My story . . . Part 1 of several
Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
In the year 2000, I was a thirty-four year old man who was kind of floating along in what most people would call a successful life. I had (and still have) a wonderful wife, Barbara, who was my college sweetheart and definite better half. I had a son, Chad, who was (and still is) a smart, handsome, athletic young man with a strong Christian character. I was working my way up in the Navy, making all of my promotions. I had served in some very prestigious jobs, in particular as an intelligence briefing officer to the Secretary of the Navy and Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon. My health was great. I owned a house. I had a nice car and a nice van. I had lots of good friends. I was very active in my church, serving at various times as a deacon, a choir member, and as a preschool Sunday School teacher. What more could I want?
Well, as it turns out, in 2000, I was more miserable than I had ever been in my entire life. The reason? Barbara and I had always desired to have a family of two, three, perhaps even four children. And as we began to try harder and harder to have a second child, we just could not conceive. Finally, we consulted medical help and found that we were having what doctors call unexplained fertility problems. Over the course of several months in 2000, as we went in for various counseling and testing, I found myself growing more and more bitter over the situation. And it started to affect many areas of my life.
For instance, I had long wanted to do a Navy tour overseas, particularly in Europe. Well, in 2000, it happened. Serving in the Norfolk area, I got my next set of orders—to England for a three-year tour. Except, with all of the infertility stuff going on, I suddenly found myself not very excited about going to England. I can still remember a night in early fall of 2000, mowing my lawn and nearly in tears. I was cursing, saying “I don’t want to go to England. I don’t want this house. I don’t want anything. Why am I not able to have another child?”
What made me even more distraught about this was that deep inside, I knew how selfish I was being, and I didn’t like it. What right did I have to be angry? Many couples are unable to have any kids, and I was blessed with Chad (born in 1992 by the way), who to this day is everything a father could ever want in a son. In addition, I claimed to be a Christian, yet I was giving no thought at all to what God might want for my life. My attitude was that God should let me have what I wanted. And I wanted to have another child. In my heart I felt that I would be willing to give up my career, house, cars—all the “stuff” that I had—if only we could conceive again.
Reluctantly, I began to think that maybe moving to England might be “good” in that it would take my mind off of our infertility problems. A change of scenery would let me move on from this chapter in my life. Maybe in the future we could start looking into the possibility of adoption. At any rate, I couldn’t believe that I was once so excited about going to Europe, and now I could care less about it. So, in the fall of 2000, Barb, Chad, and I started the “overseas screening process.” We had our initial required medical examinations, and I began making contact with the officer in England who I would relieve. We started to make preparations for selling our home, too. In late September of 2000, we had our first yard sale to get rid of some of our stuff.
Among other things, we sold almost all of Chad’s baby toys, clothes, portable items (i.e. playpens), and books at the yard sale. There was hardly any baby stuff left.
My story . . . Part 2 of several
About a month passed, and I was feeling no different.
In late October, 2000, we were painting a couple of rooms in the house in preparation for our move to England the following Spring. You can picture the scene: drop cloths all over the carpets, empty paint cans strewn about, painter’s tape around the baseboards.
I am pretty sure it was late on a Sunday afternoon. Barb was at home finishing up some painting, and I was out with Chad. When I got home, Barbara came up to me, handed me a home pregnancy test stick, and asked me that strange question, “Does that look like a line to you?” Now, realize that at this point I had given up all hope that we would get pregnant again. So when Barb asked me the question, I had no emotional response. There was no breath of anticipation; no butterflies started jumping in my stomach. But when I took a look, my immediate thought was, “Holy crap, it sure does look like a line!”
So Barb went off to see the doctor that week, and he confirmed that she was pregnant. You can imagine the exhilaration we felt over the next days and weeks. We had been trying to have another baby for about four years, and now it was finally going to happen! It was hard to believe. At some point in the initial euphoria, it dawned on us that we had just sold almost all of our baby stuff at the yard sale. But under the circumstances we didn’t care. We could buy new stuff for the new baby.
Barbara’s due date was early July of 2001. But we were supposed to move to England in April or May of 2001. So, I thought that one of the first things I ought to do is inform the Navy of this situation to make sure there were no problems. As it turns out, there was a problem. My detailer (senior Navy officer in charge of tour assignments) informed me that Navy policy is that a service member may not execute an overseas move when his dependent (wife) is in the third trimester of a pregnancy. To make a long story short, because of the timing of our pregnancy, my orders to England were cancelled, and I was reassigned to a three year job in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
It’s odd, but I remember that when I heard that I was not going to go on this much longed-for tour in Europe, I was not disappointed. Instead, I felt a rush of relief. I didn’t care that I was not going to live in England. What I really wanted was to have another baby, and that’s what was going to happen. So we would stay put in the Norfolk-Virginia Beach area for a few more years.
During those early, exciting days of Barb’s pregnancy, Chad told us something that we thought was funny. He was eight years old at the time. He said, “I want the baby to be born on my birthday.” Barb and I laughed out loud. It was a cute sentiment. But we explained to Chad that this was just not going to happen. His birthday is on May 16th. The baby was not due until early July, about eight weeks later. We tried to make him understand that it could actually be unhealthy and even dangerous for a baby to be born so early.
Throughout the pregnancy, though, Chad would occasionally mention to us that he was praying that the baby would be born on his birthday.
Well, I suppose you may have guessed what happened.
It was May 8, 2001. Barb was about seven months pregnant and we were still very excited about it all. I had just started my new job in Virginia Beach—the one I was assigned to in lieu of England. I was a department head overseeing ten courses of instruction at the Navy’s intelligence training center. Teaching and education appeal to me, so I liked the job.
On this day I got a phone call from Barb from the hospital. She had gone in that day for a check-up, and the doctor told her that she had started having contractions—pre-term labor. She would have to be admitted for a day or two until they could get the contractions to stop, then she would probably come home and be put on bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy. Given this likely scenario, Barb’s mother came down from Maryland to help out.
However, a week went by, and the doctors were unable to get the contractions to go away fully. Eventually they began to subside, and by May 15th, the doctors said that if all went well, Barb could come home the next day. But all did not go well.
On the evening of the 15th, Barb’s contractions increased a good bit, and through the evening hours she experienced quite a bit of pain. This didn’t seem fair. She had discussed all this with her doctor beforehand and for medical reasons it was decided that she was to have a c-section, by appointment, with a very minimum of pain. Instead, Barb had about five hours of fairly intense labor. As midnight approached, the doctor determined that there was no turning back. Barb was prepped for an emergency c-section. As she was whisked away to the operating room, a nurse threw a gown at me and said, “Put this on and meet us in the O.R.”
The operation went fairly quickly, and at 1:30 A.M. on May 16th, 2001, the baby was lifted out, appearing no worse for the wear. He was eight pounds. [Eight pounds and eight weeks early—geez, if he had gone full-term he would have been a monster!] We gave him the name Matthew, which means “gift of God.” We had decided on that name fairly early, since this is exactly how we felt. Anyway, Barb was sewn up, and led back to a room for recovery and sleep. I went over to where Matthew was being cared for, and spent an hour or two watching what was going on.
Now, at one time or another, most of you have been in a hospital in the middle of the night. Everything is a little surreal, foggy—silence, with the exception of muffled chatter here or there, and the sound of light, airy music in the background. In this atmosphere, it was difficult for me to even begin to process everything that had gone on in my life over the past year. What made it even more surreal was that after all this time I was actually looking at my new baby—a living, breathing, crying baby. It was exactly what I wanted.
After a while, I was able to put together a few thoughts. This would certainly make for a nifty story, one that I would no doubt be telling people for the rest of my life: Man and woman can’t have baby. Man throws temper tantrum in back yard. Man and woman have yard sale. Woman finally gets pregnant. Older son declares preposterous wish. Baby is born on his brother’s 9th birthday as a sign that God’s hand is in it all.
But as I stood there in the hospital that night, little did I know that in the next few days, I would begin to experience the greatest crisis of my life—a crisis that eventually caused me to change the way I think about almost everything in life.
Thinking back on it now, I can’t picture exactly where and how I heard the news. It must have been from Barbara when I went to the hospital to see her and Matthew.
But here’s the gist of it. When Matthew was two days old, in the neo-natal intensive care unit (NICU), a nurse observed him having what appeared to be seizures. This was a cause for concern, to say the least. The doctors ran various tests, which culminated in an EEG, which confirmed that he was having them. Two doctors gave us conflicting likely causes—one said it was due to a period of oxygen deprivation during the delivery, while another said it was due to hypoglycemia. But it didn’t really matter—they were happening. In addition to the seizures, over the first several days, the doctors noted that Matthew’s head was not growing, which was another cause for alarm.
In ensuing discussions with the doctors, we learned that the real concern was the possible long-term consequences. We were told that this abnormal activity was an indication that Matthew would have some degree of brain damage. There was no way of knowing the extent of the damage. It could be minimal, it could be significant. We would just have to see how it played out over time. Matthew’s progress would have to be closely monitored for the foreseeable future.
This certainly put a crimp in our neat little story. How does one react to this kind of news? Worry? Fear? Cries of “This can’t happen to me?” Well, to be very honest, my initial gut reaction was no real emotion at all—it didn’t really bother me. I simply told myself, “I’ve seen enough television medical dramas, and I’ve had enough friends with medical crises to know that in this situation, the thing to do is to get a second opinion.” If I asked a different doctor, he or she would tell me that Matthew was going to be all right. And if that doctor didn’t, I would ask a third and even a fourth doctor, until I was told what I wanted to hear.
Matthew would end up spending about three weeks in the NICU, and life became a whirlwind of travel to and from the hospital. During that time we spoke to a couple of different doctors. The problem is, each of them told us the exact same thing: it wasn’t a matter of if Matthew would have brain damage, but rather to what degree.
Finally, in early June, it was time for us to bring Matthew home. On the night before we did this, a doctor took Barbara and me aside and asked us to have a seat. She proceeded to “give it to us straight” one last time. In short, she told us that on the one end, Matthew might suffer only minimal effects of brain damage, while at the other extreme, he might never progress beyond the level of a two week old. He would probably end up somewhere in the middle. With all that had gone on in these three weeks, Barbara and I left the hospital pretty shaken.
For me, it was during these days when a feeling of fear began to sink in. I had gotten my second, third, and fourth opinions, and now I had to face reality. Around this time, something dawned on me. In the chaos of the situation, in the midst of my great plan to go out and find a doctor who would tell me what I wanted to hear, there is one thing I had not done. I had not prayed about this. Most of my family and friends know that I am a Christian, so it is very awkward for me to admit this. But I hadn’t. So, over his final days in the NICU, I started to pray that if it was possible, that God would heal Matthew, or at least make his brain damage as minimal as possible.
Now, I ask that you read this next part very carefully.
After a few days, as I prayed, I felt a very strong conviction come over me. I got the unmistakable sense that God was speaking to me—laying something on my heart. No, I did not encounter a burning bush in my back yard. I was not visited by an angel in my driveway. I was not blinded by the light of the sun on I-64. But more than any time in my life, I knew that God was telling me something. And this is what I heard Him say:
“You know, Dave, you say you ‘believe’ in me . . . you say that you have ‘faith’ . . . as long as things are going well, as long as you have this nice house and nice cars . . . as long as you have a healthy family, and a nice big church, and lots of friends who like you, and your affluent neighborhood, and your great Chesapeake school system for your child. BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT FAITH IS! Hebrews 11:1 says, ‘Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’”
This had long been one of my “favorite” verses of Scripture, but to be honest, I never really meditated on it all that much. One thing was certain in my mind, though—I could not see any evidence, any way, that this situation with Matthew would turn out well. As the days passed, I continued to hear God convicting me in this matter, telling me something that started to help me re-shape things in my mind. He said:
“Your son is going to be okay. I’m God, I can handle that. BUT THE REAL ISSUE HERE IS THAT YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH FAITH!”
Have you ever had someone take a pillowcase, fill it with a few bricks, swing it around, and smack you in the head with it? I haven’t. But when God began to lay these things on my heart, I felt as though I had.
I was besieged with all sorts of reminders of what my attitude had been like over the last few years. I had been extremely selfish. I wanted a baby. I wanted one now. And I wasn’t going to be happy about anything until I got what I wanted. What’s more, I realized how arrogant it was of me to think that the initial doctors were somehow wrong, and that I needed only to find a better, smarter doctor to tell me the “truth” about Matthew’s condition. I didn’t even think to pray about the situation—this after I had chuckled at my older son Chad for praying that Matthew would be born on his birthday.
So I made a decision. Knowing full well that I would mess up (daily), that I would never be able to stop all the sin in my life, and that I could only keep my word imperfectly, I told God that I would believe what He told me. Not just “believe,” but BELIEVE. I would do my best to live out Hebrews 11:1 in this situation. I would have FAITH. I wasn’t even totally sure what God meant by “Your son will be okay.” Maybe that he would be fully healed. Maybe that the brain damage would not be too bad. Maybe that it would be significant, but we would be able to handle it and that the whole ordeal would serve some greater purpose. Regardless, I decided to live my life with the certainty that what God told me was true.
As I mentioned previously, one of the early worries was that Matthew’s head was not growing. A lack of growth could indicate that his brain was not growing properly, which would result in a permanent state of being physically and mentally handicapped. As you have no doubt noticed, as I relate these events, some memories are still fairly clear in my mind, while others are quite fuzzy. But in this instance, I have a very vivid recollection of one of the first times that we measured Matthew’s head after we brought him home from the hospital. I can remember that as I watched Barbara lean over with the measuring tape, I was really, really nervous. But the circumference of his head had grown one centimeter! I prayed, “Thank you, Lord, that Matthew’s head grew one centimeter, and please let my faith in you be the evidence of what I can’t see.”
Another key milestone was an MRI that was scheduled at the three-month mark to check for any brain damage. I began to pray, and circled August 15th on my desk calendar at work. Then I circled it again. I think I circled it so much that I almost bore a hole in my desk. Much to my amazement and joy, the MRI came back showing no damage. Again, “Thank you, God. Help me to live out Hebrews 11:1.”
Over the first year of Matthew’s life, he had frequent check-ups to test for growth, motor skills, and overall development. But visit after visit, the news was always good. Finally, when Matthew was about nine months old, the neurologist told us that he did not need to see Matthew anymore. Matthew was by all accounts a normal baby with no signs of any brain damage.
The icing on the cake for me, though, was the day in July, 2002, when Matthew took his first steps. I can remember being overwhelmed with a rush of emotions. The previous year, I wasn’t sure if Matthew would ever be able to stand up, let alone walk. Yet here he was. I believe that I had seen a miracle happen before my eyes. This was one of those times when I went upstairs, closed the bedroom door behind me, fell to my knees, and burst out in tears. “Thank you, Lord, for healing my son. And thank you for beginning to teach me what it means to walk in faith.”
Well, I’ve got a few more episodes to go in my story, but I wanted to take a brief time-out and share a few photos from our experience. The first one is of Matthew during his second of two EEGs at the hospital. This picture was taken on May 31st, 2001. We have several photos of Matthew with all sorts of tubes and wires connected to him. This was the case with many of the babies that were in the neo-natal intensive care unit (NICU). Over time, seeing Matthew with all of that apparatus really made me realize that there were potential problems.
But the second picture is particularly peculiar, I think. As you have read, a lot of bizarre stuff was going on in my life during those stressful days of May and June of 2001. Although tangential to the main story, this second photo is an example of another weird occurrence. As the photo shows, on a few occasions, Matthew turned half-red and half-white! Whoa! Let me tell you, when you see your infant child half one color and half another, split right down the middle, you get kind of freaked out! This is a somewhat rare phenomenon called Harlequin Syndrome, where the nervous system somehow misfires and causes one side of the body to become flush. After the first few times, it never happened again. But with everything else that was on our minds, you can imagine how strange it was to see this. I thought that perhaps Matthew had some special powers. Hey, maybe we should have named him Jack-Jack! (Quick, name that movie—first correct answer wins a special prize!)
There are certain things in life that, when they happen, you can never go back. That is, you can’t go back to the way things were before. It was only over the course of time that I could process what had happened to me in 2000 and 2001. As I did, two very important questions came to my mind. And as I’ve said before, the answers to these questions have caused me to think differently about almost everything in life.
The first question is: Why me? That is, why was God so good to me by giving me a second child, and healing him from what multiple doctors said would be at least some level of brain damage? I know couples that have tried and tried for years, yet are not able to have any children, let alone two. I know couples that have a physically or mentally handicapped child. Matthew has no handicap. And, I know couples that have had the terrible experience of the death of a child. These are all people that I know personally. What had I done to deserve a beautiful, healthy son? All I had given to God was an attitude of selfishness and arrogance. I came to realize that I deserved none of the good things that God had given me in this situation. None.
Over the years, this realization has caused me to contemplate two words a great deal: grace and thanksgiving. Grace is when God gives us something that we don’t deserve. Thanksgiving means having a deep sense of gratitude. I can say that this experience has given me an appreciation that I did not previously have about God’s grace—particularly the gracious gift of His Son, Jesus Christ—as well as a determination to be thankful for every last thing that I have, no matter how seemingly insignificant.
The second very important question is this: Now that this circumstance had passed, what should I do about Hebrews 11:1? Is this verse, teamed with other things that the Bible teaches about faith, meant to be taken off the shelf, dusted off, and used only during those rough patches in life? Or is something more involved? Is faith as described in Hebrews 11:1 something that should be applied to every area of my life? It did not take long for me to realize that if the latter was the case, it could have enormous implications. I mean, if I really believe that God is who He says He is, and that His Word is true, then total trust in Him might lead to some very uncomfortable questions: Should I sell my house and move? What career should I pursue? How much or little money should I make (and does that even matter)? What if I sense God telling me to make a major life change, and I can’t see how I can do it?
Now, in case you were wondering, I went into this experience as a sinner, and I came out of it a sinner. So if I’ve given anyone the impression that I am now perfect, I am sorry. That is far, far from the case. What I can say is, that over time, I have grown to the conviction that Hebrews 11:1 is not simply my magic genie in a bottle that I can call upon to get me out of a jam. My goal in life is to make Hebrews 11:1 my lifestyle, that I would have faith—real faith—in God in every matter in life, no matter how big or small. And I continue to pray that my faith in God be the evidence of what I can’t see.
Starting in 2002, things started to happen in my life that put this principle to the test, so to speak. It would take several more episodes of “my story” to recount them all in detail. But rather than do that, I will wrap up my story with one more episode, in which I will talk about three specific things that have transpired in my life since 2002. I think, and hope, that by describing these three particular circumstances, you will get a taste for how God has picked me up as I was walking in one direction, and placed me on a different path—a path that is indescribably exciting, even though I can’t see how it is all going to work out.
Oh, no. I made a big-time rookie blogger mistake. I announced in advance that I would give one more episode of my story. I didn’t realize that it will really take a couple of more entries to get you up to speed on where my life is right now. So please forgive me, and I am so thankful for your indulgence, and for the kind comments that I have received from you so far. I shall continue now.
Back in 2000, if you had asked me where I was heading—where I saw myself in ten years—I would not have been able to give a very clear answer. My career in the Navy was promising, and I liked the idea of serving my country. So, I guess I would have said that I would stay in the Navy, see the world, get promoted as high as possible, and then retire from active duty in my mid-forties. Beyond that, I had no real ambition, no real clue as to what I wanted to do—no real passion.
But in 2002 and 2003, in the first few years after Matthew’s birth, three things occurred in my life that changed this outlook dramatically.
The first was my job. Do you remember that when we got pregnant with Matthew back in 2000, we did not move to England, but rather, I was assigned to a job in Virginia Beach? Well, even though I enjoyed that new assignment, it was not considered particularly “career enhancing.” In 2002, I experienced something I never thought I would—I failed to promote to the rank of Commander. Now, within the culture of the Navy, this was a significant blow. It was humiliating, embarrassing, and left me very lonely at work. For months, I felt as though I needed to yell out, “Unclean! Unclean!” before entering someone’s office. Seriously, within my community in the Navy, a “failure to promote” often leaves one ostracized, and is the kiss of death for one’s career progression.
Again, though, God was very gracious to me, and I did eventually make the promotion two years later. But by that point, I knew that I would be riding out the remainder of a twenty-year Navy career, and that I would be entering a new phase in life. This caused me to think long and hard about what I was going to do with the rest of my life. What career should I pursue after my days in the Navy were over? And, did Hebrews 11:1 have anything to do with all this?
On the one hand, I thought, I could probably slide out of the Navy, get a good job in the defense sector, make good money, and live comfortably for the rest of my life. But over time, a question kept coming to my mind: That’s all well and good, but, what is my passion? I was, and am, very happy to have served my country in the Navy, but I can’t say that it was my passion, the thing that I was “born to do.” Was there something out there that I loved so much that I just had to do it for the rest of my life?
So, as I watched my Navy career begin to fizzle, I also came to the depressing realization that I had no real passion for what I wanted to do in life. I remember a brief phase when I daydreamed about becoming “independently wealthy” enough to quit all work by my mid-50s, and just do nothing for the rest of my life. I had no passion.
This was one of those points where I began to replay the whole experience of Matthew’s birth in my mind. God had done amazing things. He really is there. I really can have faith in him. So, this was a time when I put Hebrews 11:1 to the test. I started to pray that God would help me to see what I should do with my life, what career I should pursue. And I prayed that I would be able to accept it and do what God wanted. What happened next surprised me as much as anything else in this whole saga.
As I struggled with the sharp downturn in my naval career in 2002 and 2003, a second thing began to happen that really changed my life. I didn’t realize it at first, though. In the fall of 2002, I was asked to teach a newly formed adult Sunday School class at my church.
I had taught Sunday School at various age levels for various periods of time over the years—high school, junior high, young married couples, and pre-school. In fact, before turning to this new task, I had been “teaching” (babysitting) in the one-year old class, so Matthew was one of my “students.” As you might suspect, there was not a lot of deep theological discussion in that class. Anyway, when I agreed to teach the new adult class, I figured it would be just another gig that I would do at the church, perhaps for a year or two.
The new class began with about a dozen people and over the first year grew to about thirty or so. I had not taught adults in a while, so I decided to make up some note sheets for the students every week, kind of just to keep us on track. Powerpoint worked well for that purpose. I studied the lesson hard each week because I figured that adults were apt to ask a lot of difficult questions and I wanted to be prepared.
What happened, though, in 2003, 2004, and beyond, is hard to describe. Nothing like it had ever happened to me before. Over time, as I continued to teach the class, I found myself getting more and more enthusiastic about studying the Bible. I had always been interested in the Bible, obviously because it is the basis for my Christian beliefs, and also because I have always been kind of a history buff. But this was something entirely different. I found myself putting more and more time into preparing my lesson every week. I found myself hunting down more and more reliable commentaries to help me understand the Scriptures. I found myself daydreaming throughout the week about an upcoming lesson, or passage, or some example that I could use from pop culture or the daily headlines. I found myself wanting to teach the Bible better and better every week. I don’t really know how else to describe it, except that studying and teaching the Bible became an absolute passion. In fact, by about 2004 or so, I considered it to be my favorite thing to do, aside from family.
What amazes me is this. Before, when I felt no passion in my life, I did not even know what it would feel like to have a passion about something. I firmly believe that God has given me a passion, that is, teaching biblical studies. And let me tell you, to feel a passion about doing something is so thrilling as to be almost indescribable. I absolutely love studying and teaching the Bible.
This inevitably led to a new question. How was all this piecing together? I knew that God was not calling me to be a professional Sunday School teacher, because there is no such thing. By about 2005, though, I believe that God began to put another thought in my head. I started thinking about going to seminary. Seminary? I was almost forty years old, with a job, wife, two kids, and active in church. Where exactly was I going to find the time for seminary? And, what exactly was I going to do with a seminary degree once I got it?
Well, it was also during this time when another realization came to light. This realization was the third circumstance that I want to discuss. It happened concurrently with the discovery of my passion, and really rounds out the story of how I got to where I am today.
I was commissioned an officer in the United States Navy when I graduated from college. My initial commitment was four years, though I decided to stay in longer. As the years went by and I continued my service, I often joked that someday I would leave the Navy and figure out “what I wanted to do when I grew up.”
In and around 2004 and 2005, that reality started to become a lot clearer to me. By that time, I knew my Navy career would come to an end after 20 years of service (2008), and I also felt this passion growing in me to study and teach the Bible. The third ingredient in this mix was kind of a reminder from God. He started to rekindle in me a long-dormant desire.
Had you asked me back in high school what I wanted to be when I grew up, one of my top answers would have been to be a teacher. At the time, I remember wanting to be a Math teacher. I always thought that being a college professor would be cool. Then, when I was in college, my interests changed somewhat, and I wanted to be a history professor. This dream stayed with me long enough for me to pursue a Masters degree in history in the early 90s. But after that, for some reason, my dream of being a teacher kind of fizzled.
Then, about three or four years ago, the desire started to come back, and I started to give some serious thought to pursuing a career in teaching biblical studies. Well, to make a long story short, this is exactly what I am doing. In the fall of 2006, I enrolled in seminary, and I am currently half way through a Masters of Divinity program. After that, I intend to get my Ph.D., with the eventual goal of teaching biblical studies in some capacity at a seminary, college, or university.
So as I continue on this journey, there are a number of observations I’d like to make.
First, at times it is very daunting. I am in the middle of a prolonged career transition at one of the busiest times in my life. There are times when I wonder if I’ll ever make it all the way through this transition. And when I do, I’ll be pretty close to 50. If I were not absolutely sure that God was calling me to do this, I probably would already have quit.
Second, it is one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done. I have loved every class that I have taken, and have felt nothing but confirmation that, though difficult at times, I am heading in the right direction. I can honestly say that my passion for what I am doing has not waned a bit.
Third, there are a lot of unanswered questions in my life. Where will I go to get my doctorate? Missouri? Wisconsin? Alaska? Europe? I don’t know. And how exactly will I feed my family, pay for my children’s college, etc., through all this? At some point I will cut the ties with full-time work and become a full-time student, perhaps for three or four years. Thoughts like these can be a little scary at times.
So, on the one hand, I am very certain about what God has called me to do with my life. He has given me a passion, and is providing me the opportunity to pursue it. But on the other hand, I am experiencing a great deal of uncertainty about the specifics of my future and that of my family.
What can I do but hearken back to the events that started all of this? God picked me up as I was walking in one direction and put me down to walk in another. He gave me gifts that I did not deserve, and graciously healed my son. And as I think back to all that has been, and all that is to come, one thought permeates my mind: Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Lord, please let my faith in you be the evidence of what I can’t see.
