Hope in Front of Me Read online

  Because our time together was limited due to our work schedules, many times our “together time” involved serving in the programs we loved at church. I think Sophia and I enjoyed being together in that way because we didn’t need a lot of money to serve. But when it came time for fun, we always grabbed a coupon. I kid you not. Everything we did, we had a coupon for so we could do it at a discount price. Sophia was really good about finding coupons and looking for deals. The crazy thing is I got so used to using coupons that I still use them to this day even if I don’t have to in the same way I did back then.

  Changing Myself, Changing Others

  It was during my financial struggles when I really started to think more like an entrepreneur. I got a job at UPS right out of high school. It didn’t last long. My dad commented regularly how working hard for a good company could take me far up the ladder. I completely understood what he was saying, but I didn’t share his perspective. I didn’t want to build someone else’s future by working for that person. I had a desire, even then, to create something out of nothing.

  I didn’t know where my business interests would lead me, but I knew there was a desire in me I had yet to fully understand. I wanted to help people transform their lives. And Sophia wanted to help children know they were loved and that they mattered. Our passions worked well together, and eventually those would come together in a very special way. Only neither of us knew it at the time.

  People who study personal change and organizational change know how important perspective is to creating momentum. If you can’t see your situation for what it is, then you don’t have any chance of recognizing what needs to change, let alone see how to change.

  Change isn’t easy. Before I could help others change, I had to change myself. If I weren’t able to adjust my own behavior to create a better life for myself, how could I possibly inspire others to do it?

  One of the most powerful things I learned was how I could start helping people with what I had and how I could make a difference now in my current circumstance. We’re taught we have to be comfortable and have a lot of money in order to help someone and that we need to have all our ducks in a row, but that day never comes. Giving is more than giving finances, although that is a part of it. Giving is through action as well. As I applied those principles in my life, it really changed who I was and made me a better person. I found this gold mine I never knew existed: helping people. We often have our own ideas of what happiness looks like and how we should go about getting it. It was a defining moment in my life when I learned there is a whole other view of life I hadn’t seen before.

  Making Our Time Count

  Sophia and I didn’t have our own place for most of the time we were married. At age twenty-seven, more than three years after we married, we were finally in a position where we could afford our own apartment. It wasn’t much, but it was ours. It was the first time we had a place we could call our home. I felt a little embarrassed that it took so long, but we were so excited that none of those details mattered.

  Because I was working several jobs, I had about one day a week at home. Working at the church involved driving six hundred miles each week back and forth between two campuses, along with all the other activities and programs I was required to be at as a paid staff member. In addition, I drove a truck around town. When it was time for my day off, I was flat-out exhausted. The only thing I wanted to do was stay home.

  I’m sure Sophia probably got tired of staying home on the one day off we had together, but I was always so worn out and just wanted to relax. One of my favorite things to do on my day off was watch movies. I’m sure Sophia didn’t like watching movies as much as I did. I know she probably wanted to go out. She probably got tired of eating the same things and doing the same things. But if she did, she never said anything or showed any frustration. She simply loved being with me. I wish I understood then just how valuable our time together really was. I might have been a little more creative, a little more intentional, a little more interested in making the most of our time each week.

  Start Where You Are

  The hardest part about going through this season of life was feeling like we were so far behind other people. I had friends who had good jobs and were being promoted, making a lot more money, and living what they considered to be the good life. I often found myself caught up in moments of frustration wondering when my break was coming.

  Hope was hard to hold on to. But it’s hope that we needed because we needed its assurance that greater things were ahead. Believing there is something more, something better ahead, is where we find strength to push through our darkest moments. There are a lot of things we don’t see, but we just have to allow our story to play out.

  I was leading praise and worship at the church, but it wasn’t exactly a career in music like I’d hoped for. My longtime dream of a music career was certainly fading. I wondered how long I’d have to pay my dues before my big opportunity would come. I often thought about how long it would be before I called it quits on my dream or at least came to grips with the idea that this may be as good as it gets.

  All of those feelings and thoughts could have broken me. I could have fallen into the trap of following the advice so many people gave me: Go find a good job, work hard, and let the company take care of you. But if I had followed that path — not that there is anything wrong with that — I would have given up on something that was already set in motion for me. Our struggles in life prepare us for what’s coming next.

  Sophia and I lived our married life in ways that many people I’m sure thought was less than perfect. We did what we had to do to get out of debt so we could set ourselves up to be even more generous in the future. We delayed our desire to have our own place until we were financially ready. We invested our time — what little spare time we had — in serving others and spending it with each other. Those were hard days, but they were good days. It wasn’t comfortable, but in a way it was just as it should’ve been for us because it caused us to grow. Comfort leads to complacency and can rob you of reaching your potential. Discomfort may be more challenging but leads to a far more satisfying life. Looking back, I now realize just how happy I was during that time.

  The freest way to live is to not be obsessed with what others think about you and your life decisions. I decided to not make popular decisions because they are popular, to not make comfortable commitments because they are expected, to not give in to the expectations of others simply because it is the path of least resistance, and to fight to move toward the direction the eyes of your heart know is true and pure. Clarity comes in following our hearts and the desires that have been placed within us. More often than not, hard times are preparing us for what’s ahead.

  Start where you are and stop worrying about what other people think about you and your situation. You have been given the responsibility to live your life. I think we give up too much when we subject ourselves to cultural norms that have no meaning and won’t last forever. Opposition can either bring you down or mold you and shape you into something better. A lot of people let the hard times bring them down and don’t realize God is doing something unique in their lives through these times. No one was going to elevate Sophia and me as examples of two perfect people living a perfect married life, but we were happy and in love. If we kept ourselves connected to each other, we had a peace, hope, and love that was pure, inviting, and promising. We clung to the things that were important, like investing in one another and in others, and didn’t allow ourselves to focus on what others might think or say. Hope was a crutch that carried us through these hard times, and that’s all we needed.

  Chapter 3

  Unexpected Hope

  Don’t allow the dark moments in life to distract you from what matters most.

  Sometimes we are so bent on what we think is best for us that we miss what is right in front of us. We sometimes fail to realize there is a grand plan at work. Before I was ready to experience my highest moments, I had to face
my darkest days.

  Sophia was born with a congenital heart defect. Just days old, she had her first heart procedure. She had another heart procedure at the age of seven. Otherwise, the rest of her life was mostly unaffected by her heart condition. It didn’t inhibit her ability to do anything she wanted to do. There were regular checkups with the doctor and an ongoing prescription-medicine regimen. But outside of that, everything seemed normal. There was nothing in her family history that could’ve predicted a severe heart problem, and there was nothing in her monitoring that suggested anything amiss. The doctor was pleased.

  I innocently thought the doctors had fixed her heart issues in her childhood, so I didn’t think much of it — until things started getting worse for her.

  Something Wasn’t Right

  The first major medical scare we experienced as a married couple was in June 2005. I can’t remember the exact day, but Sophia knew something wasn’t right. I could see it on her face. She kept saying her heart was beating faster than normal.

  We went to the hospital, and they clocked her heart at more than two hundred beats per minute. That was fast — too fast for someone who was in a normal state of motion. It was later determined that Sophia was experiencing atrial flutter.

  The doctor let us know he expected this to happen and that it was fairly normal for someone with Sophia’s heart condition and previous surgeries to have this kind of complication. He introduced the option of implanting a pacemaker to keep Sophia’s heart in rhythm. He also told us she might need another heart surgery in the future and even possibly a heart transplant someday and that it was dangerous for Sophia to have kids.

  At that moment, Sophia and I broke down and cried in his office because we had no idea this was in our future. That day changed everything for us.

  We were certainly not aware that Sophia might need to have a pacemaker or another heart surgery as she got older. We also didn’t realize it could be dangerous for her to have kids.

  The doctor didn’t want to implant a pacemaker just yet. He preferred to wait until Sophia was a little older and try other ways to manage her symptoms until surgery was absolutely necessary. We were willing to do whatever was needed and trusted the judgment of the doctor on this decision, so we waited and continued to monitor her heart closely.

  We spent most of 2005 through 2007 in and out of the hospital dealing with Sophia’s worsening heart condition. This was an interruption in our lives that neither of us expected or wanted. I didn’t know it at the time, but that first episode in 2005 was the beginning of some very bleak times in both our lives and our still-new marriage.

  Sophia and I did everything we could to get her condition under control. Being people of faith, we prayed for a miracle. That may sound foolish to some. You may think that medicine is medicine; don’t confuse it with prayer. But for Sophia and me, prayer was a language that was familiar and helped us stay connected to each other and the hope we desperately needed.

  When life comes at you hard, reason and intellect can become a refuge. You can disconnect from the emotion of the situation and try to see it objectively, but I think you are only fooling yourself. Unexpected events like this one — that make you dance on the line of this world and the next — are full of emotion. Prayer is simply a response to that emotion. It is not a sign of giving up. Rather, prayer is laying claim to your belief that things can change for the good.

  In the midst of all the visits to the doctor’s office and hospital, we were both missing a lot of work. That meant we weren’t bringing in a lot of money, which added a new dimension of stress to an already-stressful situation. We weren’t making a lot of money to begin with, and we certainly didn’t have a big pot of money somewhere we could use in lean times. We had to work if we were going to make our family budget.

  Whatever It Takes

  Sophia had another severe heart episode the second week of December 2007. It caught us by surprise. I guess we thought the issue would just correct itself and go away. But it didn’t, and this one showed us just how serious things were getting.

  It was a Sunday, and I was leading worship at church — an hour and fifteen minutes away from home. I got word that Sophia was being rushed to the hospital by ambulance, so I left in a hurry to be with her. On my way to the hospital, I got pulled over for speeding. The cop was clearly angry at me for speeding and didn’t want to hear any excuses. I told him my wife has a heart condition and was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. He asked me if she was dying and I tearfully said, “I don’t know.” I continued to elaborate on my story, but it didn’t stop him from yelling at me and handing me a hefty ticket. I just knew I needed to get to my wife. This time, Sophia was in the hospital for a week.

  We tried to make things as normal as possible while in the hospital and trust that everything was going to be okay. You don’t always know you are making a memory when you are just living day to day, but there are so many times I look back on now and treasure. I remember watching my first episode of SpongeBob SquarePants in the hospital with Sophia and just laughing and laughing (although Sophia didn’t seem to like it as much as I did).

  By the time Sophia was released to go home, we were both exhausted. All Sophia wanted to do was take a hot bath and relax so she could sleep through the night.

  December is a cold time in Milwaukee, but we rarely turned the heat up above sixty-eight degrees because of the heating cost. As I tried to get a bath started for Sophia, it didn’t take long to realize the water wasn’t heating. I checked the heating unit. It was on, but it wasn’t working. It seemed to me like one more thing that could go wrong did. Sophia started crying in the tub because the water was cold. I hated seeing her suffer, and I felt helpless. I had no control. I really wanted to comfort her, and she was in tears from the long week. So I did the only thing I knew to do: I started boiling water on the stove to dump into the bathtub until there was enough hot water for her to have a warm bath. That hot bath meant everything to her.

  The Hope of a New Year

  We were back at the hospital again within thirty-six hours of Sophia’s being released. She was experiencing pain just twenty-four hours after getting out of the hospital, and she stayed up all night. She was crying because she was in so much pain and couldn’t breathe very well.

  Sophia called the doctor’s office that night, and they told her there could be several things causing her discomfort. They explained she should monitor her symptoms overnight and call back in the morning if things didn’t improve. She spent most of the night crying from the excruciating pain. I tried as best I could to comfort her.

  I think Sophia’s tears were also from exhaustion. She just wanted this whole thing to be over. I did too. I was pretty frustrated at this point and angry about what was happening. She had just come home a day ago. What could it be now? We thought they fixed everything. They did all these tests to show that she’s good, and then this happens again. I wanted to go back to a normal life, one that didn’t include countless doctors visits and surprise trips to the hospital. It took everything in me not to spit anger at God. I knew God could do something, and He wasn’t. I didn’t understand it. It wasn’t what I had in mind for our life together.

  When Sophia called the doctor’s office in the morning, she was told to come in right away. But when I went out to help get her in the car, I couldn’t get out of the driveway because it had snowed that night. I ran to the neighbors’ house and pounded on the door. I asked them to help me shovel and push my car out. They pushed us out, and we rushed to the hospital. We later found out that Sophia’s pain was from a blood clot in her lungs.

  At this point, it was getting close to Christmas, and I started getting scared we might have to spend Christmas in the hospital. Neither of us wanted that. We just wanted to go home. I remember driving to church one morning and praying, God, please get her home for Christmas.

  Before my fear became a reality, I got a phone call from the doctor on Sunday, December 23, 2007. He had decided
to release Sophia. I was going to be able to bring her home that afternoon. We were, in fact, going to be able to spend Christmas together in our home. I was so excited and felt like this was an answer to our prayers.

  It’s easy to focus on the things that don’t last forever and miss the things that do. I hated the idea that Sophia had to keep going back and forth to the doctor and hospital. I didn’t want her to live like that. But at least we were able to be together at Christmas. They may not have been the best memories, but they were our memories. As painful as it is to see your wife suffer, I certainly didn’t want Sophia to think she was alone. I wanted to help her carry the weight of her suffering and comfort her as best I could.

  Sophia and I really needed 2008 to be a year of progress and better news. Every year since 2005, life — with the endless medical surprises — had become darker and darker. We needed a turnaround year. We needed to know that the situation was going to get better. We needed hope.

  When I woke up on New Year’s Day, I was feeling really broken. I did everything I could to ignore the feeling throughout the day, but it didn’t go away. When Sophia fell asleep that night, I snuck out to my car and drove around. I broke down in tears and bawled like a baby. I needed to vent my frustrations. I knew I had to let it go. I couldn’t keep it bottled up inside.