Digging Out of My Financial Winter
THE WINTER OF 1979 took a chunk out of my soul. My wife, two sons, and I were living in the Chicago suburb of Evanston where I was attempting to pioneer a church from scratch. On New Years Eve several feet of snow fell; for a day or two the streets were impassable. We lived in an apartment with no garage and parked our '73 Plymouth Fury on the street. The snowplows finally came through, but they piled a high ridge of snow against the cars parked along the curb. I had to shovel for two hours to get my car out. But that was only the beginning. When I returned from my errand to the grocery store, someone else had pulled into the spot I had cleared and I had to shovel to get my car into another unplowed space. For three months, almost every time I came or went in my car, I had to shovel more snow. The already limited street parking became even more scarce, and I would often have to park several blocks from our apartment. And the snow kept falling. It came in wave upon wave, interspersed with subzero blasts of arctic air. It seemed winter would never end. Of course through all this I was trying to pioneer a church by canvassing door to door. For two months I could do precious little of that, and my church-planting effort ended in futility. I have never forgotten how bad weather can complicate what you are trying to do. Money pressures can be like that. For much of my twenty-two years in ministry my financial situation has resembled a Chicago winter. Usually I try to ignore the weather, but even then it influences my mood and my activities. As much as I have tried to ignore money, it influences everything: when I have enough, my life feels like a crisp autumn day filled with sunshine; when I don't, it is like a cold front hammering ...
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