12/14/2025
Weekend at the Workbench 029:
UNEXPECTED PERFECTION
Over the past several years, I’ve had the unexpected honor of stepping into conversations no one ever prepares for.
They don’t happen in conference rooms or over planned coffee meetings.
They happen in hotel lobbies, hospital hallways and early mornings, when the world is still quiet and the day hasn’t had a chance to do its thing yet.
If you take the time-really take the time-to listen inside a place like City of Hope in Duarte, California, something becomes clear very quickly: Fear and hope live side by side and trauma is proofread by no one. Age, race, success, and strength mean-almost-nothing-here.
On and off for the past four years, I’ve taken what I call the weekend shift-Friday to Monday-staying with my son during treatments and recovery at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and City of Hope, just east of Pasadena. This Christmas, we find ourselves back again.
This morning, I was in the lobby with a cup of coffee, waiting for my boy to wake up, when I met a man-65 years old-and his amazing wife of 34 years. From the outside, they looked like the picture of health(besides the masks). Five children and eight grandchildren - a life already full. And now, a brand-new diagnosis.
A very rare form of leukemia. One of those one-in-ten-million mutations that, if you take five minutes to look it up, doesn’t usually end well. We started the way these conversations always start.
Where are you from? How long have you been here? He began explaining the technical details-mutations, protocols, numbers. I recognized it immediately.
There’s a stage early in treatment where learning the language gives you a sense of control. It’s not real control…but it lets you breathe. It’s like the small crag in the rock, on a sheer face of granite, that you shove your fingers in and thank God you found that hand-hold.
His first post-transplant bone marrow biopsy is coming up on Tuesday. You could see the dread in his face, in his wife’s. It was their first wait, their first “is it gone or is it back.” If you’ve been there, you know how fast the mind spins. You don’t even know what to be afraid of yet-only that you are.
We’ve been through this before, a lot. So I spoke to them plainly…I told him he had an extraordinary woman in his corner-loyal, present, unflinching(he threw in beautiful, too :)). I told them how many people walk these halls alone, with caregivers pushing wheelchairs but no one standing next to them emotionally. No one to carry the fear with them. They both teared up, grateful for each other, suddenly more-than-ever.
I reminded them that nothing bad had happened yet. That he was still here. That God doesn’t ask us to suffer tomorrow’s pain today. They cried again. They commented on my calm, on the steadiness and willingness to be honest. And standing there-in the open lobby, with people passing by-we all let the tears come. There was just no way around this one.
I told them about my wife and me, about how months of separation during hospital life somehow pulled us closer. About long evening phone calls-like high school again-sometimes not even talking, just being present to one another. How distance softened us and how crisis stripped away the unnecessary and made love clearer, and rise to the top.
I told them about the strange gifts that arrive with suffering: patience, kindness, perspective. How once you’ve carried a heavy cross, you start to see that everyone else is carrying one too-we just don’t talk about it, but we need to…we MUST.
They were so grateful and hope-filled. Not the kind of hope that fades-I could see it. The kind that stands next to two people who have endured 34 years of marriage-the kind that sticks.
We talked about how calamity comes in waves. How you face something unbearable, it passes, and then another arrives. And how long hours in hospital rooms give you time to reflect-enough time to see how earlier moments in life were quietly preparing you for this one.
They shared a story as proof:
A few years ago, they thought they’d be “dog-free.” Their two aging Weimaraners were nearing the end. But their daughter and future son-in-law had dogs they couldn’t manage-and suddenly, two young, energetic pups entered their home. The husband committed to walking them every day, and he did it, morning and night. Four to six miles…every-day-for-three-years.
He believes-without question-that those dogs changed his life(he saw that this morning) That they brought him into the best physical shape he’s ever been in. That his doctors are stunned at how record-quickly his blood counts recover now.
‘Preparation, disguised as inconvenience’
Then I told them about where I live-near the SpaceX launch sites-and how I often watch Falcon 9 rockets arc across the sky.
One night, this past July, it struck me. We think life is made of sharp peaks and deep valleys-violent ups and downs, the chaos of our lives, stitched together.
When you step back far enough…when you look over time…it isn’t a jagged line at all - It’s an arc, BEAUTIFUL, INTENTIONAL, UNBROKEN.
Good, bad, joy, suffering, strength and collapse - all of it forming a single trajectory.
We cried and smiled and thanked each other. I gave them a two copies of Formed to Serve - told them they’d recognize themselves in it, immediately. That ten days after I published it, my son got leukemia again. That this isn’t wasted: IT-CAN’T-BE. That this is why I sit in lobbies early on weekend mornings-because what we’ve lived HAS TO be used for more than just surviving it.
This image-the arc across the sky-isn’t just a rocket trail. It’s proof - that even when we can’t see the whole path-we are not moving randomly…there is an unexpected perfection at work. If you’re willing to slow down long enough to notice it, you’ll see it too.
That instinct is right.
This one doesn’t need a call-to-action. It needs a single, quiet turn of the head at the end—an invitation, not an instruction.
Here’s the only addition I’d make. Nothing more.
REFLECTION
Take a few quiet minutes today. Look back and name one moment-an inconvenience, a detour or hardship-you can now see prepared you for something difficult you later faced.
If you sit in that kind of silence each day,
you won’t stop at one.
You’ll start to see the arc, everywhere-and you can’t unsee it.
