Karl D. Stephan,
Electrical Engineering,
Texas State

[October 2, 2011]–

For too long, I have viewed my life as two distinct worlds, increasingly separated.

In the university, I am generally in control in the classroom, and if things don’t go well in my research, at least I can decide what to try next.

Back at home, things have been completely different since my father-in-law came to live with us. He lacks short term memory and can no longer live independently. Television seems to makes sense despite his impairment, so his set is on all the time. That noise became a constant annoyance to me.

Tangible Help

Then my wife’s 10-year-old nephew came to live with us this summer. His mother faces a life-threatening illness and underwent a bone-marrow transplant. Our caregiving was a tangible way we could help her, far better than any gift. As fall approached, my wife, her father and her nephew moved two states away so the child could be in school near his home.

This has left me in complete control of my home life: there isn’t any to speak of. To maximize my work life, I could stay in the lab until midnight five days a week. But I have not chosen to do that.

Instead, the day my wife left I drove from San Marcos to at an out-of-the-way ranch near the Texas coast. There is a retreat center on the ranch operated by a monastic order. At the grand old stucco mansion the only sounds are the wind, birds, insects, and the dinner bell. A rule of silence is observed – no one talks.

During my retreat I was rewarded with sighting wild turkeys roosting near my cabin, a deer and her fawn dozing in the afternoon heat a dozen steps from my door, and hawks soaring high above the mesquite trees as the red ball of the sun settled below the horizon.

All of Me

Since my return from the retreat, I have avoided television, the radio, and most websites except for job-related emails and such. I have spent the weekdays working, but now I deliberately don’t work at all at home after 5 pm. I consider it a warm-up exercise for when my wife returns. When she’s back, I want all of me to be here, rather than the leftovers from my job.

Isaiah 30:15 (NIV) says:
This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says:
“In repentance and rest is your salvation,
in quietness and trust is your strength,…”

This separation from my family, though difficult in many ways, has been a strange kind of gift. For my wife to help her sister and father, both of us had to be willing to sacrifice. Such self-sacrifice is not instinctive to me. I have learned that being quiet, turning to God, resting, and trusting is how I found the strength to do it.

September and early October for so many of us is terribly busy, whether with class preps, student advising or the deadlines of research and publishing. God’s peace is always ours for the taking; we only need stop long enough to become aware of His presence.

© 2011  Karl Stephan
photo © Faculty Commons