A Grace Discovered: Perseverance During Our Season of Loss

By Curt Olson

Join an average American family on a journey through their “season of loss,” as this new author, Curt Olson, describes it. The Bible references many people who experienced times in the wilderness as a time of listening, learning, and teaching. Those times in the wilderness, or desert, lasted as little as 40 days for Jesus Christ and 40 years for Moses. God engineered the circumstances for a season of loss for the Olsons, too.
Readers will understand the personal and spiritual challenges the Olsons faced on a journey through multiple job losses during the Great Recession, the death of a parent, two long-distance moves, a home in foreclosure with one of the Big Banks, a non-life-threatening health issue, and the end of a more than 20-year career in professional journalism.
The personal challenges focus on God orchestrating events that prepared the family for this season, although when life happens we don’t always recognize it for what it is at that moment. The Olsons also experienced the reversal of roles, God’s preparation for his wife, Lynette, to accept moving away from family, and the move of his mother from their home in the Cleveland, Ohio area as God gave glimpses that a big move was coming. The spiritual issues dive into the challenges of a man, husband, and father dealing with job loss for the first time in his career, the counsel he received from multiple godly men, waiting, worship, fearing God, and persevering under trial. Since this book is published at a time when Christians are martyred for their faith every day in the Muslim world, and elsewhere, it’s hard to call what the Olsons faced as “persecution.” But God has provided deep spiritual perseverance for the Olsons to hold them steady and strong during a deeply distressing period of their lives.
The timing of this inspirational non-fiction narrative is the Great Recession, which the author believes never ended for the vast majority of Americans. Readers may be familiar with the books in print by former secretaries of the U.S. Treasury, Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner, which address the U.S. government’s response to the nation’s near economic collapse in fall 2008. Economists and others have written similar books. However, few books in the past six years have outlined how the Great Recession impacted average people, individuals and families trying to play by the rules and survive. “A Grace Discovered: Perseverance During Our Season of Loss” achieves that ... and much more.
Wherever they lived, the Olsons were overwhelmed by the benevolence of churches of which they were members or attended regularly. Fellow Christians had their back, and that is how God designed the church to function. We celebrate together. We mourn together. We help others who are hurting. And we suffer together.
Curt Olson trusts readers will receive encouragement and hope for all challenges they face by telling his story, and the story of his family. However, Curt Olson also seeks to challenge the church in America in the area of benevolence. No one should anticipate America returning to the days of the 1980s and 1990s when the United States thrived as an economic juggernaut. While America remains the richest country in the world, that status is fading swiftly. There’s a country worth saving and everyone, including the church, has a role to play.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Curt Olson
• Release date: Aug 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310496011

Curt Olson

While Curt can brag about accomplishments during his professional career, his relationship with Jesus Christ far surpasses everything in his life. He is my Lord and my God.Curt is an award-winning writer, having earned Associated Press writing awards in Ohio in 2001 and New York State in 1995. He has earned accomplishments at every level of his career. While he loved journalism, God compelled him to end that in summer 2013 when he was in his third round of unemployment in four years from that industry. He is transitioning his career away from journalism and he is waiting for God to reveal what’s next. He has been working part-time since mid-May 2014.Curt Olson has been a professional journalist for more than 20 years, which included serving in his dream job as editorial page editor at a daily newspaper in the Cleveland, Ohio area. He also served as a beat writer covering government or public and higher education, in the Cleveland area and a newspaper in Jamestown, N.Y., and a nonprofit website journalist in Texas and South Carolina uncovering waste, fraud, and abuse in state governments as an investigative reporter.At the newspaper in the Cleveland area Curt also served as religion editor for five years. He found that incredibly rewarding when traditional journalists primarily don’t care about faith and have no understanding of how to communicate it.Curt is a proud graduate of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia and Maple Grove Junior-Senior High School in Bemus Point, New York. Other than college, he lived in Western New York State for 28 years before moving to the Cleveland, Ohio area in April 1996 when he was hired as a newspaper reporter there.After marrying his wife, Lynette, in 2000, the Olsons lived in the Cleveland area about a dozen years before moving to Round Rock, Texas in July 2011 and then the Columbia, S.C, area about 18 months later. Curt regards his greatest accomplishment being married to his best friend, Lynette, and being the father of Samuel and Olivia. Curt and Lynette have strived to have a marriage and family life grounded in the truth of God’s word. It’s odd that people have to do this today, but yes, Curt believes marriage is between a man and a woman because that’s God’s model.

Book preview

A Grace Discovered

Perseverance During Our Season of Loss

By Curt Olson

Copyright 2014 Curt Olson

Smashwords Edition

Published August 21, 2014; Revised on September 10, 2014

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This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This book is available in print at most online retailers.

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Contents

Editor’s Notes

Dedication

Preface

Chapter 1: The Lord Gives and Takes Away

Chapter 2: As Iron Sharpens Iron

Chapter 3: Life’s Blind-Side Hits

Chapter 4: Undivided Heart

Chapter 5: Role Reversals

Chapter 6: How God Moved Us

Chapter 7: God Speaks in the Silence

Chapter 8: Big Believer Now

Chapter 9: The Help That Never Arrived

Chapter 10: I Lost My Second Dad

Chapter 11: See the Need; Meet the Need

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Editor’s Notes

There are subheadings in each chapter. The author opted not to create hyperlinks for subheadings in the Contents because it is the author’s first book and he chose to keep the conversion of the book to an eBook as simple as possible. The stories in this book are based on real events. Some people gave approval to use their first and last names. There are other names in the book that do not include last names. That is intentional. The author also intentionally chose to not use the name of his brother or the names of his wife’s sisters and brothers. There also are some public figures in the book; their first and last names are used. All Scripture references come from the New American Standard Bible (NASB), the version used courtesy BibleGateway.com. That website uses several identified cross references and notes in certain passages. Those have been removed from specific verses or passages cited in this book. Please go to Biblegateway.com for further study of those passages. In the Notes at the end of certain chapters, readers will see specific references that, in some cases, includes a URL address for a website the author used as a source. Those websites worked when they were accessed by the author. The author is not responsible for any changes that may have occurred to those pages after information had been accessed.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memories of Clarence Olson and Eber Kinne, two men of God

who left spiritual legacies grounded in the truth of Jesus Christ, and who died way too early.

I miss them both dearly.

Preface

This book reveals an inspirational person account of the last nearly five years of our journey through the wilderness, which is used many times in the Bible as a period of teaching an individual. Jesus Christ, Joseph, Moses, and David are just four men who had a season of their lives in the wilderness. I have chosen to call it a season of loss. I don’t write that to sound like a whiner or complainer; rather, I write it to describe it in spiritual terms because loss surfaced as a common theme from fall 2009, which is the starting point for the substance of time for this book, until it was published as an eBook in summer 2014.

I know we would not have survived without our strength being established in the sure, steady, and warm embrace of God the Father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God the Father sent his only Son to this cruel, dark, evil world to not usher in a new political kingdom, which even the disciples believed would happen. Rather, God sent Jesus Christ to earth to teach, preach, heal the sick, lame, and blind, and cast demons from people for the sole purpose of revealing he was, is, and forever will be—the Son of God, and salvation comes only through him. Jesus Christ demonstrated supreme obedience to his Father by willingly taking on the sins of every man, woman, boy, and girl through the course of history and the future. Jesus Christ provides salvation to everyone who believes by faith alone in the simple grace, yes, unmerited favor, that only he provides. With Jesus Christ’s death on the cross of Calvary, his burial, and his resurrection three days later, Jesus Christ defeated death, sin, and Hell. Hebrews 9:22b states, … without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. There is nothing we can do in our own strength, be it good works, spiritual rituals, pedigree, or whatever, to gain God’s favor.

The greatest question you will ever answer is: What will I do with Jesus Christ? Every person must confront this question at some point. Individuals must choose to accept his invitation to come to him. Accepting Jesus allows a person to repent and believe and trust in the truth of Jesus Christ with eternal life in Heaven. Rejecting the truth of who Jesus is offers eternity in the pit of Hell, and contrary to conventional wisdom there will be no party occurring there. If you have accepted Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, praise God for that assurance. If you haven’t accepted Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, don’t wait, trust him right here, right now.

What follows are several verses in Romans and the Gospels of John and Mark that reveal the simplicity of this truth of understanding each person is a sinner and in desperate need of the only Savior and Lord who has ever lived. To God be all the glory!

Romans 3:10

¹⁰ as it is written, "There is none righteous, not even one

Romans 5:12

¹² Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—

Romans 6:23

²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 5:8, 9

⁸ But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. ⁹ Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.

Romans 10:9, 10

⁹ that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; ¹⁰ for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.

John 3:16

¹⁶ "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

John 14:6

⁶ Jesus *said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and he life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

Mark 1:14-15

¹⁴ Now after John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, ¹⁵ and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.

The Christian life is not an ending. It is a beginning. It begins a journey of a relationship that anyone can have with the only true and living God. The gospel has broad ramifications in Scripture, and the Christian life. It reveals Jesus Christ as the Messiah, Savior, and Redeemer. But the gospel also reveals Jesus Christ as God, Lord, Son of Man, Good Shepherd, Bread of Life, Alpha, Omega, Creator rock, shelter, fortress, strong tower, and the source of one’s confidence, love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, kindness, and faithfulness, among a multitude of other character traits. He is the Lord of all, yes, the Lord of all life.

If you do not know Jesus Christ as Savior, please say a simple prayer, and by faith, ask Jesus Christ into your heart and life.

I trust every reader will be encouraged by this story of perseverance and endurance during the challenges before me and my family that have occurred since the fall of 2009.

My family and I are average Americans. There is nothing special about us, but I remember when God instructed me in the wee hours of August, 17, 2013 to finish the book that I started in 2009. I hope this book will fortify, edify, and challenge Christians. Please spread the word about the book. As a self-published author, I also am doing my own marketing, and I need all of the additional marketers of this story I can get. Write a review, pass on the links for the book on social media, since it is now available at Apple iTunes, barnesandnoble.com, Smashwords.com and Amazon.com, or recommend that folks in the traditional media, or with a Christian organization contact me for an interview. Perhaps you are aware of an organization that does not come to my mind.

I am baffled how any person who is not a Christian, and has experienced trials in their life, could do so without a faith in God to keep him or her grounded and to aid the ability to cope with difficult circumstances.

I desire that this book will achieve three things. I want God to be famous for what he has done for me as a follower of Jesus Christ. He receives all of the glory for what he has done in my life, the lives of everyone in my family, and specifically through the events explained in this book. I also want people to be encouraged by the level of perseverance God has graciously poured out on my family and me during this extremely difficult time. Finally, I want to challenge the church in America in the area of benevolence. I know we can establish a better blueprint in this area to better help and equip families in churches, communities, and the nation for a difficult future that awaits us. I don’t fret and cower in fear. My frame of mind is one of expectation. The harsh reality is we are in a time of swift change and greater needs than ever before in American history. May Christians see needs and meet needs of people we encounter every day. For such a time as this, the church in America must do it.

Chapter 1

The Lord Gives and Takes Away

Everything eventually ends.

Endings are inevitable.

Some of life’s endings provoke a cause for celebration, such as a high school or college graduation or the end of a pregnancy with the birth of a boy or a girl. Some of these endings, however, incite loss. It is part of the human condition for people to experience hardship. It may be the death of a parent, brother, sister, grandparent, or some other dear relative or friend. The loss we experience could also be a job, divorce, or the end of what one believed to be a strong and lasting friendship. People also may end a career and move on to something different. In the summer of 2013, I found myself saying good-bye to a career that I enjoyed and loved, but I learned to accept the circumstances thrust in my life from the turbulent journalism industry, which along with my physical well-being made the separation essential.

My journalism career ended in July 2013 after a doctor diagnosed me with a non-life-threatening health concern. This occurred when I also found myself in the throes of a third job loss in journalism in less than four years. The upheaval and turmoil throughout the journalism industry had taken its toll, and I realized for me and my family that I could no longer go along for the ride.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does not track the number of times someone changes careers during their years of work.¹ and ² The reason we have not produced such estimates is that no consensus has emerged on what constitutes a career change, the BLS website states.

The BLS has tracked some data in a couple of other categories.

For example:

"A BLS news release published in July 2012 examined the number of jobs that people born in the years 1957 to 1964 held from age eighteen to age forty-six. The title of the report is ‘Number of Jobs Held, Labor Market Activity, and Earnings Growth among the Youngest Baby Boomers: Results from