Jerry’s cleats crunched on the gravel path, each step echoing the thudding disappointment in his chest. The baseball team tryouts had just finished, another victory chalked up for everyone but him. He’d struck out again, sending a weak pop fly that barely cleared the first baseman’s glove. Shame burned his cheeks hotter than the afternoon sun.
He found his father in the bleachers, his face a thundercloud. “What was that, Jerry? A fly swatter? Remember, ‘try, try again’!” The words, his father’s motto, were barbed nails driven into Jerry’s already open wounds.
School wasn’t a sanctuary. Algebra equations swam before his eyes, their logic as elusive as a hummingbird in a hurricane. Miss Evans, bless her kind heart, suggested extra help, but his father barked a dismissive, “No handouts, Jerry. Learn on your own.” His stomach clenched, another failure gnawing at him.
Even art, his supposed refuge, turned hostile. Colors bled into murky messes on the canvas, his brushstrokes clumsy declarations of inadequacy. His father’s disappointed sigh, a constant accompaniment, was the only critique he needed.
Jerry bounced from job to job, each a short-lived experiment in futility. The bakery fired him for burning bread, the bookstore for misplacing inventory, the factory for breaking machinery. Each dismissal another brick in the wall of self-doubt he was building around himself.
His parents, unwitting architects of his misery, remained oblivious. His mother’s worried glances and his father’s stoic disapproval became the scenery of his lonely world. He craved their praise, but received only disappointment, fueling the fire of inadequacy that had become his constant companion. “You’ll never amount to everything if you keep giving up,” his father would text him at odd hours of the night. “Maybe if you stopped being such a looser and more like your father you’d be better,” his mother would reply back with, her poor attempt to mollify his father while soothing her son.
When Never Again is Good Enough
The day his parents passed away, they house mysteriously burring to the ground, a strange calm settled over Jerry. Grief was a dull ache, but beneath it, a tentative flicker of something else: freedom. It was a faint light, barely a spark, but it was enough to crack open the door to a life he’d never dared imagine. The life where “try, try again” wouldn’t be a taunt, but a whispered encouragement. The life where Jerry, finally, could try to be just himself.
The weight on Jerry’s chest, the one he’d carried since childhood, lifted the moment his mother’s eyes closed for the last time. It was an odd sensation, like discovering a door at the back of his closet he never knew existed, leading to a sun-drenched world he hadn’t dared imagine.
His father, the drill sergeant of “try, try again” had gone years prior, leaving a void filled with echoes of disappointment and the hollow thud of unrealized dreams. The man’s gruff voice, ever reminding him of his inadequacies, was finally silenced.
No more baseballs whizzing past his ear, no more paintbrushes dancing across canvases only to be met with his father’s scowl. No more nights hunched over textbooks, tears blurring the equations and history dates, while his father’s “handouts” sermon droned on.
Suddenly, Jerry was free. Unmoored from the anchor of “never good enough,” he drifted into uncharted waters. He joined a pottery class, his clumsy hands surprisingly at ease molding clay into whimsical shapes. He volunteered at the animal shelter, the warmth of a rescued puppy’s fur melting away years of self-doubt. He rediscovered his childhood love for astronomy, spending nights beneath the star-strewn canvas, marveling at the universe’s endless possibilities.
He stumbled, of course. Pots cracked, dogs chewed shoes, constellations danced out of reach. But with each stumble, there was no reprimand, no disappointed sigh. Only the gentle whisper of his own voice, soft and encouraging: “Try again, Jerry. Just try again.”
And with each try, something remarkable happened. The awkward throws on the pottery wheel became smooth spirals. The nervous chatter with adopters turned into heartwarming connections. The constellations, once blurry smudges, began to sharpen, revealing their breathtaking secrets.
He wouldn’t call himself successful now, not by his father’s definition. But Jerry, for the first time, held his head high. He saw the reflection of a man with dirt under his fingernails and joy in his eyes, a man who, in failing to live someone else’s dream, had stumbled upon his own.
Life was no longer a race against an impossible finish line. It was a winding path, paved with missteps and triumphs, all leading him to one breathtaking discovery: Jerry, finally, was enough.
Does God Exist? 