When Our Life Strategies Don’t Work I always prided myself on holding my life together, but that all changed in my early 30s. Aching to prove myself as a man, I became a workaholic pastor, neglecting my family and precipitating a crisis in my marriage. My wife courageously confronted me and insisted that we change before it was too late. I agreed. A few months later we lost our second child in a miscarriage. A few months after that, my dad died in his 50s. And a few months after that loss I took a hiatus from the pastorate. The pain of multiple losses had caught up with me. I was depressed, making only fraction of what we were accustomed to, and hurting inside. It was then that God began the work of healing my heart and my relationships. I had tried to heal on my own by denying,…