The Week I Could Not Make It Happen

The surgery to remove my pituitary tumor was a complete success. My neurosurgeon believes he got all of it, even after finding it had spread to unexpected places — and if anything remains, we’d have years to catch it and a precise way to deal with it. But the update I actually want to give you isn’t about the surgery. It’s about everything I learned in the six days I could not do a single thing to make my own life work.

C.H.E.W. with Me

New here? What is CHEW? — a 30-second practice that grows into a day woven with God’s love.

C – Clarity: I Was in the Way of Progress

From Wednesday through Monday, I could not look at a screen for more than a few minutes. The pain was real and constant, and I’d been warned it would be. I slept thirty-six hours over one weekend. I could not help my family. I could not help my team. For the first time in my adult life, I was not the one making it happen — I was, in the most literal sense, an obstruction. And I am writing this Tuesday morning, rounding the corner, stronger, sitting at my own desk again, with tears in my eyes and more hope than I know what to do with.

H – Hear: Loved as Much as Jesus Is Loved

“…that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” (John 17:23)

This is not a verse about earning love through usefulness. It is Jesus praying, out loud, that the Father’s love for His own people would be the same love the Father has for the Son — not a lesser version, not a discount rate for the people lying in bed unable to contribute to anything. Stay with what is said: even as you loved me. Not almost as much. The Greek word behind “loved” is ēgapēsas, from agapaō — the same verb Scripture uses to define God’s own nature in 1 John 4:8, “God is love.” It’s not affection that fluctuates with performance; it’s a settled, will-directed commitment that has already been fully spent.

That’s the same word John reaches for again a few chapters later: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). The order matters. His love isn’t a response to what we bring Him — it’s the reason we have anything to bring at all. This week, I did not do a single thing to earn that love, and it did not move an inch.

E – Exchange: Watching My Family and Team Become Who They Already Were

My wife carried more than her share — caring for me, for her father who lives with us, and still preparing for her semester, without complaint. My kids stepped up in ways that undid me. My oldest son kept telling me to stop, that he would handle it, and pushing me toward the one thing I am worst at: resting while someone else struggles on my behalf. On the work side, Claire ran things better than I would have, in ways that told me the limitation had been mine all along, not hers. And in the middle of a week I spent flat on my back, five potential new clients came to us — four from referrals, one straight off LinkedIn. I did not make a single one of those things happen.

I have spent my life believing it was up to me to protect, provide, and figure it out when things got hard. What God showed me this week is that He was never short a plan when I stepped out of the way — He had people ready the whole time, and He had been preparing them, and me, for exactly this. The delegating I’ve written about in recent Fridays was not incidental. It was preparation for a week I didn’t know was coming.

The same God who let my body become the one thing I could not fix was the God proving, in real time, that His love for me was never contingent on what I could carry.

Because God’s love for you is the same love the Father has for Jesus, how does that change the way you measure your worth the next time you cannot make anything happen?

Set a timer for sixty seconds. Ask yourself that exact question, and just wait on it — don’t rush to answer it. If your mind drifts toward the next task waiting on you, bring it back to the question itself, not to solving it.

W – Walk: Name Who Carried It While You Couldn’t

Think of someone in your life or on your team who has carried real weight for you recently — in a hard week, a health scare, a season you couldn’t control. Tell them specifically what you watched them do, and thank them for it today. Let it be evidence, not just to them but to you, that God’s provision for the people you love was never actually dependent on you being the one who provides it.

Closing question: Who has God used to carry what you believed only you could carry?