Recent journey

Four years ago yesterday, my sister-in-law Janet died. What a great person Janet was. Ginny and I liked her so much that Evangeline has Janet as a middle name. Janet lived the last two and a half months at Elmhurst Hospital, and had a stream of people coming through at all times to see her. This was not a tributary, but a full gushing river of people that hospital workers commented that they don’t ever see. What a phenomenal testimony this was to the life she led. Janet had a radiance that you don’t find every day and these hundreds of people (yes, hundreds) who poured through the hospital during her final months had been so moved by the life she led that they had to come.


During this time, Evangeline was born. Also during this time, I had just started going to church on a regular basis for the first time in my life. Janet and I spoke about this in the hospital, and I could tell that not much would give her greater joy than knowing that I had started doing this. I certainly didn’t pretend to understand what Church was all about, but I did know that many of the people who lead the types of lives I wanted led and were known as church goers, so it seemed there was something to it. While it may not have even been on a conscious level, I knew that I was missing out on something that others had by not going to church, and this certainly helped me strengthen my resolve to do so.

Ginny and I attended the Church she grew up in and led a large outreach campaign there. The campaign didn’t go well. For me personally, while I was attending Church regularly, I now know that I was not yet a believer in God or Jesus during this time. It should not be a surprise that the campaign did not reach its desired outcome when a non-believer was co-leading it. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts: 1:8). As someone who wasn’t yet truly following Jesus, I didn’t have God’s power to be leading this outreach campaign, and it should be no surprise that it didn’t work.

Because of what happened with the campaign, in early 2009 Ginny and I decided to start attending a new church – Christ Community Church in St. Charles. By March, we joined a couples group and went for the first time on Friday, March 12, 2009. The group had two parts, a combined bible study, and men’s and women’s accountability time. I wasn’t really comfortable during this accountability time, and some of the guys were talking about some deep personal issues. As such, I decided to choose a “safe” topic and stated that I wanted to try to pray more and get more comfortable praying.

The following Monday, to follow through on the commitment I made, I did some prayer on the way to work. I had also got some praise songs downloaded, so I was playing a song that I had just heard at CCC called “Glorified” by Jared Anderson. The chorus of the song goes like this:

“I’ve come to worship; I’ve come to lift up your name
For you deserve this life laid down like the life that you gave
I have but one voice, one heart, and one sacrifice
So won’t you take this life laid down and be glorified”

As I sang that final lyric with the music, I experienced this incredible feeling like nothing else I had ever known. I now know that it was the presence of the Holy Spirit in me. I had this feeling of borderline euphoria that lasted for days. One seal of how things were different now with the Holy Spirit in me was that I was reacting in a different manner than previously. At work that day, after I provided coaching to one of my direct reports, another team member IMed me saying “nice f------ manager”, but the word was actually spelled out. I asked this person about it, and they became clearly embarrassed. It quickly became clear that the team member intended to send this to the person I just provided coaching to, not to me. I laughed it off. I didn’t choose to react this way, it just happened. Had that happened the week before, I doubt I would have reacted in the same way.

In our community group, we had a prayer list that each couple compiled, turned in, and each member of the group prayed for the prayers the others had. So, in coming back to group the second time, we submitted the following prayer:

“For Dave’s brother Tom and his nephew Eric. Please pray that God will be with the family during this time. April 2 is the anniversary of Tom’s wife Janet’s death. She was a wonderful woman who is sorely missed by all, but is at home with God.”

This was the first prayer that I asked others to pray for since the Holy Spirit was within me (one of two prayers that we submitted overall), and the list was distributed on March 28, 2009. So, we had a team of believers praying this prayer, asking God to be with the family, especially on April 2. On April 2, 2009, an old friend of Tom’s who he had reconnected with from high school through Facebook, Doreen, stopped by to see Tom to pick up some boxes, as he had recently moved (which is another amazing story) and she could put them to use. I’m in awe of the power of the Lord when I reflect on this, as God chose to grant this request in quite a literal fashion (Doreen is a believer in Jesus and the trinity, having the Holy Spirit inside of her, and the Holy Spirit in Doreen visited Tom on the two year anniversary of his wife’s death). To me, it’s as if God was saying “Where have you been for 35 years Dave? I’ll seal this request in a way that will leave you no doubt over who I am, or the power I have. Remember this in the tough times.”

I was baptized in the fall of 2009 and went through what was among the most challenging times in my life a year ago. However, my faith has never wavered since then. Sure, I’ve had times where I’ve been upset with God, but I’ve never doubted his sovereignty or that He can do his will in seemingly impossible odds. The strength and comfort I’ve been able to find in God has been what’s brought me through. I really wish I would have known the Lord earlier, but I know that I have a perspective that many others who were raised in the faith don’t have.

Tom and Doreen were married last summer, and Ginny and I chose Doreen to be Adelaide’s Godmother. It seemed wholly appropriate to seal our daughter’s faith with a reflection of the seal that God used on my faith.