Handcrafted Read online

  But I stuck with my golden handcuffs. I kept my head down for the first two years and tried to just suppress my complaints. For one thing, I wanted to do right by the friend who’d given me the opportunity. For another, Hudson was growing up fast, and we were talking about having a second child. Not only was I earning enough to support the family, but both of the cars we now owned had been purchased without a financial struggle, and I was comfortably making my monthly student loan payments. On most days, I was home before five p.m. Talk about an ideal situation. And yet it just didn’t feel right.

  Around that time, Kelly was working with a life coach, Paul, who was really helping her think about next steps. We knew him from church. Paul was probably in his early fifties then, a friendly guy with an easy smile and a kind demeanor. Earlier in life, he’d found his way up the corporate ladder, and while he’d been financially successful, he was one of those guys who’d moved at a thousand miles an hour and had very little margin in his life for anything other than work. Because of this, he lost a lot of the things that meant the most to him. As he worked to rebuild his life, he no longer wanted to make enormous amounts of money or become known in his industry. Rather, he wanted nothing more than to just walk with other people through their pain and struggle, the kind of heartache he’d lived through.

  Kelly knew how miserable I was and suggested I talk with Paul, but I just didn’t feel comfortable with the idea. Like a lot of men, I’d always been more closed off to talking openly about my issues and emotions.

  One afternoon, I pulled onto our street just as Paul was leaving our house after meeting with Kelly. He drove up beside me in the middle of the road. It was raining outside, but we rolled down our windows anyway.

  “I know you don’t know me very well,” he said, “but I know you. I’ve been where you’ve been and I know what you’re going through. I’m here to tell you it’s okay, and I’d love to spend some time talking with you, if you want.”

  I’ll admit that I teared up a bit while Paul was talking. He absolutely saw inside my heart at the moment. But as he drove away, I thought, No way. I don’t need a shrink.

  A few months later, though, I knew I needed to have someone besides Kelly to confide in. I gave him a call, and we met at a Starbucks in uptown Houston. Our conversation flowed easily, like two friends just trading stories. We ended that meeting by making plans for the next one.

  I began meeting with Paul every other week at the coffee shop. As I grew more comfortable, I’d dig in and share more of my life and hopes for the future, and I’d find myself crying my eyes out in public as I went deeper. I told Paul about the places where I felt stuck and the dreams I’d once had to build furniture. We talked a lot about happiness, and what it meant to actually be happy. “True happiness is about being the most honest and true form of yourself,” Paul would tell me. “You can’t be happy if you’re living a lie.” And by “lie,” he didn’t necessarily mean stepping out on your wife or having a secret family stashed away in Nevada. The kind of lie he was talking about wasn’t so obvious or extreme. It could be waking up every morning, doing a job you never wanted to do in a city you never wanted to live in, all for the sake of the dollars.

  Hello.

  Over the next two years, Paul would have me read books (Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl was on his must-read list); watch many movies (he had me dust off Field of Dreams, starring Kevin Costner, whose character was crazy enough to build a baseball field in his backyard so that famous players of the past would come back from the dead and play there); walk silently and think; walk silently and not think; dream with Kelly; and be brutally honest about my fears. It was intense. When we’d meet, he’d often ask me one question in particular: “What do you really want to do, Clint?” And the answer that kept bubbling up inside me from a deep place was this: go build furniture. Paul was careful never to tell me what to do; that was my choice. “You’re the main character in your own story,” he’d remind me. “Everybody else is your supporting cast, just as you play a supporting role in others’ stories. As the lead, you’ve gotta decide how you want your narrative to unfold.”

  During this time, I stayed in my job, and in February 2010, Kelly and I welcomed our daughter Holland, named after the country where we’d made such fond memories. Also at this time and with the blessing of my boss, and a small but resurfacing desire to ease back into ministry, I even took on a second job. During our last few months in Dallas and upon relocating to Houston, we’d returned to church, our first time back in the pews since our days in Europe. When the need arose for a pastor at the small church plant we attended up in The Woodlands, about thirty miles north of our home, I was asked to consider the job. Never mind that I was still sorting out my beliefs. And never mind that I had no formal training as a head pastor. I agreed to take the position on a part-time basis. The job lasted only a year before the church planting effort was disbanded, but my own faith in real community where people could search for God and love and iron out their issues was bolstered by the experience. And we gained real and close friendships that have lasted to this day.

  What’s crazy is that I’d never wanted to be a pastor or a salesman. I’m thankful for the many pastors who’ve had such an impact on me, and Lord knows we need good, honest salespeople in the ranks. I respect them. I just didn’t want to be them. When I’d show up for my appointments with Paul, he’d occasionally introduce me to the person he’d been meeting with before our appointment. “This is Clint,” he’d joke. “He’s in medical sales and he’s a pastor. And you know what? He doesn’t want to do either!”

  I might not have liked my sales job, but I was pretty dang good at it. By year three, I’d traded the suit and tie for scrubs, which is what a lot of my target clients wore. It was a way for me to fit in. In the movie Patch Adams, there’s a scene where a young Dr. Adams, played by Robin Williams, disrupts the hospital establishment by grabbing a red ball syringe, placing it on his nose, and creating spontaneous entertainment for sick children in the ward. The kids loved it. I loved it, too. That was my inspiration to put on my light blue scrubs and navy Chuck Taylors and show up at the hospital as a new man. I wasn’t there to sell anything anymore. I was there to connect and build trust, and that’s what I did. I found that taking just a few minutes to connect with real patients, and not just the caseworkers and doctors, alleviated some of the stress of my job.

  But the more patients I met, the more it started to bother me that I’d sometimes see dollar signs hanging over their heads. Their prolonged illnesses usually meant greater profit; the more severe their conditions, the more money I earned. Some people can do that kind of work with no misgivings and an honest ability to separate the patient from the profit (my company happened to be full of them), and we need those people in our world. But I had a very hard time with it, and I often shared those reservations with Kelly. Day by day, one sales call at a time, it felt like a little piece of me was dying.

  * * *

  In summer 2010, our annual sales meeting rolled around. My manager, Chris, stood at the front of the conference room and introduced a bunch of new faces. “This team is going to work with us to take our business up to the next level,” he announced. They’d been brought in to further train us, to turn us into the kind of salespeople who would exponentially increase the company’s revenue. Outwardly, I pasted on a smile. Inwardly, I was stressing out.

  I don’t usually get too nervous, but I was nervous on this day. By then I’d already told Chris, who was also a dear friend, that I often thought about eventually quitting this job to go for my dream of building furniture. I knew that in bringing in these sales trainers, he was just doing his job to build the company. But for me, things were more complicated: I’d either have to sell myself out by entering a six-month commitment to work with this new team, or cleverly find another exit.

  We were split up into groups and each group was assigned a sales mentor. Mine was Steve, the main guy. As he approached our group, I w
as literally sweating. Sell out? Buy in? Escape? Call a bluff? Fake illness? Crap, he’s standing right in front of me introducing himself and offering his hand.

  Steve took a seat across from me. “Clint, what do you want out of this training?” he asked. “How can I help you?”

  “So the thing is,” I began, with my throat tight, “I actually don’t want to do this. I don’t know when, but I’m quitting soon. I want to build furniture. It’s crazy, I know, but it’s what I want to do. I’m sorry. I don’t want to waste your time, and honestly, I don’t know what to do, but . . . yeah . . . there you go.”

  “Well, Clint,” he said, “that’s amazing. I love it.”

  Did he just say what I think he said? Yep. “Years ago,” he continued, “I quit my job, jumped in an RV, and traveled around the country reconnecting with family and friends. It was one of the greatest adventures of my life. It’s part of what led me to this job, which I love. I’m sure you’re going to be just fine, and I’m excited to walk with you on this part of your journey.”

  I wish I had a picture of my face in the moment. I was dumbfounded. I felt like I’d just been visited by a fairy godfather. I half expected to later tell my coworkers about my meeting with Steve, only to have them look at me confused and say, “Steve? There’s no Steve here, Clint.” But he was there. He was real. And he was saying exactly what I needed to hear.

  Steve and I stayed in touch. Every week over the next six months, he’d check in with me by phone. Sometimes we’d have a conference call with a few of my coworkers who were also working with Steve, and after it ended, he’d call me directly, just to see how I was doing. It’s amazing that Chris let me stay on board even after he knew I was planning to move on. That’s grace. That’s also friendship.

  Our team training, we were told, would culminate in a final presentation by each sales rep. We were supposed to discuss our plans for success in the coming year and include graphs, sales figures, and projections. Yeah, right. The morning of my presentation was just before Thanksgiving, and I had something else in mind.

  I was surer than I’d ever been that I was going to pursue my dream. So I didn’t mess around. Instead, I got up and talked about the patients I loved and the connections I’d made. I passionately shared stories of the lives I’d seen changed by the company’s products. In the front row was the president of the company, Rick, and I promise you I saw him shed a tear. Months afterward, Chris would tell me that Rick later said in his thick Texas accent, “Yeah, I knew Clint was gone after that presentation.” He was right. It was my farewell speech.

  * * *

  By spring 2011—and nearly two years into my meetings with life coach Paul—I came home from work one day and plopped down in a corner of our living room. Little Hudson was playing with his toys in the middle of the floor while Kelly was feeding Holland. She knew by the look on my face and the tears in my eyes that I was dealing with something serious. She put down our daughter and came and sat beside me on the couch.

  “What’s up, babe?” she asked.

  “This is it, Kelly,” I murmured.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I can’t do this job anymore,” I told her. “I can’t. I know we don’t have as much money saved up as we want for us to build a furniture business, but I cannot continue this way. The feeling is so strong that I can’t ignore it anymore.”

  “Okay, Clint,” she said. “I’m with you. We can do this.” Her support was powerful.

  The rest of my family was also behind me. My mom and stepdad, because of the wild life of constant moving they’d led, learning to make it through the toughest of situations, were cheering me on in full force. The same was true of my stepmom, who surprised me with her readiness to almost push me over the risky cliff herself! My dad, though encouraging, was a bit more cautious. He wanted me to be sure I was ready to walk away from a six-figure salary with benefits. I actually loved that he was concerned. Having grown up spending only every other weekend living with him, I was touched by his hovering over me with genuine fatherly concern. It made me feel like I did during the days when we would wrestle on the ground and he would rub his scratchy chin on my face and on my bare chest. I loved those moments, and loved feeling like he was trying to hold me tight. I needed that. I needed all of it.

  I also knew it was time to take the leap. The next day at work, I called Chris and gave him my two weeks’ notice. Two more weeks of a secure paycheck, and that would be it. Two more weeks of structured workdays. Two more weeks before I stepped into the wild unknown.

  I hung up with Chris and sent off a text to Kelly and Paul. It was a picture of a guy jumping off a cliff, arms spread out wide, in a free fall.

  CHAPTER 8

  * * *

  Handcrafted

  I never get tired of crafting every single component of a table: the top, the supports, the skirt, the legs. In the early days, when I chose to use reclaimed wood, I’d have to be inventive. Over time I found that making a leg out of scraps was so much more satisfying than buying premanufactured stock. When I’m joining boards to create a leg, I begin with finding the right amount of wood. Let’s say I’ve got six boards, each measuring approximately 1 x 4 x 72 inches. A table leg is roughly 29 inches long and 3 x 3 inches thick. If I cut my boards in half and then stack five of them on top of one another, I end up with a stack measuring roughly 3.5 x 3 x 36 inches. I then glue those up and leave them to dry overnight between some big sturdy clamps (I like to use “cabinet clamps”). I don’t hold back on the glue, but I also wipe off the excess that escapes when the clamps are tightened. By morning, they’re ready to go. Once they’re dry, a quick couple of passes over the jointer and through the planer gives me a nice square stock with which to make my legs.

  “Clint, check these out,” Kelly said. “I found some pics online where people took pallets and made furniture from them. Thought you might like that.”

  And that’s how I got the idea to build with reclaimed wood. Kelly had actually shown me the photographs before I quit my job, when we both knew it was inevitable. Over the next few months, as I worked up the courage to go for my dream, the pictures served as my inspiration. They got me thinking about how much I wanted to build furniture.

  But in what style? By the time I traded my scrubs and shiny name tag for a tool belt, Kelly and I had developed some strong ideas. For one, we wanted to create the kind of original pieces that could look as good in a SoHo loft as they could in a sprawling Texas ranch house. I was fairly sure our design ideas would be costly, so I’d already called up a lumberyard to price things out. I wanted to know approximately how much it would set us back to build a single table.

  A guy with a heavy Texas drawl had answered the phone: “Mernin’, Dawsen Lummeryard, whadyaneed?”

  “Um, yes,” I said, “Is this Dawson’s Lumberyard?” (For the record, this wasn’t the real name, but otherwise the conversation went down exactly like this, meaning I could only understand every fourth word. The lumber world, I’d soon learn, has a type of slang and banter all its own.)

  “Yeah,” he answered. “So whadyaneed?”

  “I need some wood for a table.”

  “Right. Three quar’, four quar’, or six quar’?”

  “Excuse me?” I said. “What’s a ‘quar’?”

  “You ever ordered lummer before, son?”

  “Um, no, not really.”

  “I’m askin’ how thick you want your lummer. Four quar’ is ’bout an inch. Six quar’ is like an inchanahalf.”

  “Oh. Right. Of course,” I said. “I guess I’ll go with four ‘quar,’ then. Let’s see how much that’ll cost.”

  “You got a planer and a jointer?” he asked. I told him no.

  “Well, you’ll need ’em if it’s rough cut.” Rough cut, he explained, was usually the cheapest wood because it hadn’t been prepared in any way for further use.

  One call, and it had been confirmed: when it came to lumber, I was a complete idiot. In my previous
job as a medical salesman, there’d been plenty of times when I’d had zero clue what I was talking about, so I did my best to fake it till I made it. I thought the same would be true for lumber. I mean, liver disease is one thing, but wood? I was pretty sure I could figure that out.

  I did know a little something about the different varieties of wood, thanks to my granddad. From him, I’d learned that old growth pine is usually darker and richer and displays the evidence of a slower growth cycle and older age with its tighter grain. New pine is grown quickly and aggressively, so the distance between the grain is much wider than in wood that has grown slowly and consistently over a longer period of time. My grandfather used to show me the end of a log and point out the tight grain, which occasionally would be interrupted by a massive gap before the next growth ring. “What do you think happened that year?” he’d ask.

  But that was about the extent of my wood and lumber knowledge. And now I saw that not only was I on a steep learning curve, but this whole thing was going to be expensive. When I finally explained my full order to the lumber salesman, he estimated I’d need about a hundred dollars’ worth of rough-cut wood to build a decent table. That didn’t sound too bad, until I started doing the math. If I wanted to put together, say, twenty tables, that’d run me a minimum of a couple thousand bucks. Bottom line: We couldn’t afford it. That’s when I started thinking about those pictures Kelly had shown me. When I saw the pallet furniture, made from reclaimed wood, something in me was unlocked.