I have made a terrible mistake. I have let HM Magazine tear apart my family. For 28 years HM Magazine has accomplished some cool things and been viewed at with appreciation by many people. Ask my immediately family members if they like HM Magazine right now, though, and you’d probably get a different answer (no).
My family has felt neglected, out of touch and unloved by me in ways that I can’t completely understand. Way too many times I was late coming home or cancelling my place at dinner so that I could work late on another deadline. What was I thinking?
Here’s the deal: I’m not a quitter. When I started this magazine back in 1985 the commitment I made was to do all the work if necessary. Over time I hired a staff. Over time it grew to as many as 5 people working on HM Magazine, depending upon it to earn money for their practical needs (and families). So, when I was working late, I was just doing what was necessary in my mind to keep the magazine going.
Why did I apply so much importance and prominence toward HM Magazine? Well, for one, I believe it was a God-inspired vision. Two, it’s apparent to me (and I have heard affirmations from others over the years) that God has done a work with HM Magazine. He’s seen us fit somehow to use us and it to do some good work. I think the “work” has been in the area of “pastoral” care, like helping edify believers in their walk through a common interest of great rock music styles that not many other (if any) media outlets were covering. Third, it was a job, so to keep the business growing and/or alive sometimes required rolling up my sleeves and getting to work.
I’ve heard stories of pastors burning out and getting mad at God. “I did this all for You! How could You let this happen to my family!? They hate me! It’s all Your fault!” Part of me shivers at the thought of yelling at God, but I do know He can take it and I do know of biblical stories of some honored guys like David doing some yelling at his Creator, so I wouldn’t be in bad company if I did some yelling. But this isn’t my heart. I feel like the damage I’ve done to my family is my fault – not God’s. I can’t blame Him for what I’ve done.
What I can do is humbly and desperately cry out to Him for help. “I’ve made a mess. I don’t deserve one ounce of Your help, but would you please help me repair the damage?”
Get out your violin, because I’m about to whine a little bit. Not really, but maybe. It sure might sound like it.
I’ve been killing myself the past few years trying to keep HM Magazine alive. I’ve taken on every job under the magazine’s heading (write, edit, design, layout, interact with customers/readers, updated website, sold ads, paid bills, sent invoices, collected money, fulfilled merch orders – the whole nine yards). It’s been exhausting. It’s not healthy. And it hasn’t paid my salary. This is at the tail end of years and years of the magazine doing financially well and yet my family still suffering from my absence. When I was at home, apparently, I’d be “checked out,” thinking of solutions in my head. At the first sign of ambivalence from my family at home at night, I’d whip out my notebook and catch up on work I was missing. I became a workaholic.
I need a break. I need out. I need to save my marriage and my family. I don’t want to be the pastor that cries out to God, blaming Him for being divorced, lonely and dead inside.
I love God. I love my family. I love HM Magazine and its readers. It should always have been in that order, though. I think I’ve been guilty of subtly placing #3 at the #2 spot. My family has noticed. Even if they’re wrong. Even if I’ve been righteous, Mr. Goody Two-Shoes and done all the husbandry and fatherly things right (which I haven’t), their feelings of neglect alone are worth my “guilty” verdict.
I hate taking all the blame, but I like the concept. The concept is that the husband and father takes on roles that are important and vital. If he does his job right, he will create an atmosphere of love where his wife and family will grow and have a chance to be and stay healthy. Do others have choices that are theirs and thus share some of the blame? Sure. All the time with every problem. There’s usually always multiple sides to a problem.
It hasn’t helped that I am personally in debt to the tune of over $28,000 in a business line of credit. It doesn’t help that HM Magazine is not making enough money to pay me a salary some months (my wife went back to work as a nurse in September of 2010, so we’ve survived that way). Maybe I’ve kept a dying body alive much longer than I should have. I don’t know. What would you do?
I don’t want to waste another minute talking about someone else’s fault, though. I want to save my family from shipwreck. I want good health. It might be too late. I might lose my marriage, my family, my business, my ministry, my magazine and my hope. I don’t control all the variables.
What I can control, though, is my participation in this merry-go-round. There’s always one deadline after another. No one can accuse me of not going the extra mile and throwing myself into HM Magazine to keep it going. I’m willing to stop, though.
Maybe God will resurrect it after a season. Maybe it’ll die and never be heard from again. Maybe someone will buy it and I can be their employee and be able to sign off in the afternoon and not carry the weight of making a declining magazine healthy again. Maybe someone will volunteer to steer the HM ship for a few months or a year while I take a sabbatical to restore my family. I don’t know.
I’ve got a book deadline. I’m writing someone else’s book. I have to see it through. I committed to it and I thought I’d be done in January or February at the latest. Now it’s May and I’ve put five and a half months into it. I’m going to do my best to finish it this month. I have to. Other people are depending on me.
I have the May issue that’s still in the process of being laid out. I hope to finish that tonight, tomorrow or the next day. I don’t know. I’ve got plans for the June issue and the July issue. I’ve got advertisers who are committed to buy in those issues. Will they happen? I don’t know. If I wasn’t involved in an extra project right now (why do I take these on so often?), I could be streamlining my workflow and be able to keep putting out a magazine in less time. I’m getting quicker at it – thanks to a lot of freelance writers, who are helping plan and write the articles. Our numbers are increasing, but they dropped so much that it’s a long, long way to go to get back. I have some killer special offers that are going to be presented to audiences at Creation and Purple Door and Cornerstone. I’d like to hope that we’d get hundreds if not thousands of subscribers that way. There’s talk of joining forces with another publication (taking over their mailing list), which could be a HUGE boost in numbers, which might make it a heck of a lot easier to sell ads.
I don’t know what’s going to happen with all of this. Maybe something will happen to ride it out. I’ve got my plate full. I don’t necessarily plan on dropping the plate at this instant, but I am desperate.
I’m starting to sound wishy-washy. Let me get back to the serious part of changing HM Magazine’s address (to another business owner, to another format, to non-existence maybe). If God called me to HM Magazine. Or if He watched as I came up with the idea and chose to bless me while doing it – or both – then this is really His problem.
Father,
Thank You for the honor, privilege, fun and fulfillment of making HM Magazine all these years. I’m amazed and grateful for the things I’ve seen You do. I trust that, if HM Magazine is still part of Your plan, then You will provide a way for it to continue. If it is not, then I trust that You will not abandon me, but that the next chapter will be one that I will find joy in. I am sorry that I somehow got out of balance with all of this and let my marriage and family suffer. Surely this was not Your idea and I take the blame for this. Please open my eyes to Your solution and Your plan to repair the damage I’ve done. Even if I walk away with nothing, I seek Your face, Your help and I praise Your Name. Oh Father, please help me now.
Your son,
Doug
One thing that makes me not want to press the “Publish” button on this blog here is this: What if advertisers read this and pull out of the June or July issues? What if people at the Creation Festival say to themselves, “Why should I spend $6 on a special 50% off subscription offer at this festival if I just read the guy running it is about to quit?”
In the same way that I risk still losing my family even after I give up the magazine that helped cause all these troubles, I think the risk is worth it. I love happy endings. I’d love to see my family happy and HM Magazine alive and thriving. If that ends up happening, that’s great. If that doesn’t end up happening, it’s not because I did not try.
What you have with this blog is me being honest and laying myself bare. Probably not a good idea for a business to do. I love going with my gut, though. I love following my “instincts.” I love following what I believe to be God’s direction. It’s risky. This isn’t fun and adventurous right now, though. This is life or death.
ADDENDUM: I wrote this blog back in May, with the prospect of my wife separating from me and moving out with my daughters, which happened a couple weeks later in June. As you can guess, I did not hit the publish button and did not post this blog. There were a few reasons. One, like I spelled out, if HM was going to continue, it didn’t make sense to say “I want to kill it” and let the reaction to that statement fulfill the expected roll and cause it to end (advertisers pulling out, etc); also, if I was selling the magazine, it wasn’t the best light to put on the business in the hopes of attracting a buyer. I had expenses to pay and HM was my only source of income for the last nine months. If you’ve read the March issue, though, now you know that I have announced my leaving HM. I have a new job. I’m in the process of selling HM Magazine and turning it over to new leadership. They plan on seamlessly continuing with HM, going from the March issue to the April issue without a hitch. For me this blog is something I wrote and wanted to share with an audience that HM has found. It’s just been sitting here for over 10 months, so now seems a good time to post it – if for no other reason than to fill in some blanks, add to the explanation, expand on the message from my heart; and/or maybe “get it off my chest,” so to speak. The excerpt/quote to the side of the blog (and below the blog thumbnail on the main page) is not as accurate as it was last May. I have placed a proposal in the hands of a few potential buyers. Offers are being talked about, but I would still invite and entertain other offers at this time. If you haven’t read the March issue, you can log in with these credentials: username–Underoath and password–Underoath
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