Finding Momentum

One point of fric­tion between myself and Sarah is that we have a really, really hard time com­mu­ni­cat­ing. I mean, it doesn’t help that women are elab­o­rate enig­mas, and as men we are Aston­ish­ingly Dense. Gen­tle­men, tell me if you’ve ever heard the fol­low­ing from your ladies:

You just don’t get me.

I wanted you to lis­ten and feel with me.

Stop giv­ing me solu­tions and just lis­ten to me.

Why are you so quiet?

No, that’s not what I meant.

Are you lis­ten­ing to me?

I want you to want to.

I don’t have to tell you; you should just know it already.

WELL,

Sarah just gave me the Best Valentine’s Gift Ever:

It’s basi­cally like get­ting the other team’s play­book. Every­body wins, so it’s even better.

Sarah made me an instruc­tion man­ual for Valentine’s Day. No, seri­ously. It’s a cute hand­crafted book with lit­tle snip­pets of lists of her likes and dis­likes, her basic info, and most of all, this men­tal model and deci­sion dia­gram of the female brain (well, hers at least).

My log­i­cal, ratio­nal, Engi­neer mind rejoices. I love this girl.

In the midst of the crazi­ness of I’m real­iz­ing that I need bet­ter bound­aries. Do I really want to be that dad that doesn’t know his kids because he’s pulling late hours at the office?

At the same time, it’s kind of fun stay­ing late with cowork­ers, shar­ing in the pain! Ah, yes, it’s every sin­gle EECS class I ever had, all over again. Fun, but only for the first cou­ple of evenings.

I have to remem­ber I’m human and lim­ited. God’s sov­er­eign and the work is going to get done with or with­out me. And God for­bid if I am ever con­trolled by work or stress or dead­lines. It’s just not worth it. Shake it off. Take a deep breath, Andrew. It’s gonna be okay.

Life is pretty nuts right now. But God’s still good, and with that I’m at peace.

This week at Urbana was what I needed. I think I heard what I needed to hear: echoes of the King­dom told through busi­ness­peo­ple who under­stand that with regards to their busi­nesses, “it’s not about the money, but all about rela­tion­ships.” It’s about being con­sci­en­tious to how you can use busi­ness to advance the King­dom and change lives: cre­at­ing jobs, being eth­i­cal, open­ing doors.

I’ve been need­ing some sort of spir­i­tual kick in the pants, and I think I finally feel that there’s a door open­ing with regards to my future. Com­ing here and get­ting excited about using my skills and pas­sion about soft­ware, design, pro­gram­ming, peo­ple… man. I think this is help­ing me focus where I need to be going and grow­ing. Men­tor­ship, dis­ci­ple­ship, prac­ti­cal real-world busi­ness skills, prayer…

Tom Hsieh is an Asian-American tech entre­pre­neur whose story tells that story well. Years ago Tom went to Urbana and came away with two convictions:

1. God’s heart was for the urban poor.
2. Tom did not love the poor.

Some­thing needed to hap­pen, so Tom decided to move into the inner city after grad­u­a­tion, turn­ing down sev­eral lucra­tive offers and serv­ing with a local church there. He took a part-time com­puter tech job with flex­i­ble hours so he could do his ser­vice there.

Tom was suc­cess­ful in what he did and his career advanced. Soon he found him­self an exec­u­tive at Earth­link (in its nascent startup days), where he told us sto­ries about sim­ply being obe­di­ent to Jesus in the work­place, liv­ing a sim­ple life in the grind of cor­po­rate Amer­ica, liv­ing a life of rad­i­cal giving. Tom and his wife have com­mit­ted to live at or below the median income level, so that means they give away about 80% of their income. Crazy.

Tom was clos­ing a busi­ness deal over a power lunch one day: “This isn’t real!” he thought to him­self while bring­ing the slice steak up to his mouth. Hang­ing out with the neigh­bor­hood kids and see­ing their smiles? That’s real. Being spir­i­tu­ally authen­tic and Hope­ful in a world that denies it? That’s real.  Choos­ing to fight greed with gen­eros­ity? That’s real.

Hear­ing sto­ries like these this week was good for my soul. More specif­i­cally, I think I have some sort of call­ing to live a focused, mis­sional life. Here. Or over­seas. Who knows, and where a few years ago that was some­thing I felt I had to fight, this time around it’s some­thing that’s freeing.

Who knows, who knows. It’s the start of a new year. New pos­si­bil­i­ties. We’ll see.

I’ve got my bags packed and wait­ing in an air­port in Kansas City en route to Urbana.

I was think­ing today about how much I’m seek­ing a call­ing (or a life direc­tion, you could say). Life in the work­ing world has its way of suck­ing you onto its tread­mill, where it’s easy to sim­ply wake up one day, and a year has passed, and you’re still sport­ing the same haircut.

But I was think­ing today that really, this is less about direc­tion than it is about iden­tity. I’m known less by my pro­fes­sional aspi­ra­tions, my friend­ships, the per­son I was in col­lege, my per­for­mance as a worker in the mar­ket­place than I am sim­ply God’s son.

I need some sort of kick start, some­thing to make that real­iza­tion hit home.

Five fiery oaks
    burst into light

The scent of pine
    released from autumn’s sleep

Justin hands me a photo a few weeks ago. Can you get this blown up? Mike wants it.

I go see Mike. What do you want it to say?

He thinks.

“Rest in peace, God­fa­ther. From your brother, Spicy Mike.”

Sun­day, I get a call from Mike. “Hey Drew, lis­ten I gotta talk to you man,” he starts. But this time, his voice is dif­fer­ent: wea­rier, on eggshells. “I’m at Alta Bates right now. My brother Wayne’s in the hos­pi­tal. He’s on his way out.”

“Oh, my God. What happened?”

“He’s got an infec­tion, and it’s been bad Drew, it’s been bad.” I hear some muf­fled voices in the back­ground. “But hey Drew, I gotta go now. I need your prayers.”

–

Truth of the mat­ter is that when I grad­u­ated and moved away, I lost touch with Mike. It wasn’t a sud­den break, but grad­ual and sub­tle. I grad­u­ated. I went to Africa. I came back and started work­ing. Mike stayed around.

Every once in awhile, I get a phone call from him. “Hey Drew, how ya doin?” Mike will ask. And I will tell him that I’m at work, and I’ll call him back. I try to remem­ber to call him back. I really do.

–

“He’s gone.”

“Mike, I’m so sorry.”

“He passed at 7:07.”

“I’m so sorry man.”

“Wayne just gave up man. Drew, I’m tired.”

I can say nothing.

“I can’t cry no more.”

–

Sarah and I show up at Alta Bates later that evening with some cof­fee and La Bur­rita. We wait for Mike in the wait­ing room. Soon he comes in a bit unsteadily, a boom­box clutched in one hand, a thick wool beanie cov­er­ing his head and ears. Slump­ing into the seat across from us, he leans for­ward and puts his head in his hands. “He’s gone”–and exhales.

The details make their way out. “I was out in Berke­ley doing my thang. They had to come find me, tell me ‘Mike, your brother Wayne’s in the hos­pi­tal. You gotta get over now.’ Can you believe that? They had to come find me.

Sarah offers Mike some cof­fee. Mike looks up and over–you brought that? Bless you. A deep sip.

“Wayne had an infection”–Mike says the name of some med­ical term, but I can’t quite catch it. “There was an infec­tion on his insides. He was in so much pain. They say he couldn’t hear nobody, but I was there at his side talk­ing to him and I know he can hear me. You know? He twitch.”

–

“I gotta tell every­one on his street that he gone now.”

Mike chuck­les a bit.

“Lis­ten, I tell you, Wayne used to always walk by this woman’s house in the morn­ing. She used to ask me, ‘Why does Wayne always do that?’ I say ‘It’s because he likes you!’ She says ‘But I’m mar­ried!’ and I say ‘Well that’s why Wayne always com­ing around when your man’s gone!’

Mike laughs as he relives the memory.

“I was pre­pared for Moms, but noth­ing pre­pared me for Wayne, you know? You’re ready to see your momma pass, but not your own brother. Drew, I can’t cry no more.”

–

Last I heard from Mike, he was about to go in to court for his Social Secu­rity hear­ing. “You gonna come, Drew?” he asked me. I told him I’d be there, and just to give him a call. “Good. I just need you to say to the judge that you seen me have heart prob­lems and take me to the hos­pi­tal once.” I tell him to have his lawyer call me. She never does.

Mike called the after­noon before his court date. I’m at work, so I let the call go straight to voice mail. “Hey Drew, it’s Mike. Court hearing’s tomor­row. Can you come?” I call him right back, but alas, it’s dis­con­nected. All through the evening and into the next day, his number’s still dis­con­nected, and I won­der how his case turns out.

–

“God got his pur­pose, Drew. I know that. Last night I was walk­ing the neigh­bor­hood and I saw this shoot­ing star. Just… shoom”–Mike makes this fly­ing hand motion–“I saw a shoot­ing star and it fly right over Wayne’s house. And I knew, I just knew.

“Wayne was a grumpy guy, you know? Every time I come over he kick me right out after fif­teen min­utes. Say he don’t want to see nobody. He was a hard man, but he was fam­ily ya know?”

Mike’s expres­sion changes, and he puts his head down in his hands again. “When my Moms passed, we all came together again. That was her last wish. We usu­ally fight­ing and every­thing and sure enough, we came together. But we was fight­ing all over her things.

“My big sis­ter give me a call one day and she says ‘Mike, come down here and take some of Mom’s stuff.’ I say, ‘I don’t want noth­ing to do with it.’ Everybody’s over there tak­ing and tak­ing. I finally go down and you know what’s left? A vac­uum cleaner.” Mike’s face reg­is­ters dis­gust. “They take every­thing but her vac­uum cleaner.”

Sarah and I don’t know what to say, but to look intently at him.

–

I’ve heard from Mike time and time again. He’ll call me once in awhile and leave a voice mail mes­sage. “Hey Drew, just think­ing of you. Call me back all right? Say hi to Sarah for me.”

“We don’t deserve a friend like Mike,” Sarah told me last night. “You know? Like we’re not nearly as good as friends to him as he is to us. He has every right to dis­re­gard us as do-gooder stu­dents, but we really are his friends.”

I try to remem­ber to call, I swear I do.

Since Mike doesn’t have a work­ing cell phone any more, he calls me from sev­eral phone num­bers, all of which I judge to be his fam­ily. One num­ber is his sister’s, another is Belinda’s. “How’s he doing?” I ask Belinda. “He’s not doing too well,” she replies.

“Can you talk to him?” his sis­ter asks, her voice crack­ing too, “He really needs some­one to talk to.”

–

I met Mike on a starry evening five years ago on Tele­graph and Durant. Was it March, or was it April? He was sit­ting on a milk car­ton at the time; I was a big-eyed fresh­man will­ing to talk to any­body. I met a Mike who was lost in his thoughts. “You know what man,” he tells me that evening, “I miss my Moms. She passed five years ago today.”