What are human beings, that you make so much of them, that you set your mind on them, visit them every morning, test them every moment?
Job 7:17-18
I worked alongside and became friends with Andy several years before I learned his backstory. I knew him to be a deeply faithful man, a very supportive co-worker, someone who liked to share a laugh, and who was very good with math. A lot of my office contact with Andy came in the form of me asking him to run some numbers that only Andy would know how to calculate, or with questions about the arcane database which we used, and which only Andy seemed to fully know how to coax into spitting out the information we needed it to yield. Sometimes my trips to his office led to deeper conversations, talks which moved me and inspired me to want to be a little more like Andy. He seemed to be plugged into something deeper, in possession of something hard to define, but led by an abiding and profound faith. Yet his manner was, if anything self-effacing and perhaps a little nervous- certainly not someone who set himself up as some sort of guru, though in the public presentations he gave on stewardship issues he was always confident, sharp and funny.
So it came as a shock to me when, several years into this relationship, another co-worker sent an email around the office which contained a link to a newspaper article commemorating the anniversary of an extremely tragic event. The story told of the day Andy returned from work to discover his wife and two children murdered in the home they shared.
I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for Andy at that moment, or at any time going forward. I can’t predict what my response would have been, whether I’d have exploded in anger and hatred, seeking revenge and going on a rampage which might have cost me my friendships as well as my sanity, or withered into an irrevocable mess of self-pity and withdrawn into total seclusion or escape into a world of drugs and alcohol. I know it wasn’t easy for Andy, and I know his recovery from this terror took time. But I know he eventually emerged from this as the man I knew and found inspiring even without knowing his history. And whatever crisis of faith he went through in his darkest hours, he returned to the church and became so dedicated to it that he gave up a successful law practice to work for the Massachusetts Conference of the UCC, undoubtedly for less money. And he learned to let himself love again, marrying and raising a family with his second life-partner. If that wasn’t an act of faith, then I don’t know what is.
Somehow, in the midst of unimaginable pain, Andy made a space to find a way out. And not only to survive, but to thrive and to live a life which encouraged others to live their lives fully, to not only have faith, but to act on it. He came to embody a life lived with compassion. Yet, he never used his experience as either justification or motivation; in fact, he never mentioned it. The only time he alluded to it in my presence came during my last visit with him, less than a week before he died from esophageal cancer. His situation was dire. He was not able to eat solid food and had been through surgeries and chemotherapy that left him gaunt and weak. I asked him how he was doing, and he said, “I’ve been through worse.”
If Andy was able to make space to recover from this tragedy, even to the point of having compassion, if not outright forgiveness for the person who caused his suffering, what spaces do I need to make in my own life, a life of incomparably less pain? What petty grudges can I let go of? What vain ideas of myself? What un-necessary things I covet? What shallow comparisons of myself with others? I hope I will never have to experience anything remotely similar to what Andy did, but I hope to God I can become more like him. Thank you, Andy, for pointing the way.
Through the storm, through the night, lead me on, to the light: Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.
You can read the full story of Andy Gustafson’s journey in Rev. Betsy Waters’ book, Testify to the Light.