About

Hi!  My name is Troy Eckhardt.  I was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 1970, but moved to Glenwood, Florida at the age of 10, so I talk like a Yankee but think like a southerner. Click here to read what I think about Florida.

I married my high school sweetheart Jennifer in 1994, and four years later we had our first child.  To date we have been blessed with seven children in total (Yes, we know what causes that!) and we think we might be done.  Since 1988 when we first noticed each other, we have always said that we would have eight children, so… If you’d like, you can find out more about my family here.

I have been a high school and middle school science and German teacher, but I left the profession in 2000 to pursue a place in my father’s accounting practice.  After earning an accounting degree and various professional certifications, I bought the practice from my dad, and have been my own boss ever since.  You can learn more about my professional history here.

I am a Christian.  What brand, you ask?  Well, I attend an independent church, and simply put:

• I believe the Bible is the word of God, and that it contains no errors.
• I believe that Jesus died to save me from my sin and its ultimate price, an eternity in Hell.
• I believe that because I trust Jesus to drape His righteousness over me, I will spend eternity with Him in Heaven.
• I believe that He offers this salvation to all people, and that any who ask Him for it will receive it immediately and forever, no strings attached.
• I believe that we who are saved are called to serve God and His Church, and that He has equipped each of us with gifts to achieve this goal, but that whether or not we heed this call has nothing to do with our eternal security.  Our works do, however, play a part in determining our roles in eternity.

Therein lies the purpose for Light Afflictions.  In spite of my familial and professional blessings, I spent a great deal of my adult years acutely aware of a deficit in my life.  I felt for at least a decade that I was supposed to be doing something for God and His people, but I struggled for a long time trying to figure out what He wanted me to do.  Then God let me in on a few things.

It began when my previously Eden-like life suffered a few hits and changed in ways I never imagined it could.  First I became chronically sick with what I believe is Lyme Disease. After six years of dealing with that nightmare, one of my children suddenly and tragically died.  My world leapt toward chaos in two huge bounds, and I experienced pain, both physical and spiritual, such as I had not previously known could exist.

One of the side effects of these experiences was that I began to feel others’ spiritual grief and pain in an almost physical way.  I’m not saying that I became clairvoyant or anything bizarre and off the wall like that, but that I changed in such a way that I now very strongly commiserate when I learn of others’ pain.

Then, about a year after the death of my son, people began to talk to me about their problems.  Many of these people were complete strangers who approached me in public out of the blue.  Some were people I had known in high school or past jobs, but with whom I had had no contact for years.  A few were friends of friends.  In most cases, I would have had no way of helping these people if I had not gone through “Hell on Earth” myself.  After such a deluge of people seeking help that I was able to provide only through God’s words, which had been such a comfort to me in my own trials, I was left with no choice but to believe that these people were sent to me by God.  I have concluded that God wants me to encourage His people, whether they are in some minor trouble or in the midst of the darkest season of their lives.

So what’s with the name “Light Afflictions?”  Certainly a mind-altering chronic illness and the death of a child deserve a far weightier description, right?  Well, no.  Believe me, I’m not belittling my child’s death.  I’m leaning on 2 Corinthians chapter 4, in which Paul explains that although the glorious gospel is contained within us, we are weak and fragile earthen vessels, or jars of clay as some have said.  Remember when God, through Gideon’s 300 men, overcame the entire Midianite army in part by hiding lights in clay pots?  It was only when those clay pots were smashed that the light came out. Paul is alluding to this account – We are clay pots that experience brokenness and suffering so it can be obvious that the power and glory contained by us originate with God and not with us.

Paul describes in this chapter the types of trouble he and those with him had experienced, and the issues were both physical and spiritual. They were pursued by enemies, persecuted, tortured, and put through great suffering. Eventually, many of them were put to death. Yet he comments that even as the outward man weakens, the inner man is renewed day by day.  Then in verse 17 he astounds us by calling these horrible problems “our light affliction, which is but for a moment” as compared to the glory that will come about because of them and which will last eternally.  Paul ends the chapter by presenting us with a coping strategy: We look at the unseen things which are eternal, and not the visible things that are temporal.

In the scope of a glorious eternity, our troubles are indeed small, but we all need encouragement to keep our eyes, hearts, and minds where they ought to be.  Providing that encouraging hope is the reason I have created LightAfflictions.com.  I sincerely want you to find many blessing among its pages.