To all the teachers.  Patient souls with more kids than they can count, who know most of them by name along with their needs, shortcomings, strengths, personalities, home life, pet’s names, worst fears, and future plans.  All while being pulled in so many directions and drained by constant demands.  J tips his cap to you as he offers the only way he found to fill himself up for another year, and the rest of his life.  

Teacher. Coach. Church leader.  Father.  Husband.  Fake.  Fraud.   Failure.

Vibrant, energetic, and positive.  Eventually J found himself disheveled, unkempt, and losing weight at a rapid pace.  Hit by a depression so deep that the unexplored valleys of the ocean floor couldn’t touch it.  Glued to the couch, staring at the T.V., while his own kids played outside and his wife sat with her hands shaking and her heart racing, trying to discern what to do with him, for him, and for life going forward.  

Would she lose her husband to a ghost?  An unknown?  Something, someone had come and stolen the life, his spirit, and the essence from the man she thought she knew and loved.  

How do you teach?  How do you coach?  How do you love, guide, and care for your own family, those who need the most care and interaction, when your energy and spirit have been drained so completely by so many others.  When you aren’t able to save them all? When you feel like nothing you’ve done is ever good enough?

How do you grab your guitar for worship, or lead your small group in Bible study, when you can’t even get off the couch?  When you’re not sure you really believe anything about the God and life you thought you knew?   

How do you tell anyone, or reach out for help as you struggle, without feeling their stares, hearing the whispers, and seeing the looks?  

What happens when a leader of so many just wants everything, his life and pain, to be…

Over.

“I would cry out to God for healing. I would shout at Him, pound my fists trying to figure it out. I didn’t want to live like this. I would try to get my life in order to show God that I deserved to be healed.  And I didn’t even know what was wrong.”

Hey! J!

“I laid on the couch staring at the TV waiting to die. I had no answers. I thought about ending it everyday for months at a time.  I lived as a Christian for so many years but now I wasn’t even sure I believed it.  When adversity struck, I panicked, worried about everything I’d lose in my worldly life.”  

Hey! J!

And he couldn’t share it with anyone.  How would they react?  How would they see him?  What would life look like if he wasn’t J anymore?  

Hey! J!

God was trying to get J’s attention. But his mask game was strong.

J was MY Christian leader early on in adult life.  A small group leader, teacher, and church staple.  My eyes grew wide when he texted me after reading the book and said that I wasn’t the only one who had a story. Some things had happened since we last talked years ago.

As a teacher, he knew how to gain and transfer knowledge.  And J lived it.  He was about what he believed.  He recited verses and taught Biblical truths as he prayed in front of others with precision. 

A vibrant leader and coach, he loved what he did.  He connected with kids, coached like a champ, and enjoyed leading students.  

Marriage and parenting, J and his family, they seemed like one of those family pictures staged and placed just so in the frame begging you to buy them.  Happy, connected, purposeful.    

What happened?   

J never felt like enough. Everyone needed something. He never felt worthy. He couldn’t help everyone, achieve enough, and he couldn’t save each kid, not that he really understood what that meant.

Students, parents, athletes, church obligations, life obligations, even his own family.  Everyone wants, needs, asks, pulls, drains, and sucks him dry as he teaches, leads, helps, comforts and pours out.

And he couldn’t help them all. He couldn’t help himself.

He neglected the one thing necessary to have any level of success, while truly and deeply helping people, and staying sane. 

He never allowed himself time to be filled.  Poured back into.  Refreshed.  And he never let go of control.

He could do it.

Until he couldn’t. And as he began to fall, as his spirit and his energy were drained by everyone and everything else, he couldn’t reach out.  He was J.  He was the one that poured in.  He helped and led.  He taught. He surely shouldn’t need help.  And if he just kept repeating it, maybe one day it’d be true.  

“I’m good, great, never better.  Blessed.”  His church and life mask was on, tight. 

As his spirit failed, he’d watch the students.  Such promise in their eyes and hearts.  So many years ahead of them.  It wasn’t fair. And he couldn’t save them all.

He doesn’t blame society, or the system.  Even with the hardest of financial or societal circumstances, with good and caring parents, kids can rise above much.  

But kids don’t get to choose the situations they’re born into.  How can J expect things from kids who have been beat on, screamed at and forced to live in an unsure environment through their developing years?  How does he help them?

How do we have expectations of them as adults, that they’ll learn, be successful, or love and follow God?  Why do some kids get hope, while others get pain?  J’s faith was in shambles. 

We already talked about how our earthly fathers help develop our image of The True Father.  When dads are absent, or horrible, what should our expectations be of the kids?  Kids that eventually turn into adults, raising their own children, passing on the same problems.  How does J fix that?

Coaching, J learned that kids don’t listen or follow unless they know you care.  Which means he had to be on all the time.  Every kid, every instance.  You can’t have a hard day.  You can’t check out.  You can’t stop pressing in.  You’ll lose them.  

Family?  How does J handle it when his own family, his own kids need him, but he’s busy pouring into everyone else?  When he gets home he finds himself running on fumes.  

Energy isn’t endless.  Worldly spirit isn’t infinite. Our love and affection and attention can’t continuously be poured out and into others without taking time to refill ourselves.  

And we can never, ever, ever, control the outcomes of others. Their decisions, their situations, or their life. (Not that we shouldn’t try to help, of course)

It all hit him, finally, and at once.  The tank was empty. So he hit the pills, hit the couch, and stayed there.  

What did the world suggest?

Medication.  That’s what the doctor’s said as he wore down and sought out help thinking maybe it was a medical issue. 

(*Do hear me, If medication works, if it’s what’s needed, then it’s a good and God given thing.  But when you’ve tried it as J did, know it’s not working, and the doctor’s only direction is to take more because they don’t know what’s wrong, you might have an issue.) 

Marriage was rough.  His wife had her own views of what was going on.  They didn’t see eye to eye.  Fights upon fights, but on Sunday’s, all was good.  Their family mask was on.  “Good, great, we’re never better!”

J admits he was blessed that a few in the leadership at church, specifically Josh B. knew, and pressed in, and helped as much as they could.  But still, he was empty.  And he couldn’t figure out why.    Empty heart, empty soul, empty marriage and relationships.  God was silent.  His only comfort were the pillows of the sofa.  

What was the problem?  

J’s strength was his greatest downfall.   His driving force in life, his belief in God, was based on knowledge. Biblical knowledge. And J was always in control. At least he tried to be.

But knowledge doesn’t fill.  The illusion of control doesn’t pan out. Knowledge doesn’t lead.  Knowledge doesn’t refresh.  Only the Spirit does that.  And only the Spirit can lead us in work and purpose from a birds eye view of how it all fits together, when all we can see is the here and now.

Knowing your car needs gas doesn’t mean it’ll run.  Unless you fill it up.  And even if you know where you want to go that doesn’t mean the world won’t shoot you a detour when you least expect or want it.  

J would say, now, that all the knowledge in the world won’t fill your soul, lead your spirit, or give purpose to your life.  J knew, J believed, beyond all doubt that God was real.

But J hadn’t truly let the Spirit take over.  He hadn’t let Christ fill him and direct him.  He never gave up control.  It was his life, living with the belief that God was real, but with the actual leadership of God and submission to Him very far off.  

There was never any true living water flowing back into him to revive and refresh.  

J needed to be filled. He needed to give up.

In the back of his mind, in the depth of his soul, he already had the solution. 

“That led me back to the scriptures and realizing I was working so hard for life on this earth. I was demanding to be healed. God certainly can heal, and He did heal me. But what He really wanted me to learn was that it does not matter what happens to me on this planet.”

Hey J!

“I gave up asking to be healed and I focused on accepting my circumstances and tried to still be a father and husband through them.”

Hey J!

“I gave up pounding my fists on the table and demanding, proving to God that I was worthy.” 

Hey J! He gave up.  Gave in.  Finally, to the call of God.  

“You have to learn and have the faith that regardless of your circumstances here you can be content. You can look forward to Heaven. You can have faith that nothing can touch you here because there is a heaven, an eternity for me and life here is not what to put my hope in.”

He simply asked for leadership and guidance as he dealt with his ailment.  He asked to be filled.  

And as he gave up, he noticed something.  He was coming back.  Focused on scripture, on prayer, offering to live in whatever the circumstance as long as God was leading.  

Change came.  Salvation came.  The drought was over and J began to be Jim again, maybe even for the first time.  Filled with water, living water that we’ve spoken of before.  

“Today I have no depression, I’m not on any medications. God can heal. God will teach us through adversity. It was horrible, but I wouldn’t have the faith now I have until I gave up.”

Jim knows now he can’t save everyone and he can’t change circumstances beyond his control. He knows he never really had control in the first place. He’ll never be able to do enough to feel worthy. God is the one who measures Jim’s worth. And Christ already showed Jim, all of us, He thinks we’re worth it.

Now Jim is free to pour back into others.  Teaching, coaching, leading his family, working in the church.  He credits Delaware Christian Church as a place he goes to be refreshed each week.  And as a constant stream flows into him from the Spirit, he’s free to drain himself for others and know that he will continue to be refilled from the only source that matters.  

It’s still not easy being on for hundreds of students and athletes, and his church and family all the time showing them all he cares. And he can’t say he succeeds everyday.  But with God at the helm it’s so much easier knowing He is in control.   And no matter Jim’s missteps now, God will use it to produce fruit he could never have planned himself.  

Because He has a birds eye view, an understanding of how it all fits together in the grand scheme, an understanding that we will never comprehend in the here and now.

“His purpose in all of this is that they should seek after God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and are! As one of your own poets says it, ‘We are the sons of God. (Acts 17:27-28)

Connect with the story?  Shoot Jim a comment.    Let him know you appreciate him sharing.  Read the book? Get a hold me HERE or at Chad.campese@gmail.com to talk or share your story.  Find FREEDOM and PEACE in removing the mask many of us wear as we head in for yet another Sunday service.

Written by: Chad Campese

Chad Campese is a father, husband, police officer, blogger, and author of the book Confession of a Christian Fraud.  He holds a BA in Christian Counseling and psychology, is heavily involved in peer support and recovery when it comes to first responders, and is an expert in living his life and faith as a fraud. These days he simply relies on the leading of the Spirit as he tries to slowly and purposefully take life one day at a time.