FIFTEEN
CONFESSION
The first weeks of July burned into the plains, nurturing the cornfields with
all the heat of a giant greenhouse. Wedgewood blue skies arced over
Imperial almost every day, the air buzzing with mosquitoes in the sunshine
and singing with crickets by starlight. Around the middle of July, I drove
over to Greeley, Colorado, for the church district conference. The gathering
of about 150 pastors, pastors’ wives, and delegates from Nebraska and
Colorado was meeting at the church pastored by Steve Wilson—the same
church I’d visited back in March while Sonja stayed back at the Harrises’
home, nursing Colton when we all thought he had a stomach flu.
Roman Catholics practice confession as a sacrament, sharing their sins
and shortcomings with a priest. Protestants practice confession, too,
though a little less formally, often confiding in God without an intermediary.
But Colton’s recent revelation that my raging prayers had ascended
directly to heaven—and had received an equally direct response—made
me feel like I had some additional confessing to do.
I didn’t feel good about having been so angry with God. When I was so
upset, burning with righteous anger that he was about to take my child,
guess who was holding my child? Guess who was loving my child, unseen?
As a pastor, I felt accountable to other pastors for my own lack of faith. So
at Greeley Wesleyan during the conference, I asked Phil Harris, our district
superintendent, if I could have a few minutes to share.
He agreed, and when the time came, I stood up before my peers in the
sanctuary that on Sunday mornings held around a thousand people in its
pews. After delivering a brief update on Colton’s health, I thanked these
men and women for their prayers on behalf of our family. Then I began my
confession.
“Most of you know that before everything happened with Colton, I had
broken my leg and gone through the kidney stone operation, then the
mastectomy. I had had such a bad year that some people had started
calling me Pastor Job.”