Simon Says

I saw Simon Cowell interviewed the other night. With remarkable understatement, Cowell, when asked about his “comeback” from losing everything to being a multi-millionaire said the following: “you can get things and money back. People worry too much about losing everything.” Wow!



Thirteen years ago Cowell lost everything. He rode to his parents’ home with 5 pounds in his pocket. That was the sum total of his financial wealth. Yet, here he is today, one of the most successful television and music producers in the world.


I thought about the interview a good deal as I worked with students this week. Every day one of the guys will ask me “do you really think I can do this? Do you really think I can find a good job and make it?” I always tell them the same thing: “I believe you can.” Those aren’t just words. I do believe it.


The guys in the building all know my situation: 51; I owe over $1.5 million in restitution; I’ll never practice law again; I gave everything I owned to my wife – who promptly divorced me as soon as I signed the papers – which means I have nothing. Yet the guys always say “but you’ll be fine”. And, I believe I will. The point is, I believe. And, if they can believe in me, they can believe in themselves.


Simon Cowell is right. It’s not about things. Things – money, clothes, homes – can be replaced. I read Isaiah 46 this morning. In that chapter the prophet is noting the siege of Babylon. The city’s inhabitants are fleeing the city and their carts are loaded with the peoples’ idols. The animals strain to move the load. And then Isaiah says this to God’s children:


“Even to your old age, I am He, and even to gray hairs I will carry you.”


Those words ring in my head everyday: “I will carry you.” Every struggle I endure, every moment of loss I feel over my ex and my kids, I remember, “I will carry you.”


I wonder sometime why, in the midst of some of the worst days of my life, I have the most meaningful influence on these guys. It’s because I’m not doing this alone. I’m being carried. I believe in these guys because I know He believes in me.


For a long time I wondered why God chose Moses – a murderer – to lead his people from bondage. I wondered why He still blessed Abraham with a child after he pimpled out Sarah to Pharaoh; I wondered about Rebekah and Jacob lying to Isaac and David being an adulterer and liar and Peter’s betrayal. I finally realized He carries all of us. We just have to let Him by trusting Him and doing the same for others.


There’s a great explanation of it in Big S’s Modern Language Bible when Jesus said “anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat, I am. Don’t run from suffering, embrace it…What good would it do to get everything you want and lose the real you? What would you ever trade your soul for?”


Today, I helped over twenty-three guys write their second critical essay for English. I’m tired, but not exhausted. I got through another week without hearing what I want from my ex or my kids. But I made it through; I was carried the entire way.