A Song for the Son

The Temptation of Thatcher Biltmore

And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted,he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. 1 Corinthians 10:13b

Thatcher Biltmore stopped in the hallway just outside his office and took a deep breath. Behind his back he wrung his hands together, then looked around, slouched forward, and started walking again.

He took slow methodical steps, one foot in front of the other, straining because today the weight was almost too much.

He had never actually seen it, the weight that is, but he could see the clasp bolted around his ankle, and the chain, link by link, trailing off into the ever present mist behind him. For as long as he could remember the chain had always been there, invisible to everyone else but him, reaching back into the dim where it was most certainly attached to something enormous and heavy.

It was a relief to know that only he could see the chain, and that only he was aware of the weight. Sort of. It still took all his energy to drag it through his day.

Twice in the past he had tried to use the chain as a guide to find his way to the weight to remove it, to deal with it face to face, to perhaps discover something about it that could make it lighter. Each time he had lost faith, he had doubted, and ended up dropping the chain and walking back out of the mist.

Today something had changed. Something tragic in the life of another had happened and now he was home, and now he was sitting, and now he was thinking. In time the thinking formed into resolve and then resolve transformed into action.

He reached down and grabbed the chain and pulled it taut. He hesitated, then one hand over the other he used the chain as a guide and walked into the mist. After just a few steps the shrouds of the mist closed around him.

Self doubt was the first to attack. From all sides, insecurities morphed into view and tried to convince him he could not do it, that he was too weak, that he was too frail. Then they scattered at the approach of pride as it lumbered into view, filling his mind with thoughts that he didn’t really need to find the weight, that he didn’t really need to face it today. He drove it away by muttering a word of encouragement to himself, and then his own voice shifted and betrayed him and started to mock his attempt.

He closed his eyes to them all, looked up, and sent some quiet words aloft. Keeping his eyes closed he started to use his hands, no longer just on the chain to guide him, but now pulling forward as he took each step.

And then he was there. He could hardly believe it. With elation he looked down at the end of the chain and saw an enormous boulder, slate grey, with pock marks and bumps all over its surface.

Almost immediately he felt dismay as he saw that the chain went straight into the rock. The last link was fused into the surface. There was no bolt to undo, there was no clasp to open. There was no way to unhook the chain from the rock.

“Lift it.”, said a voice.

Just ahead of him in the mist he saw another man, close to the same age as him, sitting on a slightly smaller rock.

“Pardon me?” Thatcher replied.

“Just lift it,” said the man as he clambered down off his own rock, “Just get a good grip on it and lift it up.  Those things are much easier to carry around than they are to drag.  You have to get a grip on it.”

“There is no way,” said Thatcher looking down at the rock.

“Sure, sure there is,” said the man, “I had a rock just like that once, well almost like that, and there is a handhold on each side. I see one of them. You’ll have to find the other.”

Thatcher reached down and traced the palm of his hand over the rock and indeed he found the handhold the man had pointed to, a slight depression in the rock that allowed his hand to get a good hold.

“I can’t find the other one,” he said.

“Wrestle with it,” replied the man, “That’s the only way. Wrestle the rock for a while until you find the other handhold. It’s always there. He never allows us to get chained to a rock that doesn’t have handholds. Sometimes it just takes a while to find them.”

Thatcher heaved against the rock but could not move it. He reached around and felt the other side. Back to front to side to side he moved his hand across every face of the rock, but to no avail. Soon he sat down on his rock exhausted.

“Maybe you’ll find it tomorrow,” said the man, “You don’t always find it the first day. Every time you pull yourself here along your chain you gain wisdom, every day you come you are stronger. One day you will find the handhold. One day you will lift the rock.”

Thatcher nodded to the man and thoroughly drained from the experience he walked back out of the mist.

The next morning before work he tried again, he pulled his way in, and spent almost an hour searching for the handholds, but to no avail. The next day he did the same. His routine became such that everyday he struggled to find the handholds on his rock.

Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months.

Then, one day, as he sat down on his rock, exhausted once again from searching, his hand slipped into a small crevasse on the face it. In shock he jumped down and put his other hand into the handhold the man had pointed out to him so many months earlier.  As he hugged the rock he realized that he had purchase with both hands now.

He lifted with all his might.

At first he barely got it off the ground, but once he did the rock began to shrink and lose weight.  By the time he got it to waist level it had become the size of a small pebble, the chain now tiny and almost invisible even to him. He looked at it for some time, and then as the mists around him began to disappear he slipped it into the pocket of his suit jacket. As he patted his pocket, he straightened his shoulders, smiled, and boldly stepped into his day.