---
id: flying-free-06-look-for-a-safe-place-to-land
title: Chapter 6 – Look for a Safe Place to Land
category: Personal Crisis
predicted_narrative_arc: crisis descent to faith-led landing
sentiment: reflective and hopeful
emotions:
- betrayal
- fear
- relief
- faith
keypoints:
- partner sold collateral out of trust and threatened jail time
- Dean confessed debt to banker who allowed repayment plan
- lost job, insurance, and income after partner fired him
- family moved to Michigan for salary at 10 percent of prior income
- rediscovered faith as the overlooked asset that restored direction
summary: Dean recounts the collapse of his health and business amid cancer treatments
  and a partner's betrayal involving fraudulent loans that left him facing massive
  debt and job loss. After confronting the bank honestly, he loses his position and
  insurance but relocates to a lower-paying job in Michigan, where faith reemerges
  as the stabilizing force that shifts focus from past losses to future hope.
tags:
- family
- faith
- work
- reverence
- warmth
- cancer-struggle
- business-betrayal
- faith-recovery
- safe-landing
- michigan-move
- loan-fraud
sycophancy: 0
truth_score: 9
entropy: 5
updated: '2026-09-08T20:49:35Z'
vault_stage: 07_CODEX
headwaters: COMPA
prefix: COMPA
enrich_status: ok
enrich_blockers: []
enrich_method: llm
pipeline_filename: COMPA_2026-09-08_chapter-6-look-for-a-safe-place-to-land.md
proposed_topic: Stories
lane: Stories
description: When everything collapses at once — cancer, betrayal, bankruptcy, loss
  of insurance — faith becomes the only instrument left. Dean shares the lowest point
  of his life and how faith turned the free-fall into a new beginning.
corpus_topic: Stories
---

# Chapter 6

## Look for a Safe Place to Land – When Things Are Bad, Use Faith

**Full book:** https://deanrush.net/downloads/flyingfreebook.md

---

### Context for the Reader

This is one of the most powerful and vulnerable chapters in the book. Dean describes the simultaneous collapse of his health and his business, including betrayal by a partner and the threat of jail time. The chapter demonstrates the third emergency procedure in action: when you cannot stay in the air, you must find a safe place to land — even if that landing zone is far from where you originally planned to go.

The move to Michigan with a drastically reduced salary becomes the “safe place to land” that eventually led to greater purpose.

---

All that was happening between the cancer and our business was about to become even more complicated. We had endured some of the toughest periods of our married life as the cancer attacked, surgery followed surgery, and life seemed to be accelerating in the wrong direction. Stress was an afterthought as the illness caused diversion from our ability to care for the business, which caused a constantly deteriorating income stream. There seemed to be no relief, but life kept going.

I had thought it was great when my partner brought some loan papers up to the hospital for me to sign during one of the surgeries. I surmised he really cared about me and still acknowledged my ability to contribute to the business. There was a problem, however, because some of the collateral for those loans had been sold. The missing collateral would later drive me even farther into a hole both psychologically and physically. How could life become more rigorous than all I was experiencing with the cancer? I quickly discovered how ridiculous that statement really was.

When I talked about going to the bank that had made the loans to discuss the missing collateral, my partner objected. The collateral had been sold to gain cash for the company but that meant it was sold “out of trust,” a factor that, according to my partner, would send me to jail since I had signed the loan papers in the hospital. The person who signed for the loan was responsible for any collateral associated with the loan. He said, “This can all be made well. The doctors have said you probably only have a few months to live so after your death the insurance will pay off the loan and there will be plenty of money for everyone involved to share.” In other words, I was worth more dead because the large insurance policy would pay off the bank notes and there would be plenty of money left over to split. His thoughts about the solution still ring in my mind, even today.

I determined that I had to be honest with the bank because I was responsible so I decided to drive to the bank and discuss the problem. I was too weak to drive, so a friend drove me. As I sheepishly sat across from the banker, telling him the saga and how sorry I was about the collateral dilemma, he agreed to allow me to pay back the money over time. The banker stated that he knew about the cancer and would work something out for me to pay back the loan.

In the midst of the conversation the phone rang and the banker handed the telephone to me, announcing it was my partner. As I raised the phone to my ear I heard my partner’s voice telling me I was fired for being stupid and going to the banker. The partner now owned fifty-one percent of the company so he had a legal right to say what he said. Reality quickly set in. I had just told the banker that I owed him over $200,000, which I promised to repay, and now I no longer had a job, had been given a dire diagnosis for life by my doctors, and with the loss of job also had lost my insurance. How deep could this crisis become?

In all the turmoil I began to recognize a stabilizing element that had somehow been overlooked: faith. Faith had been there as I built the business, but I suddenly overlooked the most obvious asset in my quiver. I had lost faith when I didn’t rely on God rather than on the large bank statement of the new partner. I had demonstrated a lack of faith when I did not simply trust God with all the odds against me with cancer. I realized that faith never left me; I was just not using faith.

It was after nearly a year of living with the facts I have just described that we found ourselves driving to Grand Rapids, Michigan on that cold day in December, smiling about becoming reacquainted with snow after our sunny Texas home. Our furniture was jammed in the two rented trucks. I drove one with Vickie, our daughter the other, and our son followed in the family sedan with our trusty dog. We were on the way to taking the only job I had been offered in nearly two years, at a salary which, ironically, equated to exactly ten percent of my taxable income the year I had gotten sick. One by one all those things I had wanted and worked for in the business we left in Texas became less important as we drove northward with our little caravan. The whole scenario seemed to make no sense, but in a very strange way, I realized all the turmoil we had experienced over the last year and a half was in the rearview mirror.

Somehow faith was taking hold of any doubts I had and shoving them into the background. Just as that verse in Deuteronomy stated, He was with me, “…even in the face of my enemies….” God was working me through this ordeal. I had begun my slow recovery from cancer because of God and not anything I was doing. Vickie and I were doing our best to maintain control of a life that seemed to have flown out of control. Without faith I had relied totally on my own strength and it was now obvious that my strength was not enough without faith.

I was beginning to sense someway, someday, we would try to laugh at this experience. I suddenly began thinking about the future and not relating to the past. Faith and hope began creeping back into my thought processes. Those words that my grandfather told me to learn so many years ago began to re-form in my mind: “…Be strong and courageous….”

Over the last few months as my health improved I had searched for work. It had not been a difficult decision to accept the offer in Grand Rapids because it was the only offer I received during that period. Not many people try to hire a guy who has been told by doctors he does not have long to live, is not fully recovered from cancer, and is desperate (though they didn’t know that part). It didn’t seem like the situation was as bad as it really was because I had been to the bottom—no job, no insurance, no money, and no hope—so anything that paid real money and offered hope for the future was a gift. If a job offered a paycheck and a future, it seemed like utopia. This job seemed like a new lease on life and was the key to regaining control of the situation. We were being given an opportunity to fly free and grow.

Yes, it was with that background we drove north and smiled as we talked about the timing of that moment. It seemed like we had a chance to start over and we were taking the job with great expectations.

What could we do to make things turn out better this time? We began to realize we were flying free of those encumbrances that had held us so firmly in the past, encumbrances that somehow had enticed us to stop looking at what was really important. Funny how the view changes when you begin to see some hope. We were realizing that we could fly free into a promising future.

Some friends told Vickie and me they felt sorry for us as they saw all of our material security disappear with the business. We were forced to declare bankruptcy to separate from the key man life insurance policy with the partner. Over the years following, we were blessed to be able to pay back everyone, including the bank, all the money involved in the bankruptcy. It was, however, a very tough time on my pride, but there seemed be a new light in front of us.

Vickie and I realized this was a great opportunity to begin anew. It was a freedom to break from the upheaval we had experienced in the last two and a half years. We began to look forward to a new future. We had prayed for a glimmer of hope and now, somehow, we were seeing the reality of an answer. Faith was turning into reality.

The truck we were driving wouldn’t accelerate over fifty-five miles per hour, but my mind was going much faster as I attempted to think through the steps that carried us from the near-brink of extinction financially, the steps that had overlooked faith as the major weapon of hope.

We realized that God had put us on that highway and was moving us in the direction we were headed. He was helping us realize that real security in life comes from Him and not from the business we had just left or the house we had sold at a loss to be released from the payments. He was moving us toward a new goal and one that, we later could confirm, was much larger and more satisfying than anything we had yet experienced.

I love the freedom of flight, so those moments in that truck were inspiring because they reminded me of the advantage of being able to fly free with the gift of faith. Something was occurring far beyond my control and my capability. In some weird way I began to feel that I was being freed to fly in a different direction. By faith, we were being freed from the burden of a business that waned during my illness, a partner who really couldn’t have cared less if I lived or died, and a recent life that I now realized was empty and unfulfilling. Suddenly, there was an opportunity to fly away. What a wonderful concept, flying free of the past and being able to go in a new direction!

Things seemed to have gone from bad to worse but—were they? When we began looking around, we realized, the family was together, my health was improving, I had a job with the potential to establish a good solid future, and God was providing it all. There was no other explanation for what, to us, was a miracle. Suddenly, we determined that only God could have been the reason for what was happening.

---

**Next chapter:** Regain Control – One Step at a Time

**Full book:** https://deanrush.net/downloads/flyingfreebook.md