Worth It

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been having an email exchange with a good friend. He and I re-established a college-era relationship over the past ten years. He stood by Nancy and me during some very difficult times. In an effort to be understanding and compassionate, he made the comment that only I could know whether the total experience of my last pastorate was worth the painful departure that brought it to an end. Though it’s a much larger conversation than this space allows and with some editorial changes to protect the privacy of the unnamed, this is what I said in response.

It was worth it. It was worth it for the little four-year-old Hispanic boy who sat in Santa's lap in our fellowship hall one Saturday morning ten years ago and, when asked by Santa, "What do you want for Christmas?" he responded, "Love." Santa asked, "Who from?" The little boy said, "Anyone." Then, he disappeared, unnamed into the crowd, leaving us to forever wonder what came of his wish.

It was worth it to have Nancy plop a little diapered orphan in my lap in Riga, Latvia, the first orphan I ever held, and hear her say (because she saw my anxiety), "Get with the program, Schmucker!" It was worth it for that little girl to wet on my left forearm and find out that a little pee never killed anyone. It was it worth to hear ten-year-old Olga, taking my face tightly between her two tender little palms, and say while laughing, in her native Latvian, “I love you!” It was worth it for Inars and Rinalds, Liva and Madara and all the orphans we met (and whose faces appear to me every single day in deep places in my soul) and the incredible, truly Christian, servants of God who minister to them when we aren't there.

It was worth it to see 75 kids come to our building every day and get After School care and tutoring.

It was worth it to know an elderly patriot, who fought on Iwo Jima in 1945 and who finally laid his undeserved guilt down about that in my office just before he died five years ago.

It was worth it to stand in that pulpit and hear some of the best music I ever heard in my life and then feel the incredible challenge of preaching.

It was worth it to be there to walk with dozens of other people whose marriages ended in divorce and to be able to hold their hand and pray with them when human words just weren't adequate.

It was worth it to go the VA Hospital every single day the last two weeks of an old man's life. He was a member at Cliff Temple. No one knew him, though. His wife had Alzheimer’s and since they’d joined the church five years before in absentia, they’d never been able to attend. It seems that I was the only one who would hold his hand. It was worth it to hear this man who had always believed tell of how he was scared of dying, and to be able to know that something I said seemed to comfort him, and encourage him that it was OK to go ahead and let go. That when he let go on this side, Jesus would be there to catch him on the other side.

It was worth it to be there that day in my office when a very successful and very bright forty-something dad discovered that believing and doubting are one in the same. Worth it to hear him say to me that, if I could have doubts about God and still be a pastor, then he could be a believer. Worth it to then baptize him and his ten-year-old son together in the same baptistery soon after.

It was worth it to meet, know and walk with scores of others who will always rate as some of the finest human beings and Christians I've ever known in my life. To have them hold me accountable to my own preaching and then also walk together with me when our faith got stretched to the breaking point, only to discover that's what happens when your faith is growing, not dying.

It was worth it to be close enough to your office to have lunch with you and establish a friendship that will last a lifetime.

It was worth it to discover, on what was nearly my death bed, what it means to have friends, friends who will never, ever abandon you. Worth it to hear Nancy say to me through the fog, "You're going to be OK."

It was worth it. And, that's also why it will always hurt at least a little. If it didn't hurt, it didn't mean anything. That it hurts reminds me how important it was. In time, I'll remember the things that made it worth it more than the things that hurt. I truly do believe that.