Christian Business Review 2022: Pressing On Toward God's Goal

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LIVING CASES: PERSONAL SPIRITUAL JOURNEYS OF MEN AND WOMEN IN BUSINESS GAINING PERSPECTIVES THE TOUGH WAY MIKE E. ROME O ne thing I have learned during my 69 years on earth is that looking at death changes your perspective, especially when it’s your life that is in the front row. I know because I was looking straight on at death, and you know what, the whole episode got my attention as it should. No one wants to die, even if you know for sure you are going to Heaven! A 2% CHANCE OF SURVIVAL On February 18, 2008, I attended the memorial for a 19-year-old girl from my son’s high school class. About midway through the service, I lost all sense of myself and have no recollection of how I got to my son’s baseball game that afternoon. I do not remember driving from the funeral at Second Baptist Church in Houston to my son’s baseball game at Memorial High School. How in the world was I able to not only navigate my way to the game but also apparently go home and change clothes after the service? Since all of my actions were told to me later, what I did and didn’t do can only be verified by those who were around me that day. The craziest things that happened in the sequence before actually going down from the heart attack ended up being a prelude that kept me from joining my many friends in Heaven. That storyline started with me talking with a father from 4 CHRISTIAN BUSINESS REVIEW Fall 2022
LIVING CASE the other team that I did not know, whose wife was a nurse, who was watching from the stands thinking that something wasn’t right. In her mind, she thought I was having a seizure and then watched me collapse. It was like getting hit by a bolt of lightning on a clear blue sky day. My daughter, walking up the steps for the game, saw me go down and caught my head before it hit the ground. She probably saved me from a traumatic brain injury. The nurse saw me fall and sprinted out of the stands. She got the defibrillator, which was brand new and had never been used because it had just been purchased, and—for the first time in her 21-year career—shocked a dying person back to life in a public setting. Fast forward a bit, I was eventually life-flighted to Houston’s Methodist Hospital, where my doctor inserted a defibrillator and a pacemaker into my chest over the period of a week. You never know where the statistics come from, but I was told that my chances of living were less than 2%. That is where my perspective starts to gather steam. STILL NOT SLACKING OFF Apparently, I had caught a virus while on a golfing trip to South Africa many months before. In a very short time frame after arriving home from the trip, it became very difficult to breathe, and subsequently, the collapse of my left ventricle created a blockage. Moving forward after the hospital visit, I did what I loved best—I went back to work. Why not, right? I had just come off the best year of my career, and I couldn’t afford to slack off now. In my world, my job was helping build a company that was giving away 50% of its net profit to charity every year. Knowing that I was doing work that was making a difference in many people’s lives gave me a sense of pride and worthiness. And oh yeah, the money was very good! Little did I know that God wasn’t finished with his message to me. Within a few months of going back to the office, the financial markets started a downward spiral, and fear set into the company from every angle. About the same time, my father had his third stroke, and I was with him when he fell. He passed away that August. Not long after we buried Dad, the Great Recession started wiping out the markets. The global economy spiraled downward in a dramatic fashion. As I was one of the more seasoned folks in the firm and always there for everyone, they kept coming to me looking for advice, answers, or anything to stop the financial pain. It was a brutal year. People kept asking how I was holding up. I was fine, I told them—just fine. I wasn't. I was hurting, and I was about to prove it to them all. HOW I LOST RESPECT AND GAINED PERSPECTIVE Shortly thereafter, in the fall, a young woman who worked with me made a simple mistake, and I erupted on her. I lost all self-control, and it was ugly. When I cooled off, my business partner took me aside. “Mike, you’re one of the best I’ve ever seen at what you do,” he said. “But if you don’t start treating people with respect, we can’t be partners anymore.” His words hit me deeply. I was making plenty of money, so I knew I excelled in my profession. But was I excelling as a person? In the deepest parts of myself, was I excelling at being the human being God had fashioned to serve Him on earth? Even as a child, I knew I was blessed. God gave me a good mind, and he gave me an incredibly athletic body. I was always a strong kid, so it was a surprise when I got sick in the fifth grade. The doctor diagnosed me with the Russian flu. He was wrong. In fact, my appendix had ruptured. Within five days, I was paralyzed from the waist down. It took multiple months for the medical team at the hospital to pump out the poison so I could walk again. Brushing so close to death at that young age gave me my first perspective shift. I learned that no matter how bad things looked, they would get better if I kept going. Did life get tough? Keep going. You’re sick? Keep going. In pain? Keep going. Perseverance was my new perspective. As an athlete, I persevered through three knee operations, a dislocated shoulder, a chipped hip bone, ulnar nerve surgery, and who knows how many concussions. But I knew that if I kept going, I could make it as an elite athlete. And I did! In high school, I played quarterback on the football team. We never lost a game. In my senior year, the University of Kansas recruited me to play baseball and football for them. My first major accomplishment as a collegiate athlete was CHRISTIAN BUSINESS REVIEW Fall 2022 5
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Page 11 and 12: BIBLICAL BUSINESS GOALS BOOK EXCERP
Page 17 and 18: A THEOLOGY OF DARRELL BOCK CHRISTIA
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SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT SPECIAL ACK
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Christian Business Review 2022: Pressing On Toward God's Goal

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