It was an overcast day in the middle of October in 1987.  The Houston humidity was high, the air outside felt muggy, dense.  To me, it felt like there was a shortage of air.  I kept trying to catch my breath as I pulled up to the office building in the Memorial area.  I sat in my car for a few minutes, trying to calm down as I watched a landscape crew trim the grass, probably for the last time that season, and rake the leaves starting to fall from the trees going dormant for winter.

I was going to ask for help.  It was a big deal—I didn’t do it often.  While I was the guy who helped all my friends move into new apartments or houses, when I had to move I did it all by myself.  So I wouldn’t have to ask for help.  Yet I was backed into a corner now, and had finally admitted I needed help.  I’d been going through a time of paradoxes.  Amazing growth and awareness intermingled with deep hopelessness and dreams of someone trying to hurt me.  Feeling very free, yet trapped by my struggles to connect with the right job, feeling like I was somehow pulling myself away from jobs for a reason I could not fathom.  I had been seeing a whole new connection with my Dad, and yet that very closeness and comfort with my Dad was inexplicably terrifying.  I had written in my journal that I was either on a very powerful faith journey, or going crazy.  I couldn’t determine which it was.  So I was going for counsel and aid to one of my spiritual mentors, a man to whom I had given a lot of credibility as a source of enlightenment; someone who had guided me and a lot of my friends in the past.  Wayne had been a semi-regular speaker at our singles Sunday school class.  He had taught Bible studies and led retreats for our group.  He was charismatic, wealthy and successful, and we all admired him greatly.  If anyone could shed light on my current situation, Wayne could.  I had determined I needed to be honest with him about all my circumstances and ask for some financial help until I could get all of this sorted out.  Wayne had recently helped one of my friends with a loan; I thought he would do so for me as well.  I had thought about it for a long time before approaching Wayne—was this the right thing to do, asking for his help—or should I just try to tough it out on my own.  The answer consistently seemed to be to talk with Wayne. 

I could have gone to another mentor to our group for counsel, but I chose Wayne.  It was a decision I questioned much over the years that made me wonder:  what did I intuitively see in him that on some deep, unconscious level, made me know things would turn out as they did.  This was a critical turning point in my life, and many things opened up as a result of that conversation.  Pain, awareness, and freedom came out of it for me, not because of Wayne, but in spite of him.  I still believe I was spiritually guided to his office that day, just not for the reason I thought.