Dime Store Candy

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was a crook. My favorite target was the dime store – the Ben Franklin on Main. My product preference was the bite-size Hershey candy bar, individually wrapped, which retailed for one penny.

Shoplifting was risky business because the candy racks were just across the aisle from the two cashiers. If I were too greedy and grabbed more than my small hand could hold I jeopardized the heist. If I reached for too little I’d have to return and commit the crime too often.

In all fairness to the thieving profession, I never stole that much candy and the candy I did take was the cheapest, lowest quality chocolate the market provided. After all, it was Hershey’s chocolate, and as everyone knows, American chocolate doesn’t compare in price or quality to European chocolate. Thankfully, I left this underworld soon enough and settled in to the routines of boyhood and adolescent life.

When I was 14 I was ready for the greatest conceptual shift I would ever face. In the very early hours of one morning in May, I had a semi-dramatic encounter with God. It lasted only seconds, but at its end I relinquished self-interest in exchange for a life dedicated to the kingdom of the living Christ.

It wasn’t long before I was on a trajectory of transcendence. Over the next few years my passion for God became an obsession. I was reading huge chunks of the Bible every day. During one summer job I carried a pocket New Testament with me and at every free moment found time to read it. Sometimes late at night I would go to the church and pray or worship with the freedom and abandonment that only aloneness can bring. The wakeful hours of the day were consumed with thoughts of God when my mind wasn’t preoccupied with the mundanity of daily living. I knew what it was like to experience the overwhelming presence of the Almighty.

Accompanying this spiritual immersion was a visionary projection of my discipleship potential. I saw myself as an apostle traversing the globe preaching the gospel to millions. Through my hands miraculous power would heal the sick and raise the dead. With supernatural wisdom I would contend with leaders and intellectuals and bring them to the truth. I would ignite a revolution and usher in the greatest revival the world had ever witnessed. This was my unique calling, and it wasn’t some dime store variety. It was a caliber of faith akin to that of the Twelve, Luther and Calvin, and Whitefield, Finney and Graham.

Years and years of spiritual growth merged into decades of devotion intermingled with the joys and challenges of getting married, starting a family, plying a vocation, rearing the kids, making ends meet, and saving for college. My once boiling fervor for God gradually lowered to a slight simmer and in the process much of that earlier vision evaporated. I accepted the certainty that my life was going to fall far short of the prophetic call I had imagined years before.

Fifty years after that initial encounter with God and I am still consuming the spiritual equivalent of dime store candy. While I had every intention of moving on to exotic chocolate brands as I matured, the actuality annihilated the anticipation, leaving me stalled on a journey to nowhere. I can’t count on one hand anything I’ve accomplished for God, let alone achieved of any singular significance. The unexceptional life that back then appeared so remote as to not even exist in the realm of possibility materialized slowly and stealthily until one day I opened my eyes and saw it for what it was.

Comparative rationalizations are always precarious because they never match equivalent factors. Yet, they’re difficult not to indulge when staring at Medicare eligibility in a few months. I don’t have another fifty years ahead of me to prove to anyone that the previous fifty were an anomaly. There’s nothing I can do to hide the blank slate in my hands, and there’s nothing gained at glancing at my competitors. Still….

I’m compelled to compare. A long-ago friend who actually interned for me in the governor’s office twenty-five years ago went on to get his law degree, serve in the administrations of three U.S. presidents, work for two U.S. secretaries of state, assist the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and teach at a prestigious east coast university. My best friend in high school forty-seven years ago got his doctorate in social work and made a global name for himself with a vita today that is twenty-eight pages long.

I could go on with other friends but then the point would be lost. I’m happy they all launched into exemplary lives but why couldn’t I find even a launchpad?

Obviously, success is relative, based on the complex convergence of background, skill, opportunity, initiative, and timing. Some men take these and shine like the sun while eating as many Toblerone bars as they want. Other men take the same elements and end up mostly cloudy while eating a waxy, dime store Hershey’s.

I never wanted to be satisfied with cheap dime store candy. My aim was to make an exquisite, non-imitative mark on the world if only to hear Him say well done good and faithful servant. However, here I am having arrived at what feels like a vacant lot that will forever define my life. Sure, I can point to my wonderful wife and beautiful children, but they aren’t personal achievements. I own a home, but so do billions of others. I am a full-time caregiver, but so are many parents.

I lack the chance to say I did this, because I haven’t done anything. The best I can do is to share my Hershey’s with someone who can’t tell the difference between dime store chocolates and more expensive confections. And just maybe, after they’ve finished eating it, they won’t ask me how it came to be that I acquired a taste for cheap chocolate, but whether I have any more.