Category: Personal

Watch this:

The title of this post is a mite more exciting than the contents. It’s a bit of personal reflection on my own life and business.

It’s just over 10 years since I started Energion Publications. In fact, I was rather surprised, when I looked at the first book we released, to see that it has a copyright date of 2004. We had one book before that, but it was one we bought out as we started the company.

When we started Energion Publications, I was earning my living by managing small networks, with an occasional sideline in custom software development. I kept that business while I built up the publishing operation. It was an absolutely necessary part of the program. Starting a new publishing company ten years ago, and surviving the past 10 years, required some source of additional income.

But my goal throughout was to be able to drop the computer work and work full time as a publisher. I kept thinking that the publishing business should be not just self-supporting; it should be able to support me as well. There are some quite good reasons to desire that result. If I just take the last two days, I had over 8 hours of my time taken away from urgent work meeting publishing deadlines. These were things that couldn’t have waited. One involved a power outage and a nearby lightning strike (only one small part actually had to be replaced), and the other a software vendor who provided incorrect license numbers with a software upgrade, thus effectively shutting down an entire office. Both could be fixed. But they came at a very bad time for me.

As an aside, you may ask, why am I blogging if I’m so far behind on work? There are two reasons. 1) I can’t actually work as many hours as I’d like to on book production. A moment comes when the brain says, “Enough!” and I have to take a break. On the other hand, doing a bit of blogging is one of my forms of relaxation, so I can do it as prevention. 2) We sell more books when my wife and I blog. I haven’t quite figured this one out, and it may just be correlation without causation, but more likely it has to do with total web traffic. More people read this blog than read our company blog. It took me a bit to see blogging as anything other than fun, and I still refuse to be guided by business needs in my personal blogging, but the fact is that it appears to be useful beyond what I would have imagined. So here I am.

I have also tried to consider the publishing efforts a business. Yes, it does ministry, because it makes Christian materials available. But it’s a business. My behavior isn’t always in tune with that. There are things I publish, not because I think they will make money, but because I think they should be available. I’m an independent publisher. My wife and I can make decisions like that as we need to.

That independence is important. I recall being in a discussion once in which a young pastor hinted at something about ministry from the book of Acts. One of the members of the group told him the idea sounded dangerous. He responded that he wouldn’t say it to the bishop, but it was a possibility he had to raise. I had to jump in to say that I didn’t report to any bishop, so I could say that the verse meant precisely that! At the time it was a joke. Then I got to thinking.

There is a place for independence. There is a place for accountability. Because I have two jobs, I have a certain independence. Because my business is not attached to any denomination I am free to publish what I and those who advise me believe is important. Not things that I (or they) necessarily agree with, but things that should be heard. Again, because I have two jobs, I can consider publishing something that doesn’t appear to have potential to become the next Christian bestseller.

So over the last year there has been a change in the way I think about these two jobs. I no longer look for the time when I will no longer be doing IT work. Rather I consider the IT work as the tentmaking that allows me to pursue the ministry of publishing. Yes, I still run the publishing enterprise as a business. It’s organized on a for-profit basis. I’m not going to start doing fundraising or seeking donations. That’s another thing that I’m freed from by my other business. Sometimes it means I can give books to those who need them.

Is this a form of bi-vocational ministry? I don’t really know what to call it. I just thought I’d reflect in public on why I work the way I do. Jody and I appreciate the prayers, support, work, and the advice of those who have supported us as we work.

September 22 is a difficult day for me and my family. Ten years ago, on September 22, our son/brother James went home. I cannot describe it as anything else. While it left us with a deep sense of loss, there was a certain triumph, and a definite peace about the way James left.

I’ve been pleased to watch the notes on Facebook this year. As always, they remind me of his absence and make me miss them more, but they are also so real. There’s a tendency to make a saint (apart from being “one of the saints”) out of the person who has died. James was wonderful. I really liked him as well as loved him. But his sense of humor and his mischief are such a strong part of what I miss. When people describe him as an extraordinarily spiritual sort of young man who lived in conformity with what the world and the church demanded, I have to laugh. At first I got a little annoyed. But then the humor came to me.

I think James was very spiritual. He was a delightful young man. He could, however, stress me out.  Not really that often, but he was an individual. He did things his way, and others went along with it. His most spiritual moments were when he was at the drums. In fact, he could make “drums” just about anywhere!

I’m sitting in my office at the computer where I have worked for years. I’m a creature of habit. I can look over at where he would stand when he came into my office. He insisted on knocking. I told him that I never did anything in this office that he couldn’t interrupt. He told me it just seemed right to knock. So he did. He’d come in and just stand there with his trademark little grin. In a few moments I’d give up and ask him how much he needed. That was how he told me he needed (or wanted) money.

He also had his own logic. He explained to me once that it would be better for me to give him some money he needed rather than do it in exchange for some work or other. He said he would just fail to get the work done and then I would be mad, and it would be worse all around. I asked him how often I got mad. His reply? “It could happen.” As others have pointed out to me repeatedly, James usually got what he wanted from me.

I don’t usually write anything here or on Facebook on September 22. My hard month each year is June. That’s when I found out the cancer was back. Jody was in Hungary leading a mission team. I was here with James. He had a point of pain in his back. I said (and tried to convince myself) that it might be a pulled muscle. He was, after all, in band camp. He gave me what I can only describe as a pitying look. We discussed it and decided not to wait the week or so it would take for his mother to get back from Hungary.

I ended up having to call the doctor. The paperwork went astray. One doctor had expected the other had called, but nobody had. I got to tell James the news. Then I got to figure out how to tell Jody via e-mail. Phone was not an option. All of that happened in June and that’s when I tend to remember things most.

This September, however, I was working on writing some things about our company, Energion Publications, and the two overlapped. I didn’t even realize it until early in the morning. I woke up and found Jody awake as well. I had been thinking both that our company was ten years old and that we’d released our first new book (we bought out some others when we started) a year later. That would be 2005. But suddenly I remembered that our first release was also in 2004.

That book was Daily Devotions of Ordinary People – Extraordinary God, which was a collection of Jody’s devotionals. The amazing thing is that we released that book in November. I don’t know how Jody did it. Yes, the material had been written, but she had to go over it many times as we put together that book. Her book remained our largest book for some years, though we now have a couple that match it or are slightly longer. I will get around to writing something about the last ten years as a publisher, but for now I just want to note the overlap, and the odd things time can do to our memories.

The thing I’d want to say to everyone is that there is life after loss. I can tell you today, 10 years later, that you don’t forget, that there doesn’t come a time when there is no pain. But you do learn to live and go on, and you can still accomplish what you need to accomplish. Not only that, we’re each different. One of the blessings Jody and I have experienced is not being down at the same time. The fact that I tend to remember dates less precisely, such as being a year off on when she completed her first book, also means that my moments of memory are more scattered. You can’t tell when I’m going to be thinking of James. I know Jody will be thinking of him especially as his birthday and the anniversary of his death are approaching. It’s not a time for me to be up, as in pasting on fake smiles and acting like everything is wonderful. But it does allow me to think of her and be there for her.

I’d add one more thing. Many others are remembering this September as it’s the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Ivan. We couldn’t evacuate with James, because he would not have been able to make the trip. But good friends (Tom and Sharolyn Hunt) took us in, as our double-wide under the trees was not a good place to ride out a storm. James wanted to be here, at his home, when the time came. I remember driving back up here with Tom the day after the storm. I saw so many buildings damaged or destroyed, and a couple of fine, old double-wides that looked like giants had stepped on them. When we got here, not only was our home and this office standing, the power was on. It turned out that the power was only partially on. One half of the system was out, so we had good power through about half the house, and were unable to use 220 volt appliances. But James could be where he wanted to be.

I was very thankful for that, and I’m thankful for the time we had with him. But I still miss him almost like it was yesterday.

What’s that picture?

I’m glad you asked. That’s my computer with layout work for the forthcoming Spanish translation of Dave Black’s Greek grammar. It’s an interesting bit of work. I was thinking yesterday that it doesn’t get much tougher than this, but then I recall working in graduate school on translating Akkadian into English using an Akkadian-German lexicon. Not to mention that while I had an introductory grammar in English, my best reference for grammar was also in German.

I’m looking forward to releasing this, not least because it’s always better to look back with a sense of accomplishment than forward looking for the finish line!

I’ve experienced much worse (or better, if you like snow!) elsewhere, but this is a first in terms of winter storms here in Florida.

I’m working inside until at least this afternoon when people should be done sliding around. It’s nice to have most of my work right in the house and the rest in an office about 100 feet away.

Here are some pictures:

As a USAF veteran …