08/29/2026
Part 7 — When I Ran From God
In 1986, I left the Pentagon and headed to Fort Meade, Maryland.
My new assignment was with the National Reconnaissance Office, and just like my assignment at the Pentagon, I really had no training for the job. They basically handed me a stack of books and said, “Here you go.”
So I learned.
That same year, something much more important happened in my life.
In January of 1986, I made a profession of faith and accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior.
At the time, I had no idea what the Lord had planned for me. Looking back now, I can see that He was working in my life even when I had no idea where I was going.
One thing I immediately liked better about Fort Meade was the work schedule.
At the Pentagon, for about three years, we worked two day shifts, two swing shifts, two midnight shifts, and then two days off.
Then we started all over again.
That schedule really messed me up when it came to sleeping. Half the time, my body didn't know whether it was supposed to be awake or asleep.
At Fort Meade, we worked 12-hour shifts and stayed on the same shift for about a month at a time.
Compared to the Pentagon, that seemed wonderful.
Of course, I wasn't exactly taking it easy.
While working at NSA, I was actually working three jobs. I had two jobs inside NSA, and in the evenings I loaded trucks for UPS.
I had already been married for about a year. My wife, Sherrie, was born and raised in Annapolis, Maryland, and my stepfather had retired from NSA.
I was married, working constantly, trying to build a life, and I still had no idea where that life was going.
Then our family started growing.
In 1987, our first child, Stephanie, was born.
In 1989, our first son, Steven Jr., was born.
With the help of my VA loan, I was also able to buy our first house in Maryland for about $64,000.
That was amazing at the time because houses around us were selling for well over $100,000. Being able to buy that house was something I never thought would happen.
By 1990, though, I had another major decision to make.
Was I going to stay in the military, or was I eventually going to get out?
The NRO wanted me to stay, but I told them one of my biggest problems was simple:
I couldn't afford to live in the Washington, D.C. area.
I was given two choices for my next assignment.
Buckley or Omaha.
I chose Omaha.
So in February of 1990, Sherrie and I loaded our lives and our two children into a 26-foot U-Haul and headed for Nebraska.
We arrived at Offutt Air Force Base and unloaded that truck into base housing the very same day.
I remember people telling me that coming to Omaha was a mistake.
I didn't believe that.
I believed it was God at work.
About three months later, we bought a house in South Omaha. That became the second home we purchased using my VA loan.
And when it came to finding a church, we didn't have to look very long.
The very first Sunday we walked into Midlands Bible Baptist Church in Bellevue, the pastor wasn't even there. An evangelist named Tucker was preaching that Sunday.
But Sherrie and I knew almost immediately.
This was where we belonged.
We joined the church.
Nebraska was becoming home.
Then in May of 1991, Michelle was born.
She was going to be breech, but the doctors were able to turn her before inducing labor.
By then, we had three children, a home, a church family, and what looked from the outside like a pretty clear direction.
Then came June of 1992.
After nine years in the Air Force, I got out.
And suddenly I discovered something I hadn't really expected.
I was almost completely unmarketable.
I had spent years doing highly specialized work. I had worked at the Pentagon, NSA, and with the NRO. I held a Top Secret/SCI clearance.
But once I stepped outside that world, most of what I had done didn't translate very well into an ordinary civilian résumé.
The most valuable thing I had professionally was my security clearance, and that was really only valuable if I went back into the same kind of work I had just left.
And I didn't want to do that anymore.
Before I got out of the military, I had already started looking for another direction.
I became involved in the financial industry. I earned my insurance license, my Series 6 and Series 63 securities licenses so I could sell mutual funds, and I also did some mortgage work.
The dream sounded great.
Work on commission.
Build your own business.
Recruit people.
Build a team.
Work hard now so that someday you could have something of your own.
At the same time, I did whatever I needed to do to make a living.
One of my first jobs after leaving the military was delivering flowers for Baker's. I did that for about a year.
Then I spent about a year working at UNMC as a data technician.
But I kept working at the financial business.
By 1995, I was doing it full time.
Recruiting by day and selling by night.
And for a while, that was all fine and dandy.
I believed I was building something.
I believed eventually it was all going to pay off.
Then one day my oldest daughter, Stephanie, who was probably about eight years old at the time, said something to me that I have never forgotten.
She came up to me and said:
“Hey Dad, I found a dollar. Can we buy bread?”
That hit me hard.
Here I was chasing this dream of building my own financial business, telling myself that someday all the work was going to pay off.
And my little girl had found a dollar and was excited because maybe we could use it to buy bread.
That was the moment I realized:
I had to stop dreaming and get a real job.
My family couldn't live on what I hoped might happen someday.
They needed me to provide for them now.
So I quit the financial business.
And after working at the Pentagon, NSA, and the National Reconnaissance Office, after having a Top Secret/SCI clearance and working around some of the most sophisticated technology in the world, do you know what my next job was?
I became a garbage man.
That's right.
I went to work for Watts Trucking, the garbage company.
And I wasn't ashamed of it.
I had a wife and children who needed me, and there was honest work available.
So I went to work.
I stayed with Watts for about three months.
Then I went to work for Deffenbaugh Industries, where I would spend about the next five years.
I started out driving a garbage truck.
After about four months, they made me a supervisor.
And then something happened that seemed to happen everywhere I worked.
I found my way back to computers.
I hadn't started Affordable Computer Repair yet, but throughout the 1990s I was doing computer work on the side.
I fixed computers.
I set up computers for businesses.
I did bookkeeping.
I figured out software.
If there was something involving a computer that nobody else wanted to figure out, somehow it usually ended up in front of me.
At Deffenbaugh, I eventually created an IT operation designed to help the company deal with and fight city fines.
No matter what job I took, I always seemed to find my way back to computers.
Looking back now, maybe God was already preparing me for something I couldn't see yet.
But this was also the period when my life started getting much harder.
I was injured at work.
I came very close to losing my left hand.
At the same time, things in my personal life were becoming more difficult.
I began hearing things that cut deeply.
That I spent too much time at church.
That I wasn't a good businessman.
That I wasn't a good father.
That I wasn't a good Christian.
Maybe some of those things were said out of frustration.
Maybe some of them were things I was already afraid were true.
Either way, after a while, they started getting inside my head.
For years, I had been trying to provide for my family.
Trying to serve God.
Trying to be a husband.
Trying to be a father.
Trying to build a career.
Trying to figure out where I belonged.
And I was also doing a lot at church.
I remember one day approaching our pastor with a long list of all the jobs and responsibilities I was doing at the church.
I told him:
“I can't do all of this anymore.”
I had decided that I was going to give almost everything up and just do one thing.
That probably sounds like a perfectly reasonable decision.
But to me, it didn't feel reasonable.
I felt like a traitor.
I felt like a heel.
I felt like I was letting everybody down.
And the strange thing was, I wasn't happy doing just one thing.
I was happiest when I was doing it all.
Serving at church wasn't simply a list of jobs I had somehow gotten stuck with.
I loved being involved.
I loved helping.
I loved doing whatever needed to be done.
But somewhere along the way, everything had become too much.
Work.
Money.
My injury.
Being a husband.
Being a father.
Trying to build a career.
Trying to serve God.
And then hearing that I wasn't doing any of it well enough.
I was being pulled in every direction.
When I tried to step back from church, I felt terrible.
When I tried to keep doing everything, I felt like I was failing my family.
I couldn't seem to win.
Eventually, I convinced myself there was only one way I could get away from all of it.
I had to leave.
So I sold our house.
And I moved my family out to the country.
At the time, I probably thought I was solving a problem.
I thought that if I could just put some distance between myself and everything that was happening, somehow life would get better.
It didn't.
Looking back over my life, I can say without hesitation:
It was the worst decision I ever made.
And the consequences didn't fall only on me.
That decision had a terrible impact on my family—an impact that, in some ways, could never be repaired.
I had spent years believing God had brought us to Nebraska.
I believed He had led us to our church.
I had watched Him provide for us.
I had watched Him give us a home and a church family.
And when I reached one of the lowest points of my life, instead of holding tighter to all of that...
I walked away from it.
I thought I was running away from the pressure.
I thought I was running away from the expectations.
I thought I was running away from everything that was hurting me.
But the truth is much simpler.
I was running from God.
And I was about to learn that you can change your address.
You can leave your church.
You can move your family out to the country.
You can try to leave everything behind.
But you can't outrun God.
To be continued — Part 8.