13 ~ COVID, Cardiology, and telling my new boss I have a prior commitment with my left kidney

The impending donation grew closer, and Loren was as pumped as we were. Calls had been made to the pastor elders, and plans had been made to announce the upcoming transplant dates to the church family. The Lord was continually doing a miracle in my own heart, keeping me humble, as our well-meaning church members were almost as incorrigible as the transplant center staff in terms of praising me and thanking me for my “heroic” act towards Loren. I was ready for the transplant, my wife was ready, my family was on standby to help, and my church was anticipating how they might serve all parties in the upcoming season.

But then Loren called one day in a pretty somber tone. “I’m on hold, Dave.” He started explaining. “My heart had a strange tremor, and they won’t clear me for donation.” Loren and I spoke for a few minutes. He was pretty down. His cardiologist was arguing with his nephrologist, the cardiologist, who felt Loren was fit as a fiddle and that the heart blip was nothing to worry about, was losing to the nephrologist who retorted that if this wasn’t a blip, but atrial fibrillation, he could lose Loren on the table, and he wouldn’t take that chance. The transplant was definitely off with no predetermined dates to reschedule. Loren was pretty honest about the fact that the longer he was on dialysis, the weaker his body would get, and that delaying this transplant due to a heart issue was pretty frightening as not doing the transplant could lead to additional heart issues.

Grab your copy of Sovereign and Gentle here

Loren, however, did an amazing thing in that conversation. Obviously down and discouraged, I listened to him talk himself out of that slump. I listened to him recount his blessings and reaffirm the sovereign hand of God in his life and over his health. As we left the call that day, he was still a bit low. He was still disappointed, but he was resting on God’s plan for him at that time. The coming weeks only seemed to improve Loren’s outlook on his very uncertain future. How was he dealing with that? Here he had been greenlighted for surgery with a perfect match in a willing donor. Aside from his renal failure, he was the picture of health. We had agreed in faith to walk this journey together, everything had been lined up and cared for, but now… we had to simply wait, and wait we did for almost a year.

Life carried on during that time. My work-life balance was suffering, and as often happens in that scenario, I didn’t give what either party needed. I needed to focus more at work and give more time to my job, which was already interrupting most dinners and every weekend. My family was growing, and my kids just wanted me around more. Julia was an absolute saint, and, while she definitely sided with the kids, she was grateful for the work I had been given and balanced the family perfectly in my unbalanced absence. We decided as a couple that for the health of our family, I would look for work elsewhere. It was in this mindset of looking at a career change where I had the bright idea that I told you all earlier where we decided in about ten minutes to move to New Mexico. Julia’s only desire in that moving decision was to live in a neighborhood with grass and trees.

Zillow to the rescue! Julia found her dream house in the neighborhood she had loved since she was a child. But, it would likely not be on the market when we moved, and we had little to no chance of getting it based on how real estate was moving in that area. Through a series of miraculous events and multiple realtors, we were able to walk through our dream house, offer less than asking, and the sellers agreed to hold it for more than 70 days for our closing. When the sale of our property in Colorado was pushed back a few weeks, the sellers in New Mexico graciously accommodated us and were able to float the extra mortgage payment for them for accommodating us. It all worked out so well!

We made the decision to move without having a job lined up. We made an offer on a house without an offer letter from a new employer, and I don’t recommend that anyone do that. I had filled out more than 40 applications in the residential construction field with zero feedback from any hiring managers. I was getting a bit antsy, to say the least. I don’t really remember how it came about, but my wife and I were talking about the struggles related to my industry and decided that if we were going to make this huge scenery change, we might as well look at a new career path as well. That actually sounded really good to me, and I started searching for “non-profit” work in Albuquerque. A homeless shelter popped up, and I applied to be their operations manager. They must not have read my cover letter because I received a frazzled call back a day or so later asking if I could be there that afternoon for an interview. They were pretty bummed that I wasn’t local and agreed to interview me the next time I was in town.

After a week or two of searching, I came across this posting for “production manager” at a place called Faith Comes by Hearing.” I applied and jumped at the opportunity to have a Zoom interview with Troy Harper. The ministry seemed pretty cool, from what I could gather. They record the Bible in every language they can access, and then they make those recordings freely available to everyone who needs them by every means possible. Their flagship product is a device called the Proclaimer. It’s a plain black box with solar charging technology and a pretty robust speaker so a group of people can gather in the community and listen to the Bible anywhere. These are aimed at remote and oral communities where written scripture is not available or cannot be used due to illiteracy. I believe there were a little more than 1,300 languages completed and available on these devices when I started the interview process. The Zoom conversations went well, and Troy flew me out for a few face-to-face meetings. I let the homeless ministry know that I was coming to Albuquerque that week, and they called me back about three weeks later, wondering again if I happened to be in town that afternoon. While I was in Albuquerque interviewing, two things happened. First, Troy and I agreed that this was not the best fit for me even though we would speak about that for another week or so, and second, God tied my heart to that ministry. I knew I had to work there in some capacity.

When I returned home, I went back to their website to check if there were any additional job openings. There on the website, I read the job description for the job role I fill today. It was like reading a job posting written with my resume as a guide. Why hadn’t this one been posted on Monster as well? Why had I not seen it until now? Who knows, but I applied, and that’s when I met Jonathan, my current boss. I love this role. I get to serve our global team as we put audio bibles into the hands of those who need them the most. Entire communities that have never had an opportunity to learn to read or write get to own a Bible, listen to it together, and many of them form churches from those Bible listening groups.

How special that God was moving us specifically back into ministry. I had filled out more than 40 applications in the construction field with zero calls back. God was pushing us gently towards what he had for us. I don’t know if it was my own personal poor life and time management that was making my former work life so hard or if my struggles were the gentle hand of God pushing us out of Colorado and into what he had for us. Either way, Julia and I were seeing a more perfect plan continue to unfold as we kept taking steps forward in faith.

In the New Testament, we read about a lovely couple dying to give money to the church, Ananias and Sapphira. (See what I did there?) My opinion on this particular couple is that they had every intention of selling their land and giving 100% of the proceeds to the church. My particular eisegesis, influenced by my real estate bias, leads me to prefer to believe that they received a higher sale price than they anticipated. Maybe Ananias has rigged up some automatic irrigation, or Sapphira was just a super gifted Joanna Gaines type decorator. Either way, I feel like they thought they might get one price, and that was the price they were mentally prepared to fully give to the church. When they sold, however, the price went up as it often does in real estate, whether there was a bidding war, or their property was just valued higher than they expected suddenly they were faced with different circumstances than when they originally made these plans with God. Now, none of this is Bible, but my imagination does what it does. I can see a modern-day scenario where a couple lists their house for $100,000 and makes one set of plans based on a full asking price offer, but then gets $120,000, and suddenly a new car purchase is in the mix. Colorado, and California readers, just add a zero to the list price and an additional $80,000 over and above as opposed to the meager $20,000. I don’t want you all to lose the point here just because your real estate prices are silly. I can easily see Ananias and Sapphira looking at that extra $20k and just pocketing it, after all, the Lord knew they were going to give the full $100k, and they did! They just pocketed a little extra. Praise God, right?

The point of this eisegesis exercise is to point out that for many of us when our circumstances change, our plans follow suit and change as well. The text that I received from Loren that day was hardly one that made my heart swell with gratitude or excitement. Surgery was back on, and the dates were coming up fast. In the many months since Loren’s heart troubles, we had moved, I had lost my 80 hours of PTO, we were in a new state, and Julia was now pregnant with our 5th. Life was simply different, and I was having second thoughts about being filleted.

It’s funny how quickly all the Grace shown to me by the Father over the past many months was already being obscured by my own humanity and selfish spirit. I suddenly and simply just didn’t want to donate my kidney. After all, it was mine, right? I wanted the whole situation to go away. Why did Loren have to text just now? We had finally become settled in this new life here in New Mexico. I hadn’t even mentioned this to my new boss yet. I mean, that’s not really an interview topic, and it doesn’t naturally come up in many conversations unless you’re a me-monster or conversational narcissist. I mean, how does that even go?

“Oh you’re getting an oil changed, huh? Yeah, I’ll probably, you know, donate my kidney this year. Okay, man, good luck with the oil change! Be sure to use full synthetic over 70,000 miles.”

What would my new boss say? Would I be able to take the time off? As a new hire, I didn’t have much PTO. I was supposed to be using this time to discover my role through taking my first few trips around the world, not driving back to Denver to be gutted like a fish. The whole thing was just a mess.

I relate this to you because I want you to understand where my mind was here. Lest any of you think I’m a super Christian or benevolent superstar. I am definitely not. The Grace extended to me to get me to the point that I would give another man one of my organs is unnatural and definitely not of myself. Was it Edwards who said that the only thing that we contribute to our salvation is the sin that makes it necessary? I feel like the only thing that contributed to this organ donation was not shutting my wife down during Pastor Dan’s prayer. Everything after that and probably even that moment has been unnatural and out of character for me. While it is true that hundreds of unbelievers go under the knife every year to share a kidney or a portion of the liver with someone in need, both directed and altruistic, I don’t claim to even be as good of a human as these kind heroes. If there is anything in me that is good, kind, or generous, it is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in my life. Praise God for his wonderful work in his children being manifested in me.

To my surprise, in God’s timing, and only about a day or so from receiving Loren’s text, I was back on track emotionally. I was ready to begin preparation for the donation. I had contacted Kathryn, my coordinator, and we penciled in a date. Now it was time to break the news to my new boss that I made these commitments prior to hiring on and somehow literally forgot to mention it to him in our transition. That conversation was fun. In my go-to style of not beating around the bush or wasting idle moments in small talk, I just sort of started in,

“Hey, Jonathan, so prior to applying here, I was in the process of donating a kidney to a gentleman from our last church. He had some heart complications, and everything got delayed for several months. Well, anyway, he’s been cleared by his cardiologist, and we’d like to make the donation in June. Would I be able to take some time off for that?”

Jonathan just sat there astonished. I think he blinked twice before responding with a solid full-mouth smile, “What? You just dropped that on me like you need to take some time off to aerate your lawn or something…You’re donating a kidney?!” He was half laughing out of astonishment and half because he’s just a smiley guy. He continued exasperated, “I mean, yes, of course, you can take time off, we’ll work it out, but what? Tell me about this.”

You guys need to understand Jonathan. Jonathan is my polar opposite when it comes to social settings, sharing with each other, talking, liking people, etc. He is wearing off on me a little, but not to worry, introverts, I am still on your side. Jonathan and I sat there for the next 30-40 minutes and processed the donation together. I kept trying to play down the whole scenario, but Jonathan, always the master at communication, dug until he got what he wanted. This would be a beautiful place to insert an apology to Jonathan similar to the one for Marita earlier for being so difficult to talk to, but he is still my boss for the foreseeable future, and I need to keep this persona up to keep him on his toes. Besides, I don’t want him walking into my office after reading this chapter expecting an open conversation filled with heart-warming stories and open two-way communication. Sorry, Jonathan, not happening.

Remember my 80 hours of sick leave granted to me by a merger in the world’s largest flooring company? Gone, like a freight train. Here I was with a very understanding boss, but in a brand-new position fully funded by donors whose monetary sacrifices are taken very seriously by my new employer. There would be no additional paid leave granted due to my good deeds. We also happened to live 9 hours from the transplant center as opposed to 40 minutes. I made less money, lived farther away, and now had to work out childcare, time off, and travel expenses. I needed help.

Entering stage left was this introvert’s worst nightmare. I needed to talk to someone, tell them I had a need, and I needed to wait to see what would come of it. We hadn’t joined a new church yet, so technically, we were still members at our former church in Colorado. That was one of the most difficult calls for me. Matt, our pastor, was gracious and agreed to bring the situation before the benevolence committee. Of course, the church came through in a big way that left Julia and me with no out-of-pocket expenses for the trip. Honestly, though, the physical dollars in our account didn’t mean anything next to the gesture from a body of believers who were behind us, praying for Loren, praying for me, and praying for Julia and the kids as we all headed into this next phase together. My wife and I were walking a scary path, but we were not alone. We were wrapped up in the arms of our brothers and sisters at our home church. We were being loved and cared for by the Father, made tangible and visible by his New Testament body, the local church.

Plans were made over the next few weeks, but COVID complicated things quite a bit and added several days for testing and quarantine prior to the surgery date. The extra days required for the test prior to surgery proved to be too long for either Julia or myself to want to be away from our four small children. We decided to make a fun week of the whole ordeal. We took off from New Mexico on Wednesday afternoon after I got home from work. We landed at Mom and Dad’s house, or as the kids say, Nanny and Papaw’s, late that night, and I hit the road from Woodland Park to the transplant center in Denver that Thursday morning for my COVID test.

At that time, you need to remember that we were only about three months into our “two-week shutdown to flatten the curve and slow the spread.” Remember that? COVID testing was not widespread, and I had heard extraordinarily little about the whole process. As I pulled up to the PSL test lane for my drive-through COVID test, I believe I expected a smile and a gentle Q-tip swab in my left nostril. I did not expect for the nurse that day to pull out what looked like a 5-foot swab, line it up with my nasal passageway like a billiards player lining up a shot to sink the eight ball, and shove that thing up over my brain and back down to my brain stem, spinning it around all the while like it was attached to an 18-volt battery drill and pull it back out with the strength of a bowhunter pulling back an 80-pound compound bow to take down a bull elk. Wow! Man, oh man, that was intense! She thanked me for my time, and I drove off to keep the drive-through line moving, but I will admit that I had to pull over immediately and wipe my eyes so I could see to drive. I wasn’t crying, but you couldn’t tell! I think pedestrians thought my dog had died or something as they looked on with pity at the man crying on the side of the road in a minivan.

We enjoyed the next few days with Nanny and Papaw as I “quarantined” and worked remotely from their home. My mom decided to spoil the kids a bit and purchased them a few Dr. Suess books. One of the books that she just so happened to pick up was “Hop on Pop.” “Hey, mom,” I said in my most somber tone. “I’m about to be gutted. The nephrologist is going to cut my kidney out with cauterizing scissors, drop it into a minnow net, pull it back out just below my belly button, and you just bought my kids, Hop. On. Pop?” Extra emphasis added for dramatic effect. We all had a good laugh, but I did keep that book away from my kids until after I had healed.

We made arrangements with Julia’s parents to get the kids back to New Mexico on Sunday afternoon after our three-day mini vacation. Mom and Dad Andrews jumped in my car from New Mexico and headed north while we loaded up the kids in the minivan and headed south. We met up at a Chevron station on the New Mexico side of Raton Pass, cried a bit, hugged each other, swapped vehicles, and headed back from where we had each come from. Watching my in-laws head south in our minivan with our four kids while my pregnant wife and I turned and headed north and ultimately into the surgery was a pretty difficult moment. This would be a great place to insert a deep spiritual take-away, but I don’t have one. Sometimes life is just hard. Sometimes the journey we are on can’t be labeled like the various stops along the way in Pilgrims Progress. Sometimes it’s simply hard, and you cry for a bit, but you keep pressing on, and perhaps, that’s okay.

Julia and I were headed back north, and I had until 6 pm to enjoy dinner as I needed to fast for the 12 hours immediately prior to my surgery. We pulled into Texas Roadhouse in Pueblo Colorado, only to learn that the socially distanced COVID-induced wait was in excess of two hours. Insert shaking head emoji here. We jumped back in my car and called ahead to 8th street Texas Roadhouse on the south side of Colorado Springs, they also had an incredibly long wait, but we were on the road and making progress toward Denver while we waited instead of sitting in a parking lot doing nothing still 4 hours from where we would sleep that night.

Now, I don’t need an excuse to eat a good steak, but I do need a nudge to push myself north of the Ribeye or New York Strip price point, and I happened to be fitted with just the right excuse that night. As we took our seats just prior to 6 pm, I endured no guilt in ordering and completely finishing my medium-rare Porterhouse with an entire onion sautéed and served over-top. On the rare chance that this was going to be my last dinner, I was determined to enjoy it, and enjoy it, I did.

Common Grace

A few of my favorite aspects of creation are the common graces all around us extended to believers and non-believers alike. The smell of a pine 2x4 on a chop saw, fresh-cut grass, the azure blue of the Colorado sky, the scented medley of dry brown dirt and pine sap in the high Colorado forest, the sweet smell of diesel exhaust on a cold sub-zero morning, and on this night, sweet onions sautéed in butter and poured over a salted Porterhouse steak. You don’t have to be a Christian to enjoy these graces. You don’t even have to be living a good or acceptable life in the eyes of God or your fellow man. These and millions of other wonderful graces are available to our five senses and freely given to all of creation. Those among us who are afflicted or deprived of some of their senses are still given multiple ways to enjoy creation and to experience happiness as a result of something in our created world. The joy of these graces in Christianity is that we are surrounded by tangible opportunities to lift praise back to the Creator in worship and thanksgiving.

A bit of a side note here, but I like to take advantage of the less enjoyable aspects of creation for worship as well. This is a purely selfish part of my past, but I am willing to let this audience in on my former schemes. My wife and I spent a few years in Northwest Indiana, just south of Chicago. Our outreach ministry at that time was to the Navy personnel at Great Lakes Naval Base. Now, I know some readers here may live in Montana or Alaska or possibly Canada or even Northeast Russia, but for this Colorado-raised country boy, the Great Lakes wind was about as cold as anything I have ever experienced. We would experience ice storms that would add 1/4 to 1/2 inch of ice to everything. Tree branches and entire trees would fall. Power lines would break under the ice load, and breathing was like taking a razor blade to your lungs. The ambient temperature might only be -15º, but wind chills in excess of -30º were simply miserable. In those times, I would lean into my misery and the extreme cold, and I would praise God for his awesome power in sending ice and wind the way that he would. This climate also had incredibly hot and humid summer days, and I would praise him bundled up trying to keep from shivering for the contrast between seasons. I was always amazed at how many days we could go with no sunshine peeking through the ever-grey sky. Coming from a state that boasted no less than 300 days of sunshine per year, I was in awe of months on end with nothing but grey and never seeing the sun. I had never seen so many different shades of grey. No pun intended.

My doctrinally errant scheme here was that if I were surrounded by hundreds of thousands of voices that were complaining and grumbling about the condition of creation, my small voice of praise and adoration would surely be heard loud and clear. In my mind, I would have a prime opportunity to have an audience with the Creator who magnificently created the terrible events that we were enduring. I understand now that the theology in that scheme was highly bone-headed and shouldn’t be taught, but I do have a few take-aways that can be shared with this audience and applied today:

• Praise and adoration to the Creator for his creation are never a bad idea.

• Living in a spirit of praise and adoration in all things does amazing things for your spirit.

• It is no wonder that we are commanded to thank God always and for all things. Primarily, he deserves it, and he is worthy, but it is also an incredibly wonderful posture to live in as a child of God.

All that to say, I had a choice that night to either obsess over my impending surgery or fully give myself to enjoying a Porterhouse and the company of my wife, and in those common graces, worship our Creator. I chose the latter.

SEO Type jargon. Move along ... Hello, and welcome to my not a blog blog! So, I wrote a book, and I want the message of that book to get out regardless of whether or not anyone buys a copy of the book. A blog, so I hear, is a great way to take advantage of SEO and make sure that people who WANT to find content that my book covers will have a clear path to it’s happy little home in the Amazon marketplace and should then be able to walk away with a hard copy, kindle version, or Audible copy of said book. To that end, I will be releasing sneak previews and portions to each chapter over the next several weeks. Can I buy the book today? No, sorry. While it is completed, edited, and proofed, the audio version is currently being recorded by a guy with a much better voice than my own. I have no idea what I am doing in publishing, but I think I want to release it all at once. How did you get your book on Amazon? Well, I am a brilliant author, but I also used Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) that allows me to manage and upload my own manuscript(s), audio, and artwork. So what is the book about? Sovereign and Gentle is a window into my happy little family for those of you who don’t know us as well as a deeper look for those who do. The book will even be informative to some of my closest friends, as I don’t talk about much of this content often. The book opens with the prospect of either Julia or myself donating a Kidney, follows that painful journey, and then backtracks to cover some of our struggles with infertility, multiple miscarriages, foster care, and adoption. I even sprinkled in some real estate investing horror stories for you guys. The story is framed by key passages from Scripture that have been especially meaningful to me, and the climax of the book seeks to honor and praise God, who has gifted us in all things to be able to serve him in and through our struggles. Did I discuss the big church from college days that laid me off on multiple occasions and kicked us out of a house after the pastor went up the river? I did, and I don’t think I’m bitter… I think... I’m a work in progress there, but I hope that I framed that experience in such a manner that others who have been beaten up by institutions can find comfort in the one who is sovereign over all things and in His ultimate plan.