April 14, 2007 

Southwest Flight # 2756 is scheduled to leave San Antonio from Gate 3 at 7:10 this morning. Seth is feeling quite full of himself. He wears another remnant of the old self in the form of a black T-Shirt with the words “The First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”  It’s his Shakespeare shirt, and he has worn it, in the past, to tweak Stacy a bit.  He realizes, today, that none of that matters. It’s just a shirt.

The door to the jet way opens at 6:50, and Seth steps forward onto yet another flight back to Charlotte. He awoke early this morning with those three little words nagging at him, like a gnat about his head on a hot summer day. They were no longer a way to avoid the present. He no longer had a need to avoid the present and they had become a nuisance. Frankly, he was angry, and he decided to bid them goodbye on his two hour flight back to Charlotte.

“Yeah? And? So?”

“My old friends”, he thought.  “I am going to have to send you packing.”

He first heard these words from Dwight shortly after the “Pharisee” indictment... Seth, as was his way, was beating himself up, again, and again over the mistakes of his past. It was during an otherwise uneventful counseling session that Dwight began listening to Seth, and he took a new tact.

“ I just don’t know how to make it all make sense, Dwight. I had so much potential, and I am afraid that I am wasting it. I mean, look at me, man. I have lost two marriages, my finances are a wreck, and I can’t seem to keep it together for more than a couple of days at a time without becoming a nervous wreck”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I mean, look at all of the people that I have hurt over the years; My mom, my friends, my wives, my children, my employers, gee, Dwight, I could go on and on if you don’t stop me”

“And?”

What was Dwight getting at? Usually he would begin to engage Seth by now when this oft-repeated self-disdain crept into their conversation.  Not today.

“And what, man?  Don’t you see how much of a worm I am? Can’t you at least dignify my depravity with something more than “Yeah?” and “And?”?”

“So?”

“So? That’s all you’ve got say? Yeah? And? So? What are you getting at Dwight?” Thunder rolled outside the tiny office in the tiny cottage on Church Street in Gastonia, NC. It had rained all day and it appeared that it would continue. Now, another storm was beginning to rage, outside the windows of this cottage, and inside Seth’s soul.

Dwight knew what he was doing.  One of the ways to help a client come to grips with his own weaknesses is to help him remember that, indeed, in Christ there is no condemnation.  Dwight, in role-playing the Christ-figure was attempting to make Seth understand that he was, indeed, no longer condemned by God for his past sins.

Southwest flight # 2756 flies harmlessly above the clouds below. Seth glances out the window, pondering now his relationship with Dwight and the meaning of those three little words.

Down below, storms rage. Somewhere down there, one of God’s creatures takes the life of another; In a small apartment complex in east Texas, a sinner leaves his wife to be with his secret love of the past 6 months; a desperate young man dons a ski mask, pulls out a .45, walks into a 7-11 and demands cash; a scared teen quietly and ashamedly walks through the doors of the abortion clinic, and her life changes forever. Somewhere down there, a homeless man breathes his last breath, his head drops to the ground, and, eyes wide open, he stares down the long alley that became his final address. Somewhere down there, a junkie shoots up in the bathroom of the woman he loves, trying desperately to keep his secret, and knowing, just like all of the other masters of self deception, that someday he will be found out.  A gambler strolls out of a casino in Louisiana, pockets as empty as his soul, broke, tired, desperate and afraid. A hooker stands on the sidewalk. As a car approaches, windows rolled down, she utters, for the millionth time “Want a date?”

Yes, there are storms below. Storms in the lives of just about everyone down there.  Each of those lives needs an anchor, a safe harbor in their own storm. They need those three little words right now. They need to know that, indeed, there is no condemnation for him that is in Christ. They need to know, “Yeah? And?, So?”

As he flies above these storms, Seth realizes something else new. There is forgiveness, and there is no more condemnation in these storms, but something else has to happen before these stormy lives can no longer be called murderers, adulterers, thieves, junkies, gamblers and hookers. That something else is the part that he never got to during those years with Dwight. That something else is what he is attempting to do with his fortnight of thought, and final remembrance of the poor, sick man he had become. That something else is called Repentance.