EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON

I don't know exactly why it is that our Father in Heaven gets the thanks--or the blame--for every single thing that happens. Now, lest I sound blasphemous, I don't mean this in a bad way whatsoever. I want to thank God for everything he has given me, everything he has made me. Even the bad things that happen often end up being blessings in their own way, if we learn something from them. Having said that, I want to talk about my 1990 Cadillac Fleetwood.

When, in the late 1990's, my friend Bob Hammer died, I purchased this beautiful silver two door from his wife, Inez. Other than the smell of cigarette smoke, which thanks to leather seats ended up disippating until you couldn't smell it anymore the car was immaculate. Bob always kept it clean, and nicely protected in an old garage, which unfortunately was more than I could offer the old girl. But I still loved that car, kept the maintenance up on it faithfully, and together, she and my family traveled many thousands of miles and some twenty states, one time for twenty-eight days straight.

Well, not too long ago the driver's window began having problems, and there came a time when it would no longer work. By this time, we had four children, and we decided to buy a mini van. We made the mistake of picking a Dodge, but that's a story for another blog! Anyway, we temporarily retired the Cadillac and took the plates off it to put on the van.

Well, in that strange way they have, the city code folks caught wind of this horrible looking, (spotless, beautiful silver) Cadillac on my property, so they put the screws on, so to speak. They wouldn't rest until it was in an enclosed garage--which we don't now have and never did. So finally, in desperation, I moved the Cadillac to a friend's property, where we parked it next to his old garage, which sits across the street from his house.

Now, in this part of southern Idaho, we have these things that some know as "winds." But they are not really winds. They are more like sustained cyclones or hurricanes, except that the wind almost all comes out of the southwest, rather than going in a circle. We had two weekends of these winds recently, and I was blissfully ignorant, or at least forgetful, of the cottonwood trees hovering over my beloved Cadillac, so I left it sitting where it was . . .

Let me back up a minute to say that my oldest boy, Jacob, has recently acquired his driver's license, and he was very excited to have me fix up the beautiful old Caddy for him to drive. He has this early morning missionary preparation class he wanted to attend two days a week, and without the car he would be walking the two miles to school in all kinds of weather. So I decided to grant him his wish. However, I was, shall we say, a little slow . . .

Which takes me back to my Cadillac. Last Saturday night, the winds howled hard for the second week in a row, and we received a call from the friend on whose property our Caddy was taking her ease. It seemed that sometime in the night, that tired old cottonwood next to his garage had at last succumbed to the howling wind. But rather than fall in the direction the wind was blowing it, it turned at right angles and fell all the way down the length of my Caddy, from trunk to hood, totalling the car.

My reaction upon going down to see it, even as my wife was bursting into tears, was to laugh and tell my friend, "That's now by far the most expensive firewood I've ever had." What could I do but laugh? Crying or swearing certainly wasn't going to get my car back.

But now, after this long lead-in, I come to the point of this blog. There are many out there who would say, "Everything happens for a reason." And at that point they would start to conjecture that, as I jokingly did on Facebook, perhaps my boy would have been in a bad wreck with the Cadillac the very first day he drove it. So God was protecting him by letting that tree fall on top of it. Try to think of any other "silver lining." I'm sure if you are good at that game there could be others.

I, however, do not subscribe to this way of thinking. There is not always a reason for everything that happens. Life just . . . happens. You go along, and good things happen to you, and then suddenly something bad happens. Maybe a whole bunch of bad things. Well, believe me, God did not "do something to you." It just happened. Did he stop it? No. But we were put on this earth to face challenges and see how we would handle them. God could make happen or stop from happening anything he wanted to, but that is not generally part of the plan. If there is some really important reason for something to happen a different way that Mother Nature has it planned, God is always free to step in. But I firmly believe He almost never does. He lets us choose how the bad--or the good--things will affect us.

I have always been slightly offended when told that someone's relative or friend died and left this world because God wanted them with him, because they were just too special of a spirit to be left in this horrible world. That is telling me, indirectly, that not only I, my wife, and all my friends and family, and also my own four beautiful children, just weren't special enough to be taken out of this world by God, to go live with him. I do not for one moment believe that God makes a practice of pulling innocent people--or those not-so-innocent--out of this world. He just allows life--and death--to happen.

Everything, in my opinion, does NOT have to happen for a reason. To paraphrase Forest Gump, sometimes "stuff happens." It just happens. We live with it and keep our sense of humor. Or we get bitter about it and blame God, that is if we search and search and can't find the reason why he either "did" this to us or let it happen.

I am now going to have to find another car for my son. Unless I want him to walk two miles to school in howling wind and 25 degree temperatures, as he did this morning before dawn. But that Cadillac wasn't destined to be crushed because God wanted me to buy Jake a compact car so he could save gas. It wasn't crushed because we needed a less flashy color. It wasn't crushed because God doesn't likke Cadillacs. It was simply crushed because a tree fell on it, which trees sometimes do. I was just the lucky one this time--the lottery winner. Had I taken the car out a week ago and had it fixed, it would still be a nice car.

The "reason" this happened is because the wind blew hard one night and a big tree decided to topple, and gravity made it topple in the exact direction of my Cadillac. End of story. No deep soul searching needed to figure this one out.

But wait . . . Perhaps my Cadillac was simply too special and beautiful to be here in this horrible world, and Heavenly Father wanted it up there with him. It could be, couldn't it?

TRIBUTE TO MY FRIEND, PETER BRECK

It is one of those days you foolishly hope will never come. I almost wish I had not come in to work today. But I did. And on one of my discussion groups I read the astonishing news: Peter Breck, a.k.a. Nick Barkley, is dead.

When I was young, I became a huge fan of Peter's in watching The Big Valley reruns. My brother and I would often play the Barkleys when we played what we referred to as "big men," rather than "cowboys." My cousin Cory often joined in as well. Of course, I never got to be Nick, because that was forever my brother, Jamie's part. And if Cory was there, he was always Heath, so strangely the younger brother became the oldest brother, Jarrod.

Time moved on, and in time, in March of 1999, I met and began a friendship with the real man behind Nick, Peter Breck. We met at a "Festival of the West," in Scottsdale, Arizona, where I gave him a copy of my book, Death of an Eagle. Unbeknownst to me, he was a huge fan of eagles, and I guess that explains our instant connection. He immediately told me if I ever put the book on audio he would love to be the man reading it. Of course, that honor eventually went to another great friend, James Drury, "The Virginian," but I would have loved it just as well in Peter's voice.

Later on the day I met Peter, my wife and I seated ourselves to watch a concert, and Debbie pointed to our right, where I found Peter sitting with his ever-present gloves on top of his head. That was Peter. Funny to the end. He sat there with those gloves perched on top of his full head of brown hair, looking as serious as a broken femur.

One of my favorite stories about Peter happened around 2001, when I received a late evening phone call. "Hi, this is Peter Breck." I was stunned, but of course happy. We chatted for a while, after he apparently dropped a stack of papers he had been holding. He sounded like he might have been drinking a little, but that, with Peter, was even endearing. At one time he told me to "give your mother a hug. Give ALL your family a hug. And aim low--they might be crawling."

He called another time to ask for "Jimmy Drury's phone number." I never could stand the name Jimmy, but that's what Peter called him, and to Jim Peter was "Pete." Anyway, I gave him Jim's phone number, and after we chatted briefly he hung up to call him. Debbie was standing there in awe, and she said the words I will never forget: "Would you have ever thought Nick Barkley would be calling you to get the Virginian's phone number?"

Over the past few years I kept meaning to call Peter, but I kept putting it off. As I keep in touch regularly with Jim, it is a shame that I let Peter go, but I did. I just thought he would always be there when I needed him. And then I saw the news. Peter died on Monday, and before that he was suffering from dementia. It brings me back to the sad knowledge that Clint Walker, another hero, is in the early stages of this disease himself, and has suffered it for longer than Peter did. I find myself wondering how long Clint will last, and it is hard to keep tears out of my eyes.

And so our heroes pass before our eyes into the Great Beyond, leaving only their memories behind, and their images on old film. I loved that man, Peter Breck, and I cherish the memories of the times we talked about his days on The Big Valley. I only wish I could have gone to stay with him in Vancouver as he invited me to do so long ago. You always think there will be one more day.