The Seven-Year Zap

My adult life has been structured by cycles of upheaval happening at roughly seven-year intervals.

1973: I should have been riding on top of the world. Everything seemed to be going my way. I’d achieved everything I had set out to achieve in college. Yet I was a total mess. And it was this mess that led me to becoming a Christian.

1980: We had moved to St. Louis from Houston. The Texas housing market was at a standstill, due to state usury laws capping mortgage interest rates at 10% (and the prime rate was well north of that). Two contracts on our house in Houston had fallen through, we were paying for a mortgage in Houston and an apartment in St. Louis, my wife was pregnant, and we were worse than flat broke. This mess led me to become understanding of depression, the need to confess weakness, and the need to depend upon others.

1987: My father died, the leadership structure at the church we were attending blew up (blowing me with it), and then events at work led to what looked like my career blowing up. We would eventually find another church home, and what looked like my career dead end became the pivot point for my corporation,

1994-1999: This seven-year “zap” extended over three years. The CEO I was writing speeches for announcement his retirement; his replacement was, unfortunately for me and the eventually the rest of the corporation, a mess. The company went through three years of intense turmoil and upheaval; I was spun-off with a division and the mother company was eventually itself bought up. This is where I truly learned that ability, experience, and even reputation counted for nothing in the corporate world. What mattered was politics. What mattered to God was something different.

2003: The recession caught up with my communications consulting business. It had been gangbusters for two years, began to sputter the third year, and then was looking for a crash landing the fourth year. What I learned was to not dismiss unexpected opportunities, like working as a director of communications for an urban school district.

2009-2010: Back in the corporate world, a string of major career successes led to – a deliberate and ultimately successful effort to destroy what had been one of the best functioning staff organizations in the company’s history. Major lesson learned: the world, when it feels the status quo is threatened, will actively oppose even what’s in its own best interests.

These times were difficult. In questioned what God was doing in every one of them. I often shook my fist. I often felt abandoned. But I hung on, sometimes by my fingernails and many times with the help of others. I knew I was being taught something. The “something” only became apparent after the fact.

In The Discipline of Grace: God’s Role and Our Role in the Pursuit of Holiness, Jerry Bridges says that “…in times of adversity, do not despise it by refusing to acknowledge God’s hand in it, and do not lose heart under it by failing to see His love in it.”

It’s about time for another installment of the cycle. And there’s been a situation going on for several months that’s been hard, one that it would be easy to learn the wrong lesson from. So I wait to see what God is teaching me this time.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges. To see what others had to say on this chapter, “The Discipline of Adversity,” please visit Sarah at ReadingBetween the Lines. This concludes the discussion.

Photograph by Lynn Greyling via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

The Discipline of Adversity

Jerry Bridges saved the fun chapter for the end.

Tim Challies over at Informing the Reforming has been leading a discussion of Bridges’ The Discipline of Grace, and we’ve reached the last chapter. The fun chapter. The one about adversity. And where it comes from. And what it means. And how we’re supposed to respond to it.

It would be much easier if the instructions said, “Just gripe, complain, moan and groan about it.”

But that’s not what the instructions say.

I’ve told the story of my ruptured disk at least a few times. It started with a nice flash of blinding pain while I was in the garden – so sharp that I literally fell against the side of the garage and had to brace myself. At first, I didn’t think I was going to be able to walk. But I hobbled inside.

It improved for about three weeks, and then, in August, it was so bad that I had to take the maximum dose of pain meds – and the meds were one step below morphine. I couldn’t drive. I couldn’t go to work. I slept flat on the floor a lot. One night my wife called my son over because it didn’t look like I was going to be able to get up off the floor. I was miserable to be around (translation: I bit heads off; I groped, complained, moaned and groaned). I was going to a physical therapist, and it wasn’t helping a bit (the therapist, actually, the therapists, kept changing everything around).

Late September was the low point. I was supposed to be going to The High Calling writers retreat at Laity Lodge, and I had to cancel out. I couldn’t even imagine having to sit on an airplane for any length of time.

I finally said enough. I changed therapists and took control of my recovery. If someone suggested doing something else, I barked.

By November, I knew the therapy was helping. Especially traction (twice a week). But I was also learning things.

Like why handicapped parking spaces are important to people with disabilities.

How to manage a briefcase, a cane and an umbrella in a pouring rain (you accept getting wet).

What it meant to depend upon others for routine stuff.

How to keep from screaming when a specialist sticks a shot of cortisone into your spine. I learned that one twice. “This may be a little uncomfortable” and suddenly it feels like a knife is digging in your back.

And then came the big one. The one that I believe this whole adventure was all about.

Submission.

Our minister preached a sermon about the elders and healing and anointing. My wife gave me one of her looks. “Maybe you should consider it,” she said.

My first reaction: “Right. We know what the problem is. It’s physical. Getting oil on my head and a prayer isn’t going to heal that.”

I was partially right. The problem was physical, but it was also – something else. I studied the Bible passage, and what stood out was that there was no promise of healing. None. Zero.

All it says is that you’re supposed to do it. Submit to it. Submit to the authority of the elders. Submit to God’s authority.

So I did.

I didn’t expect a miracle healing. And there wasn’t any. I didn’t stand up from the chair afterward and throw the cane away, shouting “Hallelujah.”

But I did stand up strangely moved. I felt I had been gentled.

My back still hurt. But three weeks later, the surgeon we consulted looked at the x-rays and said the disk was healing on its own, even if I couldn’t feel it yet. A month later, the cane was put away. For good. A few weeks after that, I rode my bike for the first time in nine months. Two weeks after that, I graduated from physical therapy.

My adversity taught me submission. I don’t think I could have learned it any other way.

“Adversity is not a discipline we undertake by ourselves,” Bridges says, “but is imposed on us by God as a means of spiritual growth.”

That’s hard to hear. And harder to accept and learn. And just because someone is suffering adversity doesn’t mean there’s some great sin in his life. Consider the idea that he may be suffering adversity to help you in your spiritual growth.

But my ruptured disk, and all the pain and upset that went with it, turned out to be a gift.

Led by Tim Challies at Informing the Reforming, we’ve been reading The Discipline of Grace. To see what Tim and others have to say, please visit Tim’s site.