I was born and raised in the South 62+ years ago as the 4th child and only son of a Southern Baptist pastor. My wife was born 60+ years ago in Michigan as the 4th child of 7 and her parents were devout Catholics. In other words, we were raised in Christian homes with traditional Baptist and Catholic values. However, neither of us were really serious about Christianity until 40 years ago in 1977. That’s the same year we were married (May 7, 1977) and then moved to Boone (October, 1977).
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In that same period, 1977, my brother and I were invited by a friend of ours, who had transplanted from Boone to Asheville, to be his guest at a Billy Graham Crusade being conducted in Asheville. Much to our surprise, we were invited to sit on the stage with others, which was quite an experience. After the meeting, we were asked if we would help with a medical need in India that the Grahams were aware of. Of course, we said yes.
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Dad then explained the gospel to me, that I was a sinner. Even when I was 6 years old I knew I wasn’t a good kid all the time. I disobeyed, I knew I was a sinner and I didn’t want to spend an eternity in hell, so I asked Jesus to come into my life. It was a really childlike thing. I didn’t have a complete understanding. I couldn’t tell you the books of the Bible, but I wanted to be with Jesus and I gave my life to him. It was simple, childlike faith.
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By then, I had given dating up to God. Though at work one day, there was a chef’s intern who asked my friend the baker if she thought I would go to dinner with him. When she told me that he was a Christian and only wanted to have someone to go to dinner with, I accepted. He invited me to a church that he was attending and I immediately felt that I had come home as soon as I stepped over the threshold.
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Most people do not often connect love to pain, but, in actuality, these two are often closely intertwined. To need and experience love is to be human, but sometimes the depth of love is not known without loss.
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My journey began here in North Carolina when I was born in Winston-Salem as the youngest of 4 kids in our family. A couple of years later my father took a job at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. Fortunately, we visited relatives here in the High Country on a regular basis which cultivated in me a sense that Western North Carolina was my home and instilled a desire to one day return to the Blue Ridge Mountains. James Taylor’s music during my high school years in the early 1970’s only intensified that desire.
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A few years ago, K-LOVE Radio challenged their listeners with this: using only one word, describe what you're thankful for. My one word is “purpose.” Not too many years ago, Satan tricked me into thinking that I had no purpose and I sank into a terrible place defined as depression. I wouldn't begin to put a value on all I learned through that journey and pray that I will NEVER have to suffer being that sick ever, ever again.
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From this humble beginning, Alice believed God had put certain goals in her heart. She put herself through business school, working hard toward the goal in front of her. “The Lord was involved in every decision, where to go, what to put my hand to, the moves, businesses, work. Everything was bathed in prayer.” Alice found herself dependent upon the Lord to guide her, and trusting it was Him who was directing the course of her life, where and when to begin the business she had envisioned as a child.
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Although I grew up in a family that loved God, I was never truly sure what being saved meant. A friend prayed with me in sixth grade and told me that if I meant the prayer, I was saved, but between middle school and high school, I had many moments of questioning God about whether I actually belonged to Him. I never had peace about it.
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I was 50 when I went to Atlanta. Wendy teases me that it was my mid-life crisis. I tease her that it could have been much worse! All teasing aside, I had almost gone to Redeemer in 2006, but decided not to since we had two children still in high school. At the time, Wendy told the Call Committee, “The timing just isn’t good for our family. If this were three years from now it would be a different story.” Well, the pastor who went to Redeemer left after 16 months, and they contacted me again almost exactly 3 years later and asked if I would consider a call now! This seemed to me more than mere coincidence, given what Wendy had told them. With much trepidation, and yet grieving our empty nest and figuring that I had one good call left in me, I accepted the challenge of being the Senior Pastor of a large urban church.
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t is always easy to focus on the things we do not have, isn’t it? To dwell on what could have been? To sit and wonder “If only…” Yet, I pray as you read this story you will not dwell on my missing calf muscles or my broken body. Instead, you will see the many undeserved blessings God has given me. You will rejoice over the beauty that is found in brokenness and the hope that only Christ can bring in the midst of hopelessness. You will see He is a great Author writing a great story. You will see the joy found in the journey, and the purpose found in the pain. Elisabeth Elliot once said, “God’s story never ends in ashes.” I am so grateful for that truth. He truly does bring beauty from ashes. He truly blesses His children with good gifts, even those we would never deem good. For me, sacral agenesis never seemed good. As I look back on the last 28 years of my life, I can truly see the good God has done in and through it. I have discovered that with every journey there is real joy, you just have to find it. Where Jesus is, there is joy and hope. No matter the circumstances, they are good because He is good. I would never change the diagnosis given to me at birth. I would never trade it, because it has shaped my life and the lives of the Bolick family. Oh, what a precious family He has given me! I could weep as I dwell on each one of them and the blessing they represent in my life.
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I’m a storyteller at heart, looking for meaning in the mundane. I was thrilled that The Journey asked me to contribute an article in the Summer 2015 issue. So here’s another story…
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The headmaster of the school was pleased with Jimmy’s work, and eventually asked him to become the school’s principal. At the age of 28, he became a high school principal, and at the urging of the school administrators, decided to pursue a Master’s degree. “I would be a principal all day, and then get in the car at night and go to Raleigh to take classes, then get home at midnight and get up the next morning to be principal all over again,” Jimmy says.
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All this time I had professed myself to be a Christian, but in my early twenties, I realized that I was far more religious than I was a Christian. I struggled with having to be baptized again because I felt like I was only being baptized again to join the church, and not to honor Christ. Eventually, I did get a full-submersion baptism in the mid 1990s, and joined Brushy Fork Baptist Church.
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“On December 23, 2005, two days before Christmas, I was clearing some land to plant a field of Christmas trees. I had been working there several weeks, cutting down trees, and being stubborn and stupid, I was there by myself. It was a long ways to the nearest house or highway and the only way in and out was an old logging road. On this Saturday morning in particular, I was up there working, cutting down trees and just came upon one red oak — it wasn’t any different from any of the others, but it did a strange thing…
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Recently a verse has been circulating in my mind--it says that we overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. I am thankful for the opportunity to be real and share things I often would not share. It’s not easy to talk about these things because I feel like I risk the chance of others feeling sorry for me again like they did when I was a little kid. But I believe it is by the power of God’s word that I can stand firm and hopeful in my weakness. We can all stand on His promises, and if we allow it, His promises in His word will change each one of us.
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Throughout this journey, I learned a great deal about life, death, hope, faith, and the church. I truly was at peace knowing that my son may not live, but I knew God would forever hold him. I saw the church at its best - lifting up those at their breaking point.
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“Even though that relationship didn’t work out and I felt like I gave 5 years of my life to it, I know that was God’s way of working His way back into my life and bringing me back to where that foundation was,” she said. “He brought me back to Fairplains for one, to the family that I grew up with, all of those people I talked about previously who were so instrumental in my life.”
The relationship ended last year when Elledge’s life changed. On April 13, 2014, she met her pastor at the front of the church she grew up in during an altar call. She told him that she didn’t feel assured she was saved, and she wanted a change in her life.
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It was evident how very much in love they were. Had you been eavesdropping, you would have thought they were teenagers without a care in the world but for each other. It is through their journey of endurance, hardship, loss and faith, that they have discovered the strength of their marriage. This is their inspiring story of how God made them one, to help carry each other’s burdens, learn to pray together through the storms, and to always trust God.
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