How I Wrecked My Life

Failure and fear. Those words summarize my state of mind in 2010. I had failed my wife, I had failed family, I had failed my business associates, and I had failed God. I was afraid of running out of money, I was afraid I couldn’t provide food for my wife and me to eat, I was afraid about what the future would hold for us. I was a wreck. Financially, I was bankrupt. We don’t often think about the emotions of historical figures, but I assume that Lincoln felt like a failure and he was fearful about his future in 1833.
After the collapse of my businesses, my wife Sally and I immediately decided that we would sell the home that we had built together. Here is my accounting of my feelings from my journal when we began to pack up our library in preparation for moving….somewhere.

(Sunday, November 16, 2010 – a month after the fall of my business) This was one of the most difficult days of my life. Sally and I went to the home that we had designed and built as our retirement home. We began the task of deciding which books from our library to pack up and take with us (wherever that may be) and which books to donate. To my wife, books were like friends. Each book she decided that she could not take with us was like leaving a friend behind. The intense emotion, tears, and grief she expressed tore me apart. Seeing my wife, my best friend, in that kind of distress sent me into a deep and dark depression.
We had amassed a library with thousands of titles. We had walls of bookcases in the library; we had floor to ceiling bookcases in the hallway, we had books in boxes. We had books separated by category. It took hours to sort through the books. When the selections had been made, I asked Sally to go and visit a friend and I told her I would stay to clean up the mess.
As soon as she drove away, I broke down in tears. I fell to my knees on the tile floor of the kitchen and I begged God to allow Sally to forgive me. I cried so loud and asked for His help with such volume that I was sure that my prayers could be heard in heaven. It has been nearly ten hours since I fell on my knees and prayed to God, but even now, back at my Mother-in-law’s house for the evening, tears are welling up in my eyes as I write these words.
Yet even when I think that I can sink no lower in grief, remorse, and despair, I find that there are, in fact, new depths to which I can plunge. For the first time since this ordeal began, I wish that I could die. Why doesn’t God just take me? Is there any reason for my existence? I hoped He would reveal it to me soon because I was sinking further into a dark hole.

The day after I wrote down the events of the day in my journal, I was reading Psalms 4 KJV). It says: “Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness: thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress; have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer.” I have a greater appreciation for this passage because God has heard my prayer, shown me mercy, and helped me to move forward with His plan for Sally and me.

(3 years later) I had been walking in the shadow of the valley of death. I was in the valley. I was walking through the deepest, darkest valley that I had ever encountered. In Hebrew, the darkest valley produces a shadow of death known as “tsalmaveth.” This shadow does not exist in every valley. It is found only in the deepest, the darkest, and the most dreaded valleys that you will ever encounter. I have heard about the shadow of the valley of death at nearly every funeral I had attended. So when I read Psalm 23, I naturally thought about death. Since my valley of death experience, Psalm 23 has taken on a new meaning for me because the valley that I encountered was not the valley of death; it is the shadow of the valley of death. I was in the deepest valley that I had yet known.
There are many kinds of mountains. There are those mountains that were formed by the glaciers where the sides of the mountains seem to roll across the plains. There are mountains that rose up from the earth in violent upheaval whose sides are treacherous and block out nearly all of the sun from entering the valley between mountains. The valley of the shadow of death has depths with shear drops like the Grand Canyon and peaks like Mount Everest. When you claw your way out of the valley, you still are faced with climbing Mount Everest.
I was so far into the valley that I didn’t know if I could even begin to climb my way out. There was no sun because the shadow of the valley walls blotted out the light. I didn’t think that I could ever begin to climb those valley walls towards the sun, let alone reach the top.
When the shadow of the valley of death envelopes you, your whole world goes from light to dark. You are suffering and you are in despair and you feel alone. Of course you are not alone because everyone suffers. You lose a loved one. You face divorce. Someone you care about is seriously ill. Romans 5 (RSV) tells us that “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.”