Journey of Faith

Editor’s Note:  Last week I gave my Journey of Faith along with eight other incoming Elders at Shallowford Presbyterian Church.  Each story, each journey was beautiful in its own way, I was overwhelmed by the emotion and powerful stories of each person as they shared what God has meant to them in their lives.  I did this exercise about 25 years ago, the first time I became an Elder, so my journey is even further along, and my faith is even stronger.  As a very wise friend, Jeff Poynter, would say, I’m not at graduation day yet, so I still have a lot of growing to do.  There’s not a whole lot different than some of you have already read before, but here is my Journey of Faith as presented last week.

“Did you ever wonder where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?”

We’ll get to that in a few minutes. 

First, let me introduce myself since some of you don’t know me.

I’m Steve McCullough - 

• I'm a devoted follower of Jesus Christ and am thankful every day for the beauty of Grace.
• I've been married to my wife Laurel for over 35 years, and she's the best friend I've ever had.
• I have four children, Megan, Kelly, Patrick, and Sean, and I try my best to be a caring and loving father.
• I am currently the Chief Financial Officer for WIKA Americas, and I am responsible for North and South America.
• I currently serve on the Board of Trustees of United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.
• I have previously served as an Elder, Trustee and Deacon at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Dayton as well as on many different committees.

I like to look at my life in snapshots, times in my life when I needed God most, and of course, God was there.  I’ve chosen three snapshots to take a look back at.  They are:

A River Runs Through It

Several years ago, my brother Billy committed suicide.  There were three of us growing up, Billy was the oldest, and he was the extrovert.  He could talk to anyone, he had many friends, he had a way about him that endeared him to many people.  He was also an alcoholic.  He battled alcoholism for many years, and even when he tried to stop, he’d go into convulsions, his body couldn’t handle it.  So he gave up, he gave in and ended it.

If it were that simple, but there is a valley of depression that unfortunately runs through my family, I lost a great uncle to suicide, a great aunt, and then my brother.  While it’s painful to lose a sibling to suicide, it’s even harder for the parents, and I don’t think my Mom and Dad were ever the same.  We rarely talked about Billy over the years, my brother Jim and I would, we’d vent our anger, reminisce and laugh at the memories, and eventually come to terms with it.  But you never get over that nagging question, “what could I have done?”  While many suicides take loved ones by surprise, I don’t believe any of us were surprised.  Billy would wax philosophically about suicide growing up, he would talk about it like it was a badge of honor.  But even with that sneaking suspicion that you knew what was coming, still, what to do to prevent it?  I still don’t know, but I became passionate about the subject and committing that no matter what, I would do everything possible to prevent anyone I knew from doing this.  This would come in handy further down the road, but we’ll get to that. 

If you’re familiar with the movie, “A River Runs Through It”, there is a closing sermon delivered by Reverend Maclean after the death of his son.  In it, he says:

“Each one of us here today will, at one time in our lives, look upon a loved one and with need, ask the same question: ‘We are willing to help, God, but what, if anything, is needed?’  For it’s true we can seldom help those closest to us.  Either we don’t know what part of ourselves to give, or more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted.  And so it is those whom we live with and should know who elude us, but we can still love them.  We can love completely without complete understanding.”

Love Endures All Things

Many years ago, I reached the conclusion that my marriage to Laurel wasn’t working.  I didn’t see a future for us together, and I determined that it would be best for each of us to find our true soulmate, the one who could make us the happiest.  Maybe I had watched too many movies, too much TV, not sure what it was, but I believed there was something better, something bigger out there.   I left, I became a vagabond of sorts.  I lived on friend’s floors, in their spare rooms, I eventually got an apartment of my own. 

The whole time, Laurel never gave up, who knows why.  I gave her every reason to give up on me, in some ways I kept believing, if she were really smart, really strong, she would just say the hell with me, and move on.  But she didn’t, she never gave up, she never gave in, she kept pushing and pushing me to come back.  I found out how strong, how committed, how dedicated she was.  She believed in our marriage, she was committed to our marriage, and because of her ability to endure all things, we are still together today.  If it weren’t for her, who knows what Megan and Kelly’s lives would have been like and of course, Patrick and Sean would have never been born.  Her love and commitment changed our lives completely.

Unfortunately, while Laurel forgave me, gave me my life back, I couldn’t forgive myself.  I’ve spent the past 25+ years beating myself up and fearing how God would punish me for what I did.  As a great theologian said to me a few months ago, “I’ve discovered in myself that this is my desire to boot God from the seat of judgment and place myself there.” 

I also had a major epiphany on Christmas Eve when Chris reminded us of the words of wisdom from our friend Linus, “Fear Not”.  Those tiny two words, repeated by a tiny cartoon character many years ago, brought into focus once again, what has held me back for so many years.  Stuck agonizing over my past failures, fearing what the future holds in store, wanting to take control from God, which I know is ludicrous and makes no sense, and those two words brought it all back into focus for me.  I can’t change the past, and in so many ways, I wouldn’t.  While I have some huge black marks on me from my past, I also have thousands or millions of things of beauty that define my past.  I can’t control the future, and quite frankly, I’m pretty sure that God has a better idea of what my future should look like than I do.  I need to learn to accept that.  I need to stay in the present, be the best me in the present, which will help me be a better person in the future.

Providence

Let me take you back five years ago to 2013 and when all hell broke loose for our son Patrick and the rest of the family as well.  Patrick had just gone back for his second semester of his sophomore year at Grove City College in Pennsylvania.  In January, we started getting some distressing calls.  Just a few weeks earlier, he had seemed very happy, but that had changed dramatically.  As the weeks went by, he was plummeting.  Each conversation was getting deeper and deeper into depression.  I finally told him, if he wanted to come home, just come home.  He then said the words that no parent ever wants to hear.  He said, “you won’t be disappointed in me?”  I told him no, I could never be disappointed in him. 

Unfortunately, he didn’t come home soon enough, and we got a call from the counselor on campus that Patrick was planning to commit suicide, and he wanted to admit him to a local psychiatric hospital.  This was our first experience with a psychiatric hospital, and we learned a lot, particularly patience.  Imagine yourself as a parent, and your child is five or six states away, and he is in a psychiatric hospital that you’ve never seen, and you can only talk to him once a day?  We patiently would wait for that time each evening, when we would get 10-15 minutes on the phone with Patrick, and try to decipher what was going on.  As soon as we were able, Laurel and Kelly got a flight up to Pennsylvania to see Patrick in the hospital, which gave us a whole lot of comfort.  We were eventually able to secure Patrick’s release from the psychiatric hospital, and we were able to bring him home.

When we brought Patrick home, we had some significant adjustments to make.  We hid all of the knives in the house, or anything else that we believed he could hurt himself with.  Laurel spent many nights sleeping in the spare bed in Patrick’s room to make sure that he didn’t hurt himself.   But the pain for all of us was just beginning.  Shortly after Patrick came home, Patrick revealed the one night at dinner what had led him to want to commit suicide.  He revealed that his private music teacher from his middle school and high school years had sexually abused him. 

I have to admit that when I heard what had happened, I had no reaction.  No anger, no tears, no nothing.  I was stone cold in my emotions, I was completely numb.  It wasn’t for about another week or so, as I was driving down the road, and all of a sudden, the damn burst.  The tears, the anger, the hate burst forward, I flooded with emotions, and couldn’t control them.  I desperately wanted to hurt or kill the person who had brought this devastation down on my son, but I knew that wasn’t the solution.

My morning runs progressed through my emotions, as I worked through the pain and the anger.  Initially, my prayers would be “please get the devil off my back, dear God, don’t let me do anything stupid.”  I’d work my way to “please heal Patrick dear Lord, please heal him.”  I never worked up to the ultimate prayer, “Thy will be done, Lord, thy will be done.”  That is always the most difficult prayer, and I just couldn’t bring myself to that prayer.

Each day with Patrick was an adventure, he had become a box of chocolates.  You never knew what the day would bring.  I remember one morning, as we sat at the breakfast table, Laurel just burst into tears.  I have to admit, this was a major “oh shit” moment for me, she has always been the strong one, and she was broken.  I remember so many nights going to bed and praying to God, I just can’t take this anymore, I just can’t do this.  And I’d wake up, and do it all over again.  The funny thing was, I’ve never been closer to God in my life.  I had given up, I had given in to God, I had finally acknowledged, I can’t do this by myself. 

Eventually, Patrick progressed, he climbed out of the depths, through various counselors and medication, he emerged from the depths of hell.  He was able to go back to school, to Oglethorpe University, and that was mainly because we wanted to keep him close by.  Unfortunately, he has fallen far away from God and is angry at God for letting this happen.

We still had some rocky moments along the way.  Patrick still has his moments, he can dip into depression at times, and at times, he can plummet into depression.  The one night, somewhere around midnight, we got a call from Patrick, from up in Providence, where he is in grad school.  He was completely irrational, crying uncontrollably, talking gibberish, making no sense at all.  As each of us talked to him and tried to gain some understanding and tried to calm him down, Laurel finally asked the important question.  Are you still taking your medicine?  Apparently he had quit taking it a few days ago, and I guess, this was the outcome.  I’m not sure if you have been down the road of trying to talk rationally to a completely irrational person, but it’s not easy.  The common mantra was he’s a terrible person, he doesn’t deserve to live, and he just wants the pain to go away.

As I sat there, trying to wake up, get my senses, figure out how to rationalize with him, it hit me, as it has before, this is probably going to be our reality for as long as he lives.  He will go along, seeming to be fine, and then there will be something, that sets him over the edge, and we will be back in crisis mode again.  The key though is as long as he is alive.  I watched what it did to my parents when my brother committed suicide, and they were never the same again.  I will gladly take nights like that over the alternative.  We will continue to have to talk him off of the proverbial ledge probably over and over again.

One last thing and then I’m done.  I have to confess, I’m a sermon geek.  I love great sermons.  I download them, I print them, I carry them with me, I refer back to them, I share them with people, I use them in my blog posts.  I can visualize the sermon being delivered, I can hear them still in my mind.  Whether it’s “A Rose in Winter”, “Play the Ball Where the Monkey Drops It”, “Take This One Literally”, “Being Uncertain”, I carry them, I go back to them, I visualize them.  I can see and hear Chris saying “tattoo this on your arm”, Bradley ripping up her planner or Catherine talking about that one thing.  Many have told me I’m a wellspring of useless information, but I disagree when it comes to sermons, they have gotten me through a great deal in my life.

So getting back to it.  Back on November 12, 1995, Sandy McConnel preached “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”.  While there have been many sermons I quote and go back to, this is probably my “go to” sermon.  Sandy paints the picture of when the Edmund Fitzgerald sank that day, and the song Gordon Lightfoot penned about the tragedy.  The line above is from the song, and I can still hear Sandy saying that line, and the utter silence in the sanctuary when he said it:

“Did you ever wonder where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?”

“When the Edmund Fitzgerald went down in Lake Superior, God was not present to intervene and prevent the wreck, but nonetheless God was not absent.  God was then and is now mysteriously and powerfully with us, deep in the heart of life: participating in what happens with us and through us; offering faith and courage, even in the midst of tragedies; assuring us that the risk and pain of trying to care and to be creative are worthwhile.  The God who does not intervene, who cannot be seen is yet present as the Spirit of all that is.  God is willing to share in all the consequences of creation – including evil and suffering – and God is seeking to transform them through love.”

Amen, and thank you for listening.