King's Corner: Learning the Words

If you’ve ever looked back on your childhood and wondered how you survived it, you’re not alone.

Some of us were guided carefully. Others… were retrieved regularly.

That was certainly true for my dad, Robert “Mark” King—known as “Bobbie” when he was a boy growing up in Morristown, New Jersey.

His mother was determined he would be raised properly, which in that time and place meant a Catholic education. Bobbie, however, had not yet agreed to that plan.

On his first visit to a Catholic school, he walked in, took one look at the nuns—faces framed in white, dressed in black, moving silently through the halls—and decided this was not for him. While his family was speaking with the staff, he slipped out, found the road, and hitchhiked three miles home. The ice cream man later reported the sighting.

He was taken back the next day.

That would become a pattern.

St. Mary’s was a place of structure—stone steps, a rotunda, classrooms run with discipline, expectations clearly defined. The nuns enforced that order with consistency. Bobbie, on the other hand, treated rules more like suggestions with optional compliance—as if he already had a little of the wild west in him.

He climbed where he wasn’t supposed to, making his way up through the church belfry and onto the steep roof, sliding down toward the fence below and occasionally rearranging the roof tiles. He explored what others avoided, once bringing a snake to school and keeping it in his desk—until it rose out of the inkwell at just the wrong moment and introduced itself to the class. The teacher was not impressed. The police, later called to the house, were even less so.

To the sisters, he was a problem.

To Father Stone, he was something else.

As director of the school, Father Stone carried authority easily, but there was something beneath it. He watched. He listened. And when Bobbie found himself in his office—which happened often enough to feel familiar—he wasn’t simply punished and dismissed.

He was engaged.

Father Stone would ask questions, letting Bobbie explain himself fully, even when the explanation made things worse. Then, at certain moments, he would turn his chair toward the window, the back of it shaking just slightly.

Bobbie would later realize what was happening.

The priest was trying not to laugh.

It would have been easier to shut things down quickly. But instead, Father Stone held something in tension—discipline and grace. He corrected what needed correcting, but also saw the boy underneath the behavior.

Looking back, it’s hard not to see something more at work in all of it.

Because that kind of patience—the kind that doesn’t give up on you, even when you’re making life unnecessarily complicated—is often how God chooses to guide us. Not by removing our foolishness, but by meeting us in it, shaping us, and placing the right people in our path at the right time.

Bobbie didn’t understand any of that then.

He was just trying to survive school… and occasionally improve it—usually in ways no one else had in mind.

He learned what was expected—how to sit, how to stand, when to speak, when to be silent. He learned the rhythms of the Church, the patterns of response, the repetition of words spoken in a language he didn’t understand.

Like most children, he learned the forms first.

Meaning would come later.

That’s often how God works with us. We step into things before we fully grasp them. We repeat words before we understand their weight. We follow patterns before we see where they lead. And somehow, something begins to take root.

Even in a boy who would rather be on a roof… or carrying a snake.

For Bobbie, that process continued in ways that must have surprised everyone involved. The same boy who had hitchhiked home, climbed where he shouldn’t, and startled teachers was gradually given more responsibility.

Before long, he was serving as an altar boy.

He learned how to prepare for Mass—where everything went, when to move, what to say. He learned the responses, the rhythm of something much larger than himself. And, true to form, he approached it with confidence—whether or not he fully understood what he was saying.

And yet, something was taking hold.

Looking back, you can see it clearly. A boy who resisted structure was being formed by it. A boy who tested every boundary was being guided—patiently, consistently—by people who refused to give up on him. And behind all of it was a God doing the same—long before life would carry him far beyond where it all began.

If you think about your own life, you may see something similar.

Moments where you didn’t understand what you were being taught. Times when you resisted what was probably good for you. People who showed more patience than you deserved.

And yet, here you are.

Formed, in part, by things you didn’t fully understand at the time.

Because sometimes we learn the words long before we understand what they mean.

And sometimes… those words matter more than we ever expected.

Especially this time of year… when we begin to realize they were never just words,
but something God has been saying to us—and inviting us into—all along

Jeff Headley is pastor of the Dayton Valley Community Church, and a storyteller who blends humor, honesty, and hope. His weekly column reflects on resilience, grace, and the surprising ways faith shows up in ordinary life.