Nothing Wasted Along the Way

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.

~Charlotte Joko Beck

Nothing Wasted Along the Way

I have three main sayings that I live by. One of them is always at the head of these posts. I’m not sure where I read the second one, but it has stayed with me and I’ve seen it proven true over and over and over during the mystery that is my life.

                Franklin Graham spent his early years rebelling against being the son of Billy Graham. Can you imagine the pressure and especially the expectations of being the son of Billy Graham? It would almost be a curse more than a blessing! Charlotte Joko Beck once wrote that we make martyrs of others with our expectations. I suspect Franklin Graham knows the truth of that saying. So Franklin rebelled, living what the Church calls “a life of sin.” When he came back to The Faith, Franklin said that all those things he did as a rebellious son he found useful as a Christian ministering to others. He knew what they were going through, knew how they felt, could relate to their struggles, and he could help. He’d been there, he’d done that. And he was surprised how God has used all of that in his ministry.

                Nothing is wasted in God’s economy. This is the second great saying in my life that I live by.

                When I was in my second pastorate, I was diagnosed with severe depression. It didn’t surprise me. I had told my District Superintendent that I felt like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and that I was looking forward to it because I’d be locked away in the psych ward for weeks and wouldn’t have to deal with any of my parishioners. The DS gave me a shocked look and didn’t say anything. Later he sent me a letter telling me that he had no idea how to help me or what to say. That was okay—he wasn’t much of a DS and his letter came as no surprise.

My doctor put me on an anti-depression medication called Buspar. At the time, it was the #1 prescribed medication for depression. As a pastor, I felt no small amount of guilt over this. I mean, I was a pastor, a spiritual leader, a “man of God.”  I felt that I was not only failing as a minister, but I was letting my congregation down. If I was really as spiritual as I should be, I wouldn’t be on a medication for depression. Should I keep it a secret so no one would know? I struggled with this. I decided not to broadcast it on the one hand, but to not keep it a secret on the other.  What happened surprised me. God kept bringing Christians into my life who were wrestling with the spiritual guilt of being on depression medication. They were encouraged that I was a minister who was in the same boat as they were. I was able to relate to them. I mean, who was I to criticize or judge their Christianity when I was in the same fix they were? That made me safe for them to talk to.

I knew a prominent church evangelist who was also safe for Christians to talk to. He actually did have a nervous breakdown, and he would always talk about it in one of his sermons. Christians would come forward afterwards to talk with him about their nervous breakdown experiences—experiences that were not supposed to happen in the church.

One of the things I used to wrestle with as a young adult was why God put me in a dysfunctional family with a Mom who was a prescription drug addict and a step-father who was physically, verbally and emotionally abusive. Did God love me less than He did others? The struggle almost made me believe in reincarnation—had I been a horrible person in a previous life and now Karma was paying me back? (My joke about reincarnation: “I didn’t believe in it the first time.” Ba-dum-bum).  But as I have talked about this, over the past decades I have become a safe person for Christians to talk about how they were physically or sexually abused in their Christian homes growing up. And as a Hospital Chaplain I have an understanding and a heart for prescription drug addicts, people who believe that their addiction is legitimate because they have a prescription—so the doctor believes that they need it. Because of my Mom’s addiction to Darvon, she ended up in the psych ward for six months at the University of Arkansas Medical Center. Even though it is hard for me to call on a parishioner in a mental health lock-up facility, I am still inwardly urged to do so. After listening to my Mom talk about it when I was a teenager, I know what a frightening experience it can be for that person, and how important it is for them to be visited by someone who cares.

Former addicts help addicts. A parent who has lost a child helps a parent who has lost a child. A person who was sexually abused as a child is a help to someone who had the same happen to them. Who were among the first to arrive in Moore, Oklahoma, to help after the devastating tornado? Those who had lost their homes in a tornado. God uses those who have been through it to help those who also have been through it or are going through it.

What we go through is never wasted. God’s economy is built that way. God is not a God of waste. He can and does use anything, often in mysterious, surprising and miraculous ways.

By the way, I came to realize that God did not love me any less, or that I had done something so bad in my childhood to deserve it. I came to realize that a fact of life is that parents who are unhappy and screwed up can’t help but dump their misery into the lives of those closest to them, including their children, just like their parents did to them. Dysfunction is a generational thing, after all. The good news is that victims can choose to break the cycle—“This ends with me!”

And by the way, don’t buy the advice of the World War II Generation that all you have to do is “forget about it and go on.” That’s sounds easy but is unrealistic. “Forget about it” ends up really being repression—shoving it to the back of the fridge, and we all know what happens to stuff that’s shoved to the back of the fridge after time. Mona Lisa Schulz, the neuroscientist and neuropsychologist, points out that the abuse or trauma we suffer is never forgotten—its memory is stored in the very cells of our bodies, and eventually speaks out via various illnesses. We can’t “just forget about it and go on.” We have to face it and end the generational cycle. And God, Who never lets anything go to waste, brings people into our lives to help us, just as people came into their lives to help them.

That God can use anything, that He doesn’t waste anything, does not mean that He “caused” it or even “allowed” it. Like I said, some things just happen. But God can use it for our good. Since Nothing Is Wasted in God’s Economy is one of the major sayings I live by, then Romans 8:28 is one of the major Bible verses I live by: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.

All things. It took me a while to realize the magnitude of “all things.” All means “all.” Even abuse. Even addiction. Even depression. Even the loss and death of a loved one. Humanly, that sounds possibly morbid. But it doesn’t gloss over the tragedy or the pain or the loss or the devastation. It says that in God’s Economy those things don’t have the last word.

God’s Transformational Holy Spirit can have the last word in our hearts, lives and emotions. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will. ~Romans 8:27. Holy Spirit touches human spirit, and transformation begins.

And nothing gets wasted in God’s Economy.

Your Fellow Traveler,

~Steve