Seven years ago my wife and children left their life in Orlando, Florida and followed me to an abandoned, post-Katrina, New Orleans, Louisiana because I told them God wanted me there.
I promise I wasn’t sure! That’s right, I was absolutely uncertain! I was simply trusting that what I was feeling was right. So we came. We all came.
I came because I trusted God. But they… … they came because they trusted me.
The house in Orlando stayed on the market for over a year. The work I was called to was ending and I began questioning God. As I questioned, I realized that there was another conversation going on within myself. It was a conversation with my wife and children. I began to pay close attention to this conversation and here’s what I found.
It was harder for me to face my wife and kids than it was for me to face God. If they suffered, it was my fault. If it failed, it was my fault; and then I realized that leading your family is like a woman carrying a baby in her womb. The baby can only get what you give it and can only go where you go. The health and success of the baby is primarily based on what you do. So, at best I felt pregnant for every year I lead my family and had all the emotional experiences of labor – this pain could have killed me!
Left up to myself, I would have probably quit, but looking my wife in the eye and watching my children play in the yard: I knew I had to make it all work. So I did! I did because they trusted me and when trust became questionable, they continued to trust me. That’s leadership! That’s manhood! That’s a husband! That’s a father! And that’s what we do!
We recognize that the ones that follow us make the greater sacrifice. So we lead while we bleed and we fight while we fall. It’s not in the bleeding or the falling that our families lose their trust in us; It’s only when we quit!
The truth of it man, is that no one will ever really understand what we go through and how we feel. But we know how we feel and we know how deep inside of each of us is this “little something” that makes us MEN!
God has immeasurably blessed my family through me in every way imaginable and it has been incredible for all of us. But remember, all I did – was not Quit!
What will you do? How will you lead? Who will you trust? Take responsibility for the things you know you love and the rest will come to you, man.