Protection from the Pressures
April 1, 1997
One night after one of my typical, eighteen-hour days of ministry, as we were retiring to bed, my wife announced to me in a calm yet firm voice, "I've decided to go home to my mother."
I began to panic as I saw my relationship with my sweetheart disintegrating, along with the ministry I had worked so hard to develop. As we prayed and cried and talked, what came out was my gross insensitivity to my wife. I had fallen into an overcommitted life. As our ministry in the inner city of Chicago had taken off, I had found myself pulled in a thousand directions. Without my realizing it, the stress on my relationship with Cynthia had risen to a danger point.
What happened?
As a black man growing up in inner-city Chicago, it was branded into my mind that the only way to escape the violence and crime of the ghetto was to work harder than the next person. This work ethic was modeled by my godly grandfather, who worked for over fifty years to raise six children through the Depression, and my mother, who, as a single parent, raised two boys in the midst of great pressure and pain.
As I moved through adolescence, the tendency to value work above all was reinforced through athletics. One thing that motivated me in sports was what I used to call the "dirty sock syndrome." The more macho a football player was, the dirtier he would get during practice and the more times he would keep his socks on. Dirty socks symbolized effort. As a senior, even though I was an undersized, 170-pound offensive lineman and middle linebacker, I was voted one of the best players in Chicago. That reinforced this subtle tendency toward workaholism.
The tendency increased once I became a Christian through a parachurch ministry that equated spirituality with working ...
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