Stress
Relief for Attorneys
I have just received the current
edition of OhioLawyer magazine,
and the cover story is entitled "The dangers of ATTORNEY STRESS".
The article contains some dismal
statistics concerning lawyer suicide
rates and depression rates. It says that lawyers are ranked
fourth in suicide by profession by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, and that lawyers are 3.6 time more likely to suffer
depression than non-lawyers.
So, what does one do to correct these
alarming statistics? The
article in OhioLawyer goes on to suggest a variety of solutions:
1. Be aware of your emotional pulse;
2. Focus on what is truly important;
3. Set boundaries;
4. Rely on social supports; and
5. Seek professional help.
These are great suggestions, and I
don't want to minimize them, but I
can testify from personal experience that it is difficult to
think clearly in the 'fog of battle' that depression creates. So
I offer my story for what it may be worth to you, dear reader, because
I
live a life of very little stress and lots of joy and peace while
practicing law full time.
My depression came on toward the end
of my second year of law
school. One day in April of 1976 I opened a law book at 8:00
a.m., and realized that I was on the same page at 4:00 p.m.! Life
had come to a standstill. I became aware of my emotional pulse,
and it was zero.
I was married and our son was four
years old at the time. We
lived in the same town where I grew up, and my parents were still alive
and were very supportive. But I felt like a total failure, and I
was unable to share my burden with family members who were counting on
me to
successfully complete law school. I did seek counsel from the
pastor of the church which we attended, and from that denomination's
Family Services office, but to no avail. Fortunately I had met
some
'other residents of the university library' where I spent a LOT of
time, and they noticed that I was 'down'. It turned out that most
of them were 'born-again Christians'. I had never heard that
label even though I was raised in a 'protestant' denominational church,
and had joined the Roman Catholic Church at age nineteen. But I
noticed from my emotional fog that these people seemed to be alive and
to genuinely care about me!
Most of them suggested that I needed
'to ask Jesus to come into my
heart', and to live for Him rather than for myself. That sounded
unrealistic to me. How could I live for someone I didn't know and
could not see, when I could not successfully live for myself?
Then the last Christian on my list of
acquaintances, named Lynn,
chatted with me, and she told me that God had a message for me!
The
message was Psalm 46:10. My response to her was, "Which
says.......?" - since I had never knowingly opened a Bible. She
opened a huge black Bible and pointed me to that
passage:
Psalm 46:10
Be still, and know
that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted
in the earth.
She also gave me a
'Gospel Tract' - which is a little
booklet with about eight pages published by Campus Crusade for
Christ. Their summary of the Christian 'Good News' was this:
1. God has a plan for your life;
2. But all of us have gone astray
from God after our own ways.
3. God loves us so much that He sent
His only-begotten Son, Jesus
Christ, to become a man, to live for 33 years as a man, yet without
sin, to die on a Roman cross to pay for our sins, and to be raised from
the dead to be the source of a new life for each and every person.
4. God has given us free-will as part
of His loving creation, and
honors that by allowing each and every person to choose whether to be
reconciled to God by repenting for our sins, by receiving Jesus into
our heart to be our Savior from sins and Lord of our lives, OR to
continue on our paths away from God and continue to pay the
consequences in the age and in eternity.
Eight pages with illustrations.
I read that little booklet, and
was stunned. I knew in my heart that it was true, but it was so
radical that I needed to know more. So, being in law school, I
went to the reference desk of the library, and looked up other
translations for "be still and know that I am God" since I know nothing
about the Hebrew original text. One translation caught my
eye. It said, "Stop
resisting, and let me be God." Another translation said, "Stop
striving and know Me as your God."
It had never dawned on me that I was
resisting God until I was told to
stop resisting. And likewise, it never dawned on me that I was
striving to live successfully until I was told to stop striving!
I then spent about two weeks trying to figure out how to stop striving,
and how to stop resisting God. At the end of those two weeks I
still had no answers to the question "How?", so I called the girl who
had given me Psalm 46:10 and the Gospel Tract. I figured that she
was the one with the answers, and the only conclusion I had come to in
those two weeks was that God could not do worse than I was doing in
managing my life!
So we met in the second floor lounge
in the Business Building of the
university where I studied, and I asked Lynn what I should do
next. She said, "Get down on your knees, because you will be
talking to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords!" I was
impressed that this was a monumental moment in my life, so I got down
in my knees with no though of what I was going to say to God.
When my knees touched the carpet
twenty-six years worth of tears were
released in a flood of weeping! I cried and cried, not knowing
why I was crying. Lynn was there praying for me, but I could not
hear what she was praying because of the sound of my wailing.
Eventually I ran out of tears, and got slowly to my feet, having not
said a thing to God. But the world seemed to be brand new, and I
later realized that it was me who was brand new! In response to
the big grin on my face Lynn asked me what I was going to do
next. I told her that I was going to call my wife and tell her
what had happened. I did so, and she said, "The same thing
happened to me several weeks ago, so come on home." We have been
together ever since, and that was thirty-seven years ago!
A short time later I heard on the
radio a song called, "Tears Are A
Language Which God Understands". Enough said.
LIFE GOES ON
So, May 15, 1976 at 3:00 p.m. was a
pivotal moment in my life, and I
have never been the same since, and never wanted to go back. A
lot has happened, but suffice it to say that I was able to complete law
school, and took the bar exam. I discovered that the key prayer
during the bar exam was, "Oh God, what's the answer?" I would
read a questions, pray that prayer, write what came to mind, and go
on. I believe that I was the happiest person taking the bar exam,
and several of my fellow examinees asked me why I was so calm and
peaceful. I told them the story.
After happily and successfully
completing the bar exam, I joined my
lawyer father in his solo practice of law. He had been so wounded
by the heavy-handed religion of his parents that he didn't want to hear
anything about my new 'religion'. So I honored that request, and
prayerfully tried to practice law with him as a 'Christian lawyer' but
honoring his determination to ignore my new spiritual life.
One major spiritual thing I learned
is that no one can serve both God
and money. So I made the determination that I would serve God and
not money. That was a scary decision, but looking back I was thus
set free from time clock lawyering.
Another major spiritual factor came
when I read in the Bible about the
prophet Elijah pouring water on a 'burnt offering' he was making to
God, and God sent fire and not only consumed the water and the
sacrifice, He consumed everything surrounding the altar of
sacrifice! Therefore I determined that I would not advertise for
clients, but I would trust God to bring me into contact with whomever
He wanted me to serve, and that He would give me the grace to serve
them in a way that was pleasing to Him and them. As a result I
have learned to trust God's faithfulness, and His grace to serve others
in ways that I could never achieve by myself. Just recently I had
the privilege of serving as guardian for a man named John whose family
and friends were unwilling or unable to help him when he became
medically terminal with COPD. My account of that adventure can be
found at John's
passing .
Years ago another lawyer in my town
heard someone refer to me as a
'Christian lawyer'. He was puzzled by what that might mean, so he
asked me to help him to understand what that might mean. I told
him that a client wanting a Christian lawyer probably wanted someone
who had also received Jesus as Savior and Lord as the client had.
The client would also want excellent legal advice and service together
with spiritual advice and service as the case may require. I
finished by saying that the client would probably also want the
attorney to join with him or her in prayer. The other lawyer told
me that he would refer such clients to me! <grin>
After twelve years of practicing law
with my dad, he developed lung
cancer. I have given the details of his story on another page This Could
Be The Last Time. Dad
battled the cancer for a year
before coming to a terminal condition. But he finally was
desperate enough to ask me how to become a born-again Christian, was
saved from his sins and passed away peacefully in his sleep. So I
was on my own as far as the practice of law goes. I discovered
that I had inherited a restriction on the practice of law of which I
was unaware. My dad had never done any real estate title
searching, always farming his clients' need for title work to other
attorneys. But when I was on my own I realized that I enjoyed
doing title work. in 1989 I was able to become an attorney agent
for a major title insurance company, and have done title work ever
since as a major part of my practice of law. I realized that
there was a spiritual component to this limitation which I had
inherited, which I describe and give more details about on another page
called Imaginations.
Although I had been shown that imaginations or expectations are the
cause of major problems in interpersonal relationships, I had not
personally experienced the process of being set free from another
person's expectations until I had the experience which I have just
described after my dad passed on. (Notice that I say 'passed on'
rather than 'passed away'. This is because I firmly believe that
there is an afterlife in which some will enjoy God's grace and others
will suffer the lack of God's grace by their own choice. Please,
dear reader, don't ignore this most important of issues!!!)
GOD KNOWS HOW TO MADE CONNECTIONS
I once received a phone call from a
lady named Lilly in the Southeast
US. Her
daughter had been killed in a car crash in Ohio where I live and
practice law. She had called the local clerk of courts to
determine whether her son-in-law had done anything regarding her
daughter's death, and found that nothing had been filed. So she
obtained a list of attorney phone numbers from the clerk's office, and
began calling attorneys. The first attorney to answer was
me. We discussed her legal needs, and then, before we
disconnected the phone call, I told her that one of the optional
services I offer my clients is prayer. She was overwhelmed and
told me that she had hoped to find a Christian lawyer, but had no idea
how to go about finding one. We had a nice time of praying for
God's will to be done concerning her daughter's death, and the healing
of her family member's emotional wounds, and we ended the phone
call. I took about a year and a half to get her daughter's estate
and wrongful death claims settled, and Lilly, her husband Bob, and I
have been friends ever since.
I could go on and on, and maybe
someday I will, but suffice it to say
that I have no regrets about be 'a Christian lawyer'. I have met
other Christian lawyers who have similar testimonies of how God
intervened in their lives in times of trouble, and the improvements
that have been made in their lives as a result. I consider every
day to be an adventure, and every person I meet to be a precious soul
for whom Christ died!
IN CONCLUSION
One of my favorite songs is a
slightly revised version of 'The Prayer
Of St. Francis":
Make me a vessel of Your grace and
truth;
where there is hatred let me bring
Your love;
where there is injury Your healing,
Lord,
and where there's doubt - true faith
in You.
Make me a vessel of Your grace and
truth;
where there's despair in life let me
bring hope;
where there is darkness, only light,
and where there's sadness - ever joy!
Oh Master, grant that I may never
seek
so much to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love with all my
soul!
Make us all vessels of Your grace and
truth;
it is in pardoning that we are
pardoned;
in giving to all men that we receive,
and in dying that we are born to
eternal life!
I believe that my clients need all of
these spiritual graces in
addition to the sound legal advice and services which any attorney at
law should provide.