Defining moments

Sometimes it seems that life is divided between “before 1983” and “after 1983”. Seemingly unrelated events take me back there. The last time was Christmas 2001. Our family was together, and I was overwhelmed with the wonder of the day. So why couldn’t I sleep? And why was my mind taking me back to 1983 with all its pain? Was it looking at old pictures with the kids? Was it my daughter-in-law hugging me and telling me how much she loved our son and liked being a part of our family? Was it seeing our children and their spouses enjoying one another? Was it Lynne’s overwhelming support during this exciting, difficult and questioning time of study? Or maybe I’d just eaten too much. With all the wonder dancing in my mind, why was I again . . . wakefully . . . reliving the pain of 1983, while Lynne lay sleeping beside me?

Let me tell you about 1983. The seven years previous had been good to us. We had had it all – a heritage home that I had built, lots of toys, good friends, a measure of success that had led to our “big break”. In 1982 I had been a partner developing a subdivision with projected profits in the millions. Now, a year later, real estate values had dropped by 60% and we realized we couldn’t keep it together long enough for the economy to turn around. Everything we had worked for was going to disappear into a chasm of debt – the house, the vehicles, the sailboat, the business and my ego. When the bank and Revenue Canada had sucked everything dry, I painfully visited my 24 remaining creditors, many of them close friends, and explained to them that I couldn’t pay them, but that someday . . . somehow . . . I would. I understood the doubt in their eyes.

I arrived home totally oblivious to my surroundings and literally collapsed on the floor in a heap of blubbering tears. Chad and Gennein, who were 11 and 9, were suddenly stroking my head, hugging me and asking, “What’s the matter, Daddy?” Through tears and gasps for breath, I tried to explain that we were going to lose everything and I didn’t know what I was going to do. Gennein took my head in her hands, looked at me perplexedly and said, “But, Daddy, you still have us!” Stunned, I laughed while I cried. I survived the next few years because of those words. They still inform me every day. It was a defining moment!

Don’t we all have them? Those times that, when we think of them, we think in terms of “before” and “after”. They are times when we realize where our identity is lodged. They confront that place where our treasure and heart intersect.

A strong stimulus had brought an automatic response that had overwhelmed me: “I have no choices left!” Ah, but my daughter told me otherwise. “But, Daddy, you still have us!” Her words didn’t take the tears away, but they told me I still had choices to make. In fact, I had the most important choices to make, choices between pride and humility, anger and love, competition and compassion, resentment and gratitude, worry and prayer, fate and faith, loneliness and solitude, choices between heaven and earth!

Why the laughter amid the tears? Because these are big choices. In our family, that moment brought a recognition that something sacred is at stake in every event. We can’t always control our losses, but we can control how we respond to our losses. Between the stimulus and the response lies eternity’s choice. It is our defining moment. So, listen. It’s a childlike voice: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19–21).

Garry Schmidt, a member of Northview Community Church in Abbotsford, B.C., is studying toward a D.Min. and serving as a spiritual director and pastoral counsellor at Lloyd Center Pastoral Counselling Service at San Francisco Theological Seminary.