Testimony

The following is the testimony of Kevin Hughes as given to the Canby Christian Church Men's Huddle on March 16, 2024.

Preface

It was never my intent to be in this position -- in front of an audience, sharing my testimony. Quite honestly, even with an audience of one, I never have been comfortable talking about myself. I have an unusual obsession with perception of self. I second and third-guess words I plan to say, pondering if the hearer will understand my intent, or will otherwise assume I speak from a position of ignorance, insincerity, or piety. So, I ask for your patience as I attempt to explain what I am choosing to call, "What I know of the Father."

I'm here because I chose a long time ago that when asked to serve, I would not say no. Rob asked, and here I am. I have been asked to keep this to twenty minutes. If any of you give me the proper facial reaction, I might be able to make it less.

The Home I Was Born Into

My parents were Clyde and Lataine. I grew up in the middle of southern Idaho, about a mile from the Snake River on 36 acres of pasture and corrals. My father was a dairyman turned-cattle broker and trout farmer. My mother an English teacher and librarian. If you have ever seen the TV show "Green Acres" then you have the picture, except my mother was no Eva Gabor, and my father was a cowboy. My grandparents on my father's side lived on the opposite side of the property.

The entire family were active members in the Seventh-day Adventist or "SDA" church. Teaching at the local SDA school, running the local SDA community services, church treasurer, deacon, school board.... In my youth, I wasn't quite able to appreciate the relationship they had with the church membership. I just knew my relationships and experiences were always attached to it. There was little separation between family and church member. Everybody knew perhaps a little too much about everyone else.

In 1949 my parents, not being able to have children of their own adopted two children -- Wesley and Susan. Dad and mom were complete. Wesley adopted all of the loves of my father -- fishing, hunting. Susan was a version of my mother, even taking more interest in school than my brother. It was, as has been described to me a home full of joy and love.

In 1963, when Wesley was 14 and graduating from 8th grade, dad and mom gifted Wesley with a motorcycle. That summer, on a ride not much more than a mile from home with his sister hanging on tight behind him, they lost their lives. What I know of that time were of stories related to me by church members and photos dated of the time. The church surrounded them, loved them, and waited patiently for them.

Three years later, in 1966 at the age of 43, my mother found out during a doctor's appointment for fatigue and nausea that she was pregnant. If you think this was immediate joy, don't. Never growing up did I hear from my parents, grandparents, church members, or even my auntie that this was "joyous." Shocking, certainly. Terrifying, perhaps to my mother. But to everyone who had surrounded my parents for the previous three years, it was a moment of hope that my parents pain could be eased.

Growing Up

The problem of my being the third and only child is that my life was pretty much planned out. I was to be a minister, a dedicated student, and subject of my mom's whims to "style-up" as she saw fit. I blame that on my sister.

My eight grade school years were completed in a SDA school. My grades were good being under the watchful eye of my mother. There were things I learned to not ask for -- like a motorcycle. The memory of my brother and sister were ever present in pictures on the walls, stories of their past, and mom's reminders of their birthday every year. I never gave my parents cause to worry. I understood the fearful reaction it could elicit. Even when I would get that occasional report card with a C, I was somehow reminded of my sister's perfect grades. I placed myself in constant competition with my mother's memories, and her memories of my brother and sister were the catalyst for a question I would ask myself over and over -- why am I not good enough?

Where my mother was the push, my father was the ballast in my life. He taught me the love of fishing, and often we would take off on a weekend day, hook up the boat and drive for an hour or more, to some remote canyon reservoir. Too far away for anyone to find us. He would tell me many a funny tall tale -- of the barn cat that came back to life, or when my grandfather got caught in the car headlights when he rushed out to herd the escaped cows back into the pasture... in his underwear. My father taught me all that he knew in hopes that I might someday want to take over his business. And my father was never reserved in his love. If any of you feel discomfort by a full, slightly-too-long hug from me, that's my father.

At the age of twelve, having watched several of my classmates choose Christ, I entered baptismal classes. I am certain there are twelve-year-olds that can comprehend enough of the gospel to understand what baptism symbolizes. I just know that I wasn't one of them. Regardless, I think back on my baptism as the beginning -- the clay unwrapped as it were.

High School

Then came high school. 2.5 hours away from home at a tiny SDA boarding school in Caldwell, Idaho. Fifty-four classmates in a student body of 220. These were four of the best years of my life. Here I learned responsibility for one's own words. Dad and mom were not present to shield the truth. Sometimes the lessons were hard. The teachers also resided on campus. There was no escape for them to present a different person in the classroom versus outside. These were the shepherds that founded my understanding of faith, as much by their actions as their words.

I remember being in church on campus, in a class being taught by the Math/Physics teacher, and a student asked the question that was on the minds of all teenagers in the early to mid-80s... will the world be destroyed by a nuclear holocaust. His answer was simple enough for all of us to grasp -- "we know Jesus will return and the dead will rise to meet Him. I don't believe Jesus will be returning to a dead world."

When I was on the verge of getting that one additional absence my senior year because Government class was just an hour earlier than I preferred to wake-up for, it was the attendance secretary that sent both the Government and Math/Physics teacher to my dorm room to wake me up. Seeing these two men at my door -- and by-the-way, the Government teacher was also the principal -- I was never absent or tardy again.

Finding My Wife

Incidentally, it was in my senior year that I met Heidi my wife, then a friend of my girlfriend. The following summer after my graduation, Heidi's parents accepted a teaching position at the SDA school associated with my church. Coincidentally, that summer she started working for my summer employer. Through the church's youth activities we became good friends, but she was sixteen, and I was twenty, and I didn't think anything else about it.

I spent my first year at college in academic frustration. Nothing interested me. I didn't have any idea what I wanted to do in life. My mother had given up on my being a minister and was now pushing dentistry. At the end of my first year of college, my high-school Math/Physics teacher asked if I would consider spending a year as a task force math teacher at the school. To my surprise, my mother thought it would be a good idea and so, I returned to boarding school.

Looking back now, putting a 20 year-old in a position of any kind of authority over a teenagers is frankly amoral. But here I was. I came to understand what the faculty wrestled with when considering discipline. Those years in high school seeing inconsistent discipline being handed out was replaced with consideration of the home the student came from, and what could possibly happen to their future if they were turned away.

And Heidi was a junior, and no longer looking like a freshman. In secret, we started dating Christmas day of that year. Two years later, after a year of college together, I married my best friend, in my home church, by my high school Bible teacher/pastor.

Then Change Came

After a third year at college, Heidi and I decided to return to home. I opened a Computer business and started attending a local college. Dad wanted us close and so we started discussing plans for building a third home on the family property. Our daughter Felicia was born after our second year of marriage. In that first year I observed joy in my parents, especially my mother, that I believed I had never seen before.

Then two months after Felicia's first birthday, everything changed. At the age of 69, my father passed away. He had purchased a mean bull. When a Holstein bull becomes aggressive, it is a danger to everyone. And sometimes it happens -- a person doesn't want to lose money by putting a bull down, so they partially tranquilize it and then send it to the livestock sale yard. When it became evident to dad that he had a bull that had to be put down, he asked me to meet him on a Sunday morning, to get the bull into catch pen so it could be loaded and sent to the butcher. I can only guess that he didn't want anyone else at risk, so with a pitchfork in hand he decided to do it alone. When I arrived, it was too late.

What I discovered of my father immediately after, only reinforced my love for him. It fell to me to settle my father's affairs. I visited the dozens of dairymen in the area who owed my father money to collect. Between what was owed to my father, and what my father owed the bank, there was a difference of thirty-thousand dollars. There never would have been the money for retirement, yet he had planned on helping Heidi and I build a house.

As my mother and I cleaned out my dad's shop, in in back of the bottom drawer that contained tools I found a box. It contained four years of my high-school mid-term progress reports. Note, these only were sent out if the student had Ds or Fs. "Well, would you look at this! Mom, there are all my mid-term failure reports." My mom took the box and started flipping through them, very confused. "I don't understand," she said, "you never had any problems with you grades." "Oh, come on mom!" was all I could respond with. My mom, was organized. We dropped our work gloves and walked to the house. She opened a filing cabinet and pulled out the folder containing my grades. "See, she said. You always got good grades." These were the days when grades were printed out via those band printers from a minicomputer. All the information appeared in carbon print. And upon very close inspection it became evident that my grades had been edited by a steady hand and a pencil. When we both realized what had happened I suddenly had clarity, before I would come home after the end of a quarter where my grades were not good, dad would call me at school. "Son, I have taken care of your failings where your mom is concerned. No reason to bring it up. I only ask that you try harder."

When I told mom that I would not be returning to college and that I was going to take over dad's business, her reaction was firm -- return to college or she would sell the farm. So Heidi and I packed up our family and moved to Boise. Upon arrival, Heidi discovered she was pregnant. She made it clear it was my fault, to which I'm still trying to figure out my sole responsibility for. I started attending Boise State University and took on a position at my high school teaching computer science and algebra. At the end of the first year our son Geoffrey was born, and mom sold the farm.

My Son

My daughter and son are polar opposites in nearly every respect. I won't be speaking about my daughter, only because that from this point on, it is my son that is the rest of the story.

Geoff grew up searching for perfection in himself. A compassionate, loving boy. So much so that I was worried if he would ever be able to defend himself. However, in sixth grade while playing touch football on the playground he threw his first punch, at the school bully. Heidi, who was the attendance secretary at the school, witnessed the unprofessional reactions of the staff privately spoken to Geoff as "way to go! He had it coming!" That was an indication of the road ahead.

Geoff was the apple of his mother's eye. Even as a teenager, I could find him asleep in his mother's lap. He was loud, brave, and unashamed of his poorly-toned singing voice, which he would often employ to the embarrassment of his friends that we unfortunate enough to be in his company when he decided to burst out in song. I have no idea where he got that.

Geoff went on to his own boarding high school. He went on a mission to Africa to build a school. He never held back telling his friends when they were being idiots, which seemed to suit his role as he graduated as his class' sergeant at arms. He received a scholarship to college and returned to home in Colorado where we were then living and joined the marines reserves.

Over the course of the next eight years he deployed to Afghanistan, married his high school sweetheart Anisha, reached the position of Platoon Sergeant, graduated from college with a health science and a minor in physical therapy. In 2015, Heidi and I moved here to Oregon. In 2018, he and Anisha moved to Spokane, Washington. She started on her masters in Occupational Therapy, and Geoff was hired by a local gym which thrilled him to no end.

Geoff's mission in life -- to motivate people, to be better than they are, to transform themselves through hard work, perseverance, and encouragement, always believing in who they could become and not as they see themselves now.

In April of 2019, while Anisha was away visiting family in Oregon, Geoff took his own life. We still do not know why.

His funeral took place in Happy Valley. There were between four hundred and five hundred in attendance.

What I Now Understand

Now, I have told you all of this, seemingly unrelated to my testimony. But it is necessary for you to know these events before you can appreciate how I became clay, even now being molded by the Father's hand. The gift imparted to me by the Father is but a small understanding of the depth of his love, His attachment to us, and his longing for each of us to be with Him.

Pure Love

What I discovered in the more than an hour of receiving the attendees of Geoff's funeral is that when we, the created of God can set aside everything about this world and come together in love, born out of pure compassion for each other, we can for an instant understand His love. The recipients of our love in the face of worldly devastation will never remember the words. The words are meaningless. Nothing can explain away, give comfort to, or fill the void of such loss. But watching each person try, struggle, utterly fail, and yet so deeply want to convey something through a touch -- I understand this was what God intended all along when he created the garden, and asked Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. Imagine it, the things that come into our minds that influence us to turn away from each other would never have existed if it were not for sin. In the absence of sin, pure love remains.

We Cannot be Separated from the Father

When my mother passed, she and I were in an emergency room in Colorado. I had taken her in to see why she was feeling weak and feeling some pain in her chest. While she was laying on the bed waiting for the doctor, she suffered a ruptured aortic aneurysm. The staff moved her to a central table and went to work, with tubes, and plasma. They were able to bring her back to consciousness for a couple of minutes before rushing her off to emergency surgery. In those minutes I was able to tell her how much I loved her, how much her family loved her. And her last words to me were, "you are all I have."

What I discovered in three years of wrestling with the emptiness of my son is an understanding of my mother. That it was impossible for me to replace the pain my parents felt from the death of my brother and sister. A parent, like the Father, loves each child, deeply, and uniquely. Our children are our creation, and they are an inseparable part of our being. I believe God gave us this gift -- a measure of understanding that His love binds us to him.

Longing for Us to be With Him

Several months ago, Heidi woke up from a dream, crying. Recounting it to me, she said that she had imagined walking into our bedroom and saw Geoff sitting on the bed. He said, "I'm sorry mom" and then disappeared.

I cannot imagine any way a parent who loses a child finds complete closure. Our children are a part of us. When they are gone a part of you will always be missing.

Not knowing why our son chose to end his life leaves our family, our daughter-in-law, her family with a void. Yet, I feel closer today to the Father today than ever before in my life. I have been given a sliver of understanding of the depth of His personal love for me, and the perpetual, inconsolable depth of loss our Father in Heaven feels when one of his children chose to not be with him.

And yet there is this --

For God so loved the world, that he gave His only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. -- John 3:16

As Christians, we rejoice in this gift of salvation. But as a father, I will always reflect on the first half of that verse. He loved us so much, that he gave His son to die for us. I long for the day I can understand how much love that is.

A Healthy Disciplined Church

Heidi and left the SDA church after choosing to search for something that was missing in our spiritual life. We didn't know what was missing, only that it was. We knew we wanted to find a church that studied together and supported each other in the journey of understanding that study. We visited a lot of churches. Frankly, I had given up. I told Heidi she could continue looking, but I was done. But then she suggested we give this church, just one block from her office, a try.

That "something" that was missing -- we now understand to be a healthy church that holds each other accountable in following the gospel. When I try to explain what "discipline" is and what Heidi and I have found here, it isn't well understood. I can watch the human nature creeping in, and I can see resistance to the concept, especially when it interferes with what is held as important in this world. But that is OK. I'm now committed to the long game. Where the world sees discipline, I see the will of the Father, applied in love.

Count it all joy, my brothers. When you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. --James 1:2-4 (ESV)