Reflecting on my first day in Barrie - 1997.

Thanks for all your comments on today's Facebook status. It’s been 15 years since I moved to Nashville and 14 years since my relocation to Barrie. I’m not sure why I’m so reflective on this event today more so than the last decade. Maybe I'm supposed to write this blog - for someone else.

The last dozen years of my life have been the most exciting. Working in Nashville at WAY-FM was my dream job. The day I left Nashville I cried like a girl. It was a great city; I had made good friends; it was an exciting place to live; O'Charley's Restaurant, Cool Springs Mall - arrrrg - I could go on and on.

In September 2997, it was like God was dragging me out of the country with me kicking and screaming. And I was very verbal about it! As I crossed the border from Tennessee to Kentucky I felt like I was leaving everything that was good, behind. It was a horrible, long drive back to Canada. I had no idea that WAY-FM would be the catalyst for LIFE 100.3.

I moved to Barrie for one reason only - I had nowhere else to live. I spent all my money in the U.S. avoiding coming home to Canada. My parents brought me and my family to Barrie to live with them. It was a humbling time - having a wife and kids, no job, no prospects of a job and having to live off my parents.

I remember picking up three part-time jobs and grossing $12,000 in 1998! I could put gas in my car and pay my insurance.

This was a valley in my life. I was fed up with secular radio and the sexy rude music. It was evidently more offensive having come from a Christian format where the lyrics proclaim virtues like trust, honour, purity and love. While living with my parents in their basement I continued to attend church, pray, seek God and ask people for advice.

One day I was leaving my parents house to go to my part-time weekend job and my Dad was in the driveway. I was totally forlorn at my hopeless situation. I stared at my Dad, my eyes welled up and I grabbed him for a hug. He patted me on the back, like a father and told me everything would be alright. I know he felt my pain.

Living with my parents in their basement lasted a year a half. I often was angry at my parents about my situation. As if it was their fault that I got fired. I am embarrassed to say that I was ungrateful for their generosity and hospitality, blind to the fact that they fed me, clothed me, paid my dentist bills while I searched for the next chapter in my life.

Most people think that starting a Christian radio station was my lifelong dream. It wasn’t. It just happened. The CRTC had changed the broadcast rules and were awarding licenses to full-time Christian stations and I wondered what might happen if I combined my faith and experience. So, I sent in a pitiful application that not only won me the license for LIFE 100.3, but skipped the entire hearing process.
Now LIFE 100.3 is here. Today I continue to lead this radio ministry and realize that wherever God has you, that's the best place to be.

The advice I got along the way:

Pastor Ian McLean told me “you have to give up your idols before God will reveal the next plan”. What’s your idol? Figure it out and surrender it.

Rebecca St. James told me “God doesn’t call the equipped, he equips the called.” While I had a substanial amount of radio experience, it was God who led me to the people who cheered on my vision and supported me.

Kevin Bushey told me “God gives grace to the stupid”. I interpret that as meaning, I knew programming but not business, not engineering and not fundraising and so God gave me a shortcut before I gave up.

Bob Augsburg, the head of WAY-FM told me “To whom much is given, much is required”.

If you’re stuck in a valley - seek God. He will bring you out of it.

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