Lumberjack Jesus

By Bruce Kirkpatrick

Insightful and uplifting, Lumberjack Jesus reminds us all that we need and deserve unconditional love.

 

In a series of 28 essays, Bruce Kirkpatrick discovers a loving God who is a good conversationalist and often appears as a lumberjack. God comes alive in these pages in everyday life-in stor

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bruce Kirkpatrick
• Release date: Mar 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9781733041096

Bruce Kirkpatrick

Bruce Kirkpatrick writes to inspire people to discover their full measure of God-given gifts and talents. A Pennsylvania boys, he now writes from Southern California. He spent over thirty years in Silicon Valley as an executive and entrepreneur. He now divides his time between writing and serving on nonprofit boards of directors, including Extollo International, a ministry that helps train Haitian men and women in employable skills so that they can find jobs, feed their families, and have hope for the future (Extollo.org). Please visit his website, bkirkpatrick.com.

Book preview

Lumberjack Jesus

Lumberjack Jesus by Bruce Kirkpatrick, original copyright © 2016 by Bruce H. Kirkpatrick, expanded content © 2024.

Cover by Julie Moore Design

Layout and formatting by Maria Conner, My Author Concierge

Author photo by Josh Gruetzmacher

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson, 1993, 1994,1995, 1996. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

Excerpt from Awakening the Quieter Virtues by Gregory Spencer published by IVP Books, 2010. Used by permission of IVP Books.

This book is a true story about the real life of Bruce Kirkpatrick of Santa Barbara, California. All names and locations are real. Permission has been obtained where possible for the use of names in the book, and information changed where persons wanted their identity to remain anonymous.

Print ISBN: 978-1-7330410-8-9

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-7330410-9-6

CONTENTS

Praise for Lumberjack Jesus

Also by Bruce Kirkpatrick

Introduction

Lumberjack Jesus

The Chemistry Set

Darra

Eye for an Eye

Bobby Knight

490

Cowboys

The Joy Choice

My Two Dads

Love/Hate Haiti

Big Time Wrestling

Restaurant Critic

Suffering

Letting Go

Prius Prejudice

Five Minutes of Solitude

Woodstock in the Rearview Mirror

My Homophobia

100 Pounds

Serving from the Left

The Bridge

Eagles

The Pessimist

The Ride

Wyoming

Dreaming of a New Home

Testimony

The Adam in Me

Afterword

A Message from the Author

Acknowledgments

About the Author

PRAISE FOR LUMBERJACK JESUS

In a world of false pretenses and presumptive personalities, Bruce Kirkpatrick’s writing refreshes a soul through his honesty, humility, and humor. An authentic, mesmerizing story of an honest man’s journey.

—Doug Tegner, Pastor at Large, Redwood Chapel Community Church

With the ease of a best friend, blessed with the delicate balance of calling you out and loving you all at the same time, Bruce Kirkpatrick invites you on a journey with a self-disclosing friend who wants to share his real-world lessons…never scolding, never condemning yet always inviting you to discover a deeper and richer walk with Jesus.

—Hal McLean, Author of The Enduring Organization

"Self-security takes courage since what we see first can be daunting: darker motives, such as greed, lust, envy, and laziness that mire us in self-condemnation. But, as Bruce Kirkpatrick writes so bravely in his memoir Lumberjack Jesus, the Lord’s guidance can deliver us from the pit of pain, lifting us up with the love that passes all understanding."

—Nancy Anderson, Author of Work with Passion and Work with Passion in Midlife and Beyond

The author beautifully weaves situations from his life with stories from the Bible to underline and explain the understanding of his faith. An enjoyable read.

—Diamante Lavendar, Award-winning Author of Breaking the Silence

ALSO BY BRUCE KIRKPATRICK

Fiction

Hard Left

The Resurrection of Johnny Roe

The Carnival Chemist and Other Stories

Anyone But Me

Non-Fiction

Lumberjack Jesus

Raising God’s Gen Z Teen

For my wife, Nancy

INTRODUCTION

Belief in God did not come easy for me. For two-thirds of my life, I resisted him, fought against him, and ignored him.

And yet, he always seemed to be around.

These are stories of how I developed a faith in God. Some are reflections on times in my life before God entered it and seeing now how he was actually present even though I wasn’t aware of it. Some stories I’d never told a soul before I wrote them down here for the first time. Those contain my life’s secrets—some dark, some downright devilish, some bleak, and some beckoning for help from a God I hadn’t yet met. I was crying out in the dark to something or someone for help. God was the only one that answered.

Some of these stories illustrate how, as I came to know God and to trust him, he showed me the errors of my youth. My self-indulgent, narcissistic actions and thoughts gradually fell away, discarded trash piles of younger days. He changed me for the better. He taught me to love and how to accept others. He taught me to cry over the things that broke his heart. And, just as important, he taught me how to forgive myself and fall back in love with the man he originally created, born to this Earth in 1951. No small feat.

For those of you who have not discovered God or think that he doesn’t exist, this book is for you. I believe it will give you hope. Hope in a world that seems at times insane and completely without rhyme or reason, or where no one is in charge. At least no one in charge who knows what he’s doing. Hope in a generous, benevolent God who is open and available to you, and still in control. If he can love and accept an uncaring, self-centered, lustful dope like me, he can do the same for you. Nobody is beyond his reach or his hand.

This book may also convince you that as a Christian, I can be as stupid, calloused, and prejudiced as anybody else. That will hopefully dispel the rumors out there that we Christians somehow think we are holier than you. We are not; I am especially not.

This book is not meant to be preachy. I don’t point out how you should run your life. I simply point out the pitfalls I encountered in mine and the lessons I learned (mostly the hard way) from those encounters. I reached deep down to discover why it is I believe in God and how he works in my everyday life, not just my Sunday go-to-meeting life. How I find him in a drive along a congested freeway or atop a mountain in remote Wyoming. How he comes to life—real, present, almost human-like—in the slums of Haiti, by a firing squad in Utah, or near a rock concert named Woodstock. How he influenced me through my mother and my father (neither of whom knew him intimately) or with Bobby Knight, the famed screeching general of a basketball coach.

If you don’t know God, some of these stories may show you that he does indeed exist. I’ll illustrate how I believe he saved me from such horrors as a car spinning down a freeway at 70 miles per hour backward, from destroying my marriage by answering an email from an old girlfriend, or the shame and guilt from burying my sexual abuse for twenty-five years.

If you are a Christian, this book is for you, too. These stories will show you how I struggle with my faith in the hope that, by seeing my struggles, your struggles will become real, honest, human—and how Jesus can help you through the rough times. These stories may open new ways to think about God, react to him, play with him, be with him, know him, and dare I say, obey him.

You may not agree with my theology or my spiritual habits, and that’s okay. But it is my hope that God, and especially Jesus, may come alive to you in these pages as he did for me—in stories about Vietnam heroes, cowboy movies, wrestling matches, and chemistry sets.

To me, God comes alive in everyday life. Not just in the Bible or in church. He is not simply a legalistic, ethereal character in the Bible. To me, Jesus looks like a lumberjack in a red plaid shirt, jeans, and with a short-cropped beard. When I needed him most—when I was consumed by anger, shame, and guilt, and quite literally dying on the inside—Jesus visited me every day for three months and sat alongside me at my dining room table. There, I discovered how he loves me and cares for me. Even when I push him away. So far away and with such belligerence and bellowing that you would be convinced that I neither deserved nor desired that love.

But you would be wrong. I do. You do, too. We all do.

SCRIPTURE

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

—1 Timothy 1:15-17

PRAYER

Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you. Work through me now. Holy Spirit, come alive in me and may your passion, your voice, and your love shine on me and through me. Thank you, sweet Jesus. Amen.

LUMBERJACK JESUS

My search for God has been a heart journey, an emotional quest. I’m sure my soul was involved, that someplace deep down inside of me wanted and needed a connection with him. I was never interested in discovering a historical God or even investigating other incarnations of God, like the ones proposed by the Mormon or Islamic religions. Religion itself has very little appeal to me. My quest has been to understand the God written about in the Bible, and my heart has always led in that journey.

My parents divorced when I was two years old, and I was predominately raised by women, my mother and grandmother. At times, it was difficult to develop into a man. There weren’t many good, strong male role models around me. In the 1950s, men had returned victorious from the war, my dad included, and they were ready to sow their oats. The traditional family was still intact in America, but acting on the little seams of discontent that were always there began to tear at its fabric. Affairs happened, like they always had, but in my family, divorce followed, which was not always the case. It certainly wasn’t accepted—not like it is today—but we weren’t too far away from the free love generation of the ’60s when many of society’s traditions were tossed to the wind.

As a young boy, I was sexually molested by a family friend. I don’t write that as casually as it may read. I never told a soul for twenty-five years, and it only surfaced as I was writing my autobiography for a career counselor. I had stuffed the incident and emotions deep inside.

As I matured, the shame and guilt I felt over it often exploded out of me in anger. I didn’t realize these emotional toxins I’d squashed were escaping with such force and suddenness.

I later realized I felt responsible for letting the abuse happen. I hated myself for not being man enough to stop it. Heavy burdens to bear as a young boy growing into a man. So I shouldered them alone; I buried them.

My church experience growing up did nothing to alleviate that guilt or shame. I attended Sunday school and church every other weekend, whenever we stayed with my father. As a young boy in grade school, I enjoyed Sunday school because I was with friends and it was fun.

When I graduated to the church service, I was bored out of my skull. The Presbyterian church we attended was all adorned with flowing robes, ornate high ceilings, a choir that only sang dirges (they called them hymns), and to top it off, I was told to wear a shirt and tie. Every service. Ugh!

As far as I can remember, I never once heard the saving grace of Jesus Christ talked about in that church. Maybe I wasn’t listening.

When I left for college at eighteen, I left the church. I only returned for special occasions—weddings and funerals—and never for a moment did I miss it. I stayed away for almost twenty years.

As I hit my mid-thirties, living the life of a self-proclaimed freewheeling bachelor, I began to feel loneliness creep into my life. For a long time, I relished the fact that I had left home, moved about as far away as I could from my family, and made my own way in life. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was searching for something to make me feel whole again.

I attended Werner Erhard’s est (Erhard Seminars Training, Inc.) training, Dale Carnegie courses, got into outside sales to prove my worth, and took just about every self-help seminar I could. I listened to every cassette tape series I could get my hands on. I felt better about myself, but I was still incomplete.

Then I met my future wife Nancy and decided I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. Starting a relationship with that wonderful woman prepared me to start one with God.

We had our first child when I was thirty-five, our second at thirty-eight. As we looked at preschools, she picked the one closest to our home with the nicest staff and the cleanest facility. It just happened to be a Christian school. God was reaching out to me again, but I still didn’t hear him.

One night at the dinner table, my youngest, about three years old at the time, asked where Jesus lived. Intellectually, I scanned my limited Biblical knowledge and answered, In Heaven, with God. Pretty good, huh?

My oldest, who was six years old, politely corrected me and proclaimed, No, Daddy. He lives in your heart.

My wife and I exchanged glances, and I said to her we had better check out what they were teaching our children at that school.

As Christ pursued us through our kids and a very upbeat, practical, heartfelt church and its congregation, we followed. My wife and I accepted Christ as our personal savior on the same Sunday in April of 1993. It felt right and good in our hearts.

But mine is a stubborn heart.

Even as God captured it, I resisted. Not in the typical ways of ignoring, rebelling, or abstaining from him. No, I continued to learn about God, read my Bible daily, and devoured Christian literature. I attended church classes and joined a small home group to get to know the people of God and understand him better. I was in a small men’s group with one of the pastors of the church. I volunteered everywhere in the church I could so I could see the longing in people’s eyes searching for God and the splendor in their lives when they found him.

But I rarely cried out to God. I was still an angry man. I wanted to know God on a personal level, but I still felt the shame and guilt of what had happened thirty years earlier. It was a barrier between the two of us, me and him, I wondered, if I was this new being, this new creature, born again new and fresh, then why was I still so angry? Why hadn’t my relationship with God and Jesus and all the loving people in my church cured my anger? I didn’t understand it.

After having buried the abuse deep within me for so long, it had finally surfaced. That’s what hit me hard.

I was writing an autobiography for a career counselor I was working with who wanted to know more about my past. When she saw the reference—hidden as a one-line description of my youth—she immediately recommended I dig deeper.

I wasn’t thrilled by the idea at first. Poking into my past wasn’t something I wanted to do, but I eventually found a terrific therapist who helped me understand and express what I was feeling. I told my wife and a few family members about the truth of what had happened all those years ago, how I had felt so vulnerable, and then I