20-Year Reflections

It's a week for nostalgia.  Tomorrow we leave for a summer Kansas City vacation, just like I used to have when I was a kid.  It will be fun to take my kids and Liz to the sites I looked forward to visiting each summer, as well as spending some time with the people (whom I have rarely seen in the last decade or so) that made those trips so special.

Sunday is also our 12th wedding anniversary.  It's hard to believe it's been 12 years.  It's also hard to believe it's only been 12 years, since it's hard to remember life without Liz.  Twelve years is how long it takes to get through school, and I must say I've enjoyed these dozen years much more than those school years.

Speaking of which, chance would have it that tonight is also the day of my 20-year high school reunion.  I can't attend, of course, since it's pretty impossible to get to an 8 p.m. party on a Saturday night in south Texas when you need to preach in Arkansas on Sunday morning.  But I have been seeing pictures on Facebook, and, along with all the other nostalgia of the week (did I mention the KC trip winds up with a family reunion?), it's got me in a reflective mood.

I think the first thing that pops into your mind when you think about seeing people from high school is whether or not you have met the expectations that you imagine that they had for you.  I think I sort of imagined ten years ago that I was "proving" something when I was able to come and "show off" Liz a little bit (I did get married!).  And I was a little sheepish about my weight gain.

So looking back, I'm happy to realize that, although I've been packing it on lately, I'm no fatter than I was ten years ago.  And we've added three impossibly adorable kids to the family since then.  But I also remember the plans I told people about back then, and I've lived to see them altered, crushed, re-shaped, and re-made over the past decade.

I've also come to realize that these thoughts I've imagined in others are just my own insecurities and expectations reflected back to me.  Because my high school social circle was small and I've been removed from that area since that time, I'm firmly in the category of "Who?" or "Oh yeah, I guess I remember him" for 98% of the people in my class.  The question really is whether I feel good about my life right now, and my definition of success has undergone a radical overhaul over the past couple of decades.



Coming out of high school, I didn't really have a great idea of what I wanted to do long-term.  I knew I wanted to keep playing baseball and get a degree at a good school.  After two years, I had a torn rotator cuff and had decided to be a sportscaster, so I transferred to TCU to get a broadcast journalism degree, signaling the end of my baseball "career."

I sort of rose to the top in my program as "talent," with my own column in the paper, a stint on the radio as the color guy for the baseball team, and things like that, but God had other plans for me.  I did one summer as a youth minister and decided I wasn't called to the ministry, but God wasn't going to let me off that easily.  So, even though I didn't actually apply to be a summer youth guy the next summer, a church in Houston called me anyway, and I took the job.  That summer I stopped putting off God and surrendered to the ministry, much to the confusion of my college professors.

During my five years in full-time youth ministry, I saw my ministry "numbers" flourish and then dissipate.  By the end, I was completely discouraged and my church was ready to move on.  It was 2005, Liz was now at my side, and we set off for a new adventure.

After a year's internship, we moved to Fort Worth to plant a church.  I was sure this was going to be my life's work, but we never got it going.  The story of Whitestone Community Church is a complicated one, and it still hurts to think of what happened.  There were some things outside my control, but when we stopped meeting and Liz and I started going to a local established church, it was undeniable: I had failed.

Through all this instability, there were six years in a row where I was looking for work in the spring, whether for a primary job or for supplemental income.  During that time, I was a substitute teacher, a food delivery guy, a videographer for high school football, an in-town courier, a marketing rep for a senior care company, and was turned down for many other jobs.  I was even turned away from selling plasma because my pulse was too slow.  Pretty demoralizing.

Here I was, a guy with a Master's degree, who had graduated near the top of my class every step of the way, and I couldn't provide a living for my family, which now included a son (Joseph).  Eventually, I got my teacher's certificate and landed a job in the second-to-last week of the summer at an alternative school teaching four different social studies subjects.

Then God tapped me on the shoulder and let me know he wasn't done with me yet.  There's not a great demand out there for failed church planters among churches looking for pastors, but a little church in a little town called Stephens in Arkansas saw something in me.  God brought us together.  We moved to town with our two-week-old daughter Hope in 2010, and we have grown to call this place our home.

Nothing we've done here screams "success" either, but I've learned something about that.  Sometimes you're a success simply by going.  Sometimes it's just by remaining when things are hard.  And when I truly do fail, the gospel tells me something wonderful: I am not defined by my shortcomings anymore.  Through the Cross, my history of arrogance, self-indulgence, bad decisions, and foolishness is replaced by Jesus' history of perfection.  He who knew no sin was made sin on my behalf so that God would see in me His righteousness, not my failure (2 Corinthians 5:21).

And God is full of wonderful surprises.  I never knew what to do with girls. God laughed and gave me two daughters.  Every day, Hope and Susanna fill me with a kind of joy that only they can bring me.  I never would have asked for them, but God knew.

I did ask for a wife, but I never knew I was asking for such a treasure.  She's always let me know that whether we're up or down, we're in this together.  God has taught me so much through her as I have had the privilege to love her.

I also asked for a son, and God have me Joseph as my firstborn.  It's hard to describe the feeling, but that boy is inside of me.  I am so proud of him, and I love him desperately.  It's given me a new understanding of God's love, because I could never do it.  I could never give up my son for anyone, and yet God let His Son be crushed for my sin.

I've had great experiences.  Through trying to network as a church planter, I got to play baseball again in my early thirties and picked up a new position (catcher).  I also got into endurance sports: first short-distance triathlons in Fort Worth, now just running.  I've run four half-marathons now and am hoping to run a marathon around my 40th birthday in November 2016.

God has let me bring the gospel to lots of different places: all over Texas, in Louisiana, in Georgia, in Reynosa, Mexico and Manchester, England, and four times now to Kobuk, in the arctic bush of Alaska.  It's been a journey in every sense of the word.

And through all the weird jobs, God has somehow prepared me.  I learned to be comfortable navigating hospitals and funeral homes, because I delivered flowers in college.  I learned a lot about aging through my job in senior care, and I have been stretched through many jobs--particularly as a teacher--to understand and care about people who are not like me, with different backgrounds, different hurts, different problems, but the same humanity.

I am a suburbanite through and through, both by upbringing and personality, but now God has somehow set my heart on two towns whose combined population is less than half of my high school: Stephens and Kobuk.  And He has equipped me to do the very thing He has called me to do.

People say life is short, and the way the last 20 years have flown by, I can see why.  But I remember my high school baseball coach standing is front of us seniors after our last game, trying to give us one last bit of wisdom.  He said, "Everybody says life is short.  That's bull...., fellas.  Life is long.  Whatever you end up doing, you do for a long, long time."  There's probably no one from my past embedded in my subconscious more than Coach Mallory, mostly for the wrong reasons, but I think he was on to something here.  At least from the perspective of high school, life is very long.

I've now lived longer since high school than I had when I heard those words.  I am 38 now.  As a sports fan, 38 seems very old.  Any athlete still active at my age is a grizzled veteran or an all-time great, fizzling down to the end.  Athletes about my age include Peyton Manning, Alex Rodriguez, and Kevin Garnett.  But I feel like my "career" is just beginning.  As a dad, well, I have a one-year-old.  As a pastor, things are just getting started, too.

My life might not be a "success," but I am right where I need to be.  Life is very good.

It's the story of my life: You can trust God.

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Related post: The Forgotten Nation