Robert Wolgemuth: Running Your Last Lap Well

Life is a vapor. There's a brevity to this thing. You know, I may have been kind of sloppy with certain years, but when you know this could be the end, this could be the last lap you're running, you get really intentional.

You should get really intentional. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app.

This is Family Life Today. So what a lot of people don't know about Ann Wilson is before you were Ann Wilson, you were quite the track star. You're laughing. I mean, you have records back in Ohio in high school. Maybe not records. Maybe.

No, I think they're all broken by now. Nobody would guess what your event was. I mean, you ran them all, but you were the hurdles. Hurdles. But the race that was the deadliest race for me was the last event of the track meet, and it was the 4x400. Not only was it that race, but I had the last leg of that race. Which means you're the star, you're the closer, you're the fastest.

Come on! I felt so much pressure. And so this one meet, now I'm getting into it, I have this one meet, and we're going to compete against this little school. But because it was this little school, they had a terrible track. And so you had to put spikes in your track shoes, and they were really long spikes because they didn't have a good track.

And so I had the last leg, which is the last lap around the track, and the girls coming in were behind. And so I have the baton, I have my arm outstretched to get the baton, and the girl coming toward me on my team steps on the top of my foot. And mind you, these spikes in the shoes were probably a half-inch long. And it wasn't a leather shoe, it was this real flimsy fabric. That spike goes into my foot, and I can't move because I'm pinned to the ground. Finally, she lifts her foot.

I'm so far behind, and I start sprinting. You know what? I don't even know the end of the story.

Yes. But here's my guess, because I know the spirit of my wife. You won. I'm guessing you won. You did win. We won.

Yeah, of course you did. But as I'm running, I just happened to look down. My foot was killing me.

My entire shoe is soaked with blood. But everyone knows that last lap is the most important lap, because it determines if you win or lose not only the race, but sometimes if you're tied, it determines if you win the entire meet. And all I know is that's why I married you.

You are a get-it-done no matter how hard or how painful it is, you are going to finish. The reason we're starting this crazy program with a track story is we have an author with us today who's a good friend who wrote a book. It's sort of about track. We'll explain that in a minute. But Robert Walgolmuth, thank you for being with us on Family Life Today. Thank you, Dave. Thank you, Ann. I didn't know that about you, Ann, but I'm not surprised. I saw you sitting there smiling. You're laughing. Robert, you feel like I did.

I was nervous for her. Oh, those spikes are like needles, too. Yes, exactly.

They are long and sharp. Oh, yes. Well, Robert, you've written a book, which is why we came up with that story, called Gun Lap.

Yeah, the subtitle Staying in the Race with Purpose. We'll get into the content of your book in a minute, but I just wanted to say for our listeners, they don't know a lot about our connection through our son, Austin, but I did not know you've written, what, 26 books? Yeah, I've killed a lot of trees, Dave. I'm sorry about it.

I mean, that's crazy. I did know this. You went to college just down the road from where I went to college at Ball State. You went to Taylor University.

You even got a doctorate there, an honorary doctorate. You've had an amazing career in the publishing world as a literary agency, and that's how we got somewhat connected through my son, Austin. Tell our listeners a little bit how you and Austin met.

Oh, I love that story. So, I'm in a meeting with a guy named Paul Sandhouse, who is the publisher of Moody Publishing, Moody Press in Chicago, and he's telling me that he teaches a class for seniors who are in publishing communications as a major. I said, man, I would love to be a guest teacher. And he said, well, come on, let's do that. I said, I'll be an agent, right?

Because he had editors and people who worked in production and so forth, so he had never had an agent. So, I said, you know what? I'm going to pull up in a black limousine.

I'm going to get out with like diamonds on all of my fingers and a white scarf over my shoulder. He said, no, no, don't do that. So, anyway, so I had the joy of teaching a class at Moody with seniors, bright, wide-eyed seniors, men and women. I noticed this young man as I was teaching, and he was paying close attention.

He had a little laptop and he was taking voracious notes. So, when we finished with the conversation, I said to Paul, tell me about Austin. Because we had gone around the room and introduced ourselves to each other, and sometimes I'd do my best to remember names. I said, tell me about Austin. He said, well, he grew up in Detroit. His daddy was the pastor of a church, kind of a church planting entrepreneurial kind of pastor guy.

And so, he grew up in a pastor's home and he's been a student here. He's married. I said, you know, he's married. I said, you know, would you just tell him that I asked about him?

I didn't want any more. I wanted this to come as an inspiration from this young man, if he was interested in talking to me. And in 20 minutes, I'm not kidding, in 20 minutes, I get a text from Austin Wilson. And that began a short journey that actually ended with inviting Austin to join my company as a literary agent. He had a chance actually the next day to meet my colleagues, Andrew Walgamuth and Eric Walgamuth, who are actually my brother's sons.

They're my nephews. And so, that was 10 years ago, 11 years ago, maybe. And Austin has been a precious addition to our team. And because he and Kendall were in Chicago, we moved them right away to Orlando, where I lived with my late wife, Bobby. And it was a really, really sweet time. And it was an all sweet and wonderful.

I mean, we introduced him to a new business. But then during those years, Austin and Kendall lost two babies. And we were right in the middle of their lives during that time. So it was a really precious time. They eventually then moved back to Denver. And I moved to Michigan. That was not a penalty. I didn't lose a bet.

I did this on purpose. But anyway, that's Austin. So we talk every day on the phone and collaborate on the clients that we're working with and publishing projects. So he's an amazing gift to me. I love him. It was really sweet, Robert, because I remember when you decided, you and Bobby interviewed both Austin and Kendall, having come to Florida. And I remember Austin calling us saying, you guys, this is such a gift from God. This is my dream job.

And so just right out of college, that's pretty unusual. And he has loved working with you, Robert. You have an incredible reputation.

And Bobby, your late wife, really poured into and mentored Kendall. And with your book, as you're talking about Gun Lap, explain that. Like, what is Gun Lap?

Sure. My introduction to Gun Lap and happened my senior year at Taylor University. The athletic director actually asked my roommate, who was a phys ed major, if he could get some buddies together. We were hosting the conference track meet. So my roommate, Steve, said, would you be interested?

I said, are you kidding? That sounds fantastic. So I got to rake the pit for the high jump or the pole vault or whatever. I didn't do like timing stuff.

That was for the professionals. But the last race was the two mile. And we climbed up to the tower.

They gave me permission to climb the tower. So I was up there watching this race. It's eight laps around a quarter mile track. And at the beginning of the race, you got all these runners, right? And the starter raises his arm and pulls the trigger and the gun goes off and the race begins. So then you watch it round and round eight times at the start of the final lap. The starter steps back out and puts his arm in the air and fires the gun again.

So I said to one of the guys there who knows drag, I said, what was that? He said, that's the Gun Lap. That signals that the lead runner has started his last lap. And that's the Gun Lap. So, oh, a year and a half ago, I started dreaming about writing a book and there was things we'll talk about it in a few minutes, but things that led to my wondering about the rest of my life and the idea, the metaphor of the Gun Lap came back and I thought that is a perfect metaphor for this book. It's not a book about dying. It is a book about running and running well, that last lap in our lives. And so that's why the book is called Gun Lap.

Yeah, it's interesting. You know, you sent the book to me of a month or so ago, maybe a couple of months when it came out, and I couldn't put it down. You know, in some ways, I don't think I'm in the Gun Lap, but you never know, do you?

You could be in the final lap and because we don't know. You're very kind. Actually, even though you're in Florida and I'm in Michigan, just you saying you couldn't put it down, if I could, I'd get up and kiss you right in the face. Because that's the ultimate for an author to hear because it's so easy to lay a book down, right? And so that means a lot.

I appreciate it. Well, you know, the first thing I did, obviously, when I picked it up is I look at the chapter titles and then I read your dedication, which I read again last night, which is so interesting. You dedicated to a young man who died when he was 20. And you even say at the beginning, you know, it's interesting to dedicate a book about living fully to the end of your life, hopefully a long life, to dedicate to a young man who is in his 20s. But I want to read, I want you to comment, as you wrote at the beginning, what his dad said about his son, Nick, at the memorial service.

I won't read the whole thing, but his dad said this. Each one of us is given a race to run. Some are called to run a long race. Some are called to run just a short race. What matters is not how long the race is, but how well we run it. It's God's business to determine how long that race will be. It's our business to determine how well we'll run it. Let me tell you, it is so much better to run a short race well than a long race poorly.

So talk about that. It's a great way to start a book about finishing strong. Well, actually, Nick's parents, Eileen and Tim Challies, are good friends of ours, and when the news that Nick had died just as a student at Boyce College in Louisville, he just dropped dead. He was with his buddies, his friends. He just dropped dead.

So we went through a lot of the grief of all of that, and then I had a chance to watch live the memorial service. And when his daddy said that, I thought, you know what, I want to dedicate a book about running your last lap to a man in his 20s, because we never know. We never know when we're running the last lap, which is another good reason to run well.

You know, if you kind of knew, you'd say, well, okay, I'll hang out. I'll be lazy, whatever. Now it's the last lap. Now I'm going to pick up the pace.

We don't know that. I couldn't help myself, Dave. I wanted to dedicate the book to Nick, whom I never met. I'll meet him in heaven.

But because I love his parents so much and realize just the incredible pain of losing him so early, but when his dad said that at the service, I thought, I got to put that in the dedication. Well, as you think about finishing well, I've often said to younger men in my life, you know, I can't see the finish line. I would say that in my 30s. I'd say that in my 40s. I'm starting to say now, I think I can see the finish line, and I'm sort of joking because I don't know.

We don't know. But, you know, when you enter your 60s and you're around that age, maybe a little older, you start to realize and feel the brevity. You feel the criticalness of everyday mattering. I remember Dennis Rainey saying to me when I turned 60, and I'm not going to tell our listeners how old I am, but it was a couple years ago. He said to me when I turned 60, he said, this will be the best decade of your life. And I laughed. I thought he's joking, right? Those decades are behind me. He meant it.

Like the 60s to 70s or the 70s to 80s can be the best years of your life if you finish well. So talk about that. You've been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Robert Walgamuth on Family Life Today. We'll hear Robert's response in just a minute. But first, did you know Family Life Today is listener-supported? That means we rely on generous gifts from listeners like you. And all this week, when you give any amount to Family Life Today, as our thanks, we'll send you a copy of Sam Albury's book, What God Has to Say About Our Bodies.

You can give securely online at familylifetoday.com, or you can give us a call with your donation at 1-800-358-6300. Again, the number is 1-800, F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. All right, now let's get back to Dave and Ann's conversation with Robert Walgamuth. Dennis is right, and I'm actually into the next decade. I'm in my 70s.

I'm 73. And really, the book is not about dying. It's about running that last lap. And actually, just to kind of lift the veil, I am working on the next book, and it is about dying.

It's called Finished Line. But this is about living. So what are you going to do with these years? And as Dennis said, they can be your best years, but they also can be very hard years because – and we talk about this in the book – your body doesn't do what it used to be able to do.

I mean, just for starters. And you can get really frustrated. You may have high expectations for yourself. You may have been an athlete, and you can't do that anymore.

Just simple things, climbing stairs. Or you get sick, and you realize life is a vapor. There's a brevity to this thing. I may have been kind of sloppy with certain years, but when you know this could be the end, this could be the last lap you're running, you get really intentional. You should get really intentional. And that's really what I want to say in this book. In fact, I would say, Dave, you're just about wheelhouse for this book. I mean, people ask me that question.

I would say, 55 to 65 is wheelhouse because you're going to begin to go through some transitions. You may retire from your job. Those kinds of things.

The lights go on, in many cases, with guys saying, you know what? My life is about to change. I'm going to maybe no longer go to the office every day. One of the things I talk about is, when you're working, you've got colleagues. You're in constant contact with them. Your inbox is filled. Your texts fill up every day. Your phone rings.

Then you cross that line, and that stuff gets quiet. And you're going, I realize those weren't necessarily my friends. They were my colleagues. So who loves me now? What am I supposed to do with these years of my life? So I totally embrace what Dennis Rainey is saying about the best years. What I would say is, you can't coast into them.

You have to be intentional. That's a big deal. Well, as I hear you talk about that, I'm thinking of your late wife, Bobbi. And she passed away how many years ago? She passed away in 2014, October 28, 2014.

And this is significant for Dave and I, because Austin, our son, and his wife, Kendall, were very involved. And Kendall would say that Bobbi was her mentor. And so as I think about her, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And I think it'd be easy to have a pity party at that point, when you know, I'm not only on my last lap, I'm on my last quarter of the lap.

And it would be really easy to just kind of check out, you know, like, wow, this is really hard. This is before I thought that I would be ending my race. And yet she continually poured into women, poured into your daughters, poured into your grandchildren, to the very point where Austin and Kendall went to the hospital to have their first daughter after having, it was actually three miscarriages. And so they had had Olive, and you guys had prayed for them to have a baby for those several years.

And because they had gone through so much pain. But I remember Austin and Kendall saying after Olive was born on October 22, we're not going to go home right away. We're going to stop and see Robert and Bobbi, because they have been praying for us. They've been praying for our daughter, our baby, and we want Bobbi to hold Olive, and we want them to pray over her before she goes to see Jesus. And that was significant because, I mean, when Austin and Kendall told us, like, they cried, to have Bobbi's hands on Olive praying over her was one of the most meaningful things.

You talk about gun lap and finishing well. I know for our family, that was an incredible blessing. And I know she was that for so many more.

And so talk about that a little bit, Robert. How did she keep that perspective of finishing so well? Thanks to the wonders of technology, I knew that Kendall and Austin and Olive were coming to our house. And so I actually videotaped the whole thing.

I videoed the whole thing. So I've got Kendall and Austin and Olive in the little carrier coming in our door, our back door, and then coming over and hearing Bobbi from her hospital bed in the living room, just exclaiming, just delightful giggling about this chance. And I have video of them walking over to her hospital bed, pulling Olive carefully out of the carrier, handing her to Bobbi, Bobbi reaching out her, at that point bony, feeble arms, and just just squealing with delight, holding this child. And so Olive's birthday is five days before Bobbi's death day, but those two, they will be forever connected to each other.

So that was such a God thing, you guys. Just the sweetness that the Lord allowed Bobbi to live long enough to hold this little baby. The visual that I'm seeing now, because I looked at that video just two days ago of Bobbi reaching out her arms from her hospital bed and Austin carefully laying this child in Bobbi's arms.

You know, it's Anna and Simeon. That's what I think of when I see that, holding Jesus in the temple and exclaiming what delight it was to hold this child. And that was really very much, it was a Simeon, Anna moment when Bobbi got to hold this little baby. You know, as well as anybody, Robert, you know, as parents, you pray your whole life that when your son or daughter becomes a man or a woman, husband, wife, they'll have mentors, community in their life that will point them to Jesus. And you and Bobbi have been that for our son and daughter-in-law for Austin and Kendall. And hearing you talk about that moment, what an answer to prayer. And, you know, you said earlier, your book's written for, you know, men in their 40s, 50s, but it's actually for 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds because the way Bobbi finished her gun lap has been an inspiration and a model for my son and daughter-in- law and many others, how to do life, how to live for Jesus from the birth of Olive, from, you know, the starting lap to the very end. And I don't even know if you'll ever know what a blessing you two have been to our family because you lived so well and modeled that for our own son and daughter-in-law.

Well, thank you for saying that, Dave. One of the really important points of Gun Lap is what you're describing now, and I, you know, I'm overwhelmed, really humbled with the kind things that you're saying. This isn't just about my life. It's about what I'm doing with my life as it relates to younger men. So, the chance to have somebody in my life, like your son Austin, and to be able to pour into him. And you talk about a man with a teachable spirit, a man who's, I mean, you can set your watch by his attitude.

It's the same. It's upbeat, teachable, kind, happy, pleasant, smart, all those things. This is Austin Wilson. And so, the Lord gave me this young man who actually set up his office in my home in Orlando, and we had several years.

In fact, I rarely took a trip after that, that I didn't have Austin be my colleague, my traveling companion, be my GPS in my rental car or whatever. And so, that's the great joy. You guys know this so well. The stewardship of your life poured into younger people brings you more joy than it did when you first experienced it yourself. And so, that's the chapter called ROI, a nice ROI, Return on Investment.

So that, you know, the truth is that I will, in my lifetime, I won't really know the impact that Bobby had in Olive's life, or really in Kendall and Austin's life. That's kind of just, you know, paying it forward. You do what you can.

You fail transparently, and you confess when it's time for that. And you also aren't afraid to say, this is the way you do this. You're, you know, you've got an apprentice who's watching what you do, which by the way, you know this so well. When that video camera is running, and this younger person is watching you, recording you, that impacts, that transforms actually how you act, how you live. So, it's a two-way gift. It's a gift to the younger person, but it's also a gift to you. That the things that you may think of doing, or be tempted to do, when you've got a traveling companion, that fixes all of that.

This is Titus 2. This is passing on to younger people, men to men, women to women, life on life, mentoring. And the joy that you have when you get a little bit older, you aren't smarter, but you're more experienced, which means you've made more mistakes and learned from them. So, that's a big part of this whole gun lap, looking for people to mentor. And sometimes mentoring is kind of an intimidating word, like I got to go through some program, you know, multiple weeks in a row where, no, not necessarily.

It's stuff that's caught, not necessarily taught. So, that's the great joy of being this age. The Lord has taught me things, and I've failed, and I've confessed sin, and now I have something to say, something that a younger person can learn from. And so, what a joy. In this case, I got to do this with your kid. Sorry, Austin, your man.

And now he's doing it with younger people. We talk every single day in our business, and often, they're over with friends, with little kids, playing, whatever, but I know young men who are watching your son and saying, when I grow up, I want to be like that, which helps Austin be more of a man of God. All that stuff is so sweet. Yeah, and it's a beautiful visual of whether you're in the first lap or the last lap. And again, we don't know if it's our first, middle, or last, but it's a beautiful visual of if it's our first, middle, or last, someone's watching, and your life matters right here, right now, not just for yourself, but for that person watching, whether it's your son or daughter or a neighbor, a stranger, it doesn't matter. Live each day like it's your gun lap in such a way that you'll leave a legacy that honors Christ. Amen.

That's exactly right. You've been listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with Robert Walgamuth on Family Life Today. You can get a copy of Robert's book, Gun Lap, Finishing Your Race with Grace, at familylifetoday.com. The thought that maybe the best years of our marriage are behind us can be a really discouraging thought. But what if your marriage could get better and better as you get older and older? Robert Walgamuth will be back again tomorrow with Dave and Anne Wilson to continue that conversation. We hope you can join us. On behalf of Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.