Finding an Answer

By the time I was 33 I had accomplished all I had set out to achieve in my first five years of medical practice. I had a very busy internal medicine practice in Phoenix, I had opened a second office in Scottsdale, I was named professor of the year at the University of Phoenix , I was teaching at the medical school and was listed as one of the top ten doctors by a local magazine. I was working 80-90 hours a week and was becoming more and more disgruntled with myself.

I remember one day pulling into my driveway in North Scottsdale and sitting in my car thinking…this can’t be what it is all about -no way. I have a wonderful wife, three kids, a great house, money in the bank and I can’t think of anything I need to buy to make me happy. I had reached that moment when I realized that I had everything I wanted only to find I was empty. I thought there must be an answer and I started searching.

One Easter (I usually put myself on call on those holidays so I didn’t have to go to church) I got this call that a consult had to be done on this guy before he went into surgery. I was about two miles from the hospital when they called me back and said, “We couldn’t wait he had to go into surgery, can you be here in two hours to see him when he gets out?” I’m thinking great! Here I am, dressed up, no where to go for two hours.

I’m sitting at a stop light and I notice all these people crossing the street. I look over and I see this huge Baptist church. I thought,“you know it might be funny to go in there and watch all these week people.” So I went in and sat in the back.

The pastor gets up and says, “Some of you can’t believe the circumstances that brought you to this room. In fact some of you have been probably running from this room your entire life and somehow you ended up here today and you think its an accident. It is not,its God.” He continued, “You may have even come here to make fun of us.” He had my attention.He went on, “You may think you are really smart…you may even have given up on God…but you know something is missing….I dare you to read the book of John like you would read any other book objectively. Give it 90 days and don’t walk away from God until you have examined God as an adult.”

I thought, ok I’ll read John and get it off my check list and move on to what life is really about.

I grew up in a conservative Baptist church…my dad was a deacon, my mom did the weddings at the church…I was a church rat.I knew all the stories. So I dusted off my Bible and my plan was to read it at night because I was afraid Tammy,(his wife) who was not a believer,would find out I was reading the Bible. We were moral people but not religious.

I read the opening line of John, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God…and he was with him from the beginning …“ I remember sitting up in bed and going “Oh my God…Jesus is God” I had always seen him as God’s son..but that night I sat up and realized God came here. Once I made that connection everything started making sense. God came here to save me. Pretty soon I’m telling Tammy, “YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT IS GOING ON HERE."

I was at work one day seeing patients, and I remember sitting on this exam table talking to this lady and I had this profound sense that this is not what I have for you. I went out of the room and went to my nurse and I said “I’m not suppose to be here anymore.” She said what? I said this. She sat me down and went and got my partners. They thought I had finally cracked. They had expected I would because I was doing so much.I was teaching, I had a growing practice and I was the director of a 16-doctor group. They said you have a vacation coming up…go back to Dallas.

We went to Dallas for 10 days and I watched my kids interact with their cousins. We returned to Phoenix and that Monday while sitting at my desk thinking I’m not suppose to be here, the phone rings. Its a guy who has been trying to get me to be a consultant. He asked what are you doing Thursday? I flew out to California.
When I returned from the trip Tammy said we are suppose to go back to Dallas aren’t we? I said, “I think so but I don’t know why.” I turned in my resignation and took the consulting job. I agreed to go all over the country with the condition I was going to live in Dallas.

Tammy and I went to Dallas to look for a house.She walks into this house that had just come on the market and says, “ this is it."We go back to Phoenix and put our house on the market and the next day a guy walks in and says, “this will work, I’ll buy it for what you are asking, cash deal, but on one condition…I need you out in 30 days.”

Within a month of me saying “I’m not suppose to be here anymore,” I changed jobs, we sold our house and bought the one in Dallas and I still have no clue to what is really going on.

The second day in Dallas, I’m unpacking boxes and there is a knock at the door. It’s a boy(around 7) and he says I’m wondering if you have kids. I said yeah we have three, they are not here right now but they would love to meet you. He says, “my mom wanted me to give you these cookies and welcome you to the neighborhood.” I said great. He gets about ten steps down the driveway , turns around and says, “ You think you all might want to go to church tonight? I said, “maybe.”
Tammy wasn’t anti-church it just wasn’t part of our routine. Basically she said , I’m not going to drag the kids to all the churches- when you find one you like we’ll all go.
It was a Saturday night. I looked the church up on the internet and we went. I liked it, kids loved it Our neighbor, David, turns out to be an attorney and one of the founding members of Fellowship Church in Grapevine that had Ed Young Jr. as the pastor. On our way home he asks, “What do you do for a living?” I told him I’m a doctor and a health care consultant. He asks, “What kind of consulting do you do? “ I said I measure outcomes and efficiencies and I help set up health care systems.
He pulls the car over, stops and says, “You are the one. We have been praying for you.” I’m going What?
He asks, “ Can you been in LA on Thursday?” I said I can be anywhere. I’m not doing anything right now. So we fly to Lax. David is the counsel for the Dream Center which had been trying to get a medical ministry going.

I spent the next year and a half volunteering my time between consulting assignments helping them plan and orchestrate a medical ministry. One of my clients was Sarasota Memorial Hospital and I was going to Florida one week a month and to Los Amgeles one week a month.

It was getting close to the time that LA needed a doctor to run this ministry. David looks at me and said you look like a deer in the headlights and I said we’ve been working on this thing for two years and I need a doctor to run this. David says let’s good back to the hotel and just pray. So we prayed and that night at the church service Tommy Barnett brought me up on stage and said I want you to know that Dr. Burns has been working with us for a long time to develop a medical ministy.and I’m sitting there thinking -Yeah but we don’t have a doctor and I’m trying to figure out how God is working.

After the service this guy comes up and says, “Dr.Burns I’m a doctor and I think I am suppose to come here.” He says he had this inner city clinic in Louisiana and they lost their funding. “I was watching TV and heard something about the medical ministry here and we decided yesterday to fly out.

He turned out to be the doctor to staff this clinic. I remember flying back to Dallas thinking I’m not suppose to be the one in LA but I still had the heart to want to do a medical ministry.

Tammy and I had a vacation scheduled for Orlando, but first a swing by Sarasota to do some work while she and the kids went to the beach. Later in Epcot Tammy turns to me and says, “We are suppose to move to Sarasota, aren’t we?” I said I think so. They had been trying to get me to come Sarasota fulltime. I kept thinking this can’t be what God wants me to do. I’m in seminary and we love our church in Dallas where we are small group leaders.I argued with God for about three or four months.
This can’t be what you want us to do. We are not going. Kids are comfortable in school. God just kept saying you are going to Sarasota. We submitted. We weren’t happy about it and we came kicking and screaming. I was angry and was talking to God the whole trip. God I don’t understand why?

Even the house we were moving into wasn’t really what we wanted. It was in a gated community and we had never been in one of those before. I’m in this house that I really don’t like and I’m unpacking boxes and I’m mad and arguing with God I’m saying you bring me to this place, where I don’t want to be, I don’t even have a church and there is a knock on the door.

I open the door and there is a boy (around age 7) and he says “Do you have children?” I said yes, but they are up at the pool but when they come back I’m sure they will want to play with you. He says, “My mom wanted me to bring these brownies to you.” I said Ok and he starts walking down the walk and I’m standing there going one- one thousand, two-one thousand, three- one thousand and he turns around and says “ Would you all want to go to church with us tonight?” And I said “Its Saturday.” And he says “We do church on Saturday.”
I said “Yeah I think we will be joining you at church tonight.”

At the hospital one of my jobs was to oversee the indigent care in Sarasota county. I asked where are the homeless people and I’m told there is this group that South Shore started, called Gifts from God and they serve the homeless in the park.

Several years have passed and I’m active with my church as an elder and volunteer administrative pastor. I’m still with Sarasota Memorial Hospital and that visit to the park has evolved into a mobile medical ministry called Saline Solutions serving the homeless and indigent among us. How all this happened is a series of God stories in itself.

I know now why God brought me to Sarasota.

Frank Burns
Sarasota,Fl.