Through My Eyes Read Online Free PDF Page A

to get by. It was definitely a power game inside.
    Someone was always getting hurt when we played—regardless of the game. And it was usually Peter. Once we were playing a three-way game of catch in the yard. We were each a pretty good distance apart, forming the three points of a rough triangle, and instead of following the pattern that we had followed all that day, where Robby was throwing to me, Robby decided to switch things up. Thinking that Peter was looking, Robby crow hopped and wound up to put his full weight into the throw. Of course, Peter wasn’t looking, fully expecting that Robby would be throwing to me, as had been the pattern that day; and so we ended up having to take him into Mom with a bloody nose and bruised face for some patching up.
    Another time, we were playing baseball but decided to use a basketball instead of a baseball just to see what would happen. Nothing good, as it turned out, at least as far as Peter was concerned. I was pitching, and the bat richocheted with Peter—swinging as hard as he could to see how far he could hit the basketball—right into his face.
    More blood. More bruises. Back to see Mom.
    Our favorite Peter injury, however, was less about sports and more about one of his moments of pretending he was a superhero. Funny that a kid who is so smart could have done something so crazy. I was about eight when he climbed a rope which had been attached to the ceiling in the barn, and decided to swing from one end of the barn all the way to the other. All went well until his shin discovered, at a high rate of speed, the post-hole digger that hadn’t been put away and was sitting sideways in the barn, causing his shin to split wide open. Blood was everywhere.
    Enter Mom, once again, on the scene.
    Living on a farm, there was always a certain amount of excitement around the house, and if it wasn’t one of us getting injured, it was the realities of farm life that kept things interesting. On one occasion, my dad decided, this being a working farm and all, to have a controlled burn to get the weeds out of the pasture. Controlled burns were normal but occasional occurrences, and completely necessary in settings such as ours. Apparently “controlled” is in the eye of the fire starter, especially when you don’t call the forestry department to forewarn them.
    The first indication we had that things were no longer under control was when Dad ran into the house frantically to get our help. As it turned out, the pasture was ablaze, and the fire was moving rapidly toward the woods. If it had reached the woods, it would have been devastating not only to us but to the families around us as well. All of us—Mom, my sisters, my brothers—struck out to help Dad contain the fire.
    The fire hadn’t yet reached the woods, but we all noticed that it had jumped into our neighbor’s pasture. The good thing was that our neighbor would no longer have a weed problem. Hopefully he would still have a house.
    For the next few hours, we used shovels to beat on the edges of the fire. All of us did, although Christy got out of working early. She had a piano audition that day but was worried about leaving us. We all insisted she go, however, and she focused well enough to earn a college scholarship. The rest of us followed in her footsteps, earning scholarships to college, and it’s pretty funny that it started that day, during the fire. Even Otis, our dog, was pawing at the flames. Finally, through what had to be God’s grace and our collective efforts, we won out.
    From that point on, Dad has always called the forestry department for a burn permit ahead of time for a number of good reasons, one of which no doubt is that he doesn’t have a bunch of kids on hand to help put out any more “controlled” burns. Afterward, Dad took us all inside and used a teachable moment to have a brief Bible study on James 3:1–12. With the smell of the fire still on our clothes, Dad got us glasses of water, sat us down,