Tag: down but not out

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You Don’t Wear the Black Armband Forever

A view of Earth rising above the lunar surface during Apollo 8

When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut. I loved learning about the space race of the 1960s and 70s, and at one point I knew the name and assigned crew position of every Apollo astronaut that flew on a mission during the Apollo Program.

In 1961 the Americans had barely touched space. America’s first man in space, Alan Shepard, didn’t even complete an orbit; the weak rocket he used only got him high enough to kiss the edge of space. The Soviets had already sent their first Cosmonaut into orbit, and this launch was a weak American response, barely doing enough to keep us in the race. Less than three weeks later, American President Kennedy threw down the audacious goal of beating the Soviets in a manned mission to the moon before the end of the decade, as a way of establishing American preeminence in space.

Thus began a harrowing eight or nine years for NASA. It had to not only figure out the best strategy for meeting the goal, but it also had to develop skills and equipment that didn’t exist.

The process moved fast and grew increasingly complex with time. First NASA sent up one astronaut at a time, and the longest that any mission stayed up was just over a day. Then it started launching two astronauts at a time. They started to do spacewalks, to rendezvous with other orbiting objects, and to see if a capsule and crew could physically last for the two weeks in space that it would take to make it to the moon and back. Finally, it was time for the Apollo missions, which carried three men and the ability to use a lunar lander that would be used to land on the moon.

By all measures, Apollo was a beast of a program. The spacecraft systems’ subsystems had subsystems. Engineers working on the spacecraft worked in round-the-clock shifts, and projects still fell behind schedule. Everyone worked at a breakneck speed to get things ready to meet the deadline. In January 1967, the first Apollo mission finally drew near. Three astronauts sat atop their huge rocket and conducted a final test to demonstrate that all systems were ready to operate on their own.

Then an unmitigated disaster struck, freezing everything in its tracks. As the rocket still sat on the launch pad, a ferocious fire erupted inside the cabin, and killed the three astronauts before they could escape from the capsule. The fire killed America’s second man in space, its first spacewalker, and a rookie astronaut. The devastating setback stunned the nation. All work stopped while NASA, the spacecraft contractors, and even Congress sought answers to what went wrong and whether the moon was worth the cost.

Fellow astronauts escort Grissom’s body to Arlington Cemetery

It wouldn’t be until October 1968, more than a year and a half, before another manned American launch occurred…an eternity when considering JFK’s looming end-of-the-decade deadline. With time running out, everyone needed to figure out how to grieve but still move forward. In the miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon,” Wally Schirra, the commander of the first space mission after the fire, was asked about preparing for his upcoming launch while living in the shadow of the Apollo 1 tragedy. He responded “You’re sad. You mourn the loss.” He paused for a moment before adding “But you don’t wear the black armband forever.”

Without question, there are tragedies in peoples’ lives that knock them down hard. The death of a loved one; a betrayal by someone you trust; a feared diagnosis; a job loss; a terrible injury; an addiction you’re fighting through. There are serious and legitimate times in our lives when we just can’t be an effective contributor to God’s kingdom. Nobody faults you for things that are beyond your control. It takes time to fight through many of these problems, and many times God will make something good out of them. Just make sure that you don’t start using your sorrows and difficulties as an excuse not to move forward with what God’s calling you to do.

You’re the only one that knows whether or not this is an issue you’re dealing with. You WILL be knocked down; Jesus promised that we’d have trouble in this world. Sometimes you need to stay down for a minute, but don’t forget that you do need to get back up again.

Don’t wear the black armband forever. There are people you might not even know about that are waiting for you to get back up again.

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Hanging on by a Thread (Part 3 of 3)

(See Part 1 and Part 2)

Lee with two of his grandkids after returning home from the hospital

When my father-in-law Lee suddenly had a medical emergency right after Christmas a few years ago, it caught us all off guard. For almost a week we didn’t know anything, and all we could do was wait for new developments.

In order to shield the family at the hospital from having to do all the communicating through texting and phone calls, I started emailing out updates to close friends and family. The list of recipients grew quickly though, and soon we had our own Facebook page to help keep people updated and to pass along specific prayer requests both for Lee and for the needs of his family. Lee meant a lot to a whole lot of people, and eventually hundreds of readers received the daily updates I sent out.

There must have been some people hitting their knees hard in prayer on Lee and his family’s behalf, because Lee eventually opened his eyes. After spending a few days in a medically induced coma with a body temperature somewhere in the 80s, his body had some adjusting to do when he regained consciousness. He was extremely disoriented and weak, but, at least for now, he was still with us.

We were all thrilled to see Lee moving in the right direction, but the world didn’t stop turning because he was in the hospital. My young family was far from home; we were able to stay in the area for a few more days, but I had to get back to my job. We had already stayed about a week longer than we had planned, and we couldn’t stay much longer. Lee was still in the hospital when we left to head back home. The day we left the hospital, he was weak from a related surgery he just came through, but was still happy to see us and understood why we had to leave. We had no idea at the time, but that was the last time we would see him in person. We made it back home the next day and we closely stayed in touch to hear the latest news.

Time went on and Lee got discharged from the hospital. Since his scare, the only times that I had spoken with him were in the hospital when he was exhausted or groggy. After he had made it home and had time to recover some of his strength, he called and wanted to speak with me on the phone. After getting a little bit of an update on his progress, he began to thank me. I assumed he was referring to the rescue breathing I did for him when he initially lost consciousness. Just as I was about to brush it off, though, he surprised me.

Of course he appreciated my helping him live long enough to make it to the hospital, but that wasn’t the main reason he wanted to thank me. He was more thankful that throughout all the updates I sent out to the masses, I kept the focus on our family being open to accepting God’s will, rather than forcing God’s will to comply with ours. Lee didn’t have a problem with intercessory prayer, but he appreciated the balance I put on the messaging. It turns out that on multiple occasions during his recovery in the hospital he had read every email I sent out. He was surprised at all he had missed while unconscious; he enjoyed reading the emails to catch up on all of it, and he felt that the updates had taken the right approach.

That was the last time I ever spoke with Lee. A few months after coming home from the hospital, he again caught us off guard and unexpectedly passed from this world into the next. I’m not sure if it was God’s plan all along to have Lee recover enough to come home after his initial scare, or if all of the prayers sufficiently moved God to give us a few more months with Lee, but in the end, God had His way even when it conflicted with ours.

At Lee’s memorial service, as a testament to his character, the church was packed with hundreds of people. Extra chairs had to be brought in to seat everyone. Lee lived his life knowing what was truly important while ignoring what wasn’t, and people recognized that.

It’s so easy to get wrapped up and even be consumed by the things of this life, but it’s important to live in light of eternity. Too often we lose sight of the fact that very few of our daily struggles or any other distractions that preoccupy us will even be a memory once we’ve moved on from this life. The only things that will have eternal significance are the actions you’ve taken to know God and help others know Him too.

How’s your focus? Are you paying attention to the things that are important? As you go through life, are you leaving a positive lasting impact on the people with whom you interact?

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Hanging on by a Thread (Part 2 of 3)

(See Part 1 here and Part 3 here)

The next few days after my father-in-law, Lee, got whisked away to the hospital were a blur. Whatever had gone wrong with his heart was a complicated thing. Doctors put him in a medically induced coma and dropped his body temperature for a few days as a way of “rebooting” him. Since this was right after Christmas, family that had just left turned around and came back. One of Lee and Pam’s daughters flew in from Alaska. People were constantly calling, trying to find out the latest information, even when there was nothing new to report. The adrenaline we all ran on started wearing off, and the exhaustion began setting in.

Lee’s hospital was about an hour away from his house, where my wife and three young kiddos were staying. My wife would go up there every day, but an extra two hours of travel time a day added to the burden. My kids started getting antsy; at the time they were 5, 4, and 14 months, and Mommy had never been away from them this much before. In her place, they got a guy that meant well, but just couldn’t compare to Mommy. Some of the meals I came up with were really just glorified snacks, and sometimes it was the same thing over and over again. The walls started feeling like they were closing in on all of us. We needed to find some kind of better solution as we got closer to the time the doctors were going to try to raise Lee’s body temperature and revive him.

Lee and Pam knew a bunch of people in the area near the hospital, and we decided to make the drive as a family up to that region with the intent to start staying the night up there somewhere. We packed a bunch of our stuff and left Lee and Pam’s house not knowing where we’d be spending the next few nights. We made it to the hospital and went to the waiting room where we saw lots of familiar faces. During the day all kinds of friends and well-wishers came and went, some of them even bringing much-appreciated care packages of food and things to help pass the time. My kids enjoyed the extra time with Mommy, even if it was in a waiting room. Even with all the extra family and friends helping out, though, they didn’t have to stay in the same room long before they started getting antsy again. They needed somewhere to feel settled.

During the day we were still trying to find a place to stay. One family offered us an available room in their home, but five of us is a lot to cram into one room (especially when two of the kids still napped), so we wanted to see if we could find anything else. Someone had two rooms available for us, but they had a dog that my son would’ve been allergic to. Late in the day we got word that there was a family willing to let us stay at their place. They had two rooms for us, no pets, and the house was less than five minutes from the hospital. The offers weren’t going to get much better than that and it was getting late, so we grabbed it. By the time we arrived at the house it was after dark. The house was cheery and still decorated for Christmas, and when the door opened we met some of the sweetest people we could have hoped for. Jay and Esther and their daughter Tracey welcomed us into their home in one of our young family’s hours of greatest need.

Jay and Esther were great-grandparents, and they had a large family. Their house was so warm and welcoming, and someone was always popping in because…that’s just the kind of place it was. They had one of their grandsons staying in their basement at the time, and he and a visiting friend helped us bring in our luggage, pack ‘n plays, and anything we brought with us. By the time we got there, it was time to get the kids to bed. We got our daughters set up in one of the rooms, and we set up our son on the floor in the room where my wife and I stayed. I think my wife and I spent a little time visiting with the family before we collapsed into bed, too. That was our first restful night of sleep since the whole ordeal with Lee began.

The next day my wife headed off to the hospital early again, but my kids and I were able to stay in a place the kids finally felt comfortable and occupied. If memory serves, Jay and Esther had five kids; as grandparents and great-grandparents, many children had come to visit this house, and there were all kinds of fun things for my kids to play with and explore. They also had all kinds of Christmas decorations that sang or danced after it got squeezed (a favorite for kids). In addition to all kinds of stuffed animals and toys, they had a foosball table and a pool table in the basement…something that kept my kids occupied for a very long time.

Our hosts also figured out that Daddy was good at getting his kids riled up and roughhousing, but maybe needed some help in the food preparation department. Oh, man, they were so great. My kids actually started having balanced meals. Those wonderful people made it possible for us to put one foot in front of the other on our march through the trial we faced.

Last story about staying at their place. During naptime one day, I laid down my youngest in a pack ‘n play in a room by herself. I laid my son down in his sleeping bag on the floor in our room, and I set up my oldest daughter to play/color/draw on the bed in our room. My son fell asleep right away, and I told my daughter I was going to read on the floor. Once I laid down, though, I figured out pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to stay awake long, so I let her know I’d probably take a nap on the floor. My five-year-old daughter got down off our bed with her little blanket, came and lay down beside me, and all three of us took a nap in a row on the floor. We were finally in a place where we could rest.

I’ll get you caught up on Lee in my next post, but this one’s about how much we were able to benefit from the generosity and hospitality of these wonderful people. That was their gift, they loved helping people, and it was amazing and much appreciated to be ministered to in that way.

This whole site is geared toward encouraging you to use your gifts to live a life of higher impact for Christ’s Kingdom. Not everyone is going to be an international gospel singer or someone that proclaims the truth boldly in stadiums across the globe. I don’t know what your gifts are. You might not accomplish anything earth-shattering by being hospitable to someone who needs help, but let me tell you…it can mean the world to the person receiving the help. Whatever your gift is…please…find a way to use it. God gave you that gift for a reason, and if you let Him, He’ll tie you into His master plan.

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Hanging on by a Thread (Part 1 of 3)

Read Part 2 or Part 3

For Christmas 2014 we visited my wife’s folks in northwestern Ohio. Instead of going straight there from Virginia, we drove to see some family near Dayton first. The kids had lots of fun playing with cousins, staying up later than usual, and generally wearing themselves (and us) out. At the end of that visit, we drove about two and a half hours to my in-laws’ place.


I think it was the afternoon of the 26th or 27th; I was worn out. There were two Christmas celebrations with two different sides of the family, but my young family had to skip one of them because the kids were worn out, sick, or getting sick. My oldest actually developed an ear infection, so we spent some time in an Urgent Care because of the pain she was in. I was beat, so I was laying on the living room floor, starting to fall asleep.

There were people moving around. My father-in-law, Lee, took a moment to sit down on the couch, put his feet up, and close his eyes. My wife and her mom Pam were moving around the area, working on a few other things as I drifted off.

Then I heard my wife’s worried tone. I don’t remember much of what she was saying, but she was urgently trying to soothe Lee. Pam came rushing over, too, and then there were two worried tones. I opened my eyes to see what was happening, and Lee, still reclining on the couch, looked like he was having a seizure.

I got up and ran over. He was unresponsive, his eyes were fluttering, and his body was spasming. I tried picking him up to lower him to the ground…no easy task when someone’s body goes completely rigid. I laid him flat on the ground, and my CPR training from nearly 20 years prior came rushing back. I checked for breathing, but there didn’t seem like there was any. I retilted his head to try opening his airway, but still nothing. I forgot to do a finger sweep to see if there was anything in his mouth, which ended up causing some complications later. I began doing rescue breathing on my father-in-law.

Finding a pulse can be a tricky thing. When I learned CPR on dummies, we didn’t use the kind that simulated pulses. As a result, we did a pulse check knowing full well there wasn’t going to be one. I tried his neck, I tried his wrist, and I tried his chest. I couldn’t find anything, so by all counts I should have begun doing CPR, but I doubted myself. I thought “well this might be a faint one right here.” In my mind it’s a scary thing to begin chest compressions, because that means someone’s in REAL trouble. I ended up not doing any compressions because I wasn’t thinking objectively; I hadn’t thought about any of this in years and I was scared of messing up.

Somewhere in this sequence we called an ambulance. Thankfully, there was a volunteer fire station not two blocks away, so they arrived very quickly. That time we spent waiting for them seemed like it took forever, though. Between trying to find a pulse, rescue breathing, trying to shoo the kids out of the room, and all the confusion going on, it was chaos. My youngest, who was a little older than a year at the time, crawled over Lee’s legs, cheerfully unaware that anything was wrong, before we got the kids wrangled up.

Once the EMTs arrived I happily yielded to someone who knew a lot more about what to do in this situation. Almost right away after evaluating the situation, they wrapped some kind of band around Lee’s chest, and it began doing chest compressions on its own. We filled in some of the volunteers on what happened, what kind of meds Lee took, etc., all while the EMTs worked on him. It seemed to take awhile, but eventually they prepared to load him into the ambulance. As they were busily moving about, I asked one of them “do we have a pulse?” I was very glad to hear “we do, but it’s weak.”

They loaded Lee into the ambulance, and off they went. I drove Pam to the hospital, chasing right behind. The trip was a short one, thankfully. We went into the ER and eventually met up with the doc on duty, and we told him what we knew. A flurry of phone calls, conversations with doctors, and newly arriving friends of the family followed. This particular hospital wasn’t well equipped to deal with this situation, so they prepared to transfer Lee via helicopter to a larger hospital in Toledo about an hour away by car. Shortly before the helicopter departed, the staff invited a few of us back to where Lee was being prepped for the trip. He was intubated, had IVs and heart monitors in place, and was still unconscious. This was Pam’s opportunity to see Lee one more time before splitting up to travel separately.

After a few moments, we left the ER. Some friends of the family volunteered to drive Pam up to the hospital in Toledo. We went back to the house and got a few things packed for Pam. My wife, deeply concerned about her father, wanted to go along too, so she got ready to leave. In a whirlwind they grabbed a few items and headed out. Once they departed, I was left there with my three young kiddos, just the four of us, in a house that suddenly seemed very quiet, and we didn’t know how long it would be before anyone came back.

Looking back, I didn’t do any chest compressions on Lee even though I probably should have. No, I hadn’t had any refresher training in a long time, but I knew what was next in the sequence. The reason I didn’t do it was because I was so scared of making the wrong decision (starting chest compressions when there was no need to do them) that I ended up making no decision. On the other hand, enough training came back to me to be able to help Lee in the immediate situation until more skilled people arrived. Ultimately the EMTs and volunteers’ speedy arrival was crucial in Lee living long enough to open his eyes again, but for the next few days we weren’t sure if that was going to happen.

You have to train now for things that will happen in the future. By the time you get there and need the knowledge, it will be too late to learn something and start new habits. I’m not talking strictly in the sense of emergency response, but for difficult and trying times in general. They’re coming. How do you react when things go sideways? What are you spending your time thinking about, moving toward, and taking steps to become? When hard times come, do you dig harder into devotions and prayer, or stop doing them altogether? If your track record is to be considered your training regimen, have you been training yourself to turn to God, or away from him?

Lee’s chances of survival were dropping the longer I hesitated. Even though I knew what I should be gearing up to do, I didn’t start doing it because I wasn’t confident about his pulse. The things you’ve spent time repeating, drilling into yourself, come back to you though, and you can draw on them when you need them. What do you do repetitively and regularly today in order to prepare yourself for when you’ll need it in the future?

Read Part 2 or Part 3

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Power Versus Authority

Courtesy of tonyevans.org

Rumor has it there’s a pretty big football game coming up this weekend. With that in mind, I’m going to rely on a “guest contributor” for today’s post. (I’m really just stealing from his website.) Tony Evans writes: 

In a football game, the players tower over the referees. The players are bigger, stronger and more powerful than the older, smaller and, often, out-of- shape referees. In a game, the players can use their power to knock you down, but the referees can use their authority to put you out of the game.

Never confuse power with authority.

Satan may be able to knock you down. He has more power than you. But he has absolutely no authority over you if you’re a believer. Of course, Satan knows that, but he doesn’t want you to know it. So, Satan tries to intimidate with lies and pressure and to deceive you into believing he has authority over you.

On the cross, Jesus Christ deactivated, dismantled and disarmed Satan’s rule over sin and death (Colossians 2:13-15). God gave the ultimate authority to His Son. He has placed all things in subjection to Jesus.

One of the reasons we often don’t live in light of this truth is because we confuse the terms “power” and “authority.” Satan still has power. He still dominates the world in which we live and influences people’s lives in countless ways. His tactics are both real and destructive. But what he doesn’t have is final authority. Jesus has the authority. Jesus is exalted “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion” (Ephesians 1:21).

Satan has no authority or power over the one who is aligned under the covering of the risen and exalted Christ. This is why Satan will try long and hard to hinder the one who has an abiding relationship with Jesus. He knows if he can get you to ignore the authority and rule of Christ in your day-to- day activities and decisions, he can deceive, trick and harm you however he chooses. Yet acknowledging and remaining under Christ’s lordship and authority will protect you from Satan’s onslaught.

God “made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:5-6).

When Christ died, you died with him. When Christ arose, you arose with Him. When Christ sat down at the right hand of the Father, you sat down with Him. In other words, you were made to function in concert and cadence with Christ. For you to gain access to the authority which comes through the perfect union of Jesus Christ—bringing heaven to bear on earth—you must abide in Him. To abide means to dwell, to align your thoughts, choices and perspective under God’s thoughts, choices and perspective. It means connecting with Him and honoring Him in everything you do. God doesn’t want weekend visits with His kids; He wants full custody.

This is such an important part of the victorious Christian life. You can go to all of the church services you want, read all the spiritual books you want, even do all the Bible studies that you want, but experiencing all God has planned for you comes only through aligning yourself under and abiding in the one who reigns over all, the exalted Lord Jesus Christ.

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The Unexpected WILL Happen

Starting your senior year of college is unlike the start of any other year of college. Last year’s seniors are all gone, and now YOU are part of the class that’s graduating next. It’s the last time you head back to start a new academic year. You’re either excited about the prospects of the coming year, or terrified of what comes after you graduate. For me, one of the highlights of the coming year, to be sure, was a road trip across the country with a buddy to go see the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. We originally hatched our scheme a year earlier, and now here we were only about five months away from actually doing it.

At the start of my Senior year, I had no early class on Tuesday/Thursdays. That Fall I didn’t have to be in class until 9:40ish in the morning. One Tuesday morning about two or three weeks into the year I walked into a class in the science building and grabbed a seat in the classroom. Something was off, though. Everybody just had kind of a different mood and the place was abuzz. It took me a minute to piece together what was going on.

They told me that two planes had crashed into the Twin Towers in New York City and the two buildings had collapsed.

At first I was just confused and didn’t believe them. What was this, some kind of a sick joke? I had been to those towers before. They were immense. How could two planes have crashed into two buildings right next to each other on the same day? I didn’t yet understand that it was commercial jets that had crashed into the towers, that it had been done on purpose, and that there was a coordinated effort between terrorists on four different aircraft that participated in that day’s events.

I don’t remember what the lesson was that day. I just remember trying to wrap my head around the idea that those two buildings were no longer there. We had family in Brooklyn, and ever since I was a kid we had frequently taken trips there and would sometimes go sightseeing in Manhattan, including trips to the World Trade Center. After all the trips we’d taken into New York City, I couldn’t imagine the NYC skyline without the World Trade Center.

With some family atop the World Trade Center, probably a year or two before 9/11/2001

I thought back to the last time I had been there. I couldn’t think of anyone I knew who worked in those buildings, but I remembered riding in the elevator for the long ride up to the observation deck. The last time I took that trip, there had been a guy at the elevator’s controls that talked to us a little bit during the ride, and then without missing a beat turned to a little boy and started speaking fluent Spanish to him about sight-seeing in the city. I later found out about others I knew who worked in this area of Manhattan, but that day this elevator operator was the only guy I could think of in the towers. I still have no idea if he was in the towers that day or what happened to him.

I don’t think it became real to me until after I saw news coverage and replays of an aircraft striking the second tower, the subsequent collapses, and the terrified people running through the streets. Back then nobody had ever heard about the Taliban. Hardly anyone knew where Afghanistan was. Nobody knew what was happening, but everyone’s lives changed that day. As the reality settled in over the next few days, I started to wonder if there would even BE an Olympics for us to attend.

It was scary stuff, for sure. There are going to be times in your life where everything stops and your reality gets turned upside down. You’ll be devastated and in shock. It might be the death of a loved one; financial hardships; a diagnosis you didn’t see coming; a natural disaster. You can see no good reason why God would allow things like this to happen. The only question you’ll keep coming back to is “why?” In all honesty, you might not find an answer to that question this side of Heaven.

Some of you have already had experiences like that; others of you may not have. September 11th was a national tragedy, and it was on everyone’s mind and for awhile it was all anyone thought or talked about. The only good thing about it was that we mourned together. As time marched on and the events of that day have faded into the past, new or more urgent struggles have taken priority. It’s important to remember though, that the people with whom you come in contact any given day may be attempting to cope with an immense personal struggle.

Back in 2001 we mourned as a nation, but every day there are people who honestly believe that they are all alone in whatever struggle they find themselves. Please consider that the next time you feel the urge to really let someone have a piece of your mind. Not only that, but please be on the lookout for people that are fighting just to make it through the day. You might be the only lifeline God throws to them.

Taking a break from the Olympic chapter for a bit, but don’t worry, we’ll circle back later! If you know someone that you think will be encouraged by these posts, please let them know about DareGreatlyNow. Those are the people I’m posting for!