by Danny Gokey
I really believe that people — not possessions or positions — are the key to our happiness. Sometimes we fill our lives with stuff and run out of room for people when we really should fill our lives with people and leave little room for stuff.
One person can make a difference, and that person can be me — and you. Even when you feel as though you’re wandering through life, there is a great deal of clarity that comes from helping someone else in need.
A Time to Reflect
The church I was attending at the time offered me a paid staff position. It didn’t pay a lot, but that didn’t matter to me. I was more than thrilled to get to work for this church. My impression upon taking the job was that most of my work would center around praise and worship. I was wrong. Because I was the young guy on staff, I was tasked with all the stuff other people didn’t want to do: changing the church sign, mowing the lawn, painting, running wires and cable lines through every single ceiling tile in every single room, and even day care. You get the point. I reasoned that it was okay because I was working for the church. But it became a point of frustration because I wanted to do something I was passionate about and not have to do all the other things I was doing outside of praise and worship. Unfortunately, the church didn’t have the budget to justify hiring me as only a music director.
I figured I was working for God, so I was willing to do whatever I was asked to do. We have an uncanny way of telling ourselves stories that seem to smooth out the rough edges of what doesn’t seem to be right or fit together seamlessly. Nevertheless, that job kept me deeply involved in the place that allowed me to sing lead onstage, which was — unknown to me at the time — preparing me for something even bigger in my future yet again.
While you’re wandering through life, you can’t always see the point of why you’re doing things. But in hindsight, I can see how all the details were important. God was putting all the pieces together for me, and I had to follow what I knew was true. A lot of people would’ve given up or quit, but following what I knew in my heart was right allowed me to see the pieces come together.
I decided I didn’t want to continue being frustrated about my situation at the church, which paid too little and required too much. My money situation was depressing, but I thought I should keep my job at the church because it was ministry, so I remembered my dad’s example and got a second job to make ends meet.
In addition to working at the church, I started driving a truck. I never went to truck-driving school. I purchased a book, taught myself what I needed to know, and took the test. I passed on my first try — by one point. (I think it would’ve been better if I’d failed; I’m sure I cost this company many dollars.)
With my commercial driver’s license in hand, I was hired and paired with an experienced driver to show me the ropes. I learned the hard way how to drive a truck: I damaged a lot of things. I took down stop signs and ruined loads I was shipping because of hitting my brakes too hard, which caused the product to shift and fall into the semitrailer. I once even wrecked an entire semi. I don’t recommend skipping driving school. I learned quickly there is a good reason those schools exist. My financial struggles were a burden and stress on me. I was working two jobs, and it affected my performance, I’m sure. To this day, I have no idea why the trucking company kept me.
I had a lot of time to myself while driving and waiting at the loading docks. I started listening to books on tape and radio programs such as The Dave Ramsey Show. I learned I needed to get out of debt and start using money as a way to create opportunity for myself and build my way to a better future. Up until then, I thought I knew it all and had gotten myself into a lot of debt.
This second job allowed me time to listen to the radio and hear a message about money management — a message I needed to hear but wasn’t willing to pursue on my own. As I mentioned before, learning about money was invaluable for Sophia and me when we first got married and needed to pay off our debt.
I also continued to read about business and what it meant to be an entrepreneur. I quickly learned I wasn’t going to make any real money working for someone else. I was happy to have the jobs I had, but I wanted more.
This is where my drive to understand and practice good business principles was formed — not so I could make a bunch of money and keep it to myself but so I could give a lot of it away. I wanted to stop investing in banks through interest payments. Instead, I wanted to invest in the things that really matter: people.
Let me be clear: I’m not attached to money for money’s sake. I have a deep desire to help other people. One of the things I’ve learned working in the nonprofit space is how limited you can feel by what money is available to resource a vision. You are well aware that the amount of money available to you from donations and grants can limit your ability to help people. It can be a frustrating and discouraging place to be at times.
I’ve struggled in so many different ways, but my desire and hunger for something more is one constant in my life. I wanted to be the source of funding for organizations and programs I believed in. That is a part of who I am today.
My time as a truck driver was a turning point for me. No, I didn’t suddenly become wealthy or figure out all of life. But I started heading in a new direction: forward. And there is something that happens when you start to move forward with boldness and confidence. What didn’t make sense before starts to make sense, and the pieces come together.
Moving forward is a step toward hope because there is more ahead of you than behind you. We know that when the pain comes, the questions flood in, and the threads of life unravel, we just need to hang on. Something new is happening within us, and that something new is the strength we will need to accept the good things that are coming.
If we are not prepared, then our coming prosperity may be wasted.
If we are not positioned, then our coming influence may be misapplied.
If we are not platformed, then our coming leadership may be ineffective.
A Hunger for More
One of the first things I did to move forward after that was stop living with other people. I wanted to find my own place. However, I was not yet in a position financially to afford my own apartment, so I looked for someone who might let me rent out a room.
I ended up renting a guy’s walk-in closet for $125 a month as a way to save money. The closet was so small that after putting a twin mattress on the floor and a 3-drawer night stand in there, it was very difficult to shut the door. And because it was a closet, I had clothes hanging over my bed that served as a canopy. I used to see ants on the floor and roaches in our kitchen (and even a mouse in our bathroom once).
It wasn’t much, but it was mine. I thought it was great. I lived in that closet for at least six months.
The apartment where I lived in this closet was in the ghetto, and I stuck out big-time. Living in the hood means you learn to live with a sense of the unknown. You have to pay attention to every noise because something is always happening — usually something bad.
One night I was walking from the alley into my apartment and I heard the faint sound of footsteps. I turned around and saw a huge half-naked man. Then all of a sudden, two other half-naked guys popped out from behind a car. I looked at them and told them they have the wrong guy and quickly unlocked the door to my apartment. I managed to wiggle out of the situation without harm. Things like this happened at random all the time in this neighborhood.
I also learned what to do during a drive-by shooting. In the ghetto, a drive-by is strangely normal. When you hear the pow-pow-pow of the guns going off, you know what’s happening. A reasonable person hits the ground. The first time I saw a drive-by, I noticed an SUV blocks down the street slow down in front of a house. I then heard the guns go off, and the SUV drove away. Everyone around me dropped to the ground. It took me a few minutes to realize what had just happened. I decided it would be a good idea to follow their lead and drop down when I heard gunshots next time.
When it com
es to crime, winters weren’t as bad as summers. I think the cold sent everyone into hibernation mode. But once spring hit, things got crazy. It’s like all the anger built up over the winter was let loose all at once when the weather got warm again.
This part of my life gave me great compassion for people who feel stuck and unable to move forward. I found myself wanting to help myself so I could eventually help others move toward hope too.
Adventures Unfolding with Every Step
The dark times of our lives are when we have little certainty about what will come next. Those times can clarify our intentions or confuse our sense of direction. There is no escaping the moments when we simply have to reach forward and hope that there is something to grab hold of before we begin to lose our balance and fall away.
The moments and experiences you think life is using to break you are the exact moments you are being prepared for something even bigger. It is our:
Pain that leads to joy.
Questions that lead to wisdom.
Patience that leads to unshakable faith.
Endurance that leads to our victory.
Looking forward can be difficult; moving forward is even harder. Nothing seems to be connected. Few things make sense. It isn’t until we are on the other side of our struggle that we begin to see how connected our struggle is to our success.
Life is a series of course corrections. Sometimes the road is dark, and that can be discouraging. Who would have guessed the twists and turns in my life? These are things only God can know, but they are the adventures that unfold with every step. The key is to keep moving forward until you find the answer, desire, or confidence you need and trust that you are not alone.
It is always most difficult to move through those times in life when nothing adds up and you feel as though you’re moving backward. You are restless inside, and there are few things you can count on. You desperately want a road map or something to tell you what to do next. But even if that existed for me in my dark times, I probably wouldn’t have used it. This is what makes faith and hope so important. It allows us to focus on the endgame and our dreams. If we focus on those things when we’re going through dark times, life won’t seem as bad because we know there are better days ahead.
Sometimes the only way through the dark is to wait for the dawn. You have to reach through the dark to find hope and an answer. If you have the courage to endure, you’ll begin to see your next steps unfold before your very eyes.
Chapter 11
Strength from Within
Don’t miss out on the good things right in front of you.
People want something they can worship. Some people want to be worshipped. And they are willing to do whatever it takes to get it, even if it means losing themselves in the process.
The road of life can be a long and lonely one. People want to know there is more to life — at least for someone else if they are not strong enough to believe it for themselves. We must believe that life is more than right now.
American Idol gives people — most you don’t know and have never heard of — a chance to take the world’s stage and become someone who is larger than life. The magic of the show is in watching a celebrity be born right before your eyes. It really is a remarkable experience whether you are the person on the platform, in the audience, or watching from home.
The show was the first of its kind in a long time. It reinvigorated a generation around a music-themed show. This had not been done since Star Search in the 1980s. There were other similar shows, but it had been a long time since a music-based contest had captured the hearts and minds of a mainstream audience.
A Far-Fetched Idea
All my hopes for a career in music had been fading, had been put on hold, and seemed far-fetched. Sophia and I had talked a lot about my love for music and my dream to make music my full-time work. We even discussed pursuing the most unlikely of starts: through the television show American Idol.
Sophia loved the show from its first season. She watched it religiously. I really wasn’t that interested in it for a long time. That is, until season 7. That’s when I started watching the show and Sophia and I started talking about the possibility of my trying out for season 8.
Initially, I didn’t take it very seriously. I was working so much, and it seemed unlikely that I would be able to stop my life to compete on the show. But the more I watched, the more excited I got about it. I even went to my pastor, whose opinion meant so much to me, to get his advice and blessing. He gave them, neither of us knowing at the time what dramatic changes were in store for me.
Having a music career was certainly a goal of mine. With each passing year, I felt that it was becoming more and more difficult to get noticed and have any chance at the career I wanted. I certainly wasn’t content with where things were at the time, but I wondered if there was any chance at making it.
Sophia and I decided I would give it a shot and try to make the season 8 show. We knew the cutoff age was twenty-eight and that would be the last year I could try out. I believed that was the end of the line for my dream. If I couldn’t make it on the show, a music career was probably impossible.
It still seemed too crazy to give it much consideration, but I wanted to make a run of it and see what happened. I felt as though I had been preparing for this for years, and this just might be my big chance. But then Sophia’s health deteriorated.
The initial audition was on August 8, 2008 — one month after I’d lost Sophia. I had picked that date for auditions months before Sophia’s surgery.
I was broken and not in a good place. I was crying and in such turmoil. In fact, I didn’t want to try out. This was not how I wanted to present myself to a national audience. But I knew how excited Sophia had been about it, and I knew she would have wanted me to try out. I tried to keep it together as best as I could, but I was hurting deeply inside. I wanted time to grieve and recover but knew I didn’t have another year because of the cutoff age, and I promised Sophia I would try.
Then it occurred to me that maybe something good could come out of this and maybe God has a purpose for me in all of this. That suddenly brought me a ray of hope for the first time since Sophia’s death. It didn’t take the pain away immediately, but the healing process begins when you have hope. Focusing my eyes on the hope of the show took my eyes off the hopeless loss I just went through and put things in better perspective.
Change Ahead
Most people don’t understand there are four rounds of auditions that take place before anyone gets to Hollywood. They know only what they see on TV. The first round of auditions was in Kansas City, Missouri. I was still living in Milwaukee at the time, and it was about an eight-hour drive to Kansas City.
As I stood in line to begin what would ultimately be a twelve-hour day of waiting, I wondered what I was doing there. There were so many people, and we all wanted the same thing. People were doing all sorts of crazy things just to get on camera. I was just trying to keep it together.
The thing I kept wondering to myself was how I was supposed to stand out in a crowd like this. What made me different from anyone else? It’s so easy to get focused on other people and other things and forget what makes you uniquely you.
I battled with myself over whether or not I should even be there, but I remembered my promise to Sophia and that my time was running out. If I didn’t take the chance now, it would be too late to honor that promise. Throughout the day, I was in tears one minute and laughing the next. I’m sure people wondered if there was something wrong with me.
I’m so grateful my friends Jamar, Sophia’s cousin Marilyn, and Marilyn’s husband, Pito, were with me on this journey. I’m not sure I would have made it through the day without them. They helped remind me I wasn’t alone.
The first round of auditions is called the “cattle call.” They call it that because they herded more than ten thousand of us into the dome. We sat in the arena for what seemed like forever. Then they called one section at a time to the
center of the auditorium, where they had twelve booths side by side, separated by curtains. We lined up in rows of four and one by one took a step forward to sing about twenty to thirty seconds of a song.
The audition experience was overwhelming. The sea of people who had the same dream I did, the endless posturing before my competition, and the repetitive auditions in front of various groups of producers made the whole experience feel much more like a chaotic circus than an artful performance. This was my only shot, and I desperately needed something good to happen.
Out of ten thousand people, I was one of about five hundred given the chance to come back in October and audition again.
When I got the callback, I should have been ecstatic. And I was, in a lot of ways. But I was also dealing with tremendous inner turmoil. The vision of Sophia being lowered into her grave haunted me. I wanted to grab hold of her. I wanted to breathe life into her again. I wanted anything but the fate I had been dealt, even the one that included this callback. I was living a perfect paradox. The possibility of realizing my dream was never more real, yet my soul felt heavy, broken, and fractured.
Losing My Grip
After my first audition, I was really in a bad place emotionally. There were several more auditions ahead and a few months before the show actually started taping, so there were no guarantees I would keep moving forward in the process, although things seemed to be headed that way. I was supposed to be excited, but the pain kept growing. Sophia meant the world to me — way more than the show ever did or could. I just wanted my wife back. My depression had fully set in. I tried my best to pull it all together because I was doing this for Sophia. My experience was very different from that of the other contestants. The highs and lows were amplified. I couldn’t appreciate the fullness of the moment because I was numb inside. I often walked around oblivious to anything or anyone else because I was lost in my own thoughts.
