Read an Excerpt
NOW, I'M EIGHTEEN
DENNIS
By ELIZABETH GRACE JUNG
Abbott Press
Copyright © 2013 Elizabeth Grace Jung
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4582-0732-6
Chapter One
"
I know, Mom. I heard you. You don't have to tell me twice. I heard the same thing every time you told Kaitlynn and John. Now, I've heard you say the same thing to Steve, and Paul, too. 'Go get your journal and start writing. Why do you insist on cluttering your mind with the things that are bothering you?' Okay, Mom, I'm going. Besides, I've already filled enough pages to write a novel about my life."
"You're probably right, Dennis. If you ever become a leading citizen in the community or go into politics, there might be book publishers clamoring to get the book-rights to your life-story. Why don't you go back through your journal and start a best-selling book? Who knows ... you may have a nice savings in the bank before Steve does."
My brother Steve is sixteen now, and he brags every time he puts a dollar in his savings account. He thinks he's going to be rich someday, but I'll wager he loses it all when he gets his first car or truck.
I went upstairs to my bedroom desk and looked at my older brother's police uniform hanging on a hook on our bedroom wall. John doesn't want it in our bedroom closet. He says I cram things in too tightly, and it gets all the creases messed up after he irons it.
Maybe I do. I try to be careful.
I sat at my desk, just thinking for a moment. I thought about what Mom said downstairs and about how she encouraged each one of us to write our thoughts and feelings on paper. My journals would make interesting reading, if I should ever become a leading citizen in our community, or go into politics. Mom is right. I looked at the police uniform again and thought, I more or less promised John I would go to the Police Academy at the Southeast Missouri University as soon as I graduated from high school.
Oh, well. Right now, I'm not sure of any direction I should take, except to stay on the farm and help Mom with the animals and all the planting and harvesting in the crop season.
I opened my lowest desk drawer to get my journal and pulled out my newest journal and one of the older ones. I had to laugh about some of the things I wrote when I was thirteen. Some of it would make no sense to others, but what I had written on my thirteenth birthday about being a teenager was typical of an immature kid. I chuckled and closed that one and opened my latest journal. I should label them on the front by ages. I could see how a few years later, my thinking and perspective on things had changed. Now, I'm the one in the transition time of my life, and I have to make decisions regarding what I am going to do after high school. Mom told me that my journals would often give me clues for the future by looking at the preparation I've had in high school and through my experiences in the past.
She said, "Dennis, please look at your journals, and while you are at it, think about what you feel are your best talents. Your life up to this point, and for the next few years, is the time of preparation for your future."
When my sister, Kaitlynn, and my brother, John, were seniors, I heard the same thing from Mom. So, the question was always in my mind, from my high school sophomore year, until now: what should I do as an occupation or profession to support myself the rest of my life? Now that I'd become a senior, I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do after I graduate.
I opened my journal and reached for a pen. Since I started thinking about my future, I thought again about what Mom said, and I said to myself, "I should make my life into a novel. Maybe it will sell really well, and I can pay for my college education. That's if I go to college."
I guess I should or would start a book by telling something about myself. I looked over at the police uniform again. I had to pray, "God, did you allow John to hang that uniform on that hook just as a reminder that I should consider the Police Academy?"
I was a little amused and dated the page in my journal and started writing. "I'm Dennis the third child and second son, born to the John and Bonnie Moore family in Chaffee, Missouri. I am eighteen years old now and a senior in Chaffee High School. My sister Kaitlynn is twenty-two, and she is married to Matthew Davis. They live in St. Louis. My older brother John is twenty, and he is studying criminal justice at the university in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. He went through the Police Academy and works part time on the police force in Chaffee. Chaffee is our mailing address, although we live on a farm outside the city of Chaffee, Missouri. Besides my parents and grandparents, John is the biggest influence in my life. Well, God is really the one who influences me most, but he uses my parents and John, and the Bible, too, of course. I try to read my Bible every day and memorize verses, too.
I have two younger brothers, Steve and Paul. We're all less than two years a part in age and being so close in age has helped our ability to work together on the farm. We had to learn each other's jobs, and I think it made us more like close friends. Each of us experienced some health or other serious problem, and our concern for the one with the health issue made us closer as a family. We are supportive of one another, and we appreciate each of our different abilities or talents. Yes, we argue sometimes as siblings do, but usually we don't have the time to waste on bickering. Besides, Mom would intervene very quickly and give us some nonsense chore to do, if we didn't stop and evaluate the other person's opinion. We get even with each other through some harmless revenge, and then we have a good laugh out of it. Humor keeps us from wasting time feeling sorry for ourselves with all the issues that have plagued our family—Dad's farm accident and death, Mom's kidney failure and kidney transplant, Paul's leukemia, my reaction to bee stings, weasels killing our chickens, and other things less serious. Through all the crises, our family has grown stronger and God has been faithful to help all of us. Those two things give me confidence in life.
I closed my journal and just sat on my desk chair thinking about our family. I had many thoughts going through my head and that's exactly what they were doing, going through my mind. I thought about our brain and memory and all that stuff. Sometimes I can recall things in detail just like that police uniform. All the stitching on the pockets are the same and they are probably the same on every uniform designed. I should tell John to put his uniform somewhere else, so it won't distract me.
I opened my journal again and started writing about Kaitlynn and John. I wrote: Both Kaitlynn and John have written about their lives, and I have been encouraged to do the same. It helps us to keep perspective in our thinking when negative things happened. Mom has encouraged us to write. I can hear her, now, telling one of us or all of us, "don't clutter you minds with details that worry you. Write them down and you can refer to them anytime you want. Besides, while you are writing, the details get evaluated, and often don't seem as trivial as you thought at first." Mom was right about that, too.
People have said we are mature kids. I owe that to Mom and to Dad too, before he died. Some kids think they are mature because they have the facts about life, meaning all about sex, but I think assuming responsibility and consideration for others is being mature and not the process of mating in humans. Grandpa lived with us, and his wisdom was always given in such a way that I always felt as though I had more understanding about life. John said the same thing. He probably wrote that in his journal. My parents and Grandpa taught us to look to God for answers when there didn't appear to be any. Grandpa used to say, "People will fail you, but God will never fail you." Then he would burst out in the chorus of the song "Jesus never fails." It was written by A.A. Luther, and copyrighted in 1927. I can hear Grandpa's voice in my mind. He had a baritone voice, and he would sing the words to "Jesus never fails" after having a discussion with us on friendships.
The first verse says, "Earthly friends may prove untrue, doubts and fears assail; one still loves and cares for you: One who will not fail." Then Grandpa would put his hand on my shoulder or arm to make sure I was listening, and sing the chorus. "Jesus never fails, Jesus never fails; Heaven and Earth may pass away, but Jesus never fails." That keeps my thoughts positive. John was always repeating to me what Grandpa had told him. Sometimes I felt like I was getting a triple dose of something that Grandpa had said. Grandpa would say something, Mom would say almost the same words, and then John would repeat it to me. I wonder if I then repeated the same things to my younger brother, Steve.
One day I heard Grandpa singing a different verse, and I wondered who he was singing to that time. I went and looked, and it was Mom. She was standing by a kitchen counter, and he was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee in front of him. Mom must have been feeling bad about something because Grandpa belted out-loud, "Tho' the sky be dark and drear, fierce and strong the gale, just remember He is near, and He will not fail." I must have been around ten or twelve years old. Grandpa looked at me as I pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat. He placed his hand on my arm and continued singing, "Jesus never fails. Jesus never fails."
Then he spoke the last words, "Heaven and earth may pass away, but Jesus never fails."
Grandpa glanced at me and then Mom and said, "Your husband and his dad may have passed away, but Jesus is still near us."
He looked at Mom with a very serious face. He said, "Daughter, remember that!"
Then he looked at me and said, "Dennis, do you understand the words in that song?"
I said, "Yeah," and left the kitchen. I don't know why that scene just went through my mind. Now that I'm older, I understand why Grandpa used the words in many songs to get a message into our hearts and minds. All of us in the family needed encouragement from time to time, and God used the songs, written long before we were born, to give us some stability in our lives without Dad.
I should get back to my journal and write again. My mind was wandering to memories of Grandpa and many other things. I clicked my pen a couple of times and started writing. I wrote: Our family has worked together in just about everything. We worked together at the Chaffee Café when Mom was the owner. Now, we work together to make our farm prosperous, and we play our musical instruments and sing together. Mom and Dad insisted that we pray together over family problems, and we go to church together.
I laid my pen down because I knew I was writing the same things that my older sister, Kaitlynn, and my older brother, John, had already written.
* * *
Last Fall I started working one night a week with my older brother in Cape Girardeau at a youth center. The work is a crime prevention program that Officer Harrison started. He has six young teen-aged boys meet at the youth center once or twice a week after school. Officer Harrison is on the police force in Cape Girardeau and teaches in the Criminal Justice Department at the Southeast Missouri University and the Law Enforcement Academy, too. John attends college there and I will in September. I guess, I will. I sort of promised John I would go.
It's been more than a year since Officer Harrison called my brother John to help, and he came home and asked me to help. Now, we have another program out on the farm giving the boys an opportunity to help themselves and their families. There is a lot of work, heartache, and reward seeing six boys, ages thirteen to fifteen, from poor, dysfunctional families, turn themselves into hard-working productive kids with hope for the future. It's rewarding to see attitudes changed and school work become a priority.
I took on the responsibility for the planning and seeing that each boy would feel special when he came to the farm. It was rewarding to me. I'm not much older than the boys in the program, but my brother John was in the midst of spring planting when Officer Harrison called or talked to John at the university. John tried to tell the officer that he had a full workload on the farm, and his studies for classes at the university took all his available time, but it didn't come out that way. God put words in John's mouth, and he said, "The only way I can do it is to have the boys come to the farm and work for me."
Officer Harrison thought it was a great idea. I thought it was, too. Everyone but John thought the boys would be a project that the whole family could do. My idea was to give the boys the use of three acres to make gardens and produce vegetables and fruit for their families. Anything extra, the boys could sell at a roadside stand. It seemed like a good idea to me, but John needed encouragement.
God had already given us extra help on the farm, when Paul's orthopedic doctor, Dr. Lynn, retired and purchased the farm adjacent to ours. Dr. Lynn's son, Brian, came back from a university in England and was experienced at keeping machinery in repair. He stepped in to help with our tractors and other farm equipment as well as on Mr. Jenkins's and Dr. Lynn's farm, next to ours.
Then Paul's home nurse's husband, Mr. Webster, was laid off work, and he took up the job of painting all of our out-buildings—the barn and the shed, and he even used masonry paint on the cinder-block chicken house. He painted our house, too. He taught the boys in the prevention program to paint. They were afraid at first, but after they got the hang of filling in holes and using the brush, and painting in only one direction they were very proud of themselves. I heard one of the older boys telling another boy, "In jest two or three years, I'm gonna get me a job paintin'. All the houses on 'ar street needs paintin' jest like the Moore's barn. It'd sure look better. I think I'd be most proud to live on 'ar street if'n the old houses look as good as this 'n."
I told the boy, "That's a good idea. You hang onto that. I think I might even pay for your first two-gallon cans of paint. You do a good job here, and I will even get you some business cards."
He asked, "What's a business card?"
I explained, "It's a little card with your name, phone number, and the title of your painting business. You can give them to the people on your street. They might call you to paint something for them. Then, if they like your work, they'll tell others to call you. So, do a good job here, and maybe I'll find a business that will hire you to help them.
You would have thought the boy, who was almost sixteen, had just been handed a platter of one-thousand dollar bills. He looked at me for 10 seconds. He was thinking. He finally said, "I be sixteen in three months. Do ya think I kin quit schoolin' 'n work at a paintin' job?"
I said, "No, don't quit. Stay in school as long as you can or until you graduate from high school."
He wanted to know why. "I know how ta paint now."
I had to quickly think of a logical answer. I said, "If you can't figure out how many gallons of paint you will need for a certain size job, and figure out how much to pay your helpers or to save to pay taxes, you might not have any money left over for yourself."
One of the other boys said, "Yeah, Martin, that's why we have to take math. You're good at math."
I said, "That's good, but we won't get this job done, if we stand around and talk."
I turned to wipe my brush off and place it in a brush cleaner bucket, and I heard a third boy's voice say, "Aw Marty, youse jest dream'n agin."
He was about fifteen feet away from me, but he'd been listening to the conversation I was having with the other two boys. I wiped my hands off and looked at him. He said, "I'm paintin.' See, I did all this yere. I'm faster'n them are."
He waved his brush around to show me where he had painted. I saw drops of paint go through the air and I wanted to fuss at him, but I got my thoughts organized, and said, "Yeah, Buddy, you are all doing a good job, but did you know that dreaming sometimes turns into an invention? Take the farm truck sitting over there. That used to be just a dream in someone's mind. Have you ever heard of Henry Ford? Well, Mr. Ford and his friends got tired of riding on horses, and invented something that they say has more horse power than six or eight horses. They dreamed about that until they finally did something to make their dream come true. Don't be afraid to dream and then do something to make your dream come true, especially, if it is something helpful for people."
The boy looked at the other boys and then down at his brush and then put it down in his paint bucket to get more paint on it. He said, "Yeah, s'pose youse right."
I went on in the house, smiling to myself. John wanted to know what put the big grin on my face. I said, "Well, John, I just learned that a few chosen words at the right time can encourage your boys to be dreamers of something good."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from NOW, I'M EIGHTEEN by ELIZABETH GRACE JUNG Copyright © 2013 by Elizabeth Grace Jung. Excerpted by permission of Abbott Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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