GUNFIRE! Two quick shots echoed up over my back fence. The sound jarred me away from my computer screen. My home-office looks out over a small community church used as a school during the week. The sound came from the school.
I leapt up from my desk. And did my best I’m-not-worried half-run to the back-yard fence. Maybe it was firecrackers. Maybe it was just some Denis-the-Menace kid getting into trouble. My heart flung itself mercilessly against my ribs.
“PAP, PAP, PAP, PAP.” There was no mistaking that sound for anything but a semi-automatic rifle. A siren chirped in the distance. I could hear a kid yelling.
By the time I reached the back fence, my heart sounded like the guns. My back yard is about 15 feet higher than the church property. Looking over my fence, I get a pretty clear view of the whole campus.
Below me, armed men in fatigues and bulletproof vests burst into one of the buildings. A short distance away, a group of teachers huddled in the parking lot. A tiny blonde girl, who looked about eight-years-old, skipped toward the teachers as if nothing was wrong. Run, Run! I could hardly breathe. Was she going to make it away from the building before the gunman saw her?
Suddenly my wife, Megan, was beside me. “Were those gunshots?”
I nodded. The knot in my throat choked off any words.
“Oh no.” Her chin trembled. “Oh no.” She shook her head, eyes welling with tears.
“Dad, what was that noise?” Taras, my twelve-year-old son, poked his head out the back door.
“Get your clothes on, we’re leaving.” Megan was already back across the yard, grabbing Taras’s hand and pulling him away from the scene and any stray bullets.
Laughter echoed up from below. Eight or nine SWAT team members strode away from the building they’d just charged into, congratulating each other.
“Did you get him?” One of the teachers called from their huddle in the parking lot.
“We got ‘em.” The team captain called back, taking off his helmet.
I stumbled back toward the house. Who’d they ‘get’? A possessed church hater? A bullied, unstable kid? Why were they laughing like that? Megan was going to want to move. I wanted to call the church and find out what was going on, but they had more important things to worry about than answering phones. I needed to let the neighbors know.
I ran-walked next door. I didn’t know what I would say. There was only one explanation for what I saw, and the horror left me stumbling over every word.
My neighbor had heard the shots. With trembling hands she pulled out her phone. “I have the pastor’s personal phone.”
She put him on speaker.
“Hello,” the pastor answered, cheerful and warm.
My neighbor was breathless. “We heard gunshots.”
“Oh. Everything is fine.” Friendly office chatter echoed in the background. “ATF and SWAT are practicing down here today. Remember I told you about it a couple weeks ago.”
My neighbor looked sheepish, “Oh yeah.”
I thanked them both and walked home.
Oh yeah? Really? Thanks a lot for telling ME a couple weeks ago!
I called Megan and let her know the good news.
“Oh thank God,” she said. “But I think I’ve changed my mind about Taras going to school down there.”
It took the rest of the day for my heart to slow down. Enough time to notice the similarity between this situation and the way God works in my life.
Bad things happen and no matter how I look at them, I can’t find any good reason why or how they will work out for good. And yet God promises they will – sometimes in this life, sometimes in the next. Either way we’re promised that it will all make sense and it will all be more than worth it.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” ~God (from Isaiah 55:9)
How does God work it out for good?
2016 was my year for tears and bad things that make no sense. I was already worn down from years in a lawsuit as a whistleblower. Then on December 2nd, I found my wife’s lifeless body in my bedroom. You don’t walk away from something like that unscarred. There is nothing right about it and there is no way to make it right. Bad things don’t transform into good things.
Yet, during the following months, I felt God beside me like I’d never experienced before. Jesus was a seawall between me and the storm. I got wet, but it couldn’t sweep me away. Slowly, day by day, he put the pieces back together. Today, I’m whole again. But I’m not the same person. I’m more compassionate in my relationships, less arrogant about my strengths, I listen longer and apologize sooner. I am kintsugi; the broken pottery glued back together using gold in the seams, more beautiful than it ever was before.
Over the last decade, the Lord has brought many people to me, broken from suicides and the loss of loved ones. He brings them to me, and I bring them to him. There they can find healing, restoration, and peace.
I’m also remarried. I am a piece of the healing in the lives of my wife and kids. My wife has her own kintsugi experience with a ministry helping battered women.
The morning began with gunfire and a situation with no good outcome. But when I discovered the truth, every part of me was glad those officers were there. Whatever anyone thinks about guns and law enforcement, if an insane person has a gun barrel pointed at my kid, what I want to see more than anything is a SWAT officer in a bullet proof vest and fatigues. I was grateful they were there, and grateful they had a place to practice.
When I’m scared or hurting, disappointed or discouraged, and when I don’t understand and have no hope things will be OK, I hang on to this: I know, even though everything looks completely wrong, when it’s in God’s hands, he will work it out for good. And it will be more beautiful than I thought possible. Always, always, always.