Know God, Know Yourself

Jerome Daley, Author of Gravitas: The Monastic Rhythms of Healthy Leadership

By Jerome Daley

Spiritual nourishment: Jerome Daley in the Colorado wilderness, where he spent a year-long sabbatical from pastoring. He describes the experience as healing and restorative in a variety of ways for him and his family.

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When God Called My Name

I was thirteen. Eighth grade. I can’t remember a time, from my very earliest memories, when God wasn’t gently at the center of my life… but it felt harder now. Some of my friends were making choices that I knew would take them away from God, not toward Him. Not exactly hard-core evil, but a fork in the road had appeared for this young soul. I hesitated, unsure. What would that other road hold? How could I continue the road I was on without knowing where other ones would lead?

Early that summer I had a sleepover with a couple of my middle school buddies, and we lived it up, thirteen-year-old style. I tried my first swallow of whiskey – and thought I was drinking gasoline! But still very cool, of course. By the wee hours of morning, my soul was reeling in a cloud of cigarette smoke and vertigo from hours of late-night TV. Were we having fun yet?

Something deep inside of me cried out, “This is not who I am, not what I was made for. Dad, please come take me home!” The thought of actually calling home crossed my mind. No, can’t do that; definitely uncool. So I gutted it out until the next morning when Dad did come to pick me up in our old Ford sedan, roughly the size of a third-world country. By that time, the inner crisis had passed in its intensity, and I was feeling a bit numb as we drove out through the neighborhood.

“How was your time with the guys?” I’m sure Dad asked.

“Fine,” I’m sure I replied.

Then he said something I’ll never forget. “You know, a strange thing happened to me last night,” Dad said casually. “I woke up in the middle of the night, and it was almost like I could hear you calling me.”

I was stunned. I was transfixed. How could this be? How could he know? Between sobs, I managed to get out my story. Dad listened compassionately. I don’t remember anything he actually said, but I will always remember the night that God called my name. It may have been my dad that God woke up, but it was me that He was calling. And I heard Him loud and clear. The peace and contentment that flooded my soul that day were like nothing I had ever known. He cares about me! A really big God must really like me a lot to go to all the trouble of waking up my dad because I was hurting!

Family tree: Jerome and Kellie surrounded by their family, from left to right: son-in-law Jeremy Lindemulder, daughter Ashley Daley Lindemulder, grandson Briar Lindemulder, son Thorpe Daley and fiancé Cailyn Fuller in front, Jerome and Kellie in back, and daughter Abigail Daley.

Later that same summer I was hanging out on my bed, playing my guitar and talking to God, when I had a strong impression that He was talking back. The way I remember it, vague on verbiage but strong on feeling, is that God said something to me along these lines: Son, I want you to help others know me, know themselves, and figure out where they fit in the world.

As a pastor’s kid, the only word I had for that was “pastor,” so I promptly walked into the kitchen and told my mom that God told me I was going to be a pastor. Saying “God said” was not a habit for me, not then and not now, but the impression was strong and so I owned it. Eleven years later I did become a pastor, and since that time I have found many ways to help people know God, know themselves, and figure out where they fit in the world.

Of course, helping other people with those things presupposes that I have already figured them out for myself. I haven’t. But I can say with all sincerity that the pursuit of those three things has dominated my journey through this world…and informs my ongoing mission to help others make sense of their journeys as well.

Pivot Points

The course my life has taken since I was thirteen is one I could never have plotted. As many have expressed, life generally makes more sense when we look backwards; the view forwards is usually somewhat shrouded. And as life tends to do, it coasts along somewhat predictably, only to hit an intersection where it takes a hard right…or a hard left. Pivot points that irrevocably change the trajectory of our course.

“Life generally makes more sense when we look backwards. ”

Marriage, of course, is always one of those pivot points. I met Kellie the first day on campus at seminary and, master of discipline that I am, waited seven whole months before watching her walk dreamily down the aisle toward me in my mom’s classic silk wedding gown and saying words that would indeed help us “have and hold” one another through better and worse, richer and poorer, in sickness and in health. Kellie has been a true equal partner in this venture we call life, our growth together—spiritually and developmentally—matching step for step through times both terribly painful and joyously delightful. And, as every couple knows, little in life has the potential to either illuminate or darken the knowing of God, knowing of self, and finding of fit…like a marriage partner. By the mercies of God and sheer perseverance, ours has been mostly illumination.

The next major pivot point came ten years later when a variety of forces converged to lead us out of pastoral ministry in Chapel Hill, NC and into a year’s sabbatical in Colorado Springs, CO. Truth is, my time as a pastor—doing deeply meaningful work with absolutely fantastic people—was also a time of progressive diminishment as a husband and father, matched by increasing shallowness in my spiritual life. You probably wouldn’t expect that of professional ministry, but it’s a common story.

Our year as a young family in the shadow of Pike’s Peak was healing and restorative on many fronts. It also awakened two passions that have marked our journey since.

The first is writing. Through a continuing education course that year, I uncovered a latent passion for words that has led me to publish ten books over the last twenty years. The second is an equally fervent passion for the contemplative practices of our Christian heritage, most of which were lost in the “bathwater” of the Protestant Reformation purge so many years ago, only to be seeping back up through the ground of our current generation like an artesian well to salve the thirst of many. Ancient monastic practices like lectio divina, centering prayer, the daily examen, the prayer labyrinth—these and others like them began to ease their way into our eager awareness and personal rhythm over the years that followed. These particular ways of knowing God, knowing ourselves, and finding our fit in the world have been a game-changer.

A prolific publisher: Jerome sits at his desk in Greensboro. After his initial sabbatical, Jerome discovered a passion and a talent for writing, and has gone on to write and publish ten books over the past twenty years.

The last pivot I’ll describe, following four years of full-time writing, was my entry into the field of professional coaching fifteen years ago now. Both my experience as a writer and a coach have offered unexpected new ways to know God, know myself, and find my fit…and help others do the same. Funny how the dust jackets of life can change while the story remains the same, or better, continues to be written.

The telling of our stories, of which this is a cursory but genuine attempt, serves a number of purposes crucial to our humanity. It reinforces our fundamental connection as children of God, for we hear echoes of our own journeys within them; it leads us to awe of the Great Mystery in which all things do indeed work together for good, even the most painful; and it provokes us to consider what we may learn from the learnings of our fellow travelers. I hope that something in the fits and starts of our drama spurs you to show up fully in your own life…and that it might have something to do with knowing God, knowing yourself, and finding where you fit in the world.

Jerome Daley is an executive coach, retreat leader, and conflict consultant who is passionate about helping leaders thrive...and build thriving organizational cultures. With over 20 years and 10 books in people development, he strengthens leaders in the journey toward true identity and vocational calling. Jerome is author of the recent book release, Gravitas: The Monastic Rhythms of Healthy Leadership. Making his home in the mountains of North Carolina, he and his wife Kellie are parents of three grown children. His great delights are taking spiritual retreats, backpacking in the mountains, and playing with his grandson. More about Jerome at www.Thrive9Solutions.com.

This article was originally written for the Winter 2020 Edition of thee Journey Magazine.