Be Patient With Me... I'm Still Under Construction

“Always choose people over projects.” – Os Hillman

If you want someone to put the bit between his teeth and get the job done, I am your man. Not only that, but I will bring you back a receipt, some leftovers, and ask for my next set of marching orders. However, if you need a person to demonstrate care and concern for each member of the team while accomplishing the same task (but maybe not as quickly), you’d best look elsewhere.

At least until recently, that is.

One of the hidden advantages to growing older, contracting Meniere’s disease, and almost dying of Covid two years ago is that I can no longer go at the same breakneck speed that I once did. In fact, when I look back at my “early years,” I sometimes wonder where I got the energy to do what I did.

For instance, when our kids were young, I would work five days in our office and then get up early every other Saturday for a full day of prison ministry. And when I say “full,” I mean F-U-L-L. I would wake up around 5 AM, meet my teammates around 6 AM, and then drive our van to a prison several hundred miles away where we would play two softball games against some very talented (and well-rested) inmates. Then, after a quick lunch stop, we would drive to a second institution to play another doubleheader against yet another fresh team before grabbing dinner and driving home in the wee hours of the night. Often, I wouldn’t get home until after 1:00 AM and in bed until 2:00 AM.

However, no matter what, I would be up in time to shower, dress, and head to church with Deanna, Bethany, Matthew, and Christopher to teach Sunday School before the morning service. After church – despite our sofa calling my name and having to prop my eyelids open with toothpicks – I would usually spend Sunday afternoon playing games with our kids because I hadn’t seen them the day before.

Then came Monday… and it was time to “rinse and repeat.”

Perhaps the busiest time in my life was the three-year span from 2008 to 2010. While still maintaining the same crazy prison ministry schedule, I also wrote three books and ran for Congress twice – personally knocking on 10,000 doors each election cycle – while losing two of my spiritual mentors and my best childhood friend to cancer. Can you spell “burnout?”

Now that I am older, slower, and hopefully wiser, I try not to push myself to the same breaking point as I once did. Although I am still very disciplined and task-oriented, I realize that if something doesn’t get done today, it will get done tomorrow… or the next day. Best of all, I have more time to develop and nurture personal relationships with my family and friends, including our six precious grandbabies.

As I close in on my 64th birthday later this month, I am more people-oriented and less project-oriented. Still the same Type-A overachiever, but with a softer and gentler edge.

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” Matthew 6: 34 (NKJV)

“Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” Philippians 1:6 (NKJV)

- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President