Meet Dennis Alexander

Like many of you in the church body, “life under the sun” has brought our family through a continuous ebb and flow of circumstances, good and bad. As an engineer, I often think of life as a sinusoidal wave with constantly changing amplitudes, sometimes above the x-axis (positive) and sometimes below. Individuals with a more artistic bent might better relate to the metaphor of a mosaic picture with a myriad shades of light and dark. In our 22 years of marriage, my wife Kristin and I have been blessed with some pretty comfortable seasons, but we’ve also seen our share of heartache and dark times - from miscarriages to barely surviving a terrorist attack in the Middle East.

In my flesh, my response to hardship is typically to hunker down and wait out the storm. Why would I need to assume a posture of receiving, asking Father what He wants to do through trials? Life is a sine wave after all. I just need to wait it out until the amplitude goes positive again. Seemingly out of nowhere, the second half of 2019 brought some of the most difficult battles we’d ever faced, and on multiple fronts. The most unexpected, and at times overwhelming, struggle was intense strife in our marriage. Nothing that hit us was by itself a single, devastating blow. It felt more like the proverbial death by a thousand cuts.

By the time COVID-19 began impacting our community in early 2020, I was already feeling that my “hunker down” strategy might be fatally flawed. Deep cracks were appearing in the walls of my bunker just as the bombing overhead was getting more intense. Long before I ever made the conscious decision to seek shelter in Jesus, He began pursuing me. Isn’t that awesome? He didn’t even wait for me to make the first move! He called to us through so many channels – scripture (Psalm 46:10), the big idea in former Lead Pastor Scot’s sermon (“When life feels like death, cling to Jesus”), The Chosen TV series (too many powerful moments to name), an encouraging word from our counselor (Dustin Ellis) or just His gentle voice spoken in my spirit. Kristin calls these love notes from Father. He didn’t make our circumstances better. He made himself constantly available in our circumstances and has continually remind us that he is here. As I write this it strikes me what an incredibly loving act that is. He is God, in heaven with nothing but really great circumstances, yet He chooses to enter into my bad circumstances with me. WOW!

I wish I could close by sharing that everything is all better now and that we have all the answers, but this chapter of our story is still being written. Although for now we’re still walking through some pretty major heartache, we are not walking alone. Our Father who sees and cares, who gave us his Son, who does not sleep, is carrying us through it all. He has surrounded us with other saints as tangible expressions of his support and care. He is teaching me to take refuge in Him and to see the beautiful mosaic He is making with all the shades of darkness and light. While we might not yet know the end of this chapter, in faith we believe that we will dance again and that one day He will redeem it all into something beautiful as only He can do.