Free Otherworld by Jared C. Wilson Page A

I might like to see what it might take to go into Mexico. Like, long term.”
    His mother looked like she might cry.
    His father chose a different line of objection. “Steve, I know you and the kids just got back from having a great time down there. I’m sure the Lord really moved.” He said this as if he had no idea what it really meant. “I’m sure you did a lot of good things for a lot of people, and naturally, you’re real emotional about that. You feel good about it. But I think maybe you’re confusing that with something else. You don’t want to alter your entire life from a week’s worth of a good feeling.” The truth was, Steve knew, it was his father who didn’t want him to alter his life. His father’s plans.
    â€œWhat about being a preacher?” his mother asked.
    â€œIt’s still being a preacher, I guess,” Steve said. “Just different.”
    â€œIt’s not just that,” Father interjected, but it was just that. “I just don’t think you should forget about your goals, here.”
    â€œYeah,” Steve offered lamely. “I guess you’re right.”
    He could not convince them. He knew it was pointless. They lorded his uprightness over him, used it against him. He was a good kid, compliant, passive. Always had been. His respect for his parents was used against his own best interests but he was too respectful to point it out. Any protest could find no purchase. His dad was a master convincer and his mother a master at passive aggression, a veritable maestro with the martyr complex. Trying to convince them that full-time missionary work was what he really aimed to do was like trying to shove a wet piece of paper through the cracks in a brick wall. It wouldn’t go.
    As he aged, matured, he could actually see more of his parents’ perspective, could feel its sensibility take shape in his mind. If he’d had a kid who came home from a short-term mission trip to announce he was going to be a missionary, he would scoff too. What do kids know?
    Except that kids know a lot. No, not about what’s prudent and what’s practical, but much, much more about what’s spiritual, intuitive, what lights up the angelic senses in their souls, what gives life its groove. Kids have faith. Adults have the facts that make faith seem like kid’s stuff.
    So Steve Woodbridge pursued their goals as if they were his own. College. Seminary. Looking back, the only truly fulfilling thing about it all was finding and falling in love with his wife. When those goals were accomplished, he became Pastor Steve Woodbridge, and his life’s work and mission became climbing the corporate ladder of ministry. Knowing the right people. Knowing the right words to say and the right way to act. Moving to another church only if it had a larger congregation and a higher salary (although he would never admit this to anyone, including himself). He played the part and worked his way to the top.
    But others were playing the game too. Which is how he found himself in Houston, lured by a nice salary and a nice building, hornswaggled , as it were, by what turned out to be a congregation mired in conflict, sunk in debt, and primed to vote a tremendous pay cut for their new pastor in his second year.
    And yet, the financial situation was not his regret. His pursuit of the American pastoral dream had come back to bite him, but his lament was not this decision but every decision since 1995. Every day, he could not help but think about that village in Mexico.

CHAPTER FIVE
    The meteorologist’s prediction proved accurate. The coldest day of Houston’s unusual cold spell hit with a vengeance, encasing the Bayou City in an icy cocoon.
    Pops Dickey, back from his journey to the West Coast, made his customary morning rounds on the farm. There would be no reporters on the Dickey farm for a while, no photographers to pose for. (The results from the