Dear Friends,

I delivered a devotional last week to a “Best Practices in Leadership Summit” at Loma Linda University Health on Valentine’s Day. These are the people I serve and I have grown to love them as I advocate for them and give them legal advice and support. This particular talk involved a personal risk, but I don’t believe in talking to people about what I am unwilling to live out myself.

The responses were gratifying. The message was received and taken to heart by many. I hope it blesses you too.

. . .

I take my title of this talk, “We Done It for Love,” from a little boy named Richie Ballard in Charlotte, North Carolina. Richie has something to tell us about how love gives us vision for service.

Richie was asked by his mother to polish her shoes to wear for the big family dinner on Christmas Day. When he finished, his mother gave him four quarters. When she went to put on the shoes she found the four quarters stuffed inside with a note from Richie that said, “I done it for love.”

Here’s a lesson on loving from another little boy–
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Chad was a shy, quiet little boy who turned the kind of aloneness we all fear into joy. Every day, Chad’s mom agonized when she went to pick up Chad from school and saw the big group of kids walking out, with Chad trailing along after them.

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Near Valentine’s Day, Chad announced to his mom that he wanted to make a valentine for everybody in his class. His mother’s heart sank, but Chad insisted, so she went out and bought the colors and paper and glue. For several weeks, Chad and his mom made thirty-five valentines.

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On Valentine’s Day, Chad jumped out of the car and skipped happily off to his classroom with the valentines in hand. That afternoon, Chad’s mother baked his favorite treat and drove to the school with dread in her heart. She watched out the car window as the children came out, Chad lingering alone behind them as usual. The other children were laughing and talking, but Chad’s arms were empty. Obviously, he had received no valentines, and she expected him to cry when he got in the car. In fact, she struggled to hide her own tears. But Chad ignored the special treat. His face glowed. “Not a one. Not a one!” he said.

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His mother’s heart ached. Then Chad added, “I didn’t forget one, Mommy. Not a single one” (Dale Galloway, Dream a New Dream: How to Rebuild a Broken Life [Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1975], p. 77-78)

Chad too “done it for love.” But it’s hard to love when that love isn’t returned. It’s hard to love the unlovely . . . the unappreciative . . . the ungrateful. But leaders are called to love and lead exactly those types. How do we do this?

God settles the question for us. Scripture says, “We love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:19). This is a stunning statement, because truth be told, we aren’t all that loveable. We know in our heart of hearts that we have our flaws. But God says, I love you anyway. Love is my policy.”

When we get this understanding that we are loved to move from our heads into our hearts as the core truth of our being, we live better and we lead better. Those who know they are loved are set free to love.

I am not talking about refrigerator magnet cliché or sappy poster love. I am talking about a fierce love that takes hold and won’t let go and moves you somewhere better.

Is there a greater blessing in the workplace than a secure leader, one who is comfortable in his or her own skin, who can treat others fairly and support and encourage them without worrying about whether that takes something away from themselves?  Is there a worse workplace curse than an insecure leader who projects fear on employees and uses and exploits them in an attempt to look better themselves?

True security comes from knowing we are loved. Those who have come to peace on this point lead with confidence and instill confidence in their employees. Those who doubt they are loved or are loveable try too hard and try to make it up at the expense of others.

I am a recovering jerk. Impatience and anger have marred my life and broken many things including relationships. I learned these behaviors as a child in defense against abuse, but as the Apostle Paul said, “When I became an adult, I put away childish things” (1 Cor 13:11). Only I didn’t put them away – I just kept pushing harder thinking I had to make up for a lack of love and loveability by being tougher than anyone else, and keeping the boundaries around me blow-torched back so no one could get close enough to me to hurt me again.

But how you got to be the way you are is not an excuse for staying the way you are. As Jesus Christ became a loving reality in my life, he would not accept me doing things my own way. I was a husband, a father, a boss, a co-worker, and a friend, and I could not indulge my learned behaviors at the expense of others who depended on me and to my surprise, actually seemed to love me. Anger and impatience were luxuries I could no longer afford.

How could anyone live with me or love me if I couldn’t live with or love myself? So I went into the woods, literally. One summer, our family spent a long vacation at my in-laws’ cabin in the White Mountains of Arizona.

Every morning at 4:00 a.m., I would head out into the forest by myself to think and pray and seek freedom from these behaviors that were sabotaging my relationships.

One morning, I made my way out to a rocky ledge on a cliff overlooking a valley. I was reading Scripture and praying. I read these words from Psalm 119:41-42: “Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to your promise; then I shall have an answer for the one who taunts me, for I trust in your word.”

The Holy Spirit whispered a question in my heart? “Who taunts you? Who tells you, ‘Your unloved and unloveable’ so that you try so hard to make up what you lack by not needing anyone?”

I dropped my head and prayed, “Who is it, Lord, who taunts me like this?” The answer came, “It is you who believes these things about yourself. You insult yourself with the thought that ‘You’re unloveable and no one will ever really love you.’ I love you. Trust me to love you.”

As I said, “I am a recovering jerk,” and I fall off the wagon once in a while, but it is so different now, and I thank God for that!

A secure leader knows that love means always wanting the best for the other person, the other being the employee, the student, the patient, co-workers, the spouse, child, lover, friend – whoever God brings to us and past us. But just like me, sometimes they make it hard to love them.

I once congratulated an executive director for becoming a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives. She had undertaken the qualification on her own without institutional support. “This is a real honor. I am proud of you,” I told her.

She was indifferent and said, “Oh that — So what.”

I said, “It is a big deal.”

She again deflected my praise. I knew she had come from a family where, whatever you achieved, it was never enough. No one celebrated any achievements to “avoid giving big heads.” But when parents or bosses refuse to give deserved affirmation, they may reduce the size of heads, but they certainly shrivel hearts.

Finally, in exasperation, I asked her, “Can you at least accept that I am happy for you?”

She said, “Really, why would you be happy for me?”

“Because I love you,” I said, “and I am glad when you accomplish good things or good things happen to you.”

Another Executive Director was doing a wonderful job with her department. I told her how much I appreciated and respected her leadership and the development of her employees into an effective team.

He reply was, “You don’t have to tell me things like this. You know five minutes later, I am thinking about how many things I need to do, and the many improvements I need to make in myself and what I do.”

“Listen,” I said, “You know me to shoot straight and say what I mean.”

“Yes.”

“Why do you believe me on every point, except when it comes to praising you? Do you think I would lie to you about my appreciation?

“Well, no.”

Then accept my words as they are intended. I am not flattering you. I do think you are doing a good job and my experience has been that when you see a performance you like and admire that you should say so. It is the truth, of course, and when you do this, you usually continue to receive good performances.

I told her, “I can’t stand those supervisors who never say anything to their employees unless and until something goes wrong, and then they jump on them with criticism. I hate it when I see a director play “Gotcha” as their basic management style, leaving their employees tentative and afraid of making a mistake instead of helping them to be competent and confident. I have watched the spirit and enthusiasm of many good employees wither and die when they never received the refreshment of encouragement.

“You don’t have to say anything, but ‘thank you,’ in response” I told her, “And you don’t even have to say that. Just learn to accept grace for what it is. If you deserve praise you have it, and if you don’t think you deserve it, just accept that I think you deserve it. I can praise and thank you if I want to do so. I am grateful to God for you. So deal with it!”

We like to tout our values in this organization – teamwork, wholeness, integrity, compassion and excellence. But these values are nothing without the gratitude borne of a love for others. Without gratitude, teamwork is forced and awkward. Without gratitude, selfishness eats away at our wholeness. Without gratitude, integrity is sacrificed to fear and ambition. Without gratitude, compassion is marred by condescension and contempt. Without gratitude, arrogance makes a sham of excellence.

When we live gratefully, we are saying, “We are not alone. Someone else is helping us.” Gratitude gives us the vision to see the good that others bring to us. Gratitude acknowledges the contributions of others and this makes us accountable and collaborative in our dealings. Gratitude lubricates the inevitable frictions of a stressful workplace.

Gratitude focuses us on what really matters. In 2000, there was a conflict between the then general counsel of the Medical Center on one side and the Board and administration on the other side that reached crisis proportions. The Board terminated the General Counsel and asked me to take over that role.

Kerry Heinrich, our current CEO, had been part of the previous General Counsel team. He had stayed out of the conflict. I asked him to stay on as compliance counsel and we began learning how to work together leading to the close collaboration we share to this day.

One evening, we attended a meeting in the administrative conference room where we worked on a difficult compliance problem with leadership. Afterwards, we stayed by a while to talk over how we thought things were going. We were both very positive and grateful.

I said, “Kerry, we both have represented manufacturers, car dealerships, medical practices, hospitals, but here we get to represent people teaching and healing in the name of Jesus Christ, and researching ways to do that better. For guys like us, it doesn’t get better than this.”

Kerry said, “You are so right.”

Gratitude brought us together. Gratitude brought us to love each other and to love those we serve.

Love is that added dimension that lifts service into something truly holy and transformative.

I was called to an ethics consultation in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the place we call the “NICU.”

The patient was a seven month-old boy.

His mother smoked crack the morning of his birth as she had done throughout pregnancy. He was born with good apgar scores , but he shared the mother’s addiction. It quickly became known that his lungs were under-developed with holes like Swiss cheese.

He was transferred to our NICU just two days after birth. His lungs repeatedly collapsed. Most of the seven months he was with us, he breathed with the aid of a ventilator.

His mom died of an overdose several months after his birth. His father was unknown.

The baby started to rally. He was laughing and alert. By the fifth month of his little life, the staff was able to give him rides around the NICU in a wagon.

But when the disastrous wild fires came in the fall that year, even the extremely filtered air of the NICU was affected by the smoke. It was more than the baby boy’s ragged and leaking lungs could take. He was vented and chemically paralyzed so he would not fight the ventilator tube. One of his lungs blew out again.

Finally, his primary nurse asked for the ethics consult to determine whether or not extraordinary measures were justified to keep him alive despite the pain and discomfort they caused him.

We all gathered — clinical ethicist, attendings, residents, nurses, respiratory technicians and lawyer to review the case. As the attending neonatologist presented the medical facts, I could see the primary nurse’s tears out of the corner of my eye. Her tears were sacred to me. She was thoroughly professional in calling for the consult in the best interests of her little patient even though it might lead to ending the efforts to prolong his life. But her heart was breaking at the thought of it.

I said, “I realize that this is flesh and blood we are talking about, but I have to ask two “lawyer” questions and I apologize for the coldness of them.

“Is there any reasonable hope of the patient’s recovery?”

“No, we all agree there is not,” the chief attending said.

“Then, are the current measures being taken more painful and uncomfortable to the patient then helpful?”

“Yes.”

I said, “Then we have enough for the court to rule that we can stop extraordinary measures. I’ll help you with the letter of application.”

On the way out of the room, I asked the chief of neonatology to take me to see the baby. I never like to discuss a patient that I haven’t personally observed.

He was lying there in his bassinet, beautiful skin, dark wavy hair, perfect little eyes and fingers. He was wrapped in a colorful blanket, not a standard pastel hospital issue. On the shelf I saw little colorful soft toys, also not standard issue.

When I saw those special touches, I realized that the fight that the physicians and nurses were waging for his life came from a deep, fierce and personal love for this baby. They were incapable of just going through the motions.

These were men and women of love and prayer serving in a place whose mission is “To continue the teaching and healing ministry of Jesus Christ.” Their service was their loving intercession for the life of this child. In this case, the answer to that intercession was a heartbreaking “No.” But they “done it for love” anyway.

I walked out to my truck and cried all the way home. I called my wife Patricia on the cell phone and told her about my despair, but I said, “You know–whether someone is on this earth seven hours, seven days, seven months, or seventy years–to be with people who love you and fight for you is a great and wondrous grace. It doesn’t get better than this. And even when we in our human limitations have to let go, Jesus Christ does not let go of them or of us.”

He loves us so the pressure is off. We are free to love our patients, our employees and each other, not because we will be loved back or all of our stories will have “happily ever after” endings, but because that’s who we are – loved people who are loving.

Let it be said of us, “They done it for love!”

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps. 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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