Sometimes I think about it. God said, “I am going to bring this child into the world. If you do not want him, if you do not take him, I will give him to another.” (What’s he got? Contingency plans?)
What if Dad had said “No”? If God said it, somehow I’d still be here. Sometimes it’s cool to think what I’d be like if I wasn’t me but somebody else. Would I still be me?
I’d like to get into a scrap with him! What a blast! This world ain’t big enough for the two of us, pal! (Ha! I’d win either way!) But I digress …
Well, obviously Dad said yes, so “Bada-bing! Bada-boom!”—my mother was pregnant and my life began. (Yahoo!) (Gotta love Paris in the springtime, eh? Sigh … again.)
There you have it. “The Set-Up.”
So, back to the airplane—now you can see why we couldn’t die. I hadn’t been born yet! I was still alive inside, so I hadn’t pulled off any more trouble than a bad craving for tuna-fish ice cream and a mild case of heartburn. (By the way, I fully intend on having a very serious conversation with both God and my father about all this later on.)
Well, from here on in things get a whole lot noisier because now, I’ve got to get born! And man! I was hell on wheels right from the start. My mother told me that I hit the ground running and did not let up for one second. She said if I wasn’t in sight, I could always be found at a locked door trying to puzzle out how to get my way through it. She told me it seemed like I just had this fascination with going somewhere.
My mother told me that when I was still a toddler I figured out this one door and immediately made a beeline straight to the back of the yard, dug myself a tunnel under the fence, and escaped out to the road. Well, she flipped! (We lived in a small village in rural Argentina.) The whole house was in an uproar, because to them I’d vanished into thin air. (I’d purposely shut the door when I left, to buy myself more time.)
Long and short of it was they caught up to me some three long blocks away lying on my belly with my chin in my hands less than a foot from a busy trucking highway, just watching the traffic and trying to puzzle out how to get across that road too. The funny thing about all this is that I clearly remember formulating this plan of mine before executing it. And just before my great escape, I also remember looking down at my legs and thinking, I got this! I can walk now! (And if I get tired I can always crawl for a bit too.) “I” was going exploring, and that was that! This kind of behaviour stuck with me till, well … today really.
1 Lorrie White, interviewed by the author, November 2015.
2 “All 52 on Jet Die in Brazil Crash; Argentine Comet Dives to Earth Just After Taking Off—American Aboard All 52 on Argentine Jet Killed in Crash on Take-Off in Brazil” Associated Press, New York Times (November 24, 1961).
3 John White, The Cost of Commitment (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 72–74, 79–80.
4 John White, The Pathway of Holiness: A Guide for Sinners (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 38–39.
2: Decision
For many years now, I have sought for some reasonable explanation as to why I made the most ruinous and destructive decision of my life. That I was very afraid, I already know. Why I was afraid and why I chose that catastrophic course of action to deal with my fear is what completely bewilders me now. Perhaps part of it was because I made that decision when I was only seven years old, and I was afraid, and very alone.
I had what I see now as an unusually good childhood—my early one at least. We were all loved and well cared for, and I have fond memories of times with my siblings and both my parents. I know I was treated no differently than any of the other children. The same love and discipline were given to each of us. I was a bit more independent than the other kids, but there is nothing I can think of that could possibly account for such a drastic decision. Life was pretty happy for all of us. Other than when he was preaching, I’ve only heard my father raise his voice once. We were being quite loud downstairs, and he was trying to study for a very difficult exam which would admit him to practice psychiatry in Canada. It shocked us, and we looked at each other—frightened and a bit bewildered. The exam has long since been banned as being far too difficult. He passed it. His professor failed. As I said, my father was a remarkable man.
I do not remember my mother ever raising her voice to any of us once. How she managed that is to me now simply incomprehensible, especially considering I was one of those children. I never saw or heard my parents fight or argue—ever. We were always taught right from wrong, and more importantly, we were taught why things were right and why they were wrong. We were taught to understand. If I did something wrong, my father, who carried out the discipline for “serious” offences, would first ask if I knew why I was in trouble. If I was unsure (which wasn’t very often), he would explain. Then he would ask if I knew why it was wrong. Again, if I was unsure, he would explain. Finally, he would ask if I understood why he was going to spank me or take away a privilege, and I know with me at least, the discipline dispensed, he would take me into his arms and tell me I was loved and that the matter was finished. No one was ever allowed to tease anyone about what had been said or done. Discipline was, of course, carried out in private.
I write these things because I truly don’t understand why I became so fearful—what it was that drove me to such a terrible decision that morning. Perhaps it was because we had moved to a new house and a new neighbourhood and it was my first day at a new school. We had just moved from South America to Winnipeg, Manitoba, two years earlier, and then, when we moved again, it seemed something happened to me. I became afraid. Or maybe it was being run over by that car on my sixth birthday. I don’t know. All I do know is that on the very first day of grade three at my new school a terrible fear took root inside me and immediately began to destroy any hope I had of a normal life. That day saw a horrible nightmare begin—a misery from which I could not wake for over 45 years.
I had arrived early that morning, and as I sat by myself on those cold school steps dreading the arrival of the other students, I felt very alone and afraid. For some strange reason I believed deep down inside that if I didn’t master that fear in every area of my life I would crumble and be utterly destroyed beneath it. That thought frightened me more than the fear itself did.
For some reason, by some strange convolution of logic, I decided that I must become really fierce to overcome this fear. And in order to become fierce, I felt that I must become … bad. They seemed to be two sides of the same coin. Inseparable. So that day I made the decision to become bad—really bad—and fierce—fierce with all the fury that this “being bad” would require of me. Unknowingly, I had made that decision an unspoken vow, and as I felt it sink to the very core of me, somehow I felt safe—protected with a shield of badness and armed with a sword of fury.
Now all of this was fine and good, but I immediately discovered I had some serious hurdles to overcome. You see, I was only seven, and at that age I did not know how to be bad, or fierce, for that matter. I had known nothing but goodness and love all of my life. I thought carefully about my predicament for some time as I sat alone on the steps that morning. After quite a bit of serious puzzling, I was suddenly struck with what I thought was a wonderfully good idea about how I could become terribly bad. I needed a mentor—someone to show me the ropes, so to speak. I decided to accomplish this task by carefully observing all the other kids, picking the one who always seemed to be in trouble, becoming his friend, and then watching and learning all there was to know about being bad.
So I did exactly that, and by the end of that day I had found my new teacher. My progress right from the start