“What do we have to do to get you to stay?” asked Nick DeAnte, sitting in a chair across from my desk. If there was ever a person who was put together in appearance, but disheveled in spirit; it was Nick. He wore pressed black slacks and a neat, tan, company-logoed shirt. He couldn’t have been over thirty, but he held the burdens of a man who had been overworked well into his fifties.
This was the moment I’d been waiting for. When I got out of the military three years ago, I set a personal goal to have a job making six figures by the time I was forty. I was thirty-two years old and one response away from being eight years ahead of schedule.
I flashed back to two weeks ago. As I was sitting at my work desk, I peered over to the bottom right-hand corner of one of my three computer monitors to see the time was 6:30 p.m. “If I leave now, I’ll get to see the kids for a half hour before they go to bed. If I stay an extra half hour, I won’t have to deal with the bed time routine and I’ll have everything ready for tomorrow morning’s meeting. Who am I kidding? I have to stay.” I called Stacy to let her know that it was going to be another late night. I wish I could say she was surprised by my phone call, but late nights, working once I got home, and going in on the weekend had become more of the expectation and less of the exception.
After I hung up the phone, I stared blankly at my computer screen. “What am I doing?” I asked myself before putting my head in my hands a letting out a long exhale. Contemplating how I was going to get two hours of work done in a half hours’, time I remembered a quote I heard in business school that motivated me so many years ago, “You can have any one thing if you’re willing to sacrifice everything.” Too exhausted to be upset, I picked my head up from my hands and continued on my project status updates.
No one has ever accused me of not being motivated or driven. One of the reasons why I got out of the military was because there were too many barriers to career progression. In the Air Force, you can have a business degree and be the best aircraft maintenance manager on the facility, you can have plans for saving the military thousands of dollars, you can work 80 hours a week and execute strategies that enhance productivity by 200%. But if you don’t have enough time at your current rank, you’re not getting promoted. The bottom line was there was no incentive for competition, and I wanted to compete. I wanted to be free to go into the work force, outperform everybody, and get compensated accordingly.
Sitting across from Nick, I was reminded of why I had decided to quit my job one week prior. After breaking down at work, calling Stacy to tell her I was going to quit that day, then meeting with her to discuss how we would get by if I didn’t have a job, I realized I had been sacrificing everything. In my efforts to work my way to the top of the corporate ladder, I sacrificed the quality time with my wife that we both so desperately need. I sacrificed not only the time with my children, but the energy required to go home and give them the attention they need. And, what hurt the most, I sacrificed time with my savior, Jesus Christ. It was time to answer the call.
About two years ago I felt a call to full time ministry. I can remember a conversation with a friend of mine who asked me, “If you never had to worry about money again, what would you do?” To which I responded, “I’d preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.” My heart was convicted that serving the Kingdom of God in a pastoral capacity was exactly where God wanted me to be. The only question was how?
Before my professional career took off in a skyward trajectory, I was very involved in my church. I would go in every Sunday morning and help the tech team set up. I was eagerly moving through our church elder training program, I was leading a weekly community group, and filling in to preach for our pastor from time to time. I was joyful and appreciative of these opportunities to serve. Not that it was at all about me and what I could do, but that it was all about how God used each of these things to grow my relationship with Him. However, as promotions came and the demands of my job began to increase, I slowly backed away from each of these blessings one by one until my only connection with the Lord outside of Sunday mornings was listening to the Bible on my one hour commute to work, prayer, and hosting a “weekly” community group which we regularly canceled due to my late nights at the office.
Although it was obvious that I was slipping away from my church involvement, we never stopped praying. For two years we prayed. Stacy and I prayed, my pastor prayed, our community group prayed, we all tried to think of different ways to make this transition happen, but the question of “how” went unresolved. How? How could we take such a dramatic drop in our income? How were we going to pay our mortgage? Our health insurance? Our retirement investments? How could we possibly get by without our primary means of income? How?
In His perfect timing, it took two years to realize the “How” was by faith. The “how” was trusting that so long as we are faithful to follow God’s calling, He will be faithful to provide for us.
“Nick, I’m humbled that you would even ask for me to stay, but I have to follow this dream.” I responded with a smile.
“I know, but I had to ask.” Nick said, nodding his head in agreement.
I told Nick I was following a dream, but to be more accurate, I’m following a belief and a calling. My belief is that I don’t have to sacrifice everything to have any one thing, because everything has already been sacrificed so that I may have the only thing I need: a Savior. When God sent his Son from the kingdom of heaven, He sent everything to be sacrificed so that those who had earned nothing could have the one thing they need: salvation. With 100% of my heart I believe this. I understand that I have a responsibility as a Christian man, a husband, and a father to provide for my family, but what is required of me is not just financial provision. It is infinitely more important that I provide for my family spiritually and emotionally, than it will ever be for me to provide for them financially. I would rather leave to my family the faith in and acknowledgement of Jesus Christ than I would a million dollar inheritance. My calling is to be in full time ministry, and I believe that in my pursuit to serve God first, then provide for my family in spirit and in faith, God will provide the rest.
That isn’t my only belief. Just as I am strongly called to be in Christian Ministry, I am equally called to support my wife in her passion for professional photography. I believe that Stacy has a heart and God-given talent for developing client relationships, capturing irreplaceable moments, and being a part of the love that one family shares, starting from the day a couple’s love is first discovered, and going on until they are a family of four. My hope is that now that we’re a team, our passion for the family unit will be clear to all our clients and friends. Because ultimately, the “Love Multiplied” brand is rooted in our belief that as a family grows their love is not divided among the people in that family, but multiplied to a love greater than they’ve ever known. Just as there are no limits to the love God has for His children, neither are there limits to the love that can grow within a family.
So here I am, stepping out in faith in the pursuit of my calling in the ministry, ready to start this husband and wife adventure as co-owner of Stacy Hart Photography, and living every day thankful that I didn’t lose everything pursuing the one thing that wasn’t worth anything.
God Bless,
Steve
+ COMMENTS
add a comment