I want to share my story in relationship to what happens in a family when a tragedy takes place.  There are a lot of responses you get when you go through a tragedy.  Most of us have been through something in our life that we would call a difficulty, a family tragedy or a problem.  There are a lot of answers – I have people say, “Well, if you would just…” and then they give me their answer.  Or, they make comments like, “You know, God is just punishing you for something or you are getting what you deserve.”  

Yet, there are words that are comforting.  “I feel sorry for you. I am sorry for what you are experiencing.”  Sometimes there are words that are encouraging.  “You will make it; life’s tough but God will see you through.”  “I’ve been right where you are and I understand.”  (I heard that more than I ever dreamed I would.)  Then there always are those who will say, “Let me tell you what to do.” 

My continual question to myself was, “God, what are you trying to teach me about life?  What is there that I have not learned?” I want to tell you that I am learning. I want to stand before you and say very clearly that I have not learned all of life’s lessons.  I’m still learning.  I’m not sure if I have or have not learned what I needed to learn but I always want to leave room for God to do whatever He needs to do in the process of making me Christ-like.  I don’t have all the answers. I’m still a learner. 

Let me share with you what God has taught me through this journey with our daughter Susan’s abuse of drugs.  I only share with you what God has taught me specifically. 

First, we cannot be quick to judge others.  The scripture is so clear – “do not judge others but with the judgment you judge others, you shall be judged.”  Don’t be quick to make decisions about other people’s lives.  There is an old Indian saying that says: “Do not judge someone until you walk a mile in his moccasins.”   

The second thing I learned is I am not expert in raising kids although I have worked with college students most of my ministry and I have three grown children.  I am not an expert.  If you want to find out how to be an expert parent you have to go to somebody who hasn’t had kids yet.  

Thirdly, every child is different. You may have two kids who have no problems and you may have another one who has lots of problems.  You may have five kids and three of them that are just angels; one of them is a devil; and the other you haven’t figured out what they are.  Every child is made different because everyone of us is different. 

Fourthly, every family is different.  I have had people say to me, “Oh, my family has never had any problems like that.”  That’s because it’s your family.  Your family is not my family and my family is not your family.  All families are as different as people are different.  We bring dynamics into our family from all kinds of situations, difficulties and backgrounds because none of us are the same.  Every family is made different and we have to understand that in our approach to life. 

Fifthly, we need to learn to recognize the substance of anxiety and depression.  Now why do I say that?  My wife Sandy and I teach a conference for pastors and their spouses called Fresh Start.    Right in the middle of all that we were going through somebody called me and said, “I want you to come talk to pastors who are having problems.”  I thought, man, how could I do that because I have more problems than the average pastor.  I’m going through it myself.  But I found out that God uses people like that. 

I’ll be honest with you.  At this time I didn’t recognize the symptoms of depression I was having.  I do not think most Christians understand depression; we try to make it all spiritual and it’s not.  I knew all the truths of the scripture about the flesh and the Spirit.  I knew how to walk in the Spirit. I knew all the answers. I have been preaching for years and years.  Yet, I will never forget when that youth pastor called me and told me what was going on relative to our daughter Susan using drugs.  Sandy and I confronted Susan and found out she was using drugs.  

We called Scott Haddon who is one of the best counselors we know.  He was living in Denver at the time.  Scott has been to our church a number of times.  We sent Susan to Scott for a week.  She lived in Scott’s home.  He tried to work with her for that week. Scott did send her to a psychiatrist, a Christian man.  The description that we received was basically that Susan was self-medicating for depression.  He said she needed to get to a psychiatrist at home for medication.  He also recommended spiritual counseling and help. He asked a lot of questions of Susan about our family. 

Susan came home and said, “Dad, the psychiatrist said you are depressed, too, and you need to see a psychiatrist.”  I’ll be honest with you--if it had not been for my daughter and what she was going through I probably would not have done that.  But I have a lot of faith and trust in Scott Haddon and the people he trusts.  So, I began to look at myself.  I realized something was wrong. 

I telephoned a psychiatrist out of the clear blue.  I did not know him. I walked into his office.  For one hour and 40 minutes I explained to him what was going on in my life, my daughter’s life, my wife’s life and our family’s life.  He said, “It is my opinion from what you are sharing with me that you are in serious clinical depression.”  He handed me some medication and said, “I want you to take this before you leave.” I know some Christians are anti-medication and I’m sorry because that attitude keeps some people from getting victory.  If you have diabetes and you need insulin I’m the last person who is going to say to you, “If you had faith you could quit taking your insulin.”  If you have epilepsy and you are taking medication for it, I would be a fool to tell you to quit taking it because there are things that happen inside your brain that most of us don’t understand.   I was deeply, deeply, deeply depressed and I needed medication.   

I remember coming to the church for a meeting with our stewardship team.  I sat at that meeting with seven men that night. I was so depressed; I was so discouraged; I was fighting back tears. I finally told the guys,  “Guys, it’s not for publication but I’ve got to share with somebody. I am deeply depressed. I’ve seen a psychiatrist. I’m on medication.”  As they looked at me I didn’t know whether they would fire me or suggest that I resign. They looked at me and said, “Dennis, what are you doing here?  Go home and be with your family.”  Those of you who were in that meeting have no idea what that meant to me.  I felt support, love and encouragement.  I am eternally grateful you.  You do not even know you did anything for me during that period of time.   

The psychiatrist said I needed exercise. Marty Einstein challenged me to lift weights with him. The whole time I was lifting with Marty I was on medication.  God brought me through this awful time with medication, Marty, exercise and with the power of the Holy Spirit, all combined. 

I didn’t recognize depression in my daughter.  I didn’t recognize depression in myself.  Teenagers express depression by acting out.  They use drugs, they fight their parents, they scream and yell at people.  Many teenagers who are in trouble today are people who are depressed and need help. They don’t sit around and cry; they act out.  Women often cry when they are depressed.  Men get angry.  Some men are angry all the time and mask the depression with anger.   

I was a lousy pastor during that period of time.  Some of you remember that.  I didn’t give leadership to this church.  I barely got through one day to the next.  Every Sunday I would come and sit on this front row with the expectation, the anticipation and the planning to get up in this pulpit and resign and leave the ministry and never preach, never teach, never do anything in ministry ever again.  That was my goal – every Sunday for almost two years.  I didn’t go to the door and shake hands many Sundays, not because I didn’t like you but because I didn’t like myself very well. I was that depressed.  Most of you didn’t know it.  I’m good at masking things. I could mask it on Sunday morning but when I got home on Sunday afternoon I found all I wanted to do was sleep.  That was my only escape.   

There are other lessons I have learned through this process.  The sixth is that we are not perfect and never will be.  We are not perfect parents, perfect partners, or perfect children. I’ll tell you one thing that God has had to teach me.  I couldn’t be a perfect parent.  You know how you get to be a perfect parent – that is when you have perfect kids.  None of us are perfect; we all make mistakes. 

Seventh, I found out that growing a church and a business is not as important as growing a family.  I need to apologize to my family this morning because I neglected them often because of the ministry and it’s wrong. 

Eight is tough for all of us.  Our children have a free will and will exercise it.  They will make wrong choices.  All of us have a free will.  All of you can choose to do wrong and most of us do. 

Number nine is important because it is so easy to violate.   We should not beat up on our mate, children or ourselves when things don’t go well.  We have a tendency to want to find somebody to blame everything on.  It’s got to be your fault, you must have done something wrong, you caused this.  Let me share with you that one of the things that we cannot do, and the reason I got up to resign every Sunday is because I was a failure as a parent.  I felt that way. I was a failure as a pastor.  I would stand up and preach and the scripture would go through my head, “If you cannot manage your own family, you cannot manage the church.” I struggled and wrestled with that every day for at least two years.  I wanted to quit. I knew I should quit. I had to resign.  I got relief one day when someone shared with me, “the answer to the question is not whether your family is perfect; the verse says ‘manage’.” 

The tenth lesson I learned is that it is tough being a preacher’s kid.  All three of my children and any of you who are preacher’s kids will attest to that fact.  It’s hard being a preacher’s kid.  There’s an expectation that is there. 

The eleventh lesson is key: we must find someone we can talk to about our problems.  I share with the pastors when Sandy and I teach.  Almost all of the pastors that come to our Fresh Start conferences, when we ask then to name one, two, three, four or five people they can go to, most of them will say they have absolutely no one they can talk to about their problems.  Most pastors are afraid that the moment they share they will be fired before the next Sunday.   

I know that because I am in contact with a group called “You’re Not Alone.”  It is pastors who are connected across this country because their children are on drugs.  Seventeen percent of pastors at this very moment as I stand here this morning have this or have had it in their families. Only 25% of those ever get any help because they have no one to turn to for fear of losing their jobs.  I can show you testimony after testimony where pastors are bitter and angry at the church because the minute they shared that their child was going through a problem they were dismissed from that church immediately.  I thank you for extending grace to my family and me.   

Twelfth is that we have to “weigh our advisors not count them.”  Some times advice is good and sometimes advice stinks.   I got some good counsel while I was going through what we were going through but I also got some bad counsel.  I had some people who told me, “keep this quiet; don’t talk to anybody.”  For a while I did but I discovered that this is dysfunction and does not help.  Three signs of dysfunction in a family are: don’t feel anything, don’t talk about the issue and don’t trust anybody.   

The advice from my psychiatrist was such simple but helpful advice.  He said, “Dennis, you need to do some of those things that you used to enjoy doing that are not work.”  I used to go fishing.  I used to play golf.  There were a lot of things I used to do and I quit doing all those things.  I was too depressed.  I started doing them again.  Secondly, he said, “Once a month you need to do something new.”  That’s why I started pumping weights.  It was something new, something I had never done.  Then he said, “Have an ongoing project that you spend at least 15 minutes a day doing.”  Those of you who have been in my house know that I remodeled my garage.  I remodeled it, three years ago, when I needed to do something 15 minutes a day.  I’d go out and drive a couple of nails and put up a couple two by fours and lay some sheetrock.  That was my project for each day and it helped get me through the tough days. 

Thirteen was one I should have known but of which I had to be reminded.  Jesus still loves me even when I am depressed, defeated and failing.  Oh my goodness, I needed to hear that over and over and over.  Susan comments that we never quit loving her when she was using drugs.  This is because I knew that God never quit loving me when I was feeling depressed, discouraged and defeated. 

Number fourteen is that we will fail.  That’s why I say I’m still learning because I don’t know when I will fail again. 

Fifteenth is that it is good to trust God.  If I had anything that God kept bringing back to me over and over and over and over was, “ trust Me, trust Me.” I’ll tell you that was the last thing I could do at that time.  I didn’t trust God.  In fact, I preached a series of sermons series where I talked about the difference between faith and trust.  That series was the result of what God was teaching me, that I had to trust Him again.  I didn’t trust God.  I remember when why children were born.  The first thing my wife and I did was pray, “Okay, God, they’re Yours.”  And I’ll tell you in my heart and my mind, I thought God messed up really bad and I had to learn to trust Him all over again. 

The sixteenth lesson in this whole journey is so self-explanatory.  Prayer makes a difference.  I want to thank you for your prayers, not only for Susan but for my entire family.  Many of you said, “We are praying for you.”  Many of you had no idea what we were experiencing, still don’t understand it, and you may never and that’s okay. That lack of awareness of the situation does not negate the power of your prayers.   And I’m going to tell you in any situation prayer makes a difference.  I cannot tell you the number of nights, 1:30 in the morning, 2:00 in the morning we would wake up, discover Susan was not home.  Many nights we never went back to bed, sometimes lying awake for hours in tears.  The only relief I found during that time was just to pray.  Also, I had many of you tell me that you were praying for our family.  Thank you, because your prayers made the difference. 

The seventeenth lesson is that God is never wrong.  There’s another side to that and that is that God is always right.  He does the right thing.  I don’t always understand God’s ways.  His ways are not my ways.  But I want to tell you God always does the right thing.  That is why He is God.  God provides for and protects us when we don’t even understand that He is providing and protecting.  I will never forget a prayer meeting.  It was at the Phoenix pastors’ prayer summit somewhere in the mountains.  I don’t even know where we were because I just barely functional.  When I got there I remember meeting with that group of pastors and sharing with them what was going on.  One of the pastors got up because he couldn’t even stay in the room.  He just went in the back room and you could hear him sobbing his burden for what was going on in my family. I’ll never forget that young man.  I don’t know where he is today but I will never forget his saying to me, “God has just given me a word.  God has told me that your daughter is going to make it but she will be shaken.”   

Now my thought of “shaken” was that she is going to go through some difficult times.  But for Susan it was physically shaking for ten hours.  I will never forget what that pastor said to me.  That was encouragement.  I knew that God was protecting and providing.  God gives direction.  You pray a lot when you are in situations like this.  “God show me what I need to do, where do I need to go.”  God helps take away the fear in our lives.  Sometimes I would get so fearful I just thought life was over.  I knew about 4:00 a.m. that my daughter was probably dead somewhere. I did not know where she was.  Sometimes it was two or three days when we didn’t even see her.  Yet, God is worthy of blessing.  The scripture says: “Bless the Lord, O, my soul and all that is within me.”  Many times we don’t feel like blessing God but God says bless Him anyhow.  God brings ultimate victory.  We have no place to go and no one except God to whom we can say, “Thank you, Lord.” 

Lastly, God deals with us in mercy and grace.  Thank God for that -- mercy and grace.  He withholds from us that which we really deserve and He gives to us that which is divine enablement.  We all need God’s hand, mercy and grace.  We all need a touch from the Lord every day.  Jesus reminded me in the scripture that those who are well do not need a physician, only those who are sick.  He was trying to tell a group of Pharisees, “if you realize you are sick you would probably get well a lot quicker.”  We have incredible need today for God’s healing hand upon our marriages, our families, and our personal well-being.  I do not believe the church will get well until the church gets honest.  It does not help not to talk, not feel and not trust.  We need one another and we need the Lord desperately.