Two Phone Calls—Tender Loving Care
Despondency
In the spring of 1991 I was still teaching at Manhattan Christian College in Kansas. It was my sixth year and I was ready to move on—and the school was ready for me to move on as well. I was told to "keep looking" for another position at the time I was handed a contract for the following teaching year. So I had looked and looked for positions, although I had heard no responses from any colleges or universities.
One evening, I began to feel unusually and deeply despondent. I thought about all that I had put my family through for the nine years I pursued my doctoral degree and how I had been unable to provide adequately for my family financially. I had uprooted Louise from her family and friends in California ten years earlier in the summer of 1981, immediately after the birth of our first child, Albert. I was in pursuit of the dream of having an advanced degree in music. When we arrived in Colorado, I found the program so demanding that I often would go days at a time with only a few minutes to even converse with Louise, much less to provide any kind of emotional support or encouragement to the new mom. I often had little or no time to be with little Albert. Our financial situation in Colorado was always precarious. When our daughter Marie was born in 1984, the doctor found a probable defect in the septum of her heart. This in fact turned out to be a tetralogy of Fallot, a serious heart defect requiring open-heart surgery of our one-year-old daughter. During all of this difficulty—and during IRS audits and other traumas I was a nearly useless father, not even providing adequate financial support to keep the family together.
So when the job at Manhattan Christian College surfaced for an Associate Professor of Music beginning with the school year in 1985, I was interested and accepted it. The day after one-year-old Marie’s surgery in Denver, I had to leave to go back to my new job 500 miles away. I left Louise in the hospital, cradling our little girl in her arms, tubes and bandages protruding as Marie whimpered softly. I believe it may have been the saddest day of my life.
The work at Manhattan Christian College was challenging enough, although the financial condition of the school was dire. In fact, six weeks after I joined the faculty, the holder of the second mortgage on the school property foreclosed. Financial conditions continued to deteriorate through the six years I was on the faculty there. Toward the end of my time on the faculty, we rarely received our monthly paycheck on time. We sometimes were three or even four months behind in receiving our salaries. Retirement was not paid into the designated retirement funds—until I left the school.
Incredibly, we never went hungry or missed a house payment. Neither Louise nor I can explain how it was possible to live on next to nothing and still pay our bills on time. Louise was remarkably parsimonious and Christian people were remarkably generous. Still, the columns don’t balance; our income did not meet our expense needs, even counting gifts and cost savings. Louise and I both give God the credit for making up the deficit. He must have some creative accounting methods.
During this time at Manhattan Christian College, in the spring of 1990, I finished my doctorate—and the following school year I was asked to look for new work. (I had been looking for some months, and I would guess that the administration knew.) That brings us to the spring of 1991 and one evening of dark despondency, in the basement of our home. I uttered one of those wordless prayers that comes from deep in one’s soul. The word "help" is an inadequate expression of the way I was feeling. I was too depressed even to form words. Then, something remarkable happened.
Within the next 20 minutes I received two surprising phone calls. One was from Reginald Gerig, of all people. I had met Mr. Gerig some time earlier at a conference and was surprised to learn that he remembered me. His book, Famous Pianists and Their Technique is a standard text for serious pianists—a magnificent and compelling work for those who take the instrument seriously. In addition, I had good reason to believe he was a devout Christian. Months ago, six or seven as I now recall, I had sent to Mr. Gerig a copy of my résumé hoping he could direct me to someone who might have a lead on a job. "Of course I remember you," he said jovially. "We met at the National Conference [on Piano Pedagogy]." He recently had been on sabbatical and had not seen my letter and résumé until just before he called. My résumé looked wonderful, I was wonderful, don’t give up! He was most encouraging, as only a truly fine scholar and musician can be toward someone who admired him as profoundly as I did and do. Unfortunately, he did not have any leads for me. I thanked him profusely for his phone call and for all of his encouraging words.
While the second call was not as jovial, it nonetheless provided the encouragement I needed during that dark evening. A university in Oklahoma had received my application. It seems that I was one of the top seven applicants they were considering for a position and they needed more information, which of course I was happy to provide.
The odd thing about both of these phone calls is that nothing came of either of them. That is, no job leads came from either of them, although I was heartily encouraged by the calls. I realized that if one or the other call had come within 20 minutes of my desperate, despondent prayer, I easily could have chocked it up to coincidence.
There were two calls, however, and that’s a much bigger coincidence. To this day, I consider those two phone calls to be an expression of God’s tender loving care for me. He didn’t have a job for me—yet—so He wanted me to know that He knew how I was feeling and that He cared for me. I’d be hard pressed to understand the experience any other way.
Selected from the Wolfe Family Coincidence log
