The Flog – The Fabry Log

The truth is, I didn’t want to do a daily talk show. I even told the folks at Moody that I just didn’t feel like God was “calling” me back into a semi-full-time position in radio by doing that. I already had a daily show in Love Worth Finding I was doing. I had other radio things, like Reaching Your World with Luis Palau and I was recording audio books. Plus, I felt my writing was just taking off with the sale of my first novel for adults, Dogwood.

I remember the feeling of writing that e-mail and telling them no. It was difficult because it was flattering, to say the least, that they had confidence that I could do a good job at this type of endeavor. I hadn’t really done anything like this solo before—I’d hosted Open Line, but that was more guest-driven. This new program, whatever we would call it, would spring more from me and be built around the hosts interests. I suggested a few other people and then went my merry way.

But something happened in me over the next few weeks. A thought kept nagging at me when I’d get up early and start writing. “What if…” I’d push the thought away. The world does not need another talk show, I assured myself. I wasn’t being humble, I really thought that.

My mind is fuzzy about the timing of this, but I believe I made the decision, after talking a lot with Andrea, at a stoplight in Monument, Colorado. I was thinking a lot about our friend, Bill, who had fixed things around our house, built my office in the garage, and who had died a few weeks earlier. I spoke at his funeral and it was one of the most difficult and most joyous things I’d done. I vowed to God when Bill died that if he ever gave me a chance to speak to another “Bill,” someone who felt very on the outside of the church, someone who had “issues,” I would do it.

At the stoplight, turning left onto Hwy 105, came a flatbed Ford and a guy with the window rolled down. It was chilly that day, so his window should not have been rolled down. I never saw his face, just a tattooed arm and a dog in the back seat. He had a workman’s hat on, I remember that, and he drank from an old coffee cup. The radio was set to a country station and it was loud, drowning out whatever pain was in this old boy’s life.

That’s when it clicked. This was a “Bill.” I felt this overwhelming sense that God wanted me to speak into his life in some way, but I didn’t have any idea how. Follow the guy down the road? The light turned green and we pulled out, then separated as he went toward the Interstate and I went into a subdivision.

And then I thought, What if that guy is flipping channels because he doesn’t like Shania Twain (which is probably not possible) and I had the chance to talk to him? I rolled that around in my head a few minutes and came to the conclusion that God was giving me an opportunity to do just that. After letting it sit a couple of days, I wrote Doug Hastings at Moody and asked if they had found anyone to host the program. I believe it had been at least a few weeks, maybe a month since I had told them no. Doug said they had talked to several people but were just waiting on the person God wanted.

Fast forward to July, I think, of last year. We’d begun the program on May 5, 2008. I’m minding my own business, doing a show—I can’t even remember the subject. And a man’s name pops up from the Midwest. He says he’s tired of living the way he’s living. That he and his wife don’t have a good relationship. It seems to me he feels on the outside of his church family. And then he says, “I go to work, go to my second job, come home, drink two beers to help me fall asleep and then get up and do it all over again.” He says, “I’m tired of that and I want to change.”

That’s not verbatim because I can’t pinpoint the date of that call. But when I heard that, I shoved a NASCAR loving fist into the air, pumped it a couple of times in celebration, and thanked God. This could have been the fellow in the truck beside me seven months earlier.

In the intervening months we’ve gotten emails from men and women who feel left out and overlooked. Bruised and broken. Some are homosexual and don’t feel they have a place in the church. Some were abandoned. One fellow called us after losing $2,000 at a casino. He was on his way back home and said he was tired of the addiction. A lot of hurting moms have tuned in, I think. Moms and dads who grieve the choices of their children and grandchildren. I had no idea how much a part of this group I would feel until October of last year when we vacated our home.

It has been a privilege to be part of this program. I look forward every day to what we’re going to tackle and pray God will give me good questions and a listening heart. Thanks for tuning in as often as you do.