Coach watched from the end of the bench, along with the rest of his little league team, as the batter hit it square. Out in left field, an 8 year old in an oversized neon green tee shirt turned and ran directly backwards. For the first time that practice, or any practice, left field mattered. Coach had put number 16 out there because the kids never hit hard enough to reach it. Having mercy on him and the team, he gave him a spot where he would never have to catch anything. But not today.
Coach watched the 16 on the back of that neon-green shirt grow smaller and smaller. As the ball became barely visible, he squinted to track it. It cleared the fence. Some of the boys were jealous, but some had enough sense to be happy for Jackson. They had never liked him before, but he was now the first little league member to ever hit a home run on this lot in the 6-8 age bracket.
The boys rushed the field after Jackson made his lap around the bases, slapping his helmet and making all sorts of noises and comments that would become inside jokes for the rest of the season. Coach joined in the celebration, and at the end of practice, he met Jackson’s parents in the parking lot when they came to pick him up.
“You ought to be prouda Jackson, y’know? Boy hit a home run at 8 years old on this holy ground yer standing on here! First one I e’er seen in all my time as a little-league coach!”
Jackson’s parents listened for a few more minutes with proud and loving smiles, looking from Coach to Jackson and back. The pride of a coach and the pride of parents passed back and forth between them, and Jackson remembers that moment to this day as what love sounds like. After some high fives, they drove off in their Range Rover. Everyone went home satisfied, some in awe, some dreaming of their own grand slams.
Whether it was the excitement of the game, or just how forgettable he was, no one seemed to notice that 16 was gone.
What happened was, as best as I can remember it, 16 un-athletically climbed the fence headfirst, bruising his chest, and flopped onto the other side. Then he wandered into the trees to find someone else’s trophy.
He was consumed with finding it. The whole team had watched him climb that fence, and he figured the only way to undo the embarrassment was to bring back something valuable to them. It occurred to him that if he never found it, his position on the field wouldn’t just be useless. It would be less than useless. He mumbled to himself and anxiously kicked through leaves. As branches poked at him and mosquitos and gnats swarmed his legs, he grew more resentful than anxious.
He hated everything about this team. He was only here because his father thought it would be good for him, and because he was forced to be. He couldn’t even catch a ball. The team picked on him and made jokes about him, and the only thing he could do was try to appease them. Even at 8 years old, he was well versed in self-deprecation, a flat honesty about his lack of abilities paired with a vicious self-hatred. He hated how freely the others talked to each other and how much they liked being around each other. It was painfully clear that he was excluded from that group. Adults can at least fake that they accept other people, he thought. Children can’t.
And then he thought about how this was exactly like his home, where he knew he wasn’t in the in-group either. It was even worse there, because no one was. Not Mom, not his brother. He was bullied by his own father, and being on this field was just an extension of his father’s control, masquerading as love for his son. His father said he wanted the best for him, but even at his age, he knew what his father really wanted. He wanted him gone.
If his father wanted him there, he would have shown up to watch the games. He would have picked him up himself before five hours of an October night chilled him to the bone in a forest he was now lost in. Turns out, there was a miscommunication between Mom and Dad. Mom thought Dad was picking him up, and Dad got drunk and forgot. These days, Mom doesn’t call Dad anymore.
16 fell asleep shivering around 2am on a mossy patch under a tree. He knew the time because of the cheap Walmart watch on his wrist. He could hardly read the analog face, but out of necessity, he took a moment to work out what he was looking at.
The outdoors was big and mysterious, and he knew almost nothing about it. Even though it was unruly and dangerous, it was somehow safer than his own home. Though he was unprotected and utterly neglected, he felt free. Outside of that fence, he had finally found somewhere he wasn’t controlled.
16 woke up only four hours later to rodents crunching through the leaves around him. His clothes were damp with morning dew from the moss. Since he had no sense of direction, he figured he would just walk straight until he heard cars, and take it from there.
But as he traveled, he couldn’t tell if he was going straight or walking in circles. It quickly turned into a frantic panic. The further he walked, the less he knew where he was. He ran at times, then walked to regain his composure. He hadn’t realized that all this fear had suppressed his appetite, but now the pangs of hunger set in. At eight years old, 16 had despaired of life itself. He hid from an October wind among a few rocks overlooking a surprisingly well-kept field of something.
He looked down at his watch and it was 1:23pm. A minute later it was 1:40pm. He marveled at the Great Value of Walmart. For the first time, he decided to pray. It was something he had heard his parents do, though it obviously hadn’t worked for them, and he only tried it because there was nothing else left to try.
Hey God, it’s uh, Gideon here. Please help because I’m lost in the woods and if you don’t I’ll probably die.
There was no response. So Gideon asked something different this time.
Hey God, when I die here, can you make my death pleasant? Like can you just make it like I’m going to sleep?
There was no response. Hungry and exhausted, Gideon had nothing left to do but admire the field.
The field sat in the middle of four hills. The hill he was on was the tallest, and from it he could watch the sun travel from east to west. The ground was so even it looked like a farmer kept it. He checked his watch again. It was 3pm, though he had only been there five minutes or so. The watch was laughably unreliable.
Then the sun started setting over the east hill, fast, which he was pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to do. It careened across the sky, straight down from where he sat, faster than he had ever seen it move in his 8 years on earth. A moment later it was already sinking behind the east hill. He was undone. Another night was coming, the last of God’s cruelties he would ever see. Perhaps God was mercifully hastening his last sleep.
But he couldn’t help taking in the beauty of this last sunset. The sky was pink and gold, and the clouds were like paint strokes across the Creator’s landscape. A group of bald eagles flew in V formation in front of the sun. Wait, is that something they even do?
And then the sun began to do something that, even now as I recount this story, I have a hard time believing I saw. I guess you’ll have to take my word for it. The sun hurled horizontally around the sky, orbiting the four hills and throwing shadows across the field from every side. It moved disturbingly fast, blasting light everywhere, until over the course of half an hour it gradually slowed to a gentler pace. Was it the sun moving or the earth? To this day I do not know.
Terrified, Gideon did the only thing he could think to do. He climbed down to the field and, in a never-ending sunset, walked to the center.
As sun and birds circled him, he looked down and found a single baseball. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands, then looked across the field to the north hill. The sun had stopped there, perfectly still.
On top of that hill stood the silhouette of a man. In an instant, gracefully, the man was in front of him.
“Hey Gideon, don’t be afraid. You won’t die here. And you have lots of life in front of you. Life that I will walk with you in and through. Here, you are hungry. Eat.”
I will never forget how that meal tasted. Believe it or not, Jesus didn’t give me an MRE or some instant noodles. It was the best steak, mashed potatoes, gravy, fresh corn, and pasta I’ve ever had. I think He prepared it for me because He knew it was my favorite.
Satisfied, Gideon wiped his mouth with his arm and listened to this voice of love. Somehow he wasn’t afraid at all, even though everything surrounding His appearance should have terrified him.
“I don’t have much to tell you yet, because right now I’m here to get you home. But I want you to understand some things about your father. He is very sick, and he is going through a lot of pain. He is taking that pain out on you by trying to control you. But he cannot control you. You are not your father, and you will never be like him, because you were created as a different person. And I love your father very much, as I know you do.
“For now, you are a child, and you will live in your father’s house. It’s going to be very hard. But I will be with you in all of it. Every single time he yells at Mom, I want you to know that I am there, with you, with your Mom, with your brother, and yes, with him. Because you are a child, you cannot leave. That is beyond your control. The only thing you can do is trust in Me and My love. I will protect you. Life is not about entering or avoiding pain. It is about My Presence in it. And I will always have My full love and compassion aimed at you. Always!”
Gideon felt like he should respond. But in that moment, with Love Himself fully embracing him, he had nothing to say.
“Oh, and one last thing. Drop the baseball.”
And Gideon dropped the baseball.
Suddenly, Gideon was in a hospital. Coach had found him that morning, passed out in the leaves just past the left field fence. His chest was more than bruised. Turns out a rib he broke on the fence had punctured his lung, and they needed pretty intensive surgery to fix it. The doctors were happy to see him come out of the anesthesia and were warm and kind to him. He healed in a few months with no lasting complications.
Not a moment after the doctors brought him some juice and left, his parents started yelling at each other again. The part of him that felt neglected and hopeless, that couldn’t believe their fighting mattered more than his own life, came and went. And, exhausted by the surgery, by everything he had been through, and by the Love of Jesus, he fell into a deep and restful sleep until the next morning.
Welcome to Between You and Me. It’s called that because I ask that we keep this between us two. A lot of these things are quite personal, y’know? Wouldn’t want these things floating around on the internet where Christians can whip my words with the Bible, would we?
But it’s also called Between You and Me because there is a lot between me and God. There’s a lot between God and me and all of us, isn’t there? This book is an attempt to name those things so they can be healed. One chapter at a time.
Waylon Woody is a writer and minister living in West Milford, NJ.
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