We learned more from taking the long trail instead of the shortcut and more often than not found that having experienced it, we had credibility to bring encouragement to others who had as many valleys as mountaintops.
The Christmas of 1975 was perhaps our simplest ever. Neither of us had money to buy anything for the other that year, but neither of us wanted any “thing” anyway. That year, we celebrated something far greater than a gift that could be wrapped and placed under the tree. Christmas often was the anticipation of what we were going to eat or what gifts we would receive or what kind of Christmas lights we would see. Something was dramatically different about this Christmas. We had made it to Christmas, and life and hope were all that we wanted. The lights were just as bright and the Christmas food was just as good, but it was the first Christmas ever that no gift at all could have equaled the one we cherished most. We celebrated life itself, and it was a pretty good reminder of what really matters in life. No one openly talked about death or cancer, but the expressions and subtle comments my family members made that day proved that everyone realized that, but for the grace of God, Janet might not have been with us that Christmas. I honestly don’t remember a thing either of us received that year in the way of gifts, but nothing would have overshadowed the gift we truly cherished—her being alive.
That Christmas we learned that God’s greatest gift to us is not to remove us from crisis, but to walk through crisis with us. He does not do us a favor by taking us out of all the trials and tribulations of life, but strengthens us by giving us the grace to get through them and emerge on the other side having realized that what we thought we couldn’t endure we in fact just did. How often do we ask for the gift of escape from a problem and instead it seems to escalate? When we want Christmas to represent the easy path and the glittery gifts, we fail to understand that the real message of the Messiah is that the first Christmas was the opposite of easy. It was more about long stretches of darkness and loneliness, instead of the stunning stars that were eventually seen in the night sky. Before the angels sang and the shepherds saw stars, a scared couple fumbled their way around a strange town and endured pain and humiliation. True faith is forged in the furnace, not the showroom.
It might have been our simplest Christmas ever. We had nothing but family, our traditions, and each other. But as it turned out, those simple things were the best things, and we will always remember 1975 because we celebrated the simplest but most precious gift of all—the gift of life.
7.
Hope
By the end of the year, Janet and I were glad to get 1975 behind us. A year of progressively worse struggles and downward spirals had left us to believe that we would surely have a better Christmas the next year. We weren’t disappointed!
When we got back to Fort Worth after the brief Christmas visit to our families in Hope, it was like starting all over again. We lived in a new place in a new town, and I was starting graduate school in a new environment. Janet was getting stronger and healthier each day, and soon we would both start looking for new jobs.
We had learned during the previous year just how insignificant material things really are in the hierarchy of values. When you aren’t sure if you’re going to be alive in a few months, having “things” suddenly doesn’t seem so important. Janet and I had started our marriage with pretty much nothing, and before we had even reached our second anniversary, we had reduced that by quite a bit! But after the crisis we had just been through, we didn’t seem to mind not having a lot of “stuff.” Having next to nothing can be a blessing in that it lets you fully appreciate what little you do have, and more important, it makes you grateful that you still have the one thing that does matter—life itself.
Janet found a job as a dental assistant for a dentist whose office was very near our house and the seminary. It was a perfect job for her, and while the pay wasn’t great, it was adequate, and the dentist, Dr. Harold Cohen, was very good to her. He had been an army dentist for several years before going into private practice, and in many ways he still had the military mind-set of how to run things. Janet loved working for him, and although the money was critical for us, her ability to work again was a true blessing in that it affirmed just how alive she was. In a strange way, coming so close to death really brings you closer to life. Those who have stood in the shadow of death quickly learn to appreciate the simple things that remind them, “You are alive.” You realize that a job is more than employment; it’s a sign of hope and optimism that you are going to be around a while and that there is a future being planned with you in it.
I had come to Fort Worth with the anticipation of working for a Christian ministry that had planned on hiring me, but by the time I arrived, the finances of the organization were strained and it was unable to offer me a job. That forced me to hit the streets looking for something—anything—so we could survive. I had completed my training and clinical work to be an EMT and applied at several ambulance services and emergency rooms, but either they weren’t hiring or I didn’t have enough experience to work in the “big city.” I applied for every job I could find, including working on freight docks and waiting tables in restaurants, and was constantly turned away with the worst excuse ever—“You’re overqualified.” Yes, I was a college graduate who had completed a four-year degree in just over two years and graduated magna cum laude, and yes, I didn’t really want to wait tables or ask customers, “Would you like fries or a baked potato?” as a career, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t willing to work hard. Looking for a job can be humbling. Mustering the courage to ask for the interview and just being told no makes a person feel like a leper. I can fully understand how easy it would be for a person to get utterly frustrated and simply quit looking for a job because the wounds of the process are so painful and the process can be so demeaning. I finally realized that I was trying to get someone to hire me for something I was not likely to do long term because it was clearly not my career goal. Why would someone hire me to wait tables, load freight, or stabilize a victim of a car wreck when it was apparent that I didn’t really plan on doing that for the rest of my life?
But there was something I had done since I was fourteen years old and still enjoyed very much—radio. The likelihood I would be hired to be a DJ or a sportscaster in a major market was about zero, but I could freelance and write, produce, and do voice spots. And so I set out to find possible clients. I had some contacts with some megachurches and large Christian organizations and offered to do some spots at no cost that they could then buy if they liked them and wanted to use them. Fortunately for me, they did like them and did pay for them and even recommended me to some other organizations. I was picking up enough work, and between Janet and me, we could cover our rent. Just barely, but we could do it.
If you are thinking these were our worst days, think again. In so many ways, they were our best. We had escaped a galloping terror just months earlier, and if there’s one good thing about hitting bottom it’s that you know that there’s nowhere to go but up. Having been there, you know what it feels like; it’s much easier to believe that things are going to get better and that you can handle anything life throws at you.
To save money, Janet and I ate peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and canned soup virtually every day. It was cheap and there was no waste. We varied the flavor of the soup to give ourselves some variety, and grocery shopping was easy. Every Tuesday, a little taco stand not far from our house sold tacos for twenty-five cents each, and we’d splurge and spend fifty cents to treat ourselves to a dinner “out.” We can laugh about it now, but that was a big treat for us then.
For my new job, I bought a suit at a factory outlet for $12.50. It was a blue polyester knit suit with patterns on the pocket. I can only pray that no one finds photos of me wearing that hideous thing, but I needed at least one suit for the occasions on which I was invited to speak in a church or do something “important.” I had a pair of black dress shoes that I wore with the suit, and for everyday wear, I ha
d an old pair of brown casual shoes with rubber soles that were more comfortable for walking back and forth to class. About halfway through the semester, the sole of one of these shoes separated from the rest of the shoe, and one of the guys in my Greek class made fun of me because he thought I was wearing them to be cool and to show my rebellious and independent streak. I laughed along with him, not wanting him to know that I wasn’t wearing worn-out shoes to make some kind of statement. It was simply all I had.
I started seminary as a twenty-year-old. The average age of the other students in my classes was thirty, as seminary tended to attract older students who had started a career of one kind only to decide later to pursue a theology degree and do full-time Christian ministry or mission work. As best I could tell, I was the youngest student in any of my classes. Most of the “younger” guys were at least twenty-two or twenty-three, and many were in their forties or even fifties. I looked like a kid compared to them.
Southwestern was at the time the largest Christian seminary in the world, with over 4,000 students on campus. It touted itself as the largest institution in history that provided full-time training for Christian ministry. That meant most of the classes were large, with as many as 110 students packed into a single lecture hall. I was way too timid to try to make myself stand out. I felt like such a small and insignificant part of what was going on there, but I also felt incredibly privileged just to be there.
The academic environment was challenging, but the spirit of the classes was more like that at evangelistic meetings because the professors taught with such passion and fire, not simply reading the yellowed pages of lecture notes prepared a generation earlier. To this day, I recall the glisten in the eyes of Dr. William Tolar as he extolled the power of archaeology in helping to validate the veracity of the Bible; the flame in the voice of Dr. Roy Fish as he urged us to find a way to translate faith into a transferable gift to others through evangelism; and the enthusiasm of Dr. Thomas Urrey (known as “Hurry Urrey” because of the speed at which he expected his students to master the intricacies of the Koine Greek language of the New Testament), who took a dead language (Koine Greek is no longer a spoken language) and brought it to life with his enthusiasm about its precision to give us clarity in the scripture. Even in church history class Dr. William Estep had me on the edge of my seat as he told the narratives.
I looked forward to every day at school, even though I always felt a bit like a fish out of water. I was so much younger than my classmates, I wasn’t a “somebody,” and my fashion choices were more warehouse than Wall Street, but being provided a daily dose of hope and optimism helped me overlook these details. The daily chapel services were packed, and each day, my heart was stirred with messages of challenge to “change the world.” It hardly seemed like a twenty-year-old wearing shoes with big holes in them was in a position to change a light-bulb, much less the world, but numerous cells of vision were implanted into my spiritual and intellectual consciousness each day, and now that those days of facing Janet’s cancer seemed further away than ever, the future seemed a journey worth taking.
Janet and I had pretty much established our routine by now. During the week, I walked or rode a bicycle to class and she drove to the dental office for work. At lunch, we would both make the short trip to the Winnebago-sized house, where we would have a peanut-butter sandwich and share a can of soup. Then I’d go back to class and then come home to start studying and trying to peddle some of my radio spots. Sundays were, of course, for church, but on Saturdays we tried to dedicate at least half a day to exploring Fort Worth by driving through a section of the city and getting acquainted with it. On one Saturday, we drove to the far western side of the city to the gates of Carswell Air Force Base, which at the time was one of our nation’s major bases in the Strategic Air Command. Since we were both from small towns, one of the things that captivated us was the inspiring and majestic sight of the ever-present B-52 bombers flying in and out of Carswell twenty-four hours a day. The closer one got to the base, the more massive those jets became. They were an ominous sight with their one-of-a-kind wing-over-fuselage look and their massive engines ready to fly them literally around the world and back with a nuclear bomb aboard, prepared to face any threat that came their way.
We still laugh with embarrassment when we tell our friends about the day we drove right up to the gates of Carswell and, when the sharply dressed sentinel snapped at us and asked what we wanted, told him, “We just wanted to look around and see the planes.” Judging from the stunned look on his face, he must have thought we were bozos. “Sir,” he said, “this is a SAC base. No visitors are allowed on these premises.”
Hey, we didn’t know. We figured they’d love to have us come and look around and be proud of what our tax dollars were supporting. But I guess they figured we could be equally proud watching from outside the gates.
Janet’s physical condition continued to improve as she regained strength, stamina, and her ability to walk and move without the limitations that the “year from hell” had presented. We had nothing but the used and borrowed furniture that occupied our little “two-bedroom” house, but we had each other and were enjoying life.
We became good friends with several other couples from our church, a few of whom were also in seminary and just as poor as we were. Our friends Jerry and Glenda Woods lived just blocks from us in seminary housing, and to save gas, we would take turns driving to the Hulen Street Baptist Church, where we all attended. Jerry and Glenda were from Tennessee, so they “spoke Southern,” and neither of them had come from wealthy or storied families, so we had much in common. Jerry was preparing to be a pastor, and I was still hoping to work in some form of Christian broadcasting. We had a lot in common, but one big difference between us was that they had a young son. Since we knew that, due to Janet’s radiation, we weren’t likely to ever be able to have children of our own, we delighted in their two-year-old, Jeremy. We enjoyed watching him grow and sharing milestones in his development. He was a well-behaved and content child, and Janet would usually sit in the backseat with Glenda and they would play with Jeremy, who sat in a car seat between them. Jerry and I would sit in the front and discuss the issues of the day and how we would handle them if someone would just put us in charge.
I could tell that Janet enjoyed those trips playing and talking with the baby, and there were times I sensed how tough it must be wondering what it would be like to have the children cancer and radiation had stolen from her. If she was distraught over it, she never let on, and we never spoke about it; it was a part of our lives we simply had to accept. On Good Friday of 1976, I made my way home for lunch as I did every day. Janet had arrived before me and already had the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich ready and the soup all warmed up. But on the table was an Easter basket, which I thought a bit strange since we were both adults and hardly planned on going on an Easter egg hunt. She had the most apprehensive look on her face but urged me to look in the basket. She had put the typical plastic grass in the bottom and a few plastic eggs, one of which was marked with my name on it. Not one to wait on opening things, I naturally picked it up and opened it. A note inside the egg said, “By next Easter, we’ll need the basket for our own little baby’s first Easter.” That seemed strange. What baby? We couldn’t have one, we had been told, so this note could mean only one of three things: (1) Janet wanted to adopt a baby and figured that an impoverished couple who worked and went to school and had no tangible assets would be approved for adoption. (Delusional!); (2) She planned on our kidnapping someone else’s child à la the movie Raising Arizona and needed psychiatric help immediately; (3) The doctors had been wrong.
At that moment, I was afraid to say something really stupid and get excited that she was actually pregnant only to find out she was talking about getting a puppy. Then she would get depressed and angry because I “didn’t really want the puppy” or she thought Iwas“unhappy in the marriage because we couldn’t have kids.”
I asked the questio
ns slowly and deliberately. Are you pregnant? How do you know? Have you been to a doctor to know this? Which one? Are you sure?
She had been having some strange feelings and some nausea and thinking that it was a holdover from the radiation, so she had decided to ask a doctor about it. The seminary had a clinic on campus, and a family-health physician would come over a couple of days a week to see students. She had gone there and after describing the symptoms was administered a pregnancy test. It was positive. She explained that something must be wrong as pregnancy wasn’t possible. Another test said the same thing. A few phone calls between doctors in Fort Worth and Little Rock seemed to have everyone arriving at the same conclusion.
The good news—she was pregnant. This alone was pretty much a miracle because we had given up the hope of ever having a child of our own.
The bad news—while the pregnancy was indeed surprising, there was immediate concern that Janet might not be able to carry the child to term, and there was an even greater likelihood that, if she could carry the child to term, the baby would be at risk for birth defects due to the radiation.
The news brought hope tempered by reality, but for me the mere fact that Janet was pregnant was all that mattered. I was ecstatic. At that moment, I wasn’t thinking about how we would possibly survive the cost of a birth, taking care of a baby, and losing one of the two paltry incomes we had. But somehow I knew the human race had survived with couples who had less than we did and far more obstacles in front of them. Even that couple in Bethlehem so long ago faced tougher odds than we did, so I knew that we could worry about our troubles later. We had received one miracle; now we would just have to start praying for a few more.
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