About the Author

ABOUT TOM EBEL

Walk Ten Steps with The Lord, published in 2011 by Xulon Press, is the story of my walk with the Lord which I hope will draw others closer to Him.

My story actually began with something of a miracle. I was born in 1954 as the first and only child to two older parents who had been told they could never have children.  As an unexpected arrival and an only child, my parents made sure I knew how much I was loved. Otherwise, my childhood and formative years growing up in suburban Richmond, VA as an average American Baby Boomer kid were routine and relatively uneventful.

When it came time to go to college, I applied and was accepted to Hampden Sydney College in rural Southside Virginia, where my father had gone.  Life was good in the Ebel household. My parents were thrilled I was headed to Hampden-Sydney, and I was looking forward to coasting through the rest of my senior year in high school and starting college.  A few weeks after I was accepted, about a week before Christmas, my father, who was an avid outdoorsman, asked me to go bird hunting with him and his close friend and business partner, Pete. Although I sometimes I went with him, on this day, I decided to stay home and work on hooking up a new stereo he had bought me for Christmas the night before. On that afternoon, while doing what he loved to do, my father died of a massive heart attack at age 57.  Pete had to break the tragic news to my mother and me. I still remember his words to me that day:  "you are a man now". I was shocked and devastated by the death of my father.

My entire world changed. I had lost not only my father, but my brother and best friend. He was a kind, generous and fun loving man. My mother and I were left alone without the central figure in our family, someone we both loved deeply. For a while it looked as though we could not afford for me to go to college, but  Hampden-Sydney provided me with a generous scholarship.  Through the grace of God, I was able to cope with the loss of my father and adapt to college life.

In the fall of my sophomore year, I was expecting my mother to visit me at Hampden-Sydney for Homecoming (one of our great family traditions), but she called and said she was not feeling well, and stayed home. Within a few weeks she was hospitalized with what was originally diagnosed as a brain hemorrhage. On Christmas Eve, we found out she had brain cancer, and she died a month later. At age nineteen, I was on my own in the world, with no immediate family. Fortunately, following my mother's death, friends and family stepped in to fill the void left by the loss of my parents. Somehow I remember feeling a strange calm that everything was going to be alright. Although I did not recognize it then, I now know that God truly was looking after me during this period of tragedy and loss. My parents attended church regularly, but frankly, as loving and as good as my parents were, we did not discuss matters relating to God, Jesus, the church or religion. After they passed away, I was taken in, loved and cared for by my father's sister, Vera, and her family. When you stayed with my aunt, you had to go to church. My aunt was gentle in her delivery, but there was no question that the church and the love of God were very important to her. I learned from her and her family the absolute transforming power of unconditional love. That love sustained during a very challenging time, and I know helped to lay the foundation for understanding the unconditional love which God has for all of us.

In the summer following my junior year at Hampden-Sydney, I met and fell in love with my wife, Liz. I know this was truly a gift from God. Her love for me has been a powerful sustaining force ever since we met. Like my aunt, to this day, my wife also has been someone who expected me to attend church on Sunday.

After college, I went on to law school, and upon completion, Liz and I were married, and I began my law practice. Liz also was working and had a successful career of her own. By the time I was thirty, life seemed to be clipping along very nicely. We both had good jobs, a nice home, great friends, a robust social life and were involved in our church and the community. I had overcome the many obstacles which I faced and appeared to on my way to success. By the standards of the world, I had every reason to be happy. However, I was becoming increasingly unhappy, and, in fact I was miserable. Despite all I had survived and accomplished, life was becoming dark, confusing and without meaning. Two events then combined to open my eyes to God's goodness and power. Liz announced she was pregnant with our first child and a friend took me to a meeting of business professionals sponsored by Needle's Eye Ministries, an interdenominational Christian Ministry to the business community. Listening to a testimony at one of those meetings, and being exposed to the truth of the Gospel of John at a follow-up meeting, I came to see that it was only the unconditional love of a good and gracious God revealed to me through his Son, Jesus Christ, which could fill the void in my life and give it meaning.

While those events launched me on a great journey walking with the Lord, my life has not been perfect since I turned control over to Christ. Anyone who has tried to raise a family, sustain a marriage and pursue a career will tell you it is not an easy road. Like many others, I  face  the daily  struggle to integrate my faith into both my personal and professional lives, I have continued to have struggles and unexpected tragedies, which have challenged, but eventually strengthened, my faith. However,  I have learned from this long walk with God that in the midst of unexpected tragedies and  difficult circumstances, we find the unconditional love of a good and gracious God and those He sends to help us.

Wanting to assist others to know this and to rely on the God who I know cares for and shepherds us, I wrote "Walk Ten Steps with the Lord".