A Simple Christmas Part 4

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.

As the fall of 1991 began to turn toward winter, Janet and I had seriously contemplated the idea of my running for the United States Senate and determined that it would be absurd for me to even entertain the notion. Bill Clinton had announced his candidacy for president in October of 1991, and we knew that that alone would change the political landscape of the state.

We carefully sought to weigh all the ramifications of stepping out from what was a very comfortable and desirable life to get into something that would be an incredibly uphill climb. To get elected, I would have to defeat Dale b.u.mpers, a three-term U.S. senator and two-term governor. As Christmas approached, we knew that to run in 1992 I would have to make my decision soon and that if I decided to run, it would require another major transition in our lives that would bring upheaval to the peaceful and comfortable world we lived in.

In December of 1991, within days of Christmas, Janet and I took a long walk around the streets of our neighborhood and talked very honestly with each other about what might be the most game-changing decision of our marriage and our lives. It was a cool but not especially cold night, and we were able to take our time as we walked past the nicely decorated homes in our well-groomed subdivision, where our friends and neighbors were behind their doors preparing for Christmas, oblivious to the fact that just outside, Janet and I were on a journey that wouldn't just end when we got back home. In fact, what happened on that walk would ultimately lead us further from home than we could have ever imagined.

Christmas is the perfect time to reflect; it's a time for looking back. You look back to the first Christmas, to the year behind you, and to the year ahead. At Christmas, you are reminded what really matters-sacrifice, love, family, purpose-and this Christmas was no different. Janet and I were grateful for everything we had, but we also knew that politics would give me the opportunity to give back even more. First, we knew that running for office would mean having to resign from the church, and that meant walking away from a good income and a comfortable life-better than either of us had imagined living. It would mean opening our lives up to a level of scrutiny, hostility, and criticism unlike any we had faced. We couldn't fully understand just how lonely the journey would be at times and how much it would empty us of pretty much everything we had materially, personally, and spiritually. But we decided that we could hardly encourage people to be "salt and light" in a broken world if we weren't willing to step out of the boat and into the sea ourselves.

Somewhere along Cambridge Street, where our house sat at the end of the cul-de-sac, Janet and I decided that if G.o.d's purpose and plan for our lives was to get comfortable, then we had indeed found success. But how could we truly claim that G.o.d's purpose for us was to become comfortable? We agreed that we were on the planet to be light in the darkness and a preservative in a culture that was spoiling.

It was our custom to have a Christmas open house for our church family each holiday season, and that year, as we welcomed the several hundred people-many of them dear friends-who dropped in throughout the day, it was difficult to hold back the deep emotions that were going through our minds. I must confess that the thought of leaving such a gracious circle of affirmation was painful. I would later compare the move from the church to politics to stepping out of a nice, warm, soothing hot tub and into a tank of hungry sharks!

As we celebrated the Christmas of 1991, we were aware that no matter what, things would never be the same in our lives. We had no idea of just how different they would be for the next eighteen years. We waited until after Christmas to tell the kids about the decision, though they could tell that something major was in the air. We wanted to keep things as normal as possible for as long as possible, and I'm glad we did, because from that Christmas forward, there would be nothing normal whatsoever about our lives.

On the last Sunday of 1991, I announced my intention to step down as pastor of the church effective the first week of February. I wanted to make sure there was an opportunity to tie up loose ends and make the transition as smooth as possible for the church, the staff, and the family. I did not say what had led me to this decision, as I didn't want anyone to think I was using the pulpit to advance my bid for office.

It was one of the most frightening risks Janet and I had taken in our marriage. When we were younger, it had been fairly easy to walk away from something-when there was so little to walk away from. When it was just the two of us and everything we owned could fit into a pickup truck and the backseat of a car, a move to a new town or a change to a new job wasn't too daunting. Now there was a mortgage, three kids ranging in age from nine to fifteen, and the prospect of spending an entire year without an income in order to "apply" for a job that was already filled by someone who was prepared to spend several million dollars to keep it.

In order to survive, we cashed in a life insurance policy and liquidated funds from an annuity, and I picked up freelance communications jobs so that we could keep food on the table and pay the bills. Miraculously, we were never late in payment on anything and we managed to survive, although there were many months when I wasn't sure how this had been possible. To this day, I find it stunningly stupid when columnists and pundits suggest that I entered politics for the money. Their ignorance of the real journey is staggering.

It was several years into my term as governor-several years after my initial run for office-before my income finally equaled what I had made as a pastor in Texarkana. Arkansas has the lowest salary for its governor of any state in the nation. I clearly didn't do it for the money. It was only because I had the opportunity to write books during my term as governor that I was able to get my kids through college without having to borrow a fortune, and it wasn't until my presidential campaign ended and I started working in television and radio again that my income increased to anything really substantial.

Life inside the fishbowl of politics is unlike what most people can imagine. Every aspect of one's life is open for inspection-tax returns, sources and amounts of income and expenditures, medical conditions, academic records, personal activities, and even friends and relations.h.i.+ps. Most of the reporters who are indignant when there is the least attempt to keep some area of life private would never accept or tolerate what they demand of candidates and officeholders, and they would of course argue that they are simply holding us accountable since we are getting a taxpayer-funded paycheck. Fair enough, but their words and opinions will directly affect how people feel about those candidates and elected officials, and perhaps it might be nice to know how much money they have and where it comes from; what organizations they are members of; what relations.h.i.+ps they have; what stocks they own; and what business relations.h.i.+ps they have. I know that isn't going to happen, and it probably shouldn't, but the self-righteous I-have-a-right-to-demand-information att.i.tude is often very difficult to tolerate knowing that most of the reporters who ask such questions would never answer them if the tables were turned.

Each Christmas is a time to reflect back on the year behind and to look forward at what lies ahead. We looked back in a very emotional review of not just a year but a career and a comfortable life that was coming to an end. We were looking ahead at the most uncertain since we had had to face Janet's cancer. There was no bridge behind us. We were walking the high wire with no net underneath us. There was a real risk of losing our house, our savings, and all that we owned. No one guaranteed us anything. But we were as much at peace with it all as if we had known the outcome was going to be better than imagined.

We learned from that process to keep things really simple. It was truly starting all over. We were forced to decide what was important in life and what things were just excess inventory. When the dust settled, what mattered was faith, family, and freedom. We would end up losing many things over the next few years, such as our privacy, our financial security, and our nice evenings at home, but we still had what mattered most. Simple things. And we rediscovered them during a transition at Christmas. A simple Christmas.

Faith.

My dad never finished high school. Neither did his father or his grandfather or any other male in my family before him. So the fact that I graduated from high school made me the Stars.h.i.+p Enterprise of my family-I had gone where no man had gone before. Graduating from college was an even bigger achievement. That doesn't mean my father was unintelligent, although it wasn't until I was married and had kids that I came to realize that having an education doesn't automatically make you smart.

On the campaign trail, I often described my dad as the kind of guy who lifted heavy things and only knew hard work. In addition to his job as a fireman, he worked as a mechanic, running a little generator repair shop on his days off, so his hands were always rough and deeply embedded with motor residue, no matter how hard he scrubbed. When I was growing up, the only soap we had in our house was Lava soap, and I was in college before I found out that it isn't supposed to hurt when you take a shower. So many refined ladies go to a spa these days and have an "exfoliation." A bar of Lava soap will do the same thing-for a fraction of the cost!

Mark Twain once said, "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years." It's that way for most of us, I suppose. We grow up thinking that we'll be nothing like our father, that he "just doesn't get it," and then one day we look in the mirror as adults and are startled to see him staring at us. I'm so much like my father that sometimes, when I say or do something like him, my wife and kids will say, "There you go, Dorsey." On a side note, you may be wondering about my father's name. I've often wondered about it myself. His full name was "Dorsey Wiles Huckabee," and the only explanation I've ever been able to come up with for why my grandparents named him that is that they must've wanted to toughen him up-like the dad in "A Boy Named Sue" by Johnny Cash. I never knew exactly where the name came from, but I'm pretty sure my dad spent a good deal of his time with his fists balled up, taking on some punk who was giving him a hard time about his name.

My dad had a great sense of humor, although I don't think I realized that until I was grown. Kids never think their parents are really very funny or entertaining. Of course, my kids still don't think I'm very funny or entertaining, but I've fixed that by cutting them out of any inheritance until they acknowledge the wonderful world of humor that I've imparted to them. No laughs, no loot. I think that's fair.

Storytelling was a big part of our lives when I was little. We didn't think of it as storytelling at the time, just as my father's many recitations of his life and the lives of our relatives. I'm pretty sure that many of the stories were embellished and details were added or changed over time, but it was a part of our world and about the only real family history we had. It's caused me to realize just how important oral traditions can be and the value of a family pa.s.sing on the heirlooms of their heritage by way of stories.

I wasn't so conscious of such things as a child, but as I grew older, I realized that my dad lived with some regrets and even embarra.s.sment about not finis.h.i.+ng school and not having enough money to give us things others had. I eventually would realize that one of the reasons he pushed my sister and me to excel in all we did was that he wanted to make sure that we took advantage of all the opportunities we had. He encouraged us to play musical instruments, to try out for plays, to run for cla.s.s office, and to play sports. He never forced any particular activity on us, but if we showed interest, both he and my mother would insist that we do our best. If I heard that phrase once, I heard it a million times. "Son, we don't care what you do as long as you do your best." A halfhearted effort, whether in a science project or a household ch.o.r.e, was never acceptable. All endeav ors had better be accomplished with a sense of expeditious excellence, although neither of my parents would have used those words. They were old school in that they believed we were to respect authority whether we wanted to or not. That meant teachers, police officers, anyone deemed our "elders," or just about anyone else for that matter.

Getting in trouble at school was never a good thing, but it became unbearable if my parents found out. If the teacher or princ.i.p.al said, "Do you want me to call your parents?" I suddenly became better behaved than Mother Teresa and Ma hatma Gandhi combined. On those occasions when they did find out, I never even tried to blame the teacher for being too harsh or perhaps mistaking me for the real offender in the cla.s.s. I was guilty, the teacher was right, and I would go right back to school and apologize. Then they would speak the words I hated most: "You better not let me hear about this again." Of course, I had no intention of my parents' ever hearing about it again, though that wasn't to say I wasn't going to do the same thing again. I was prepared to keep secrets better than d.i.c.k Cheney and would have rather been waterboarded by the CIA than face my parents' wrath for acting up at school.

You might think that since I became a pastor, I grew up in a really religious household, but my dad never went to church. Ever. He didn't want to talk about it, either. He didn't mind that my mother would take my sister and me to Sunday school, as long as we didn't bug him about going. He was not antire ligion and didn't speak disparagingly of "church people," but we knew not to bring up the subject. I was a teenager before I found out that the reason my dad was averse to all things church was because once, when he had attended some years earlier, someone had made fun of him for not having the "right clothes." It hurt him deeply, and instead of just ignoring the utterly insensitive and unchristian att.i.tude of the idiot who said it, he allowed that incident to drive him into a deep sh.e.l.l when it came to anything spiritual. I never knew who the wonderful "Christian" was who had uttered such an intemperate remark, but because of that haunting knowledge, I have forever been mindful of how hurtful or how helpful words can be.

My mother was forced to be the spiritual leader of the family, and she was somewhat timid in faith, largely due to the lack of support she got from my dad in all religious matters. For the most part, we went to Sunday school and that was it. "Big church," as we called it, was the morning wors.h.i.+p service, and we would go occasionally, but I found it very intimidating because the preacher screamed and scared the daylights out of me. Plus, the music didn't exactly make my motor turn, since it was old-fas.h.i.+oned, piano-banging Southern gospel, and I was really getting into the Beatles. Bob Harrington, a famous evangelist prominent in the sixties, said it best: "More people are following the Beatles than the Baptists, because the Beatles look like they are going somewhere and the Baptists look like they are sorry they've been!"

I did go to the things that were targeted more toward kids, like vacation Bible school in the summers, church camp, and the children's programs for Christmas. In fact, it was at vacation Bible school when I was ten years old that I became a believer. My sister had attended on Monday, but I had refused, saying that it was for girls and sissies. (Like father, like son!) My sister, always the great actor, said that at vacation Bible school, I could get all the cookies I could eat and all the Kool-Aid I could drink and the guys played baseball during the recess. Based on that description, I decided I would go the next day and quickly discovered my sister's big lie. They didn't let me eat more than two cookies or drink more than one small paper cup full of Kool-Aid. But that didn't matter, because something else did happen that day that changed my life.

It was August 24, 1965, my tenth birthday. So far my birthday and VBS had been very disappointing, and I wasn't prepared for them to get any better. The pastor of the church, Clyde Johnson, came to our cla.s.s and talked to us about "knowing Jesus." I couldn't really figure out what all that meant, but as he talked, I was so concentrated on what he was saying that I felt as if everyone else in the room had been dismissed and I was there alone. He told us that G.o.d knew everything there was to know about each of us. That both scared and excited me. It scared me to think that G.o.d knew not just my public words and actions but also my private thoughts. But it excited me to contemplate the idea that the Creator of the universe was actually aware of my existence and, more important, cared about me. I knew that most people in my little hometown didn't know who I was, but the fact that G.o.d did was rather overwhelming. Pastor Johnson asked us to raise our hands if we wanted to pray and ask Jesus to come into our hearts. I felt certain that if I lifted my hand, he would call me out and I would be put on the spot and likely humiliated. So I didn't raise my hand, but I snuck in by keeping my hand down but my heart up and prayed the prayer anyway. And though no one else heard me, G.o.d did, and I was overwhelmed with a sense of His presence. It wasn't just my physical birthday that day, but my spiritual one as well. In many ways, it was like Christmas, because I received the ultimate gift from G.o.d, and I learned that Christmas was all about G.o.d's coming to us-not our coming to Him.

The church I attended during my childhood was the Garrett Memorial Baptist Church in Hope, Arkansas. It was a small Missionary Baptist church, which is different from Southern Baptist mainly in denominational structure and the fact that Missionary Baptists tend to be stricter and frown upon everything from dancing to "mixed bathing" (this meant boys and girls couldn't swim together or shower in the same stall, which really would have been scandalous) to "modern music." They lightened up somewhat on the music in later years, but their basic formula was "Get saved, go to church while you live, and go to heaven when you die." There wasn't much discussion about my faith transforming my daily life in terms of my actions or att.i.tudes toward things except for the external activities like going to church, giving t.i.thes, and singing hymns.

During my early teen years, the church hired a youth director who was supposed to create programs that catered to the youth and kept us interested in church. We actually got to play guitars, sing music that sounded closer to what we listened to on the radio, and talk about things that actually mattered to us, like dating, war, drugs, and career choices. This made me willing to go to "big church," so I started going to the Sunday night services because that's when the youth activities were held.

When I was fifteen, I was selected to represent Arkansas at the Hugh O'Brian Youth Foundation s.p.a.ce Seminar at Cape Kennedy, Florida. One student from each of the fifty states and ten from foreign countries were invited to spend a little over a week at no expense at Cape Kennedy to train with astronauts, learn about the s.p.a.ce program, and become "s.p.a.ce Amba.s.sadors." While there, I was stunned to find out that most of the other students lacked even a basic belief in G.o.d and that most of them were at the top of their cla.s.s and among the brightest in their state. I came back from that event with a new awareness of what a small world I had lived in and within a week had dedicated my life to Christian service.

I told my parents about my decision, and the next week, none other than my own father came to church for the first time I could ever remember. He said, "If my son is going to do church work, I guess I had better at least go myself." And with that began a new chapter for him and for the rest of the family.

Whatever had kept him out of church before was forgotten, and now nothing could keep him away. He had a hard time understanding the King James Version of the Bible, but my sister, mother, and I bought him a Living Bible, which is a modern-language version that reads more like a daily newspaper in simple, easy-to-understand language.

For the first time in my life, my parents sat together in church, and soon church became the center of their social lives as well as their spiritual lives. It was so strange to see my father going to church that on Sunday mornings I sometimes wondered, "Who is this guy hurrying around the house telling us to get ready so we won't be late to church?"

Over the next few years, I saw my father's spiritual life grow. Slowly but steadily, he came to learn what it means to "follow Jesus," and while those of his generation were generally not overly vocal about such personal things as faith, he became very expressive about his faith. He didn't talk about it too much or b.u.t.tonhole people on the street, but his actions changed and truly reflected service and sacrifice. Without grudging, he gave with increasing generosity to the church and to special needs he knew about. He was the first to volunteer to mow the lawn of a family whose head of household was ill or to help someone who had to move furniture or to sit with a sick person at the hospital to relieve an exhausted family member.

As my sister and I graduated from high school, moved on to college, and married and started our own families, my father continued to be increasingly active and involved, which proved that he wasn't simply "doing the church thing" for our benefit but was doing it because something genuine had happened to him that had changed his life.

As my sister and I were growing up, my dad really wasn't able to teach us much about faith, trust in G.o.d, or preparing for eternity. That all changed at Christmas of 1995.

In 1983, my dad had suffered a heart attack and had had to undergo heart bypa.s.s surgery. That was a real turning point in his life as he faced his own mortality in a profound way. From that point forward, he truly felt that every day was a "borrowed day," and he seemed to have a renewed sense of how temporary life is and a determination to make the most of it. One by-product of the experience was that he truly believed that every Christmas was his last one, and each year from 1983 forward, we had to listen to his annual declaration that "this is probably my last Christmas with you guys, so I want to make the most of it." He was so convinced that each Christmas was the last one that we joked among ourselves that this Christmas was the tenth annual "last Christmas" for Dorsey Huckabee.

In 1995, we finally had reason to believe him. He had called us just two days before Christmas and calmly and soberly told us that he had been to the doctor and been told that a melanoma that he had had removed thirteen years earlier had returned and that it was already spreading. There was no crying or whining or complaining on his part. In fact, he was rather matter-of-fact about the news and just wanted us to know that there really wasn't much to be done about it and that he probably only had months left to live.

After all the years of his announcing to us that this was his "last Christmas," this time, we knew it probably really was.

I think there is, for most of us, a sense that Christmas makes us think about our own mortality. If a loved one has died during the year, we can't help but think of the empty chair at the dinner table or the familiar greeting, perennial gift, or other tradition that is missing. We ponder to ourselves what impact our absence would have on the family if we weren't there next year. Because Christmas is the one day of the year that we typically share with our extended families, the loss of a member creates a verydefinite void and a painfuland poignant reminder of the changes that will be permanent.

After all those years of joking about my father's perennial "last Christmas," there was nothing to laugh about this year. The only member of the family who seemed to be handling it with complete equilibrium was my dad. It was almost as if he were relieved that after years of wrongly predicting his demise, the odds of his. .h.i.tting it right this time were pretty good. My mother had been in very poor health since January of 1992, when she suffered a brain aneurysm and subsequent stroke. She had slowly regained many of her functions and facilities but was never the same. With this news, it was apparent that they would need to move into an a.s.sisted-living facility, as she needed daily care that he could no longer provide.

The fact that he was losing his health, his home, and his life seemed not to have an effect on his demeanor, other than to give him more of a reason to try to keep the rest of us cheered up and optimistic. He reminded us in every conversation that he had lived a good and blessed life and was so very grateful for the years he had had and the joy he had received from seeing his kids grow up, get through college, and have families of their own. We all wanted to comfort him, but he would have none of it-he wanted no sympathy and refused to let us get all weepy and sentimental. He was determined to face this demon head-on and beat it not by outliving it, but by not letting it ruin the time he had left.

Janet and I had gone through her cancer, but it was obvious from the beginning that this was an untamable monster that would take out my father's body, but he was determined that it wouldn't take out his soul. For the next three months, as his body weakened, his faith strengthened. I found myself amazed that this same man who wouldn't even set foot in church for the first fifteen years of my life, and who even as an adult had been somewhat guarded and timid in his outward expression of faith, was now abounding in encouragement as he truly exhibited what it was to "walk through the valley of the shadow of death" and "fear no evil."

With each phone call or visit with my father, I could tell he was physically declining but advancing in his hope and optimism. He had no illusions of getting well. This was not the kind of man to cling to an unrealistic hope, and he openly told us that he knew he would die soon. His only concerns were for my mother, my sister, and me. He reminded us daily that things were fine with him and that he only regretted that he didn't get to live long enough to see his grandkids grow up and get married.

I was lieutenant governor of Arkansas at the time, having been elected in a special election in July 1993 and then reelected in 1994. In 1996, I had announced my candidacy for the United States Senate for an open seat vacated by Senator David Pryor, and I was leading in all polls and seemingly on my way to victory. The governor, Jim Guy Tucker, had been indicted and was awaiting trial on felony charges related to the Whitewater investigations led by Kenneth Starr. I was confident that no Arkansas jury would ever convict a sitting Democratic governor of anything, especially if the person who would take the office was a Republican. That's why I proceeded with the Senate campaign.

My dad told me, "Son, I wish I were going to live long enough to see you become governor." I told him that he would have to live a very long time, since that didn't appear to be in the works, and I explained to him that even though Governor Tucker was facing trial, it didn't seem likely that he would be convicted, and even if he were, he'd probably refuse to resign until he had exhausted his appeals. In a rare moment for my dad, who seldom tried to instruct me in the nature of politics, he smiled and said, "You will be governor. I just won't be here to see it."

He was right about both.

He died on the last day of March of 1996. He had requested that I speak at his funeral service, which I did. I was reluctant to do so because I knew that it was going to be hard to control my own emotions, but it was the last thing he had asked me to do for him and it was the last time I would be able to honor one of his requests.

On July 15, 1996, I was sworn in as the forty-fourth governor of Arkansas. Jim Guy Tucker had been convicted in late May and announced that he would resign on July 15. I decided that it was my duty and responsibility to fill the remaining two and a half years in the governor's office rather than continue the pursuit of the Senate seat, and so I withdrew from the race in order to devote myself to the job of governor. The state needed stability and continuity in that office; otherwise we would have had four different people hold the office within a four-year period.

I often wished so very deeply that my dad could have lived another one hundred days to see me become governor. He had taken me to hear a speech by then-Governor Orval Faubus when I was eight years old and Faubus was making a rare appearance in our part of the state. I never forgot what he told me. "Son, I'm going to take you to hear a talk by the governor. You might live your whole life and never get to meet a governor in person." Little did he know I would become one.