As I was dealing with my own personal challenges, a rising chorus of people at church were letting their sentiments be known. Mainly because they felt abandoned when I left for Thailand for a year. I realized that my challenges were overlooked when our church was buzzing with success, but they became glaringly evident when our community started struggling.
Becca had been getting strong impressions she felt from God for about a year. Each time, she’d been alarmed by what she was feeling. The third time, she had an impression of words that were so lucid, she immediately ran and got a pen and paper to write them down. Again, all this is not normal for Becca because she’s witnessed the spiritual abuse of leaders claiming their ideas were from God.
With fear and trepidation, I said to her, “You can tell me now. What did God say to you?”
“You are so concerned about monetary debt, yet the debt of offense you have against others is far greater. Only when you take care of your own debt of offense will you not only be a leader, but also become a leader of leaders.”
Nahhhhh. This isn’t from God.God wouldn’t say that knowing what I’ve been through. If anyone needs to apologize, it’s them.
God knew the people Becca was referring to, the same ones who had talked trash behind my back and betrayed me while I couldn’t say or do anything. I began thinking of what it would look like to go to them and ask for forgiveness where I’d offended them. Becca fell asleep, but I couldn’t do the same. My frustration continued to build as I thought about all the people who I believed had hurt me or my family. I went through people who had spoken disparagingly about me. People whom I know longer saw. People I really didn’t want to think about anymore. They had become hostile toward me. Some had even deeply wounded me.
But how have I wounded them?
Until this moment, I hadn’t thought too deeply about this. I was ready to dismiss this as certainly not being from God. Yet this phrase “leader of leaders” struck me.
I had heard people say this about me for a long time. Early mentors in high school, like Pastor Dave Bunt, had said that I would become a leader of leaders. My mentors from graduate school and leadership initiatives, and finally another leader I grew to respect, from the San Francisco area, had said that exact phrase to me a few years prior over a breakfast in San Jose. The phrase had become embedded in my purpose, and it’s one that has resonated with me through my whole life, even in seasons I’ve tried to run from it.
I wasn’t able to sleep that night. By five in the morning, I found myself staring at the wall in the dark and admitting the truth.
That was God speaking to Becca.
So I got up and started making a list of the people whom I could possibly have hurt or offended.
It was a long list.
One by one I made my way through that list of names over the next several months.
From former staff to people I now really wanted nothing to do with.
It was definitely painful but with each person there was a gift of freedom awaiting me and the person I might have offended.
I was surprised how in the middle of conversations I would start to see the person who I felt was talking smack behind my back or sending bad energy my way looking like a child. Not in a negative way, but in a way where they looked innocent, hurt, and just wanting to be loved.
He was the first person on my list that I called. His offense seemed obvious to me. At a time when the organization I was overseeing was struggling financially, he’d had the audacity to ask for a raise. And on top of that to say he worked “just as hard” as I did. I felt like I was listening to a teenage rant. But there I was sitting at the table, listening to him, years after not talking to him, and magically, I couldn’t believe this emotion rising up in me. He suddenly felt like a son to me. The realization tore through my defensiveness and judgmental arrogance. Beyond the demands and the attitude that were hard for me to get over in the past, I now saw his pain, his disappointment and suffering at my inability even to understand or empathize with his life.
My past responses were so defensive that it had been hard for me to hear him or feel his pain.
My wife’s tears had brought me to this epiphany but something also changed in the way I saw him. It was love. The feelings that one has for their own child started overwhelming me.
After having gone to most of the people on that list, I made a discovery: a person’s identity may rest in what they think they’re not. If we get rocked in an area that is considered our strength, we can easily become demoralized. Sometimes our greatest calling resides in the place of our deepest wounds. There were reasons I struggled with the idea of fatherhood. It primarily had to do with my own father. Then suddenly I was walloped by the truth that the reason I was running away from being a father was that I was scared to hurt my children like my dad hurt us. I didn’t want to disappoint my children. So why even try to be a father? I discovered the answer over time that being a father is my inheritance. Both my mom and dad struggled without fathers. My sister didn’t know her father. And I don’t know my birth father. But my guess is that although all of the fathers in our family’s histories made mistakes, they were good fathers. Within me is the power to be a good father.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE The Promise Fulfilled
Dave. Can you hold… my hand?”
I haven’t heard Carolyn speak this way before. There is an urgency in her voice. I look at her closely; she’s struggling. She looks frightened. Her eyes are enlarged.
I realize she is having a panic attack.
I quickly grab her hand and try to soothe her.
“Carolyn, try to breathe more slowly. I’ll call the nurse but I think she’s with somebody right now. I hear her in another room.”
“Dave, it’s still hard for me to breathe.”
Earlier in the day I sat down with Carolyn and the nurse and physician. They had just expressed to me their concern for her declining appetite—one of the signs that the end is near.
In just three short years, Carolyn has gone from an energetic senior to someone who suffers from dementia and has trouble walking. We’d had to transfer her out of the beautiful senior living center, where she had her own private condo. Originally she had thought it was too expensive, but we encouraged her to go for it. She deserved it. All of her life she had been extra careful about spending money. Carolyn was a saver and had learned to be frugal, having been divorced and a single mother before she met my father. After being in the senior living center for a few months and loving it, Carolyn fell and struck her head. After the doctors examined her, they said she would need a more dedicated facility to assist her. She couldn’t be alone. We had to move her out of her dream retirement condominium complex.
She did not like the idea of an assisted living facility. She was private, and liked to keep to herself. But it was the best thing for her since she didn’t want to live in California with me and Becca. She loved Arizona. But more important for her, she didn’t want to be a burden on us.
As I look at her face now, once again bruised from a more recent fall, Carolyn looks into my eyes to see any hint of what I may be thinking about her condition. She can smell any BS, so I’ve learned not to act like she looks good when she doesn’t. She’ll call me out on it. In the early days of her dementia, she would ask me how she was doing. I would say, “You’re doing pretty good, Carolyn. In fact, I think you’re doing fine, maybe even better than before.”
“Yeah, right, Dave,” she’d say. “I’m not better than I was before. I keep forgetting things.”
She looks closely at me again to see if I’m concerned about her shortness of breath. I am, but I am trying not to show it. As she tries to read my thoughts, I see her struggling with her breathing. Gasping for air. I say to her, “Carolyn, what if I carry you to the room?” I can say this because she now weighs about 80 pounds.
“No, it’s okay.”
“Okay, I’ll help you get up and we’ll walk very slowly to your bed.”
I help her stand. She holds on to one of my arms. I make sure to put my other arm around her waist to support her. We take small, measured steps to the room. As I am closely by her side, I notice how frail she is. As we get to her bed, I help her sit on the side of it. I then lift her legs. Place her under the covers and help situate her pillow. Finally, she closes her eyes to calm herself down.
Her breathing starts to come back to normal. And she falls asleep.
I make my way back to the living room and sit down.
