Lesson From Tim

How a doubting son’s spiritual journey taught an ailing father to trust

- Rick Hamlin’s

TIM WAS THERE, MY 25-YEAR-OLD SON, sitting across from my hospital bed in the ICU and reading a Psalm aloud. I was in such bad shape, suffering from a lung infection, that I could barely comprehend his words. But I could take in the journey he had made that spurred him to read a Psalm in the first place. Remembering it reminded me to trust. Trust God when it is hardest to trust.

Trust God when you can’t figure out how to fix what even the doctors don’t know how to fix. Just trust.

You worry about your grown-up kids as they head out into the world. You think you know what’s best for them, and you want to show them the way. You want to engineer a future for them. If you could, you would wave a magic wand that would open all the right doors, even if doing so would rob them of the necessary “learning experiences”—terrible notion—that make for a magna cum laude in the school of hard knocks.

Short of that, you make suggestions, you send links to helpful articles (my dad used to send me newspaper clippings), you make phone calls, you mention that you know someone who would love to talk to them and might have just the right idea for them, knowing as you do that sometimes someone who isn’t Mom or Dad might be able to get through their heads.

Tim’s older brother, William, had made the transition from college to career look easy. But then, he’d been an econ major. The way was paved by campus visits from recruiters who were only too glad to meet a numbers guy with social skills. Will had a job offer before graduation.

But Tim was a history major who’d dabbled in theater and played guitar in his high school rock band. No on campus interviews for him. No job offers either. Graduation came and went, and he seemed to look at all the choices before him with bewilderment.