This morning officials of the NCAA announced the penalties placed on Penn State in the wake of the sexual abuse scandal: sixty million dollars, all wins from 1998 to 2011 rescinded, no post-season games for four years. A powerhouse football program decimated. The legacy of a man blotted out as if he had never a coached. Too harsh? I don’t think so.

The Bible has a clear exhortation: Consider not only your own interests but also the interests of others (Philippians 2:4). Football was placed over the safety and well-being of little boys, children, the least among us.

The result is that many are suffering, the innocent as well as the guilty: the victims and their families, the convicted and his family, those who lost their jobs in disgrace and their families, football players and students who will suffer the consequences of the NCAA ruling, alumni of Penn State, citizens of State College and of Pennsylvania…the list is endless.

Consider not only your own interests but also the interests of others.

If these words ruled our hearts and minds, what a different world we would live in.

Baseball is not a sport I enjoy watching. It’s a little slow-moving for me. However, I enjoy listening to talk about baseball: the stats, the strategy, the technicality of how to throw a baseball and field a ball.

It’s not that I wasn’t exposed to baseball. When I was born my dad bought me a baseball and glove. In school I played baseball in gym class. Not being a very good athlete, I struggled. Catching the ball was difficult; hitting the ball was impossible. When each of my three boys was born, my dad bought baseballs and gloves and taught them to catch. I went to all of my kids’ games.

This morning a friend asked me how I want my time on deck to be spent. Even with my limited knowledge of baseball, I know about on deck.

For those of you who know even less about baseball than I do, on deck refers to being next in line to bat. The player waits in the on-deck circle which is positioned in the foul area between home plate and the team bench. Here the on-deck batter warms up as he waits for the current batter to finish his turn.

Using my friend’s metaphor, when people of the older generation pass away, I am left on deck. Both of my parents are gone as are my husband’s parents. All of my husband’s parents’ siblings are gone. Two of my mother’s are still living and one of their husbands. I’m not on deck yet, but I’ve moved to the end of the bench.

Since this morning the question has been rolling around in my head. How do I want to spend my time on deck? There are several choices. I can spend the time warming up. I can review strategy. I can plan for the kind of pitch that is likely to be thrown.

My first thought and answer was that I want to develop a character that is marked by what the Bible calls gifts of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. However, now that I’ve had some time to think about it, my answer is to spend my time on deck building, mending, strengthening relationships with the people who are most important to me–my husband, my children, other family members, my friends. Once I’ve gone to take my turn at bat, the thing that will be left of a lasting nature will be the relationships with the people I love. When they take their position on deck, it may be the relationship we shared that will help them be strong and capable for their turn at bat.

On the road of life, detours avoid a road that is dangerous and chaotic. The original woodpile kitty took a detour which took her from a dangerous, chaotic place to a safe, peaceful place. It is my story; perhaps this is your story as well.

It was October in south Texas, a time when the only way to gauge that fall is here is by the way the sun lies low in the sky and not by the temperature. I went out to the garage to talk to my husband when I heard the most pitiful meow.

I looked at him and he looked at me. He had chosen to ignore the meowing. Not me, “I think there’s a kitty behind the garage.” And with that I went to look.

Like an old woman hides her legs under a long skirt, our garage hides a conglomeration of ugly things: a pile of old flower pots, a stack of bricks, a neat-as-a-pin stack of firewood and a ramshackled pile of old wood. But no kitty. I decided that it was probably in one of the neighbors’ backyards.

However, every time I went to the garage, I heard that same meowing. And every time I’d scan the area behind the garage. Sometimes I’d walk around the flower pots, brick stack, firewood, and woodpile, but I did not find a  kitty.

When Butch got home from work I gave him the kitty report. His answer: I think you’ve got Claude Rains back there.

“Huh?” I said.

“Yeah, Claude Rains, the guy who played the invisible man in that old movie. You’ve got the invisible cat out there.”

I knew there was a kitty out there and I was determined to find it. I wanted it to live in my house where it would be safe.

The next day as I walked through the house, I happened to glance out the window. And there, bouncing across the lawn like a baby kangaroo, was a little grey kitty.

Armed with a flashlight I went to search in earnest. Like CSI, I shined my flashlight around the pile of old flower pots, behind the stack of bricks, in the crevices of the neat-as-a-pin stack of firewood. There was only one place left.  I shined my flashlight around and into the ramshackled pile of old wood. I got down on my knees and shined it up into the woodpile and there, glinting in the beam of the flashlight, were two little eyes. Ah-ha! I found it.

I put some food out on the lawn in view of both the house and the woodpile. Slowly but inevitably, the little kitty came out of its hiding place and ate it. I gradually moved the food closer and closer to the patio until the kitty was eating on the patio. In the morning, if we were extremely quiet, we could catch the kitty sleeping on the patio cushions. The slightest noise, and shoom! It was off to the woodpile.

Every day I plotted and planned how to get close enough to catch it. I wanted more than anything for it to live with us in our house.  After about a week, I knew I was not going  to catch it with my bare hands. Not to be deterred, I borrowed a live trap from my veterinarian. The kitty didn’t weigh enough to trip the latch  so Butch rigged it so the door would close. Finally after several attempts, we caught it. And it was mad. Around and around the trap it ran, nothing but a grey blur. When it finally stopped, we took the trap, kitty and all, into the bathroom.

For a couple of days the woodpile kitty lived in our bathroom. I’d go in periodically and pet it and pick it up. When I heard purring, I knew we had ourselves a new kitty. We were able to determine that it was girl. The name? Claude, of course.

After her woodpile experience, she did not like to be petted, much less picked up. Nevertheless we cohabited peacefully.

One morning according to my habit, I went into my study to have a quiet time. Claude came in, sat at my feet and began meowing and meowing. She acted like she wanted to be picked up. So I did. I held her up on my shoulder under my chin and stroked her soft fur. She was so still, cuddling up to me. And then she started purring.

Sitting there in the quiet, I remembered that we had no idea where Claude came from or how she got in the woodpile. I wondered where she would have ended up without our detouring her into our house and family. As I thought about Claude’s detour, I clearly saw my own detour.

I had gotten myself into a woodpile when I got pregnant as a teenager. I knew enough about teen moms to know that I should have been divorced; I should have had multiple children with multiple men. I should not have graduated from high school, much less college. I should have lived in poverty. None of that was true for me. God had detoured me into a life with a husband who loves me, a good marriage, wonderful children, blessings too numerous to list.

I translated Claude’s kitty language of purring into my language. “Thank you”, she said, “thank you for rescuing me from the woodpile. Thank you for inviting me to live with you in your house.” In her little kitty way, she was saying, “I love you”.

Claude and I had each been led on a detour out of the woodpile. Like Claude, there was nothing I could do to repay my rescuer. All that was necessary was the giving of thanks for all my rescuer has done, is doing and will do for me.

Thank you, Father, for the detour out of the woodpile and into your house where it is safe and sound.

On the road trip that is life, there are two kinds of detours: those we chose and those chosen for us. How’s your road trip going? Are you on a detour? On my life’s road trip, I once chose a detour and got off the correct road. This is the story of that adventure.

I grew up in a dysfunctional family. Everyone’s family is dysfunctional in some way, some worse than others. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being perfection, my family was probably a 4. Because my mother did not have good health, the energy in our home went to her in an effort to keep her happy and calm. My dad had his own business which meant that he worked Monday to Saturday. On Sunday we went to church. This family structure didn’t leave a lot of room for me and my needs.

I grew up, discovered boys and started dating. I found a substitute for the attention I yearned for at home. In my freshman year of high school, I began dating a boy who I dated off and on until we were juniors when we dated steadily. One thing led to another and, by the end of our junior year, we were pregnant. In my family and at that time, the only options were to get married or place the baby for adoption. We opted to get married. We were 17 years old.

Being pregnant was not what I had wanted. I was raised that this was the worst thing that I could do. I had failed in a social sense and I had failed in a spiritual sense. I was a follower of Christ. I went to church every Sunday. I was a member of the youth group and the youth choir. I came from a good family and I was a good student. I had let everyone down: my parents, myself, my friends, and, worst of all, God.

I hadn’t just taken a detour; I had gotten off the correct road altogether and was traveling down the wrong road.

So what could I do? I decided to make up for the bad thing by doing good things. I continued going to church. I taught Sunday School and volunteered at church for anything that needed to be done. To keep my secret, I lied. I lied about my age. I avoided talking about weddings. I didn’t want anyone to know the real me and what I had done.

This was my state of mind and spirit for twenty-five years.

Until one day God got my attention. I was reading Psalm 51, the psalm David wrote after his indescretion with Bathsheba, a psalm I had read a hundred times. Suddenly I saw that all the work trying to make up for what I had done was not necessary. God had forgiven me and redeemed the terrible thing I had done, getting pregnant without being married.

Up to that time, I had been driving down the road in the dark, checking the map constantly, and then second guessing the directions. That day the sun came out. I discovered that I was on the correct road; I needed to stop driving according to my own rules. It was time to stop doing and just be.

Are you on a detour of your own choosing? Pull over on the side of the road. Check the map. Is it time to get on the correct road again?

I hope you’ll be with me in the next post when we arrive at this road trip’s destination.