Interactions with God #88

2001 started off with a lot of possibilities.  On New Year’s Eve that year, we had 5 families spend the night at our house, kids and all.  It was a blast.  One of the best New Year’s Eve get-togethers that we have ever had.  We all played board games until the wee hours.  There were people in sleeping bags everywhere!  With a planned church plant send off in March, a great Job, and good friends, yes, everything looked great for the year 2001.  Unfortunately, looks can be deceiving…

The excitement for the Cave Creek Church plant was high.  Quite a few people committed to help.  Even some who would travel longer distances had offered their support until the church started to grow.  Among them was a worship leader. 

The job was going really well at iPlanet.  I had blown out my numbers for the previous quarter.  My boss was awesome, so were my teammates!  To this day, it is the most favorite company and team I have ever worked for.  But, the beginning of hard times for the year of 2001 and the coming decade started with that job. My manager, Howard, left the company.  I think he knew what was coming.

Sun Mircosystems had not been doing well.  Due to the Dot.com bust, their hardware sales had plummeted.  They found themselves competing with their own hardware sold in foreclosure. So many companies had gone bankrupt. Their hardware was now being sold at a fraction of the original cost at foreclosure auctions.  Why buy new when you can get the same equipment for so much less?  Additionally, new business was a fraction of what it was due to the venture capital money flow abruptly stopping.  Yea, Sun Microsystems was hurting really bad, even though the AOL Alliance I worked for, iPlanet, was doing really well. 

On the church side, the first sign of trouble came on the Sunday night of our official church plant send off.  The whole church was going to pray over our team.  It should have been a big deal.  Half my team didn’t show up.  I stood up there with only a few people who had committed to help.  It was embarrassing.  Trying to stay on the positive side, I kept telling myself that these were just minor challenges.

If I remember right, our first Sunday service was held the last week in March.  We wanted to be up and running before Easter Sunday.  We met in a local Charter School in Cave Creek.  There were 30 people there that day.  I really felt hopeful.  My mom and Dad even came down from NH.  That was the largest number we would ever have for the Desert Foothills Vineyard Christian Fellowship.

The following Sunday we had only 6 people, including Martha and myself.  Quite a few who committed to help had already abandoned us.  The trend just got worse as the Sundays progressed.  Fighting back the fear of a repeat of the failed church plant in NH, Martha and I plodded along.  We did everything we could to reach new people, even as we lost those who were supposed to help.  We did outreaches, door to door things, community events, and advertising.  Nothing seemed to work.  We did get visitors, but at a rate of only one or two every couple of months, the church would never grow.  

By June, the Church was steady at only 5 or 6 people any given Sunday.  We didn’t always have a worship leader, so we made due with CDs.  Already feeling rather discouraged, I got a call that dropped another hammer.  Sun Microsystems was going to lay off all the iPlanet Education folks.  My last day on the job would be in the first week of July.  Ouch.

Though, I would get a severance, how long would it last?  The IT industry as a whole was not doing very well.  As I was still trying to remain hopeful, that ominous feeling just grew.

My office for iPlanet was in an independent office building in the Biltmore area of Phoenix.  Sun/AOL rented the office space for myself, several software sales reps and consultants.  On my last day, I had to go in to the office and pack up my stuff.  As I stood there alone in my office, packing up my notebook computer in order to ship it back to Sun Microsystems, I just wanted to cry.  This job had been great.  Yet, it only lasted a little over a year.  I had no idea what would happen next.  With the church plant already stagnant, facing unemployment again was going to kill me.   I tried to hold on to the fact that God is in control.  However, that doesn’t mean things will go the way I want.  No, hard times are often in God’s plan for us.  I knew that well already.  But, who wants to go through it again?  I sure didn’t. 

Look, Jesus knew He was going to the cross in the garden of Gethsemane.  He clearly didn’t want to go if He didn’t have to.  So why, do we get the lame “encouragement” from our brothers and sisters in Christ! “Oh, you should just trust God and be joyful!”  I am sorry, but this is completely idiotic.  If you ever feel the need to say something like that to a brother or sister who is hurting, please slap yourself!  Because unfortunately, it is likely that the one hurting, who you are about to slap with your foolish words, won’t hit you back.  They are too busy just trying to hang on.

To pack my computer, I had to ask the office staff for packing peanuts and a box.  Along with a shipping box, they gave me a rather large garbage bag full of peanuts.  As I dug through it to fill the box and surround the notebook I came across a tiny piece of paper the size of a fortune cookie message. It was mixed in with the thousands of packing peanuts.  Curious, I pulled it out and read it.  It said, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you."

I knew it was from Him.  I also knew deep in my heart that this coming trial was going to be hard, but like all the trials before, He would be with me.  It was just nice to get that reminder, right when I needed it.