IT IS ALL CONNECTED

By David Cabela

“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but 
whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”
Luke 9:24

"Come on, Mary. Get up here," the pianist said.

Mary shook her head and shrunk back a little in her seat near the piano.

"Ladies and gentlemen, a good friend of mine is going to share her talented voice with you tonight. Her name is Mary and she is going to sing Edelweiss.” The pianist, Frank Penning, obviously was not going to take no for an answer.

The tentative claps from the crowd and the prodding from the friends at her table finally nudged her up to the piano at the Domino Lounge in Chicago. She was on target that night. She performed the song with perfect pitch. She held every difficult high note to its improbable and dramatic finish. She nailed it. The lounge, often chatty and indifferent to the entertainment burst from silent rapture into raucous applause.

Mary bowed her head—a little uncomfortable with the attention, but still finding satisfaction in the applauding praise. She had done well.

A few minutes afterwards, a man in a fitted suit approached their table and handed her a card. "I'm a record producer in Nashville and you've got just what I have been looking for on a project I am working on. How would you like to come to Tennessee and cut a record with me?"

He stopped her before she could answer even though everyone at the table could make a near sure bet on what she was about to say. Mary never had much of a poker face.

"Don't say anything now. Go home. Talk it over with your husband and then give me a call. We'll fly you out and get you acquainted with the recording studio."

Mary spent the next week changing diapers, washing dishes, filling orders, practicing in the church choir, and tentatively thinking of a dream she thought had been permanently shelved. God had called her to be a wife and a mother and to use her vocal talents at the Chappell Catholic church. She had embraced her life. She had never even considered a singing career after the children were born, and had, in fact, placed it on the shelf even before that. But now, so many years later, an opportunity presented itself. Maybe she could be a singer and a mother at the same time. Maybe she could be a recording artist and a devoted wife. She could never give up her calling as a mother and wife for her voice, but maybe, just maybe she could go to Nashville and see what happened. Dick needed her help with the children, he needed her help with the budding new business. He simply needed her. 

But she had always been there for him. She supported him through his risk taking, through his long hours of work, through his failures. He needed her, there was no denying that, but he loved her and to love her meant to put her needs and wants and dreams above his own. He told her she should go.

So she made the call.

A week later, before the arrangements could be made, the producer died in a plane crash. 

Mary never went to Nashville. 

Would Mary have found success on the stage? Would she have given birth to her other children? Would they have moved from Nebraska? Would Dick have abandoned the implausible future of Cabela's to support his wife?

We will never know the answers to those questions. But that is okay—it is the way it is supposed to be. God's plan did not include a singing career for Mary. It included nine children, an integral part in a business that would, over time, touch the lives of tens of thousands of employees and countless customers, and a foundation that would become a world leader in conservation. 

Mary spent a good deal of time praying for the producer and his family and asking God for direction. After that, she re-shelved those dreams and went back to being the best mother and wife she could be. She would still sing in the church choir and at the Domino Lounge and at Mickey’s in Vail, Colorado and at weddings and funerals. She would sing because she loved it. She would sing because it brought her joy. Who knows, maybe a career in singing might have tainted that in some way. 

It is often easier to look back on the moments of your life and see them with clarity than it is to live within those same moments with confusion.

Dick and Mary began Cabela's hoping to build a small piece of the American Dream—a piece of freedom they could call their own. If they succeeded they would answer only to themselves. Yet, Cabela's became so much more than that. It became a culture more than a mission statement, an organism more than an organization, a family more than a company. And they found other people who depended on them and expected them to make wise decisions that would affect all their lives. And Dick and Mary depended on those same people.

Mary Cabela might have missed out on a potential singing career, but did she actually consider it a sacrifice? Did she look back on her life with regret? At times, she might have wondered what would have happened, but regret—never. Had Mary been allowed to take that opportunity to sing in Nashville, her life may have turned out differently. And not only her life, but the lives of all her children and grandchildren as well. Some of them may not even exist had her life taken that turn. How could she regret that? Still, how can we say that a woman with that kind of talent who stands by her husband and his dreams, who raises nine kids, who takes in and cares for a mother with Alzheimer's for a decade,  and who continually put her life on hold for those she loved, did not sacrifice? Maybe we would call it duty. Maybe something else, but it does not really matter what we call it. Mary would not waste her time labeling it. She would just do it. She would act, because that was who she was. She understood her life was not all about her, or her feelings, or her desires, or her worldly success, or her comfort. She understood, even if subconsciously, that true satisfaction and even the meaning of life had nothing to do with how much money you made or how successful you were, but in how much you loved others.

We all make sacrifices in our lives. Some are big, but most are small daily sacrifices. However, given the advantage of time behind us, we might not see it as sacrifice at all. The events in our lives happen for a reason and to go through life looking back at what could have been wastes so much time and diverts our gaze from blessings right in front of us. The dreams we give up, the events we miss, the doors we allow to close, might just make us stronger. They might just be given up, missed, and closed because there is something more important through the other door, at the other event, in the other dream. Something that will lead us to our real purpose.

Take for instance, the story of the one man whose life influenced our world more than any other. He spent His childhood in obscurity. His mother and father working hard at just being the best parents they could be. They saw their parenthood as a sacred duty. Jesus was meant to live quietly and humbly with his family for the greater part of his earthly life. That was his purpose. It was their purpose. How can a purpose like that be anything but great and worthy for us then? It is not what you do, but how you do it that truly matters.

In the end, maybe that is what freedom really is--maybe it is God leading us to our true selves and using the talents and skills He gave us in the service of others—as a mom or a wife or a friend or a voice in the church choir. True freedom dwells within each one of us. And if we listen to the whispers and turn when we should, our paths will lead us right where we are supposed to go. Then, when we look back, we may realize our sacrifices were not really sacrifices at all.