Read an Excerpt
The Extravagant Fool
a faith journey that begins where common sense ends
By Kevin Adams ZONDERVAN
Copyright © 2014 Kevin Adams
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-310-33796-6
CHAPTER 1
THROWN IN THE WELL
The fall season has arrived as an empty-handed messenger. The income we'd hoped to see remains the income we hope to see eventually. Until then, we've stopped paying our mortgage in order to cover essentials. Better to face foreclosure in the next few months than to face the next few weeks without food and utilities. With little memory of God's sweetness there is nothing to do but wait, and wonder aloud if He is still generous. All I have is failure to cover my need, and not a clue what a generous God might do with such an extravagant fool.
Faith Journal, November 2011
THE VIEW FROM ABOVE—OCTOBER 2008
There was something hypnotic about swiveling my chair back and forth between the windows. The backside of our house overlooked a valley dotted with overweight custom homes, and people on golf carts threading between them while talking on their phones. But not everything that rhymes is poetic, and some things are only beautiful when we squint. Just a half block up in front, on the neighborhood's highest peak, stood the largest home for miles at about fourteen thousand square feet, pushing its way through my office window like ambition pushes its way through a man's character. In a community full of ambitious people with clean fingernails and perfectly trimmed lawns, a generation of sprinters lined up for a race that for most is actually a marathon.
It was the fall of 2008 when the phone finally rang, and my largest client hadn't paid us for months. On my desk sat stacks of receivables—hundreds of unpaid bills owed by hundreds of companywide buyers, people always in a jam. I spun my chair away from the window and back again, wondering if I should answer.
"Mr. Adams, this is the finance department, and I'm the new CFO. It appears we have a backlog of unpaid invoices from your company. Do you have a few minutes to discuss?"
"Certainly," I said.
"Sorry for the inconvenience," he said, "but we've been working on the budget and don't quite have a handle on what your company does for us."
I paused, considering why a client I'd been serving for years was asking what we do for them. Translation: We're making sure we no longer need what your company does for us. Another thirty seconds passed between the echo of throats being cleared and speakerphone whispers. "Actually, Mr. Adams, if you could just provide some detail on these invoices, we can begin working toward a settlement." Further translation: Thanks, Mr. Adams ... it's been real!
And it got even more real, as the phone began to ring with one call after another, asking the same emotionless question—"Why are we paying you?" Somehow I'd become a foreigner to anyone with an accounting degree. It was as if by UFO the CFOs had been flown in to save the world from everything nonessential. And by extension, my three large homes, my business condo, my company's value, and every penny of my income were now equally nonessential.
Where would this end up? I crossed my legs and slumped into my chair, causing it to drift slightly from the window. I suppose its hypnotic swivel had finally made me sick, homesick that is, for something more stable.
Our largest client withheld payment for so long before cutting ties that any final relief was instantly absorbed by creditors. All our clients in one form or another took the same posture—preserve thyself and ask questions later. With monthly expenses in the tens of thousands and suddenly no income, the ground does more than shake. My wife, Holly, and I have described it as a three-month earthquake that led to a four-year tsunami. But out of respect for victims of such tragic events, perhaps the term "perfect storm" is more appropriate.
A perfect storm is a rare combination of events whose effects are compounded exponentially when they intersect. I'd always heard that success is where hard work and opportunity intersect. I suppose without wisdom they amount to the same thing, because chasing success at any cost is like chasing that storm until it eventually reverses course—unless, of course, you are wise enough in advance to prepare a place to retreat. With several investment properties—an office condo and two large homes, not including our residence—the option to sell or borrow on equity was my retreat. Or so I thought.
When we started investing, home equity was rising by leaps and bounds, but the rental market was highly competitive. Keeping our rental rates low ensured that the properties would remain occupied until we were ready to sell. Obviously, there's little wisdom in taking on tenants for the sole purpose of breaking even. But in a time when you can buy a house, paint the bonus room, and sell it for a fifty thousand dollar profit, subpar rental rates are a negligible trade for such a glorious upside. Also, our disposable income was high enough to avoid renters altogether, so the rates didn't seem to matter as much in the moment—a moment destined to intersect with my character.
A collapsing real estate market, along with the near collapse of our economy, set the stage. But it was my ambition and lack of wisdom that left us unprepared and ultimately stole the show—a show that went on for the next four years—a perfect storm of sorts.
In most financial downturns the dominoes fall one by one. Though painful to watch, there is time to consider the damage. Bad investments become lessons learned, and lost incomes are replaced. With hard work, those fallen pieces can be reset, but standing dominoes have less resistance in the wind of a perfect storm. With a company pulled out from under us and the simultaneous real estate implosion, our little wooden blocks were utterly blown off the table. Investments became debts, and debts without income became lawsuits.
There were simply no pieces left to set back up.
DESPAIR IN SLOW MOTION
With no pieces to pick up, no bootstraps to grab, there appeared to be no remedy—no possible escape through hard work. Our tenants were not sympathetic, and neither were most people who knew us, because nothing had changed in our immediate surroundings. Life is not a beach, but it must have appeared to some that we were carelessly basking on one.
Only my wife and I could see the approaching tidal wave. Hand in hand with our children playing behind us, completely unaware of its danger, we couldn't bring ourselves to turn around and explain it to them or anyone else. So we just stood there, not even looking at one another, waiting for impact while they laughed and argued with no appreciation of how good they'd had it. Like most of us.
It was one of those treacherous moments that occur in slow motion, but not so slow that one can escape it. So with both feet sinking into wet sand, I was forced to watch it helplessly while the unflinching world around me continued on, smiling. Golf carts still circled the block. Mothers talked on phones while buying groceries. No one knew, and God didn't seem to care.
I was angry with myself for what I had done to my family, and angry about what they would suffer. It would mean losing material wealth—past, present, and future—my career, our life savings, every investment, a company built from scratch, our home and nearly all that filled it, and every scrap of credit. And certainly it meant losing the freedom that those things provide, little things like piano lessons and haircuts, gas for the car and oil for the mower, shoes for the girls, and a micro-wave oven that works. But it would ultimately mean suffering through despair that no one around us could truly feel.
We'd been given a food basket that included a bag of micro-wave popcorn. Only the clock still worked on our oven, so we politely asked a neighbor to microwave it for us. Her response was an easygoing but slightly uncertain yes, followed by a pinch of passive sarcasm.
"You know, microwave ovens are not that expensive these days." My wife just smiled and kindly thanked her.
Private despair is also facing an empty cupboard while an armed messenger from the sheriff's department bangs at the door. It is wondering how long the electricity will stay on while pausing to consider if lights are more important than health insurance. And it is continuing on while new debts invisible to friends are being accrued from past mistakes—mistakes now inching us closer and closer to homelessness. But it's not about bootstraps or going back to zero and picking up the pieces, despite the well-intentioned sentiment of others.
JOB'S FRIENDS AND OURS
God is never silent by accident, but that doesn't stop us from making suggestions in His place to those with an unclear struggle. "Just turn your lemons into lemonade," we might say. Or how about this one: "If there's anything I can do"—said just before glancing at our watch and moving on. Whether our response originates from compassion or a stealthy means of escape, we all feel compelled to speak on occasion when God is silent. And for the hurting, the road to their hell-on-earth is, on occasion, paved with good intentions that we call words of wisdom.
While the neighborly make passing suggestions about lemons, others make standing proclamations, speaking not only in God's silence but apparently speaking on His behalf. I call these folks "Job's friends," and from the spiritual woodwork they come, marching in lockstep with their "keep your chin up and pray with your feet moving" regalia and the "it's all right, we've all been there" speech. For us they came ready to raise a spiritual barn, assuming our commitment to God needed an overhaul or a rebuilding with new timber.
"Looks like it's time to simplify your life—to cancel cable TV and cell phones, to stop eating out and buying junk food, and to live in a modest home. It's time to get off the floor and rebuild your company, or work several jobs, if necessary; time for the wife to get an income and make sure you are tithing as a family. It's time for you to humble yourself and cautiously remember that a man who works is one who eats and pays back every penny he owes. So if you'll roll up your sleeves and really commit, you'll find that God is waiting in the wings to help you. He always helps those who help themselves, and we always reap what we sow. We're praying for you."
Maybe they were right, but never before did something so practical seem so meaningless. I'd been a Christian all my life, and a committed one since I was eighteen. I knew there was more to this life than getting ourselves to the next one. But suddenly, at age forty, after years of commitment, I couldn't explain what "more to this life" actually meant. Were they saying that God would really leave us in the street to teach us deeper commitment? No one, of course, would say such a thing, but to a man in my position, that was the bottom line.
I once told someone emphatically that God would never allow that to happen. "Hopefully not," the man replied, "but if He does, you need to be prepared." How exactly does one prepare for that? In the heavenly silence the noisy world got noisier and the voices of those around me grew louder, until my wife, the voice that mattered more, was asking the same question of me that I was asking of God. "What are you doing?"
THE DO-IT-YOURSELF CHURCH
So for a time, I stopped asking God and looked to those around me, considering perhaps that God was speaking through others others—I hadn't considered, such as the church. Maybe they could fathom that when we said "complicated," we meant millions in debt, and when we said "everything," we meant there are no groceries. But their answers were the same proverbial, consider-the-ants practicality, and it would require more than canceling the cable and more than working an extra job to get us out of this mess. And ultimately it would take more wisdom than I possessed to explain something so far-reaching to those hard-working ants.
Yes, we tithed, gave generously, and served as faithful believers doing all the right things—none of which made any difference. But all the common-sense answers were pointing in the same direction. Every answer, every solution, was indistinguishable from the next—do more, prepare more, become this, give that, be more committed. Do, do, do—I was exhausted.
But with every passing hour their evidence mounted against us. We'd soon be forced from our home with no income, no credit, and three expensive properties that could no longer be supported or quickly sold. Finding a place to rent under these conditions was nearly impossible, and without a place to rent or family close by, there would be no place to catch our breath and nowhere to go after that—a certain death sentence.
Whether the judgment was aimed at rehabilitating our commitment or something more tenuous, the most painful thing was thinking that God had abandoned us—not our souls, but our welfare. I wasn't angry with God, only with where my understanding of the Christian life had led us—bad decisions based on things He expected of me, like providing, leading, and loving my family.
Ultimately, there would be no escape through doing more of the same, but even a glimpse of freedom through the ideas of other Christians would keep me trying until every high place from which to jump, every embankment, and every bottle of pills gave me pause. Death wasn't a relief for me as much as an offering to relieve my family of me—a last bold move that would provide them justice for my drive to succeed, mislead, and gamble with their lives. I pleaded for God to take my life, but something in His silence would not allow their relief to come through my absence.
Okay, God ... it's Your move. People say they're afraid to ask God to do whatever it takes, or pray the "I'll do anything" prayer. But we were asking a different question, praying a different prayer—"God, there is nothing left for us to do—now what?" Résumés and rental inquiries flew from the keyboard and printer, but nothing returned—no olive branches or answers from God, and no calls from potential employers.
I sat in my car regularly for weeks to escape the absurdity of home—a new home worth only half its purchase price. Behind every open door lingered the aromas of oak floor, fresh paint, and new carpet. We'd only lived there a year. My faith reclined behind the wheel of the driver's seat as people rushed in and out of Target with expensive coffee and small children. Where did they live? I wondered, as I considered how a family of five might sleep, there on my fully reclined seats. There were different parking lots and different passersby, but no escape for me, as absurdity, it seemed, was a moving cloud with my name on it.
With kids as healthy as sunshine, a devoted wife, and no boils to scrape, my suffering was inconsequential next to Job's. But I couldn't help wondering how he would handle such a mess as mine. I never doubted that God loved me, but I also believed that His love and care were based on my behavior. Oh, it's easy to say the opposite, but deep down there are few of us who don't trip over our own foibles and consider the pain of fixing-it-oneself to be a kind of "holy" responsibility.
TWO KINDS OF FOOLS
At one point, after studying the Bible for several hours, I began to feel a sense of encouragement that God was revealing something about my own "holy" responsibility, and I was eventually drawn to this verse.
Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become "fools" so that you may become wise.
1 Corinthians 3:18
Through this verse God revealed to me that there are essentially two kinds of fools—one who says (or lives as if) there is no God, and one who lives as if there's nothing worthwhile outside of God. Which is a clear-cut distinction that forces us to choose between the two, immediately. Until that moment, I had always believed I was the right kind of fool, but after further meditation, I began to see things a little more clearly.
For instance, becoming a genuine fool for God is as simple for many believers as taking the moral high ground by remaining humble in an argument, or avoiding worldly practices such as dishonesty, greed, selfishness, and the like. While at the same time, we engage in less obvious practices, such as leaning on our own understanding, applying moderation to our faith in God, making our decisions by the spirit of fear and calling it wisdom, or even placing the desires of our spouses or children above God—and the list goes on.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Extravagant Fool by Kevin Adams. Copyright © 2014 Kevin Adams. Excerpted by permission of ZONDERVAN.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
