On July 1, 1985, I died. And when I died, it was then that I learned to live.
Here's the full story:
The world of politics, I believe, is directly linked to the state of our society. The state of our society is linked directly to our faith. Faith guides ethics and morals. This is not to say that those without faith have no morals or ethics. However, I believe that when the morality of a community, or nation, breakdown, it can be directly contributed to the breakdown of faith. And as these morals breakdown, so does society, and ultimately, so follows our government.
Growing up, my mom was an integral part of ensuring that I was exposed to the good news of Christ. I attended church, and I believed in the crucifixion of Christ. My letterman's jacket had a descending dove on the back with the words, "Runner for Christ" below it.
My wife, raised a Catholic, but whose family was non-practicing, was attracted to me, she says, because of my firm belief in the faith of Christianity.
Problem was, I believed in Christ, but I was not to the point in my life where I "knew" Christ, as much as I thought otherwise at the time.
By the time I was married and entered the U.S. Navy, I was beginning to wonder about this belief system of Christianity that my parents tried to convince me of, and of which I thought I was a believer throughout my younger years.
In the school system, and on television and radio, I was being slowly convinced that reason and Christianity are incompatible. Through the teaching of the theory of Darwinism as "fact" in the public school system I sometimes had my doubts about Christianity. After all, I was beginning to think, how could there be a necessity for a creator if life emerged without any assistance?
Between my final years of education and my first year in the United States Navy the opinions I encountered was eating away at the traditional concepts I was taught as a young man, and leaving in its wake a worldview contrary to faith.
As I turned away from God, I believed at that time that my life became less meaningful. There was no gratifying end to all the storms of life endured here on Earth. Humanity became nothing more than a group of atoms that, in time, would leave no trace of existence in the giant dustbin that is the vast universe. All human achievements would be lost. No philosophy would remain, no evidence that humanity ever existed. Only the inevitability of nothingness would remain.
Still, despite the despair of a darkness after the end of my life, and after the inevitable end of humanity, letting go of what I thought to be the chains of a dictatorial God with numerous moral strictures made me feel elated. I was suddenly given the gift of moral freedom. I turned my back on God, meaning I could live my life for "me." Without God in my life I no longer needed to worry about ever being held accountable for my actions. Personal happiness and the pursuit of pleasure lay before me, waiting to be indulged in as much as I desired. No longer would I be haunted by God's disapproving gaze. I felt like Pinocchio at the front gate of Pleasure Island.
I set aside all of the restrictions of rules of ethics and morality. Nothing, now, including God, stood between me and ultimate freedom.
The finality of death was the least of my concerns. I was at my peak, after all. I was strong, young, virile, and ready to conquer the world. I ran 20 miles a day, could do enough push-ups to put anyone to shame, and I had a crowd of smarts in my brain that still had universities pursuing me (though a run-in I had with one school caused a number of institutions to second guess my attitude).
My intellect led me to seek out other thinkers like myself. Debating was one of my favorite pastimes. My love for debate began in high school in the "Issues and Answers" club on campus. The activity of debate carried over into my lunch hour in school as well, where nearly every day I argued politics with a gal named Amanda. She was a holdover from the early seventies anti-war movement, and I was a new Republican that admired the newly elected president, Ronald Reagan. I especially defended Reagan's economic policies, and his opinion that peace can only be achieved through strength.
By the time I was serving aboard my first naval vessel, the USS Chandler DDG-996, my immorality was in full swing. I was a womanizing, alcohol drinking, cigarette smoking, hallucinogen using bundle of God-defying rage, proclaiming that I was simply enjoying my freedom to its fullest. What I believed to be an outmoded belief of Jesus Christ made me secretly laugh at the people of faith around me. I was smug, arrogant, and felt superior to those small-minded slaves of an imaginary God that kept them in a bird cage of endless rules and restrictions. How boring of a world they lived in. How boring of a world I had left behind.
Intellectualism, and faith, were sworn enemies, in my opinion at that time. I was too smart to follow the faith of my childhood. My high IQ demanded that I dispassionately follow the conclusions of the world, rather than a Christian God that only desired to limit me in my life, and hold me back from achieving the greatness I knew was on the horizon for me. If God wanted me to be in His corner, He was going to have to do more than send a few Bible-thumpers to my door, appeal to me through the kind and loving words of my mother, or try to make me feel guilty through the venomous sermons of my local preacher.
"Bring it on," I dared Him. "Bring it on, if you even exist in the first place!"
April Fools Day, 1985, my wife gave birth to our son, Christopher David. The woman who was going through the same kind of rejection of God as I was wanted to name him Christopher because it means "Christ-like." She desired "David" as his middle name after the King of Israel in the Old Testament. I agreed. After all, what harm could become of it?
At the time I explained the birth of my son as being like going through a religious experience. My love for the frail child was so strong it hurt inside. My need to be responsible hit me like a ton of bricks. I immediately quit the heavy drinking and drug usage. The miracle that lay on my wife's chest defied my recent conclusions about the existence of God. The Bible lessons of the first part of my life haunted me. The words of philosophers and prophets intertwined in my head, battling for dominance, fighting for a pole position. I had a lot of motivation to remain on my path away from God, but the birth of my son planted a seed of doubt that appealed to me to return to the faith of my childhood. But it didn't just want me to return to my faith. This time it wanted me to practice my faith in a manner that was more than simply saying "Amen" during church service, and leaving God inside the four walls of Church on Sunday.
There is a funny thing about when we demand wake-up calls from God. Sometimes, when you dare God to reveal Himself to you, He obliges, and in ways you may never imagine.
Be careful what you ask for. . .
I continued to doubt as April of 1985 passed. As the month of July approached I spent the entire weekend in the Southern California town I left behind when I entered the United States Navy. I was home from San Diego. Home from my Navy career - for the weekend. My wife remained at her mother's house in the same town. It was a good two hour drive from my haze-gray-and-underway home in San Diego.
My ten year old brother had never been to the beach before, so I took him on Saturday. We played in the sand. I did a little body surfing. We got a little bit of a sunburn, which can exhaust a person, but we had fun.
I spent Sunday with my wife. She was a little upset because I hadn't spent much time with her and the baby while I was home for the weekend. It was the second or third time in Christopher's life that I had the chance to be with him, so I held my little son as much as I could. I also took my wife out to lunch and dinner, hoping the meals would satisfy her desire to spend time with me.
My son was only three months old. Our marriage was a little less than a year old.
I stayed in town later than I should have, for I needed to get back to the ship no later than 6:00 am, because that is when muster was. We were due to leave for a six month WestPac. The ship was going to head for Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, Diego Garcia, and ultimately the Persian Gulf.
I departed from Corona much later than I should have.
At that time in my life I was still battling with my belief in God. I had essentially turned my back on Him, and the faith I had learned as a child. But, hey, I was ten foot tall and bullet-proof, as far as I was concerned. Death could not come to me. Tragedy only happened to the other guy. I was mighty. I was arrogant. I thought I had everything under control.
I left from Corona for San Diego at 1:30 am, Monday, July 1, 1985, to return to the USS Chandler, and I never made it to my destination.
Exhaustion. I knew how tired I was. As I drove south on Interstate 15 I did whatever I could to battle my heavy eyelids. As I was nodding off, I had the windows down so that the brisk air could caress my face, and force me to remain awake. In Lake Elsinore I bought a cold milk shake, figuring the chill of the frozen desert would keep me awake, not realizing that the ice cream based drink would coat my stomach, bringing on sleepiness even more. The foolishness of a young mind, I suppose.
Just south of current day Temecula, just inside San Diego County, I lost my battle to stay awake.
Back then the southbound lanes of Interstate 15 were situated much higher than the northbound lanes. The median was a grassy hill seperating the two. It was at that point I fell asleep at the wheel. I was traveling 80 miles per hour in a small Toyota Tercel. I was not wearing a seat belt. The car slowly veered to the left. As I slept, the wheels crossed the shoulder, and hit the grassy hill that separated my lanes from the southbound lanes below.
The car began to roll down the hill. Side by side, end over end, the Tercel flipped and flopped across the highway. Along the way the doors, the hood, the trunk cover, and every piece of glass in that car was torn away. The roof of the car wound up crushed to my seat, virtually in line with the middle of the tweaked steering wheel. The wheels were buckled up under the vehicle. I was thrown on the final roll, the eighth roll, I have been told.
The vehicle came to rest on the slow lane of the northbound side of the freeway, upside down, pointing north. I was thrown over that shoulder of the highway, which was an embankment, a long embankment, one covered with boulders of all shapes and sizes. It is believed I landed head-first into the sea of boulders at the bottom of the drop. The report indicated that at least twenty minutes had passed before I was even found.
When I was discovered I was unable to breath on my own. I had aspirated, meaning that I had vomited, and the liquid wound up in my lungs. I was literally drowning in my own puke. My heartrate was nearly non-existent. The scene was one of tangled blood and flesh. Unconscious, the reports would later indicate that when they found me I was not only not breathing, but had 0% oxygen in my blood.
I was dead.
On the life flight helicopter ride to Palomar Memorial Hospital in Escondido, California, they worked feverously to revive me.
This is what I get for daring God to give me a wake-up call.
As the helicopter approached the landing pad at the hospital, they revived me successfully. I was in a deep coma for a week and a half. I had a respirator hooked up to me for three days so that I could breath. The damage to my head was a left-temporal fracture. It was a fracture that went along my left temple, back above my ear, and then down into the ear area. To this day I am deaf in my left ear because of it, most of my loss of hearing due to nerve damage, and the destruction of three bones in my ear.
Spinal fluid flowed from my left ear into a bed pan for three days. My eyes were badly hemorraged. Family tells me my eyes looked like those of an insect, they were so swollen. My face was torn open and my right cheekbone was exposed. My left knee was severely damaged, killing any hopes of running 20-plus miles a day like I had been doing for so many years. My back and neck were twisted.
My dad, the United States Marine that was the epitome of "tough," and able to handle this kind of thing due to his tough skin hardened partly by his years in Vietnam during the mid-sixties, took one look at me and had to leave the room.
Mom says she held my hand and it felt dead - cold and clammy. Dad was in the bathroom rinsing his face with cold water, finding it difficult to imagine that somewhere inside that damaged body or torn flesh lay the son that he had chosen to be the father of since I was nearly three years old.
My wife had a new born baby to worry about. She had to take care of our three month old baby, and her husband was lying in the hospital, possibly dying, possibly severely mentally retarded for the rest of his life due to the severe head trauma.
After a week and a half passed I came out of the deep coma, but I was still kind of in a coma. The lights were on, but nobody was home. I responded to basic stimuli. My eyes were open. I was like a child responding robotically to basic needs and desires like hunger, sleep, and the occasional "yes" or "no."
At that point they transferred me from Palomar Memorial Hospital in Escondido, California to Naval Hospital Balboa in San Diego. My new home was a trauma ward where most of my neighbors were the victims of motorcycle accidents wearing "halos" screwed into the bone of their skulls.
After a month, or so, passed, cognizant responses became evident. My rehabilitation included memory games, and learning how to walk again. With the kind of head injury I had, the brain reverted back to childhood, slowly growing in maturity as time passed. I was like a child for the longest time, and most of the staff doubted I would ever become as I was before the accident again. The brain was growing up again. The doctors were amazed that I was not dead, for the type of head injury I suffered has a high mortality rate. Those lucky enough to survive are often severely mentally retarded, unable to even perform the most basic of tasks in order to function independently.
The neuro-surgeons and neurologists assigned to me expected my wife to have to take care of me in a similar fashion she was taking care of our child. And at the time it couldn't get any worse, it did. I began having epileptic seizures. Up to 80 siezures per day, a large portion of which were petite mal and grand mal.
Seizures, deafness in the left ear with a constant ringing that remains to this day, couldn't walk without assistance because of the destroyed knee - God had done a real number on me. My pride always rested in my high intellect and athleticism. When I was younger people could tell me twenty random numbers, and I could recite them forwards or backwards on the spot. It was a great way to entertain friends. Now, I had difficulty figuring out how many fingers I had on my hand. I would never run again, and the high intellect and memory portion of my brain had been damaged. Even my balance was screwed up, thanks to the left ear damage. And on top of all of that, I had to listen to the tinnitus in my left ear 24/7. It was enough to drive a man insane. The ringing in my ear never stops, and sometimes becomes so loud I have difficulty understanding what someone is saying.
I made sure God was aware of my dissatisfaction, if He even existed. "How could you do this to me?" I asked Him angrily. "You are not a loving God if you did this to me. What kind of loving God would allow me to go through this? You took away everything important to me."
My memory was shot. My intellect was gone. I couldn't even remember myself, half the time. The only reason I knew I was married is because somebody told me. There was no way I would ever run again, much less walk, with the destroyed knee, and pain in my lower back and hips.
I was angry.
I was an angry patient that was always negative. I was always having a lousy day, and I never smiled. I couldn't even sit up on my bed - I would fall over, once falling off the bed and winding up with a few stitches just above my left eye.
How could God do this to me?
After a couple months I got to the point that I was able to walk with the assistance of a cane, making my own bed, and I was spending a lot of time in the TV room. At one point I saw my ship on the news in the Persian Gulf rescuing a fishing boat after it had been attacked by Iraqi vessels.
A new neighbor was brought to me in the bed beside mine, near the end of my stay in the hospital. For me it had been a long three months. My neighbor, Chad, came from an aircraft carrier. Aboard the ship he was in the Supply division, and had fallen through a hole in the deck normally reserved for a "dumb waiter" style of contraption. He fell a few decks, and landed on his head. His head injury, as bad as mine was, was worse. The swelling was so bad in his skull that he had to go through surgery for them to put a tube from his skull to his bladder inside his body so that the pressure of the swelling in his head could be released. The fluid would simply be urinated later after travelling through the tube into his bladder.
For someone in such bad shape, my new neighbor was not angry at God at all. In fact, he was a pretty happy guy.
We talked often, played chess, and quickly became friends.
Problem was, his positive attitude was really beginning to piss me off.
How could I be angry at God with this knucklehead beside me always smiling?
His survival truly was a miracle, as was mine, but he was happy about it as if the injury that he had recieved was a gift. His life was over, for the most part. He would never be able to fly again. His sea-going days were over as well. The tragedy, this horrible trauma that had befallen him, was something to thank God for. "Thank you, Lord," he would say. "Thank you for what you have given me."
"Thank you for what?" I asked. "You're screwed up. How is it in the face of all this you are always smiling? Because I sure as heck don't see any good reason to smile."
He smiled, as expected, but didn't say a word. He reached under his pillow and he pulled out a book. The book was a familiar one. I had seen it before. I recognized the black leather cover. The gold trimmed pages. The words "Holy Bible" on the cover. In other words, it was the book I learned from growing up, and the one I had been battling against for more than a year. He lay the book of the Christian Faith that I enjoyed during my younger years on his stomach. I simply gazed at the very book I had been rejecting.
As this book lay on his stomach, I looked at it dumbly, as if I had never seen such a display of the obvious in my life. But I knew exactly what it meant. My survival was a miracle. And these bad things were simply storms that would eventually equate to a good thing in my life.
The storms of life strengthen us. It is through them that our character is built. I was finally beginning to understand that. Remember, before this moment I was a doubter, a doubter that thought he might be a believer, but didn't necessarily "know" Christ.
Staring at that Bible, however, caused something inside me to break. It was a feeling very similar to the feeling I felt when I first saw my son in the delivery room three months before. I loved my son so much that it hurt. I felt a similar pain at that moment. The pain was immense. What had I done?
Throughout the years I have made my mistakes. I realized, however, regardless of all of the sin in my past, it was at that moment in time that I needed to grow. The friend's Bible reminded me of who I was. I needed to reacquaint myself with my Savior.
The writers of the New Testament walked with Him. They saw the empty tomb. They stood on Calvary. They walked the paths that Jesus walked. But I don't think we fully understand, sometimes, the full scope of His gift to us. They are a pair. The Resurrection, and Crucifixion.
At that moment in the Naval Hospital Balboa, San Diego, California, I reintroduced myself to Christ, and He to me. I no longer only believed. The miracle of my life led to me knowing Him.
When I tell people this story, often the response is, "Wow, you sure were lucky."
Luck had nothing to do with it.
I look back now, on that day I reopened my eyes, and I remember an old saying I said as a child.
Please be patient, God is not finished with me yet.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
I continued to doubt as April of 1985 passed. As the month of July approached I spent the entire weekend in the Southern California town I left behind when I entered the United States Navy. I was home from San Diego. Home from my Navy career - for the weekend. My wife remained at her mother's house in the same town. It was a good two hour drive from my haze-gray-and-underway home in San Diego.
My ten year old brother had never been to the beach before, so I took him on Saturday. We played in the sand. I did a little body surfing. We got a little bit of a sunburn, which can exhaust a person, but we had fun.
I spent Sunday with my wife. She was a little upset because I hadn't spent much time with her and the baby while I was home for the weekend. It was the second or third time in Christopher's life that I had the chance to be with him, so I held my little son as much as I could. I also took my wife out to lunch and dinner, hoping the meals would satisfy her desire to spend time with me.
My son was only three months old. Our marriage was a little less than a year old.
I stayed in town later than I should have, for I needed to get back to the ship no later than 6:00 am, because that is when muster was. We were due to leave for a six month WestPac. The ship was going to head for Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, Diego Garcia, and ultimately the Persian Gulf.
I departed from Corona much later than I should have.
At that time in my life I was still battling with my belief in God. I had essentially turned my back on Him, and the faith I had learned as a child. But, hey, I was ten foot tall and bullet-proof, as far as I was concerned. Death could not come to me. Tragedy only happened to the other guy. I was mighty. I was arrogant. I thought I had everything under control.
I left from Corona for San Diego at 1:30 am, Monday, July 1, 1985, to return to the USS Chandler, and I never made it to my destination.
Exhaustion. I knew how tired I was. As I drove south on Interstate 15 I did whatever I could to battle my heavy eyelids. As I was nodding off, I had the windows down so that the brisk air could caress my face, and force me to remain awake. In Lake Elsinore I bought a cold milk shake, figuring the chill of the frozen desert would keep me awake, not realizing that the ice cream based drink would coat my stomach, bringing on sleepiness even more. The foolishness of a young mind, I suppose.
Just south of current day Temecula, just inside San Diego County, I lost my battle to stay awake.
Back then the southbound lanes of Interstate 15 were situated much higher than the northbound lanes. The median was a grassy hill seperating the two. It was at that point I fell asleep at the wheel. I was traveling 80 miles per hour in a small Toyota Tercel. I was not wearing a seat belt. The car slowly veered to the left. As I slept, the wheels crossed the shoulder, and hit the grassy hill that separated my lanes from the southbound lanes below.
The car began to roll down the hill. Side by side, end over end, the Tercel flipped and flopped across the highway. Along the way the doors, the hood, the trunk cover, and every piece of glass in that car was torn away. The roof of the car wound up crushed to my seat, virtually in line with the middle of the tweaked steering wheel. The wheels were buckled up under the vehicle. I was thrown on the final roll, the eighth roll, I have been told.
The vehicle came to rest on the slow lane of the northbound side of the freeway, upside down, pointing north. I was thrown over that shoulder of the highway, which was an embankment, a long embankment, one covered with boulders of all shapes and sizes. It is believed I landed head-first into the sea of boulders at the bottom of the drop. The report indicated that at least twenty minutes had passed before I was even found.
When I was discovered I was unable to breath on my own. I had aspirated, meaning that I had vomited, and the liquid wound up in my lungs. I was literally drowning in my own puke. My heartrate was nearly non-existent. The scene was one of tangled blood and flesh. Unconscious, the reports would later indicate that when they found me I was not only not breathing, but had 0% oxygen in my blood.
I was dead.
On the life flight helicopter ride to Palomar Memorial Hospital in Escondido, California, they worked feverously to revive me.
This is what I get for daring God to give me a wake-up call.
As the helicopter approached the landing pad at the hospital, they revived me successfully. I was in a deep coma for a week and a half. I had a respirator hooked up to me for three days so that I could breath. The damage to my head was a left-temporal fracture. It was a fracture that went along my left temple, back above my ear, and then down into the ear area. To this day I am deaf in my left ear because of it, most of my loss of hearing due to nerve damage, and the destruction of three bones in my ear.
Spinal fluid flowed from my left ear into a bed pan for three days. My eyes were badly hemorraged. Family tells me my eyes looked like those of an insect, they were so swollen. My face was torn open and my right cheekbone was exposed. My left knee was severely damaged, killing any hopes of running 20-plus miles a day like I had been doing for so many years. My back and neck were twisted.
My dad, the United States Marine that was the epitome of "tough," and able to handle this kind of thing due to his tough skin hardened partly by his years in Vietnam during the mid-sixties, took one look at me and had to leave the room.
Mom says she held my hand and it felt dead - cold and clammy. Dad was in the bathroom rinsing his face with cold water, finding it difficult to imagine that somewhere inside that damaged body or torn flesh lay the son that he had chosen to be the father of since I was nearly three years old.
My wife had a new born baby to worry about. She had to take care of our three month old baby, and her husband was lying in the hospital, possibly dying, possibly severely mentally retarded for the rest of his life due to the severe head trauma.
After a week and a half passed I came out of the deep coma, but I was still kind of in a coma. The lights were on, but nobody was home. I responded to basic stimuli. My eyes were open. I was like a child responding robotically to basic needs and desires like hunger, sleep, and the occasional "yes" or "no."
At that point they transferred me from Palomar Memorial Hospital in Escondido, California to Naval Hospital Balboa in San Diego. My new home was a trauma ward where most of my neighbors were the victims of motorcycle accidents wearing "halos" screwed into the bone of their skulls.
After a month, or so, passed, cognizant responses became evident. My rehabilitation included memory games, and learning how to walk again. With the kind of head injury I had, the brain reverted back to childhood, slowly growing in maturity as time passed. I was like a child for the longest time, and most of the staff doubted I would ever become as I was before the accident again. The brain was growing up again. The doctors were amazed that I was not dead, for the type of head injury I suffered has a high mortality rate. Those lucky enough to survive are often severely mentally retarded, unable to even perform the most basic of tasks in order to function independently.
The neuro-surgeons and neurologists assigned to me expected my wife to have to take care of me in a similar fashion she was taking care of our child. And at the time it couldn't get any worse, it did. I began having epileptic seizures. Up to 80 siezures per day, a large portion of which were petite mal and grand mal.
Seizures, deafness in the left ear with a constant ringing that remains to this day, couldn't walk without assistance because of the destroyed knee - God had done a real number on me. My pride always rested in my high intellect and athleticism. When I was younger people could tell me twenty random numbers, and I could recite them forwards or backwards on the spot. It was a great way to entertain friends. Now, I had difficulty figuring out how many fingers I had on my hand. I would never run again, and the high intellect and memory portion of my brain had been damaged. Even my balance was screwed up, thanks to the left ear damage. And on top of all of that, I had to listen to the tinnitus in my left ear 24/7. It was enough to drive a man insane. The ringing in my ear never stops, and sometimes becomes so loud I have difficulty understanding what someone is saying.
I made sure God was aware of my dissatisfaction, if He even existed. "How could you do this to me?" I asked Him angrily. "You are not a loving God if you did this to me. What kind of loving God would allow me to go through this? You took away everything important to me."
My memory was shot. My intellect was gone. I couldn't even remember myself, half the time. The only reason I knew I was married is because somebody told me. There was no way I would ever run again, much less walk, with the destroyed knee, and pain in my lower back and hips.
I was angry.
I was an angry patient that was always negative. I was always having a lousy day, and I never smiled. I couldn't even sit up on my bed - I would fall over, once falling off the bed and winding up with a few stitches just above my left eye.
How could God do this to me?
After a couple months I got to the point that I was able to walk with the assistance of a cane, making my own bed, and I was spending a lot of time in the TV room. At one point I saw my ship on the news in the Persian Gulf rescuing a fishing boat after it had been attacked by Iraqi vessels.
A new neighbor was brought to me in the bed beside mine, near the end of my stay in the hospital. For me it had been a long three months. My neighbor, Chad, came from an aircraft carrier. Aboard the ship he was in the Supply division, and had fallen through a hole in the deck normally reserved for a "dumb waiter" style of contraption. He fell a few decks, and landed on his head. His head injury, as bad as mine was, was worse. The swelling was so bad in his skull that he had to go through surgery for them to put a tube from his skull to his bladder inside his body so that the pressure of the swelling in his head could be released. The fluid would simply be urinated later after travelling through the tube into his bladder.
For someone in such bad shape, my new neighbor was not angry at God at all. In fact, he was a pretty happy guy.
We talked often, played chess, and quickly became friends.
Problem was, his positive attitude was really beginning to piss me off.
How could I be angry at God with this knucklehead beside me always smiling?
His survival truly was a miracle, as was mine, but he was happy about it as if the injury that he had recieved was a gift. His life was over, for the most part. He would never be able to fly again. His sea-going days were over as well. The tragedy, this horrible trauma that had befallen him, was something to thank God for. "Thank you, Lord," he would say. "Thank you for what you have given me."
"Thank you for what?" I asked. "You're screwed up. How is it in the face of all this you are always smiling? Because I sure as heck don't see any good reason to smile."
He smiled, as expected, but didn't say a word. He reached under his pillow and he pulled out a book. The book was a familiar one. I had seen it before. I recognized the black leather cover. The gold trimmed pages. The words "Holy Bible" on the cover. In other words, it was the book I learned from growing up, and the one I had been battling against for more than a year. He lay the book of the Christian Faith that I enjoyed during my younger years on his stomach. I simply gazed at the very book I had been rejecting.
As this book lay on his stomach, I looked at it dumbly, as if I had never seen such a display of the obvious in my life. But I knew exactly what it meant. My survival was a miracle. And these bad things were simply storms that would eventually equate to a good thing in my life.
The storms of life strengthen us. It is through them that our character is built. I was finally beginning to understand that. Remember, before this moment I was a doubter, a doubter that thought he might be a believer, but didn't necessarily "know" Christ.
Staring at that Bible, however, caused something inside me to break. It was a feeling very similar to the feeling I felt when I first saw my son in the delivery room three months before. I loved my son so much that it hurt. I felt a similar pain at that moment. The pain was immense. What had I done?
Throughout the years I have made my mistakes. I realized, however, regardless of all of the sin in my past, it was at that moment in time that I needed to grow. The friend's Bible reminded me of who I was. I needed to reacquaint myself with my Savior.
The writers of the New Testament walked with Him. They saw the empty tomb. They stood on Calvary. They walked the paths that Jesus walked. But I don't think we fully understand, sometimes, the full scope of His gift to us. They are a pair. The Resurrection, and Crucifixion.
At that moment in the Naval Hospital Balboa, San Diego, California, I reintroduced myself to Christ, and He to me. I no longer only believed. The miracle of my life led to me knowing Him.
When I tell people this story, often the response is, "Wow, you sure were lucky."
Luck had nothing to do with it.
I look back now, on that day I reopened my eyes, and I remember an old saying I said as a child.
Please be patient, God is not finished with me yet.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
1 comment:
What a testimony!!!! Indeed God is good and he will certainly speak to us and sometimes not to our liking. He will also keep us in his hand even when we turn our backs on him.
Been there done that and know of what you speak and know it to be the truth. So to God be the Glory, great things he has done, is doing and will continue to do.
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