Childhood reflections with a touch of grace: The shot heard around the world

Mickey Starling
Columnist

Being raised in the South means certain things come with the territory. Sweet tea, cane syrup and grits are considered staple items. However, it is a little known fact that, in these parts, sweet tea can double as cane syrup, should you run out. But, if you are truly Southern, you don’t run out, ever.
Part of a boy’s coming of age in the South involves the eventual ownership of a pocket knife and a BB gun. Every kid worth their salt had cut a finger or two and had a mishap involving a BB gun by the time they were 10. It was only natural.
My cousins lived in the “Little but Proud” town of Lee, Fla. and their spacious property, full of barns, old cars and farming equipment, made for the perfect place for BB gun pandemonium.
This was especially true if you were familiar with the story of the Hatfields and McCoys, the ever-dueling families that fought over everything. They would have had so much fun if Facebook had been around in their time and think of the money they could have saved on bullets!
One afternoon, on a weekend at the cousins, we decided to re-enact the famous feuders with our BB guns. So we picked families and headed to the barns as we tried to deepen and age our southern accents in order to do the whole thing up properly.
The cousins’ mother was dutifully taking a nap, so as to facilitate our feud without getting caught, or so we thought.
She actually was pretending to be asleep and was listening carefully for the first sign of any unsanctioned fun we might attempt. Sure enough, at the first pings of a BB striking a barn or human flesh, she was up and yelling our full birth certificate names, demanding we march back to the house.
I’m pretty sure what roused her was the shrieking sounds we were making early in the battle. I had pulled off the shot of the century by zeroing in and landing a perfect shot to the fingernail of one of my cousins who mistakenly thought it was safe to rest his air rifle on his hands, revealing those delightful finger tips. I’m pretty sure that my shrieks of pleasure were muted by the groans of pain coming from my dear cousin.
It is also a Southern thing that whenever you hear your full name being screamed syllable by syllable by anyone in authority, you know that trouble is brewing. Mama Cousin lined us up as if we were standing before a firing squad, which is exactly what it felt like. Worse than a firing squad was the news that she was reporting our activities to her husband when he got home.
Suddenly, visions of water boarding, or worse, flashed through my mind. The couple of hours it took for him to get home seemed like months. Once he got home, I’m certain that I stopped breathing. When I finally took a breath, it was more like hyperventilating.
To my surprise, his deeply raspy and slow Southern drawl released a short, but pointed message about gun safety and the fact that there would be painful consequences for their actions.
He never even looked my way or called my name. I had suddenly become blissfully invisible. Though I got off with no punishment, the fear of it must have been enough. Though I was shot by BB guns on numerous other occasions, I never took another shot at either a Hatfield or a McCoy.
The lesson I took from that moment was that there is no hiding of your intentions that will last.
“Be sure, your sins will find you out.” The Bible declares that what we whisper in secret will be shouted from the mountain top.
There was a day that I feared these verses, but now I know that God exposes our darkness and secrets so that we can see where we are headed. He graciously makes room for us to turn to Him with our brokenness so that we may be healed.
Often, I have awaited my punishment for areas that I really blew it in, only to have God silently pass by me with a gentle wave of mercy.
It was a mercy that called out my sinful condition while offering me a divinely created transformation in my heart that gradually and steadily removed me from the desire to press on into oblivious folly.
I thank God for His forgiveness and mercy that causes me to be at peace with the Hatfields and McCoys in the world today, even the ones I find within my own heart.