Just Do It

It was the summer of 2001. We lived in California. I was at the height of my professional career. A Vice President in Product Development at the world's 2nd largest software company. A team that was soon to grow from big to bigger.

God's presence in my life was becoming larger too and He seemed particularly uninterested in my job.

Every time I began a conversation with God about fair employee stock option distribution from Houston to Hydrabad he responded with a yawn.

Instead, the powerful personal presence of God had Menifee county on His mind. My church was planning a trip there to assist a pastor in setting up his new ministry. The focus of this first visit would be a small group of men doing a lot of manual labor.

This was a meaningful time in my life: I was beginning to feel the seeds sown into my soul before birth by God the Father Almighty. Every time I mentioned "career" in prayer, the Spirit responded "Kentucky".

This interchange went on for months until I finally relented. I was one of 5 men who responded. There was Denny Smith, Jim Gilbertson, Brad Hooey, Don Busboom and myself.

Denny had power tools, Jim had a business as a handyman, Brad had just finished a tour abroad with the National Guard, and Don was our equipping pastor. I, on the other hand, had seen pictures of power tools in magazines. At the time, I found it quite confusing. Looking back, I find it hilarious.

What is not amusing is this: I did not write anything down at the time. Journaling was completely unknown to me. I did not even take a camera. Eight years later, God is equally adamant: "Write something down before anymore is lost. Anything is better than nothing." This is always the way God works. I feel strongly I should be writing about several other topics. Important events. Recent seasons. And yet, the spiritual response is empty for my agenda. I have unfinished business. God has held me hostage like this before-- The result was the study guide for How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth. As my family will enthusiastically attest, I was one grumpy monkey that entire summer.

So, I've begun to dredge the depths of my fading memory. I could not even recall all four names. I had to talk with my bride and it took us about 5 minutes to conjure up the identity of the missing man.

Let me be clear: This trip marked the first time in my adult life I listened and heard God's voice in a concrete, actionable way. I learned more about who God was in that week than perhaps the prior 37 years of my life combined. At the time, I said I would never forget a single detail.

So, please accept this for what it is-- A shaky sketch of a time long ago. The reality was much, much richer than what follows.

The Trip Out

The trip took place in October 2001. We were on one of the very early post-911 flights to Kentucky. It's hard to recall how different things were at that time. I do not mind saying that I was flat out scared to get on the plane. I debated canceling right up to the last moment.

Security was crazy. People were paranoid. Fearful they would confiscate a camera I left it behind. As I watched Denny loading up power saw blades into rubbermaid containers and duct taping them shut I wondered aloud about checking those as "baggage". They sailed right through and we were on the plane. It was a long flight. I still remember vividly looking over at a sleeping Denny with his copy of the Koran on the seat-tray in front of him. Denny had said-- "I just thought it might help me to better understand the situation."

Meanwhile, I was not so sure how 5 men traveling together packing power tools and korans might look to nervous airline personnel.

Other than that, the trip out was remarkably uneventful.

Hannah

After a long day of travel we headed straight over to a church event. One of the first people we met was a 17-year-old firecracker named Hannah. She walked straight up to the California contingent and wanted to know what we thought about gun control and the constitution. She was writing a paper for school on the topic and she wanted to hear from the California liberals. I stammered and then joked that I had left my copy of the constitution in my other jeans. She responded immediately: "Well, I didn't. I always carry one. Here you go." And with that, I had met the pastor's daughter. A beautiful young woman with a passion for life, plans to go to Law School and the grades and moxie to back up those dreams. She had a big smile and a joyful outlook on life.

Noah

I was in a conversation with several men when I was literally tackled from behind. The body blow was powerfully administered to my legs and I buckled backwards into a heap with my assailant. He was grinning ear to ear as he playfully looked into my eyes: "Hello. I'm Noah." Noah was the pastor's son. He was 16 years old at the time. Born with Down's Syndrome, he wore coke-bottle thick glasses and had a lady's man smile.

I had never spent much time with anyone like Noah. I would say that he had the maturity and sparkle of my 5-year-old boy Grant but housed in a body my own size. As a father, my eyes grew large as I tried to fathom the logistics of such a parenting situation.

One of the things we did throughout the week was to provide fresh wrestling playmates for Noah. Noah's energy was boundless but ours was not. We had to develop a tag-team system to get through uninjured.

Barbara

We met a woman in a wheel-chair. Her body was stiff and gnarled. She could not speak. I don't recall the name of the disease that was ravaging her but it was described as a combination of Lou Gehrig's disease and something else. It had shown up a few years earlier. No one knew how long she would live in this condition.

She was the pastor's wife.

My memories of how tenderly he spoke of her and to her remain undiminished. I watched him prove again and again how sound the mind was within that suffering body. I also recall how sitting with her made my skin crawl. A helpless feeling coupled with dread and my mind repeating quietly "why? why? why?"

I frequently had to leave her presence to collect myself.

During a game of Hearts I watched Hannah leave again and again..

Once to change her mother's diaper. Once to clean her mouth as she explained the dangers of choking on her own spittle. Once to make her dinner and feed her.

At the time, I tried to compare my senior year in high school with Hannah's.

Glenn

We first met Glenn looking out at us from the pulpit. He was a strong speaker who clearly could have joined a church anywhere in America but he felt pulled back to Kentucky where he grew up.

On several occasions, I was privileged to watch Glenn wheel Barbara into church followed by Noah and then Hannah. He would move purposefully up to the 2nd row and tenderly lift her out of the wheel-chair and place her gently into the pew. As he moved on to the pulpit, Hannah would slip in next to her and then Noah. It was like a dance.

Throughout the week, Glenn's energy and passion were always evident. It was amazing to hear him talk about the Doctors trying to convince him first to terminate Barbara's pregnancy with Noah and later to discourage them from performing open heart surgery on Noah.

No matter what your personal beliefs are on pro-life vs. pro-choice, I think everyone should spend an afternoon talking with someone like Glenn flanked by the members of his family. They truly walk-the-talk.

At one point he looked at Barbara and almost whispered: "I always knew we would be in ministry together but I never dreamed it would be like this."

Church Steeple

After a morning spent repairing the church's little steeple, I was sitting on the roof eating lunch with Brad Hooey. Bologna and american cheese sandwiches on white bread I think. Not exactly the PF Chang's lettuce wraps I was used to but I was hungry and they were great.

Brad was in his early twenties and had just returned from a stint in the national guard. His relationship with a personal God was rich, varied and deep. I, frankly, was still pretty confused by the idea of a vibrant, intimate relationship with God.

For me, God the Father Almighty made sense. Jesus the Redeemer made sense. A Spirit-filled life right here, right now? I had no clue.

On paper, you might think the 37-year-old father of 3 would have a lot to teach a young man just starting out. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here is Brad's story as I dimly recall it:

Brad: "Man... I like Bologna pretty good. You know what I really like though? Peanut butter and jelly. One of the things I missed while I was away was making bunches of PBJ sandwiches, buying socks at Costco and heading into the Tenderloin on Friday nights."

Me: "What's in the Tenderloin on Friday nights?"

Brad: "I like to give the sandwiches and socks out to the homeless and tell them that I love them."

As with Hannah earlier, I tried to compare my favorite Friday Night activities in my early twenties with Brad's. I found I had little to say. So I listened.

Brad: "It's funny how things work out. While I was on my tour I started saving my money. I had this picture in my head of saving up enough money so that I could take my girlfriend to Hawaii when I got back. I'd ask her to marry me there.

So I saved and I saved and I kept it a secret. And I did it. I saved enough for the two of us to go on a really fancy trip. I could not wait to get home.

So, I tell her. And she looks at me. And she says:

Brad, that sounds awesome. And I know we wouldn't do anything until after we get married. BUT, my new job is in children's ministry. I just don't think it would look right.

And I thought about it. And she was right. So, I don't know what I'm going to do with all this cash.

His words were almost incomprehensible to me. I was wrestling with my own choices concerning sex as a young man and what was sensible to teach my children. One of my last sacred cow rationalizations about the Bible was on this very topic. And it was so easy to do. As long as I relegated the Bible to ancient stories about people who got married when they were 12 I could easily point out how unfair it was to expect people to wait until they were 30 to have sex.

Thirty. The age I was when I got married. With a full head of steam I could also argue that it was foolish to think I could be mature enough when I was twenty to get married.

But all of that was before I met Brad. And through Brad I was introduced to the possibilities of being raised in a community of people who knew God as an ever-present father, friend and counselor.

When Brad spoke it was never about morality or what was wrong but instead it was about lives filled with love and what was right. So I asked questions. I learned about Brad's youth group. When he talked about them his eyes lit up. He described adventure after adventure. Mission trips and ski trips and concerts. When Brad talked about his youth group-- it sounded cool.

A community of young people hanging out with God helping the poor, the sick and each other while having a blast doing it.

I realized on that church steeple in Kentucky that my airtight, logical argument only made sense with the Living God Brad described nowhere in sight. God as philosophy was no help at all. God as long-dead founder of a religion was worse and God as a distant watchmaker was worse than that.

But what if, instead, I had to contend with a God who permeated His creation in a powerfully personal way? A God who was intimate and omnipotent without contradiction?

On that day, Brad introduced me both to the Trinity and to the Kingdom of God. At the time, I had never hung out in Matthew 5 and the Trinity was a dusty set of dessicated doctrines from my Presbyterian youth.

Instead, a compelling love story and a walk down memory lane blew my analytical mind out of the water. I pledged to God right then that my children would be surrounded by a community of faith like Brad's.

I just believed this community would be in California. Over the last decade, this sacred moment had diminished in my memory. But now, eight years later, my family is once again enriched by Brad's story as we help plant just such a church with exactly this kind of youth group in Durham, North Carolina.

The Ditch Witch

The 5 of us did various manual tasks while we were in Kentucky, but the biggest task involved the laying of a gas line and a water line into the little church Glenn was adding to his ministry. The county provided water & gas lines along the road, but the church was a solid 35 yards from the road.

This task was not part of the original plan so we arrived at the work site with exactly one pick-axe and 2 shovels between the five of us.

There was a quiet man who led us out to the site the first day and watched us as we slowly began digging the ditch. At one point, the pick-axe broke. We applied duct-tape and continued working. We must have been quite a sight.

By the end of the 1st day we were pretty discouraged. By the end of the 2nd day we were desperate.

We arrived at the worksite on day 3 to find the quiet man there with his ditch-witch. He was pretty much done with the chore.

We told Glenn and he was quite surprised-- Glenn had befriended the man soon after arriving but the man rarely spoke and had never come to a church service.

Meanwhile, Back In California

I left my bride with our three children for the week. Jackson was 2 months, Grant was 3 years and Lauren was 6 years. We had very little contact during the entire trip. There was no cell phone coverage throughout the county.  The 5 of us used the house phone at the end of each day. Throughout the week, I got an "all is well" from Julie which I needed to hear and she knew it.

Several months later, this story finally came out:

While I was gone, there was a terrific storm and a giant tree was knocked down in the backyard. Early the next morning Julie went outside with the big kids to look at the fallen tree. A gust of wind blew the door shut. The door was locked. The baby was inside. Julie was outside. It was time to breast-feed. In their pajamas Julie took our big kids over to the neighbor's house and called the fire department. She returned to the window where she could look in on Jackson. The pool-guy showed up to clean the pool. The firemen came, checked the house and reported that it was mighty secure.

Julie was standing outside the window where Jackson was crying to be fed, arms strategically crossed, experiencing a massive let-down response as the firemen indicated they could not break a window to get in.

Finally, the pool-guy, said: "Oh for God's sake, maybe you can't but I can" and with that he broke the window.

Of Subsequent Trips

The pastor & his wife had two other older children. We met them only briefly during this trip. One was a military medic just returning from the middle east and the other was a college student. One was adopted but I'm not sure which boy.

The stories of these older boys were more prominent during later trips by members of our church. But those are not my stories to tell. Our relationships with our old church became strained and then frayed as the Enemy pushed us far apart.

Here is all I know: Later, a young woman from our church answered a call to go and minister to Barbara so Hannah could go to college. She went and stayed for quite sometime. I think she married one of Glenn's older children. Barbara passed away and I believe Glenn remarried and moved out of Kentucky.

I cannot help but wonder: if I had focused on chronicling these mighty stories of the Holy Spirit's actions in Kentucky long ago would it have changed any of the subsequent heartbreak we felt in our own church? I will never know. And you will never get to hear those stories.

Last Word

God works through His people. God jogs our memories through His agents. God speaks to each of us using their mouths.

My recollections of this trip had grown murky and diffuse until about a year ago when I received this card. Denny and I have not spoken in 5 years. But right around the time of my father's death I received this encouragement.

It has sat on my desk ever since. Oh, it's moved around several times from stack to stack but I read it again and again. And I remember when God first moved deep in my heart. I recall when He began speaking and teaching through the citizens of His Kingdom. Through Denny, through Brad, through Jim and through Don.

 Thank you Denny, and thank you God.