More Joy, Less Scars

I grew up in Arlington, the third of four children. My parents were public school teachers. We attended the local United Methodist Church, but the older we got, the less we attended. By the time I was in junior high school, we had stopped attending church altogether.

I was a good kid, a strong student, often the teacher’s pet, and I was agnostic; that is, I did not know if there was a God. I knew the story of Jesus and thought it was a beautiful story, but I knew that didn’t mean it was true. I am a logic-oriented person. I am not given to emotionalism, and I have always been a truth-seeker. To me, even back then, the most important thing in the world was truth. Oh, by the way, if you have not figured it out already, I am an Enneagram One.

In college, I really began wondering about the existence of God. I knew the answer to that question had solid implications for my life. If God did not exist, I thought I might as well sleep in on Sunday mornings and get as much pleasure out of life as I could. If God did exist, then I should orient my life to follow Him. To make a long story short, after my search, I came to three important conclusions: (1) God must exist – Because physical matter exists, this world, there must be Something, an Uncaused Cause, at the beginning to create matter. That Uncaused Cause is God. (2) The man Jesus historically existed. Non-Biblical sources assert that He lived in first-century Palestine and was executed by the Roman government. (3) The Bible is a reliable document, and Jesus is who He said He is – God in the flesh. I realized I ultimately had to take a step of faith, and so on January 26, 1983, at about 9:00 pm in Dallas, Texas, I bowed my head and confessed my sinfulness to the Creator God and entrusted my eternal destiny into His hands by way of the crucifixion and resurrection and ascension of the incarnate God, Jesus the Messiah.

For the past almost 40 years now, I have walked with Christ. I have been fortunate to be part of several solid Bible-teaching churches over the years. As a result, I have learned the value of spending time in God’s Word and daily connecting my heart with Jesus. Jesus has changed me from a naturally pessimistic, sarcastic, dark, and moody (I prefer the term artsy) person to someone filled with hope, light, and even joy. My wife would acknowledge that I still have bouts with my artsy side, but it does not define my outlook as it once did.

Being saved did not mean I did not experience hard things, but they didn’t have the overwhelming weight they would have otherwise had.

Many of my struggles are related to my pursuit of a career. I have gone down several paths that involved years of study and tens of thousands of dollars that did not work out.

My first degree was in music. I wanted to sing opera. I tried it for a while, but it didn’t work out for me. It had been my secret dream since elementary school. A dream and pursuit in which I had failed, and I was greatly disappointed. For those of you who have experienced the death of a long-held dream, you know how devastating it can be. But to borrow from 2 Corinthians 4:8, I was hard pressed, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair. There was something bigger in my life now. My life was based on Jesus Christ and trusting Him as I followed Him to the best of my ability. So I cried my tears, and my wife Jinger cried with me. Then we embraced our God, stood up, and moved on with hope.

My next pursuit was medicine. If I couldn’t be an opera singer, I would be a medical doctor. 

That seems obvious, right? I went back to school for several years to add some science classes, applied to medical school, got accepted, made some good friends, studied a lot, and ended up failing my first year in medical school. 

Again, it was very hard, but it was not ultimate. Nailing down a career was important, but it simply was not the most important thing in my life – God was. And following Him despite my circumstances was my chief end.

Let me make a comment here. Jinger and I did not get through these tough times on our own. We had a strong community of believers around us that were our support. As a matter of fact, the week I found out I failed medical school, Kyle and Tresha Kaigler dropped everything to drive three hours and spend two days with us as we grieved and processed my loss. They were an important piece of God’s grace to us as we figured out how to move on with hope.

Next, I attended Dallas Theological Seminary and graduated with a Master’s degree in Counseling. But as I began the process of accumulating the 3000 supervised hours required to take the state licensing exam, I faced a crisis in my counseling. I had called myself a believer in Christ, and I believed the Bible to be God’s written revelation to us, but did I truly believe what 2 Peter 1:3 says?

“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness.”

Did I need to add man’s psychology to this, or was God’s presence and God’s Word enough? The one thing I did not want to do was to help people cope with their problems apart from the Word of God and the Spirit of God. So I withdrew from pursuing my counseling license while I waited on the LORD. 

This, again, was a very difficult decision. I had to trust God, not knowing what I was going to do next.

A couple of years after that, I was asked to help plant a church in south Arlington. This was a wonderful eight years as I got to use my music background as the worship leader and my counseling training as an associate pastor. However, this too came to an end as the church closed due to financial and relational difficulties. That was almost exactly 14 years ago.

Since then, I have had other ups and downs career-wise, spent some precious years as a stay-at-home homeschool dad, and now work as a biblical marriage counselor for a ministry called Marriage Revolution. I am finally in a career that I love that uses my training, gifts, and love for God’s Word and helping people.

In spite of all I have been through and because of Jesus, I have a very rich life. I am married to an amazing woman, and we have enjoyed a great marriage for over 34 years now. I have good relationships with our three young adult kids, two of whom are walking well with Jesus. I love my church and the community of people I get to do life with. Due to God’s truth and grace, my life is free of many of the scars that often accompany those who have experienced the disappointments that I have.

While I often don’t understand His ways and why my pursuits turned out the way they did, I have always known that He is good and His ways are above my ways. In short, I trust Him, and because of that, things may have buried others that have not buried me. Not because I am anything special, but because God is special and His ways are true. 

He is the most special and important thing to me, and since that can never be taken from me, I have always been left standing on the Rock, my Fortress. As Psalms 62:2 says,

“He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken.”