The Lord’s been very kind to me the last few months. That’s the first thing I want to acknowledge.
Next, I want to answer a question I’ve gotten quite a bit.. Where are you?
That’s probably where I need to start this article. The last time I wrote anything was June 20, just a couple weeks after having two major spine surgeries. At that time, I shared a lot of what God was teaching me during those first few days of recovery, particularly through my wife. I also said that I expected to write more as my recovery continued, and I fully expected to do just that.
But then I disappeared. So much for the series, I guess.
So what actually happened? Well, I can tell you I didn’t make an explicit decision to stop writing. Life just got busier than I expected. You have spine surgery, and you think you’re going to have a little downtime. Not so much in my case. Every time I thought I'd sit down and write, something else happened. After a while, “I’ll get to it later” turned into months.
And a lot has happened since June.
For starters, obviously, I’ve been recovering. Early on, that was pretty much my entire job. I needed help with things I’d always done without giving them a second thought, and that gave me plenty of time to consider how much I take for granted. It’s humbling to be unable to do the simplest things for yourself. The Lord used those days, particularly the patient care of my wife, to teach me things I might’ve been too busy to pay attention to otherwise. A lot of good came out of that time, though I wouldn’t recommend major neck and back surgery as a mode of discipleship.
These days, my recovery looks a lot different. I guess you could say my life’s starting to feel normal again.
I went back to work just a month after surgery, on July 13, and honestly, I was ready. Mentally, at least. My body probably wanted a little more time away, but I just couldn’t stay away. I needed to do something familiar and useful again.
I absolutely love what I do. I know it sounds cliché to say, “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life,” but that’s exactly how I feel. I’ve spent my entire adult life in radio, and the Lord has allowed me to spend the last six years doing it in service to Him.
These days, what I’m able to talk about and produce matters infinitely more than anything I ever did in secular radio. Getting back to that on a normal, daily basis felt like getting a piece of my life back.
So I was ready to come back to work. I don't know if I was ready for what I actually came back to, which was a major remodel and studio upgrade.
If you’ve never been through one of those, here’s roughly how that’s gone.
We had a plan, and it was an excellent plan. But the plan was just about as far as the organization of this whole process went. The equipment was installed, and for about eleven minutes you think you’re almost done.
So you turn everything on, and boom.
One piece of equipment doesn’t talk to another, or something that worked yesterday apparently decided overnight that it didn’t want to work that way anymore. So you start moving wires around and changing this thing and that thing. You fix one problem and discover three more. By the time you’ve sorted out video problems, somebody’s headphones start picking up a local police scanner.
That’s an exaggeration, but not by much.
Look, this honestly was a substantial upgrade. And getting all of this to work the way we needed has taken up a large portion of my life.
The daily nature of our work has made it especially interesting. I produce nine podcasts, two of which are daily. Whatever needed fixing had to be fixed while we kept working.
I say all of that to explain why my writing got pushed to the side.
Writing takes up a different part of my brain than radio does. Radio is a moving medium. You’re thinking, listening, responding, and watching a clock. Writing is different. It requires me to sit still and think through what I want to write about.
I’ve missed that.
There hasn’t been a shortage of things to write about, obviously. I’ve got notes everywhere, but I haven’t had the time to sit down, work through those things, and write about them carefully.
I don’t want to write things just so this website looks active. That’s not who I am. When I write, I want to think things through. For the past couple of months, the time that normally would’ve gone to that has gone to other things.
But I think I’m finally starting to turn the corner.
This studio project is starting to calm down. Obviously, there’s still work to do. There’s always going to be work to do when equipment’s involved. But we’re starting to see light at the end of the tunnel.
So I’m writing this article as an update, but also to hold myself accountable by saying publicly that I intend to write again. When will that be? I’m not sure of an exact date, but I know it’ll be soon.
To those of you who read my last article and prayed for me, I want to thank you. I am grateful for you. I’m grateful for everyone who checked in and asked how my recovery was going. Some of you have burdens much heavier than mine, and the fact that you took the time to pray for me and my family while carrying your own burdens means a great deal to me.
Looking back over the last several months, I keep coming back to this one central thing.. the kindness of our Lord.
He was kind to me before this surgery, while I was trying to understand what was actually happening to me. I experienced His kindness every day in my recovery through the care of my wife when I couldn’t do things for myself. And whether you believe it or not, He was kind to me by allowing me to return to this job, doing the work I absolutely love.
Throughout this entire time, He’s also continually reminded me how very little control I have over any of this.
I’m grateful for the ability to recover from the surgery I had. I’m grateful for a wife who loves me, and I’m grateful to have work I absolutely love doing. I understand those gifts come with responsibilities, and I want to be faithful with what He’s given me.
That includes this little corner of the internet.
In His Service,
I talk about Jesus and the Bible a lot. Sometimes on the radio, sometimes to people who willingly show up to listen. Occasionally, I write things down.
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Most of the people who read this got here that way. Passing something along like that is still the most helpful thing you can do.
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