Spirituality Column #792

January 18, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Life Change

By Bob Walters

It dawned on me a few days ago that this month marks the 30^th anniversary of the biggest and most welcome job move and life change of my professional career.

In January of 1992 I hired on as the public relations director at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  I’d worked in the media and in sponsor/team public relations in both Indy Cars and NASCAR auto racing in the late 1980s.  Coming back home to Indiana to work at the 500 was a job I’d been praying for, and it happened.

That job, in my eyes, was akin to working in religion and landing a spot in the Vatican.  I say “I’d been praying for” it, but it wasn’t like I was talking to Jesus back in those days.  I was praying for the IMS job the way a whole lot of people pray – without any recognizable relationship with God and purely for favor, whether for self or others.

I didn’t meet up with Jesus for another 10 years.

That job in 1992 was my central purpose in life.  I was married, our second son John was born that month – January 18, in fact, the date of this column … Happy 30^th Birthday, John! – and it was joy upon joy to move back to Indiana after five years away in St. Louis and Albuquerque.  We were home, and I had the best job I could imagine.

Great times, those 12 seasons (1985-1996) working at the very top of American auto racing.  It would be a book-length yarn to tell in adequate detail, but not here.

That adventure for me ended with bumps and bruises amid the turmoil of the Indy Racing League vs CART battles through the latter 1990s.  Life changed again.

Instead of working and/or traveling literally dozens of weekends per year, I was home and got to truly know my sons Eric (now 34) and John.  I coached kid baseball, was a Cub Scout and Boy Scout leader and went camping, and helped out with the boys’ elementary school events.  I learned to have conversations with neighbors about subjects other than the 500 and auto racing. 

A few consulting gigs aside, my career in PR was basically over.  I’d felt I’d been dropped on my head, hard, leaving those heady days of high-profile motorsports, but I was learning, however slowly, that my life’s central purpose was being redirected.

As it turned out, because I was now home most evenings for dinner, I was sitting at the table when Eric asked – out of seeming nowhere – “How come we don’t go to church?”  That was August of 2001 – 20 years ago this past fall, if you’re counting.

My central purpose in life once was my career.  Then my central purpose in life was my kids.  Then through no expressed intent of my own – let’s be clear, I wasn’t looking for Jesus – we went to church one Sunday.  Guess who sat down next to me?

Yep, Jesus, who over the next several years introduced me in the Spirit to my new central purpose in life … doing what I could to glorify His Father God.

God’s most significant physical gift to me was time.  Time is part of the physical world, not the eternal world.  But I was gifted with time to learn, grow, write, teach, and understand the greatest central purpose of human life: loving Jesus to glorify God. 

My career didn’t teach me love; my boys did.  And Jesus put it to good use.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), because fast cars are still fun, provides this LINK of a Czech mogul driving a $3M Bugatti Chiron 260 mph on the Autobahn … for Jesus.  Also, 30 years ago was 1992; 30 years before that Walters was in second grade.