Fate, Fluke or Faith?

Do you ever think about how things came about in your life? About how different they might have been had one decision been different.  Is there a set path in our genes to be followed or as I was taught, to find the will of God for your life, as if there was a specific plan.  Back then I feared that in failing to find that plan it would be like a NASA launch to the moon that was a hair off and I would be floating around in space forever, unfulfilled and forever an embarrassment to family, God and country. 

My mom almost named me Michael Patrick Malloy, or reverting to the original spelling, Michael Patrick O’Molloy.  Sound pretty Catholic, even priestly.  My Molloy ancestors did leave Ireland in the late 1700s to escape religious persecution as Catholics.  Was I intended to just come full circle? 

I had switched from a civil engineering major as a junior in college to psychology.  Partly because I’d worked two summer for the Corps of Engineers without relish.  I’d also felt ‘a call’ which was the language of the day.  It was a leaning toward service, or ministry but not the pulpit.  So I went on the grad school to seminary and then UTA getting two master degrees hoping to start a social work somewhere while being on a church staff as minister of education. But while in grad school a social ministry had started up in Nashville in 1973 driven by their dedication to pro-life.

After seeing an article about them in a denominational magazine, I had made an initial contact by mail so on our first trip east of the Mississippi, we arranged to meet the director.  This was a camping trip…all we could afford.  We went all the way to Smokey Mountain National Park…in our tent.  All our gear was packed in our two-door 69’ Mustang Grande—red.  Loved that car.  Our first night in Nashville was at a campsite at a KOA campground with our backs to Briley Parkway.  The agency was small so their offering was a half time position at a whopping salary of $5000.  Back in Texas we debated the possibilities and decided it might be worth me making another trip to Nashville looking for another half-time position.  At the time, Jeannie was making nearly $15,000 at Bell Helicopter there in Fort Worth. 

The director, Jack Jamison, offered to let me stay with them sharing his son’s bedroom.  I beat the pavement for two or three days but to no avail.  When I finally called home the third night she was not happy that I’d not called earlier but I’d had no good news to share.  I was crouched down in Jamison’s kitchen trying to quietly talk on their phone.  When I hung up Jack came in and sat down having heard part of my conversation.  

He said that he was not the guy that stayed anywhere for long and that he was looking for a young guy to groom for his position down the line five years or so.  Also, they were wanting to open a branch in Memphis associated with a church there.  I could be on their staff and begin the social work…just what I’d envisioned years earlier. But before that came to fruition the pastor in Memphis moved on up the ladder to a position in Kansas City, Rome for the Nazarenes. Back to square one.

Somehow Millard Reed got wind of all this, tracked me down and offered a half-time position as Outreach Pastor at First Nazarene, primarily Shade-tree.  Adrian Jones had begun Shade-tree in the public housing projects that surrounded the church.  Volunteers held weekday ‘Sunday school’ under the trees in the projects.  Many of the single moms considered First Nazarene their church even though they’d never darkened the door.  So, for a total salary of several thousand less that what Jeannie was making, we moved.  Financially it made no sense but it was a lessen that dollars are not the only reason to make moves. 

We found ourselves on the staff of a much larger church than we’d even known, referring to themselves as the mother-church of the south (I learned later that other Nazarene churches resented that language in that they were not ‘planted’ by mother). We found, at least initially, southern middle Tennessee hospitality was not as open, as warm as Texas style. We missed our good friends back in Texas to the point of tears during the first few months…especially when it was many weeks before we ever got an invitation to anyone’s home.  

The director of the non-profit, Jack, and his wife Roma attended first Naz but they came late, sat in the far back and left early.  Although I never asked I think it was because therapists are unsettling, dangerous people.  They know too much which can be perceived as threatening to those who have sat with them in their professional office.  I saw that first hand after nearly two decades.  I knew the back stories of individuals as the choir entered the loft, as the congregation took their seats.  Professionally taking a vow of confidentiality, nothing was ever said.  I would not even recognize someone first out of concern that others would think they were a client.  It can be a lonely position to be in.  In this field of practice, you see the realities of all our lives with the struggles and brokenness…but we all wear masks to church.  It can be unsettling when we’ve dropped the mask before a counselor/therapist, even if the counselor is only a reminder of our momentary troubles or ‘sin’.

Unbeknownst to me, Jack had allowed a zealous young couple to come under the umbrella of the agency to start a group home for boys.  They had no front monies, experience or grad degrees…just enthusiasm.

I was ‘director of social services’ but they did not report to me. The couple and I were close in age so I was ‘Johnny come lately’ from a distant land. They started taking boys into their own home with the only income being the payments from the Department of Human Services.  It floundered from the start.  In distress we rented an old two story frame house on Ordway in East Nashville.  The home had partially burnt and in hast they’d paneled over the walls.  The house had ten foot ceilings with wall heaters.  The winter of 1976-77 in Nashville was miserable.  It snowed shortly after Christmas and stayed on the ground for weeks.  Jeannie and I  thought again we’d made a bad move to Siberia.  The couple quit.  We got a single guy as a house parent but to give him some relief on weekends Jeannie and I would be weekend houseparents.  Recalling one particular weekend, we were expecting our first daughter in early March, so Jeannie was ‘great with child’.  The kitchen pipes had frozen at the house so as she cooked I washed dishes in the bathtub.  The wall heaters gave off so little heat the guys were wearing winter coats all day.  It was a disaster.  

Again, never actually talking about it, Jack offered his resignation that summer only two years after our conversation in his kitchen.  I believe it was the stress of the group home that moved up the date. There I was ‘crown prince’ and was offered his position at twenty-eight years old.  First order was closing the group home…it was a case of the tail waging the dog money wise.  It never reached financial viability and was killing all morale.  

From there it was history.  I stayed another eighteen years.  When we moved from Texas the budget was around $75,000.  It was half a million when I left.  We’d done some really great things during those years. Some disagreed and after we left, due to poor decisions the agency closed four years later. 

I say ALL this to question, are our lives just matters of fate?  Was it a fluke that I saw the story about this place in Nashville? That we camped our way east in our Mustang?  What about faith?  

It many be all three…I’m going with faith primarily.  Even though we find along the way that so much of God is mystery…yet in His unpredictability He is faithful…sounds crazy though doesn’t it?

There is through it all a thread…a strong, golden thread.  And often we don’t see the shine, the glow of the gold until we are looking back.  Perspective is so much of it, the longer view.  And from that long view I also learned that what were stupid, bad decisions have a way of being folded into all of it for the good.  Like moving for only the money, making stupid decisions that turn out ok doesn’t make much sense either.

And that my friends is exactly the mystery of faith.  Life so often, I’m sure you’ve found out, does not make sense.  And it’s in those moments we’re drawn if not yanked out of our heads into our hearts, where the abundance of living really lies.

And mystery surrounds it all.