Houston, We Have a Problem

Every Sunday the Pastor's family sits in the pew right in front of the Joneses — Pastor Garrett, Sister Garrett, and their littlest, Houston, who is just about Andy's age and just about Andy's favorite person in the world. The two of them have struck up the wobbly, joyful friendship of two two-year-olds. Which is exactly why it is such a catastrophe when they get into it over Andy's red ball, right in the middle of service. The babies are over it in roughly four seconds. 

The Jones sisters are not. 

Certain that somebody must be right and somebody must be wrong, the girls set out to settle the case — and end up in a far bigger fight than the one they were trying to judge. A warm story about brotherly love, and about the wide difference between keeping the peace and keeping score. 

Scripture: Matthew 5:9; Ephesians 4:32 (KJV).

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SPEAKER_01 1:19

Welcome to the Jones Family Chronicles. For life at school, home and church is always full of lessons, laughter, and love. Meet Dad, the pastor's assistant, Mom, the heart of the home, and their five bright and lively kids. Allison, Addison, Anna, Ava Grace, and little Andy, who somehow always managed to turn ordinary days into extraordinary adventures. So gather round, open your heart, and let's discover together the joy of faith, family, and the timeless truths of God's Word. This is the Jones Family Chronicles. All right, kids, gather close. Paw Paul has a story for you about your favorite family The Joneses. Every Sunday the pastor's family sat in the second row from the front directly ahead of the Joneses, who sat in the third. There was Sister Garrett, and there was their littlest, a round and serious two year old named Houston, who was just about Andy's age and who had become over a whole summer of Sundays, just about Andy's favorite person in the entire world. Now you have to understand that Andy loved the pastor already on principle. Andy could spot Pastor Garrett clear across the church and point and holler Pastor with his whole heart every single week. So when it turned out the pastor came with a Houston attached, a person Andy's own size, who loved the same three things Andy loved, namely balls, noise and running, well, it was very nearly more good fortune than one small boy could be expected to bear. The two of them conducted their entire friendship over the back of the chairs. Andy would stand up on his seat and Houston would stand up on his, and the two of them would face each other across that chair back and share a joy that needed no words, which was convenient, because between the two of them they only had about nine words total. Houston was a serious boy, graver than Andy, with a considering little frown occasionally, and he took the friendship seriously too. Every service, the moment he and Sister Garrett came in, Houston would turn all the way around in his mother's arms to hunt for Andy, and Andy would light up like somebody had plugged him in. And Sister Garrett and Mom would trade a look over the tops of the two of them. It was a good thing that friendship, which is what made the next part such a shame. Their mothers had a system. A cracker here, a quiet toy there, a firm hand when the joy got too loud. It worked most services. It it not worked this one. The trouble, as trouble so often is, was round and red. Andy had brought his ball to church, the small red one that lived in his fist most days, and Houston saw the ball and wanted the ball, with the sudden and total wanting that only another boy can truly produce. So he reached over the pew and took it. Andy was briefly too astonished to react. Then he reacted. Mine, said Andy, which was one of his very clearest words, and he grabbed the ball back. Houston grabbed it again. There was a tug, there was a whale, possibly two whales layered in slightly different keys, and the red ball popped loose and bounced away under the seats, and both boys, having now lost the very thing they'd been fighting over, cried about that instead. The ball rolled to a stop a few rows back against Brother Thompson's shoe. He picked it up and passed it quietly to Sister Beverly, who was already halfway out of her seat toward the commotion the way she always was, and she carried it up and set it in Mom's hand with a wink, the two of them a good deal calmer about the whole affair than anyone under three feet tall. Sister Garrett scooped up Houston, Mom scooped up Andy. The two mothers exchanged the ancient, wordless look of mothers everywhere. Sorry, no, mine's fine, don't you worry, aren't they something? And the whole thing was over from the mother's point of view in about the length of a single sentence. From the Jones sister's point of view, it had only just begun. Because the girls had seen the whole thing, and the girls had opinions. Anna was off the blocks first, naturally, whispering at a volume that was technically a whisper the way a kettle is technically a musical instrument. Houston took it. Andy had it first, and Houston just took it. Did you see that? He took Andy's ball. Addison, who missed nothing, had watched the whole thing like an instant replay and felt obligated to be precise. Andy had it first, she agreed. But Andy grabbed it back kind of hard, and that's when it got knocked loose. So technically, technically nothing hissed Anna. Houston started it. And Alison Alison felt the pull she always felt, which was the pull to sort a thing out, establish the facts, and rule on it correctly. Somebody was right here and somebody was wrong, and Alison found it almost physically uncomfortable to leave that undecided. Okay, she whispered. Let's just figure out who actually girls, said Dad without turning his head, in the low voice that ended things.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

And they hushed. But they did not stop. You could feel them not stopping.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Three sisters sat through the rest of the preaching fairly vibrating with an unfinished argument, while one sister, the smallest one, sat quietly in the middle of them and watched the two boys, who by now were peacefully sharing a hymnal, and had entirely forgotten they had ever owned a grievance in their lives. The argument, denied its outlet in church, came roaring out in the car. By the time they were halfway home, the Jones sisters were fully at it. Anna was Andy's defense attorney, loud and loyal, Addison was the witness for the record, insisting on the exact sequence of events, whether it helped anybody's case or not, and Allison had appointed herself judge and was trying to hold court in the back of a moving expedition and getting absolutely nowhere. Because nobody actually wanted a fair verdict. They each just wanted to be told that they were right. It's simple, Allison kept saying. Houston reached first, reaching first is taking, so Houston was wrong. Andy pulled it back too hard, though, said Addison, who could not help herself. Whose side are you on? said Anna to Addison, about a fight between two children who could not drive and were not at that moment even present.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

They stopped, though, said Ava Grace, from her booster seat, to nobody who was listening. The boys stopped a long time ago.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

The words drifted right past all three of them like wind past a shut window.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

It was not yet time. Ava Grace didn't mind at all. She was good at waiting for it to be the right time.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

And there it was. Somewhere on the road home without anybody deciding to, the argument had quietly changed shape. It was not about Andy and Houston anymore. Andy and Houston were fine. Andy was in fact asleep. The fight now belonged entirely to the big girls, three sisters, who loved each other dearly genuinely cross with one another, over a thirty second squabble between two little boys who had already forgiven each other and moved on to a hymnal.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

It didn't get better at home.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

It got worse. The way things always do because now there was history. Now Anna was mad at Addison because she hadn't backed Andy. Now Addison was mad that nobody cared about the facts. Now Alison was mad that her perfectly good verdict kept getting ignored. By supper the three of them were barely speaking, and Ava Grace, who had not said one single word this entire time, sat watching all of them with those big steady eyes, the way she watched everything, waiting. Mom and Dad had noticed, of course. You can't have three daughters refusing to speak to one another and hide it over meatloaf. So let me be sure I've got this right, Dad said, setting his fork down. The two of you, he nodded at the general war, plus that one are not speaking. Because Andy and Houston had a disagreement. That Andy and Houston have completely forgotten. He let it sit a moment. Where is Andy right now? They looked. Andy? He was under the table feeding a green bean to nobody in particular, radiantly happy. And where's the ball?

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Dad asked. Nobody knew where the ball was. The ball, the whole entire cause of the war, had not been thought about in hours.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

After supper, Dad got the Bible and he did not lecture them because Dad had never once fixed a thing by lecturing and knew it. He just read them two short verses. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God Matthew five and nine. Notice what it doesn't say, Dad said. It doesn't say blessed are the ones who were right. There is no verse anywhere in this whole book that says blessed are the ones who figured out whose fault it was. He looked around at them. God never asked you to be the judge of your brother. He asked you to be a peacemaker for him. Those are two different jobs. A judge wants to find out who's wrong. A peacemaker just wants everybody back together. Then you read them the other one. And be ye kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. Ephesians four and thirty two. Forgiving one another, Dad said, even as God forgave you. And you want to know how God forgave you? He didn't run the tape back first to make sure whose fault it was. He already knew whose fault it was. He forgave it anyway. That right there is the whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

That's the family business. Ava Grace, from her end of the table, finally spoke. She'd been saving it up. The babies already did it. Everybody looked at her.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

They already forgave right away, back in church. She gave a small shrug. We're the only ones still fighting about the fight that they had already finished.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

It got very quiet at the table.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Alison, who had spent an entire Sunday building a case, felt the whole thing go loose in her hands. She had been so certain that somebody being right was the important part. And the two people the fight had actually belonged to had never once cared who was right. They had only wanted to be friends again. And so they were, and had been for hours, while Alison was still back at the table preparing her verdict. It was Anna who moved first, which surprised everyone because Anna was usually the last one down off of a good med. I yelled at you, she said to Addison. You weren't even on a side. There weren't supposed to be sides. I kept score, Addison admitted. I don't even know why. It just felt important to have it exactly right. And Alison quietly closed the notebook she had, in fact, been keeping the sequence of events in, closed it without reading anybody the final ruling, which for Allison was a whole sermon all by itself. Dad watched his daughters find their way back to one another and didn't say another word, because the best thing you do with a lesson that has finally landed is get out of its way. He just reached over and squeezed Mom's hand under the table, the two of them thinking the same thing they often thought at that table, which was that the Lord was doing something in this house that they could not have done themselves if they tried for a hundred years. The next Sunday, the Jones sisters came embraced. They filed into the third row, half ready to referee, watching the two boys the way you watch a pot that boiled over on you last time. They needn't have worried. Andy stood up on his seat, and Houston stood up on his. And the two of them beheld each other across the back of the chair like a pair of old sailors reunited at the docks. And then Andy did the thing that Andy does. He looked at his friend, and he looked at the red ball in his own fist, the very red ball, the entire cause of the last war, and he simply held it up and held it out over the pew and gave it to Houston.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

Just gave it to him. Because Houston wanted it. And Andy loved Houston.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

And to Andy, those two facts had a very obvious solution that didn't even require a judge. Now, Houston took the ball and beamed. And then Houston looked at it a second and reached back over the pew and gave it to Andy. And Andy gave it back to Houston. And the two of them spent the entire first song passing that red ball back and forth across the top of the chairs, giving away the very thing they had torn each other apart over, laughing hysterically every single time, as though it were the finest and funniest game ever invented, which it is possible that it was. The Jones sisters watched their baby brother and the pastor's baby boy hand a red ball back and forth and back and forth, and not one of the girls said a single word about whose it was. On the way home, a very different ride than the Sunday before, Ava Grace summed up the whole couple of weeks in the way that only Ava Grace could. Andy's not smarter than us, she said, considering it carefully. He just didn't waste any time being right. Nobody argued. For once, nobody argued about anything at all. And papa, telling it, looked around at his grandchildren gathered close. There are going to be a lot of fights in your life, he said. And in plenty of them somebody really will have started it, and you really will be able to prove it. And every time you'll get to choose between two jobs. You can be the judge and win, or you can be the peacemaker and you can get your brother back. He smiled. Only one of those jobs did God put his own name on. Blessed are the peacemakers, he said, for they shall be called the children of God.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

He never once said blessed are the ones who turned out to be right. Now, who's ready for brownies?