SURPRISE ME - A 30-DAY FAITH EXPERIMENT // Terry Esau

Date: 12/25/2006
Title: Merry Christmas + A Gift for You
Location: From The Surprise Me family

Details:
Merry Christmas from the world of Surprise Me!

Terry here, author of Surprise Me—just wanted to thank you all for a great year and for taking this ride with me. I’ve got a Christmas present, of sorts, for each of you. Okay, don’t be thinking ‘tangible-under-the-tree-bow-wrapped’ sort of present here, but I have enclosed a Christmas story that I wrote to help bring some fun and thought-stimulating moments into your holiday plans. It’s a bit odd, but what else would you expect!? And—the only way to unwrap this present is to read it. (See the attachment and/or check out the end of this email.)

But first, here’s the two-minute drill of:
What’s Happening in Surprise Me Land.

In the next month we will be introducing the Surprise Me Experiment to Fargo, ND. Stop it…no jokes. The Cohen Brothers have nothing to do with this one.
KFNW, the big radio station in that market, is inviting the people and the churches within a 150-mile radius to join them in this experiment. It will be their focus for the month of January. I’ll be heading up there to do some speaking and help kick it off. Ya sure, you bet cha this is going to be real neat then…don’t you know? Sorry.
Then on Sunday, January 7th, Calvary Lutheran in Golden Valley is kicking off the experiment. We’ll be introducing it at 5 services and coming back at the end of the month for the Surprise Party. Several other churches in the metro area are also starting the year off with this feisty little experiment, not to mention other churches, colleges, and small groups around the country. (Your church?)
Surprise du Jour, our daily 90-second radio show, is starting to find it’s way onto more and more stations. We’re hoping that trend continues and accelerates in 2007. (Your local station?)
The Surprise Me fire is spreading, which is to say—God’s special brand of grace, love, and forgiveness is spreading. Some days I can’t believe that I get to be a part of this adventure; I am having way too much fun.
If any of you would like to be a part of this movement in a more tangible way, there are three things you can do.
1. Pray for us. God knows we need it.
2. Bring the Surprise Me Experiment to your church, college, or group. I’d love to come speak to your group and help get the ball rolling. (Contact info below, or check out our website.) www.SurpriseMeGod.com
3. Make a financial contribution to help bring this experiment to a broader audience. Make checks payable to Nudge The World, LLC, and send to address below. (We do not have non-profit status yet, but we are working on it. So, contributions are not tax deductible. However, our board of directors will make sure every penny goes only to bringing this experiment to more people around the country.)

I hope all of your Christmases are filled with spontaneous, unscripted surprises…of the very merry kind.
Merry Christmas everyone!

Terry Esau
(Don’t forget to unwrap your ‘present’—see story below!)

Nudge The World, LLC
755 Dickey Lake Drive
Minneapolis, MN 55356
Terry@SurpriseMeGod.com
www.SurpriseMeGod.com
952-476-2204

The Hitchhiker
By Terry Esau ©1996

It was Christmas morning. I stood on the shoulder of Interstate 80 somewhere in the middle of Wyoming, blowing on my hands trying to keep them pliable. I had my thumb out in a pose I’d seen in countless movies, but one I’d never struck myself.
I think it was the angel perched on the tip of our Christmas tree that gave me the idea. It wasn’t a vision or anything like that, just a harebrained scheme to go in search of Mecca, a Norman Rockwell-ian utopia. Heaven. That was my plan. Plain and simple; thumb my way to heaven. So I packed a lunch, grabbed my boots, and headed for the highway.
I had used a green magic marker to scratch my destination of choice on an old piece of cardboard.
Heaven.
That’s all it said.
I’d been sitting there for about an hour. Three uneventful rides had taken me this far. Still, no heaven in sight. Sixty-eight cars had gone by since the last ride had dumped me here. He’d only taken me a few miles, just far enough to get me out into the sticks. Then he pulled over, reached across my lap, threw open my door, and basically told me where to go, which, incidentally, wasn’t heaven. As he kicked me out onto the shoulder I heard his hacking laugh over the screech of tires, a nice little punctuation on his prank. “That’s OK,” I thought. “I didn’t figure him for the kind of guy with a nose for heaven anyway.”
I’m not sure I really know what heaven is. Would I recognize it if I saw it? Will there be a sign when I enter that says,
Heaven
Population 4,317,462
When I was a kid I thought Christmas morning was about as close to heaven as you could get. All the presents and food, and everybody happy. Seemed all right to me.
I don’t know, maybe it’s out there, maybe it isn’t. But hey, it’s Christmas day, who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky.
Just then a beat up pickup truck pulled over onto the shoulder. The door had a big crease in the side, the obvious victim of a head-butt from a misguided fender. This certainly didn’t have the appearance of a ticket to heaven, but I grabbed my backpack, ran up to the truck, and pried open the passenger door.
“Ho, ho, ho.” came at me with a tired, fairy tale delivery. The driver, a 50’s-ish man of considerable girth, smiled at me displaying a black hole where a bicuspid and an incisor belonged. He was dressed in red velvet from head to toe. The fake white beard hung from his neck by a rubber strap. It reminded me of a bib my nephew used wear, complete with catsup stains.
I reached out my hand to him and said, “Merry Christmas, Santa.”
“I’m not going to heaven, but I can take you as far as the North Pole,” he chuckled. Then he did that clicking sound with his tongue, cracked an imaginary whip, and said, “Come on Rudolf, let’s go.” His right foot went all the way to the floor and his 2.3-liter team of reindeer dug their hooves into the asphalt. After a spit, a sputter, and a backfire, we were off.
We rode in silence for a couple of minutes. Then Santa looked at me, sizing me up, “Heaven, huh?”
“Yup.”
“I suppose you don’t believe in me then. You’d be more of a Jesus fan than Santa.”
“I’m just trying to get to heaven. If you can get me there, hey, I’ll believe in you.” I meant it. I was an ends-justifies-the-means kind of guy. I figured whoever knows how to get there must be the man.
Another minute of silence.
“A kid asked me once if I could make sure his dog was in heaven.”
“What’d you say?”
“I said, ‘Sonny, he’s already there.’” A jagged grin jiggled his jowls. He took off his hat and placed it on the dashboard. The move uncovered a scalp that was uncovering itself. Even the Grecian formula comb-over couldn’t hide the fact.
Santa looked at me, “You gotta die first, you know.”
“Excuse me?”
“Heaven. You gotta die first. Can’t go there till you die. Otherwise what would be the point of earth? Shoot, this would be heaven…and it ain’t. Pretty dang sure ‘bout that.”
We pulled into Cheyenne, filled up, grabbed a Coke, and turned north on 25 towards Casper. On the way out of town we hit a red light right beside a Holiday Inn motel. In place of the normal “No Vacancy” sign were the words “No Room In The Inn.”
“Everyone’s a comedian,” I half-whispered under my breath. The light turned green…and we sat there. I looked over at Santa to see if he had dosed off, but instead I saw him staring towards the Holiday Inn sign. I looked over there and saw what had caught his eye. Sitting under the sign was another hitchhiker. He was holding a hand-made cardboard sign almost identical to mine, except it read,
‘Earth.’
“I’ll be diggety dogged,” said Santa. “This I don’t wanna miss.” He pulled over, I slid over and Mr. Earth hopped in.
“Ho, ho, ho!” Deja vu all over again.
“Hi guys. Thanks for the lift.” said Mr. Earth.
“Mr. Earth, meet Mr. Heaven…I’m Mr. Claus.” Three crazies in the front seat of a rusted-out ‘88 Dodge Dakota. Once more, fiction bowed to the superseding strangeness of truth. Santa put his shoe leather to the rear end of Donner and Blitzen and we were off. Nobody said anything for a while. Finally I ventured, “Merry Christmas.”
Mr. Earth looked at me, then at my sign, “Heaven, huh?”
“Yup.”
“You’ll like it there. It’s nice.”
‘Oh boy,’ I thought, ‘I’m sitting next to a whacko. He thinks he’s been to heaven.’
“Don’t tell me, you’re a philosophy major, right?” offered Santa.
“More or less.”
“I knew it.”
Then, out of nowhere, “Hey, it’s my birthday today.” offered Mr. Earth.
“No kidding?” Santa looked at me, and without so much as a glimmer of reservation, he busted out into song with a voice that I imagined would be how Elvis would sound now, were he still alive.
“Happy birthday to you (Honk)
Happy birthday to you (Honk)
Happy birthday…Mr. Earth
Happy birthday to you.”
I clapped, Santa honked some more, and Mr. Earth tipped his head in thanks.
“So, how old did you say you were,” I asked?
“Hmm, that’s a hard question.” Mr. Earth appeared to be in a bit of a fog. “I feel ancient, but today, back there at the Inn, I felt new-born. Strange, huh?”
“Christmas will do that to ya.” said Santa. “It’s the cure for what ails you. Makes you feel like a kid again.”
Our newest passenger snapped out of his daze, looked at me like he was psychoanalyzing me and asked, “So, what don’t you like about earth? Why are you trying to leave it?”
“Oh, I like it,” I said, “but something’s missing. I always feel like there must be something else, something more, something beyond…” I trailed off into thought.
Mr. Earth smiled at me knowingly and said, “You are going to like heaven.”
Santa looked at Mr. Earth for a full ten seconds without looking back at the road. You could tell he had his mental yardstick out and was measuring the depth of the topsoil of Mr. Terra Firma. He finally looked back at the road and stated very matter-of-factly,
“You’re an alien, ain’t ya?”
“Well, I’m not from around here, if that’s what you mean.” Mr. Earth looked straight ahead, downplaying the fact that he’d just swerved to miss a head-on question.
This guy was starting to give me the creeps. I decided to put him on the spot, take away his turn lane so his answer would have to stay between the lines. “Alright, so who are you and what do you…?”
Just then Santa put the sleigh into a four-hoof-skid. Mr. Earth and I grabbed for the dash, hoping to keep from sailing through the windshield. As the Dakota rocked to a stop I noticed why Santa had yanked so hard on the reigns. There in front of us, all the way across the road, was a herd of sheep. A couple hundred or more.
“What the---” Santa rolled out of the truck, tripping on his belt which had burst and was now wrapped around his ankles. He looked like he was going to blow up but then he just started laughing. Two guys who were evidently herding the sheep across the road came running up to check on him.
“You okay?” they asked.
“Yeah. Wasn’t exactly expecting to run across a herd of sheep in the middle of Highway 25 though.”
“Sorry. Something gave them a scare up there on the hill and they took off runnin’. I’m, I’m really sorry. Here, we’ll uh, move ‘em, make a path for you to drive through and you can be on your way.” For the first time it seemed the shepherd noticed the red velvet get-up. Then he quipped, “Don’t want a bunch of angry kids blaming us for a ruined Christmas, now do we?”
Ah, a shepherd with a sense of humor.
As we made our way through the herd, Mr. Earth rolled down his window and appeared to be evaluating each sheep as we passed. When we got to the end, he leaned out towards one of the shepherds and said, “Better check on Evelyn. She’s got a burr in her right front hoof.”
Yikes! All I could think was, “I hope Mr. Earth’s not packin’ heat.”
I was about to gently revisit my questions for him when Mr. Earth started singing under his breath,

You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout
I’m telling you why

Santa, in his best fat Elvis, joined in on the next line.

Santa Claus is coming to town

I decided to abandon my line of questions and my cynicism and join them.

He’s making a list
Checking it twice
Gonna find out
Who’s naughty and nice…

Mr. Earth interrupted the chorus of three tenors with another
one of his obscure statements, “You know, Santa, you and I are a lot alike. We both have a list—we both know who’s naughty and nice. Hey, what do you give the naughty ones?”
Santa gave him that ‘what-a-stupid-question’ look. “Nothin.’” he answered, “You kiddin?’”
“Ah, that’s where you and I are different. Actually that’s why I’m here…for the naughty ones, I guess.”
Santa, thinking, “Hey, between you and me we got the whole world covered then, right?”
Mr. Earth, smiling, “To be honest, I think I’ve got it covered just on my side of things. I mean nobody’s perfect, so in a sense, everybody’s—naughty.”
I was going to jump in here, but I thought I’d let those two hammer it out.
“So, um, what you gonna do for ‘em, the naughty ones?”
Mr. Earth seemed to think about that for a while. He cocked his head a bit and said, “I’m going to give them an eraser; a gift that will give them a clean piece of paper again. A fresh start.”
I couldn’t resist jumping in, “You mean, like a de-naughty-izer?”
“Yeah. A denaughtyizer. I like that.”
“So,” chimed in Santa, “Where’s the naughty gonna go? A landfill or something?”
“No. I’m, I’m going to carry it.”
I half laughed, “It’s a big world and there’s no shortage of evil. Do you realize the weight of the load you’re talking about?”
“Yeah.”
I looked in his eyes, and for the first time I realized they weren’t the eyes of a whacko. They were clear. I could see all the way to the bottom, sheer honesty.
“You’re, you’re aware a load like that could kill you, right?” I asked.
He looked out the side window, and almost to himself he said, “Yeah.”
Do you ever have those moments where truth knifes through the fog and slashes away at what you thought was real? In that instant, my view of reality was rerouted. The old map of my life was made up of circular randomness, a robotic progression towards nothing. But in his eyes, I saw coordinates that were clear, purposeful, and true. I know this sounds crazy, but suddenly I knew who I was, where I was going, and who could show me the way there.
I looked at Mr. Earth and said, “You’re the eraser, aren’t you.”
“Yeah.”
There I sat between a Santa who serviced the good, the nice, the flawless; and a nouveau Santa incarnate of sorts whose clientele was the bad eggs of the world. I knew from which dozen I had hatched, and I knew which Santa carried the sack with the gift I needed.
Still looking out the window, far away, Mr. Earth said, “I’m going to hitchhike the face of the earth till everyone who’s looking for something more has a chance to find it. Till everyone with a smudged list is offered the eraser. Till everyone with a hand-made cardboard sign gets directions.”
I looked at Mr. Earth and said, “You know, I could use an eraser myself—and I certainly could use some directions.”
He smiled, then looked over at Santa, “Mr. Claus, you with us?”
Even with Santa’s lopsided grin I could tell he was in. “You just tell old St. Nick where to go and my team will take you there.
Just then I got an idea. “Pull over for a second, will you Santa? There’s something I gotta do.” As we coasted to a stop, I climbed over Mr. Earth and walked around the backside of the truck. I took my ‘Heaven’ sign and wedged it into the frame around the license plate.
“There. That should help.” I hopped in and Santa nudged the team back up to speed.
It was Christmas day in the middle of Wyoming. The best present I ever got was riding next to me in the front seat of a truck. Life is a strange ride.
We were halfway through Jingle Bell Rock when three guys pulled up beside us in a Camel cigarette delivery truck. The guy on the passenger side rolled down his window and motioned for Santa to do the same. He leaned out and yelled, “Hey, St. Nick, I got a present for you and your buddies.” He threw three Cracker Jack boxes through our window and then dropped back in line right behind us.
“Wise guys,” said Santa as he handed out the treats. We opened our boxes complete with their toy surprises. Santa got a fake gold ring in his box, I got a plastic action figure of Frankenstein, and Mr. Earth got a tattoo of Papa Smurf.
Gold, Frankenstein, and Smurf. Go figure.
“Wow. Nobody ever gave me a gift on Christmas before.” said Santa. Mr. Earth looked at him and grinned till his dimples showed.
I turned to look through the back window and give a wave of thanks to our philanthropic Camel couriers.
I wasn’t prepared for what came next. My eyes were met by a billion-watt barrage of light. Headlights snaking around curves and over hills as far as I could see. It was like the whole world had been strung with chasing Christmas tree lights. There must have been a convoy of a million cars and trucks in our wake, each one paying tribute to the man who knew the way.
We finished singing Jingle Bell Rock as we headed toward the sunset. I know the road sign says we’re still in Wyoming, but I swear I can see heaven from here.
I learned something today. Heaven’s not as far away as it seems. It’s just a matter of putting your thumb out, hitching a ride, and saying, “Follow that rusted out ‘88 Dodge Dakota. The one with the hand-made cardboard sign for a license plate.”

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