Temptation Reveals Character

I was thinking last night about my mother’s family and how sad it is that some of us decided to trade priceless relationships for money.

I really do mean “sad.” People use the word in a snotty way, to lash out at others. “It’s so sad you think eating meat is cool.” “It’s so sad you have white fragility.” I’m using the word in its proper sense. We lost something of tremendous value, and we will never get it back. I miss the relationships we used to have.

When I was a kid, I lived in a miserable home. My dad drank and chased women. He strangled my mother twice in front of me. He beat her for things like failing to match his socks. My mother, my sister and I were afraid of him. I had a repeating nightmare in which he cut them up and they talked to me while they were dying. We looked forward to his business trips because when he was gone, we had more peace.

My sister was sick and sadistic. My mother was always unhappy. My dad and my sister both abused her. I was not much of a son. I was irresponsible, afraid of people, and unsuccessful. She loved me deeply, which is not surprising, but she was also proud of me, which made no sense.

I loved going to visit my mother’s parents. They had a big custom-built home on a hill with three spare bedrooms plus a basement room and a sewing and gun room that could be used for guests. We visited in both summer and winter.

When Christmas, came, the families of all 4 daughters gathered at the house. The families that didn’t live nearby stayed there. It was wonderful. I treasure the memories.

My branch of the family drove up from Florida, where the air was hot and never smelled quite clean. I remember how things changed when we got to Kentucky. The air was crisp and cold and smelled like coal smoke. If we were lucky, we also smelled snow.

The house would be full of homemade cookies and things like stack cake and fried apple pies. Sometimes there would be a crate of oranges in the foyer. By the time we got there, the tree and decorations were always up, and the house smelled like pine needles.

With the exception of my strange Uncle John, who was cruel to me for no reason, and who was never held accountable by my parents, I looked forward to seeing everyone. When I heard the door to the carport open, it made me happy, because I knew another bunch had finally arrived.

We opened presents on Christmas Eve, which was a mistake, and we generally got in a couple of days of playing with things like race car sets.

I liked all of my aunts. At different times of my life, each one was my favorite. I liked two of my uncles.

In the summers, I got to work on my grandfather’s farms, and he would often put me in his car or truck and take me to one. He let me run his tractor. When I was small, he would set me on the right fender, and I would sit on it while he ran it. Sometimes he would stand on the floorboard to my right and coach me while I steered.

I remember him taking me on a long hike on a farm that bordered the Red River Gorge. He showed me an old moonshining camp by a little branch. He dug up some old bottles and gave them to me, and I cleaned them up. Of course, someone took them from his house later, along with a remarkable chunk of solid mica I found in the Chattooga River in North Carolina, below Potholes Falls.

Sometimes we shot, or shot at, rabbits. Sometimes he would take me to a local restaurant, and after he sat down, a big group of people who knew him would pull up chairs and make the place crowded. To me, he seemed like a king. The boss of three counties.

He was actually a corrupt politician, and he made a lot of money suing insurance companies in front of mountain juries, but I didn’t know those things.

Corruption was considered cute up there. Still is, I suppose.

I used to walk up the road to his brother’s house, and we would sit in his carport and trade pocket knives. I still have one I got from him. He was like an extra grandfather.

All that is behind me now. Two aunts are still alive. My mother is dead. All three uncles are dead. My dad and my grandparents are dead. Estate preparation was poor. There has been division. People have taken advantage.

I still get along with one aunt. The other is in charge of the interminable distribution of my grandparents’ wealth. My grandfather died in 1994, my grandmother died in 2003, and my aunt still resists selling land and closing up the estates. Things will probably wrap up very quickly when she dies, unless the family puts her unsuccessful nonagenarian second husband–not a blood relative or heir–in charge.

I trust God to compensate me for anything I lose, I don’t need money, my life is very peaceful, and my mother always told me not to get into a certain kind of fight with a skunk, so I don’t push things.

The last time she talked to me, she was furious. I told her she needed to sell everything, and I said she had never given any of us a monthly or yearly statement. I asked why she bothered me about prospective land deals. I said she was going to do whatever she wanted anyway. She said, “That’s right!”, without a trace of shame or any concern about civil or criminal liability.

She blurted out, “I HAVE MORE THAN YOU.” She wanted me to know she had more real estate than I did, as though that justified mishandling things. She told me I was trying to get money because I was poor. She started bragging about her kids and grandchildren, and she said all I had was “maybe a sorry dog.”

Very weird. At the time, as now, I was married to a wonderful woman, and I had a parrot. I don’t have a dog. I have no idea whether she has more real estate than I do. God bless her if she does. I don’t claim to be rich. All I know is that I have a wonderful home from which my wife and I have made a lot of foreign trips, all of which were paid for without borrowing. I have no debt.

All of my property is in areas where values have gone insane, very much unlike prices in Eastern Kentucky, so I am grateful for the way things have worked out. I don’t know if I could take the stress of working a real job in a world that has given itself over completely to Satan.

She said I had sponged off others all my life. I did sponge pretty badly in my twenties while I was trying to make it as a writer, and it’s true that I lived with my dad after law school, but that was a choice, and I paid my own way. I worked when I was in law school, I had inherited money from my mother, and I paid half of my tuition from stock market trades.

Our relationship improved tremendously when I was in law school, and afterward, although I was working, I thought a lot about joint families and the way families worked in the Bible. I felt God wanted me to stay. I started thinking the nuclear family was overrated and that it was better to be around older generations. As it turned out, that was correct.

It was strange to hear her sputtering at me in anger. Others had told me about her cursing them out, but I had never seen it. I don’t know how much of it is dementia. Age has a way of exposing people, though.

As personal representative of the estates, she hired her son to do legal work my dad and I offered to do for nothing. In my opinion, her son is not a real lawyer. He’s intelligent enough to practice, but he ended up at the second-worst law school in the US. I guess my aunt’s connections could not get him into the University of Kentucky, but I don’t know. I can’t imagine going to a horrible law school far away when you can go to a better one nearby and pay in-state tuition.

I won’t toot my own horn, but my dad was third in his class, and he made a living beating Ivy League lawyers in federal court. He defended 11 people charged with murder and got 10 off completely. I will say that I kept up with him.

The estates’ legal affairs turned out very badly, but my cousin got paid a lot. He did some shocking things, and his representation seemed completely inept to me. I called him on it, and he was rude and nasty to me. But I didn’t feel God wanted me to file a bar complaint or sue.

These are people I used to love seeing. It’s hard to believe it ended up like this. I thought we would have loving relationships as long as we lived.

I have never done them wrong. I never stole a penny or a paper clip from the estates, but I have been told things were taken by others. I always said I would not charge for helping, but others got paid. Now here we are. My aunt is slowly dying, her husband is in similar shape, and I suppose it would be awkward if I attended their funerals. Not that I plan to return to Eastern Kentucky for any reason. If my other aunt is living there when she dies, I’ll go, but that’s about it. I am going to avoid the whole area as well as I can. It’s a trashy, cursed place full of people who never grow up. A white ghetto.

My wife and I just got back from North Carolina and Tennessee. So different. The houses and businesses were well-kept. We didn’t see a single discarded school bus in a yard; this is a popular Eastern Kentucky decoration. We didn’t see old cars and refrigerators that had been dumped in creeks. The people were much nicer than people in Eastern Kentucky. You don’t have to be white trash to be from Appalachia.

I wish I could go back in time and tell my grandparents about the future of their descendants. Maybe we would still have a family. They could have done something to lock everything up so no one could end up controlling and taking advantage of the others Good fences make good neighbors.

I thought our family, dysfunctional though it was, was great. I thought we had such warmth. We seemed privileged. An illusion. I saw a veneer. Now if I want a blood family, I’ll have to start one, in my old age. And of course, my Spirit-filled friends are my family. God has given me excellent friends and godchildren.

Speaking of dysfunction, I had a startling revelation last night. I realized my wife and I were not dysfunctional. It came home to me, how strange it was to be all right. Most people are dysfunctional.

Out of 8 grandchildren, I think two may have families that are reasonably free of dysfunction. The rest are a mess. Can’t say I’m sure about the other two. I don’t hear from them. Maybe that means things are going well. My suspicion is that one or both deliberately limit contact with the rest of us in order to protect their peace, but I don’t know. Maybe they just outgrew the family.

I don’t beat my wife. I don’t drink much. We don’t take drugs. We don’t argue. I have no interest in other women. She doesn’t sit by herself and contemplate her existence, thinking about how disappointing it is and what a letdown her husband is. We love each other’s company. We treat each other well.

We have long prayer sessions every day. No one has to be coerced. We both want it.

She didn’t marry me hoping to turn me into a status symbol and money fountain. I didn’t marry her hoping for a perfect sex object that never aged. We don’t think about other people’s opinions of us. We don’t social-climb. We won’t be buying cars we think will impress people. Right now, I’m investing a ton in my old Dodge Cummins so I can drive it until I die.

We don’t go on Facebook and try to convince people who know better that we are Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, living in a fantasy world of blissful marital dreams come true. That’s a common affliction. We are not trying to impress people to make them feel inferior; especially people we don’t respect.

I don’t have to worry about cleaning the house myself or doing laundry because my wife is a slob. She doesn’t have to call tradesmen because I’m too sorry to have repairs made.

I don’t wonder if my newborn son should have a DNA test. I will never try to convince people he’s the next Mozart or Newton because I feel bad about myself or him. He will never have to tell people I lied about him or that he’s not what I held him out to be.

I don’t know how smart or talented he will be, but I know he will have a dedicated father who teaches him about the Holy Spirit and passes on as much wisdom as possible.

We don’t have any mental disorders. I was depressed pretty much continuously until I was 30, but it’s gone, and I feel better every year. We’re not neurotic. We don’t have delusions.

It’s so strange, knowing we’re not dysfunctional. I’m used to thinking of myself as dysfunctional, because I was, and I think of dysfunction as normal, because it is. It’s hard for me to think of acquaintances who aren’t dysfunctional.

Childishness is a big problem everywhere, but it’s SOP in Eastern Kentucky. People hold grudges and maintain feuds. I’m sure a lot of them go to hell for it. If the members of a family can learn to be accountable adults, they can spare themselves a lot of unnecessary suffering. A long time ago, I realized I had never seen two people who were not jerks divorce. Not once. At least one person was always a problem. The same thing is true in all relationships.

Prayer in tongues repairs hearts and minds. It also keeps husbands and wives aligned with each other. It aligns you with God, and if you’re aligned with him, it’s not possible to be out of alignment with each other. You can have little speed bumps, but you’re not going to throw plates at each other or hire attorneys.

We both come from dysfunctional homes, but God repaired us and continues to repair us. If we stop doing what he has taught us to do, we’ll be as dysfunctional as anyone.

It would be great if everyone in the family were praying in tongues. I don’t see anything like that happening in the future. Old people are hard to save. I have one cousin who, like me, is recovering. By the grace of God.

I wish the family had not turned out this way. It would have been wonderful if we had continued to be close. The worst thing about succeeding is watching people you care about continue to peel off and fail.