Part 4 (1/2)

The idea of selling things to consumers that have to be completely constructed from scratch was an evolutionary thing. It started with things coming ready to take out of the box and use, then progressed to ”batteries not included,” and then came the innocent enough label ”some a.s.sembly required,” meaning that the package contained two or three large pieces that would easily fit together and the product required nothing more than simple observation to make it work. I wasn't fortunate enough to do my ”daddying” during those golden days of American toydom. By the time it fell upon me to prepare the Christmas toys for the big day, the a.s.sembly of almost anything other than a stuffed animal required a minimum of a master's degree in mechanical engineering from MIT and four or five a.s.sistants who had previously helped a.s.semble s.p.a.ce shuttles for NASA. I'm sure it won't be long before the stuffed animals will come packaged as a bag of stuffing, some cloth material, plastic pieces for eyes, nose, and accessories, and a little sewing kit so the consumer can build the teddy bear from the pieces and parts.

Right after John Mark's third birthday in 1979, we were in the process of moving from Texas back to Arkansas and Janet and I thought it was time for him to get his first tricycle. This is always a milestone in a child's life-the day he extends movement beyond his own legs and employs a mechanical device to move him more efficiently and quickly. I had loved my tricycle when I was a kid and pretty much worn it out riding up and down the sidewalks of my neighborhood and around my house on rainy days. I was sure that no child could turn out normal without a bike, so I was excited to buy John Mark's first ”vehicle” and teach him how to ride.

I attempted to purchase an already-a.s.sembled tricycle from each of the local stores that sold them and was virtually laughed out of the store for daring to request such a thing. ”Those are floor display models,” I was brutally told, and my attempt to buy one was met with derision. Logic was no weapon in this endeavor. I pointed out that the floor models were likely s.h.i.+pped to the store as a box full of parts and that whoever put them together had obviously done a good job, so why not sell me one and let that experienced tricycle engineer simply put another together? No can do, they told me. I offered to pay to have their guy do it (a practice I must have inspired, since now I see that service offered regularly by stores) but was rebuffed.

My son was going to have a tricycle no matter what! Of course, the smart thing would have been to buy the box of bolts and metal pieces and ask my dad (the grandpa) or even my wife to a.s.semble it. But having to admit that I was a total wimp who couldn't even a.s.semble a tricycle would have been emasculating to me. I mean, it was a tricycle, not an ultralight airplane or a rocket s.h.i.+p. How hard could it be? So armed with my manly pride and all the confidence I could muster, I purchased a tricycle at Wal-Mart, took the box home, and announced to Janet that I would put it together on Christmas Eve after John Mark went to bed. Janet offered to help, but of course I waved off any a.s.sistance, as that would have directly threatened my manhood and I might as well start carrying a purse.

It's a little tricycle, for heaven's sake! I should have known better and simply let Janet put it together, but no-I was out to prove that being a dad had magically endowed me with new powers to do for my son at Christmas what every other American dad did for his son.

Once we put John Mark to bed around eight thirty on Christmas Eve, I immediately went to the garage, which would be the staging area for this momentous event. The tricycle was no longer a toy for my boy-it was the symbol of my manhood and ability to celebrate Christmas the way G.o.d intended.

As I opened the box, I was a bit intimidated by the fact that there were what seemed like about four hundred little plastic packets, each of which had a different size screw, nut, and washer, along with dozens of larger parts that, when put together, were supposed to form a tricycle. No two pieces had been attached or a.s.sembled in any way. I'm sure that various pieces of the little three-wheeled challenge had been fabricated in various manufacturing plants around the world, and now I had before me a collection of parts and a very pathetic excuse for a parts list and instruction manual that contained indecipherable instructions and a few pencil sketches to ill.u.s.trate what the end result should look like.

The first challenge was simply trying to figure out which size screw was what and how they fit into the overall picture. They all looked alike to me, and the variations in size weren't distinguishable based on the pictures in the manual.

I would have been better able to figure out the Rubik's Cube while blindfolded. Concern began to give way to sheer panic-my son would wake up on Christmas morning and I would present him with a floor filled with various pieces of bright red tubular metal, some little wheels, and several large piles of hardware. I would announce, ”Merry Christmas, son! Santa brought you a tricycle!”

I could imagine him looking at the entire floor covered with unconnected pieces and bursting into tears thinking that Santa's elves must have unionized and gone on strike. Then I would have to listen to his mother chide me for having ruined Christmas, not just for John Mark but for the entire planet. Somehow, I was sure she would blame me for ruining the spirit of the holiday through my laziness and pride.

I couldn't let this get to me! I labored on, attempting to find pieces of the puzzle that either would fit or could be forced to connect with one another.

The project that should have taken about an hour was consuming the entire night. Janet checked on me to ask how it was going, and of course, I lied like a snake and told her it was going just fine. She went to bed around midnight and I again lied and said I should be headed that way soon. That part wasn't as bad a lie-it was true that I should be headed that way, but what should be and what was were totally different things.

By four o'clock on Christmas morning, something remotely resembling a tricycle sat in the middle of the garage. And you know what? It turns out I didn't need all those screws, nuts, and washers after all, because I had a pile of them left over that I hadn't been able to fit.

I placed the trike under the tree just in time for John Mark to wake up and go into the family room, where the tree proudly stood with his little Christmas hat from his first Christmas topping it. There was that red, s.h.i.+ny tricycle in all its glory-well, most of its glory, since there were some parts missing.

For reasons that I still do not fully understand, that little tricycle always squeaked, and no amount of WD-40 could make it stop. I a.s.sured John Mark that it was just the equivalent of motor noise and that it would help us locate him if he was riding about the neighborhood.

Another thing that was a bit odd about the tricycle was that with each revolution of the back left wheel, the entire bike leaned slightly to the left. It was as if it were limping on a sore tire. Despite all of my creative communication skills, I couldn't find a way to euphemistically explain to John Mark why his tricycle had this very distinct disability. He seemed to accept that limitation, although I don't think his mother ever forgave me for having refused her a.s.sistance in building it in the first place. And I have wished for the past thirty years that I had asked for her help. In fact, what I probably should have done is said, ”This tricycle a.s.sembly looks really easy and shouldn't take but a few minutes. I think I'll just let you go ahead and put it together and I'll get our Christmas music lined up on the ca.s.sette player for Christmas morning.”

I learned a lot from my dismal failure at seeking to be the ”big-shot dad” by attempting to put that little tricycle together by myself. As Clint Eastwood said in Magnum Force, ”A man's got to know his limitations.”

I learned some of mine on that long Christmas Eve night. Knowing our limitations and not trying to do things outside our capacity often means we have to break down our pride and admit we need help. I don't buy things that require a.s.sembly unless there is someone (wife, son, etc.) who has agreed in advance to put them together. I don't need to waste money on an item I can't figure out, and I don't have the time to go through the endless frustration of my utter ineptness at all things requiring manual dexterity.

I have come to learn that Christmas is about accepting more than just my limitations in the a.s.sembly of toys and appliances. It's about accepting that I'm incapable of putting my own life together and making all the pieces fit. It's about recognizing that G.o.d isn't asking me to impress Him with my skills at ”building a perfect human being.” He didn't send His son to criticize my failures or laugh at my very miserable attempts at putting all the screws, nuts, and washers in my life in the right place. In fact, His son became a carpenter so he'd really have the hang of patiently building something from the rawest of materials.

There's nothing disgraceful about admitting the need for help. The real disgrace is being so filled with pride and ego that we don't reach out for the help that we so obviously need, and in the end we fail anyway.

My limitations in toy building may have almost made me convert to Judaism, but they also showed me that this is what Christmas is all about. We are not alone. G.o.d has already reached out to us before we even ask for Him. He can handle my limitations, and so should I.

Once I fully realized this, I understood that Christmas wasn't the problem. It was the answer. I was the problem. But I could fix this by finally accepting my limitations and remembering Christmas for what it really is. Simple. Powerful and profound, but simple.

Transitions.

Christmas is, in many ways, a milestone that marks various parts of our year. We will put things off ”until after Christmas” or commit to get something done ”before Christmas.” We speak of Christmas as a reference point in time, as in ”We haven't seen them since last Christmas.” For many of us Christmas is the biggest and most antic.i.p.ated holiday of the year, and it's thought of not just as a day but as an entire season. Christmas is also the time when you catch up with many people in your life-family, friends, neighbors-whom you might not have spoken to in a while. It's a time to reflect on life-what you're doing, what you've done, and what you hope to do.

It's also a time of transition-from one year to the next-so it shouldn't come as too big a surprise that some of the most significant transitions and turning points in my life have occurred around Christmas. Janet and I left Arkansas to move to Texas after her bout with spinal cancer right at Christmas, and we moved into our first house just a few weeks before Christmas. But since then we've experienced several more Christmas transitions that have greatly affected the course of our lives as a whole.

From the time I was in elementary school, I read the daily newspaper, watched TV news, and listened to news on the radio. I kept up with current events and the news of the day more than most adults I knew and certainly more than most of the kids my age. Politics and current events captivated me, and even though I couldn't for the life of me see how I would do it, I couldn't help but think that one day I would run for office. At one time, I thought about becoming a lawyer, but after landing a job at the local radio station when I was a teenager, I realized that the best way I could serve G.o.d was to work in broadcasting. I liked the work and was good at it, and I figured it might also be a good way to eventually launch a career in politics. At various times in my life, I would think about running for office, and then circ.u.mstances, such as my becoming a pastor, would kill that vision and render it seemingly impossible. Contrary to popular belief, my decision to move back to Arkansas was not so I could become a minister; I wanted to run for office.

For all the talk about how dumb politicians are and how they tend to follow instead of lead, the greatest examples of sheep following sheep are those in the media who will hear or read something from one of their colleagues and, without any attempt to find out if it's true, report it as fact.

If you followed the coverage of the 2008 Republican presidential primary, you would probably a.s.sume I was preaching in a little Baptist church in Arkansas until one glorious Sunday I up and decided to run for president. A pretty dramatic story, but a bogus one nonetheless. The true story wouldn't have been that hard to have discovered, and even when a few reporters asked me about it directly, they ignored the facts in order to maintain the image of me as a one-dimensional ”religious” candidate who had no experience leading outside the church and no motive for going into politics except to advance my agenda. They ignored the fact that I had more executive experience actually running a government than any of the candidates in the race from either party except for Tommy Thompson, the former governor of Wisconsin, who left the race in August of 2007. Journalists barely mentioned my time as governor or the initiatives I had achieved in such areas as education, health care, the prison system, environment, taxes, and the economy, which had attracted national accolades.

What most people don't realize, thanks in large part to this one-sided coverage of my career, was that my decision to become a pastor was actually a detour from what I thought I would be doing. My career goal was in communications-radio, television, advertising, and writing, primarily with Christian organizations and ministries. And this is what I was doing in September 1980 when the congregation of the Immanuel Baptist Church in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, invited me to speak in their pastorless church one Sunday and then asked me to serve as their interim pastor while they searched for someone to fill the post full time. I had recently created my own Christian communications company, Mike Huckabee and a.s.sociates, and so was able to work at the church and at my day job for a while. Janet and I had in fact made an offer on a home back in Hope and expected to move back there, since there was really no reason for us to stay in Texas anymore. It would also give me the opportunity to reestablish my residency in Arkansas, since I was starting to consider running for Congress in the Fourth Congressional District, which mostly comprises southern Arkansas.

I had thought that President Jimmy Carter was going to usher in a new kind of politics and lead the nation past what had been a tumultuous period-Watergate. But less than a year into his presidency, I realized that his policies were warmed-over cla.s.sic big-government liberalism, and I grew increasingly restless about the direction of the nation. I had hoped that Ron ald Reagan would win the GOP nomination in 1976, and in 1980 when he announced his decision to run for the White House, I was truly encouraged. My own political views had grown more conservative over the years, bolstered by ca.s.sette tapes of speeches by Paul Weyrich and Howard Phillips and books by people like Phyllis Schlafly. I sensed that the country was disenchanted with the liberalism of the Democratic Party and that 1980 would be a watershed year for conservatives. I was barely old enough to run for Congress, but it seemed like the right time to start preparing for what I thought was going to be my first political race. I talked to some key leaders in the state GOP and even had conversations with some of the leading old-school Democratic leaders, just to get their take on the political landscape.

I was enjoying being an interim pastor but expected that to be a short-term gig that would end in a few months when the church secured a permanent pastor. But to my surprise, after nearly three months as the interim pastor at Immanuel, the church asked me if I wanted to take on the job permanently. After much prayer and consideration, Janet and I agreed to make the move to Pine Bluff permanent. We forfeited the deposit on our house in Hope, I shut down my small business and notified my clients that I would not be able to provide them services after the first of the year, and at the age of twenty-five, I became the pastor of some of the most wonderful people in the world. Because I had more experience in communications and advertising than in preaching, I had a steep learning curve and approached the job with a very nontraditional style. The pulpit duties were a point of comfort for me, but working with deacons, committees, and special-interest groups was all new. I will say that nothing better prepared me for a future political career quite like experiencing the politics of a local Baptist church!

In addition to my role as pastor, I helped the church develop a logo and a ”branded strategy” for advertising, purchase ad s.p.a.ce on bus benches, and launch a daily radio commentary on the local news/talk station called ”Positive Alternatives.” The station, KOTN, was overwhelmingly the dominant station in that market, and at first the manager was very reluctant to sell airtime to a local church for the two-minute-a-day (morning and afternoon) drive-time spots that I wanted to do. I told him I was going to do a motivational and inspirational commentary that would appeal to everyone and promised that it wouldn't be ”in your face” religious broadcasting. He agreed to take it on a trial basis, and it became one of the station's most popular features. The station manager, Buddy Deane, even became a dear friend of mine over the years despite his original doubts about putting a Baptist program on his station. In fact, when Buddy died years later, during my time as governor, I was asked to conduct his funeral service.

Our church was very innovative in terms of its communications and also launched a twenty-four-hour-a-day television channel that broadcast not only church services but also talk shows, sports, and local events. Looking back, I am amazed that we had the chutzpah to attempt something so bold, but it worked, and the church grew dramatically and rapidly because of it.

I settled in to the role of pastor and loved it. I abandoned the idea of ever running for office, a.s.suming that being a pastor would preclude me from ever being able to make that transition to politics. During my six years in Pine Bluff, we added two more children to our growing family-David, who was born just a few months prior to our moving there, and Sarah, born in 1982. It was also there that I learned not only some useful skills in everything from diplomacy to administration but also some of the most important lessons of my life.

A pastor looks at life more deeply than people in most other professions. A pastor witnesses the most wonderful moments in a person's life, such as weddings and births, as well as the most painful moments, such as divorce, disease, and death. During my time as a pastor, I received an education like no other in the realities of life. I saw intense poverty by going into the homes of the poorest people in our community to bring food or a.s.sist in a family crisis, and I saw intense prosperity by interacting with some of the most successful businesspeople in the community.

Most elected officials learn about the issues of the day by studying or reading about them. For me, there is not a single social pathology that I haven't seen firsthand, and I probably have a story for any situation you could think of: a pregnant unwed teen afraid to tell her parents that she's about to be a mother; a young couple faced with the news that their child will be born with severe disabilities; a middle-aged couple forced to become ”parents” to their parents, who are no longer able to care for themselves; an elderly couple having to decide whether to take medicine or eat because they can't afford to do both. I've met couples facing marital or financial problems; individuals with drug, alcohol, gambling, s.e.x, or other addictions; and people suffering from deep depression. I saw all of this every week and spent a good bit of my time counseling those who had come to me as their first line of help for just about anything and everything.

After six years in Pine Bluff, I was approached by the pastor search committee of the Beech Street First Baptist Church in Texarkana, Arkansas. Other pastor search committees had approached me in the past, but I had always declined their offers. But the Texarkana congregation was persistent, and in order to test their seriousness, I told them that I would only consider working at their church if they were willing to launch a television channel similar to what we had in Pine Bluff. I believed that part of my calling was to use the media as a communication vessel for the Gospel, and so I wasn't willing to give up the opportunity to do that, no matter where I worked. Because the Beech Street First Baptist Church was known as a more traditional church, I fully expected this to be a deal breaker for them, but they told me that it was precisely this nontraditional approach and the idea of a television channel that appealed to them and had led them to me.

Several weeks of discussion and agonizing prayer followed. Janet, the kids, and I loved Pine Bluff and the people who lived there. I could have stayed there forever. We were very active in the community, we had close friends, and the kids were settled in school and the neighborhood. But despite how comfortable we were, we somehow knew that, despite our misgivings, we were being clearly drawn to a new field of ministry and life and that G.o.d was calling us to a new chapter of our lives. We decided to move to Texarkana.

Our experience in Texarkana was very different from our experience in Pine Bluff, but equally exciting and fulfilling. I hit the ground running by launching a major fund-raising effort to start the television channel, construct a family life center that had been on the drawing board for years but never constructed, and purchase additional property for the church to expand. The church was a majestic old building originally constructed in the early 1900s and was rich with history and tradition. It was a landmark in the city for its distinctive silver dome, which made it look more like a state capitol than a church. Because it was an older, downtown church, it was much more traditional than I what was used to, and one of the regular challenges I faced was taking my more unconventional methods of ministry into a much more conventional congregation.

I immersed myself in the community just as I had in Pine Bluff, and Janet and I found a wonderful home on a cul-de-sac in an absolutely great neighborhood. There were kids everywhere who were about the same age as ours, and it was a quiet, safe, and uncongested area about as perfect as we could have hoped for. We loved our house, and with its five bedrooms and s.p.a.cious yard, we had room for the kids to play and to enjoy life.

Over the next six years, we lived a life that was nothing short of ideal. We were in a wonderful church and had close friends with whom we developed deep bonds. My sister, Pat, already lived in Texarkana at that time, and my parents and in-laws were just thirty miles away in Hope, so we saw our families more than we ever had. My parents moved to Texarkana about two years later and lived just a few blocks from my sister and from us.

Neither Janet nor I had grown up with all that much, and while we were far from rich and still had to live frugally, we were enjoying a standard of living far better than either of us had growing up. We were active in the community, our kids were totally engaged in all sorts of sports and school activities, and we truly loved the life we were living-neighborhood, community, church, family. We had lots of friends, and I really can't think of any enemies. Great fis.h.i.+ng lakes were nearby, and we were only a three-hour drive from Arlington Stadium, home of the Texas Rangers baseball team, whom we would go to see play several times each year. Life was good!

In 1989, I was elected president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention and became the youngest person to ever hold that position. I was thirty-four years old. It was a tumultuous time in the life of Southern Baptists, mainly due to a decade-long struggle over the doctrinal direction of the denomination. The theological issues had been overwhelmingly settled in the favor of an unapologetic commitment to the authority and in errancy of the Bible, and about the only thing left to fight about was not what belief system to follow, but who would hold key positions in the church. My election was viewed as a way to put in office someone who was an unwavering conservative but who had not been divisive and was very involved in advancing the mission of the denomination. The other person nominated was Ronnie Floyd, a good friend of mine, who today is one of our nation's most dynamic and innovative pastors in Spring-dale and Rogers, Arkansas, and leads one of the most influential ministries in the denomination. I've often joked with him that he may have gotten the better end of the deal by not being elected!

During my tenure, the denomination was able to avoid the angry schisms that had befallen other state conventions, and we had a peaceful and productive two years. To be fair, this had far less to do with me than it did with the rank-and-file pastors in Arkansas who kept the ”main thing the main thing.” The main thing in this case was the goal of equipping people with biblical truth so they could live out the Gospel and mimic the life of Christ in their everyday lives. Being elected president of the state convention put me in a highly visible position not only with Arkansas Baptists but in other states as well. Southern Baptists make up 20 percent of the population of Arkansas, making it by far the largest denomination in the state. I received very favorable news coverage during my time as president, from both secular and denominational publications, and I traveled all over the state as a representative of the convention.

By early 1991, several good friends and others had asked me, ”Have you ever thought about running for office?” While most of them had no idea of my plans some eleven years earlier to do just that, some of my old friends from high school and college, to whom I had mentioned those plans twenty years earlier, also encouraged me to consider it.

In early spring of 1991, the Arkansas legislature was considering some prolife legislation that then-Governor Bill Clinton's Health Department director, Dr. Joycelyn Elders (later appointed surgeon general under President Bill Clinton) was openly opposing. At one legislative hearing, Dr. Elders made the now-infamous statement that ”preachers need to get over their love affair with a fetus” and that ”preachers need to quit moralizing from the pulpit.”

The outrage was instant and intense. It was a direct insult to the character and integrity not only of pastors but of all prolife people in the state. Arkansas had pa.s.sed an amendment to the state const.i.tution in 1988 that declared a person to exist from the point of conception, and the state had a responsibility to protect human life until its natural conclusion. Not only were the pastors of the state incensed, but so were the voters, and a firestorm erupted throughout the state.

On several occasions during my tenure as Baptist Convention president, Governor Clinton contacted me to ask for input from the evangelical community. He was a shrewd and savvy politician and knew that the combined influence of Southern Baptists alone could turn an issue. While the debate over abortion raged, Governor Clinton called and asked if I would be willing to sit down privately with Dr. Elders and explain how evangelicals felt about the issue and why there was such a strong, visceral reaction to her comments. I agreed, and the governor's staff set up the meeting between Dr. Elders and me at her office.

She and I met for almost two hours. It was a thoughtful and civil conversation, and to this day, we've maintained a cordial relations.h.i.+p, but our views on the sanct.i.ty of life and the role of government in such issues were 180 degrees apart. When I arrived home that night after the two-and-a-half hour drive from Little Rock to Texarkana, I told Janet, ”If these are the people who are setting the agenda for our children's future in school and in the community, then maybe we're going to have to get out of the stands and onto the field.” At the time I said that, I had no idea what it would lead to, but I knew that sitting back and letting others decide this issue wasn't enough.

Over the coming months, more people talked to me about the idea of running for office, and I began to seek counsel from trusted friends and other pastors. In several cases, I sought the advice of those who I thought for sure would discourage me, but to my surprise, I received encouragement. One of my mentors was Dr. Trueman Moore, a pastor in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and one of the most brilliant and thoughtful men I have ever known. He had become a source of inspiration and information for me, and I cherished his insights and respected his irreproachable integrity. I specifically sought him out a.s.suming that he would discourage any notions I had about running for office. I was surprised when he said, ”I would ordinarily advise a pastor to do what you're already doing, but in your case, I really feel that you should consider politics-we need people like you.”

One of my close friends since the days we had met at Arkansas Boys State in 1972 was Jonathan Barnett of Siloam Springs, Arkansas. (Boys State is a national program operated in each state by the American Legion to build citizens.h.i.+p and patriotism in young men.) I had been elected governor of Boys State, and he had been elected as one of the two national Boys State senators from Arkansas. In high school, we had talked about one day going into politics, and he had become a leader in state and local Republican circles, chairing the county organization of Benton County, the largest and most influential county. As I visited with him to get his insights, he suggested I get to know some other political operatives and activists and told me some people I should contact.