Zipperhead

“A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.”  Proverbs 17:17 NIV

If you have ever seen my big brother, you have noticed a couple of things: first, he is a barge; then you see the ink.  When I hug him, I cannot reach all the way around him and I do not know how many tattoos he has but he has one of the most unique I have seen.  On the top of his head there is a tattoo of a zipper opening up to reveal his brain. 

When he lets his hair grow, you cannot see it.  When he goes for the shaved head look it is still a little hard to notice only because he is so tall.  Few people can see the top of his head unless he is sitting or leaning.   

Most tattoos have a back story.  Asking people about them can be interesting.  The stories are usually deeply felt.  This one is no different.  Our mom had a decades long battle with Parkinson’s disease.  Most health challenges give you a choice, you engage in the fight or let the fight run over you.  My mom fought, but eventually it ran over her anyway. 

Toward the end of her life, she had it rough.  Her body just locked up.  First, it was her right arm, then her right leg.  Then her left leg and then her left arm.  It took her body but it could not touch her soul.  Every morning she would be literally as stiff as a board, you could not bend any of her joints.  She also slept with her arms over her face, which is still a little weird to me.  I have not figured out how that was comfortable.  But I still remember her laughing about someone trying to get her medicines to her mouth through the maze of her arms that she could not move.  The medicine would slowly allow her some flexibility. 

At one point there simply was no medicine or treatment that was going to work.  It was at this point my brother offered to give her a new brain, his.  His hope was to let her hit a re-set and he was willing to give up his life to help her get there.  In spite of all the medical breakthroughs, doctors cannot perform a brain transplant.  It may sound corny, but my brother meant it.  The tattoo was a way to mark that event in his life.  He has about 40 other tattoos, all of which have meaning to him. 

He ended up donating a kidney to someone about 10 years after our mom died.  After the operation the recipient showed him her scar.  She revealed that someone had drawn a zipper opening up to receive a kidney.  Pretty cool.  He told us he did it for our mom.  I asked him if he had started talking to God again.  I will never forget his answer.  “I never stopped talking to Him, I’ve just been yelling at Him for the last 10 years”.  People take anger to all kinds of wrong places when we should take it to our Savior.  Jesus can handle our emotions. 

Many people who have met him talk about how big he is or how intimidating he is.  I suppose that is true.  But if that is all you see when you look at him you are missing his most prominent feature.  He would literally step in front of a bus to protect someone he loves.  He would also step in front of a bus to save someone he does not know.

When I was a child I literally never worried about being picked on or hurt, I had Dave.  Although there was the time he talked me in to boxing him.  He evened up the odds by getting on his knees.  Ring the bell, I thought I was ready.  After the fight he spent the next 15 minutes telling me the excuse “we” were going to tell mom and dad to explain the fat lip and blood on my face.  We settled on a “biking accident”.  We made many excuses for a variety of injuries over the years. 

There are too many stories to fit in one post, like the time he had a wreck and was not ready to tell our parents.  He parked the car on the opposite side of the street thinking they would not notice.  They noticed anyway.  We used to go to an amusement park at Silver Dollar City.  My parents went off on their own for a while and let us explore.  We got hungry but none of us had any money.  Dave “found” a tray of hamburgers at a concession stand and brought them to us.  I don’t know how, but he took care of us. 

He used to drive a Jeep and our daughter loved it.  We had to tell her not to mention that she liked it because we were afraid he would actually give it to her.  To this day if I mention that I like something he tries to give it to me. 

Growing up, my dad made a point to tell Dave that he was not allowed to fight and Dave listened.  There were tensions in the schools we grew up in.  Word sort of got around to his classmates that Dave was not allowed to hit back.  He had battles the rest of us missed because of that rule.  My dad actually sat me down and told me he made a mistake telling Dave that.  He modified the rule.  He told me if I ever started a fight I would be in big trouble with him.  But if needed, I was to fight back.  He told me it was okay to engage in a fight, to not let it run over me.  My experience in school was completely different as a result.

I have been blessed with officiating 4 weddings.  It is a beautiful experience.  The best part is the marriage preparation.  You get to know the couple and you get to help  framing the marriage in Jesus.  One of those weddings was when my brother married Jess.  Now my brother would rather take advice from a brick wall than from his little brother so I must say I was not sure how those meetings would go.  To my surprise he participated.  He talked.  He listened, mostly to Jess, but I was in the room.  I love that I got to pronounce them as husband and wife. 

When you are big and strong people assume you do not get hurt, but that's not true.  Words and actions still hurt and affect you.  My brother learned to be a defender and it became his job and he became very good at it.  In the military he volunteered for missions most people would have ran from and stood in harms way for people he did not know.  He is sort of built for the battle and he will stand by you.  He has a heart the size of a lion, but he minimizes the fact that in some ways he is as sensitive as a child, and I mean that as an extreme compliment.  I hope he never loses that part of him. 

Have you ever told your siblings how much you love them?  We should.  Some of mine are straight up crazy, but I love them. 

Have you ever stopped to think about how much your siblings love you?  We should.  You might be the straight up crazy one.

Challenge: Seeing past how big and strong people are and to realize that they may just need to hear how proud you are of them. 

Rick Claiborn and Sally Vega, little brother and little sister.