When Both Are True

I sold my business at the end of 2024. The close represented something specific for my family — a level of provision and freedom I'd been working toward most of my adult life. It was supposed to be one of those mountaintop moments.

At the same time, my wife and I were walking through the hardest season we'd ever had with one of our children.

They were making choices that ran against everything we'd raised them to believe. The values that defined our family weren't holding. We'd done what we knew to do and arrived at the place every parent dreads — the conversation about whether keeping them under our roof was still the right thing for them, or for us. In the end, they made the decision before we did, and moved out on their own.

For weeks, I struggled with those two realities, and I couldn't make sense of them together. A lifetime achievement was supposed to feel like a lifetime achievement. Instead, I kept circling the same question: why does this have to happen now? Why couldn't God have given me one without the other? Why couldn't I just celebrate this occasion in peace?

I was lying in bed one night, asking that question again, when something shifted. It was simple, and almost embarrassing that it took me nearly forty-five years to realize it. It occurred to me: you can have both. They can both be true.

The joy from the sale was real. The pain at home was real. Neither one canceled the other. One feeling didn't have to win over the other. Gratitude wasn't dishonoring our struggle. Grief wasn't ungrateful for the gift. Both were sitting in me because both were actually happening — and life, it turns out, is generous and brutal in the same breath more often than we admit.

Something else opened up for me in that season too.

I grew up in the church. I had heard a thousand times that God is a Father who loves us even when we are far from Him, even when we make poor choices. I understood it. At least academically.

I did not feel it until I was the parent in pain.

Sitting with my own grief over my child — wanting them near, wanting them well, wanting to protect them, and at the same time knowing I might have to let them face the consequences of their own choices — I caught a glimpse of what the Father feels toward us. He can be disappointed in us and still love us deeply. He can hold us accountable and still ache while He does it. The Prodigal's father in Luke 15 didn't drag his son home. He let him go. And then he watched the road. And when the son finally turned around, the father ran.

That is the Father we have. Disappointed sometimes. Always watching. Always ready to run.

What I want to say to anyone reading this — especially anyone in the middle of a season where the wins and the wounds are arriving at the same time — is that you don't have to pick which one is real. Both are. And God is not waiting on the other side of the hard thing to be present in the good thing. He is in both. He is with you in the great quarter and with you in the doctor's office. He is with you on the mountaintop and in the valley, often on the same afternoon.

You are allowed to give thanks in the storm. You are allowed to weep on the mountaintop. The Father is with you in all of it.

It's been a couple of years now. Our child made their way back, slowly, and started making better choices. We have a real relationship again. It isn't perfect. It is so much better than it was. The father in Luke 15 got to see his son on the road. By God's grace, I have too.