clergy ethics there was to abide by, I didn't know about it or care...I just missed my friends.

It's a pattern that has repeated itself more than once in my life, both as a PK and as a P in my own right.

It's a hard thing--probably necessary only because we clergy cannot be trusted to behave professionally toward one another--an indictment on all persons of the cloth and God knows there's far too many horror stories of preacher's past who can't and won't let go even though there is no longer any official authority to be pastoral in a former context – making it difficult for the new pastor and confusing for congregants.

The problem with that is PK's get caught in the vice between what was and what must now be.

A life lesson, me thinks, and one that's tough to take sometimes.

Well, over the years my contact with those who were my childhood friends has lessened and lessened to the point of being nearly nonexistent.

The people I knew and called friend are that only in my memory of what I knew them to be – almost 35 years ago.

I've always felt that Mayfield was an aborted chapter in my life. Maybe it would have been different for me to have left at a school year's end. It would have had some appropriate finality to it. And true enough, with each new appointment then and now has come the opportunity to be in relationship with wonderful people. And that has happened again as recently as my move this Summer.

Well, a couple of things have occurred that have reacquainted me with that place.

My sister has lived in Mayfield longer than anywhere else in her life, I guess. Beyond our time there are a family, she has lived just outside of town with her husband for the whole of her marriage. Earlier in life it was easier to get up there and visit. As my life has become more and more complex, the more difficult it has been to go.

Last week for the holiday break the family loaded up and went to Mayfield. It was the first time I have spent any meaningful time there, which is to say more than driving through on my way to Paducah, in about 5 years.

Jerriann and Colin moved into a new home last year, and she's been itching for us to come up.

It was a good visit and time I needed to spend with my sister. It's a hard thing, though. I know I'm not the brother to her that she had in Jimmy. I couldn't be that if I tried. So I haven't. But I've always known I could be better than I was.

We spent a couple of nights there. On July 4, she and I drove into town, needing to load up on cookout stuff, and I saw the town I once knew as home in the light of day.

My own sense of what I saw didn’t square with my memory. Maybe it’s that my memory, pre-life experience, is devoid of interpretation of what things mean in their realistic context.

What I saw was a small town that seemed smaller than I knew it. And it may, in fact, be smaller.

The General Tire plant is long since gone. The KT plant is gone. I don’t know what industry there is that generates the economic energy for the town to circulate around. I was left to wonder if Mayfield is hurting or if it has adapted to economic pressures and doing better than it seemed to me.

Well, since she and I drove into town to go to the store and because it takes only minutes to drive from one part of town to the other, we decided to go see the places I knew of as home in my childhood.

You know how time warps perspective? How is it possible that a place that seemed so expansive was the exact opposite?

Here's my first house. 1301 Longview. We lived there for the first couple of years. That spot in the front yard is a place a tree used to be- one I climbed and played in almost daily.

The curb in front is the one I hit my head on when I was 7 when I wrecked my bike after speeding down the hill coming from right to left in the picture. I think I see the indentation from here. A scary thing - concussion. What I remember about that is wanting to sleep, and my folks not letting me.

A couple of years later, we moved to 204 Heritage Drive.

Jimmy and I shared a room and the last window on the left, which is barely visible in this (drive by with your iPhone in hand) photo, was ours. The window just to the right was Jerriann’s room, and the reason we know it’s her window is that she spent more than a little time climbing in and out of it at all hours of the night! But that’s another story.

It was a brand new house in a brand new subdivision. It was so new that not all the houses around us were finished yet, and there were no houses behind us, only woods. To play in those woods was to enter into a world of another kind. In the heart of the woods was a creek - and much time and mischief ensued there. My stories of that place were less than the Hundred Acre Wood and much less than the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but they were meaningful to me nonetheless.


I went to Longfellow Elementary School. We were the Tigers. Hmmm, seeds were sown early, I guess. I played football for the Tigers in grades 4, 5 and 6. I was starting center in 6th grade. In those days, we could chop block, and I was pretty good at it.

My mother still has the picture of me in Gold and Navy uniform. My footwear? Cleats? Nope…Red, high top Chuck Taylor’s. Nice.

Somewhere along the line, schools in Mayfield became something very different than what they are now. There were several other elementary schools back then – Washington and East College, I think. Now, there’s one brand new beautiful elementary school in town. Graves County schools didn't exist back then, at least not in the way they do now.

Longfellow is gone. The building is now being used as the Health Department on one side and an adult education facility in the back along the hallways where the upper grades once met. Other than my home and neighborhood, this was the building I spent more time in than anywhere else during those years.

If pushed, I think I could recall all my teachers from those years---I think.

This very bad picture is of the Church in which the soil of my spirit was tilled. First Church, Mayfield was a special place to me. I was confirmed there. It was from that pulpit that I was most powerfully aware of the art of preaching. It was there that I heard a voice from the pulpit other than my father’s.

I have vague recollection of Joe Leggett’s presence in the pulpit. What I recall more than his preaching was his crew cut, and during football season he’d ask Mayfield's golden boy, known to you as the Rev'd Dr. Gregory Waldrop, to stand up and announce how many touchdowns he had scored at the previous Friday night's football game, or how many points he had scored playing basketball. Greg and my Dad's relationship was powerful in those days. Dad was in Greg's life when Greg was sensing the call to ministry and he helped Greg to hone it as it was taking shape within him. There were many, many nights you'd find Greg at our home, late at night, popcorn popping and deep life conversations commencing. I remember Greg’s first sermon from Mayfield First's pulpit. It was titled “Go!”

But the voice from the pulpit that captured my attention in those years, other than my dad's, was Jerry Carr's. He was and is a master of the craft. His use of language and sense of presence in the pulpit had me riveted.

And there I'd sit. Very often I'd be on the second pew, pulpit right, sitting beside Chuck Stallins - who was the definition of a helluva guy.

I loved that Church. It was because of it that we lived in Mayfield. And when we left Mayfield, we left that Church.

Only in the recent past has some reconnection with Mayfield come about with folks other than family. One of my buddies in those days, Kenny, lives in Reidland and goes to church there with my friend and clergy brother, Sky, as his pastor. There was an email reconnect there, and that made me glad. Recently Kenny's dad died. A good man, as I recall, and I was thankful that Sky let me know that so I could convey my sympathies to Kenny. And I was thankful for a ministry peer I knew and trusted who could walk the difficult days of grief with them.

And then, dare I say it, there’s Facebook.

Liz was my closest buddy in those days. We went to school together, church, our families socialized. It was never boyfriend/girlfriend. Had we been in each others’ lives at another time, maybe? But we were buddies, and there’s always been a soft place in my heart for her.

Other than the rare news about each other communciated through our parents, we've not been in each other's company, or made direct contact, in a long, long time.

A few weeks ago I had a friend request from her, and I thought, “Ok, now I see the value of Facebook.” She still lives in Mayfield and has a great life. She’s helped fill in the blanks of folks I’ll never see again and always wondered what sort of life they ended up living.

My Mayfield trip was cathartic in ways I never expected nor thought I needed.

But I was wrong, I did.

It was good to be with my family. My boys loved being there with their Aunt Jerriann and Uncle Colin.

Don’t know when we’ll get back – although I doubt it’ll be 5 years from now.

We need those places, don't we? Wonder places for Wonder Years. Truth about them is never fully what we remember and was never really what was actually true. The value of the place and the meaning we attach to it is not dependant on that.

And that's a good thing.