Redemption

I am not a swearing man.  You can ask my kids.

But sometimes, and only just sometimes, cussing gets to the point and tells the story better than without the bad word. This is one of them.  So here it goes.  Be prepared.

God had to literally kick my ass to get my attention.  Literally. Well, sort of literally.

I have been a Christian for many years.  I believe I was in the ninth grade when I gave my life to Christ. I went to church, I was very active in my church’s youth group. In high school, I often went to church on Saturday night as well as Sunday morning.  Over the years I was a youth director at three different churches. My wife and I worked hard to ensure our wedding ceremony was all about God. I served as an elder at my Presbyterian church numerous times.

But … and this is a big but….I rarely prayed and I seldom read the Bible. I had been a Christian over 40 years and I was still a baby in my faith. I believed, but I lacked any faith. I believed in God.  I believed that Jesus had saved me. But I did not believe God.

He got tired of me still being Tommy and in a short amount of time ripped away from me everything that was the most important.

• After 20 years of working for the local phone company, my employer closed my office and I was forced to retire. Please be aware I was far from being financially ready to retire.
• My son was in college, 125 miles away, and rarely came home.
• One daughter was working in Japan, and the other daughter lived in New Orleans.
• My wife left me.

God removed my job and my family. I was naked.

This was not unfamiliar territory for me. Many years ago I was working in a warehouse. It was a great job.  I worked with really good people. But I knew…..I just knew that God wanted me to leave and chase after my heart’s desire — to be a newspaper reporter. But I played it safe and continued to work as a shipping clerk in the warehouse. I was too afraid that I would fail as a journalist. I had known since sixth grade that I wanted to be a writer, and I could not stand the thought of failing at something that had been my dream profession for so long.

God had enough and out of the blue one Friday afternoon my boss fired me.  It was a total surprise.

(I did land a reporter job, and soon after that accepted an editor position.  It turned out I was pretty good at it.  Sigh…..)

So here I was again.  Ignoring God……or at least ignoring all that He had to offer me.

I had nothing. I was stripped naked before God. My soul was baren. I was all alone before my God.

I cried a lot.  Actually, I wailed. And I wailed.  And I wailed some more. The wailing turned to crying. The crying and wailing would sometimes change to yelling at God. Everyone once in a while the yelling would change to pleading.

I sometimes found myself on my knees, with snot streaming from my nose, tears pouring from my eyes, my heart screaming and my lungs gasping.

But mostly I just felt extraordinarily alone.

It did not take very long to discover that God really is amazing.

He let me know just how much He loved me — and He showed me in some creative ways.

First, there was my daughter’s dog.  You know about the dog if you read my second blog.  The story is only really impactful if you know how deep my disdain was for him.

God does have a sense of humor.

Three years later the dog still has a very, very, very important place in my heart. I give him a treat every evening at 9 pm.  I do not forget. About once a week or so I get on my knees, get face to face with him, and wrap my arms around his neck and warmly hug him. I whisper in his ears that I love him.  I know, I just know that God used the dog to show how much Christ cares for and loves me. There is no doubt. It is so wonderfully amazing to me that God used a dog — a dog that I absolutely did not like — to reach out to me.  The dog must have known that I thought he was an idiot. Yet he was faithful enough to check up on me during those walks.  He was faithful enough to smile at me.  God used this dog to save me.

After that, God started putting people into my life. I wish I could write about one in particular (you know who you are), but I cannot. This person and his wife welcomed me into their home, fed me, and listened to my stories.  Over the last couple of football seasons, I have been invited to their house to watch the games. We were friends before, but even more so now. A pastor came into my life at exactly the right time.  He did not know my story but sensed he needed to spend time with me.  He started taking me out for lunch or dinner and we just connected.  He formed a small group at our church and it was so huge in my healing.  It was a very safe place and many of us poured out our hearts there.

A farm about 300 miles from my home was also a safe place for me. A friend from college married a farmer and they have blest me so many times. It is a second home to me. They are both interested in my life story, listen intently, and sometimes ask hard questions. They do hold me accountable. Over the last three years, I have spent three or four long weekends there, gettings hugs from my college friend and forehead kisses from her husband. These visits are an opportunity to be pampered, but they were also a chance to remove myself from the daily reminders of what my life had become. I could go on and on about these friends, but needless to say, they are God’s little angels on Earth.

God was so good and so faithful in how He took this naked Tommy and started to make Himself real to me. So many times …. so many times….at just the right time I would receive support from just the right person or in some other way. I would get a text or a phone call. I would get invited to dinner. Guys would come over and we would play games. My brothers called me, to check-in. And like I wrote in my first blog, my yard became my sanctuary — a place of beautiful healing.

But I would be truly remiss if I did not share one story from the early days of the separation. It was an awful day.  I felt so low, so very empty. I knew I could not be alone. I needed to be with someone, someone who knew me, who loved me. I was on a walk with the dog and it was mid-morning.  I was horrified that I faced a whole day of being lonely and empty. My heart was screaming. I felt sick and I believe I was shaking. I was desperate.

I called my sister.

 

She legally is my step-sister (that did not last long — she is a blood relative in my book). As teenagers, we battled a lot. She followed the rules and I was a rebel.  “Mom said,” was her calling card. One day I grew tired of the fighting.  I was a college student and called her from my dorm phone and apologized and we agreed to be friends.  I cannot imagine a better friend.

 

I do not remember the details of the phone conversation while I walked, but she must have heard the tone of my voice.  She lives about an hour away and my sister drove to my house and we spent a few hours together.  It was magical. The effort she put in to make sure her baby brother was safe was magical. Thank you!!

It was another amazing gift from God.

I recently read a Facebook post from a friend. It aptly tells part of my story these past three years. I cleaned up some of the text.

“…. ..I could hear God saying to me, ‘I had to break you to show you why I created you. You had to go through it so you could fulfill your purpose’  There are some people who will be content just ‘being,’ but some of us that God has chosen must be broken. We have to get sick. We have to lose our job. We go through a divorce. We have to bury our spouse, parents, best friend, or our child. In those moments of desperation, God is breaking us. But, when the breaking is done, then we will be able to see the reason for which we were created. So when you see (me), just know that I  have been broken, but (also) healed by His Grace and Mercy.”

That was me.  I was not going to totally surrender to Christ without being broken.  I was not going to trust Him completely without being ripped apart. It just was not going to happen.

My stubbornness had a steep price. It cost me everything.