Recollections & Thoughts

Wednesday, August 12, 2008

Yesterday, Tuesday, I began writing of my experiences (as written below) and before finishing, we needed to leave to go to Pottery. We glazed/colored our different clay makings and just as I was about to begin glazing one of CC’s creations, the exhaustion hit hard. Sweating followed and complete brain fog and I was helped out to the van. Got home and then helped upstairs and then meds and then to sleep. Sucky end to a reasonable day.

Kirsten’s boyfriend Danny came up yesterday and spent the night last night with us. Not sure what the plans are for today.

Okay, onto the lengthy part of the blog…over 3,000 words, I think…

I got to thinking two nights ago, as I was going to sleep, that it would be good to remember in this blog, some of the miracles that have taken place in my life. So, my hope here is to recall as accurately as I can, some of the many miracles that God has done in my life, and it is through remembering these incredible events that I can share with others what God has done for me and in me and I can remind myself that regardless of how I feel and regardless of what is going on, that He is in control. This will not be a short entry, nor should it be, I guess…

Orange county truck

A few years back, CC and I took Missy and Joshua down to Los Angeles to surprise Missy on her birthday with a trip to Disneyland. The coolest part of this trip was that we did succeed in surprising her and to the best of my knowledge he had a great time while we were there. Something she still remembers today. During that trip, while we were in Orange County, I believe that we were driving. One evening to go to dinner, and while driving on one of the main thoroughfares, we watched a small pickup truck that was way up in front of us, swerve and then hit the curb and roll onto its top where it stopped. In no time at all, we were passing the accident, and I turned the Van around so that we were now heading the same direction as the accident vehicle was heading, and I instructed. CC in the kids to stay in the car and I got out and ran over to the truck to see if I can help get the driver out of the truck. Nobody else had gotten to the truck by the time I got there. And I was able to open the passenger door and the driver was probably my size maybe a little bit heavier than me and just hanging upside down, being held in by his seatbelt. He seemed pretty dazed and out of it; he had either hit the steering wheel or hit the windshield or dashboard, I couldn't tell what that he had hit, but he had a cut or some kind of abrasion on his forehead. It seemed like, in no time at all, I was hearing people from across the street who were yelling to me that there was smoke coming from the engine block and that it was likely catching fire. While I have been trying to figure out what the safest and easiest way would be to get him out of the truck and not worrying about doing it quickly, hearing the people from across the street did an effective job of changing my thought process from "safety and easy", to "get him out now", but unfortunately, nobody else had gotten to the truck to help me with him, so I reached and found the seat buckle connection and tried to unlatch the seatbelt and pull his shoulder at the same time so that he would not land on his head when he dropped. Fortunately for him, but unfortunately for me, when the seat belt released, all 250 or 270 pounds of him came down on my right arm and shoulder, but he did not land on his head or neck. Once he was loose from the seatbelt, another person was at the car door next to me and he and I pulled him from the truck and we pulled him over to a grassy location just across the sidewalk from where his truck landed. Very shortly after he was out of the truck. The police and the fire department showed up, and I gave my statement to them. The fire Department extinguished, whatever had caught fire in the engine and an ambulance was pulling up just after I had given my statement and I walked back to our van so that we can continue on to dinner. When I got into the van, Missy was crying and very upset that I had left them in the car and I could've gotten hurt being there and helping him by myself.

I put this event in the "miracle" category, because:

1.) I was in a position to be able to help the person in the truck

2.) When I opened the passenger door, it opened without issue

3.) My arm and my shoulder didn't break when all that weight fell on it

4.) I was able to help pull him out of the truck with two of us pulling essentially 250 plus pounds of dead weight (no he wasn't dead, but you know what I mean)

when I saw the truck flipped over, something inside me new that I was going to go, and that I was supposed to go and help the person in the truck. It did not occur to me to call 911 and to wait and watch for somebody else to go and help him or for me to wait for somebody else to come and help me to help him. Anytime I feel that God has given me a directive, something nearly audible in my head that I feel is an instruction of something to do, I consider that miraculous in my life while at the same time, being completely aware of the reality of how small I am and how great He is.

Concert Fight Night

During 1988 through 1991, I was in a band called Forthright, a Christian, hard rock/metal band that played some of the clubs in Los Angeles and Orange County as well as played at churches, colleges and even a picnic or two. On a Friday night in the summer of 1990, we played a concert at a church in Fullerton. The concert went very well and we all felt very good about the evening, so after loading up the trailer with all of our gear and getting most of our stuff ready to go, Brian (our soundman) and I loaded up into my Bronco II and we left ahead of the rest of the band to head back to my house. As we were coming down a long stretch of hill in downtown Fullerton, there was a major light/intersection that we were coming to and on the other side of the intersection from us, on the left-hand side, was a mall parking lot that was pretty much empty, with the exception of a few cars that were parked in the parking places closest to the Boulevard that we were traveling on. Brian and I could see a group of guys gathered around on the sidewalk and they appeared to be in two lines facing each other; what looked to be about 15 or 20 Hispanic guys total. As we got closer, I could see that there were two individuals that were fighting, and this fight was taking place in between the two lines of guys. When we came to the intersection where the fight was taking place just across from us, the light was red so Brian and I watched what was going on while we waited for the green light. Once I got the green light, I went through the intersection, and as we were driving by the fight I could see that it was no longer a fight anymore; one of the guys was no longer fighting and was on his back while the person who had been fighting with him, was sitting on top of him and using the other guys shirt and shoulders to repeatedly hit the back of his head on the pavement. In that moment I felt that I was watching a killing take place, and something inside of me clicked and I knew then and there that I was supposed to go hand break it up. All of this happened in a matter of seconds, and after having just passed the fight, I then turned the truck around and I stopped the truck, probably 50 feet from where the fight was happening. I told Brian that I was going to stop the fight and told him to go find a pay phone and call 911.

What I failed to mention earlier is that, as a band, we chose to dress the part of a hard rock/metal band, which meant that all of us had long hair and that we wore denim, leather, boots and sometimes long coats to increase our stage presence. This night was no different from any other concert night, so I was wearing my cowboy boots denim jeans, a white T-shirt under my black leather biker jacket, which had a sleeveless denim vest over the top of it and the vest itself had metal chains going from the front to the back. So, when I got out of the truck and began running towards this group of guys, I know that they saw a 6' 2", bigger than life, biker-looking guy running towards them, yelling at them to "knock it off" and "stop fighting". Now, in hindsight, I completely realize how stupid this must have seemed and even how stupid it must seem even now, but there was no question in my mind at all that I was supposed to go and break up this fight. I guess I was still on a spiritual high from our concert an hour or so before, and I didn't think twice about what I was supposed to go and do. Brian, on the other hand, had thought more than twice about what I was going to be doing in the brief moments while I was turning the truck around was pleading with me not to go do something stupid. At any rate, when the truck stopped, Brian got out and ran across the street to a gas station and I got out, and started running at the guys in the fight. As I got near to the group of guys, most all of them, including the one who was beating the other one senseless, turned their heads and looked at me, and it was as if the blood ran out of their faces; to me they looked briefly pale with the scared look on their face and all of them scattered, running back to their cars and leaving their friend to die in the street. When I got up to the guy who was lying in the street. His eyes had rolled back into his head and he was bleeding badly from the back of his head and on his neck. Somehow, I was able to cradle him in my arms with his head and neck resting on my right arm with my left arm under his knees, and I picked him up off of the street. It was then that I realized he was probably 5'10" to 6' tall and kind of chubby, so he weighed at lease 200 pounds. When I turned to look into the parking lot, a group of guys were in a convertible, gesturing at me to bring him to them, so I walked as quickly as I could to their car and as I neared their car, one of the guys got out and took off his shirt and wrapped it around the injured guys head, and I handed him off to the guys in the car. No sooner had he left my arms, they peeled out of the parking lot, over the curb and down the cross boulevard, hopefully on their way to a hospital. In the distance I could hear the sounds of sirens approaching so I ran back to my truck where Brian was waiting for me, and we both got into the truck, and I turned it around and headed on home. We got to my house, I went into the bathroom to wash the blood off of my jacket and off of my hands and CC had asked what had happened, because she had not gone to the concert that night. I explained everything to her, and likewise, when the rest of the band got to the house.

I cannot remember if it was the following day or a few days after that I spoke to a pastor friend of mine, pretty much my spiritual mentor at the time, and I shared with him what had happened. I wasn't shaking any longer from the adrenaline that had surged through me that evening, but I was wrestling with what I felt was a slight lack of intelligence and wisdom in that moment of running into a gang fight with the intention to break it up. He shared with me that I had done exactly what God had called me to do in that moment and that, though, it was physically just me running from my truck towards the guys, it is quite likely that the guys saw me plus a number of angelic fighters running towards them that caused them fear, and so much so, that they would all run away. I had not considered that possibility, but after thinking about it, his words seemed almost like the missing piece of the puzzle and to this day, I'm absolutely certain that they did not see me running towards them, but they saw what God wanted them to see.

I don't think I need to clarify the miraculous elements of this occasion, there are far too many of them.

Medical Miracles

Back in October of 1995, I broke my L5 vertebrae into three pieces and subsequently in April of 1996, underwent surgery to remove the broken pieces of vertebrae, and to implant to steel plates with bolts called Steffi plates, which were used to solidify and protect the broken area of my back. Approximately 1 year later, in March of 1997, I had a second surgery in which the surgeons went in and took out all of the metal that they had put in as well as tested the fusion point of the L5 and S1 repair.

The miraculous elements of these two surgeries were that age surgery should have taken between five and seven hours, however in my case, each surgery took approximately 3 hours. This may not seem like a very big deal, but what needs to be factored in his bat. I chose to donate my own blood to each surgery, so a matter of weeks before the intended surgery date, I went in and they collected kinds of blood from me that were to be used for the surgery date. So that I would not have to use common blood from the blood bank. The blood available in the blood bank is not guaranteed to be free of hepatitis or AIDS so it makes the most possible sense to donate your own blood to your surgical procedure so that they simply put your blood back into your body during the surgery as needed. In my case, I had donated blood before the first surgery and had donated enough blood. So that there would be enough to last five to seven hours of surgery time. I received a call two days before my first surgery to let me know that an error had been made within the department that handles the blood in the hospital and that two thirds of the blood that I had donated for my surgery had been destroyed, which meant that once I got into surgery, they would likely use up all the blood that I had left and I would then have to use blood bank blood to finish the surgery out. The thought of this scared me as much as I have ever been scared in my life, but I could not conceive of putting off this long awaited surgery, even for a matter of a couple months in order to donate more blood to the surgery; preparing my mind to go into the surgery was taking all of my conscious effort that I had available. Being that most of my mind and energies were spent trying to get through the terrible pain. That resulted from a broken back. So I told them that we would go ahead and do the surgery and I would take my luck with the blood bank. The miracle is that by the time. My donated blood was running out, the surgery was finishing so that I did not need any additional blood from the blood bank. Both the orthopedic surgeon and the Neuro surgeon were left nearly speechless as to explaining why my surgery took only three hours to complete. In independent appointments with each of them, they shared that they had never had a surgery like mine go that quickly and that well. As far as I'm concerned, that was clearly a God thing. Then comes the second surgery in which they are to take out the metal from my back and the night before the surgery was to take place. I received a call from the neuro surgeon, who told me that the anesthesiologist, who was slated to do my surgery in the morning, happened to come across one of my previous lab results and in that lab results. He noted that certain levels with my kidneys and my liver were abnormally high and that there was nearly 100% chance that, if I was to go into surgery the following morning, and go under the anesthesia, that my body would not be able to recover and come back out from the anesthetic. Bottom line, best case scenario I would go into a coma, worst case and most probable, I would die in recovery. The neurosurgeon shared this with me, including that it is very unusual for an anesthesiologist to look into older labs from a patient going into surgery instead of simply working from the most recent and current labs. This particular anesthesiologist saved my life simply because he decided to look at previous labs as well as the current ones. I believe that God’s hand was in that moment and that He was the reason that the older labs were looked up. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that the second surgery took less time than the first did; also to the complete surprise and shock of both surgeons. One of them asked me, while I was in recovery, if I had asked people to be praying for me that morning. CC or I told him yes and he then nodded his head and said “that’s the only thing that would make any sense then. Amazing.” And then he left.

I’ve not included my experience which followed the second surgery, in which God healed me of my back pain and weakness from surgery. I will plan to write of that before the week is out.