Free Family Squeeze by Phil Callaway

pray that God would transform my tongue and use my words to bring healing and hope.
    I believe it is one of the prayers God loves to hear and that He answers it for all of us. I have seen Him do so in the most surprising ways.
    I was speaking about God’s grace at a large convention recently, and when I stepped off the stage, guess who was waiting for me? Ken. I kid you not. He gave me a bear hug that made my kidneys hurt. There were tears streaming down his face. Ten minutes later, guess who elbowed his way through the crowd? Larry. There were tears in his eyes. Mine too. Two bullies and a skinny kid. On even ground at the foot of the cross. Amazed by grace.
    As
parents we do what we can, but we always fall short. And God’s grace comes in. Surprising each new generation, captivating us, meeting us where we are but never leaving us where it finds us.
    “Isn’t God good?” said Ken, taking my right hand and squeezing it a little too hard. “How’s the thumb?”
    “Never better,” I said. “Never better.”
    Author’s note:
Names have been changed in this chapter because these guys are still bigger than I.

Dogs lead a nice life
.
You never see a dog with a wristwatch
.
    G EORGE C ARLIN
    I t’s a funny thing, this getting older. Okay, maybe not so funny. But interesting. It’s an adventure unlike anything we’ve experienced before. For one thing, our bodies aren’t what they used to be. We have to stretch before playing checkers now. We get winded looking at staircases. To make matters worse, those same bodies have simply stopped taking directions. In fact, they’ve gone on strike. “Feed me,” they whimper, “and I will think of serving you again. Feed me large hampers full of cholesterol-stuffed ham and red meat.”
    Since the age of three I have played ice hockey. But lately when I play, my mind screams at me, saying, “Go get the puck, you fool! It’s right there in front of you!” Meanwhile, my body hollers, “I bet Ed’s Diner will be open after the game. They serve those nachos with that cheese-flavored lard! Besides, there is a younger guy who wants the puck worse than me. Let him have it!” And my mind, which doesn’t hear so well anymore, repeats the words, “Let him have it”—and my body, which rarely follows directions, finally decides to. So I shish-kebab the younger guy with my hockey stick.
    The forgetfulness problem is an interesting one too. Recently, at alarge gathering, I introduced myself to the same person twice within the space of three minutes.
    “But we just met,” he said, this younger guy with a razor-sharp mind.
    “Aha,” I replied, “I was testing you.”
    Perhaps you’ve done something similar. You meet someone you haven’t seen since high school and want to introduce him to your spouse. You say, “Honey, this is, um…a dear friend of mine from…uh…high school. We were in, uh…a class together. I sat next to him three years in a row… Yes, we were best friends… He was best man at our wedding…and, uh… Do either of you need more punch?”
    There are three things we need to remember when it comes to forgetfulness:
    1. Our minds are like sponges, but they also leak.
    2. The part that doesn’t leak isn’t of much use.
    As early as ninth grade, our brains begin to accumulate junk—years and years of completely useless information—which includes jokes told during recess and the lyrics to seventies songs. Almost every day people ask me important questions about history, about the Christian life—sometimes on radio or national television—and though I am trying to access file folders stored in my brain since youth, all I can think of is a lyric swirling round and round, a lyric I am not making up:
    Drop kick me, Jesus, through the goalposts of life…
    Straight through the heart of them righteous uprights.
    Country songs are to blame for the mass migration of most of my thoughts at vital moments. I cannot count the times I have racked my brain for an