by Don Piper
HAND
He is your God, the one who is worthy of your praise, the one who has done mighty miracles that you yourself have seen.
DEUTERONOMY 10:21
I was privileged to share my story in Dick’s church, Klein First Baptist, a little more than a year after the accident. His wife, Anita, was there, and so was my own family. Because I still wore leg braces, two people had to help me walk up on the platform.
I told everyone about the accident and about Dick’s part in bringing me back. “I believe I’m alive today because Dick prayed me back to earth,” I said. “In my first moments of consciousness, two things stand out. First, I was singing ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus.’ The second was that Dick’s hand gripped mine and held it tight.”
After the morning worship, many of us went out to lunch together at a Chinese restaurant. Anita sat across from me. I remember sipping my wonton soup and having a delightful time with the church members.
When there was a lull in the conversation, Anita leaned across the table and said in a low voice, “I appreciated everything you said this morning.”
“Thank you—”
“There’s just one thing—one thing I need to correct about what you said in your message.”
“Really?” Her words shocked me. “I tried to be as accurate as possible in everything I said. I certainly didn’t intend to exaggerate anything. What did I say that was incorrect?”
“You were talking about Dick getting into the car with you. Then you said he prayed for you while he was holding your hand.”
“Yes, I remember that part very distinctly. I have a number of memory gaps, and most of the things I don’t remember.” That morning I had readily admitted that some of the information I gave came secondhand. “The one thing that’s totally clear was Dick being in the car and praying with me.”
“That’s true. He did get in the car and pray with you.” She leaned closer. “But, Don, he never held your hand.”
“I distinctly remember holding his hand.”
“That didn’t happen. It was physically impossible.”
“But I remember that so clearly. It’s one of the most vivid—”
“Think about it. Dick leaned over from the rear of the trunk over the backseat and put his hand on your shoulder and touched you. You were facing forward and your left arm was barely hanging together.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Dick said you were slumped over on the seat toward the passenger side.”
I closed my eyes, visualizing what she had just said. I nodded.
“Your right hand was on the floor of the passenger side of the car. Although the tarp covered the car, there was enough light for him to see your hand down there. There was no way Dick could have reached your right hand.”
“But . . . but . . .” I sputtered.
“Someone was holding your hand. But it wasn’t Dick.”
“If it wasn’t Dick’s hand, whose was it?”
She smiled and said, “I think you know.”
I put down my spoon and stared at her for several seconds. I had no doubt whatsoever that someone had held my hand. Then I understood. “Yes, I think I know too.”
Immediately I thought of the verse in Hebrews about entertaining angels unaware. As I pondered for a moment, I also remembered other incidents where there was nothing but a spiritual explanation. For instance, many times in the hospital room in the middle of the night, I would be at my worst. I never saw or heard anyone, but I felt a presence—something—someone—sustaining and encouraging me. That also was something I hadn’t talked about. I couldn’t explain it, so I assumed others wouldn’t understand.
This was another miracle, and I wouldn’t have known about it if Anita hadn’t corrected me.
Five years after my accident, Dick and I both appeared on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club. A camera crew came to Texas to reenact the accident and then asked me to talk about my visit to heaven’s gates. The 700 Club aired that segment many times over the next two years.
In one of life’s great ironic twists, Dick died of a heart attack in 2001. I confess that I was saddened to hear of his passing, but delighted that he is in glory. Dick saved my life, and God took him to heaven first. I was glad he heard me share about my journey to heaven before he made his own trip.
Since that experience with Anita a little more than a year after my accident, I’ve been more convinced than ever that God brought me back to this earth for a purpose. The angel gripping my hand was God’s way of sustaining me and letting me know that he would not let go of me no matter how hard things became.
I may not feel that hand each day, but I know it’s there.
14
THE NEW NORMAL
“I will give you back your health and heal your wounds, says the Lord. Now you are called an outcast—‘Jerusalem for whom nobody cares.’”
JEREMIAH 30:17
Some things happen to us from which we never recover, and they disrupt the normalcy of our lives. That’s how life is.
Human nature has a tendency to try to reconstruct old ways and pick up where we left off. If we’re wise, we won’t continue to go back to the way things were (we can’t anyway). We must instead forget the old standard and accept a “new normal.”
I wasted a lot of time thinking about how I used to be healthy and had no physical limitations. In my mind, I’d reconstruct how life ought to be, but in reality, I knew my life would never be the same. I had to adjust and accept my physical limits as part of my new normal.
As a child I’d sit on a big brown rug in my great-grandparents’ living room and listen to them talk about the good old days. After hearing several stories, I thought, Those days weren’t that good—at least the recollections they shared didn’t seem so great. Maybe for them they truly were the good old days, or perhaps they forgot the negative parts of those days. At some points in our lives, most of us want to go back to a simpler, healthier, or happier time. We can’t, but we still keep dreaming about how it once was.
In my twenties, when I was a disc jockey, we used to play oldies, and people who called in to request those songs often commented that music used to be better than it is now. The reality is that in the old days we played good and bad records, but the bad ones faded quickly from memory just like bad ones do now. No one ever asked us to play the music that bombed. The good songs make the former times seem great, as if all the music was outstanding. In reality, there was bad music thirty years ago or fifty years ago—in fact, a lot of bad music. The same is true with experiences. We tend to forget the negative and go back to recapture pleasant events. The reality is, we have selectively remembered—and just as selectively forgotten.
Once that idea got through to me, I decided I couldn’t recapture the past. No matter how much I tried to idealize it, that part of my life was over and I would never be healthy or strong again. The only thing for me to do was to discover a new normal.
Yes, I said to myself, there are things I will never be able to do again. I don’t like that and may even hate it, but that doesn’t change the way things are. The sooner I make peace with that fact and accept the way things are, the sooner I’ll be able to live in peace and enjoy my new normalcy.
Here’s an example of what I mean.
In early 2000, I took a group of college kids on a ski trip from Houston to Colorado. Skiing is one of the things I’d always loved doing. Unable to participate, I sat in a clubhouse at the bottom of the hill, gazed out the window, and watched them glide down. Sadness came over me, and I thought, I made a big mistake. I should never have come here. As happy as I was for them, I mourned over my inability ever to ski again.
Then I thought for the thousandth time of other things I would never do again. When I was a senior pastor, most of the adults greeted me at the door following each morning service.
“Enjoyed your sermon,” they’d said. “Great service.”
Kids, however, behaved differently. They’d race up with a picture they’d c
olored for me. Before my accident, I loved the kids flocking around me; I’d kneel down and talk with them. After my recovery, I couldn’t squat down and stare at their smiling faces the way I used to before as I said, “Thank you very much. I really like this picture. This is very nice.”
After my accident, the best I could do was lean forward and talk to them. Perhaps that doesn’t seem like a big thing, but it is for me. I’ll never squat again; I’ll never be able to kneel so that I can be at a child’s level again, because my legs won’t give me the ability to do that.
Here’s another example: When I go to a drive-through fast-food restaurant, I can’t reach for the change with my left arm. The best I can do is reach out across my body with my right arm. It must look strange, and I get a few odd looks, but it’s the best I can do.
While neither of these examples is particularly dramatic, they are nonetheless reminders that sometimes things we take for granted every day can be taken from us permanently and suddenly, and we’re changed forever.
During my long hospitalization, somebody gave me a magazine article about a young man who lost his sight. He went through an incredibly bitter, depressive time. He wrote that he got so demoralized that a friend who cared enough about him to tell him the truth said, “You just need to get past this.”
I paused from reading and thought, Yes, that sounds like the way I was after my accident. The article went on, however, to tell the practical instructions the blind man’s friend gave him: “I want you to make a list of all the stuff you can still do.”
“Now what kind of a list would that be?” the angry blind man asked.
“Just do it for me. You can’t write it, obviously, but you can get a tape recorder and dictate it. Just make a list of all the things you can still do. And I’m talking about simple things like ‘I can still smell flowers.’ Make the list as extensive as you can. When you’re finished, I want to hear that list.”
The blind man finally agreed and made the list. I don’t know how much time passed, but when the friend returned, the blind man was smiling and peaceful.
“You seem like you’re in a much better frame of mind than the last time I saw you,” the friend said.
“I am. I really am, and that’s because I’ve been working on my list.”
“How many things are on your list?”
“About a thousand so far.”
“That’s fantastic.”
“Some of them are very simple. None of them are big, but there are thousands of things I can still do.”
The blind man had changed so radically that his friend asked, “Tell me what made you change.”
“I’ve decided to do all the stuff I can. The more I thought about it, the fewer limitations I saw. There are thousands of things I can do—and I’m going to do them for the rest of my life.”
After I read that article, I thought, That’s exactly what I need—not mourning, pining, and going back over the way things used to be or what I used to have that I don’t have anymore. Instead, I need to discover what I have now, not only to celebrate but also to recognize I’m not helpless.
As I continued to ponder that idea, I realized I had more going for me than I thought. I had focused so heavily on my losses that I had forgotten what I had left. And I hadn’t realized the opportunities I might never have tried otherwise.
In the article, the blind man said something like, “I’m not going to worry about what I can’t do. I’m going to do what I can do well.” Those words seemed simple.
I read that article at just the right time, and the words seemed incredibly profound. God had sent the message I needed when I needed it. It was one of those powerful moments that caused me to say, “I’ve got to get on with my life. Whatever I have, I’m going to use it and magnify it to the max.”
I’m running out of time, I thought, but so is everyone else. I suppose I’m more conscious of time than some people are for two reasons: First, I lost a big chunk of my life because of the accident. Second, I know we don’t get to stay long on this earth. As many of the old hymns say, we’re really like strangers passing through. It’s something we all know from reading the Bible and other books, but those realizations became a wake-up call for me.
I also know that my loved ones are waiting for me at the gate. Some days I can’t wait to get back there.
I also realize that I have to wait until God sends me back.
Members of South Park Baptist Church moved our family while I was hospitalized. We had been living in a town called Friendswood, about ten miles from the church. We had needed a place nearer the church but hadn’t found one. While I was in the hospital, the church leaders found a house, rented it, packed up everything for us, and moved us. When I got out of the hospital, I entered a house I had never seen before. After the ambulance backed up and unloaded me from a gurney to my home hospital bed, I stared at our house for the first time.
I soon adjusted to the new living quarters, because for a long time I could only see the living room, where they set up my hospital bed.
In some ways the move into the rented house was more difficult on the family than on me. I sensed some of the adjustments and difficulties my wife went through with my illness. Eva almost lost her job because she had spent so much time with me that she ran out of conference days, vacation days, and sick days. Other teachers donated their own sick days to her so she could come and be with me in the hospital. Eventually, she ran out of those donated days and had to go back to work. She was our primary source of income.
Eva’s colleagues at Robert Louis Stevenson Primary School in Alvin often graded her papers for her, wrote her lesson plans, and covered her classes when she left early to come see me in the hospital. Her fellow teachers even made little gifts to give our kids each day so they would have something to look forward to. They called them “surprise boxes.” Fellow teachers also came to our home, along with church members, to clean our house and bring meals. Had it not been for the teachers and the church, Eva would have certainly lost her job and so would I. Yet even with all these incredibly sacrificial gifts and assistance, how she and our children got through that spring semester of 1989 remains a miracle.
One time when Eva inquired about my long-term prognosis, a nurse told her, “Honey, you don’t need to know all of that, you’re just a wife.”
To that nurse, she may have been “just a wife,” but Eva took over and functioned for both of us after my accident. I had always taken care of the bills, bank accounts, insurance, and most family matters. She had no choice but to handle them herself, and she did everything well. Eva found strength and a new level of confidence. God provided her with the wisdom to help her take care of family matters. She also learned to remain calm during my complaints and grumbling throughout my lengthy recovery.
The church didn’t stop paying me, but we realized that they might, and they were entitled to because I wasn’t working. We never talked about the money, but it was always a possibility that hung over our heads.
When the State of Texas was found at fault for the accident, the law limited their liability to $250,000. All the money went to hospital bills, and a quarter of a million dollars didn’t make much of a dent.
Ironically, the attorney general of Texas defended the man who drove the truck that hit me, because the defendant was an indigent inmate. Therefore my tax dollars went to defend the state and the man who caused the accident. Isn’t life strange sometimes?
During the 105 days I spent in the hospital, Eva had the most strain. Not only did she take on the burden of everything in our home, she got up at 6:00 every morning and did everything she had to do around the house and hurried to school. As soon as school was over, she rushed to my bedside, where she stayed until 10:30 every night. Day after day was the same stressful routine.
One of the most challenging experiences for her—by herself—was to buy a van to replace my wrecked car. By then, I was home and able to walk with my Ilizarov still attached. That meant, however,
that if I wanted to go anywhere, we had to have a van to transport me. We had no idea how long it would be before I could sit in a normal sedan.
Eva had never bought a vehicle in her life, but she didn’t complain. She went to a dealer, test-drove a van, picked out one, and brought it home. “Here’s our van,” she said.
She made me proud of her—and I felt very grateful.
I learned to drive again in that van. One day as the family was washing it, I walked outside still wearing my Ilizarov. As I lumbered around the van, I noticed that the driver’s side door was open. Peering inside, I calculated what it would take for me and my thirty pounds of stainless steel to get behind the wheel. While the family wasn’t looking, I maneuvered myself into the seat and started the engine. My family was stunned.
Eva came around to the door and asked, “What are you doing?”
I smiled and said, “I’m going for a drive!”
Incredulous, she stammered, “But you can’t.”
However, something told me that not having driven for nearly a year, and having had my last drive end in my death, it was now or never for taking the wheel and driving again.
I backed out slowly and drove around the block. It wasn’t a long drive, but it was another milestone in my recovery. I’m still not very fond of eighteen-wheelers or long two-lane bridges, but so far I manage to get where I’m going.
Of course, it fell on Eva to make all my appointments and to see that I got to my doctor’s office twice a week. And I must add that I wasn’t the easiest person to look after. In fact, I was difficult. As my health improved, I became demanding and curt (I wasn’t aware of that), and Eva agonized over trying to please me, although she handled it well.
The fact is that I was very unhappy. Many of my problems stemmed from my feeling completely helpless. For a long time I couldn’t even get myself a glass of water. Even if I could have poured one for myself, I couldn’t have drunk it without help. Even the simplest tasks made me feel useless.
