Blood, Sweat, and Tears
As new church planters we needed a few things right off of the bat. One of those things was a trailer to haul all of our mobile stuff around in. We started with an affordable trailer that was only about 5 feet tall. It was the first piece of equipment that really made it all seem like a reality! Although it was too small, it was our beginning and we were excited!
As we were preparing for the launch, we set up a time to assemble advertising tins at another church since we needed lots of room! We excitedly loaded up the masses of boxes and paraphenalia into the trailer and went down the street.
We worked painstakingly for hours. The exhaustion and the realization of the large task in front of us began to set in. As the evening drew to a close we were crushed under the weight of what lie before us. We began to load up our trailer with the tins and clean up the massive mess we had created. It was mildly depressing.
As I rounded the corner with another armful of things, one of the kids said, “Mark’s hurt. He’s in the kitchen.” I set down my load and headed to the kitchen where I found Mark laying on the floor with blood surrounding him. Kim, our children’s pastor, was mopping up the blood that was pouring out of his head.
Mark had scalped his head on our 5 foot tall trailer and taken a chunk right off of the top. I handed off my newborn and my two year old to my inlaws and we headed off to the emergency room. As we drove, I began to get dizzy from the emotional and physical workload. By the time we drove up to the emergency room, I was sick.
We sat down to wait and I put my head between my legs to keep from passing out. The nurse came around the corner and said, “Which one of you is it that has the head wound?” OK, when a nurse can’t tell which one of us is hurt, that’s when you know it’s been a long month! Mark raised his hand and she took us back to get him stapled back together.
Long story short, he healed just fine, but the trailer was sold and replaced with a taller version. The extra money was well worth it! We had officially invest blood, sweat, and tears into this crazy dream. I am glad to say that we have not made another investment of blood since that day! The sweat is still pouring and the tears come all too often. However, they are tears of great joy as we hear story after story of changed lives.
