I got a kink in my neck at church yesterday.

What would you guess caused it?

It was a red scarf.

Apparently this scarf needed a seat. On our pew there were five in my group, plus this lady, her husband, and a red scarf. (total of eight if you count the scarf). My five, (which included a 6’9″ 275 pound 17 year old Serbian boy, who takes up a seat and a half), used about two-thirds of the row. The lady, her husband, and the red scarf took up a solid third.

When we started to sit, the lady appeared annoyed that we wanted to sit there. I was kind of annoyed that I wanted to sit there too. My wife told me to lead us to a seat, so I walked one way (honestly feeling like a man, since my wife was willing to follow me), but I got about ten feet to my right and looked back and my family was walking up the middle of the church toward the front. So, I changed my mind about where I wanted to lead our family, and decided to sit by the red scarf. My indecision is frustrating to me. Why didn’t I realize where I wanted to sit before my wife had to show me?

At one point I thought the lady was going to move the scarf because she saw that I was contorting my body. But she simply adjusted it a little and looked at me askew with what appeared to me to be a look of disdain. Maybe I was reading into it. But the whole thing confused me. Do scarves require a seat? Why is this lady treating me with contempt? Is there something sacred about red scarves on the last Sunday of the year?

Also, I genuinely like people and treat them well. I tend to get kindness in return. Kids like me, peers like me, ladies love me, girls adore me, I mean, even the ones who never saw me like the way that I rhyme at a show , the reason why man, I don’t know.

If I just lost you, my apologies, those were some lyrics from Rob Base. If you don’t know him, don’t worry about it. He’s not internationally known, but he is known to rock the microphone. Stay away from him if you’re contagious. And for Heaven’s sake, whatever you do, do not give him a Big Mac. And do not sit next to a lady’s scarf in church. Lesson learned.

Babies and toddlers should teach us more.

“He’s grumpy because he didn’t get a good nap.”
“TOO much sugar.  She can’t settle down.”
“He’s acting out because he is just trying to get attention.”

Adults are just over-sized babies.  We need good rest.  We need to have the right foods and avoid the wrong ones.  And we mostly just want somebody to like us.

But the best thing about babies and toddlers is that they are honest about their emotions.  They don’t hide the fact that you are making them angry because they want that candy.  Then we adults do this wonderfully awful thing to our young ones.  We teach them to hide their feelings and avoid honest dialogue.

Sure, we do need to teach them to know when to act out and when not to act out.  But, if their emotions are suppressed over one issue, it will come out in another way.  It is the EXACT same thing for you and me.

What I have attempted to do is to realize that I am toddler before God.  I do not rest enough, I want things that are not good for me, and I really just want people to like me.  If I am honest about that, and realize that I need guidance, I tend to have a better chance at resting, will likely get more of what I really need, and will probably be more likable to people.

Thanks all you cry babies.  You teach me a lot.

Hyperbole are the best.

That line reminds me of comedian Steven Wright’s line, “A metaphor is like a simile.” If that doesn’t make you laugh, you are probably smarter than me…well, that should be assumed.

I’ll prove how not smart I am. I am about to call out most people for their use of hyperbole (I am trying to make the word plural, but I keep getting corrected. I am pretty sure I can just add an “s” to hyperbole to make it plural, but I think the word itself has convinced auto-correct that it has no need for plurality).

I’ve always responded poorly to hyperbole inside my head. And I sometimes let that frustration out. I’m probably wrong to be bothered, but let me explain.

The use of hyperbole seems to immediately discredit the intention of the statement.

My kids are the best ever!
It has NEVER rained like this before!
That was the worst flight!

I won’t try to tell you that your kids aren’t your favorite. I hope you like them more than you like mine. But, when you say they are the best, in all honesty, it kind of seems like you are trying to convince yourself of something you do not believe. And the truth is, they are not the best ever. Because nobody really can say that. Except maybe Mary and Joseph (Jon Acuff, was that a Jesus Juke? If I understand the word correctly, I think it was.)

Never rained like this before. Really? You may be correct. And it is verifiable. But as soon as you say it, all I can do is stop listening to anything else you are saying and think about how to prove you right or wrong. I mean come on…The Flood. You know, Noah. (Is it a Jesus Juke if it is in the Old Testament?) Even if I eliminate The Flood of Genesis, I am pretty sure it has rained more somewhere sometime.

Your flight was the worst ever? It landed I assume. You are talking. Those two realities alone disqualify your statement. Unless you were on the flight that crashed landed and you had to eat people to survive, I don’t really think you have a case. It seems to me that a plane that crashes and you die is better than one in which you would have to eat people. I don’t mean to be humorous about that. It kind of is funny, I think. But I mean it as serious.

I guess using hyperbole for emphasis is fine. That is the intention. I just don’t like it. That is an indicator of my conflicted mind. But, I might suggest that you replace hyperbole with more subjective terminology.

My kids are my favorite. I really love them.
This rain is crazy. And it gives me something to talk about.
That flight was bad. But at least I didn’t crash and have to eat someone to survive.

Respect hyperbole. It is the best word ever!

I can still remember really clearly a time I was riding around with my parents in a Chevy Suburban (my grandparents’) in Central Florida. Actually, I probably am confused and blending several memories together. Whatever…I always tell the story as if it is true. I am, however, confident about the lesson I learned as a result of this distorted recollection.

By the way, I fell in love with Suburbans back then. My grandparents had this 70’s Suburban, vinyl seats, smelled like old people (umm…maybe, something like a mothball smell…was that just MY grandparents? Do you even know what mothballs smell like?), and it had the coolest window tinting in the back. I wonder how many people remember those original tinted windows that were pictures and had tiny little holes in it…you could see out but not in. It seems like they had a picture of mountains.

I knew then that I would one day own a Suburban. Around the year 2003 my wife and I bought one that was just about as old as my grandparents’ (as old as the Suburban they owned, NOT as old as THEM!, come on, read with some understanding…don’t be so literal). I LOVE that thing. It is way over 200,000 miles. The driver side door won’t open from the inside. But that is ok because the window sometimes will roll down/up (but other times it doesn’t–it is better to be happy about it than mad about it…imagine if I accomplished my goals about 50% of the time…that would be better than now, so why should I be mad or disappointed about a WINDOW that works 50% of the time? I thank it when it works…unless it is raining.) Also, the brakes don’t really work. I have to down shift to slow down and really think ahead about where I am going, how I will get there, and if I might need to stop…which I really like because I like challenging games. It is boring if you know exactly how things are going to develop or if you don’t have to really think. Plus, the tag has been expired since April (it is almost November) so I don’t take it off campus here at Rabun Gap, unless I have to do secret missions late at night, which I did a couple of weeks ago and only a few people know about that mission. If you care, the mission was super successful. I doubt I will ever write about it, but I sure want to. So maybe one day. Keep quiet you people who know!

So….ok, that Suburban got me off track a little. But it occupies a pretty big portion of my mind, so it has to come into the conversation at some point, right?

My mind really does work like this. One thought leads to another thought, to another, to another…it rarely stops. Not at all saying I am smart. Just saying my mind never ceases to make connections to other thoughts. Though it is entertaining in my head, it does actually irritate me. I get on my own nerves. Haha..I just remembered that my brother, J.R., used to say, “…you are getting on my nervous…” It was adorable. But not as adorable as how he said TRUCK. My friends would come over just to make him say truck. Let’s just say, you wouldn’t hear him say truck now. At least not how he said it then. He is a gentleman.

Late 1970’s.
Balmy Central Florida night.
Driving around in a mothball smelling Suburban with a mountain picture window tinting on the back.
Head on my mom’s lap.
I was about 6 or 7 years old.
No seat belt (no seat belt laws then…horrible evil times they were)

As we drove I noticed the moon. I looked at it and thought about it. When we drove this way, it was there. When we drove that way, it was there. No matter where we went, the moon was with us. Hmmm. I wondered how this worked. I thought about the other cars. Could they too see the moon wherever they went? What if we went different directions? I just could not quite make sense of this. I really wanted to figure it out so I asked my mom.

I said, “Mom, the moon seems to be wherever we go. How does it stay with us? Is it connected to us by an invisible cable?” I have no idea what she said. I do not even remember a response. But I have always remembered that question in my head. And I now have a better understanding of how the moon remains visible to us as we travel.

We learn things. At points in our lives, we can only understand things based on what we already know. Knowledge has to build on other knowledge. An invisible cable was the best possible solution I could come up with at that time based on my understanding and experiences.

So what makes me think that I have it all figured out? About anything…

Do I understand what our country should do as it relates to war? Maybe I think we shouldn’t be involved because it costs us too much money and we don’t need to kill other people, or risk the lives of our soldiers, and we don’t need to be the world’s bully any more. Sounds smart.

Until you hear from an Afghani girl who says that the people of her country are scared and confused as to why the U.S. is leaving them vulnerable and unprotected. Or the Bosnian lady in the 1990’s who described the greatest evil in the world as the United States for NOT involving themselves in a war to protect innocent and terrified people. She didn’t even say her enemies were evil. She said her allies who did not help were the evil ones.

Do I understand how we can solve our country’s economic problems? Health care problems?

Maybe an invisible cable would come in handy. It solved my moon problem.

The most important realization for me was and still is this:

God

If I can think I understand something at one point, but then learn new things that help me comprehend better, why would this not be true about God? Faith? Truth?

Understanding grows. Knowledge is built on knowledge.

Truth is constant. But my understanding of it is not. My goal in life is to keep walking towards truth. If I ever feel like I have figured it out, I am a fool.

I hope I can always be that little boy with my head in my mom’s lap wondering about the moon. If that invisible cable remains invisible, I will always keep trying to understand. If I let someone convince me I can see the cable, I’ll stop trying to learn. I don’t want things to make complete sense. I want to wonder.

God is awesome like that. The more I search, the more I find, but also…the more I realize I just do not understand. Is that what Jesus meant when He said we should be like children?

Do you remember losing something when you were young? Then that thing you lost took on an entirely different level of importance…it became the greatest, most valuable item of its kind that you ever possessed.  But its gone.  You never forget it.

About six years ago I saw a monkey on a golf course in the North Carolina Mountains. I wish it wasn’t true. But it is. I promise.

My dad, my two brothers, and I were playing at Highlands Cove Golf Club, which is now the Old Edwards Inn Course. Oddly enough, I can’t really remember much else about that day. I don’t remember starting the round. I don’t remember finishing the round. I don’t remember what I shot (for non-golfers, that means my score), although if I really am honest, I bet it was over 100 (for you non-golfers, that is not good).

Here are the things I remember. It was a gorgeous day in the month of June, near Father’s Day. It cost $100 per person, but I had a gift certificate that I won at the school’s end of the year party and raffle. Actually, I think I traded it with someone. Seems like I had some sort of picnic bag and the other person had no interest in playing golf. We both won. There is no way I would have paid $400 for our crew to play a round of golf.

The thing that makes me remember it was so nice out was that my brother, JR, was taking lots of pictures. There were so many amazing views that it was tough to play well (haha…golfers always make excuses for their poor play). I cannot say enough to explain how pretty it was. Sunny. Not too hot. Exactly what you want to see when you are in the mountains and when playing golf.

We were having a good time together, as we always do. Making fun of each other but all in love. Three of us, I think, were on the 5th green. I believe I was standing over my putt; probably a birdie putt…it seems like my dad was still down in a little dry creek bed in front of the green. It had tall grass so that if he were on the other side of us, we wouldn’t be able to see him. I really don’t remember exactly where he was at that point, but I know he had been down in there looking for a ball. (Later he said that he heard or sensed something was in the tall grass). He probably started there looking for his own ball, but then started scavenging, which is pretty common for the Cox boys on a golf course.

As I was looking down at my ball about to putt, my youngest brother, Anthony, started saying in an excited but confused voice, “whoa, whoa, whoa..it’s a monkey!”

Hahahahaha…just writing that now makes me laugh out loud and my eyes start watering….

Anthony is funny in a nerdy kind of way. But he is not a goofball. I and my brother JR could be classified as goofballs. But JR is also smart.
I looked at Anthony…he was pointing…his face demonstrated a look of excited apprehension. He was confused. I looked over toward the dry creek bed and tall grass at the front of the green. This little spider-monkey-looking-thing was stopped, staring at us, maybe 50 feet away. It had a snake in its mouth, biting it right in the middle with half of the the 2 foot long snake on each side of its mouth hanging down. I’m not kidding.

This guy stared at us for just a few seconds, but long enough for us to really get a great look. It was sort of like it was looking at us and sizing us up. Not to attack us. Although, I was genuinely nervous. I just assumed it could have and wanted to jump from that point right onto my face. In hindsight, it felt like it was looking at us and thinking, “are these dudes worth my time? will anyone believe them that they saw me here?….nah, nobody will believe these fools…” then he dashed off with that snake in its mouth into the nearby woods. But not too fast. He wasn’t scared. He was confident that we were not coming after him and that nobody would ever believe us.

WHAT?

I said, “WHERE ARE WE?…Are we really in North Carolina?” I seriously had to question where we were. We chattered. I don’t remember what else we said exactly. I just know we looked at each other, recounted what we saw, asked if it could have been a squirrel, a fox, or anything. We kept coming back to the fact that we just saw a monkey. The way it ran (on two feet), its size, its tail, and the fact that it looked EXACTLY LIKE A MONKEY.

We all wondered then and still wonder why JR did not take a picture. All I can say is that I completely understand. We were stunned. Shocked. Confused. All we could do at the moment was look with our mouths open and try our best to individually to process what we were seeing.

Then it was over.

When we made the turn (came to the clubhouse to go from hole 9 to hole 10…which means we were half way through our round) I approached and asked the cart guy if they there were monkeys on the course. Before he answered, I assured him with visual evidence that NONE of us were drinking alcohol (none of us really do…and I know some of you were assuming we were…completely understandable).

He said in a slight southern drawl, “Nooo. But we do have a bunch of bear.” Then started telling us about the most recent sighting. I have no recollection of that story. I said, “Well, we just saw a monkey, on #5 green.” He was unimpressed and displayed no interest in our story.

We went on, still quite confused, unsettled, laughing, but really wanting some help. We didn’t want to have just seen a monkey, unless this was a reasonably common sight here on this Alice in Wonder Land Golf Course.

A few holes later, keep in mind that I do not remember any actual golf that day except for my putt on #5 (which I missed), we saw some grounds crew guys. This was it! These guys would know. They are out early and often all around the course. No doubt they have seen or at least heard about the wildlife here.

Being the spokesperson for the group, I said to the six or seven guys, who were all lined up on there respective lawn mowing machines waiting for us to play through, “hi guys, have any of you ever seen a MONKEY out here?”. They just looked at me. They gave no sign of interest. They just looked at me. It dawned on me that they may not speak English. So, I asked if any of them spoke English, “habla ingles?” Then they started to look at each other and speak Spanish. I know SOME Spanish, but I can’t follow a conversation. They ended up pointing out one guy, and he said, “I do.” So I asked him again the same question. And before he answered, I told him what we saw. He said, “I have only been here one week.” I said, “Oh. OK. Can you ask them if they have ever seen a monkey out here?” He did. I think. Who knows what he said. Then he just said, “no…they haven’t”.

They too seemed unimpressed and uninterested.

We ended the round. Went home. Told our families. They laughed at us. Not with us. At us.

JR emailed us a picture later that day that looked like the monkey we saw. I think it was a rhesus monkey. It did look like what we saw. Look here at this picture that JR inserted.

Now picture it on a North Carolina golf course, with a snake in its mouth. Yep. That’s it. That’s what we saw.

Mistakenly I started to tell others that story. Of course, not one person believed us. There was one time when I was being forced to tell this story at a coaches get together so they could all laugh at me…well…this guy stopped me. I know the following is not going to help support our story…this guy is a great guy, sort of a southern guy, basically, he told us that his Uncle Cletus, hunts in the area and has for years told people that he has seen a monkey out there more than once.

Well, everyone just laughed even more. Uncle Cletus is always the guy you want on your side when trying to prove you saw a monkey on a golf course in the mountains.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t care if people laugh. It is funny. Very funny. But I’m telling you. We saw a monkey.

My friend Pastor Allen Speegle uses an excellent phrase that applies here. It is best used when speaking of our relationship with God and the Truth that is known to us individually. But I think it applies perfectly here too.

“A man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument.”

We saw a monkey. Your belief in our story does not make it true or untrue. Our experience is all we need.

But, honestly, if anyone out there does in fact believe our story, it would feel nice to be believed. hahahaha