When my son asked if I could meet him for lunch at our favorite Chinese restaurant, I didn’t ask why. Wesley was 19, good looking, an idealistic dreamer, and engaged to an attractive 23-year-old woman he’d met at Bible college.
My wife, Barb, and I thought Wesley was too young for marriage and had said so repeatedly. “Give yourself and your relationship more time to mature,” we had said. But when you’re 19, the future spreads out before you.
Perhaps he wants to talk it through, I thought. Maybe he finally heard our feelings.
“Dad,” he said, “we’re going to have a baby.”
I sat stunned.
“I’m sorry to hurt you like this. We’re going to go ahead and get married right away.”
All I could do was pick at my food and grasp for some response. Finally, I excused myself to make a phone call. For a long moment I stared at the pay phone. Then I dialed the church office and spoke in controlled tones to the familiar voice of our secretary at the other end.
“Kill the announcement of my new sermon series, will you? I’ve been having some second thoughts.”
“I’m sorry, Pastor. It’s already gone to press.”
“Okay,” I replied finally. “I’ll deal with it later. Please let my wife know I’ve had lunch with Wesley and will be leaving for home in a few minutes. It is important she be there.”
Walking slowly back to the table, my thoughts kept coming back to the sermon series to begin this Sunday: “The Future Family.”
I told Wesley and Cindy that I needed to tell the church board. They wanted to meet with the board as well, but I said no. It was their marriage and their baby, but I was in a protectionist mood. Their problem had become my problem.
When my five board members gathered for the special meeting, I presented the events. “If even one of you feels this would be too much for the church family to absorb,” I said, “I’ll tender my resignation with understanding. But we feel it’s important to stand with our family, especially with this yet-to-be-married couple if they are to have any chance for a successful future.” If that included resigning, that’s the way it would have to be.
To a person, the board affirmed me and my family. One reminded me of how I had stood with him in a similar crisis. We prayed together and cried together.
As word of our situation surfaced, there were no confrontations or accusations from church members. Only those closest to us mentioned anything, and then simply to encourage. Some helped with Wesley and Cindy’s uninsured medical expenses. Others threw a baby shower. Wesley and Cindy were thankful.
It was a small May wedding. After a brief honeymoon, Wesley and Cindy moved in with her parents until they could get on their feet financially. The arrangement ended six weeks later with an explosive and embarrassing confrontation with her parents.
Knowing they needed some privacy, we let them spend the next month house-sitting while we went on vacation. Soon after our return, they rented an apartment about a mile away.
Throughout the summer, I continued my series on the family. Questions dogged my study time: What went wrong? How could we have been so blind? How do people feel about what I’m telling them?
But in a sense, each Sunday was cathartic. With each important issue, I reexamined my own parenting.
I’d often said that whether good or bad, we are always an example. And now I felt so imperfect. I am by nature quiet and private when it comes to personal matters. I wanted to retreat. But the church was in a funding campaign for a new building, so there were demands to be in the public eye. Often, though, while alone, I found myself staring at the wall.
In November, our daughter, Lenea, was married in a large and beautiful ceremony. At the end of the rehearsal dinner, Wesley said wistfully, “This is a lot different from our wedding, isn’t it?”
Two weeks later, on Thanksgiving, we became grandparents of a beautiful baby girl. Wesley was euphoric. Cindy proudly showed off their little miracle. At long last it seemed things might be coming together.
They did smile and laugh when they visited us. But, we heard, their apartment had become a war zone of angry, hurtful words. Already unsure of himself, Wes felt the pressure mounting. So did Cindy. But how do two young people, filled with remorse and rage, reach out to each other when the feeling of forever entrapment keeps growing?
Increasingly we saw Cindy go home to her mother. Wesley would brood in anger, with a drink to kill the pain. As the pain increased, so did the number of drinks.
Many in our church gave them loving support-probably too many. All the friendly voices, sympathetic voices, stern voices sounded wrong to them. To Cindy, they came from “his father’s congregation.” To Wes, they sounded like “just what Mom and Dad would say.” It was like having hundreds of close relatives around, and they felt guilty and embarrassed. People might not say much about our “premature” child, but what must they be thinking?
Wesley couldn’t stop feeling he had let us down. We said we’d forgiven him, but in his mind, he was the black sheep.
Wes drifted through a series of ill-suited jobs-selling cars, installing burglar alarms, finally a job with an aircraft firm. Cindy worked in a restaurant and sold art objects on the side. Together they struggled with finances and hopelessness.
We tried to help, but also stay out of the way. Then they both began to come to us for counsel and suggestions-the word of wisdom their pastor-parents always seemed to have for everyone else. But when are you an impartial pastor and when a concerned parent? We weren’t sure, and we decided to help pay for professional Christian marriage counseling. But even this was suspect: How could Cindy trust the psychologist when he was a friend of Wesley’s family?
One day Wesley called. He had returned from work to find the apartment empty. Everything Cindy had brought into their life was gone: the baby, the furniture, the wedding gifts from her side of the family. What remained was heaped in a pile in the center of the apartment. On top lay a carefully wrapped birthday gift and a note saying she wanted a divorce.
That evening we gathered around the dining room table and watched twenty-one candles burn low on the birthday cake. No one felt like singing.
Early the next spring, the divorce papers were signed. Three months later, Cindy remarried.
Wesley lived with us for the next few months. Then one day, he announced he was starting a home repair and remodeling business. That’s what he’d always wanted to do, he said.
He was receiving lots of encouragement from a young woman in our church. Jean’s parents were supportive of the idea, too. He loved working with wood and was quite good at it. Jobs started coming.
But to us, Wes’s relationship with Jean seemed to be moving much too fast. Barb and I saw what appeared to be the classic rebound relationship. Wes felt differently. So did Jean’s parents. I met with them one evening after church, and we talked candidly about the future of our kids. But we left as we had come, with greatly different views of the situation.
Then came the announcement: Jean and Wes were getting married. Jean’s parents were planning a big church wedding. This time there would even be a rehearsal dinner.
One Sunday, as I left for the first service, the tension in our house boiled over. Barb and I told him we were worried about the new relationship. “It’s moving too fast,” we said.
“For someone who’s paid to be sensitive, you sure don’t care how I feel,” Wes shot back. We started yelling at each other. I tried to explain as dispassionately as I could that the tension in the house had taken its toll on everybody and it was time for him to live somewhere else.
He listened in cold anger and said, “I’ll be gone before you get home from church.”
As I pulled out of our driveway, I thought, I’m on my way to church. I’m supposed to bring inspiration and strength to God’s people. They are gathering to hear words of hope and encouragement from the Lord. But I can’t focus. We’re losing our son. Life is out of control.
Preaching used to be fun, the highlight of the week. Now I dreaded it. As I pulled into the church lot, I thought, I don’t want to see anybody, much less talk to anyone. How will I get through this? I’m dry, dry.
“Good morning, everyone! Welcome! Let’s stand and sing Hymn 415.”
On September 1, we were grandparents again as David and Lenea gave birth to a beautiful little girl. Not long after, David’s firm relocated them to Sacramento. This will be good for their marriage, we reasoned. They will be away from us, from the church, from all that’s familiar. They’ll have to rely on each other, just as we had to do in the early years of our marriage.
The following April, we all gathered for a sumptuous rehearsal dinner on the eve of Wesley’s wedding. The church was full of smiling people as I intoned the words of the wedding ceremony. “Until death do us part,” came automatically. I had tried to put together something special for this occasion, but it sounded like I felt: empty.
Not long after, Lenea and David happily told us she was pregnant again.
That summer, I approached my board. “After thirteen years in this pastorate, I need some extended time away,” I said. I didn’t go into all the reasons, but they knew. They agreed to a ten-week sabbatical the following year. If we can just hold ourselves together until then, I thought.
Barbie and I were spending a late September vacation at a friend’s oceanside home when my sister phoned from Washington. We knew my mother was scheduled for a relatively routine surgery, but life-threatening complications had set in. “No, don’t come yet,” my sister said. “Perhaps everything will level out. Just pray.”
But near the end of October, after two trips north, came the third and final journey. I conducted the funeral service at her church. In the crisp autumn air, we spoke words of love over the one who had been the family catalyst. Then we placed her next to our father. We divided her things among the children, listed her home for sale, said good-bye one last time, and closed the door. As we backed out of the driveway, she should have been standing there, waving.
Nineteen days later, Barb’s mother died of a heart attack. We once more hurriedly arranged for the pastoral staff to cover for us and caught the earliest available flight out. Another funeral home. More final arrangements.
“We’re pastoring,” we kept reminding ourselves on the return flight. Our lives had become a blur of airplanes, hospitals, funeral homes, and unfamiliar beds. We could only guess what the folks back home were thinking. “Perhaps they’re questioning whether the words of encouragement and hope we’ve given in their times of sorrow will work for us,” we guessed.
Meanwhile, the church needed attention, maybe more than we were capable of giving. Our part-time minister to children was planning to retire. Who would replace her? And another staff person was not succeeding. I had to break the news that it hadn’t worked out. I am not good at this, I thought. What did I miss when calling him ? I don’t feel like a very good senior pastor. Do I really want to do this the rest of my life?
In January, Lenea was rushed to the delivery room at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco. Complications threatened her life and her unborn infant’s. Again we sat helplessly in a waiting room of plastic furniture and outdated magazines.
After several hours, a nurse brought word that Lenea was fine. In the sixth month of her pregnancy, she had given birth to a son. “The baby, however, is touch and go,” she continued. “He has received a complete blood transfusion and will need even more.” Further, the birth complications meant that Lenea and David should not attempt to have any more children.
Barbie and I looked at one another. They had dreamed of a big family. At least they have a girl and a boy. If only he makes it. He must! Our family is desperate for some kind of victory. Surely God owes us some good news.
For the next thirteen days, we commuted each day to the hospital, first to visit Lenea, then, after her release, to visit little Kristian Andrew, who was on life support. On day twelve, I found Lenea softly reading a familiar children’s story while stroking Kristian’s tiny hand. “Would you offer a dedication prayer for him?” she asked. The look in her eyes betrayed her anxiety. Nurses quietly went on with their work as we joined hands and presented little Kristian Andrew to God.
On day thirteen, the doctor told us our grandson was dying. He spoke to Lenea and David privately, recommending removal of the life support system. In somber resignation, they agreed.
I went down the hall and sat near the big window that opened toward the city. We’re beaten, I thought. We’ve lost. Where is God? What is left?
The clock on the wall was broken. Somehow it fit the moment. Time stopped as the doctor and nurse brought our grandson through the door. Each of us held him. Little Kristian Andrew died while cradled for the first time in his parents’ arms. He never opened his eyes. He never saw the sun. He never even cried.
We buried him on a sunny day in a nearby infants’ cemetery. A frog, hidden in the tall grass, croaked throughout the memorial service. What more could a little boy want? I thought. Except hearing it himself?
Meanwhile, Wesley continued his struggle with depression. He and Jean had been unable to deal with the open wounds from his recent past. At last, defeated and alone, he spent the night in a motel with a gun and a bottle. He didn’t pull the trigger, but the marriage ended. Jean went home to live with her parents.
Our church family graciously provided us with hotel reservations and a free weekend. For two days, the battered remains of our family walked white sand beaches and narrow village streets. We ate in quaint restaurants. Our granddaughter, Nicole, was delighted by her first visit to the ocean. Wesley looked devastated. David turned inward on his grief and disappointment. “Why?” Lenea wondered. “Why did God permit this to happen?”
As a family, we asked one another the questions we couldn’t ask anyone else. “What has gone wrong with us? Why is all this happening? Will it ever end? Do we have enough left in us to face the future?”
I was barely managing to go through the motions of being a pastor.
The following June, our pastoral staff and a few friends saw Barbie and me off at the airport for our sabbatical. Wesley joined us as well, looking like a lost soul. We wondered if he’d make it until we returned. But we couldn’t stay to find out. We couldn’t even trust our feelings. We had held them in too long.
Ten hours later, we touched down in Amsterdam. After the first Sunday with friends in Brussels, we didn’t go to church again the entire summer. We held our own quiet services by a lake in Switzerland. We stood reverently in the remains of a bombed-out church in Dresden. We lingered in the great cathedral of Barcelona. But we needed to be away from church for a while-any church where people spoke a language we understood and asked for what we could no longer give.
We called Lenea on her birthday from a subway in Munich: three minutes. We called Wesley on his birthday: no answer. We never called the church office; we only sent a card now and then. No one knew where we were, and that’s the way we needed it. Our only cares were where to sleep, what to eat, and where to drive the next day. Those ten weeks were a spiritual cocoon. Gradually, as the days rolled by, a miraculous metamorphosis began to occur.
Before leaving, we had spent some time with a professional counselor. We didn’t need another friend to sympathize; we needed a skilled and mature person in Christ who could tell us if we were handling things reasonably well. If not, where were we missing it? We could no longer be sure ourselves.
We followed his advice to take a book, How Do I Say “I Love You”? by William J. Krutza, to share with each other. We also took a one-volume church history by Kenneth Latourette. Everywhere we traveled, we read of God’s dealings with the church in that particular place. The split papacy in Avignon and Rome, the Reformation in Wittenberg and Worms-they all came alive. And while moving about the continent, we began to come alive as well. The European countryside, with its rolling green hills and quaint villages, had become for us a holy ground.
Late in August, with great reluctance, we turned in our rental car and boarded the return flight.
Wesley met us at the airport and helped carry our bags to the car. He looked pale. “I’m going to L.A.,” he said. He was closing what was left of his business. Too many clients hadn’t paid.
“When are you leaving?” I asked.
“Tomorrow.”
He stayed with a pastor for a while, working whenever he could. Then he got a job he was excited about. If it took off, there would be big bucks! He moved into a house with some new friends. It all sounds too good, we thought as we listened to his glowing reports on the phone and read his long, rambling letters. Something is wrong. But what?
Early in November, Wesley came home for Barbie’s birthday. We enjoyed our meal together until Wesley brought up how I had dismissed the staff member, a friend. One statement led to another, and in anger, Wesley left the table.
That night, Wesley stayed at a friend’s house. The next day, he came by to get his things. “I love you and Mom,” he said. “But the pain that surfaces each time we come together is too much. I can’t handle it anymore. I’m leaving, Dad. For good. Don’t expect me back. You and Mom think you’ve got everything figured out in life, but you don’t. And, Dad, you’re not nearly the pastor you think you are.”
We knew Wesley was in the area a time or two after that, but he never visited. Christmas came and went without even a phone call, only a long letter filled with anger and bitterness. Barbie and I missed him, but we talked about other things.
We turned our attention toward Lenea and her family. Our trauma and theirs had severely strained their marriage. Neither seemed to have anything left to give. Together, Barbie and I prayed daily for our family. Though this brought tremendous solace, we were unsure what God would do. At times, we even doubted what he could do.
We blamed ourselves. We questioned how we had reared our children. We saw all the places we could have done better. But, at the core, we were angry at God. I found myself envying friends in the ministry who had finished their role as parents successfully. Their children graduated from college, got married, had families, served the Lord. And looked incredibly happy. I felt cheated.
But like Peter, Barbie and I finally decided there was no one else to turn to. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).
One day, I noticed Barbie deeply engrossed in her Bible.
“What portion are you reading?” I asked.
“Job,” she said with a sheepish smile. “What else?”
“Me, too,” I said. “You know I’ve never liked Job. He always leaves me depressed. But I’m reading there, too. I guess he’s the only biblical character I can identify with right now. I think I’m starting to understand him.”
In the summer, almost seven years after our conversation in the Chinese restaurant, a phone call came, and Wesley and I talked again.
“Dad, I’m in trouble.”
“What’s the problem, Wes?”
He had been employed by an unsavory businessman who helped finance his corporation with tainted money. The deal had turned sour. His former friends were gone.
I said I would fly down the next day. He had no transportation. “I’ll rent a car,” I said. As he gave me directions, I could sense his relief. But my own apprehension was growing. What was I getting into?
The next morning, I followed his directions into a newer residential neighborhood. As I turned the corner, Wesley stood at the curb, gaunt and thin, hands in his pockets. I parked and got out of the car. He smiled ever so slightly, then dropped his head. For a long moment, we both were silent. Then he looked up.
“Thanks for coming, Dad,” he said softly.
I put my hand on his shoulder. We hugged one another in the middle of the street. Then we went into the house where he’d been living.
As we went to lunch together, I wondered how long it had been since he had eaten. His complexion was pasty white. The look in his eyes made me want to take him in my arms and hold him as I had done when he was little.
We agreed he would come home for a while until he could sort things out. Though our relationship had hit bottom, neither of us had an alternative. But as I saw Wesley sitting there so frail and weary, the very hopelessness of his situation gave me hope.
As we ate, we established two immediate tasks. First, our relationship had to be based on truth. No more untruths or half-truths between us. No more telling what we wanted the other to hear instead of what really was. Second, he agreed to write down a list of all the loose ends in his life that he needed to deal with.
We settled in at a motel for the evening. I went to bed exhausted; he went to work on his list. The next morning, he showed me a formidable list. He had been up most of the night. How did he get so messed up? I thought. How can he ever work his way through all of this?
The week after we arrived home, Wesley went to work for a trucking company. He worked long hours, many days on double shift. It was the kind of schedule he seemed to need as an inner purging took place. He didn’t go to church often. That seemed beyond his ability for coping. We didn’t try to force it. One weekend, he went camping with his truck driver friends and had too much to drink. But instead of hiding it, he wanted to talk about it.
“Dad, I’ve got to stop,” he said the next day. “I can’t handle that anymore.”
I agreed.
“I’m joining the Army, Dad.”
I looked into his eyes to see if he was serious.
“If you let me stay the rest of the summer, I’ll take the delayed entry program. That will give me a chance to keep working on my list. I’d like to leave October 1.”
“I’d like to talk it over with your mother,” I replied carefully. Is it wise to test our relationship with such an extended time together? I wondered.
But Barbie and I agreed, feeling we were seeing God’s answer to our prayers somehow being worked out. It was hard to accept that our troubles might be ending.
As the summer wore on, Wesley was like a blind man slowing regaining his sight. As we discussed some biblical thought, he would blink once or twice and say, “Really?” Or as we recalled some family incident, he would say, “I guess I’ve never thought about it that way.”
As his appetite returned, he began to regain his strength. His eyes became noticeably clearer. For the first time, we again laughed together.
October 1, Wesley gave each of us a long hug, picked up his shaving kit, and walked out into the pre-dawn darkness. We closed the door behind him, went into the kitchen, and poured coffee. My hand locked with Barbie’s as we sat in the stillness.
And we smiled. We thought he might make it. We decided we might make it, too.
Epilogue: It doesn’t take long in the ministry to learn there are few private places to store your pain. Where can you hide the disappointment of a church gone sour, or the frustration of pouring your life into a congregation that doesn’t respond?
But when your family itself is endangered, all else fades into the background. Your church, your ministry-they were important yesterday, but today they are meaningless. With time, the pain has subsided. Entire days now go by when we don’t even notice it.
Lenea and David struggled with their loss for many months, but recently they celebrated their seventh anniversary.
Wesley is serving in an Army unit near Savannah. He is strong and in good health, returning to college studies, and dreaming once more of the future.
Recently, Wesley and I sat in the family room together, our conversation flowing freely and easily. No anger, no raised voices. Just two men talking: a pastor and a soldier, a father and a son.
More than two years have passed since our seven lean years. Our life and ministry go on. Many of the new people in our congregation have no idea what we’ve been through. A friend who recently visited the church told me, “There is such a healthy sense of humor here, and it’s an obvious reflection of your own.” I thanked him, but inwardly I marveled how God could produce laughter-that great pain reliever-even in the midst of personal confusion and tragedy.
A few Sundays ago, a new couple about my age came forward for prayer. Their eyes brimmed with tears. “Pastor,” they finally got out, “we have a son who is 26 years old and a drug addict. We’ve gone ’round and ’round on this until we’ve almost lost all relationship with one another,” the man said quietly. “His name is Wesley. This week he came home. And now we don’t know what to do.”
I paused for a moment, then took their hands in mine. “I, too, have a son named Wesley,” I said. “And I think I understand how you must feel.”
Milton Lee is a pen name for a pastor in the western United States.
Copyright © 1989 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
