Back to Thriving
God at Work
Back to this Christian perspective — why does all that matter? Well, it is God who not only provides all, but wants to provide more than we can imagine, and does so more than I deserve. This book, for those who are reading whether out of desire or curiosity, is about a faith-based perspective on thriving by way of surviving the inevitable tough times that come with life — including professionally, even including design projects and with design teams,[ † ] and so on. God loves his creation, and you are a part of it. God is relational with the Trinity being the ultimate example and evidence of relationship. What I never learned in my 1970s Roman Catholic upbringing of regular church attendance and Catholic schools from first grade through high school is this: Christianity is about a relationship with God through Christ, not just following rules. That brings to mind a quote of Josh McDowell: “Rules without relationship leads to rebellion.” In hindsight, that quote tells my story quite well.
1 Why It Works — The “Theory” Side as Understanding
God created each of us not because he needs us, but because he wants us; he wants us for relationship. “Okay, then why the tough times?” you ask. Because growth always comes far more through the tough stuff; and, God is willing to handle the grief he feels in order for us to struggle, hurt, suffer, and ultimately grow. Look, because God loves us, he indeed grieves when we struggle and hurt, just as a good parent does as he watches his daughter get cut from the team, or she sees her son getting picked on, etc. Queen Elizabeth II of England wisely stated in the aftermath of 9-11, “Grief is the price we pay for love.” How true. Parents’ love for their children, which pales in comparison to God’s love for his creation — us — can lead to nothing but grieving the hurt and struggles of our children. But, we know as parents, as God knows even better, removing the struggles is not in the child’s best interest. Rather, it is love, support, and encouragement that turn the trials into growth, into improvement for the struggler as he/she becomes something more and better down the road.
However, God, unlike parents, is all powerful. When you get to know someone who wants to give anything and everything that is right on your behalf, and has the means to do so, and promises to do so, you have to also believe it will hold in the toughest of times. And that someone is God, our Heavenly Father, Daddy as Jesus instructed we can refer to him, coming to God as little children. Given that, you will have what you need to ride out the biggest of shit-storms. The lowest, darkest, foggiest, rainiest, snowiest, freezing-rainiest… of the valleys are traversable because that Provider promises to provide and delivers on it.
This does not mean it is easy nor is it promised by God to be easy. But, it is promised to be doable. And God promises that all he lets you go through he will use for good. And coming with the noted relationship is our trust in that truth. And that is a trust that grows in time, though it never reaches perfection (even Vince Lombardi told us that we never reach perfection; ugh, there I go again, a Bears fan quoting a Packers coach). I am evidence of that lack of perfection — my trust in God has grown, but it is far from perfect and is regularly tested as a means for further growth.
My point is this. As Christians, we know God’s promise, we trust in him, and through that we are guaranteed the tough times are survivable and actually a potential source of good and growth, ultimately leading to thriving and not just surviving. Understand, though, that thriving generally does not equate to health, wealth, and happiness. It does at times include those worldly measures, but in any case, thriving in Christ is much more than that; it is the journey of transformation to the character of Christ, ultimately ending in death from this world to eternal life with him. Nevertheless, the opposites of health, wealth, and happiness — the pains of this world — are real.
All that is easy for me to say and think compared to others, and yet it was so long until I could. It is important to note that there are indeed many people in this world, and to a lesser extent in this country, that seem to be cursed with a constant shit-storm of oppression, poverty, sickness, persecution, human trafficking, and so forth. It pains me deeply that God chooses to let them suffer. But, as one blessed with a lot more peaks than valleys compared to many others, my response must be to work to serve and help those in need, the “widows and orphans” as the Bible identifies them. In doing so I join with others in caring for what God cares about.
“Yeah, but still, why are tough times so many and so hard, and why must others suffer just for us to help?” you ask. So do I, by the way. Here’s why I don’t know, but what I do know. Engineers, for instance, make a plan and execute it to design something. God made a plan and designed something too. What an engineer designs — what she creates — has neither the right nor capability to question and understand the engineer and her plan as its creator. Likewise, we as the created have neither the right nor capability to question and understand fully the plan of our Creator. But we do have the call and opportunity to do as the Creator calls us to do, to step into his plan and serve others who he lets need us. By the way, we are also called to let others help us when we are in need; it gives them the chance to exercise that God-given opportunity to serve others. In other words, we are part of God’s help and provision for others in their tough times, and others are part of God’s help and provision for us in our tough times, and it is neither our right nor capability to fully understand why any of those tough times come to pass. By the way, if you equate God’s provision to money, it’s far more than that. Yes, God can and does provide in the form of financial resources, but more so it is what God provides in our interests, abilities, opportunities to learn, and opportunities to apply ourselves and our acquired knowledge and skills, that then brings forth monetary compensation in the world. And when it comes to the tough stuff, God’s provision is largely in the form of the people he places around us, not money per se, or certainly not exclusively.
It’s amazing how at times a sermon or the reading of a bible passage seems to be perfect timing — coincidence… I think not; God’s provision… definitely. As I am doing my (first) final edit on this chapter, just this morning Pastor Nate’s sermon was all about this subject of life’s troubles and tough stuff. He closed by pointing out as believers in Christ we have a free ride (referencing The Edgar Winter Group’s song “Free Ride”[1]), not a free fall (referencing Tom Petty’s song “Free Fallin’”[2]). Given how aligned it was with my subject here, I felt compelled to provide a link to it in the chapter’s references/end-notes list for anyone interested in taking a listen.[3] Heck, last week’s sermon by Pastor Travis is on the mark too.[4] This whole four-part sermon series, entitled “THE LUGE — The Ride of Your Life” is all about the struggles, hurts, and pain, whether emotional or physical, and trusting God to be there to provide, to comfort, to give us all we need, largely by those he places around us in concert with his complete control over all situations and circumstances. Great stuff!
2 How It Works — The “Practice” Side as Evidence
Be strong and courageous. …
for the Lord your God goes with you;
he will never leave you nor forsake you.
–Moses
words to the Israelites,
Deuteronomy 31:6 (NIV)
And now on to some examples/stories…
2.1 The Toughest Week of My Professional Life (Thus Far)
It was October 2013, actually it was Monday, October 7, 2013. I received a call from our commercialization partner, we’ll call him Cal. “Bill, I can’t keep this up.” Those are the only exact words from that late afternoon phone call still embedded today in my 51-year-old brain. Over the preceding couple years Cal’s small but historically well-financed company had gotten pretty far behind on their account with us. I had been okay with it. I decided floating that R&D work to the extent we could with other projects going, for a while at least, was something I could do as part of my investment into the future of this product line we had developed for them. The R&D work was for sure taking longer than I had anticipated. But it was largely complete and they were to do the marketing and selling and we would manufacture for them and provide technical support. For a business our size, the amount they owed us was quite a bit. But, months back I had proposed a payment plan be put in place and they had been paying it down regularly according to the plan we agreed to. The goal was to get their receivables account down to zero in about 15 months. These payments were a significant part of our cash flow as we bridged the gap from R&D to their sales and our manufacturing revenues. And with sales of the product line not materializing, my gut sank on those six words of his. I was eight years into this venture, had hundreds of thousands of personally guaranteed debt, and most of my six employees had families and mortgages. Heck, we had just bought a half-million-dollar machine six months prior in our ramp-up efforts for this product line.
Cal was not throwing in the towel, but he could not keep making the payments we had agreed to. I immediately met with my engineering manager and shop manager, guys I had been working with in developing their leadership abilities while I did the same for myself. I told them the situation. I told them the repercussions it would have. I told them a major cut had to be made in our burn rate — the term for the rate at which you burn/spend cash in a startup. Exactly how that would be accomplished was for me to decide, with their help in figuring it out.
To keep to the important parts for the purpose here, skip to Friday, October 11, 2013. I faced the shittiest thing I have had to do in my professional career. I had laid someone off in the past, my previous benchmark for the ugly decisions that need to be made by a leader for the wellbeing of the team. But this was unimaginable to me until the reality was thrust upon me. I laid off four of the six employees — two-thirds of my team. It included one of those two managers. It was another employee of the group he managed in the shop who I determined was “key” to what had to be done in the shop to survive. Over the previous year the latter individual, through self-driven learning and ambition, had worked himself into that key role. He now knew more about how to make it happen in the shop than his boss did. And he had been putting it into action better. The manager was no longer “key” and it was especially hard to let him go as he had been with us for quite some time.
That left the other manager, from engineering, and the one key guy from the shop, and me. We didn’t need an engineering manager and shop manager anymore; we needed people who could make it happen on their own in the trenches, from CAD, calcs, and FEA in the engineering office to prototypes and testing in the shop. I was laid off as well in terms of income, but my workload if anything was even higher now.
I could only ask in prayer, God, where’s this going? Why do my guys need to go through this? Times had been tough in the business numerous times over its eight-year lifetime. I had already foregone cumulatively $50,000 of company-related personal income over those years to keep the business solvent. In the first place, my personal income from the business was not lining my pockets. It was not “profit.” We were developing ideas toward commercialization and ultimately sales and royalties; “profits” would come later. Thus far we had only sold services to the noted partner, some other testing services here and there, and a good amount of National Science Foundation (NSF) small-business commercialization grants that cover costs, not profit. My biweekly income from the company was less than the income I forewent at the university by dropping to 49% appointment (a Small Business Administration requirement for the NSF awards). That had been the case for most of the business lifetime.
With the layoff, the business cut deep and I personally had to cut deep. I looked for whatever I could cut. Having child support payments that, by agreement, were not tied to actual income and its fluctuations, my personal options for cutting were far fewer than would be the case under other circumstances. I cut my eating. I rarely went out to eat as it was, so not much to cut there. My groceries were pretty low key, some Walmart Great Value products, leading to simple homemade meals. I took sandwiches every day for lunch, packaging them in old bread bags when they were available. I already tried to live pretty waste-free and frugal, though quite comfortable for sure compared to so many in this world. My options here were slim, but I had a part I could play. A part I was to play while God did his part. I could just eat less food. Just by consuming less, I cut my groceries expenses by 40%. There were other cuts too, but this is the one that takes the story forward. Yes, the story becomes about eating.
What God was doing in all this I didn’t know. Specifically, that is. Generally speaking, I got it. I had come to believe, and had by this point in my life recognized enough times in hindsight, God worked through trials to build my character and trust in him. This round was looking a bit scarier. I was resorting to cutting back on how much I ate! I had built up some emergency funds with surplus of his provision over the preceding couple years, and now the emergency hit.
Things stabilized at the business about five months later and we were able to hire one of the promising shop apprentices back. But I kept just as frugal at home having burned through most of my emergency funds and summer was approaching; during the summer my university income dies off and my usual pre-summer savings were looking scarce.
By that point, now eight months later, it was clear I had lost weight. Multiple other people had told me how I looked thinner, even asking of I was okay. I don’t own a scale, but I can gauge by belt notches. I had lost nearly two notches, which I guess is two inches. I didn’t care about the weight. That was not the point. Not my point in this. I was saving money. But, what I found the next January (now 2015) at my annual physical is this. I had lost weight, like 20 pounds, and my cholesterol was for the first time in years in acceptable territory, not off-the-charts territory.
With my dad dying in early 2017 of a massive heart attack, his dad dying of a heart attack, and my mom’s dad dying of a heart attack… hmmm. Was God doing something far beyond what I was seeing or thinking? Was he provoking a change in my lifestyle toward better physical health (and not so wasteful/excessive in consumption too!)? For sure there were a lot of other things at work in all of this struggle, but this too? I believe so.
God always brings good out of the bad and ugly, often involving results we could never guess at or foresee. There were other positive outcomes of this one, but time to move on here.
2.2 Three Tough Summers — Just Enough is… Enough
Like I said earlier, I won’t tell dozens of these stories of where God is there in the tough times just as he is there in all the good times. But here is one more. If the “eating” theme and my belief regarding what was at work are questionable to you, this one may be more tangible.
Fast forwarding to Spring 2016, our apprentice in the shop decided to leave to focus on school. That left my business partner, Doug, to step up and learn all the equipment in the shop, or we were dead in the water — $1.2M of equipment and no one to make it work. It was just me and him; he was that engineering manager who stayed on in the layoffs, not the shop manager or a shop employee at all. It was a huge and formidable task, but he was willing and committed in spite of being underpaid all the years by about $10K per year, in my opinion — it was what we could afford, and he considered it a fair trade for a job he loved. He has been with me on this since early on, a true partner, and at this point we were putting in place an equity position for him.
A couple months later, getting into that summer, our financial situation continued to suck, I had no personal savings built up entering my summer of minimal university income, and I had no idea how I could personally get through the summer with all my credit used to supplement the business for its cash-flow needs. Then, while I was driving back from upper New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio for sales and partnering visits in early June, out of nowhere comes an email with an expert witness inquiry. I get them periodically, but with a call that Friday afternoon from a rest area I found this one was actually a decent fit. Not a great fit — cutting a pipe in a trench with an abrasive cutoff saw — but one where I thought I could surely help. It was more about beam deflections, boundary conditions, and movements than it was about the cutting, which is my main area of expertise. I was testifying for the defendant, whose employee was sadly killed in the accident, defending against charges levied by OSHA (the plaintiff). The projected income from that expert witness engagement would be what I needed to get through the summer and then some. God had just provided the answer to my “I have no idea how I’m going to make it this summer” dilemma.
Come mid-July, Doug was facing a lot of frustration in the shop, keeping in mind he was learning on his own five different CNC machines including a 4-axis lathe, a 4-axis vertical machining center, and a 5-axis mill-turn machine — not simple stuff. His frustration was understandable. I was driving through lower Michigan from Chicago to Detroit doing sales work. His email that I saw around midnight, as I was settling into my car for a night at a rest stop along I-94, was heartbreaking. He had reached his limit. Financially things still sucked, and he demanded a raise to keep going on this; this was no longer a job he loved so the willingness to be underpaid had run its course, and understandably so. I had to do it, he more than earned it. It was my leadership shortcomings that had brought him to that point of having to put his foot down. I deserved the backlash, while he had earned more than I was returning. The raise was not as much as he had earned, but enough to bring us back into alignment along with the equity position we were working on. The situation was a huge pothole in the road of our personal relationship, but because of all we had been through together over the years and the incredible strength of relationship that built through all that, we came out of it even stronger and determined to make it happen together, with an even stronger relationship than before.
And then I did something too well. In less than 24 hours from receiving my position paper on the expert witness case, OSHA dropped the case. Great for my client, but it meant that a good chunk of the projected income from that engagement evaporated with it not going to trial as was expected. But, come the end of summer, the income that did materialize was just enough to get me personally through the summer, and cover the extra on Doug’s raise. God provided. It was clear.
Now, I had seen clear provision from God numerous times over the years of struggle, so I already had that trust and confidence. But I tell this story here as evidence, not just vague, intangible “trust God, he provides” lip service. That statement is true, but I’m an engineer who teaches engineers about what? We work with evidence, facts, and numbers, not just feelings and beliefs. So, there’s some evidence that God comes through in the tough times — not just words of faith, but evidence of action on God’s part.
And here is where it really hit me. Fast forward to Summer 2017, facing the same, actually more daunting summer shortage for my personal finances, I got a call from the attorney at OSHA we had faced the year before. He was asking me to testify for them as the plaintiff on another cutoff-saw injury removing a pipe from a trench. Basically, my work a year before kicked his butt good enough that he came straight to me to help him on the next one. I could never have imagined becoming the “go-to” guy on this sort of situation. My expertise was more about production machining and cutting tools, not hand-held equipment at a construction site. But that previous summer, which clearly provided the funds to make it through Summer 2016, also set the stage for something I could never have foreseen — paying work to get me through Summer 2017. Whoa! Even I can’t miss that one.
And like the previous year, it provided just enough, even though again the potential income was significantly truncated when the defendant settled based on my testimony in my position paper. Hey, personally, I just can’t not see God at work in all that (please excuse the double negative). I hope you can see it. In big tough times, our big God provides in ways that are just enough, the perfect amount, and usually including ways we cannot foresee, and in fact in ways we often don’t even recognize; these ones were simply big enough and stark enough that I couldn’t miss them. Oh, and note that God didn’t just give me money, he provided opportunities to apply myself with all sorts of knowledge and abilities he had provided opportunities to gain over the years. And, equally important but not noted explicitly, God provided certain business associates and close friends, and Doug among them, who helped in various ways as I worked through the financial struggles.
Remember what I wrote earlier about money (the subject of money is important enough that the Bible talks a lot about it). Money itself is not a blessing. Money is a byproduct of blessings, God’s gifts of the natural inherent abilities and interests he instills in us, the people he places in our lives, and the opportunities that materialize to learn and do useful things. All those blessings have abounded in the situation noted here, and others. Heck, even the people in our lives who are a thorn, that we wish were not there (at times at least), often are gifts in the sense that they present opportunities to grow and improve ourselves, refining us, if we are able to view those people and situations for any positive that could come from it. And that’s hard! Those thorns are often seen as curses or the like, not gifts. I have gotten better at viewing them for God at work in, on, and maybe through me, but me having gotten better still leaves a lot of room for improvement and growth. As the saying (non-compliment compliment) goes: I don’t suck as bad as I used to.
To close this out, you must be thinking… why on earth are you still in business? Well, I still believe going into and being in business was God’s plan for me — to create wealth to be used to help others in need. Could I be wrong? Of course I could. But last fall this came to me. I don’t think God sits there dismayed by us not understanding or even seeing his plan well enough. He knows it is not possible for us. Rather, what is important is this. If we sincerely hold a belief that his plan is X, then what’s important is that we hold true to that belief. If X is a selfish insincere belief, then I suppose things may not go well. If X is a sincere belief, then even if it does not pan out, God is pleased that we hold true to X, trusting in him. None of our mistakes and shortcomings is too much for God to work out for good.
That said, since the beginning I have also been aware that success of the business in a worldly (financial) sense is not necessarily part of the plan. That it could all go down the tubes… that something bigger is at work than this business, kind of like a second and bigger expert witness job was the unanticipated bigger thing that came from the first one that was on a subject that was pretty remote from my expertise in the first place. And something more to this whole business thing, like improving my health as a result of a financial baseball bat to the head.
Be strong, and let us fight bravely
for our people and the cities of our God.
The Lord will do what is good in his sight.
–Joab to his brother Abishai
2 Samuel 10:12 (NIV)
emphasis added
As I put the finishing touches on this chapter before my first sharing of it with others, today being March 24, 2018, soon heading into what could be another really tough summer, we are literally a week or two from either suspending operations or getting an influx of resources from a potential strategic partner who is doing a market assessment before acting. They have been diligent in their work, not dragging it out, but it still has taken nearly four months since we engaged the conversation last December — time I haven’t felt we had, but trusted we needed to take. In parallel, over the past five months, I have three times turned down our old commercialization partner, Cal, wanting to pull us into commitment for an extended period, with no money on the table, to sell all our new developments made independently from them, if a buyer can be found. Turning it down has been based on a belief that the other path, though a much harder road, is the better path. Like Joab and Abishai and their army, when we are called to take the tough path, the harder road, we must be courageous in fighting hard for the right things while accepting in advance that the ultimate outcome is in God’s hands and what he sees as good. His good is a good that so often we are simply not able to see. And at times his good comes with hurt and sadness. But we cannot just write them off in some religious whim as God’s will. Those hurts and sadness are truly real; I have had them and others have had far worse and more than me. They require healing through care and compassion from others around us, others God has put there as a means to extending his care and compassion for us. And look for opportunities to be the giver of care and compassion when others get hit hard. After recovery, we can all be ready for the next battle, the next call to take the tough road.
This entire business struggle for sure has tested my patience and trust in God. To be sure, it will really suck to go through liquidation and likely bankruptcy proceedings in order to try and make things as right as I can with my creditors. But, however it turns out I know God will take care of me and those he has entrusted to me. Again, it doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it will always be doable. So, I stress again, remember that when you hit the tough times in life, and if you exercise your free will and accept God’s invitation to a personal relationship with him through faith in Christ, you will not only have all you need in this life, but more than you can imagine for eternity.
The story continues. Perhaps come next year I will have an update to this chapter. Scratch that, for sure by next year, likely sooner, I will have an update. The story will continue to unfold until I move on from this part of eternity.
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And now it’s May 2019, and Cal, who I mentioned earlier, after a selling hiatus of over two years, is attempting to reinitiate/revive sales of the product we had developed for his company. In doing so he is pushing again to get my company to support him. I formally (in writing) terminated our business relationship nearly two years ago, and worse yet my company now has a real conflict of interest (near-complete products that are superior to and compete with his). For these reasons I simply cannot and will not represent his company and their products. If for no other reason, it would be wrong due to the conflict of interest. I have been gently informing him over the past month and in no uncertain terms more directly last weekend. Cal didn’t like that. Two days ago, he threatened to sue me, with what basis I don’t know yet, offering his preferred alternative to litigation being my company serving his needs and wants or my company buying his company (the number in his head, I know, is pushing 8 figures). Why do I mention this? It is an example of more than we realize — so much is out of our hands, but all is in God’s hands. This one is way out of my hands and hugely in God’s hands… most here is out of my control meaning it is thankfully in God’s control… my part is small, his is big. I know for sure this road could be ugly. It is not what I would prefer — I don’t want to do it. But I realized this morning and want to share it with you on the subject of “the tough stuff”: God is not asking me to do much, rather to be at his side while he handles most of this, his business. Sure, I may be in need of redirection, or I may be in need of refinement. That is often the case and I am sure there is some degree of one or both wrapped up in this. And I do have some small part to play. But this time it feels like God saying “Bill, watch this.” And “this” may be that this company he has entrusted to me fizzles out, but only to bring about growth and something next. I don’t know. But I do know this. God always has a “what.” Sometimes I see his “what” in foresight, more often in hindsight. God also has a “when.” That’s where I so often struggle — not having my “when” align with God’s “when,” mine always way sooner than his. Rebekah and Jacob are examples in the Bible who also did — they had been told by God his “what” and took it into their hands to force the “when” before God’s “when.” God also has a “how” that is not our place to understand as I have noted (earlier and later), though sometimes we do, in hindsight. One thing for sure is that God’s “how” is always loving. Rebekah and Jacob forced their “how,” and theirs, like mine too often, are not so good or loving. I’m gonna try to not overstep my bounds on the “how” in this legal threat situation. And on the general line of what, who, when, and why, one other thing for sure is that God always has his “why.” And, the one universal element of all that God does and lets happen — his “why” — is that all is for his glory and done in love for his creation. That’s the “why,” the foundational element of any problem just like the “why” that is foundational in what we seek to solve in design engineering — the problem’s meaningfulness… why it matters. As covered in chapters 7 and 8 of A Game Against Reality about the what, who, and why of a problem in need of a solution, “why” is foundational. And God is the ultimate of solution providers as he knows perfectly the “why”… he is the why. So, on this one God, my only part that I see right now is to stand strong with resolve (not recklessness!) and confident reliance (not cocky righteousness!) in your grace, provision, and protection from my enemies (and myself!). I look forward to seeing you at work on me, in me, and through me in this and whatever you decide comes next for me. The story continues… |
… we rejoice in our sufferings,
knowing that suffering produces endurance,
and endurance produces character,
and character produces hope ….
–Apostle Paul
Letter to the Romans 5:3-4 (NIV)
3 It’s Not All…
3.1 …Business
Don’t think for a minute all my tough stuff is about my business. There are many others, and some that stick out most are ones I had to navigate more on my own, before I found God. From this I feel confident assuring you that if you have not chosen to follow Jesus, don’t think God is not there and does not care. He is and he does. When I found Christ 14 years ago (2003 at age 37), hindsight kicked in pretty quickly. Yes, God is at work on us even when we don’t yet know him; he worked on me in some standout ways well before I found him, again only recognizable in hindsight.
- In the loss of our first child, something only a parent can remotely grasp and a pain that none who has experienced it can really put into words — from this I found a compassion for others who are hurting, even others I don’t even know, a compassion I think was always there in me but was never surfaced until this experience of a twofold pain of my own loss and then watching my wife in emotional agony and me being helpless to do anything meaningful about it for her.
- In my mom dying before I was ready for it to happen, not that I suppose I ever would have been ready — through this I realized the importance of being grateful at all times for the gifts of life and making time for those people and relationships always, not “next time when there is more time.”
- In the denial of tenure at University of Michigan, taking away my golden bat as John Eldredge talks about in his book Wild at Heart — my career defined me in those years and through this God humbled me in a way that was sorely needed, prepping me yet further for where he planned to ultimately take me through…
- The loss of my marriage and family, as I have already mentioned.
And there are more, including ones after I found God, but you get the picture, I hope.
However, now a few years after the original writing of this, and now a year after a particular personal situation that enlightened me, I will share one more story. I share it with permission of the few others to whom it most closely hits home.
It happened in the fall of 2019. A voice message came that Wednesday evening from my sister, Sue, to call her. Our mom’s sister, our Aunt Mary, had passed away that Monday, and with Sue as sort of the main point of contact to that family of cousins, she had shared the news with me and my siblings the day before. I figured it was a follow-up call. I called her back shortly after. I could not have been more off. With amazing composure, she shared with me that my nephew, her 31-year-old son, Adam, had died that morning. Unexpectedly and suddenly. I cried more than she during that call, reading in her words and tone the pain and struggle she was immersed in. The loss of a child late in pregnancy indeed made a change in me; I know now looking back that God was at work long before I ever personally met him. And that work has sustained in the form of a deep and emotionally active compassion for others who are hurting, and not only in loss of loved ones. As hard as those many situations are for me, due to the emotional response I feel, I would not trade it for anything. I would never trade it because it came along with a new heart and a new life with my Lord, and with that a love I can (try/hopefully) share in those instances. My knowing Jesus is incomparably worth the struggles of personal emotion those situations invoke.
Honestly, when the call was over, I had blanked out in part of it and did not remember some of the details she knew at the time and shared. More would be learned in the coming days, but even that little bit she knew from her son in conversations while in the hospital went in one ear and out the other. It was only 36 hours after being admitted with what turned out to be an internal infection that he suddenly internally bled out and he passed. As I edit this a year later, it is still surreal, to use a word my daughter used at the time.
Well, how does this fit in? God revealed a little more understanding to me through the days that followed. That was Wednesday night. Thursday was my 53rd birthday, meaning I will always remember without distraction or delay the anniversary of our family’s loss. And as Friday approached, my head and heart were sorting it out, or trying to, in the midst of some work to get done quickly so I could leave town Friday morning. As I went to my Thursday morning men’s program at church, I was already thinking of how I might be brought to task to help digest this. My family believed in God, but some of them, at least this sister, knew that I had found something far more than our growing-up religion. Would the question arise to me… “why did God do this to him? To us?”
“Crap,” I thought after that thought rolled into my head Thursday. I knew the simple answer was “God didn’t ‘do’ this to you or him.” I believed in my heart that was truth, but could not give anything beyond my belief as such.
Then Friday morning, with a couple buddies from church at BK as I do before hitting the morning of work as usual, talking about stuff in general, it came to me. I cannot say this is 100% coverage of the subject, but I have run this by others of greater knowledge than me to conclude it is biblical. Though, it is not necessarily complete — okay, incomplete for sure — for the same reason as I have noted earlier, that fully understanding The Creator who created us and the universe is neither our right nor our ability as the created. Regardless of how amazing God did in creating us as his image bearers, still, we are the created, not The Creator.
So, here’s the thought. Not an answer. Just a biblically sound thought on that. I will write this as though I were answering the question to Sue, my brother-in-law, Brian, and/or my niece, Alyssa, had the question come up.
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Second, God is weeping profusely at your loss. Again, as parents, we grieve the losses and struggles of our children, and God does the same that much more. Each of us, Adam as well, was created for God’s purpose of eternal relationship, and that relationship was intended to be perfect, just as new parents would wish for and imagine a perfect life for their new child held in their arms. But sin broke the world, so that perfection is gone for now. But still, as we grieve for our children, God grieves for us. |
So then, why did God do this, especially if it grieves him and he loves us?!!!! Well, I think it comes back to what I wrote earlier. God does not owe us anything, yet provides and gifts to us profusely. We tend to take much for granted, and expect all to be good. But the fact that so many more things in this broken world are not bad is, in my recent thinking, totally amazing and tells me indeed there is a loving, sovereign, all-good, fully-in-control God at work constantly. So, then, why all the bad shit?!!! Well, in this case as an example, Sue, Brian, and Alyssa did not deserve the gift of Adam in their lives at all, nor did any of us in the family, nor his friends he made along the way, nor the kids he intended to help through his future career, nor the kids he already had helped as a budding child psychologist focusing on kids going through serious medical struggles. But, in spite of us not deserving the gift of Adam, we had it. God did not take it away, he gave it. He gave it for 31 years. The fact that Adam was with us even a week was a blessing.
Now, this is not to suggest there is no reason to grieve! Jesus — God himself in human form — grieved and wept in numerous documented accounts and I bet many undocumented ones. “Grief is the price we pay for love,” to repeat the earlier quote of Queen Elizabeth II of England, stated in the aftermath of 9-11. But all said and done, love is worth it. Because we were made in God’s image, and because God is love and loves perfectly to us and, though tarnished by us, loves through us to others, we deep-down desire more than anything to love and to be loved. This goes beyond the biblical to the secular psychological.
So… why did God do this? I end the question this time shorter than above, without the “to him? To us?” That is, the question I think we need to ask to bring comfort, eventually if not sooner, is “Why did God… give us Adam for 31 years?” Because he loves every one of us whose life Adam touched, and loved Adam as well. Adam’s life was a gift to him, as mine is to me, as yours is to you. And Adam’s life was a gift to many others, as is yours, as is mine. Losses remain, pain can linger and resurface at times, but healing does happen and the intensity of the pain does subside.
The pain you’re going through
will eventually be the pain you went through…
and survived.
–Rick
a guy I met, whose been through a lot
3.2 It’s Not All… Bad
And it’s not all bad stuff. That’s just been the subject of this book. There has been so much more good stuff to life than the bad and ugly tough crap. Not to mention the good that ultimately can, and for me thankfully has, come from growth through the tough trials. If God is sovereign, you must come to a place of thankfulness for everything that has happened, sometimes not for what has happened, but always for what God is doing in and through it. Keep that in perspective, always. With God it’s not just about surviving; it’s about surviving in dependence on him as the means to thriving… eternally, which includes the here and now.
In a nutshell on the subject of life being mostly good is this, as already noted. God’s part is big, our part is quite small, not negligible and not unimportant, but small compared to the big and fully reliable part God has in it all. And that’s good news, since if anything more was actually left to me, that would be bad news in my mind and in reality. But here’s this… God’s biggest part is what he did 2000-ish years ago that is of eternal significance for each of us, and that leads to really good news.
4 And The Good News Is…
The word gospel means “good news.” But what is it really? I get together on Wednesday mornings with a group of guys, and another smaller group on Friday mornings. Christian brothers getting together to practice iron sharpening iron. A couple months ago with the Wednesday group, I posed that question. I know the answer, but I posed it as What is the gospel in jargon-free, non-Christian speak? I say it in class to my students how you really know you know something (technical) if you can explain it to your grandmother and she gets it (a variant on a quote attributed to Albert Einstein). That’s sort of what I was asking. What is it in words that anyone can understand? We talked about it for a few weeks. Well, here’s my best attempt:
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Well, that’s my best shot at it, as an amateur. But even an amateur can get frustrated with the pros. It has irked me for a number of years now how so many seek complexity in what the Bible tells us. All that complexity and religious mumbo jumbo clouding God’s call to us for relationship serves only to harm and hinder relationships. It either divides fellow followers of Jesus and worse it turns others away entirely. The Bible message is really simple, the “what” to do that is. Beyond that is the “why” — for God’s glory — and then the majority of the Bible beyond that is the “how” to do the “what,” and how not do it, and stories of the consequences of the latter, and the joy and hope in the former.
This is what the Bible says to do: love God; love others; tell them about Jesus — eight words. Yep, eight (8) words. It’s simple and not divisive, yet so much complexity is brought in by so many that there is so much division it makes me… pissed off to be honest — I guess I should then do something about it; okay this is my attempt (for now at least). There is actually a Danny Gokey song that came out recently that, once I really caught the words correctly I thought… “hey, that’s exactly what’s been bothering me for so long.” When I heard the song’s tile itself, that says most of it, the first four words anyway. The song’s title — Love God Love People — covers my “it’s really simple” position on “love God; love others” with his “gotta keep it real simple”. The “what” is indeed simple, though not easy, which is why there is so much “how” in the Bible; and the “why”… once we recognize God’s love and provision and sovereignty, for his glory is a more-than-fair why, though I fall short regularly, making too many things about me and not God and others as noted above, and will sadly do so for the rest of this part of life. And Jesus — God — takes the penalty.
And that leads to one part of the above jargon-free attempt to describe the good news that really blows me away:
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Since I discovered a personal relationship with Christ, I have been so thankful to my core for the new life he offered me, paying the penalty on my behalf. This morning (May 5, 2019) it occurred to me at heart… “Thank you just doesn’t cut it.” Though it sort of does, or “love [God] back” does, or doing my best to do so, I should say; “thank you” is simply part of that. God is great.
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[ † ] Recall, this was originally written to be part of a book centered on the context of engineering design.
[1] The Edgar Winter Group, “Free Ride,” lyrics by Dan Hartman, © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC,
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/edgarwinter/freeride.html.
[2] Tom Petty, “Free Fallin’,” lyrics by Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne, © Emi April Music Inc. / Gone Gator Music,
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/tompettyandtheheartbreakers/freefallin.html.
[3] Nate Marsh, “THE LUGE — The Ride of Your Life: Free Fall to Free Ride,”
https://evangelup.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/18-03-25-The-Luge4.mp3.
[4] Travis Williams, “THE LUGE — The Ride of Your Life: Confidence in the Corners,”
https://evangelup.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/18-03-18-The-Luge3.mp3.
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