A Resurrection Story

Hello, I'm Dick Foth, and welcome to Known Stories to Make Sense of It All. You say that's a bit of an audacious claim, stories to make sense of it all. How are you going to do that? I think by listening to the story of an individual, it puts skin on truth, and it informs our own lives. So these podcasts are about those kinds of conversations and reflections, and the hope is that as we explore other people's worlds and journeys, we get help for our own. At the heart of it all, we want to engage the story of Jesus of Nazareth, to get perspective, actually, for how life really works. Thanks for tuning in, let's do this. Well, let's holy week, March 2018, John the writer, the gospel writer, records what happened after the crucifixion, and it's a fascinating account, because John the 20th chapter early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter, and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, they've taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they've put him. So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb, both were running, but the other disciple out ran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over, looked into the strips of linen lying there, but did not go in, and Simon Peter came along, behind him, and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus' head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally, the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. They still did not understand from scripture that Jesus had derised from the dead, then the disciples went back to where they were staying. This morning, after, if you will, experience that the disciples had, and then Mary Magdalene is unique in so many dimensions, but what happened on that resurrection more, changed the face of the earth, changed the face of humankind, I think, and it began a great adventure. I record these thoughts in the early morning darkness on the coast of Oregon, between Florence and a town called Yehats. This sea is riled up this morning, and I can see in the grain as though the lights of tertiary fishing boats probably a couple of miles out. I'm just going to step out here into the wind and talk for a moment. When I stand and look at the Pacific Ocean, this morning is gray. You're not quite able to tell exactly where the horizon line and the clouds merge. It's a faintly different color of gray in each one. There's something about the roiling, relentless surf that stirs the blood. I can never stand looking at the ocean without feeling adventure spring up. It seems limitless just to look out and see what might be or what's out there. I wonder if the disciples and Mary had that thought that Easter morning. I wonder if they did, because resurrection changes everything. If dead things can live again, all bets are off. I recently had a conversation with a couple of friends who talked of their life together, talked of their marriage, that they thought had died, but they got a surprise. I'd like you to meet it. I'm here with my friends Lee and Lisa Leechman. We are in Northern Colorado. We're out in the high plains. We're out in Cowboy Country, so thank you for joining me, Lee and Lisa. Good to be here. I'll start with my standard question. Where were you guys born and brought up? I was born in Billings, Montana. It was born and raised there. I went to Southern California for college and then lived and worked in Los Angeles for about ten years. Billings is that place where they have the airport up on a bluff, right? That's right. You can just drop right off. You don't have to go anywhere to crash. And Lee, where are you? I was born in upstate New York. We had a cattle farm there, about an hour north of New York City, but I was raised in Billings because we moved to Montana in 1970 when I was about four years old. I grew up in Billings. I actually met Lisa in third grade. We went to grade school, junior high, and high school together, and as part of the key to our marriage, we never dated at that age. Perfect. We waited until we were older and then got married. So did you follow her to Southern California to college? Well, only kind of virtually. I didn't literally follow her. I actually went to the other coast, went to Harvard, and so we went to the opposite ends of the country, and only years later reunited back in Billings. So what did you study when you went to Southern Cowell, Lisa? So I studied economics. Economics. Money. I have a friend of many, I haven't seen him in decades, but when he was a young PhD student at the University of Illinois, I said, his name was CB Easterwood, and he's from Mississippi, and I said CB, give me a definition of economics. He said economics is the efficient use of scarce resources. And I've found that over the years to be a good definition. Very good. So you're in money, and you're in... I didn't study cattle, though. You didn't know what you could study at Harvard. My father said, don't study the cattle business because they'll just confuse you. He said, and the other thing he cautioned me was to not become too liberal in my politics while I stayed in Massachusetts for college. So I actually studied economics as well, with a strong statistical background, which kind of led into the way we've read cattle now. There's lots of different ways to read cattle. Okay, so what do you call this? Leachman cattle of Colorado? Leachman cattle of Colorado, and what specifically do you do with cattle? You breed them, but... So we're in the business of raising genetics for beef cattle, and specifically the way we deliver those genetics is we sell you a bull. So we raise the bulls that then would produce the hamburger you eat or the steak you eat. I see. And we also, of course, sell some of the related products. Some cattle are artificially inseminated, right? Seaman, and others receive embryos. And so we basically sell bulls, females, embryos, and seaman. Really? The whole deal? The whole deal. And not just from here, you have cattle other places in the country or the world, or? So we market primarily around the United States, but wherever temperate cattle are raised, what's that? Meaning cattle away from the equator, because the closer you get to the equator, the more parasites you find and the grass changes. So it actually takes different kinds of cattle. You've seen the humpback cattle in India. Sure. The brahmin cattle are more suited to those tropical environments. I see. The genetics we raise are more suited to the temperate regions, which are farther from the equator. Outside of the tropic of Capacorn and the tropic of cancer. And so there you find these more temperate zones, these cooler regions, the high plains of the United States. Right here, so we're at 5,000 feet. Yep. And where would that be in Latin America? Well, they would be lower, but they would also be much closer to the equator. Typically they would not freeze throughout the year. And of course, as you know here, we freeze all but a hundred days out of the year, so I see. So it takes a different kind of cattle. So we raise the temperate cattle. And wherever people raise temperate cattle, they use our genetics. We also sell genetics into the tropics a little bit, but they're less applicable in the tropics. Okay. So that's how we're doing now. In between the third grade and now has been a journey. Would that be fair to say? It always is. So when did you marry? And where? You got married in the late 1990s in Billings, Montana. In really, Montana? Seven years in, something changed. Or it started changing before that, no doubt. But just talked to Melisa about the marriage. After we got married, we were so happy and excited about life and being together, and it was really wonderful. We traveled a lot. We had our son and then the demands and the pressures of business and life really came in on us and caused great strife in our marriage. Perhaps we bought into that misconception that marriage was going to make our lives blissful and be a place where we were going to be fulfilled by our partner. Sure. And then as we got married, Lisa became a full-time homemaker with our son and stayed at home. And I kind of fell back into my patterns, which were fairly well-described as being a workaholic. We had a family business, a multi-generational family business where work and the workplace dominated all aspects of our lives. And so apparently, as I look back, I was fairly caught up in that dip. I would not identify with that at all. Unless Ruth were in the room. Exactly. She had some choice statements about when I was sucked up into those other worlds. I was a pastor. I was a young pastor in Illinois, and the university walked in one day and Ruth said, Dick, I just have a question for you. I said, what's that? And we had four kids under the age of seven, four young kids anyway. And she just said, how is it that you give all of your prime time to people you hardly know? And the kids and I get the leftovers. And I'm saying, like, do you have another question? So I think I get it. We get it. You know, it's a trap that we fall into. We're seeking fulfillment from our occupation. Well, and you're making your mark. You're a young person in a AAA type. What exactly? You have a brain in the vision. All those kind of things. And the future was so bright. And then it kind of came all crashing down. We, part of my idea when I came into the family business in the late 80s, so I've been in about 10 years with Lisa and I got married, we were going to expand the business out of genetics and actually delivering branded beef to people's homes. And we started a project with that. And I was all wrapped up in it. And when we got married, I was all wrapped up in it. But it was outside of our area of expertise. And in a matter of about three years, it broke the family business and wiped out all our capital. Wow. And so there's a backdrop to this young marriage. Sure. And being the type A CEO of the company, young age, in charge, Harvard graduate, you know, I got to solve this. Sure. It was my job. Fix it. You the ultimate fixer, upper. Fix it. And my parents went through a divorce at that time. So you know, we just had, you know, it was kind of like walking through Baghdad in the middle of the war, right? I mean, stuff was blowing up all over the place. And our marriage obviously was one of the casualties of that situation. And we just didn't have the tools. So what happened? We went to how many Christian counselors? Marriage counselors? At least three. At least three. And, you know, to me, that was like going to the dentist. I mean, we don't have a root canal every day. And it really wasn't changing things, Dick. And, you know, I think, if I think about how Lisa felt at the time, you know, she probably felt like she was in a container with no oxygen. You know, there's just no place to breathe. And then I wasn't helping. And in fact, you know, my allegiance to our core family versus my family of origin had big problems. Sure. Okay. There were problems with pornography. There were problems with how I'm going to spend my time at work. All these things going on. And it's just this mess that just, that the enemy uses to tear down our marriages. And so one day after hours and hours, months and months years of marital counseling, we went to meet with our marital counselor. Tremendous guy by the name of Phil Howes, and Lisa said, you know, this, I can't take this. We need to get, we need to do a trial separation. So you did that. We did. And I think that I was just in such depths of despair, that I was trying to, we were trying to hear into our son. And I really was, I was a mess. At the end of it. That day we decided we'd get separated for, I think the original separation was going to be six weeks. But the counselor was quick to add. He said, now, of course, if you understand, you can't go home until she says it's okay to go home. Which I was like, wait a minute, wait. No, no, wait, six weeks. Six weeks is the deal, right? That four day 42, I'm moving back in, right? No, no, it's really not, doesn't work that way. You know, you have to, she has to see change. And when she sees change, she'll know it. And she'll want you to move back. But he said, honestly, if you're not really waiting, willing to work for three years on your marriage, you probably don't have a chance. He basically said that. We now look back and say that was sort of prophetic, because that's kind of how it turned out. But so it ended up being three years. There was. In fact, if you play it back, so we're in this financial struggle, our business goes into receivership, I actually got in a lawsuit with my dad. I mean, it was just catastrophic. The business sold. We got separated in February. The business was liquidated by September. I had the opportunity to move the business to sell part of the business to a fellow here in Colorado. And so we did that. But, you know, we're separated. And so you might describe how it felt to you. I thought, well, I've got to go out and take this opportunity to continue to provide. Sure. And of course, you thought. I thought he should stay in Billings and flip burgers and be nearest. Do something instead of move far away and recreate yourself and go on with his own life. And it was, it was an absolute source of contention that you would leave. So we stayed in Billings near our smallish family and tried to carry on. But I will say that although I grew up in the church, going to church, it was more about tradition and a bit of a ritual. And I belonged to a kind of a fairly liturgical church. And so I didn't have a personal relationship with Jesus. And so when we were separated, I had a dear cousin who invited me to a non-denominational international Bible study, Bible study fellowship. Right. And it was the first time in my life that I read the Bible for myself. And we were studying the book of Genesis. And I was able to see, I was able to get to know the God of the universe. And reading all those, reading the God's word about all that he did in the beginning. And knowing that he was, he's the same God of the impossible. It forever changed me. I'm still thankful for BSF for introducing me to his word in that way. And so I was able to sit in a little leather chair in this little house that we were renting and gave my life to Jesus. And I do believe that because of the work that he was doing in me, then that I was able to trust him and to meet him every morning and ask for his strength in his wisdom. You know, it's interesting. By the way, thank you guys for doing this. Here you are sitting, we're sitting in a house that's under construction or reconstruction. It's appropriate. It is. It is. It's our life. Fix your upper house. We're sitting here. But thank you for making the time to do this because there are folks out here listening. I'm sure that saying, boy, I'm glad I wasn't in that much of a mess or others are saying, keep going. I'm with you. You know, but it's interesting that the very first verb in Genesis in the beginning God created is the verb that means to create something out of nothing. How appropriate is that? And I tell people if you're feeling like it's zero, well, good. That's what God works with. So she's sitting in a leather chair finding Jesus and you're still working with bulls or what? Exactly. We're trying. Yeah, so I had moved down to Colorado. I was commuting back to Billings one week a month to spend time with our son Graham, so I didn't lose that relationship. A lot of things happen, but one of the things that happened is I had all the things that mattered to me stripped away. My work was gone. My company was gone. My family of origin was gone. My wife and my marriage and my son were gone. It really lets you then focus on the one thing that's left, which is Jesus in that relationship. And for me, you know, I had a foundation through a friend of mine who was in the Navigator's organization who had taught me who were the Navigator. So the Navigators would be a non-denominational group of men, primarily that counsel other men and scriptural things and teach you some fundamental principles about studying the Bible and the gods. You find them a lot on college campuses, right? Exactly. You would go ahead. And so I was studying the scripture and just spent a lot of time in tears and crying and singing to the Lord. I think for some reason at that stage that singing was one of the one things that I could do the fine comfort. I'm saying alone because I'm really not very talented vocally. But none the less. Probably good thing you're still working with bulls. Exactly, exactly. You know, this image of a bullbreeder singing to God. It's just, excuse me, that's just my word since a humor book. I'd take it one step further. Actually, there were days when I was out with the cattle singing. I can tell you that. There you go. You can imagine it mostly by myself. Because that was what I think was crazy. The old cattle brought. Exactly. But, you know, I think what was really happening in probably both of our lives in different ways is while there was very little communication between us. I mean, we would literally hand off our son and talk to each other about whatever financial things needed to be handled. That was it. I mean, we weren't working on the marriage. But what we were doing at a very individual and specific level is we were pursuing Jesus. And for me, I started coming to Timberline. I had some men that I started meeting with each week here in Fort Collins and Brain with. And scripture memory and my singing. And, you know, through all that, even though we weren't together at sort of a spiritual and emotional level, we were drawing closer together. But it took, there was so much destruction and baggage created through the hurtful period of our marriage or that it took months and months and months and months to get through that the start of letting any of those wounds heal. So there's an old saying that we're an old truth, actually, that two pianos, tuned with the same tuning fork, are automatically tuned to each other. So you were seeing that happen. There's a couple way back in the 1960s. I think that named Walter, I can't remember her name, Walter Trobisch. There's South African folks who wrote a book about that. This idea of looking at marriage like a triangle and at the apex is Jesus going in that as you focus that direction, you automatically draw closer to each other. Is that true? I agree. And that's beautifully said. What I noticed is that early in our marriage, I really looked to Leland to satisfy me and to make me happy and to fill my life with things, with things that would make me happy. He was the knight in shining armor. Exactly. And so understandably, you know, he couldn't, he couldn't fill me up and he couldn't, he wasn't meant to make that, to have that role in my life. And so when we were apart, and I was reading God's warning, getting to know him and his promises and his faithfulness and his goodness, then my trust in the Lord is really what sustained me. And out of that, out of that time, I was able then to, I was filled up and then, I was able to give Leland more grace. You needed that, huh? And as do I, don't we all, because it was so, it was so stacked that it was a really no-win situation. And I think that some of the problems that we had in our marriage were very common. Sure. That that happens. We want our sprouts to fill us up. Sure. And really in a way that really no person can. So we hit this rock bottom of hopelessness. Decided we're going to get divorced. It's not going to work. It's not going to come around. And you know, that was about a year and a half into the process. It then took us several months to even get the divorce papers lined out. And so we reached this one day when finally the divorce papers are done. And I'm in buildings. I'm dropping off these papers. And I dropped my son off at school. And I'm going to drive back to Colorado and we're going to be divorced. And I just get this prompting from the Lord that says, go buy their house, ask her one more time if she really wants to file those papers. And you know, I'm type A and by this point, I've kind of had enough. And I say, well, no. But it's obvious that this was not my prompting. This was not my own voice saying this. This was the Lord asking me to do this. So after a brief argument of a period, I gave in and I said, okay, okay, I'll go over there. But she's going to say no. Because we've been doing this for years. You know the drill. I know the drill. So I went by the house. I knocked on the door. It's very cordial. So it's come in. I said down and we make a chit chat. And I said, you know, I know the paperwork's done. She says, yep, I've got it right over there. I said, you know, if you don't want to file that, you don't have to. And she said, I don't think I will. And that started a process that wasn't overnight. Months and months to kind of lead back to reconciliation. But exactly or almost exactly three years from the day we got separated. We decided to get back together. Did you formalize that in any way? Or you just showed up and went to Burger King together? We did. I don't know, but I have no idea what the answer to this question is going to be. We told our son and then a couple of months later, we renewed our vows. My father's backyard in buildings. And it was a small, fair, beautiful. I suddenly liked it. He got to dress up in a white tuxedo. He really thought that was cool. Well, let me see if I have this straight. You get married. It's going great for a while. And then life shows up. And the downside of life, the dark side of life shows up. So there's a split. It's not formalized under the law, but it's certainly formalized in function. And you find yourself alone, but then surrounded by a group of women, who, by the way, happen to be studying scriptures. You end up alone in a different state. You're both in a state of confusion, pardon the pun. You end up meeting with some guys who happen to be, by the way, investing themselves in studying scripture. So by focusing on something other than yourselves, if you will, and focusing on the person of God through Jesus, he shows you who you are. It sounds like a preachment of some kind, but it shows you who you are. And that begins a journey back, a little bit like the prodigal son, journey. You know, you find yourself in a far country, sloping hogs for pizza. And I'd start to bring hogs into the picture when you're a beef guy. But the point is, it's that kind of experience. Is that, would that be fair, lead to say it like that? I think that's exactly it. And, you know, if you think about it, you know, so much marriage counseling focuses on this horizontal relationship between us. And we couldn't fix it. Because we had to fix that relationship upward to Jesus, the top of that triangle first. And as we fix that, then this horizontal relationship fell into place. Because now instead of looking to her or her looking to me to meet our needs, we know that Christ is going to meet our needs. We know that God designed marriage. We know that God tells us to stay in marriage. We know that God makes us a covenant relationship. We either have faith that just like when Abraham went up the mountain to sacrifice his son, what sense could he make out of that? What's that about? But he had faith. He said, somehow God's going to make this right because he's God. And if you bring that to the marriage, within all those problems that seem so insurmountable, that hope that seems impossible can come back in your marriage. And, you know, we both have scripture that we remember, you know, one of mine that I was given from a man early on when we were separated, was weight on the Lord, weight on the Lord. I'm fully convinced that you will see the goodness of the Lord and the land of the living. You know, these promises. Cargo weight when you're triple A. Think if we had three hours, I could tell you how hard it was to read a weight. At least it would chime in. But I mean, you know, isn't that so much of the time what ruins our marriages? Is it we won't wait? We won't wait. We're a microage society. We want it fixed. We want it fixed now. It's the gratification. There's no hope. What do you do? You make a change. The grass is greener on the other side of the fence. It's not the way God designed it. And I think one of our big messages, our take home messages for couples, as no matter how bad it is, if you seek Jesus, he can restore that marriage. And I mean, we can tell you today, we thought our marriage was great when we got married. We got married. We would talk about other couples and about how our marriage was so much better than theirs. And how we could never imagine being in a bad spot. We actually said this. Okay. And today, our marriage is so much better than it was then. I mean, I'm sure you and Ruth could say the same thing. You can look back at your young marriage and say, we never imagined the depth of relationship that we could have. By staying, it's the title of your book. No. Sure. Right? I mean, who knows you better than your spouse when you live in these relationships and you stay and you stay through these times and you stay. You just stay and you wait. So Lisa, there's a woman listening to this podcast. She's struggling. She doesn't trust her guy. She doesn't maybe know where he is half the time. You're not a counselor or I'm sure you are a counselor these days, but not in the sense of having an office and having hours. But thoughts, encouragement for someone listening like that. A couple of things. I thought that my marriage was so broken. And so dead that there was no hope. And I'm so thankful that God is in the business of resurrecting things. Because he indeed, he resurrected and restored our marriage to something I couldn't even imagine. But when I started reading God's word, I was especially drawn to Ephesians in the prayer that Paul would pray. For fellow believers in Ephesians 1, about as I pray for Lee and other friends too, but especially for Lee as we were walking through that time, that God would give him the wisdom to seek him and to know him better and that the eyes of his heart would be enlightened. I'm praying for him and I know he's praying for me that we will seek and know God more. As I think about young women who may be in the same position that I was for years. Full of such despair and so hopeless that anything was going to change. I would just encourage them to cry out to the Lord and to just render yourself to him and seek him with all of your heart because he will never disappoint you. And it makes all the difference in the world for how I see not only my hope now, but also what God is doing in me and changing me into the becoming more Christlike through my marriage, through my parenting, through my friendships. Thank you for that. Many years ago now it feels like, I guess it was several decades ago when I was a young pastor, University of Illinois, we had numbers of women come to sit and you know, it has counseled on this and that and the other thing. And I never had a wife, one of these wives come in and say, I want to be the leader at my house or I want to be the boss or however we see this. But I had so many of them come in and say, I wish my husband would lead at our house and by that they didn't mean bossism or what they meant was you know, if I knew that he was close to Jesus then I wouldn't have to worry about it so much. Would that be fair to frame it that way? And this idea of praying for each other, it takes the fear out, it's something positive, it's the most positive thing we can do when we take our spouse's name before the creator, the universe every afternoon or morning or whatever. And in the depths of it, a lot of couples probably, if you're out there and you're struggling, I know for us, when we're in the depths of despair, we couldn't pray together. Sure, and it's too broken, right? But we need to be praying for each other apart but still doing it. But boy, the minute we can pray together and if you're in that place where things aren't good and you feel like they're getting a little worse, isn't praying together the best thing you could do. We really need to do the hard work to make that something that can be done in our marriages because it is, again, it's bringing us towards that tuning fork together, drawing us close in such an important way. And you said something that I really think captures it for men. If you're out there and you're just struggling to figure out how this woman you married is ever going to find you to be satisfactory or acceptable or desirable, again, the answers really clear. You need to chase Jesus. There's actually a reference book that we refer a lot of people to. I don't know if you'll leave this in the podcast or not. There's a fellow by the name of Ken Nair who's at Arizona. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. He wrote a book called Understanding the Mind of a Woman, which is albeit a very lofty goal of a book. But in the book, the premise of the book is basically that if we closely pursue Jesus, our wives will find us irresistible. And when we have trouble in our marriage, it's because our wives are actually designed in a way to respond to our nearness to Jesus, such that when we're not nearly following him, things start to come apart. And I had read this book very early on and back in that long period when we were separated. And we were struggling to get back together. And the AAA here said, hey, we need a timeline. And if it doesn't happen by this date, it's time to cut and run. Even after God had kind of sent us a crystal clear message. Our dad really couldn't figure it out. And so I was meeting with my friends one day and I said, hey, I think it's not going to happen. And then one of the guys said, well, I'm reading a book that you maybe should hear about. And it was this book. And I said, well, I read it. He said, well, what do you think that says for your situation? Well, of course, what it said is I wasn't following Jesus nearly enough. And it was really at that stage of our separation where I made some changes of kind of surrendering things that really made a huge difference. And so this is a long process. But if you take that route, I don't think that two people pursuing Jesus, two people really pursuing Jesus. I don't think God leaves that prayer an answer. I don't think those marriages won't avenge. I think they will all eventually come around. It's that powerful. So it's been how many years now that you have been back together since the backyards, the backyard renewal, 11 years. And your son is in university now. He's a sophomore at CSU. Wow. Yeah. Well, I can't thank you enough for just taking time to talk with me. I'm sitting here thinking we only have so many days, so many hours in our lives. Our time and our brain power and our energy is a scarce resource. And I'm thinking that I've just had a distillation, if you will, on what it means to be one in Jesus from two folks who studied economics. And what I'm hearing is that you made a shift when the marriage didn't work the way you were working at it and decided to really go the economics route, the efficient use of scarce resources. Only so much time, so much energy, why don't we start with what works and adapt ourselves to that and see the transformation and see what happens. Lee and Lisa, thanks a million for being with me. I'm going to go home now and see Ruth. Thank you, Dick. Thanks, Dick.