THINGS I'VE LEARNED AFTER I KNEW IT ALL (and lost a son)

(I rarely use this forum to share glimpses from my personal life. I try to 'keep it professional.'  Many of you may not know that my wife, Karen, and I lost a son eight years ago this June 14.  If you are interested in how that tragedy has changed us you are invited to view our blog, Embracing Grief, at http://embracinggrief.blogspot.com/.  But let me warn you, sometimes we get pretty transparent, raw, and messy with our journey.)

 I was born into and raised in one of those “Ward & June Cleaver” homes (I guess making me a “Beaver” type of boy).  I enjoyed playing in the neighborhood, walking to and from school, starring on Little League teams, and being active at the local First Baptist Church.  My mom worked there part time and my dad took his turns being the Deacon Chairman and, at other times, the Sunday School director.  I won my share of attendance pins and choir awards at the church.  It was truly an idyllic upbringing.

Because of this upbringing, my love for God and His church started early and it blossomed into a life calling into ministry through the church.  My wife, Karen, and I left Orlando, FL for Ft. Worth, TX to attend seminary there. I sensed my calling was being directed toward Christian education and discipleship in the church.  After receiving my training and degrees, I started my career in serving God through the local church, organizing and training people to become better disciples. And let me tell you, I thought I knew it all!  I knew all the answers in helping grow a church. I led Bible studies and, on occasion, I would preach – always with the full confidence that I knew what I was talking about. I traveled around the country leading conferences on church growth. I was on the career ladder of bigger churches and more complex work responsibilities.

Karen and I started our family – first a son, Ben and then a daughter, Katie.  Ben and Katie were the typical perfect children.  Sure, they tested our parental fortitude but, on the whole, they were a delight.  But then along came Jacob, and our world began to change.  No, Jacob was not a problem child in a way we often see. In fact, he was as delightful as his older siblings.  The challenges that Jacob brought to us were not of his own choosing – he was born with a severe and always fatal heart defect.  We sought out medical advice and options and were led to a cardiologist that was pioneering a series of palliative surgeries. We followed this option and Jacob came through each of the three open heart surgery relatively easy (emphasis on the ‘relatively’ – nothing is really ‘easy’ when you dealing with open heart surgeries).

Let me fast forward through this life cavalcade in order to get to what I learned after I knew it all.  Our family lived a fairly normal life … for a minister’s family.  We moved every few years.  Despite starting over in new situations in different towns, each of our children excelled in different ways …. all the while we spent a lot of time seeing heart specialists in order to keep Jacob healthy.

As Jacob entered his junior year of high school, his heart began to fail him and a heart transplant was performed.  You can imagine the roller coaster of emotions as we went through that tenuous time, but he responded well with his new heart and went on to graduate high school and go off to college.

We were told the average life span of a donated heart is around 10 years, but Jacob’s heart began to deteriorate after 3 short years and, miraculously, he received a second heart transplant just in the nick of time.

Tragically, nearly two years later, Jacob died of cardiac arrest when his body was attempting to reject this second transplanted heart.

Now that I’ve set the stage with this extensive backdrop, let me quickly share some things I’ve learned about life after I thought I knew it all

1. JUST BECAUSE YOU’VE DEVOTED YOUR LIFE TO DOING GOD’S WORK, IT DOESN’T MEAN THAT YOU GET TO LIVE A CHARMED LIFE.

When I first learned of Jacob’s diagnosis and prognosis, I began quite an assault on God’s door.  I repeatedly beat on the door and, more or less, yelled the question, “Why me?”  I thought (erroneously) that since I was a minister of the gospel that I would be immune to any negative things in my life.  I kept myself clean before God. I read my Bible daily. I told others that God loved them.  So I thought I had the ‘right’ to ask God, “Since I do all these things for You, why is this happening?”

I HAVE LEARNED THAT the verse in the Bible where it says, “it rains on the just and the unjust” means just that.  Being a Christian, or even a minister of the Christian gospel, does not exempt you from experiencing sadness, financial reverses, sickness, or tragedies to you or anyone you love.

2. PRAYER DOESN’T ALWAYS WORK THE WAY WE THINK IT SHOULD.

Throughout Jacob’s life, my prayer life morphed in a way that was different than the way I learned.  I think as humans we tend to remember the statements about prayer that we like.  Statements that we have read, heard, and even sung like:

“God will take care of you, through every day, o’er all the way”

“God answers prayers”

“He will meet your every need.”

“Just tell God your heart’s desire, and He will be faithful to answer.”

“God loves to answer the prayers of His children.”

I HAVE LEARNED THAT in a sense these statements contain truth but we twist the truth to our liking.  All too often, we have been taught that we are to go to God in prayer to express our desires, to convey our wish list, to submit our orders so He can hop to it and begin to check off each request on our list.  It’s only human to do that. We see that even Jesus experienced this in the garden of Gethsemane.  But focus on the last part of his request from Mark 14:36, “Father, all things are possible for you. Take this cup away from me.  Nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will.”  Jesus demonstrates a human desire for what he wanted to see happen but he then models what our prayers are to be – we should approach God seeking what He wants to see happen and submitting ourselves to be a part of that process rather than coming to God to drop off our grocery list of needs so He can get to work on them.

3. CHURCHES NEED TO BE CAREFUL TO NOT PROMISE MORE THAN CAN BE DELIVERED.

All too often, in our zeal to grow our church and reach the world for Christ, part of our ‘sales pitch’ includes saying “All you have to do is ask Jesus into your heart and everything will be OK.”  Again, boiled down to the statement’s basic elements, this is true.  God will see us through.  But to a neophyte Christian or to someone suffering from unimaginable maladies, they see this as a life ring to Easy Street.  We don’t share the whole truth that often our growth as a Christian is through some very difficult exercises that are not to our choosing nor to our liking.  Sometimes we inadvertently lead a person to think that being in the family of God is like living at an “all inclusive” resort:  we live in a room and the maid comes daily to clean up and freshen up; we order whatever and whenever we want at the restaurants while others wait on us; we frolic each day while others attend to our every whim.

I HAVE LEARNED THAT though this sounds great, but that’s not the way it is.  We call ourselves the family of God for a reason.  We are to pull our share; we are to care for others that need assistance; we do whatever is necessary to keep the family functioning. That means, as much as we may prefer not to, there are times we must do things ‘that’s not fun” but is necessary to the wellbeing of the family.  Nobody enjoys cleaning toilets, washing the dishes or doing the clothes, cleaning up someone’s messes – but that is what a family does.

In the Christian life, we will experience things that we prefer not to experience but they can serve as character development in our lives. We need to help our brothers and sisters be prepared for this and how to react to the reverses of life.

4. GRIEF NEVER GETS EASIER NOR DO WE EVER GET ‘OVER IT’; WE JUST GET USED TO THE ADDED PACK WEIGHT.

People who have experienced the loss of a loved one begin a new lifelong path of grief.  Contrary to what some people think (usually they are people who have not experienced this depth of loss yet) you don’t simply “get over it”.  And honestly, experiencing grief never gets easier. 

I HAVE LEARNED THAT grief becomes a constant weight in your backpack of life.  You never get rid of it or get over it. Grief never gets lighter.  What happens is that the person who has grief as a new life companion becomes accustomed to the added weight.  We learn to carry it better so to an untrained eye, it appears that we are “back to normal”.  However, in reality, if that added weight shifts in our ‘backpack’ we are suddenly reminded of that originating experience of grief.  Because of that shift in weight, we may falter or fall.  We may wince in pain or we may reinjure ourselves.  And that original pain of grief is seen by all. There are times in a year where you can expect that weight to shift and cause pain again – birthdays, death days, most holidays, and other special family occasions. You can count on experiencing pain on those days. But there are other days, when the weight unexpectedly shifts as a result of a sound, a scene, a word, a song, a person, a thing, a picture – and that grief pain strikes suddenly and surprises us. At those times, we readjust the ‘weight’ and allow for the pain to subside slowly.

5. FRIENDS MEAN WELL IN OFFERING COMFORT BUT OFTEN THEY DO IT IN THE WRONG WAY.

Much like Job’s friends, a family member or friend who wants to bring comfort will only cause more harm the minute they open their mouth.  Such statements as these do not bring comfort to a grieving person:

“I guess God needed another angel.”

“You know this was God’s will.”

“God did this to make you stronger.”

“You must have done something to cause this to happen.”

I HAVE LEARNED THAT it’s not best to try to explain what God is trying to get across or what He is trying to teach the person numb in grief.  It won’t make sense or it may even fan the flame of their anger at God even more. Even saying to a person who is in the depths of grief, “If there is something I can do, just let me know” isn’t adequate.  When a person is grieving, they don’t know what is needed.  To the person wanting to minister to a grieving friend, think what you would want done and then just go do it.  Go to the house and see what needs to be done and organize a crew to handle it. After Jacob died, a friend came to my house and asked for my dress shoes. I stared at him numbly and asked why.  He said, “I want to polish them for you so you won’t have to worry about that for the funeral.” What a blessing that was!

Ministry to a grieving person is done through self-initiated acts of kindness or simply the ministry of your quiet presence.

Jacob & I, a month before his death

WHAT I HAVE LEARNED AFTER I THOUGHT I KNEW IT ALL is that God is the creator every feeling I have experienced and He has promised me His constant presence (even when I don’t sense it or even want it).  God understands and can handle my anger, my outbursts, and my temper tantrums. In fact, He invites me to share them with Him.  Though there are times when I may question His wisdom, He reminds me of his omnipotence and asks me to trust Him and his ways. He has never promised an easy life but He does promise to be with me in the midst of each dark day.    Questions, doubts, and even anger are occasional visitors in my emotional life of grief. God knows and understands this.  But chasing after answers or making demands of explanations is often wasted effort.  I have learned that I’m not in charge. I don’t have the ability to create and govern this universe. My knowledge is very finite. I’ve learned to live in the mystery of life – even when it frustrates me – and to depend on the one known constant fact – God loves me!

THINGS YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN ….

FOR CHURCH LEADERS: Revive Conference – a time for revitalization and replanting, September 26, Prince Avenue Baptist/Bogart http://www.cvent.com/events/revive-september-26-2017/event-summary-1d6a78855fd549d6a46a67e0c3af802b.aspx

FOR BIBLE STUDY LEADERSHIP: “Does It Matter Whether You Call It Sunday School or Another Name?” by Bruce Raley - http://www.lifeway.com/groupministry/2014/09/09/call-it-sunday-school-or-another-name-does-it-matter/?ecid=84521512&bid=731704431

FOR CHURCH & COMMUNITY – DevoHub, providing daily devotional material directly to your smart phone or tablet - http://devohub.com/

FOR LEADER TRAINING: Sunday School Matters by Alan Taylor, 12 sessions to build, expand and maintain a healthy Sunday School ministry - http://www.lifeway.com/Product/sunday-school-matters-leader-kit-P005792826

FOR DISCIPLESHIP: Think Differently by James McDonald - http://buff.ly/2nIbKaO

FOR DISCIPLESHIP: Disciples Path: The Journey, all four volumes are now available! Relational, Intentional, Progressive, Comprehensive: http://buff.ly/2fWPk2b

FOR DISCIPLESHIP: Foundations for Adults, a 260 Day Bible reading plan - http://www.lifeway.com/Product/foundations-P005769893?intcmp=FoundationsSearch-MTX-Foundations-20170103

FOR WOMEN’S MINISTRY: Transformed Lives: Taking Your Women’s Ministry to the Next Level by Chris Adams - http://www.lifeway.com/Product/transformed-lives-revised-and-expanded-P005371579?intcmp=LWB-WM-transformedlives

FOR MEN’S MINISTRY: The Main Event -  http://buff.ly/2jvnImd

FOR MEN’S MINISTRY: Sleeping Giant by Kenny Luck, steps toward beginning a men’s ministry that transforms men - http://www.lifeway.com/Product/sleeping-giant-leader-kit-P005469852

FOR MEN’S MINISTRY: Unfolded by Dr. Eric Geiger - http://buff.ly/2hGyO9w 

FOR STUDENT MINISTRY: Disciples Path for students – a new series for developing your student’s discipleship - http://www.lifeway.com/Disciples-Path/Youth/c/N-1z0znzeZ1z141ym?intcmp=DisciplesPath-MTX-Text-Students-20150625

FOR STUDENT MINISTRY: Foundations for Students, a 260 Day Bible reading plan - http://www.lifeway.com/Product/foundations-teen-devotional-P005791600

FOR STUDENT MINISTRY: The LIFT Tour for developing student leaders - http://www.slulead.com/lift-tour

FOR STUDENT MINISTRY: Youth Pastor Summit registration is now open - http://www.slulead.com/youth-pastor-summit

FOR STUDENT MINISTRY: Student Pastor Network, connect with Student Pastors around the country without leaving your office AND get $200 worth of 'stuff'. http://buff.ly/2lksLHS

FOR KIDS MINISTRY: ETCH (Equipping The Church & Home) Conference, October 16-18, Register Now: http://buff.ly/2nw9Wpc

FOR KIDS MINISTRY: Kids Ministry 101 Podcasts -  http://buff.ly/2kPNDFV

FOR KIDS MINISTRY: Kids Ministry 101 magazine, sign up for this free resource - http://www.lifeway.com/kidsministry/kids-ministry-101-magazine-signup/