How Going Broke Made Me Rich

A while back, I lost everything.

Not "everything" the way people say it after a rough quarter. I mean I opened my banking app one day and saw a number with no digits in front of the decimal. Zero. The kind of zero that makes you sit very still for a minute.

I'd been earning a million dollars a year. And then I wasn't earning anything at all.

Here's the strange part, and it's the reason for this post and the episode it goes with: losing it might be the best thing that ever happened to me.

If you've ever been afraid of losing what you've built — or you're in the middle of losing it right now — stay with me.

"The recent unpleasantness"

I've started calling it that, with a little wink, "the recent unpleasantness" (what's that movie? Anyone know?).

It began with Parkinson's. Then the pandemic, which was not a gentle season for anyone running a business. Then shoulder surgery. Then brain surgery — and I want you to notice I just dropped "brain surgery" in next to "shoulder surgery" like I was listing errands.

Add a few business decisions I'd love to have back, some personal ones I'd file in the same drawer, medical bills that arrived looking like phone numbers, and overhead that had grown to the size of a small kingdom. Underneath all of it, quietly, a crisis of faith. Not a wobble. A genuine dark night of the soul, the kind St. John of the Cross wrote about, where God seems to have left the room and shut the door, and you stand in the dark wondering if any of it was ever real.

At the bottom of it, I declared bankruptcy.

I'm not telling you this to perform my suffering. I'm not complaining. We're rebuilding, and I'm a new man — by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I mean that as plainly as I can say it.

So here's the question I had to ask myself. When I say going broke made me rich, is that just a clever line? A copywriter's sleight of hand? Or can a man say a thing like that and be telling the truth?

It's true. Here's how.

What was actually load-bearing

When you get stripped all the way down, you find out what was holding the house up.

I'd built a life with a lot of stuff in it. Income. Status. A reputation in my corner of the marketing world. The comfort of knowing the bills were handled and then some. None of that is wrong. I'm not here to tell you money is the problem and poverty is the cure — that's a sermon people preach when they've never actually been broke, and it's nonsense.

What happened was simpler. Everything that wasn't essential got taken away, and I was left holding only what was. And the list of things that are truly essential turns out to be far shorter than the list of things I'd convinced myself I couldn't live without.

Corrie Ten Boom said it better than I can: you don't learn that Jesus is all you need until the day He's all you have.

I used to read that as a needlepoint-pillow kind of line. Then I lived it, and it stopped being a pillow and became the floor I was standing on. Because when you've got nothing left but God, you find out fast whether God is enough. He is. Not because I read it somewhere — because I tested it against the wall, with nothing to fall back on, and it held.

What grew in the low place

I spent a lot of that season on my knees. I mean that literally, not as a figure of speech. Some mornings I was flat on my face on the floor, talking to God. Sometimes not even talking. Just there. Out of words, out of plans, out of the energy it takes to keep pretending you've got it handled.

And in that low place, things grew that had never had room before.

Real humility — the kind that comes from running out of options and realizing you were never as in control as you thought. A habit of seeking God's will before a decision instead of after, when I just needed Him to bless what I'd already chosen. A patience I did not previously possess; ask anyone who knew me in the old days.

I became a better husband, a better parent, a better friend, a better follower of Jesus. Not better than you, or anybody — better than the man I used to be. That's the only fair comparison there is. And the new one is a better creature. A reborn one. That's not a marketing claim. It's a report from the field.

A different kind of builder

I'm rebuilding the business now, with a few good people helping me, and it's going well. But it's going well in a completely different way.

Before, I built fast and big. I added overhead like it was a hobby. If something looked like it might work, I threw money and people at it and sorted the details later. This time it's slow, methodical, almost annoyingly careful. Not because I've gotten timid — because I've become a different kind of business person. The fast-and-big version of me was running on a need to prove something, to be impressive, to outrun a fear I couldn't have named at the time. That guy got retired during the unpleasantness, and the fellow who replaced him builds differently.

Going back through my old courses and trainings as part of the rebuild, I found most of it was sound. Well-built. Stuff I can stand behind. I'll say that carefully, because there's a version of it that's just bragging in modest clothing. I'm not proud of the work. I'm pleased by it — and there's a difference. Proud takes credit and puffs up. Pleased just looks at the thing honestly and notices the foundation's still square.

The shortcut

Here's where I land the plane.

Some of us are slow students. I'll put myself first in that line. Apparently I'm the kind of student who needs the painful version of the lesson — going broke financially, physically, spiritually, getting taken all the way down to the studs before I'll finally surrender to God's will. That's how I learned it. The hard way. The expensive way.

It doesn't have to be that way for you.

You could skip all of it and go straight to the mercy seat. Straight to surrender and humility and trust, and find the freedom there before the tragedy ever shows up. The lesson is available without the tuition I paid. I had to lose everything to learn God was enough. You could simply decide He's enough today — on a perfectly ordinary Tuesday, business intact, bank balance healthy, nothing dramatic happening at all. Surrender now, while it's a choice, instead of later, when it's the only option left.

That's the shortcut, and it's a real one.

So if everything's going fine and you've been holding God at arm's length because you don't feel like you need Him at the moment — go to your knees anyway. Not out of crisis. Out of wisdom. Get there the easy way.

And if you're in the dark right now, door shut, God seemingly gone from the room, hear this from somebody who's been exactly where you are: He hasn't left. It feels like it. I know. But the floor is still there in the dark. I found it. It held me. It'll hold you.

Going broke made me rich. I mean that every way it can be meant. I lost the money and found the things money was always a substitute for, and knowing what I know now, I wouldn't trade back.

This is the written companion to this week's episode of The Ray Edwards Show. If it landed, go listen to the full conversation — and then go do the thing only you can do. And remember whose you are.