Dear Mac,
It’s hard to believe that you were only our pastor for only 16 months. When we moved to Austin from Houston in 2010, it felt like searching the frontier. We knew very few people, we had no money, and we didn’t have a plan. I moved to town to start a company that I didn’t know how to build. The move was a last ditch effort at a decent life for a three year old who deserved more. By then, we had been evicted once and I was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Lindsey was a P.E. teacher at local private school and together, we were raising a toddler in an expensive city on an income that wasn’t cutting it.
We visited Lake Hills Church after a number of church stops in our first several months. We immediately fell in love with what it represented. It was the community that we so desperately needed in a city that was close to my youth in proximity but felt foreign in practice. Julie and you had us over for dinner a number of times. They were reminders, to me, to look for the helpers.
Over a decade later and you would have thought that we’d known each other for a lifetime.
You’re like a brother to me. Though you’re nearly two decades my senior, there are few humans on earth that have shared their heart with me the way that you have. We’ve also shared workouts and countless glasses of bourbon.
You are one of my best friends; you’ve actually saved my life twice. You were no longer my pastor when you flew to Columbus on a day’s notice to counsel me in 2014. And I’d lived in Ohio for nearly 11 years, when I called for your help in November of 2021. With your counsel and help, I achieved a freedom that I hadn’t known in 15 years. It didn’t matter that we had long since left Austin, it seemed as if we were still active members of your church. That’s how you work. The gratitude that I have for you is unmatched and I will not ever forget the lengths that you’re willing to go to make other lives better.
Lesson: the ability to help others has no expiration date.
Web