WARNING: This story contains high-tension drama. If you’ve been diagnosed with high blood pressure, heart issues, or hiccups, you may want to refrain from further reading.

I was spoiled growing up. Our family residence was a fabulous five-acre property with a five bedroom home complete with a panoramic view of Lake Sammamish, Washington (never mind that the house was in a constant state of construction and upheaval). When summer came, we had no lack of stimulating activities to keep us entertained.

After completing our assigned chores, my brother and I might build superbly engineered roads for our toy trucks, conduct high level sea operations with our armada of tiny naval ships or maybe wage wars with our battalions of tiny soldiers. Also, throw in a little basketball or badminton. If we got bored, there was always our ram to tease. But our unanimous favorite activity was swimming.

Almost every afternoon we went down to Grandma and Grandpa’s house where my dad had taught me to swim. They had a totally vintage lakefront home (it was built in the early 50’s), had a nice dock and a huge lot with a wonderful garden. I often snuck off and stole some green beans and raspberries off the vines. Sometimes my sister Joanie and I had contests looking for five leaf clovers. Because Dad worked swing shift in Seattle, he had to leave home by 3:00, so we usually went to Grandma’s around 1:00.

Our afternoon swims were filled with frenzied fun and frolic. Our border collie, Gypsy, was always there for our protection. Whenever any of us dived off the dock, she would jump in right after us, making sure we weren’t drowning. Sometimes I would dive, swim underwater and hide under the dock. Gypsy would get frantic and swim in circles, looking for me. What kind of mean kid would do something like that?

To make things more challenging for Gypsy, we would sometimes dive off of a wood raft that we kept a few feet from the dock. Never one to be outmaneuvered, Gypsy would jump off the dock onto the raft and then dive into the water looking to save us. If we carefully grabbed onto her tail she would drag us to the shore, happily keeping us safe.

One afternoon my cute little sister, Jenni, who was around three years old and hadn’t learned to swim yet, gave us all a bit of a start. We were all gathered under the shade structure away from the beach. For some reason, known only to her, she started walking to the water and then into the water. And then kept walking.

It could be that she was inspired by the story of Jesus and Peter who both walked on water. But if that was the case, her faith was on the weak side as she didn’t quite make the cut. She sank deeper and deeper in the water, eventually over her head. In a panic, we all ran down to rescue her. Fortunately, no one had to apply mouth to mouth resuscitation. That would have been gross, from a brother’s point of view. We never did find out what inspired her.

One memorable summer day, after another enjoyable time swimming at Grandma’s, we were all happily tucked into our Chevy station wagon for our seven-minute drive home. Just as we were arriving at the left turn to our house, we became aware that something strange was happening. Dad nearly started swearing. Imagine that. Possibly exposing his charming, innocent children to such vulgarities. Fortunately, he was able to put a clamp on his tongue. We didn’t really know what was wrong, why he was nearly losing it.

We soon found out…

In the rearview mirror he saw a car bearing down on us at an extremely high rate of speed. It was weaving back and forth over the centerline. Not a good situation. Very weird. But then things started to get even weirder.

The driver decided to try to pass us, even though Dad was signaling to turn left. And then, wouldn’t you know it, disaster started to raise up its ugly head. A car came around the corner from the opposite direction, setting us up for a total catastrophe. Recipe for a perfect storm. Not good! Freak-out city in fact.

To avoid total destruction, Dad had to pull onto the shoulder, rather than turn left onto our road, probably saving us from a two or three car pile-up.

Because I was such a hyper-observant eleven-year-old, I could tell by the bulging of his neck veins, he was getting totally enraged. I don’t think Dad would have been a very good poker player. You could easily read his ‘tells’.

The crazy car behind us raced past as though he totally expected us to pull over. Quite the assumption. He barely skimmed between us and the oncoming car! Dad was now more than furious! Not sure what the proper adjective would be.

What happened next was like a scene from a movie.

Rather than returning to our normal route, turning left to go home, Dad, in his highly evolved, indisputable wisdom, decided to follow the crazy driver. Easier said than done. The driver was still going at a high rate of speed, veering all over the road.

Even though my mom and my brothers and sisters were all packed in the car, Dad cranked up the speed to match that of the crazy driver. This was getting stranger by the second. We had never experienced anything like this. I wasn’t sure whether to be excited or scared.

The driver notched it up even further. Dad matched him. Mom was quietly shrieking. A silent scream. We kids, wide-eyed, looked at each with a mix of fear and excitement, watched the drama unfold. Emotions of all kinds were flying around the car. I peed my pants. Almost. I was convinced we were chasing a bank robber.

The chase went on. Screeching down the skinny, narrow little two-lane road at over seventy miles an hour. Dad had a steely look on his face I’d never seen before.

As a prelude to the incredible leader I was destined to become, I spoke to Dad in a highly authoritative voice, “Dad, get real! This is stupid and dangerous!” Seeing as the words didn’t actually leave my mouth, Dad maintained the chase.

How insane was this! Reminded me of the hot rod TV show we had been watching, ‘Route 66’. This was pedal to the metal time. I doubt the car had ever gone this fast before. By the way, in case you’re wondering, I don’t think we had seatbelts. Seatbelts were never installed in new cars in those days, but Dad actually bought some later and installed them himself. Maybe in response to this situation.

Conversation in the car was limited. In fact, there was no conversation. Everyone was hyper-focused on the intense drama we were in. Were we even going to make it out of this alive? Our car might crash. A tire could blow out. Not that we knew how, but we were each probably uttering some kind of prayer.

Finally, the town of Issaquah came into view. Finally. The drunken driver actually slowed down and pulled into the first gas station in sight. He stopped his car. Dad pulled up a short, safe distance away. If tension was intense before, it ratcheted up even more. This was certainly more exciting than any of our favorite TV shows, except maybe Gunsmoke.

We all wondered what would happen next. What kind of guy was this, getting drunk in the middle of the day? Was he going to jump out and shoot us like some kind of maniac? Was Dad going to attack him? We were going crazy.

Our questions were answered before we even finished our thoughts. Dad got out of the car and grabbed a club that he had stowed under the seat. None of us even knew it was there. Seriously, a bat-like club. Had he ever used this before? Was my dad some kind of closet vigilante?

If possible, our collective anxiety ratcheted up to an even higher level. Was this going to be some kind of street battle? Was Dad going to be shot? It was surreal watching him walk aggressively over to the crazy driver’s car to confront him. No hesitation on his part whatsoever. I got a whole new perception of Dad that day.

Dad got to the car just as the maniac opened his car door. The guy quickly pulled out a snub-nosed revolver and shot my dad in the gut, splattering blood everywhere. Not really. Just kidding about that. But it could have happened.

The guy could barely stand up. Much to our relief he didn’t put up any kind of fight. I don’t think he was even aware of Dad’s club. It’s doubtful he was even aware that we were chasing him. Dad grabbed him by the arm and sort of walked him toward the gas station.

Per directions from Dad, the gas station attendant called the police who arrived on the scene quickly. Seeing as Dad was late for work, we couldn’t stay on the scene to see how things unrolled. He gave them his contact information and we went home, all of us massively decompressing and breathing collective sighs of relief.

Dad might have made a good cop, but in this case I think his anger clouded his judgement, putting our family at risk. He did make a good witness at the trial, however, and the man ended up serving time.

What would prompt someone to get stone cold drunk in the middle of the day? Who knows. I just thank God that He protected us and that Dad was aware of the situation and pulled over just in the nick of time.

My father was a wonderful provider and kept us safe (other than in this debacle). He loved us but had a hard time expressing it. I later learned what love from a father is all about. After I entered the Kingdom of God, by accepting Jesus as my Savior, I came to know my Heavenly Father. He loves me unconditionally. No matter how much I mess things up (which I do a lot), He loves me. He holds me in His arms. He sings over me. I love Him!

He loves you with an unconditional love as well. You are His child.

It was midnight, February 6th, 2023, the year of our Lord. A day forever ingrained in my psyche.

This particular night, for some highly existential unknown reason, my sleep was rough and rocky. Rocky and Rough. I was turning over constantly, fraught with the waking-up-falling-back-asleep program. Not sleeping like a baby. I tried to blame the mattress, but it refused to take the blame.

Things got progressively worse. Not only wasn’t I able to sleep, I started to get nauseous. As much as I wanted to stay in bed, I had to jump up and hustle my way to the throne room. Quickly. Honestly, things were not going the way I envisioned for my precious sleep time.

The next part of the story is primarily second hand, as told to me by my precious wife, Julie.

Julie heard a curious crunching crash. She reluctantly emerged from her highly valued deep sleep state and somehow determined that the sound emanated from the bathroom. “Oh boy, what is going on?”, she wondered.

She decided that this wasn’t a dream and quickly jumped to her feet to see what was happening. In case you’re wondering, this was not a normal nighttime scenario for us. As she entered the bathroom, she was shocked to see me literally sprawled out on the tile floor. Flat out on the floor. She thought I had died. Obviously, I hadn’t, or I wouldn’t be writing this story. Duh.

But she was freaked. Totally freaked out. Anybody would be. She came over to me and as she leaned over, I slowly started coming to. “What happened?” she exclaimed. “I don’t know, but I’m fine. I’m just fine.” With that I started to get up. With her help I gingerly got up and stood there for like three seconds. I was in kind of a daze, attempting to make sense of the situation. But I couldn’t, because the situation didn’t make any kind of sense.

Guess what happened next? Once the three seconds were up, I fell like a tree, after a logger was done with it, hitting our antique desk on my way down to the tile floor. Tile. In other words, hard. Like a rock. Unconscious again.

Julie was convinced that this time I really did die. What the heck was going on? A million thoughts were running through her mind. None of them pleasant. Foremost, who would take the garbage out? Who would unload the dishwasher? What would she do without this absolute stud of a man (because I’m the highly esteemed author, I slipped this in without her seeing it).

But alas, I started stirring. Again. Signs of life. I was not dead! Alive. Sort of. I started shuffling around on the floor, bewildered because, once again, I had no idea what had happened. If you thought that I might have been in a state of confusion, you got the right conclusion. I’ll send you a prize. Obviously, you’re not confused.

I then had another of my famous highly evolved ideas; why not stand up? Again. I struggled. I worked at it. Struggled. Strained. And what do you know, I ultimately made it to my feet. Not exactly steady, but I was proud to be up. I’m not sure why standing would accomplish anything, but somehow, I did accomplish my lofty goal. Kind of inane, but I did it. I was vertical. Vastly superior to horizontal, right? Things were improving, as this time I was able to stand for upwards of six seconds.

And then… (wouldn’t you know it) down I went again. Head smashing into the tile floor. If I was in the boxing ring, I think they would call the fight at this point; call it a knock-out. And I was definitely knocked out. Like George Foreman at the hands of Muhammad Ali in the famous 1974 Rumble in the Jungle. This third time was the charm for Julie.

Once again, she was totally convinced that I was dead. Her blood pressure hit the stratosphere. Freak-out city. At the same time though she was commanding me to live and not die, in Jesus’ name. Fortunately, she is a totally powerful prayer warrior.

And then…

My body started stirring once again. As I came to, I was again pretty much unaware of what had been going on. I started to try to stand up again, but Julie took charge and commanded me to stay put. “No getting up! I think we should call 911!” she declared. “I don’t think you need to do that. I’m sure I’m fine.” was my high-level response.

As she got firmer with the idea, I reluctantly relented. So, I relaxed on the tile floor, finally crawling my way to the bedroom, where there was a comfortable oriental rug on the floor. I don’t think I had ever experienced the beautiful rug quite the same way before, my face buried in it. Fortunately, it was clean.

Shortly thereafter, six burly firemen were surrounding me in our bedroom attaching various devices to my body. I don’t think we had ever had a crowd in our bedroom like that. It turned out my blood pressure and O2 levels were extremely low. They asked me various questions, probably more to see if I was cognizant than to actually learn the answers to their questions.

Finally, one of them said, “I think we should get you to the hospital.” Although I was apprehensive about the idea, the thought of going for an ambulance ride sounded like great entertainment and I really had nothing else planned for the night, so I agreed. This would be my first such ride. Exciting stuff.

Julie followed the ambulance to the hospital. Seeing as I was brought in an emergency vehicle, I was admitted quickly. Quickly admitted, but ever so slowly examined. I was not given a bed but rather told to sit on a hard plastic chair in a hallway. I ended up spending pretty much the whole night on that chair, watching medical staff briskly walk by me. The chair and I soon became good friends.

Fortunately, Julie was able to sit and commiserate with me. As extremely brilliant as we are, we couldn’t quite figure out what was going on. Why did I hit the deck three times? Three times. And each time she thought I died. Sorry Julie.

After an hour or so they took me to the X-ray lab to check to see if I had damaged my skull or maybe my brain. Then back to my hallway chair. No word from anyone as to what the issue was. Was this something serious or?

At some point I realized there was intense pain in my calf. It took some time to convince any attendants of this, but I finally was again taken to the X-ray lab. Although the technician was supposed to let the doctors review the information with me, she whispered to me that I had a possible broken fibula.

After getting back to the hall, I finally got a little respite from the hard plastic chair by commandeering a nearby wheelchair, which was much more comfortable. Unfortunately, this newfound comfort lasted only a few minutes as they suddenly needed it for a newly admitted patient suffering from a gunshot wound. Apparently, Tucson was still the wild west.

The nurse then wheeled me to the X-ray room once again. This time they wanted to make sure there were no broken bones in my foot. The x-ray showed that my foot was fine. The head results also came in and apparently because I’m so hardheaded it turned out that my head was just fine. No cracked skull. I’m not sure how it survived crashing into the tile floor three times. But my fibula was definitely broken. Fibula. Fibula. Fibula. Could have the makings of a great song.

After nearly eight arduous hours sitting on the stiff plastic chair in the hospital hall, I was finally released. Phew. Honestly, it was not the grooviest way to spend the night. It was now morning, the first day of the rest of my life.

Once home I had a great reunion with my beloved crutches, obtained at the time of my hip replacement surgery.

I then made an emergency appointment with my cardiologist to see if, per chance, there was a heart-related issue. Upon completing certain tests, the doctor (an Italian surgeon who wears totally stylish Italian shoes) sat me down in his office and started laying out his prognosis.

“First of all, Jim, you don’t have any serious heart issue to be concerned about. Very likely you had what is called a vagal episode.” An example, he explained, is when the Beatles came to America, many girls at their concerts would pass out in their excitement, which apparently were vagal episodes.

I learned that a vagal episode could cause dizziness, nausea, sweating, and in some cases, fainting. Because of the nausea I was experiencing while in bed, my blood was likely focusing on my gut and ignoring my brain. Very likely I was dehydrated as well and with getting up quickly, this was the perfect storm for my triple pass-outs.

The doctor also told me that when he was a child, he was assigned to follow his grandmother around at Italian weddings because she would often have such vagal episodes, and he would catch her when she started to fall. How hilarious was that.

Looking back now, three years later, I’m certainly thankful that I didn’t crack my skull on any of the tile edges or the tile floor. I’m thankful I didn’t die. That would have been a drag. I’m thankful that after a brief stint on crutches, I’m back healthy again; walking, playing volleyball, pole vaulting, bull riding, conducting Olympic decathlons. I thank you Lord for my good health and for many healthy years ahead.

When I look at the scene where this all took place, except for the hardwood desk, there is no surface that is not tile. Here’s a thought, could this have been an attack by the enemy in an attempt to undermine God’s call on my life? It makes me wonder if perhaps an angel intercepted my fall. How could I not have cracked my skull?

I have a God-designed destiny. You have a God-designed destiny. The enemy would love to interfere with or stop what God has for you and I. You are, or will be, a vital part of the Kingdom of God. If you haven’t been born into the Kingdom yet, now is the time.

1999. Bellingham, Washington.

Our family was happily ensconced in our cute little cabinny A-frame chalet-style home on picturesque Lake Ki, near Arlington. This was some forty miles north of Seattle, fifty miles south of Bellingham. My father-in-law had recently passed, and my mother-in-law subsequently sold their country house outside of Bellingham.

Included in the sale was an agreement to conduct some minor repairs to the septic drain field, post-closing. I agreed to do this work as we had previously owned the house, and I knew all about the drain field. Very exciting stuff.

The day finally came for my required rudimentary repair work and my five-year-old daughter, Jasmine, decided to tag along as my helper and adviser. Septic drain fields were of great fascination to her. Plus, maybe a little father daughter bonding time. Certain to be a very memorable day.

So, off we went to Bellingham, having great high-level existential conversations. When we got to the house, a plethora (one of my favorite words) of memories flooded my mind. Such as…

Bucking hay from the fifty acres of fields and subsequently stacking the bales twenty feet high in the rickety barn. It was always challenging hauling the bales up to the top of the stack, but being the macho man that I imagined myself to be, I grew quite adept at it. Sometimes we had some athletic high school boys from church help us. They liked to show off their machismo, carrying one bale with each hand.

Grandpa Tom riding little pony Missy. He had no riding experience, so it was quite entertaining to see him trying to navigate the pony around the fields.

Trying (quite unsuccessfully) to avoid hypothermia by attempting to heat the house by burning green wood in the wood stove.

Our cute little MGB GT dying every time it went through a mudpuddle in the long driveway. Apparently the carburetor couldn’t handle the water splashing up on it, which is quite ironic, as the cars were designed and manufactured in England and as I recall, it rains quite incessantly there.

Picking apples from the apple trees in the sixty-year-old orchard. Interesting side note: recently a company that makes hard apple cider discovered some of the trees in our old orchard and decided to use them in their cider. Apparently these are some kind of special apples and provide a certain unique aspect to the flavor of the cider.

Riding and jumping our horses around our quirky little homemade cross country jump course, while skillfully avoiding slipping in the mud when approaching the jumps.

Our Saluki running full speed into a faucet protruding from the ground and puncturing its chest.

Having a little twelve-hand stallion pony jump the fence and, against all odds, impregnate our seventeen-hand infertile mares. Their babies happened to be born the same time as our first miracle baby, Joshua.

Little Joshua, as a two-year-old, sneaking into the bathroom and ingesting a bit of Bengay, prompting a 911 call and having several firetrucks show up at the scene to check on him.

Sitting under the wonderful weeping willows, watching the leaves wave wistfully in the wind (how about that for an awesomely amazing alliteration).

These were among the memories that came to mind. Some happy. Some challenging.

When we pulled up to the house, a couple young boys were outside happily playing in the yard. What fun was that. Jasmine’s eyes lit up and she asked me if she could play with them. “Of course, honey. Have some fun.” I guess I would have to fare without her septic drain field advice. At any rate, what a fantastic day this was turning out to be.

Apparently, the new owners had already moved in. I introduced myself to the boys’ mother and then grabbed my tools and happily went out to the pasture to do the aforementioned rudimentary repairs on the septic field. The ‘septic field’ was simply a long trench, with perforated piping, which I had laid and then covered with dirt. Happily, the job was coming together quite well.

But then…

I was almost finished with my work when I heard some screaming coming from the yard where the kids were playing. It sounded like a child. I threw down my tools and ran up to the area where the kids were playing. My emotions skyrocketed from peaceful, tranquil and serene to super-high anxiety in like, three seconds. I was totally shocked with what I saw. Even now, I shudder to think about it. My little Jasmine was screaming, and blood was flowing profusely down her face.

This was my little Jasmine. My baby. I was freaking. The boys’ mother was holding her and trying to comfort her, to no avail.

Trying to determine what happened, I looked at the boys, who suspiciously avoided any eye contact with me. After a little coaxing on my part, the older boy finally disclosed what had happened.

Apparently the younger of the boys, Joel, age 4, was showing off his baseball prowess to Jasmine. He had asked her to watch him while he demonstrated his bat swinging abilities. It seems he was able to swing the bat so hard he couldn’t hold on to it and it unfortunately slipped out of his grip.

You know where it landed, right? In slow motion, I could see it in my mind’s eye. The bat spinning over and over until…BAM! It hit Jasmine head on, literally. It smashed her in the middle of her beautiful little face.

It was hard to tell if there were any broken bones but regardless, she definitely wasn’t doing well. I felt sick to my stomach. My pain was probably greater than hers.

We cleaned her up as much as possible and then I quickly made the hour-plus trek home. During the drive, I comforted Jasmine as much as I could. I also dreaded what I knew was coming when I got home.

As expected, Julie wasn’t happy. Understatement of the year. She was furious. Livid. How could our little girl have gotten hurt like that? How could I have allowed it to happen? Between you and me, if I were her, I’m sure I would have had the same reaction.

When we took the wrap away from her face, the damage was staring us in the face. Jazzy’s nose was broken. This was definitely not good. A disaster, actually.

When she was born, some twenty years after we were married, Julie was so happy that we now had a girl to counterbalance our two boys. After twelve years of insufferable infertility, God had given us a miracle baby, Joshua. Four years later, along came another cute little miracle package, Joel. Then four years later Jasmine decided to show up as out third miracle baby. We were ecstatic.

And she had the perfect nose. Even though I always thought it was beautiful, Julie was never that happy with her own nose. So, she was especially happy that God gave us a beautiful little girl with a perfect nose. Perfect. It was an answer to her prayers.

And now it was broken!! This was untenable.

We immediately took her to an ENT doctor to see what we could do, if anything. Anxiety was running rampart in both of us. What was his analysis going to be?

He looked at us with a sad look on his face and confirmed that it definitely was broken but unfortunately, and here’s the bad news, he couldn’t do anything about it. He didn’t feel comfortable operating on a small girl whose face would continue to grow. This was not the news we wanted to hear. Not surprisingly, Julie wasn’t happy with that. Not at all.

Was there anything we could do? Anything? There must be something. Our beautiful little girl disfigured like this.

Julie was understandably adamant when she stated, “I want a second opinion. Now! I can’t believe they can’t fix her at this age.”

With that charge in mind, we found another ENT doctor. We were understandably concerned with what his prognosis might be. Would he agree with doctor number 1? Or?

It turned out he didn’t agree with doctor number 1. Fortunately. He gave us a little bit more of a positive report. “I can definitely fix this. She’ll be just like new.” This was very encouraging. Totally encouraging. We exhaled a syncronized breath of relief. How great was this!

Except…

There was one little problem. A little hiccup. We had no health insurance at the time, and this was not going to be an inexpensive procedure. Nothing like a little stress to add to our already challenging situation.

But then…

A little wrinkle. The homeowner’s insurance for the new folks in the Bellingham house came through and paid for almost all of the bills. It was about time something positive happened. Jasmine had her operation, and it came out perfect. Perfect.

I’m not sure why we have to go through our various trials and tribulations, but God came through for us. Hallelujah! I’m thankful first that God blessed us with three incredible children. I’m thankful that the assault that Jasmine endured wasn’t something more ominous than what happened. I’m thankful that Julie pushed through to get that second opinion. I’m thankful that we found a wonderful doctor that did an amazing job on Jasmine’s nose.

This incident might seem like a minor, insignificant event. But to us and to Jasmine it was huge. And God led us through the whole thing. Praise His name forevermore! I encourage you to have an attitude of gratitude. God will take care of you. Whatever you’re facing, He will make a way.

Here’s a photo of young Jasmine, before the assault, and another of her with her broken nose and also a recent photo of her together with our grandaughter, at age six, both with perfect noses (although Jasmine likes to wear little nosey ring things, but I guess that’s her way of celebrating her beautiful nose).

Thank you so much for reading this little story. I’m definitely open to being assaulted with a ‘like’ or a comment. Or both. All very much appreciated.

Many Years Ago…

I applied for, and for some inexplicable reason, was admitted to Fairhaven College in Bellingham, Washington. Fairhaven was, and still is, a self-proclaimed “experimental” college, part of Western Washington University. The premise was to provide a ‘living learning’ environment.

There were no grades and no rigid rules. The idea was for the students to autonomously manage their own education. The classes offered were primarily eclectic and esoteric. Many of us deferred most of our scholastic work until the last couple weeks of the quarter. We then stayed up through the nights to write summary essays of the materials covered during the quarter. This was the ‘learning’ part.

In regard to the ‘living’ part, many of the students decided that they would prefer abandoning their assigned dormmates and move in with their newly discovered girlfriend or boyfriend. That was like, really living. I mean how can you beat the concept of eighteen-year-olds shacking up together.

Some of the high-value, life-changing classes I took included geodesic dome building (which consisted of driving around the countryside in search of such geodesic domes), folk dancing and sensitivity training. I had some interesting but rather odd professors. One of them preached about the evils of using toilet paper (apparently rags were preferred). Another suggested to me that it might be preferrable for me to drop out and “find myself”.

Before long I realized that I should take most of my classes at the mother school, Western, which offered traditional graded classes. I started to develop some passion for photography and design. You may not believe this, but I actually did reasonably well. I think I had somewhat of a visual eye. One photo I took was of a young female student at a pottery wheel in the ceramics lab. A pinpoint of sunlight was streaming perfectly through the clerestory windows, creating a beautiful, magical scene, almost as if staged.

When I went to the darkroom, I spent the entire night working on it to get it just right (this was the dark ages when one had to use a dark room with negatives and chemicals). It was one of my teacher’s favorites, so he hung it up on the hallway wall. When the fiancé of the pottery student saw it, apparently, he loved it. He looked me up and bought it. After all my work, I probably made around $1/hour, less my cost of supplies. My stellar career as a photographer ended at that point.

And then this…

One quarter, three of us decided that dorm life was just too insipidly institutional for us. We wanted something more at-one-with-the-earth. Like…you know…organic. Enough of these new dorm buildings and SAGA prepared cafeteria meals (although admittedly they were on the tasty side). I’m not sure which of us got the inspiration, but we came up with a totally highly evolved idea. Let’s see if we can find an abandoned house. A place that hadn’t been occupied for years. This would be our home. That would be like, so far-out. Certainly, a glaring contrast to our bourgeois dorm life. I’m not sure what we were on when we came up with this idea but there you have it.

Not ones to simply let our imaginations wander aimlessly, we actually set a plan into motion. Ignoring our studies, we drove around the countryside looking for such a place. After several days of searching, we randomly discovered a possible candidate near Ferndale (North of Bellingham approximately ten miles). The house, on Mountain View Rd, had certainly been abandoned for many years. The few windows it had left were broken. The doors marginally worked. It had no working plumbing or electricity. It did have a working outhouse. By ‘working’ it had a seat with a big hole.

It was a two-story house with three bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen. The best part was that it was situated on five cleared acres that had once been nice pasture. Being the brilliant pioneer hippie students that we were, we decided that this was definitely our exciting new abode.

This turned out to be one of the highest-level, most strategic decisions I made during my college years. Then again, maybe not.

We did our deep-dive research and found the owner’s name and address. After writing to him and asking permission to squat on his land, we were a little surprised, but nonetheless pleased, to obtain his permission to move in rent free. Obviously, the universe was smiling on us.

With that great achievement achieved, we enthusiastically set about ‘rehabbing’ the house (although none of us knew much about tools or how to use the few that we had obtained). This meant finding other abandoned houses and ‘borrowing’ the unbroken windows to install in our new country home. I use the word ‘install’ generously. None of the borrowed windows actually fit, but nevertheless, we ‘installed’ them. At least you could see through them, and honestly, they stopped most of the wind and rain.

It was quite the adventure for us; the first time living away from our school dormitories. Inexplicably, it had a working wood heater, so we were able to keep somewhat warm.

Not surprisingly, after moving in, we found that the country life we had envisioned wasn’t quite the reality we were experiencing. A little primitive to say the least. Going outside in the rain and cold, in the dark, to use the outhouse might conjure images of a romantic life to some. But in reality, on those nights, it was totally cold. Totally dark. And smelly. Totally smelly.

My housemates were Gary and Julie. And Heather. Heather the horse. A couple years earlier, when Julie moved to Bellingham from Japan for college, she decided the most important thing she needed for college life was a horse. She found a sweet, lovely Palomino, Heather, and kept her in a pasture about a mile or so from campus.

When we moved from our college dorms to the Ferndale ‘farm’ she had to figure out a way to get Heather there. Having no horse trailer or even knowing anyone who had one, Julie decided to ride her. I have no idea how she figured out her route, but she rode through the city of Bellingham, made her way north through the country then west through Ferndale to the ‘farm’. Heather was now home. I enjoyed going out at dusk in my undies and riding Heather bareback around the field.

We kept going to college, driving in each day in our old pickup. One of the courses I elected to take was Organic Chemistry. I thought it would fit in really well with the organic experience we were having. Little did I realize that Organic Chemistry is simply the study of carbon. Duh. It was a little challenging studying my chemistry books utilizing only the light from our kerosene lanterns. But if Abe Lincoln could do it, I figured I could.

At one point my parents decided to visit. How bizarre was that. I’m sure they were looking at me cross-eyed, trying to figure out how this fit in with any kind of rational life plan. I remember my mom going out and working on the garden we had tried to start. How sweet was that. They were especially impressed with the outhouse.

We also got a dog. Of course, you have to have a dog if you live in the country, right? We also got a bunny rabbit, Twilliger, who seemed to make himself right at home.

The house was a bit eerie at night. There were various uncanny sounds. Weird sounds. Like, where did that sound come from? And that sound? Conjured up scenes from assorted horror movies. Our imaginations grew. We started to have thoughts that maybe this old house might be haunted.

How could such super evolved, highly educated young people even consider such ideas. Nevertheless, it became an overriding nighttime theme that haunted us. Could a ghastly crime had been committed here years ago. We needed to find out. We needed to find an expert. If necessary, maybe find a ghost buster.

As fate would have it, my faculty adviser, Dr Ives Waldo, was such an expert. Of course. He was a kind of a self-proclaimed mystical guru. I approached him about our scenario, and he readily agreed to help, seeing as he was such a highly acclaimed expert in such matters.

One day we drove him out to the house for his discernment on the situation. We watched him perform some rather strange esoteric maneuvers. He went deep into some kind of trance. We waited. We watched. Never being involved in such a situation, I was on the edge of my seat as to his determination.

Finally, his discerning decision. What was he going to say? Much to our delight, he declared the house to be clean, free and clear of ghosts. Wow. No need to call the ghost busters.

It didn’t matter though. Our illusions of the romantic organic country life began to dissolve. Pitiful pioneers that we were, we decided that the advancements of electricity and running water weren’t so bad after all. Our experiment over, we moved back to Bellingham. That chapter abruptly ended.

It wasn’t long after that that I had another ghost experience. It came at a time when the downward life spiral I was experiencing really began to rock my boat. I knew I needed something more. My self-sufficiency wasn’t cutting it. I was at the end of my proverbial rope. I remember one evening, I went outside, looked up into the dark starry night and cried out, “God, if You’re real, I need to know if that’s so. I need You in my life.”

Maybe He heard me as I found myself in some school friends’ house in the evening a couple days later, which happened to be Halloween. It was interesting as they had previously been known as the primary suppliers of LSD on campus but had recently had a dramatic change in their life and had become what we called ‘Jesus freaks’.

I wasn’t there long before they started praying. I sensed a wonderful welcoming warmth descend into the room. I was feeling a calmness come over me. I couldn’t really reconcile what was happening. Then the strangest thing happened.

I heard a voice in my spirit. “Jim, this is your night. If you don’t give your heart to the Lord this evening, you probably never will.” I later learned that this was likely the Holy Ghost speaking to me. The Holy Ghost. Part of the Trinity. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Not the ghost that we thought might have been in our farmhouse. Not the ‘ghosts’ running around on Halloween. But the Holy Ghost. THE HOLY GHOST.

That night everything changed for me. I came into the Kingdom of God. I came to know Jesus. I came to know the Father. And I came to know the Holy Ghost.

The Holy Ghost was in the house.

I was in a tight and terrifically tense tennis match with a good friend of mine. A very athletic friend. It was a brutal court battle royale. The crowds in the bleachers were watching intently. When I aced my friend with one of my epic serves, the crowd erupted in a frenzy. The crowd in my head anyway.

The match went on. My friend was up. I was up. Back and forth it went. Not sure why I always feel the need to be competitive, but I had high hopes I might be able to beat him, though he was undoubtedly a better player than I.

And then something totally crazy and unexpected happened.

As I previously mentioned, this was a tense match; well, I felt something tense up in my back. It was getting tight, much like the match. I had never felt anything like this before. Very strange. But despite the tightness and tenseness, the match must go on. Right? I couldn’t stop just because of a little pain. C’mon. I mean, I had to maintain my macho-man mirage.

Unfortunately, the pain started growing more intense. My back was tightening. And tightening. And the match was tightening. The score was tied. Since I could still move and swing my racket to some degree, I certainly didn’t want to give up. Against all odds, I somehow muddled my way through the match to a painful but much deserved victory. Hooray for me! Bittersweet though, as my back was now a throbbing mess.

Never having experienced back pain before, I wasn’t sure exactly how to deal with it. Hopefully a night of rest would help. But no, the next day my illusions of painlessness were shattered. The pain was unrelenting.

Not having many options, I decided to go to a chiropractor friend. This was my very first chiropractor visit. Very exciting stuff. My inaugural visit. Totally groovy!

After I explained the situation to him, he had me lie down on his special table or bench or whatever it’s called. He then did some of his marvelous, mysterious manipulations and sent me home. Well maybe not so marvelous, as when I took a shower that evening, the pain was so intense that somehow, I passed out. Thank God I have a wonderful wife that came to my rescue.

What an enigma. Why do we have to experience pain anyway? What’s the point? At any rate, this had to get solved. I couldn’t bear it. The pain made work around the house very difficult. At least that was my excuse. I did gain a whole new level of empathy for those in chronic pain.

Another chiropractor friend of mine told me that he had some procedures that didn’t involve such marvelous, mysterious manipulations. That sounded good, although I wondered what kind of protocols he employed. After ten seconds of deep thought, I decided to give him a try.

Turned out to be quite an interesting experience. His ‘techniques’ were to touch my feet, head and back in some esoteric way, with the idea that the circuits of the body would be reset somehow. He was a true believer in it. Seemed totally hocus pocus to me. My back agreed with me, it didn’t help. Darn.

Unfortunately, none of the chiropractic treatments, massages, doctor visits helped. But, on the positive sign…over months and a couple years, the pain gradually subsided. Life got back to normal. Hallelujah for that!

A couple years later, in 1994, we were on vacation in Palm Springs with our two boys, Joshua and Joel. Julie was pregnant with daughter Jasmine. As the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens in Palm Desert sounded fun for the kids, we dedicated a day to meet some sweet new animal friends. How far-out was that! Great way to finish up our vacation.

We stumbled upon an exciting and exhilarating exhibit that showcased a great variety of snakes and other reptiles. Of course, the boys loved it. At one display, being the ever loving and thoughtful father that I am, I picked up Joel to give him a closer look.

Suddenly, ‘SNAP’, an intense pain was triggered in my back. Just like that! The pain was nearly unbearable. The PL (pain level) went from ‘0’ to ‘10’ in one second. I almost dropped Joel but fortunately didn’t. It was so weird; I’d forgotten that I even had a back issue.

The next morning things were no better. In fact, things suddenly became super challenging for Julie. Travel dynamics went into total upheaval. Rather than thriving, we were now barely surviving in chaos. She had to help me with my pants and put my shoes and socks on. I was now a six-foot-tall toddler. I could barely take a step, let alone push a stroller or carry luggage.

Julie, six months pregnant, now had to manage our two boys, and corral all of our suitcases so we could get to the airport. It wasn’t easy but somehow, we made it back to the Pacific Northwest.

This time I didn’t go to any chiropractors. I did the ‘grin-and- bear-it’ program. This was so discouraging, disgusting and disappointing. Previous x-rays hadn’t shown any disc issues. So, what the heck! How could it hurt so much? Once again, an immediate disablement program. The good news was that I would probably qualify for good parking spaces.

After experiencing a couple more of these debilitating incidences, it was time for one of my famous highly evolved solutions. This was obviously not something I wanted to live with the rest of my life. These were pre-google days, so I went to the yellow pages in the phone book. I came up with the near-genius idea of looking up ‘back’ and wouldn’t you know it, there was a listing for a medical back clinic in Seattle. Not chiropractors; medical doctors. This sounded like something that might be worth exploring. Did they have a solution? With anxious, apprehensive hope I set up an appointment.

Thankfully, the doctor was very thorough in his analysis of my condition. To my high-level way of thinking, his assessment made a lot of sense. He said that because my job primarily entailed sitting behind a desk all day, my back was gradually breaking down. Additionally, most of my recreational activities involved racquetball, tennis, basketball and volleyball, which required twisting, rotating and other detrimental movements which contributed to the degradation of my back.

His prescription was quite simple; do some daily stretching exercises that he demonstrated, and more importantly, take walks every day. Avoid the aforementioned sports activities. He reiterated that walking (also biking and swimming) actually builds up the muscles of the back, whereas the other activities tear down the back.

Although I didn’t appreciate his discouragement of my sports activities, with that admonition in mind, I started the walk program. At first, I could barely put one foot in front of the other. Fortunately, we had a nice, paved walking trail near our house. Nearly every day I would gather Julie and the kids and head down to the path where they would ride bikes while I hobbled along with Julie at my side.

What a great life metaphor. Even though things might be difficult, it’s important to keep moving forward. Take baby steps if necessary. Just keep moving forward.

As time went on, my pain subsided. This time it went much quicker. I felt like my back was actually gaining strength.

In 2006, together with our three children, three dogs, three cats, three fleas and one horse, we hit the road and moved to Tucson, Arizona. At our new home in the foothills near Catalina, we had mesmerizingly beautiful desert trails to walk, right from our front door; complete with coyotes, range cattle, rattlesnakes and Indian ruins. A bit of a contrast to the paved walking trail in Washington. It was lovely. Here’s the good news, I haven’t had a back issue in twenty years.

It seems that almost everyone has had back troubles. But for me, the most compelling back story is that of Jesus. My back pain had no comparison to His. It’s fascinating to me that Jesus, totally submitted to the beating of His back, as part of His sacrifice on our behalf. Scripture declares that “by His stripes we are healed”.

Per my highly evolved research, here’s what happened:

Pilate ordered Jesus to be scourged. This was a HORRIFIC ordeal. Roman law actually wouldn’t allow Roman citizens to undergo it. The victim was stripped of all clothing, then tied to a post with his hands above his head (to stretch the skin to make the wounds worse). The whip had nine leather straps and at the end of each strap were pieces of bone, metal or glass. These would tear into the body with each successive lashing. A gruesome scene; muscles, vital organs and even the spine could often be seen openly. The beating was stopped at either 39 or 40 lashes. Often the victim would fall to the ground unconscious.

This was just part of Jesus’ ordeal. Before the flogging, he was beaten, spit upon and his beard ripped out. After the flogging they drove a crown of 2” sharp long thorns into His head. He was then made to carry a cross (likely 100-150 pounds) but was not able to complete this task and a man named Simon was ordered to carry it. He was then crucified with nails driven through His hands and feet.

So, why was Jesus willing to endure such unimaginable torture? And what does it have to do with you and me? Although it could take volumes of books to answer those profound existential questions, here’s the condensed version.

God is perfect. You and I are not perfect. We all sin to one degree or another, no matter how good we attempt to be. If God allowed a person with sin into heaven it would be like allowing cancer to fester in your body. Like having a fly in your chowder. Heaven is absolutely holy and no sin or evil is allowed there. That being the case, nobody could enter heaven. Except…

God had a brilliant plan. He allowed His son, Jesus, to be the substitute for us. Jesus willingly died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin and offered a free gift of forgiveness and eternal life for you and I. Our part is to accept that forgiveness. To believe and confess that He died and rose from the dead for us. If you haven’t done that, I highly encourage you to. I would love to spend eternity with you dancing with the angels.

If this story was of interest to you, please give a ‘like’. I would also love to hear your comments.

They are all unique. I like to brag about them. It’s fascinating to me that they have far different personalities and skillsets even though they have the same DNA.

Our daughter Jasmine, has a great affinity for special needs children and as a result, obtained a doctorate in Occupational Therapy and works daily with special needs kids. She does such an excellent job she was just awarded ‘employee of the year’ for the school where she works in Kent, WA.

My second son, Joel, decided that real estate was his game. Not really a game though as he has excelled in the field beyond measure. He was recently featured on the front cover article of ‘Top Producers’, a regional real estate publication. He also is an amazing worship leader and songwriter.

For some inexplicable reason, our son Joshua developed an ardent affinity for playing the piano. From an early age, even before he had taken lessons, when he heard a song or melody, he could instantly play it back pretty much note for note. Here’s an intriguing irony: even though my wife Julie didn’t enjoy the eight years of piano lessons she took as a child, she felt in her spirit that Joshua should start taking lessons.

Joshua’s grandma was very fond of classical music and played the violin in several symphonies, so she very much appreciated his fondness for music and helped fund his lessons. Incidentally, his great grandmother, Stella, was a virtuoso opera singer who toured many of the great opera houses of Italy in the 30’s, before she escaped the tyranny of Mussolini.

As Joshua progressed in his piano adventures he started entering various competitions. Although they dragged their feet a bit, we brought his brother and sister, along to attend. Joshua won nearly all of them, as well as winning best composition of the year for his age group, for the State of Washington. One competition he won awarded him the opportunity to play an unbelievable MacDowell piece accompanied by an orchestra at the University of Washington.

When it came time to think about college, Joshua was quite intent on going to a prestigious music conservatory. His teacher thought it would be a stretch for him as his music studies only began in earnest when he was around ten years old, about five years behind his contemporaries. Not to be deterred, he applied to three schools: Eastman, Peabody and Oberlin. The primary acceptance criteria was to audition before a panel of judges.

Julie flew with him to his Oberlin audition in Ohio. I flew with him to the other two. When we were flying to Peabody Music Conservatory, in Baltimore, because of nasty storms, the plane had to divert and fly extra hours before landing. When we finally landed and dragged our way to our hotel room it was like 1:00 in the morning. Nothing like spending the day in the friendly skies. Unfortunately, his audition was early the next morning. Being a bit jet-lagged and sleep-deprived, that audition was challenging.

The next audition was at Eastman School of Music, in Rochester, New York. This time our flight was smooth, and we had plenty of time to rest. After breakfast we went to the school for his audition. It was comprised of three professor/judges who listen to the candidates play a few memorized complex pieces. They are then given sheet music of a new piece to see how well they can sight-read; play it instantaneously. The decision of the judges was the primary basis for being offered admittance as well as any scholarship offers. Just a little stressful.

As I was waiting in the hall outside the studio, I spoke with several other candidates waiting for their auditions. One was from Turkey, one from South Korea, one from Japan. It turned out that these were some of the best foreign student pianists that Joshua was competing against. I would have freaked, but he seemed to be in his element. Just chillin’.

The short version was that he chose Eastman, which also offered him a wonderful scholarship. And soon, with much trepidation, we sent our first-born child off to a faraway part of the country to college. One side benefit was that we liked to travel to Toronto in those days, so we would see Joshua in Rochester, then drive through Niagara Falls to Toronto.

In 2005, I was involved with some real estate projects in Sahuarita, Arizona. Somehow, I came up with the highly evolved idea of having Joshua perform a concert there. Joshua was all for it and the management of the development where we were building houses, Rancho Resort, thought it was a great idea. Many of our new homeowners were excited about the idea, so what was originally a random thought, caught sail and became a reality. We booked the large meeting room at Rancho Resort, when Joshua would be on break from college, and booked our tickets from Seattle to Tucson. Wow! Things were really grooving. Or so we thought.

The family was excited to have a nice Spring break in Southern Arizona. Our flight was with Delta Airlines with a brief layover in Salt Lake City. We looked forward to stretching our legs a bit in the Salt Lake City Airport. We were also hoping we wouldn’t get mugged by too many Mormon missionaries.

As we exited the plane and entered the terminal, I looked for the gate information for our next flight, which was supposed to be within the hour. When I didn’t see anything on the reader board, I finally found the line at the Delta customer service desk. Not one with much patience for waiting in lines, I was a bit perplexed when I eventually got to the desk.

“Hi there,” I said, “I couldn’t see our flight listed on the reader board; which gate is our flight to Tucson?” Looking at her computer she cavalierly replied, “Oh, that flight’s been cancelled.” Me- “Cancelled? What the heck. And why? Ok, when is the next one?” Without batting an eye or showing any remorse she said, “So sorry, but the next one is not for three days.”

“Three days!!?? How can you leave us stranded for three days?” I was getting livid. After checking with the other airlines, I found that no flights from any airlines were flying to Tucson for the rest of the day, even with layovers. Joshua’s concert was the next day. This was beyond disconcerting. We even had a recording tech lined up to record the concert. What to do, besides have a temper tantrum?

That’s when I came up with one of my patented highly evolved ideas. I called my business partner in Tucson and after a brief discussion, the plan came into place. I love it when plans come together, especially world-changing ones. I gathered the fam together for a nice scrumptious bite to eat in one of the airport restaurants and then we strolled over to the general aviation terminal.

Soon, a gentleman came up to us and asked us if we were the Pielemeiers? The kids looked at me with funny quizzical look on their faces. Upon my acknowledgement, he escorted us outside to a plane waiting on the tarmac. A small private jet.

The kids looked at me like I was crazy (little do they know how true that is). The gentleman that greeted us turned out to be the captain. He welcomed us to the flight and invited us to jump in. Before getting in, we all looked over the plane from front to back. Our plane! Wow! Our private plane. A jet no less. We climbed in and settled ourselves into the luxurious leather seats. We were royalty. For a day.

The next day Joshua’s concert was a smashing success with over two hundred enthusiastic attendees. He got a sterling standing ovation. The CD was well-recorded, of which we still have copies. Many people have been blessed by it. What appeared to be a disaster became an incredible memorable moment for all of us. God truly turned the lemon into lemonade.

I love it the way God loves on us; takes care of us. By the way, He loves you as well with His all-consuming love. I pray that He will give you a wonderful surprise, like He did my family. That He would blow your socks off. Wouldn’t that be something. God bless you.

Having traveled two days from the US to Hyderabad, we were totally exhausted. This was our third continent. Definitely wasted.

But unfortunately, our itinerary wasn’t quite complete. We still had a five-hour drive to our destination, Ongole, India. To further compound our exhaustion, we were in a time zone that was like, twelve hours different from our own. We were wandering around the airport in respective stupors. Zombies.

This was my second time leading a group for a mission trip to India. Included in this team was my former pastor from Washington as well as my fourteen-year-old daughter, Jasmine. Apparently, the mission the previous year was a success, as I was invited to bring a team back. Though tired, I was super pumped.

To add to our walking-dead exhaustion, we were missing a critical piece of luggage. Jasmine had brought some large worship flags and had packed them in a large fishing pole tube. It was oversize, so it wasn’t with the other luggage. So, where the heck was it?

Not only wasn’t it with the rest of the luggage, but it also wasn’t in the oversized luggage area either. How could such a large object just disappear? Probably missed the transfer in Munich? Dead on my feet, I were just about to forget about it, but then, at the very last minute, there it was, somehow, all alone in the oversize area. Wanting to be reunited with us. Thank God for minor miracles!

Our driver took us through the familiar streets of Hyderabad, and we got re-acquainted with the unforgetable blasting music of the multiple car horns clamoring for attention from all directions. Fortunately, we didn’t hit a sacred cow like we did last time. The scent of sweet incense permeated, or rather polluted the air, nearly making me nauseous. Somehow, we survived and made it to Ongole. Were we ready for the pastor conference, scheduled to begin the next morning? Not a chance.

Besides the three- day pastors’ conference, we had agreed to do two separate three-day, what they call ‘Jesus festivals’. At the Jesus festivals an Indian worship team would start things out with their unique Indian worship. After the worship, Jasmine would do improvised worship dancing using the large flags that we almost lost. She would do one dance to an Indian worship song then one to a Western worship song. I’m sure it was the first time the folks there had seen anything like this. She had to use really large flags as the crowds were large and small ones couldn’t be seen from the long distance to the rear of the crowd.

The final Jesus festival we did was mind-blowing as each night the crowds grew. Once again, they came in on trucks, buses, but mostly from tractors pulling open air trailers filled with sweet Indian people, primarily the ‘untouchables’. It was mind-blowing to see them coming in on trailers from distant villages to attend our meetings. They sat quietly on the grass of the soccer field.

By the time the third night came, our host estimated that there were around fifteen thousand people in attendance. I took some time to walk through the crowd; it seemed to stretch out forever. Many of the women were adorned in colorful, beautiful sarees.

It was difficult to read the crowd. What were they thinking was going to happen? Why did they come?

I was the speaker that final night. Foremost on my mind, how does one communicate effectively with these lovely people? We come from entirely different cultures. They knew nothing about America. Surely, they had never heard of Jesus or the Bible.

What is the best way to share the gospel? To truly reach them? It was also challenging to speak with an interpreter. I sometimes wondered whether he translated my words correctly.

I felt led to share parts of my own life story, including stories about some of my pets and farm animals. For example, they enjoyed the story I told of my sister getting butted through the wood fence by our ram. She had gone into his pen looking for something she had lost there. While bending over to pick it up, the ram had a great rear end target and couldn’t resist what rams like to do.

The story that captured their attention the most was that of our little dog, Muffin. It goes like this: One day, for some inexplicable reason, a family member took Muffin out to pee, and while waiting, attached Muffin’s leash to the passenger door handle on my Jeep Cherokee and then went back inside. Unfortunately, they then forgot all about Muffin.

I didn’t know anything about this and had to drive into town. Making sure no children were nearby; I carefully backed my jeep out onto the driveway. I had no idea Muffin was attached to the car (nobody had ever done this before) and I couldn’t see anything on that side of the car.

The next part of this scenario is R rated, so don’t get freaked out. I pulled out of our rather long driveway and then started driving toward town on a road with a speed limit of 35 mph. It wasn’t long before I was traveling at that speed. Suddenly someone in a car coming from the opposite direction dramatically gestured to me to pull over.

What? I had no idea why all the drama, but I complied with his suggestion. When I stopped and walked around the car I nearly fainted. I couldn’t believe it. Muffin was a bloody carcass. I ever so gently picked her up and found that she was still breathing. Oh my gosh. I called home on my cell phone and started screaming, “Who tied Muffin to my car?”

Everyone at home started screaming and crying. It was quite the morning.

I rushed Muffin to our vet who subsequently referred us to a veterinary hospital. Long story short - after a few days and a few thousand dollars little Muffin came home bandaged up like a mummy. Only her eyes were visible. But she was miraculously alive and fortunately lived many more years.

Back to India - I used the story of Muffin as a picture of what happened to Jesus, the Lamb of God. He was innocent, like Muffin, but suffered beatings and piercings and ultimately death on the cross. But unlike Muffin, Jesus understood his plight and did it willingly, offering His life as a sacrifice for the salvation of all that call on His name.

The response on that last night of the festival was mind-blowing. Literally thousands were birthed into the Kingdom. Their lives were forever changed. You could literally sense the Presence of God over the crowd.

If it were possible, what happened next was even more of a mindblower. James, my Indian host, came to me and said, “Jim, I want to make an altar call for those that feel in their hearts that they have a call to full-time ministry. I have a sense that there will be forty people that will respond. Is that okay with you?”

Of course it was ok with me. He then went to the microphone and carefully explained what he was proposing; that those who responded, would from that moment on, be engaged in a demanding and unpopular (very likely persecuted) calling (90% of Indians are Hindus that do not like Christians).

Guess what? Forty people responded. These were individuals that had only been saved for a half hour or so. This was very foreign to my Western mindset. They had just committed to a possible lifelong new journey.

My commitment to James was that we would help pay for their training. With their families they all temporarily relocated to Hyderabad and underwent three months of intensive training. They were then sent to various villages to open new churches and start their ministries.

I later heard from James a number of times about how they were doing. He told me stories about how they were truly doing the Lord’s work, establishing village churches, ministering to the widows and poor and seeing healing miracles. The last I heard there were still 38 of them in the field doing wonderful Kingdom things.

All of this was beyond surreal to me. I’m not overly talented in public speaking or in leading a team like this. But it seems that God doesn’t care. If one is willing to take a chance and respond to His leadings, He will use it and magnify it for His glory. I found that He’ll use anyone that is willing and obedient.

In our time there, we also visited a children’s home, for special needs children, part of our host’s ministry. Of all the exciting things we did there, visiting this home was the apex of our time there for Jasmine.

She loved the children. I believe it was life-changing for her as she actually went back to India a couple of times on her own, at her own expense, to take care of children. I believe this sparked something in her spirit, as she eventually earned her doctorate in occupational therapy in order to work with special needs kids, which she is doing now, at the time of this writing, in the Kent school district in Washington.

Here’s why this story is such a mindblower. To me at least. It all started when I felt I heard God whisper “orphans” to my spirit, as told in my previous Substack story, ‘The Whisper’. I then was led to random scriptures about children. Then a minister sang a powerful spontaneous song to me about children. She had no idea I was seeking the Lord about orphans.

Evan though I was totally slow to respond to God’s prompting and needed multiple confirmations, here’s what transpired, in spite of me:

A ministry for orphan children called ‘Legacies of Life’ was birthed. With a wonderful Indian partner, ultimately forty children were rescued and are now adults living wonderful productive lives in India.

Stemming from my orphanage work in India, I was twice invited to lead a team to go to India to teach pastors and lead crusades. The Lord brought thousands into the Kingdom through those efforts.

Forty men were invited to become pastors, and forty churches were started in forty villages. Forty villages forever changed. There’s something about the number ‘forty’.

My daughter caught the vision of helping special needs children. She does such an amazing job at her school district; she was just named employee of the year for the entire school. She is helping countless special needs children every week.

To me this is beyond amazing. You may say that I’m totally in left field, but I happen to believe that all of this can be traced back to ‘the whisper’. What I’m trying to say is, if God can use a dunce like me, He can use anybody. This is the Holy roar of the Lion of Judah.

I encourage you to spend intimate time with the Lord. During these times I’m confident He will share divine secrets with you. Things spoken from Holy Spirit to your spirit.

Comments and ‘likes’ are more than appreciated. Thank you.

So, what does one do in that kind of scenario? I managed a barter office for a while but the shekels it was providing didn’t light up life much for Julie and me. Fortunately, I then had another of my famous patented highly evolved ideas; maybe think about a career change, possibly into securities (stocks and bonds).

Charging ahead with that idea, I applied at Dain Bosworth and Merrill Lynch. Their application processes were drastically and divergently different. At Dain, one of the primary application tools they used was a 150-question personality profile test that was actually written in the 1950’s. One reoccurring question on the test, written in different ways, in an attempt set a trap was, ‘Have you ever lied?’ They knew you were lying just by saying “no”. The office manager later told me that my personality profile was the most evolved that they had ever seen (that’s a possible lie).

The Merrill Lynch approach was to send me to an office in Seattle where I was given a cubicle and desk and told to play the part of a stockbroker for a couple of hours. There were fifteen people in the room, and I was told that only the top two would progress to the next level of the application process. As part of the simulation, there was ‘news’ rolled out on a tv and some research that was made available to us. A bit of insider information was also passed along.

We then had to field calls from prospective ‘customers’. The critical part was making sure that no insider information was used to make sales, but at the same time sales were critical. Quickly utilizing the research and news was key. It was an exhausting exercise. Apparently, I made the cut and was able to move on to the rest of the application process. My highly esteemed acting skillset obviously helped me play the role.

The next step was an interview with the manager of the Bellingham office. How outta-sight was that! It looked like things were moving forward. When I walked into his office, I learned that he was formerly a lieutenant in the army; a no-fun-and-games kind of guy. A Vietnam vet. He was courteous but quite direct.

I felt like I was totally scoring on the interview. I was in a groove, until he asked me, “What do you think is your weakest trait?” What an absurd question. I knew I had no weak traits whatsoever. But I had to come up with something, so I said, “Well, I’m kind of a ‘nice’ guy.” “In that case”, he responded dismissively, “this interview is over. We don’t have room for ‘nice’ guys in this office”.

Whoa. I wasn’t expecting that response. Did I paint myself into a corner? After a few seconds my response to him was, “Well, because I know I’m a nice guy, I can use that to my advantage. Once people open up to me, they start to trust me and we can do business. Kind of like coming in the back door.” Apparently, that answer worked. I was hired. I was now part of his little platoon.

The next step was a required two-month training program conducted in NYC. Unfortunately, I had to leave Julie alone in the old farmhouse, taking care of the dogs, cats and horses, all while attempting to keep our uninsulated house warm with green firewood.

While I was enjoying the entertaining ambience of the Roosevelt Hotel in New York, she was pioneering it in our shack of a house in the inclement weather of NW Washington. Fortunately, her father decided to come up and help her around the house most of the time I was gone. What a blessing that was.

My introduction to NYC was going to a delightful little deli. Once inside, I took my place in line and watched with wonder at the clerk-to-customer interactions. “Wha ya wan?” the clerk would yell at the next person in line. When a bagel was ready, the counterman would literally throw it across the room to the customer who would hopefully catch it and then eat standing up, as there was no seating. How charming. I could now see why everyone loves NYC.

It so happened that we were acquainted with an affluent family from the San Juan Islands in Washington State and one of the family members lived in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. As she was a native New Yorker, I thought she could ‘show me the ropes’ (whatever that means) of NYC.

She was more than happy to do that, and we decided to take in a show. Never having experienced a NY Broadway show before, I was quite blown away. For her it was just another day in town. And then, in a wildly generous show of hospitality, she suggested that sometime before I left NYC I could come out to her place for a bit of dinner. How gracious of her.

We arranged a mutually workable date and seeing as I was counting pennies, when the day came, I decided to take the subway. This would be a new experience for me. I was apprehensively excited about the experience. Experience the typical daily life of New Yorkers. How groovy was that.

I had heard that there were the occasional violent acts in the subway. But what the heck, I’m super macho. Not to worry. With a little novice navigating I finally found the fine subway station. I was like, totally making progress.

I got my ticket and proudly walked through the toll, acting like I knew what I was doing. Boy, was I fooling them. The subway train soon came along, almost on schedule. What’s wrong with all these people making accusations about the NY subway. It was fine. I got in and mingled as much as I could with the locals. Little did they know I was just a country boy trying to fit in.

I pretty much avoided any eye contact. Anyway, it was a great new experience for me. It wasn’t long before I got off at my stop. Just like a local. “This is a breeze,” I thought. I totally knew what I was doing.

Or did I? Somehow something didn’t feel right. What was it? I couldn’t put my finger on it. I thought I had this all figured out.

And then this…

I found myself on the landing surrounded by young African American men. Not looking too kindly upon me. I then noticed something interesting; I had gotten off at the Harlem station, not my Upper Eastside destination. In those days Harlem was not like it is now. Not the gentrified Harlem of today. This was the day when, if you’re white, you’re not all that welcome.

How the heck did I make that kind of stupid mistake. I thought I was grooving. I was definitely out of my element here. I could tell I wasn’t the most popular guy on the platform. And then if things weren’t strange enough…

A sudden motion in my peripheral vision. A young black man comes racing onto the platform from my right, at a high rate of speed. Then, just as quickly, he warp-speeds off the platform to my left. Wow. What was that all about? Everybody watched him come. Everyone watched him go. Maybe that was normal here, but it was rather bizarro to me.

Then the weirdest thing yet. Two cops come running onto the platform from my right, just like the young black man. Suddenly they stop on the platform, quickly scan the crowd, and shout, “Which way did he go?”

Being the highly evolved man that I am, I like to do the good citizenship thing as much as possible, so I quickly chimed in, “He went that way!” as I pointed to my left. The officers immediately book it out of there at a high rate of speed. What a great card-carrying civic citizen I was.

Boy was I proud of my quick contribution to the officers. For a few seconds anyway.

As soon as the cops disappeared, every eye on the platform turned on me. I quickly surveyed the crowd. It didn’t take me long to see that these eyes were not filled with love or respect, but the antonym thereof. Around a dozen young men. Angry men. With metaphorical knives. At least I think they were metaphorical.

Almost as if choreographed, in unison, they started moving slowly in my direction. Could have been part of a Broadway production, but this was real life.

I was no longer so proud of my civic contributions. My necktie was my only defensive weapon. If I thought I wasn’t popular when I first got off the subway, the feeling now was magnified a hundred times. Was I going to end up on the tracks crushed by the next train. Apparently, showing the cops where the fugitive went, wasn’t one of my most evolved ideas.

What would Julie think if I was sent back to Washington in boxes? This was not just tense; it was bordering on scary. I was surrounded by angry men. I was the only white person on the landing. The word ‘plight’ came to my mind. What might be my plight?

But then…

I heard an interesting sound. It was a loud vibrational roaring, followed by a screeching. An awful obnoxious sound. Normally. In this case it was the sound of music.

The next train was in sight, coming in for a landing. My rescue was at hand. With great anticipation, I watched the train come to a complete stop. The doors burst open. I gingerly stepped forward and put my foot into the car. Fortunately, I was able to board in one piece. My journey to the Upper Eastside could now continue, although not without my heart rate reaching the moon. Quite the afternoon!

I actually don’t blame those on the platform for their attitude. There had long been a sordid history of racial injustice in the city. The anger and hate had been building for years. This time, as I was in the minority, I could certainly empathize with them.

Those young men just needed the love of Jesus. He loves them (and all of us) so much. The enemy had blinded them to their true purpose and calling.

It’s interesting that a few years later I participated in an event at Madison Square Garden, called Good News New York hosted by Rodney Howard Brown. I saw many young NYC people come to know the Lord at that time.

I’m just happy to report that all ended up well with me (Thank you Jesus!). Maybe not so much for the subway fugitive. Once again, I have to thank my Lord Jesus and His numerous angels for protecting me and leading me.

Any kind of token of love, for example a ‘like’ would be much appreciated. God bless you.

Imagine life with two reality options. Two different worlds. World A. World B. Opposite ends of the spectrum. That was my situation.

Here’s my unbelievable story.

I’ve been told that the many years ago that it took place, my birth at the Swedish Hospital in Seattle, wasn’t an easy one. That makes total sense in light of the challenging (I prefer ‘complex’) person I became.

To mitigate the situation to some degree, the doctors gave my mother some kind of knock-out drug. As I was growing up, always pushing the envelope, I imagine that she often wished she had access to that same knock-out drug.

Too bad. With a son like me, who could really blame her. After enjoying my sweet, lovely older sister, Joanie, for a couple years, she had no idea what she was asking for when she asked God for a little baby boy.

After the birth, as my mother was slowly coming out of her drug-induced happy-place, the nurses brought in her newborn baby. “What a beautiful, beautiful baby,” she thought to herself. “Such wonderful eyes. And its nose. It’s just perfect. The perfect baby. This makes me so happy.” As she held it and coddled it, she took off its baby wrap.

A big mistake.

With a bit of uncertainty and hesitancy in her voice, she addressed the nurses, “Uhm…hello nurses. You know… Uhm, I’m so sorry to inconvenience you, but I thought I had a baby boy?” “No,” the nurses said with the confidence of concrete, “This is your baby.”

With understandable confusion and concern, my mom answered, “But I’m pretty sure that I had a boy. I think I remember seeing his little ‘thing’. Could you please go back and check? Please? I’m just pretty sure I had a boy. Can you please do that for me?”

After a certain amount of debate, the nurses reluctantly left my mother’s room with the baby. Needless to say, my mother was becoming quite anxious and disquieted about the situation. More knock-out drug please.

Finally, after a few minutes, the nurses returned, this time with a different baby. “How about this one?” they said, cavalierly handing off the new baby to my mom.

My mother took the baby and looked it over carefully. After determining that this baby was in fact a boy, and although not nearly as cute and beautiful as the first baby, my mother reluctantly claimed it as her own. “This is my baby” she exclaimed. “This is definitely my baby!”

And, in fact, that was me. And that is how I started life in this world. Thank God life is full of second chances. After only being alive around ten minutes, I already got my first second chance.

The nurses didn’t listen to me when I was trying to tell them, “I want my mommy! My real mommy!” (this by way of my very first crying temper tantrum). Fortunately, the real mommy and the real baby were joyfully united and lived happily ever after. Well, that’s not quite true, but they’re nice words to say.

The nurses were not all that remorseful, as though it was a common occurrence. I mean, a baby is a baby, right?

I was ever so close to entering an alternate reality.

One question that has bothered me my entire life; did my temporary mother nurse me? If so, did that affect my personality? Can I blame my challenges on her?

This situation triggered several other questions to my highly evolved, ever-inquisitive, always active mind. Did the mother of the other baby know that she nearly ended up with a less-cute baby boy instead of a charmingly cute little girl? Had she taken the knock-out drugs as well?

Here’s a thought; did the nurses give the knock-out drugs to mothers in order to switch babies as some kind of devious plot? To wreak havoc on world order?

What would my life have been like being raised in another family? If the girl had ended up in my family maybe it would have been preferable, as then there would have been three girls and three boys. Even.

Maybe my ‘other’ family was totally rich. What would life have looked like then?

Being as supremely highly evolved as I am, I decided to do a little deep dive research on this subject.

I found that such a switch occurs extremely rarely, but it does happen. Here’s a few totally exciting examples that I found:

• In 1951, at a hospital in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, the babies of Mary Miller and Kay McDonald were accidentally switched. Mary Miller immediately suspected that a switch had occurred, as the baby she received weighed a full two pounds less than at the hospital. Mary Miller knew Kay McDonald, and assumed that it was their baby she had taken home. However, discouragement from her husband kept Mary from actively pursuing her suspicion for 43 years, when she revealed to the now grown girls, Sue McDonald and Martha Miller, what she suspected of their births. Genetic tests later confirmed that a switch did in fact occur. The story was featured on an episode of the radio show This American Life.^[9][10]

• In 1953, at Pioneer Memorial Hospital in Heppner, Oregon, two babies were switched. In May 2009, the women discovered they were switched. DeeAnn Angell of Fossil and Kay Rene Reed of Condon learned about the mistake from an 86-year-old woman who was a former neighbor. The former neighbor said that one of the girls’ mothers, Marjorie Angell, insisted back in 1953 that she had been given the wrong baby after nurses returned from bathing them. But her concerns were ignored. With both sets of parents dead, the Reed and Angell siblings compared notes and family stories, learning that rumors of a mix-up had been around for years. Kay Rene Reed decided to get their DNA tested, and that confirmed the mistake. They both say they just have to move forward with their lives now, and they celebrated their latest birthday together.

• In March 1953, at San-Ikukai Hospital in Tokyo’s Sumida Ward, hospital staff mistook a baby boy for another baby boy born 13 minutes later. This story was referred to as the tale of the Japanese “prince and pauper.” Sixty years later, a 60-year-old Japanese truck driver discovered he was switched at birth after being born to a rich family. The man was raised by a single mother in a 100-square-foot apartment. The boy who was raised in his place by the rich family became the president of a real estate company.

• In the mid 1950s, Richard Beauvais and Eddy Ambrose were born hours apart in a small, municipally run rural hospital in Arborg, Manitoba, and then sent home with the wrong parents. In 2021, members of their family did DNA testing and discovered the switch. Their story was featured in The New York Times in 2023.^[14]

• In 2001, it was reported that a 35-year-old woman from the Canary Islands had discovered that she was one of a set of identical twins and that she had been accidentally switched at birth with another girl. She grew up as an only child, until a friend of her twin mistook her for being that twin. The person was shocked by the striking similarity in appearance and summoned them together. They took a DNA test, which proved they were identical twins. The twin who had grown up thinking that another girl was her twin said that the girl she thought was her twin looked nothing like her. Since the women were born in a state hospital, they sued the government for damages.

• In 1992, it was discovered that Canadians Brent Tremblay and Marcus Holmes had been switched at birth 21 years earlier. The error was discovered when Brent and his identical twin George Holmes met each other at Carleton University in Ottawa. The Children’s Aid Society of Ontario later settled with the families involved.^[17]

• In 1975, at least two known cases occurred in Norway House, Manitoba, of babies being switched at birth at the Norway House Hospital: Luke Monias and Norman Barkman,^[18] and Leon Swanson and David Tait Jr.^[19] Both pairs of boys were from the same small communities, and had been lifelong friends of their switch-mates before learning of the switches only in the mid-2010s.

• In 1978, Kimberly Mays and Arlena Twigg were switched at birth as a result of a medical error in a hospital in Wauchula, Florida;^[20] the events surrounding their case were subsequently dramatized as the TV movie Switched at Birth.

• The sons of two South African women, Margaret Clinton-Parker and Sandra Dawkins, were accidentally switched at birth in 1989; the women sued in the High Court of South Africa in Johannesburg in 1995, demanding damages of ZAR120,000 each from the government of the province of Gauteng for the error.^[25] Later that year, they were awarded damages to cover medical expenses and the future projected costs of visiting their biological children.^[26][27] Each family kept the child they had been living and raised them as their own even after learning of the switch. That was until one of the boys, Robin, at the age of 15, decided to leave Sandy Dawkins to go and live with his biological mother Margaret Clinton-Parker. The boys spent the remainder of their childhood living as brothers.^[28]

So, as attested by these anecdotes, it certainly does happen. But ever so rarely.

The interesting thing is that there is no mention of babies of the opposite sex being switched. Maybe I would have been the first! How bizarre would that have been when each family found out years later that their birth child wasn’t the sex of the child they raised.

What would they do with with such a revelation? Can you imagine it?

Imagine they somehow discovered the mistake when each child was like, seventeen? What would they do? Switch? I don’t think so.

So there it is. That’s my alternate reality story.

This was the first of many bizarre situations I’ve experienced over my lifetime. It must have been some kind of presage, portend or prognostication of future events that would eventually unfold in my life.

I’m certainly glad that the knock-out drug was wearing off and my mom was cognizant enough and tough enough to claim me and get me into the family that I was designed to be in. Although I’m sure she likely regretted many times, as the years went by, not claiming the cute little girl baby.

Incidentally, I have five siblings that, although not as highly evolved as I am, all have similar looks to mine, so I’m confident that I ended up in the right place.

I believe that each of us are created by God for our unique purpose in this world and our family is a big part of that. In fact, it blows my mind how thoughtful and wonderful God’s plan is for families.

No matter what your family history is, it is good to be thankful. Thankful for the positive things that happened in your family. No matter what your family history is, you were created as the unique person that you are. You were called for such a time as this. You have a wonderful purpose and destiny.

I recommend that you give praise and honor to God for your God-given life.

Thank you for reading my story. ‘Likes’ are always appreciated.

In my previous story, ‘Killed in the Market’, I share the harrowing experience of my week as the interim office manager of the Bellingham, WA Merrill Lynch office. It so happened, that on the first day of my new assignment, the stock market had a catastrophic collapse, the worst percentage drop in history.

This was Black Monday, October 19th, 1987. I had to comfort and console not only my clients, but also that of my co-workers, who were away on a company awarded trip to Hawaii. Many clients were scared, nearly hysterical, about losing so much money in just a few hours. Worldwide losses were over $1.7 trillion (over $4 trillion in 2026 dollars).

As you might imagine, this was extremely challenging. Fortunately God was with me and carried me through the day.

A few months later, something memorable happened, a welcome antithesis to the previous months…

Merrill lynch recognized some of my good work, and I was awarded a trip for two to Carmel & Pebble Beach. How outta-sight was that! So, despite all the multiple ramifications of the negative bear market, there was fortunately, a silver lining for me.

Time for a VACATION!!! Yes and hallelujah. After sorting through the fallout of the market, it was certainly time for a break.

Together with fifteen-month-old Joshua, we flew into San Jose and decided to rent a Cadillac and live the ‘Life of Riley’ for a few days. We drove the Caddy to Carmel by the Sea where we checked into our elegant resort, The Inn at Spanish Bay, which was part of my award (2026 room prices $1280/night). I hadn’t had the luxury of staying in such an elegant resort before. We felt like royalty. I guess we are royalty; King’s kids.

The next day I took part in a golf tournament at Pebble Beach, one of the most famous golf courses in the world. It certainly lived up to its reputation. Each hole had spectacular ocean views. Just walking the course was unbelievably captivating and enthralling.

Fortunately, the tournament was a scramble format. At each hole the players tee off and then go to the location of the best-placed ball. At that location, each player of the four person team, places their ball there and swings their respective clubs. They then again go to the location of the best placed ball and continue this protocol through all eighteen holes.

As I’m such a highly evolved Happy Gilmore type golfer, I was happy that the scramble program was used. I was super pumped that my ball was the best-placed a few times and I don’t think I lost more than a dozen balls. In my opinion, the day was a smashing success. My teammates were duly impressed with my creative use of golf clubs.

After Carmel-by-the Sea we went to the fish markets of Monterey. We were super excited about the possibility of eating at one of the quaint seaside seafood cafes. But apparently that was not in the grand scheme of things. As soon as we sat down, dear little Joshua would start stirring up a fuss. Too much fuss. We tried another restaurant. Same thing. That being the case, we canned the restaurant idea and starting walking around.

We had Joshua on a leash and he decided to lead us around. A fifteen month old toddler leading his parents to random undefined destinations. Probably a precursor to his eventual take-charge personality. After living so many years without children, new dynamics were certainly challenging, but worth it of course. We ended up grabbing some fish sandwiches and eating while walking. Transitory ambience.

Our last stop was a brand-new Marriot in San Jose. We got great grand-opening prices. It was a beautiful hotel, but the property didn’t compare to The Inn at Spanish Bay. Being inland somewhat, the temperatures were higher in San Jose; 103 in fact. Being from the Pacific Northwest, we certainly weren’t accustomed to that.

As we were checking out, I started the car to get it cooled off, being the ever-so-thoughtful husband and father that I was. We finally got our luggage out the door, all ready to load up.

I like it when a plan comes together. I put Joshua in the car, out of the heat, and turned around to grab the luggage. I then heard an interesting clicking sound…

I turned around and saw Joshua standing up on the driver’s seat behind the steering wheel. Seeing as the motor was running, I didn’t think that was the greatest idea, so I opened the car door. Or tried to open it anyway. Didn’t work. Apparently, it was locked. Joshua had found the button to electronically lock all of the doors. Even though I had an older luxury car back home, a Jaguar, it didn’t have the electronic door locking feature.

I gestured to Joshua and spoke to him through the car window, trying to explain that he had locked the car. I used super creative mime-like gestures to further augment my communications. His response was to grab the steering wheel and happily jump up and down while standing on the seat. Seeing as this was his first chance behind the wheel of a luxury car, he wanted to make the most of it. Big smiles.

While I was standing in the 100 degree heat, he was cooling it in the car. Obviously, he was the smart one. I kept gesturing to him. He kept ignoring me. As I looked in on him, I couldn’t help worrying that his next step might be to grab the gear shift and take off. Wouldn’t that be a trip. Literally. Right into the hotel lobby.

The bellman noticed the predicament and came over to see if he could help. So thoughtful of him. Then a few other hotel employees started gathering around to see what they might be able to do. As the crowd started growing around the car, I could see Joshua starting to freak a bit, although he does like an audience. Still does.

He was still standing behind the steering wheel bouncing up and down. The windows were all tightly rolled up, so no room to put wires in to unlock a door. I thought about breaking a window, but thanks to my highly evolved mind, decided that would not be a great idea. This was becoming a great conundrum (I have to admit, I love that word). Apparently, Joshua liked the Cadillac and wanted it all to himself.

This was evolving into an epic surreal scene. Not unlike many of the interesting misadventure dramas left behind on our life trail. Our tiny toddler terrorist was at the center of it all. Our dream vacation was beginning to descend into a nasty nightmare. People were surrounding the car on all sides, many with inane suggestions. All talking at once. What a circus.

On top of all of the drama, we had a plane to catch. But apparently little Joshua didn’t care. He was having too much fun, and probably realized he was everyone’s entertainment for the day.

To add to the chaotic chaos, we suddenly heard sirens. Loud sirens. Getting louder by the minute. Suddenly a police car pulled into the hotel parking lot. Fortunately, they turned the screaming sirens off. Two policemen worked their way through the crowd to our car.

Mr Cop, “Ok, what’s going on here? This kid trying to steal your car?” He was kidding about that. What a kidder.

My highly evolved response, “No officer, he just locked himself in and can’t figure out how to unlock himself. He’s my son and despite what you might think, he’s very smart.” The officer rolled his eyes and went and grabbed a slim jim (ironically, I was quite slim in those days).

It took him about fifteen seconds to silently slip the slim jim in the door and get it unlocked. Whew.

Then this...

He told me he would have to arrest Joshua for disturbing the peace. He would need to put him in handcuffs and arrest him. Bust our toddler? “C’mon officer. No!”

The kidder again. This comical cop could be a stand-up.

We pulled Joshua out of the car, trying not to publicly display our frustration. Everyone clapped (this was the first of dozens of times crowds have clapped for Joshua, as he eventually became a phenomenal piano performer). We put Joshua properly in his car seat. Shook the officers hands and thanked them for their gallant rescue.

We might actually make it to the airport to catch our flight. Nothing like increasing stress levels to new heights. Another adventure.

Recap: After twelve years of infertility, we were given the gift of Joshua, who was born on April Fool’s Day. His arrival was dramatic as has been his life. He was followed by brother Joel and daughter Jasmine, all precious gifts from God. The transition from childlessness to a family with three children was certainly challenging. But without challenges, what’s life? That was part of God’s wonderful plan for us.

They have all become wonderful loving and productive people and all have wonderful spouses. Thank you, Jesus, for your incredible plan for our family. And thank You for the amazing adventures that You’ve brought us through.

Actually, just walking with God is an amazing adventure. I encourage you to invite Him into your life. To walk alongside you. That’s when your adventure begins.

Fall. 1987. I had now been a financial consultant with Merrill Lynch for four fabulous years. Thankfully this was one of the boom times of our life versus the bust time of a few years previously. We had recently purchased a new contemporary house on ten acres outside of Bellingham. Julie had recently given birth to our miracle baby, Joshua. This after twelve years of insipid infertility. Things were good. God was taking care of us.

At work, I was given an interesting new assignment for the week. Because the office manager and most of my fellow brokers were away on a company awarded Hawaii trip, I was assigned the responsibility of interim manager for the week. Seeing as I was relatively new to the business, I’m not sure why he chose me for this assignment. He must have recognized how highly evolved I was.

But I had no idea of the storm that was brewing...

As our office was in the Pacific time zone, I had to be at the office before 7:00 AM, when the stock market opened. This particular Monday, for some eerie reason, I felt like something undefined and strange was going on behind the scenes. I sensed tremors in the financial markets. I could feel it in my bones.

Nevertheless, I sat at my desk, ready to start the week with a resounding bang. But the resounding bang turned into a decidely dull thud. Once the opening bell rang, the market immediately plunged into negative territory. Not just a normal little market dip. No. Down over two percent in the first few minutes. That’s huge.

Usually, the market bounces back and forth; up and down like a cute little yoyo. In this case, it didn’t. It kept dropping. Falling down a bottomless chasm. Now it was down three percent. Four percent. What’s going on?

So here I was, perched in my office chair, watching in unbelief as the ticker tape was dropping dramatically minute by minute. I came to the high revelation that this day wasn’t going to be the bright sunny day that I had anticipated.

I was looking for some kind of recovery. Anything hopeful. Hoping investors would step in, now that the market had dropped. But no recovery was in the cards. The market continued its freefall. Falling. Falling. Falling. No end in sight. I’ld never seen anything like this before.

Who knew where it would land. There was some kind of seismic shift happening. Seemed like the earth was collapsing under my feet. This was an unprecedented situation. Scary. I was getting literal chills.

Naturally, I started getting panic calls from clients. “What should we do, Jim?” My response, “Jump off the nearest cliff.” Obviously kidding, but I also was very anxious. This was my clients’ money. In some cases, their entire life savings. There was real fear in their voices. Many had worked their whole life for their little nest eggs. They were scared. Was this shaping up to be a Humpty Dumpty calamity?

They needed to hear wise and astute counseling. From me. Me, the expert. How the heck was I supposed to know what to do. This was a huge responsibility. The company analysts with their whopping salaries didn’t offer much help. I was on my own. But, in reality, I really wasn’t on my own. “God, I need You!”

There were really only three choices. Sell, before the prices drop even further. Buy, at these seemingly incredible low prices. Or get on the fence and hold fast. But what was the right choice?

It was gut-wrenching. My blood pressure probably popped 300. I did my best to reassure everyone. “Stay calm. Don’t panic. Ride out the storm.” I was fielding calls not only from my clients but also of those of my oblivious co-workers who were likely enjoying Pina Coladas on the beaches of Hawaii.

I walked up and down the hallway, as if this might provide some solace. It actually did seem to calm me a bit. Nearly every minute I would check the clock, anxiously anticipating the market close at 1:00 PM Pacific time. I wanted so badly for this trading session to end. Fortunately, it finally did. But the devastating damage was done.

This was my first ever experience as the interim office manager and of course it came on what is infamously labeled, ‘Black Monday’; October 19^th, 1987. When the dust finally settled, the market plummeted over 22% that day. This was the largest one-day percentage drop in history. Worse than any day of the famous 1929 market crash.

Sadly, at least one Merrill Lynch broker committed suicide that day. At a Merril Lynch office in Miami, one client was so ticked off, he came in a few days later and shot and killed his broker. Many people’s lives were ruined that dark day.

I later learned that on that tumultuous day, investor panic dramatically exacerbated the downward spiral. Hysterical investors. Panic fed panic. There was a literal stampede to exit the market. All sense of rationality fled. Lemmings jumping off the proverbial cliff.

Fortunately, my clients actually faired reasonably well that day, considering the calamity of the market. Since I had historically recommended conservative investments, the volatility wasn’t nearly as severe as it could have been for them.

Over the next few months, my clients actually recovered most, if not all of their losses.

In retrospect, this was one of the biggest challenges I ever had to deal with in the business world. Even though I started to freak a bit, God was with me all along. He kept me level headed and for the most part I was able to provide comfort and reassurance to my extremely worried clients.

If I learned anything that day is that it’s probably not a good idea to put all your trust in money. Money comes. Money goes. Prov 23:5 so poetically states, “riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away like an eagle toward heaven.”

It might make more sense to put your trust in the Giver of life. The One from which everything flows. The One, that no matter what happens in the financial markets, is your true Provider. I Tim 6:17 states, “not to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy.”

I will always remember October 19th, but not so much for that memorable Black Monday, but that our third miracle baby, Jasmine Anastasia, was born seven years later on October 19th. I share the incredible story about Jasmine and our other two miracle babies in my story, ‘Our insufferable, infuriating, insurmountable, infertility battle’.

Thank you for reading. If you got this far, I would say you are super cool. You don’t have to, but a loving ‘like’ would be totally rad. God bless.

1973. The year that brought Roe v. Wade. The end of the Vietnam war. Transitional, turbulent times. The year I transitioned from darkness to light. The year I met the Lord.

Seeing as I was officially an adult now, I was supposed to make what they call ‘mature’ decisions. So, I made a decision that every decision hereafter would be super mature.

That being said, I decided that college wasn’t particularly relevant, so I made the highly evolved decision to drop out, with one quarter to go. Extremely smart move. This led me to the deeply existential realization that to justify my existence I would probably have to do some kind of work. Seriously? Work? Now that I was an adult and mature and all, I guess I had to start getting somewhat serious about these kinds of things.

I was already working as a waiter at night, so I had the entire day open to infinite possibilities. How outta-sight was that!! The whole world was beckoning me.

Julie, my then girlfriend, now my wonderful, witty wife, saw a compelling posting on a bulletin board at the college and excitedly shared it with me. “Work your own hours. Unlimited income. Products everyone loves.” Wow! This could be amazing.

I called the number and set up a meeting. It was incredible. I came away from the meeting with some sample household cleaning products and an unbelievable marketing plan. Not only could I sell the products and make tons of money, but I could recruit others to sell them as well. I would get big time overrides on all their sales! The American dream!! This was totally far-out! With just a little effort I would soon be hauling in barrels of money.

Well, it didn’t take long for my big, beautiful balloon to burst. The products were undoubtedly good quality, but they were expensive. Not easy to sell. I did sell some concrete cleaner to an auto dealer. I was super proud of that. That was about it.

Well, sales might be hard, but I was assured that I would make millions if I recruited and built a nice team. ‘If’ was the pivotal word. Slight problem. Nobody wanted to be recruited. By me at least. So much for my great adventure with Amway.

Realizing I was getting nowhere super-fast, I put my application in with another great iconic American company, Sears & Roebuck. To my great astonishment, I was actually hired. Although hoping I would end up in the lingerie department, I was assigned to the home improvement department, selling plumbing, electrical and such. I actually enjoyed the work and learned quite a bit about home improvement. I was fast becoming a home improvement expert. Toilet seats were my specialty.

Too bad it didn’t last long. Shortly after I got married and right after Christmas, I was given a termination notice. Nothing to do with my work or attitude I was told (I’m sure I was the epitome of a perfect employee); the company was simply scaling back. Never having been scaled before, it was a new and novel experience for me. Not something I wanted to repeat too many times.

Feeling a bit of self-imposed pressure to contribute financially to our newly formed household, I was a bit of a loss as to what to do. But then a random but life-changing event occurred. Julie, not wanting me to be a couch potato so early in life, showed me an ad in the newspaper classifieds. A company was looking to hire a real estate agent. Huh? “I don’t know anything about real estate Julie. What the heck?”

But being the model husband I imagined myself to be, I was willing to consider anything. I set up an appointment and went in to meet the owner/broker of the company, Key West Realty. I thought it a rather odd name considering its location in Bellingham, Washington was like, 4000 miles from Key West, Florida.

The broker was very gracious and thought I could do quite well in the business. He directed me to a real estate school and voila, just like that, I was on my way.

Three months later I was fortunate to graduate (although sadly, no cap and gown). I excitedly came back to the office. I was pumped. I was now a real estate expert. Bring me the buyers. I’ll set the world on fire.

The broker directed me to my new desk. It had a telephone and a three-ring binder containing the listings of the local multiple listing service. “There you go.” he said and walked away. That was it. Humm?

I sat down at my new desk and looked around. I really had no idea what to do. I was now an official real estate agent. No salary. No customers lined up. Time for a reality check. How does all this work, anyway? This wasn’t what I had envisioned. Fortunately, I still had my waiter job to work evenings while starting my real estate career.

But then a highly evolved and brilliant idea came to me. I found that if I called sellers of properties the day after their respective listings expired, I was able to get a few folks to grant me a meeting. I would brainstorm with them as to why their property didn’t sell during the term of the listing. Usually the price was too high (duh), but sometimes a different approach to marketing might make a difference or sprucing up the property a bit more (they now call it ‘staging’).

Although I was an absolute novice, apparently, I fooled some into thinking I was an expert. Before long I started obtaining a few listings, which we then advertised. What do you know, the telephone rang, and I started to get some potential buyers as well. My buyers happily bought and some of my listings actually sold.

This was starting to be kind of fun. Pretty soon I started to get actual checks that I could take to the bank and literally deposit. How exciting was that! And then another something interesting happened.

After a little over a year as an agent, I was approached by an elderly gentleman, the owner of one of the smaller real estate agencies in Bellingham. He asked me if I would consider the possibility of buying his company. I have absolutely no idea why he approached me. Either he thought I was a sucker, or he had heard a little about my so-called ‘successes’. Why wouldn’t he just sell it to the agents in his office?

Julie and I talked it over, prayed, and ultimately decided that this might be a good idea. Who knew where this might lead. So, within a couple of weeks, I found myself to be the proud new owner of a real estate company complete with eight agents and a property management division. Watch out Donald Trump, here I come.

When I walked into the first company sales meeting to be introduced, there were eight sets of eyes glaring at me. How could this upstart twenty-five-year-old kid be their boss when they were much more experienced and older, some over twice my age. “How could this be?” They didn’t say anything. I could feel their questions.

I quickly learned that I had to act the part of being confident and decisive even though I was far from it. Some of the highly evolved executive decisions I made that first year: I sold the property management division (probably because I didn’t like all of the low rent tenants coming into the office to pay their rent); we moved the office from our little downtown storefront location to the 13th floor of the tallest building in town (likely because I was tired of getting parking tickets nearly every day); I took on a couple of highly successful agents that were ten years my senior as partners.

Before long we built the company into the second largest real estate firm in the city. Were we ever rockin’ and rollin’ now. Not long after that, we moved our office again. We bought the building where I had previously gone to church and where Julie and I had gotten married. The church was now my office. I could still sense the wonderful spiritual residue from our time there in the church.

We were obviously in a total groove. We expanded into real estate development and construction. I acquired some rental properties. My agency work evolved into the acquisition and sales of higher valued multi-family and development properties. I was on the verge of entering the real estate tycoon club. Then…

The eighties came. Like a tidal wave. Interest rates soared to eighteen percent. 18%. Those few folks that still qualified to buy a house, or any real estate for that matter, had no interest in signing a loan with those kinds of rates. The few deals I could structure had to make use of very creative financing. What’s more, many of my clients were Canadian and the value of the Canadian dollar had plummeted, so those few remaining buyers I had, vanished. Disappeared.

As you might imagine, things turned dark very quickly. This was not a fun time. Carrying loans on spec houses at 18% was a little on the stressful side, to say the least. The glamour of real estate was fading faster than a shooting star. Hard decisions had to be made.

Sadly, I ended up selling my ownership in the real estate company to my partners. The tycoon club was no longer to be.

One day I was the youngest owner of a real estate company in the city. A promising future. Everyone looked up to me, it seemed. A few years later; nothing. What a juxtaposition. All was lost. My dream evaporated. I grieved. However..

In the midst of all that, I realized God was with me all along (“I will never leave you or forsake you”). He brought us through the most agonizing and difficult of times. Even in the pain and despair, I could sense His love and care for me and Julie. We learned to depend on Him more than we ever had.

Although I did make more mistakes than I care to remember. I felt like He was proud of me. I stepped out and bought a company at age 25 and experienced some manifold blessings during the time I owned the company.

Eccles 3:1 “To everything there is a season.” I went through a variety of seasons that were beyond my control. With His help I was able to weather them without going nuts.

I learned that my value and your value are not dependent on our ‘successes’.

To “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”, makes the Father smile. That’s true success.

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THE WHISPER – PART II – THERE’S MORE

I published my story, ‘The Whisper’, last week, which I find to be quite fascinating, even though I’m the protagonist. Not just any protagonist, but a highly evolved protagonist. In it I reflected on a time in my life where I felt there was something more to unfold. While praying and pondering, I sensed a gentle voice that came to my spirit, uttering the word, “orphans”. Not knowing what that meant, I continued praying and pondering. I was then overwhelmed, when reading the Bible, ‘random’ scriptures about children seemed to jump off the page at me.

On top of that, we went to a church service where a minister sang a beautiful spontaneous song to me about children. Seeing as I’m so highly evolved, I was convinced this might be a God thing.

Based on that, I started a non-profit, Legacies of Life. I met a young man, Abraham, who also had a heart for orphans, and we partnered up to start rescuing orphans in India. A cool aspect to the story was that a real estate project was literally dropped into my lap which provided funding for the children via Legacies of Life. We eventually rescued and raised forty beautiful children that are now happy, productive adults.

All this because I sensed that I heard God whisper a simple word to me, ‘orphans’. To me, this was beyond mind-blowing.

But here’s the thing. The story doesn’t end there.

Just after moving down from the Seattle area to Tucson in 2006, because I was already involved in orphan ministry activity in India, I was introduced to James, a visiting minister from India, who was the overseer of hundreds of small village churches. We immediately hit it off, as he really appreciated my heart for the children we were helping in India. Also, anyone named ‘James’ has to be cool.

Soon after meeting him, I called him one day with a question, “James, I was thinking of participating in a crusade in India led by evangelist Randy Clark. This is an event that you are the sponsor/host of. What do you think about me joining that team?”

His answer was a mind blower.

Rather than join Randy’s team, he suggested that I assemble and lead a separate team that would minister in a different geographical area. He felt strongly that this was a God thing, and that I could do it well. I understood his strategy. More people could potentially be reached by bringing a different team to a different area. Made sense.

I didn’t know what to think. I had never done anything like this before. I wasn’t a ‘licensed’ or ‘professional’ minister, not that I thought that mattered. I had only been on two mission trips myself. One to Latvia/Russia and one to New Delhi, India. But never as a team leader. I had no context of how to do this.

Julie and I prayed about it. Prayed and pondered. Even though my Tucson pastor discouraged me from undertaking such a mission, we felt a release to move forward. Per Nike, ‘just do it’.

This was very exciting! Groovy even. This was definitely my stepping-out-of-the-boat moment.

Despite all my insecurities, I was soon able to put together a team that included, among others, my former pastor from Washington State, as well as my son, Joshua. We had to obtain the necessary visas and put together funding for the mission. But as it is written, “with God, all things are possible”, somehow it all came together. With my mighty turbo-charged team assembled, off we went.

Just getting there was a challenging challenge. It took nearly two days of flying to finally arrive at Hyderabad and then another five hours of driving before we reached our destination of Ongole, on the sea of the Bay of Bengal. Not sitting in First Class, especially for my 6‘5” pastor (former NFL player with a New York Jets Superbowl ring) was a challenging trial for us. Cramped up legs for two days. Suffering for Jesus.

As exhausted as we were, a pastor’s conference was scheduled to begin the next day with our team conducting it.

Driving in the cities of India is a very special and unique experience. You wouldn’t want to miss it. The car horn is the absolute favorite accessory for drivers there. Every driver uses their horn at all times. It’s loud. It’s musical. Not exactly trombones and trumpets, but horns, nevertheless. Would make a great avante-guard recording.

The ebb and flow of traffic was a mindblower. Large trucks and buses, rickshaws, motorcycles and bicycles. Sometimes a single bicycle would have an entire family lodged precariously on them, defying all laws of physics. Like some kind of circus act.

Combine that with the numerous pedestrians with their own individual walking patterns and the odd wandering cow, you had quite the potpourri of travelers.

Fortunately, we had a driver assigned to us that understood the unique rhythms of the roads of India, although we did hit a cow once. Fortunately, it got up off the ground, shrugged it off, and went on its merry way. Otherwise, the driver may have been hauled off to jail for killing a sacred cow.

There were around a hundred pastors in attendance at the conference. Never having done something like this before, I was wondering what could I say that would be beneficial to these sweet pastors. I don’t recall what I taught on but despite me being me, the Lord came through and they told us that it was life-changing for them. Praise God that He can use totally unqualified people for His purposes.

Once the pastors’ conference was complete, we were scheduled to conduct, for three nights, what they called a ‘Jesus Festival’. A large soccer field was provided for us with a stage constructed complete with a large placard as a backdrop to the stage, with my name on it. Wow! They even spelled my name correctly. I can barely do that myself.

As the time in the evening for the event grew closer, I saw farm tractors with open trailers hauling families in from various villages to attend the festival. Hundreds of sweet Indian people were gathering. These people were primarily of the lowest caste in India, called the ‘untouchables’.

A local worship band would start the festival with some festive Indian worship music. It was so unique and surreal to be in this atmosphere. Almost anywhere else I went, there was eerie Hindu music blasting away, aggravating my spirit, so this was a wonderful counterpoint to that.

After the worship, my son Joshua, would play some classical music on a piano we bought for our hosts. Each night his selection would vary but would include Chopin, Bach and other brilliant composers. The sweet Indian people had never heard music like this and really enjoyed it.

The festival was for three nights, and the crowds grew each night until the final night in which there were around 2,000 people in attendance. Each night, after the worship was over, one or two of the team would give a testimony. When my son had his opportunity, he spoke about his miracle birth after our twelve years of our infertility. It blew my mind seeing him share before this massive crowd who were fascinated by his story. All about how God miraculously brought him into the world.

The sermon would be given by myself or my pastor friend, Steve.

The Indian people were extremely receptive to our message, and many responded to our invitations to come into the Kingdom of God. We would then invite them forward for personal prayer for healing. To tell the truth it was totally unreal.

Here’s the total mindblower. All of this actually stemmed from the whisper I heard a few years before and fortunately responded to. ‘Orphans’. Previously we were given the opportunity to rescue orphan children, but now we had the opportunity to introduce salvation to these ‘untouchables’; these spiritual orphans. Desperate people that didn’t know the Lord. Hundreds of ‘untouchables’ were touched by Jesus. Brought into the Kingdom of God. Many healed of their diseases.

Who could know that the most subtle God-spoken whisper could grow to become a cosmic eternal heavenly roar. A roar that forever reverberates through the heavenlies.

When I think of the ripple effect of responding to a whisper, it literally blows my mind. My admonition to you is to listen. I believe God wants to speak to you. He has wonderful things to say. Just listen. Just listen.

As I was approaching the daunting age of fifty, there was a feeling of dissatisfaction growing in my spirit. I sensed that there was perhaps another life chapter yearning to unfold. I didn’t know what that was supposed to look like. I just felt that there was ‘something’. There was an emptiness. A mid-life crisis, maybe. Who knows. At any rate, being as highly evolved as I am, I decided to ponder and pray. Pray and ponder.

One day, while conducting such praying and pondering, from out of nowhere, a whispered word came into my spirit, “orphans.” What was that? Did I really hear that? Was my normally highly evolved imagination playing games with me? Was I dreaming? What?

Could this possibly be a God thing? Does He whisper? Seriously, does Almighty God have an interest in uttering a simple, single little word to me? Sounds a bit presumptuous. To even think that God would speak to me, a mere mortal, is a bit preposterous, don’t you think?

I couldn’t really reconcile both the fact that I might possibly be hearing the voice of God and secondly, what was the deal with ‘orphans’ anyway? Was I delusional? I had contributed a little bit in the past to some charities that helped children in Africa but that was the extent of my exposure to orphans.

So, I went back to praying and pondering. It seemed that every time I opened the Bible I would ‘randomly’ be directed to a verse about children. Typical example: Luke 9:48 “whoever receives this little child in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me receives Him who sent Me.” There were numerous other scriptures along those lines that when I came across them, they somehow, lit up. They came alive. Like neon signs.

Don’t you ever wonder why God doesn’t lay things out nice and clear? At any rate it seemed as though I was making some kind of progress. Towards what? Even though I’m super evolved (sorry to have to keep reminding you of that), I wasn’t sure.

About that time, we heard about a respected minister that was going to be coming to the area. Although it was challenging to pack all three kids and drive an hour to the venue, we went to the host church three nights in a row. The services were wonderful, but in all honesty, I wasn’t sure why we were making such a huge effort to attend. Until this…

During the service on the last night, the minister did something very beautiful yet surreal. I could sense something was about to happen. As the building full of worshippers looked on, she approached me out of the crowd and literally began singing an inspired spontaneous song directly to me. I could sense the Presence of God as she sang. I was overwhelmed. Shattered.

The song was all about children. This was like, unbelievably amazing. The minister didn’t know me; didn’t know I was in the midst of trying to hear direction. Direction about children. It was a total mind blower. I had been asking for confirmation. It seemed as though I got it!

I’ll sure you’ll agree, I’m a little on the dense side. But I finally got the picture. It appeared I had some kind of an assignment that involved orphans. This was a mindblower. Now that I had that insight, what was I supposed to do about it?

I decided to meet with my pastor and explain what I was sensing. I shared with him that my personal money situation was a little wanting, so this was probably an idea for a later time. He didn’t agree. He stated quite emphatically that he felt that I should start immediately. Like, now.

Ok. I got it. So, based on that advice I decided to set up an entity; a non-profit called Legacies of Life. Two wonderful friends agreed to come on as board members and join Julie and me. They seeded it with $100 cash each. Seeds. So, there I was. In business.

But what was this supposed to look like? I felt that, for some reason, it was supposed to be international. But what was I supposed to do and where was I supposed to do it? I wasn’t sure. I explored some possible opportunities in Mexico and Belize but neither of these situations panned out.

About that time, a friend of mine put me in touch with a friend of hers, Abraham, who was also interested in helping orphan children. Abraham was a very interesting and authentic guy. He was living in Denver with his wife (interestingly named Sarah) and was from the Kerala area of India. After having some compelling conversations on the phone with him, I decided to fly to Denver to meet him.

My time with Abraham was like seeing the beginning of the fulfillment of a vision. He had a heart to rescue orphaned children in India. He explained to me that their likely plight would be to work as child laborers doing hard work in rock yards or similar places. Slave like conditions. Abraham and I hit it off right away. I was super excited.

Although he was about half my age, we decided to partner up to start rescuing children in India. He would open up a children’s home that would be put under his watchful eye as well as that of his church there. My part would be to continue developing the vision, pray, and also provide necessary funding. Although I didn’t have anything in the way of funds at the time, by faith I agreed. We had no idea where it would lead.

We started out on the proverbial shoestring. Abraham went to his hometown in India and began the necessary groundwork. He rented a house and almost immediately was able to rescue several orphaned children. This was spectacularly exciting to me. It was really happening! These children were from four to eight years of age. Rescued. Rescued from a life of slavery.

With the help of some donor friends, we were able to hobble along to fund the house rental and the support of these few children.

Coincidentally, at that time, I was invited to be a part of a team for a mission trip to New Delhi, India. Seeing as I was already in the country, I traveled down to Kerala to meet the rescued children. By this time, there were seven beautiful children. Seeing them so happy and worshipping in church, I was literally overwhelmed. Their lives had been forever changed. I think my life was changed as well.

Then something amazing happened. This might seem like a rabbit trail, but it’s not.

At that time, I often read the Wall St Journal and would scan the classified ads, especially the real estate ads. One day a small three-line ad caught my attention. It was advertising a package of lots and unfinished homes in Green Valley, a community 20 miles South of Tucson.

I learned that the three previous builder/developers had gone broke, and the current owner was the private lender who had acquired the property through foreclosure. I wasn’t sure why, but there was something intriguing about this situation.

I immediately flew from Seattle to Tucson to scope out the property and then to Phoenix to meet with the owner. We had a pleasant visit and when I left his home we had come to an agreement. I was able to secure a deal to purchase 124 lots and 8 unfinished homes.

That was way cool, even though I didn’t have much capital to work with. But with the help of investors and a partner I was able to build 150 homes before the market downturn in 2008.

You might ask, what does this have to do with the orphans in India? The answer my friends is this; from the proceeds of every home that was sold, a portion was set aside and donated to Legacies of Life. I believe this was a God-given opportunity that provided new life to many children. It’s interesting, as the seller of the Green Valley property told me that 63 other interested parties had spoken to him about that opportunity but for some reason he did the deal with me.

Eventually, forty Indian children were rescued. Their lives were changed for eternity. All the people that helped Abraham and I, even the folks that bought the 150 homes in Green Valley have a legacy of life!

So, I have to ask, was the whisper of “orphans” my imagination? Was the extraordinary highlighting of scriptures about children that I experienced a coincidence? Was the minister singing inspirationally to me about children happenstance? Was honing in on the WSJ ad for the project in Green Valley, securing the deal against all odds, to fund the vision of Legacies of Life, a random fluke?

Scripture states, “My sheep hear His voice.” It also says, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.” I believe He spoke to me and gave me the steps to walk. I have no idea why, as I’ve goofed up things so many times. But in this case…

The 40 children are now adults, living happy, productive Christian lives. Some are in the ministry, some in business, some are productive employees, others are now happily married.

I believe He wants to speak to you as well. To lead you into wonderful assignments He has prepared for you. If you’re like me, I want to hear His voice saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”

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DISASTER IN PALM SPRINGS

Palm Springs. We love the magnificent landscaping and majestic beauty of this city. One of our favorite things to do is drive through neighborhoods and appreciate the extraordinary desert landscaping. Also fun to imagine living there.

1:15 AM, May 2^nd, 2026. We were exhausted but had no choice but to wake up to the mean and nasty alarm on my IPhone. Felt like we had just drifted off. We worked hard to scrape the sleep out of our eyes and then carefully took our precious new little puppies out for their first nighttime pee. How exciting was that.

The retro AirBnb bungalow we were staying in was pet-friendly, so we were especially enjoying the ability to put them out on our own large back patio complete with pea grass (that’s a pun if you didn’t catch it).

We egressed through the slider. That evening, the night sky was (I like this cool expression), a ‘resplendent celestial canopy’. It truly was amazing how the glittering stars showcased themselves so dramatically in the desert skies. A little glimpse into the heavenly cosmos.

We were so enjoying this new little adventure in our lives, what with these adorable new puppies, after being empty pet nestors for twelve years.

Here’s a totally exciting little rabbit trail for you:

Although our infertility issues kept us from having children for over twelve years, we certainly weren’t barren in regard to our beloved pets. Cock-a-poos, Salukis, Whippets. We had them all. We also had our fair share of sweet little kitty cats as well. When we moved from Washington to Arizona in 2006, we brought along with us three children, three dogs, three cats and one horse. Quite the wild assortment.

Each kitty, each doggy had their particular unique God-given personalities. We enjoyed and loved each of them. Sorry, one exception. We had one cat, Persia, that didn’t like any of us except our daughter Jasmine. She lived in Jasmine’s room and never showed her face, which was totally fine with the rest of us.

The Salukis and Whippets loved to run, so it was a blast taking them on walks. When we tried taking our Cock-a-poo on a walk, it trekked along with us for about a hundred yards and then plopped itself down on the ground, basically saying, “If you want to keep walking, you’re going to have to carry me.”

So, after our vows not to get any more pets, what happened exactly? What changed? You’re reading this, so you have a right to know. Well, (while avoiding looking you in the eyes) I have to admit; I’m the main culprit here. Here’s what happened:

I received an email from my barter exchange with a photo of a little mini poodle that had just become available. I was intrigued. Don’t know why. I shouldn’t have, but I showed the photo to Julie. If the puppy would have been ugly it wouldn’t have been a problem but unfortunately it was endearingly cute. Too cute. We were ‘taken’, I guess you could say.

As there are thousands of members in the exchange, probably all wanting this little guy, we had to make a decision. We had a minute, maybe two. So, with our self-imposed pressure, we nabbed him. Named him Mochi.

With that high-level decision made, Julie said, “But won’t he be lonely and totally fixated on us? We should probably get him a companion.” I supposed that might be true. So, that set into motion the search for Mochi’s perfect companion. She had mentioned her fond memories of our time with our Saluki dogs from years ago. I also had fond memories. Maybe…

I was ‘inspired’ to do a little research into Saluki puppies that might be currently available. Of course, a litter came up. In Los Angeles. Three little six-week-old pups were available. Orange boy, Blue boy and Red boy. Doing intense research and highly evolved analysis, we decided on Orange Boy. We arranged to drive to Los Angeles to pick him up.

Back to my highly compelling story:

After entertaining our sleepy eyes by watching the puppies do their little numbers, we gathered them up to head back inside to bed (for a couple hours anyway until the alarm got nasty and mean again for another pee break). I could barely keep awake. I couldn’t wait to get back into bed. But…a tiny teensy weensy little problem…

The sliding door refused to open. I did what you normally do with a slider; I tried to slide it. It wouldn’t budge. I tried harder. It wouldn’t budge harder. This was getting extremely irritating. I decided to go around to the front of our bungalow. Although highly unlikely, there was an odd chance that we had left the front door unlocked. When I arrived at the door, I had the slimmest, meagerest amount of hope. Unlocked? Nope. No such luck. Of course.

Then back around to the back yard to share the good news with Julie; the front door is locked. It looks like we’re destined to spend the night in the backyard with our new pups.

Then I remembered something. This slider had that problem earlier in the day; occasionally when you shut it, the lock mechanism slips down and engages the lock. Unfortunately, because we were so zoned out from travels and sleep deprivation, we forgot about that when we closed the door behind us.

So let me paint a not-so-pretty picture for you. It’s 1:15 in the morning. We’re locked out of our bungalow with our two baby puppies. We don’t have our phones. We’re basically in our underwear. There were no tools of any kind in the yard. This was not a good situation. Things were looking a bit…bleak.

I was starting to get mad. Made an instant transition from euphoric to dysphoric. How could this happen? What are we going to do? I was muttering to myself, “It seems like there’s always something.” Up until now we had been having a surprisingly pleasant adventure.

While I’m foaming, Julie apparently did a quick silent prayer. Her normal go-to response. I would suggest that her response to the situation was a bit more biblical than mine.

I looked around the yard once again to see if there were any tools or anything at all that might possibly help our situation. Nothing. Not a single tool.

At that moment, for some reason, we both started to focus on the clamps that held the tablecloth down to the patio table. I couldn’t imagine what benefit they might be. Nevertheless, I unclamped one and took a deep look at it. It had typical clamp handles, of course. It had, what they call the ‘jaws’ which do the clamping. It also had a wire that did…something.

A wire, huh? Interesting. I decided to disassemble (a better word would be ‘break’) the clamp in order to get at the wire. I worked it and worked it, but the little wire was certainly stubborn, not wanting to leave its friends, the handles and jaws. Finally, I got it. Great success.

But I had no idea whether the little wire thing would do us any good at all. I might add that I wouldn’t win any prizes at mechanical or handymanish stuff. At any rate, there was a little hole in the slider at the location of the lock. I decided to insert the wire into the hole and see what that might do, or more likely not do. I jiggled it around. To no avail. I jiggled it some more. Still nothing. More jiggling. More nothing. My jiggling wasn’t working, and it was just exacerbating my frustration and anger.

Julie says, “Let me try.” She jiggles it and jiggles it. Nothing. Jiggles it. Nothing. Then she puts her whole body into it, moving into some kind of cosmic choreographed jiggle. And then…wait for it… the door unlocks. C’mon, I’m serious. She did it. I should have kissed her. We now had access to our bungalow and more importantly our bed. I learned something deep that night; my wife is a great jiggler. Way better than I.

To sum up some of my summary, let’s put this whole episode in perspective. Without prayer on the part of my beloved wife, I doubt we ever would have gotten out of that situation. Of course her high-level jiggling helped as well. We would have spent the night under the stars, in our underwear and without water. What would our new puppies think of us? I gave the situation a fleshly response. Julie responded spiritually.

Scriptures say to ‘pray without ceasing’. Who knows how many situations will work out better if we are constantly praying. He certainly knows our situations. When we connect with Him, we can be assured He will lead us. I encourage you and I encourage myself to gear up our prayers. The prayers of a righteous man or woman (that’s you and I) accomplishes much. Even though this was a tiny little situation In Palm Springs, it was certainly a learning experience for me. You and I are world changers and our prayers are an essential part of that.

It was the Spring of 1971. Fairhaven College. Bellingham, WA. My girlfriend Julie (now my wise, wonderful, whimsical wife) and I were visiting a friend in his dorm room. Julie was bemoaning the fact that she would be leaving for Italy in a few months to spend the summer with her parents (her father had been in the diplomatic corps throughout his life and was now at his last station as the consul general in Genoa, Italy).

She was feeling sad that she would be leaving me and her new college friends, even though it was merely for the summer. I can certainly understand why she would be sad leaving me. I mean, I have to admit, I am pretty darn cool. But if it was me, I wouldn’t think twice about skipping out on my friends to regal in Italy. But Julie had spent much of her life overseas, either in Italy or Japan, where her father served, so it was not a big deal for her.

Then Julie suddenly had one of her famous inspirations. “Jim, why don’t you come with me? Come to Italy with me for the summer.” What? This was a totally radical and unexpected idea. I had never even been to another country before, save Canada, which I hardly considered much of a separate country (sorry, Canucks). As the idea starting swirling around in my head, I asked, “Are you sure? What would your parents say?” Julie, “I’m totally sure! My parents would be, like, totally fine with it.”

The head swirling got more intense, in contrast to my normal laid-backness. Seeing as this was somewhat of a major decision, I gave it at least thirty seconds. “Okay, I’m in! Let’s do it!” Another of my highly evolved decisions.

To the guys reading this story; how many of you have had your girlfriend invite you to Italy for the summer? So there you go. This was a mind-blower. One little hitch; I didn’t have any travel money. Another highly evolved idea - I’ll quit this quarter of college and get my tuition refunded.

So that’s what I did. I got most of my tuition back. I then did various jobs to come up with money, including going home to my parents’ house where my dad paid me to do some work around the house (thank you Dad even though you weren’t totally in support of my plan of dropping out of school and going to Europe).

After accumulating a massive sum of money ($500 at least) Julie and I got on a flight and flew to London (this was the first ever of our many flights together). The next leg of our trip was to take a train from London to Milan. We grabbed a quaint, cute compartment on the train thinking how cool this was, just the two of us in this cozy compartment, on our way to Italy. How incredibly special!

Not for long. At the first stop in France, a middle-aged couple joined us, since there was seating enough for six people. Once situated, they commenced quite the vigorous conversation with each other in French, ignoring Julie and me. Since Julie was minoring in French, she understood what they were saying. It wasn’t pretty. For some reason they thought we were Germans; their conversation was all about us and they had nothing good to say.

Toward the end of the ride, after Julie had had enough, she spoke to them in French explaining and that we were Americans. Their countenance changed immediately. From dark to light. Suddenly we were their best friends. They gave us a few little food items, smiled and almost hugged us. The lingering disgust they had for their German neighbors was certainly understandable, seeing as WWII had ended less than thirty years before.

Julie’s father picked us up from the train station and drove us past awe-inspiring beautiful Lake Como to their residence in Genoa. I’m not sure what I expected but when I got there I was totally blown away. First of all, Julie’s parents were beyond gracious and hospitable to me, especially since I wasn’t much of a deodorant fan in those days. Secondly, the house (better described as a palazzo) was breathe-taking.

The enormous dining room had a ceiling that was like, twenty feet high. It was covered with stunning frescoes. The room that was to be my bedroom had a view down the strada to the picturesque Mediterranean Sea. I felt like a prince. Such an interesting juxtaposition; a few days earlier I was laboring for $2/hour in Washington, now I was living in an Italian palace overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. I was an Italian prince.

Since Julie wasn’t licensed yet, Julie’s father actually gave me the keys to the car to drive Julie and I around Italy. This was unbelievable. He must have been a little crazy or I really won him over. Me, a twenty-year-old kid, driving internationally. When driving on the Italian autostradas, I quickly learned to be aware of the truck drivers, who when passing, didn’t bother waiting until they were past you to pull back into the lane, causing you to put on the brakes or be pushed off the road. Probably a few too many glasses of wine.

One of the duties of Julie’s father, as consul general of Genoa, was to host dignitaries when they came to the city. The dinner I remember the most distinctively, was with Chief Justice Warren Burger. Being the hippie country boy I was, I was likely talking with my mouth full and spilling ravioli down my shirt. I had no comprehension of the status of the man I was sitting across from, probably one of the five most powerful persons in America. Looking back, I can think of so many questions I would like to have asked him.

Some of the trips we made were to Florence, Venice, Porto Fino and Rome. All exquisite. Exotic. All more beautiful than can be stated in words. In Rome, Julie and I slipped secretly, silently and surreptitiously into a 2000-year-old Roman bath, conjuring up images of Roman emperors basking and bathing in the beautiful baths, bare butts bulging in the wind.

As Genoa is a very historical and picturesque seaside city; famous for being the port of Christoper Columbus, Julie and I decided to do a little exploring. While excitedly trekking around the city, we stumbled across an exotic vacant palace with a real estate sign posted on the gate. Curiosity got the best of us, and we decided to sneak through the gate and look around. It was magical. Totally enchanting. And then we had a super deep thought; we’re already on the property, maybe we should go a just a little bit further and take a quick look inside.

Sure enough, we happened to find an unlocked door and just like Goldilocks, we let ourselves in. Although it was scarily surreal, it was quite exciting being in this enchanted castle, hundreds of years old. It wasn’t hard to imagine the kinds of feasts and parties that had been held here for generations and generations. Julie and I were certainly enjoying our secret, private tour, and then…

Out of the you-could-hear-a-pin-drop stillness, we were suddenly bombarded with the loudest most intense sound. We had to cover our ears lest they burst. What…? Turns out we were in a huge room complete with a gigantic pipe organ that suddenly came to life. Erupted more like. A scene from a Hitchcock movie. The return of Count Dracula. Extremely loud music was reverberating everywhere. Obviously, (because I’m so quick on the uptake) I realized someone (besides us) was in the palace.

We looked at each other with a deep understanding as to our desperate situation. We knew we were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was time for Julie and me to book. Fast. Without knowing the layout of the house, we worked our way through the labyrinth of rooms and snuck out as fast as we could. My hair was standing up straight, but we made it out unscathed. Whew! Fortunately, neither one of us had a heart attack.

We later found out that the asking price for the property was like, $62,000. I was about $61,900 short; otherwise, I would have bought it.

This moment of time, when I imagined myself a prince in Italy, I will never forget. The architecture was unbelievable, spanning back over 3000 years. You buy a new house there, it’s like 200 years old. In addition to the magnificent and timeless Italian structures, there were also totally stunning Greek and Etruscan architecture.

Did I mention the art? Italy is literally saturated with an endless assortment of momentous art. The thing that was mind-blowing to me was that the vast majority of the art was ‘religious’ in nature. I didn’t have much of an understanding of spiritual truths in those days, but I was totally blown away by how everything was centered around the Savior, Jesus Christ. His birth, the last supper, the death and resurrection of Jesus.

I imagined myself to be a prince but the real royalty was displayed throughout Italy for all the world to see. The King of Kings. At that time, not being a believer, being confronted with such countless images of the Lord, certainly helped instill in me a hunger for eternal truth. It wasn’t long after that, that I had a personal encounter with Jesus. My life was forever changed.

Changed. Forever.

Any kind of feedback from you, the reader, would be highly appreciated. A ‘like’, maybe an ‘unlike’, and/or a comment would be totally far-out.

Please don’t get mad at me, I’m doing something a little different this week. Last week I published a story called ‘Mom’s Angel’, where I described a very surreal experience my mom had a number of years ago that likely protected her from a fiery death. I also shared about a friend of mine, who while a police officer, experienced a totally supernatural occurrence. While responding to a huge parking lot fight, she was protected by huge not-of-this-world beings. If you haven’t read the story, I recommend it.

Here’s the cool thing. I received some totally compelling comments on this story from several of my wonderful new Substack friends. These comments are stories about how angels actually came to their rescue. Real stories. They are exciting!! You can believe it or not. I’m going to share a few of them here. Maybe it will encourage you, knowing that God’s holy angels are watching over you.

So let’s start:

G and T: The Journey:

“Oh wow! That exact thing happened to me driving Maria to school many years ago, but the angels spoke through her! She was only about 5, but she said “mummy, slow down, there’s something coming, or we will hit a tree”! I couldn’t believe it, but I did and there was a huge tractor coming the other way! It shook me up, but I truly believe it saved a nasty accident. As always, I love your stories 🌹”

PIRATEpapa:

“Two comments:

One: I was in the second lane on I-5 between Southcenter and 188th (near Seattle) and about to pass a semi when I heard “Move over. Now.” I’d been a Christian long enough to a) hear and b) not question, so I did. Just then, one of the truck’s left tires exploded, sending rubber and steel belt fragments right where I would have been. I should mention that I was on a motorcycle and had very limited, if any, protection other than my helmet.

Two: You certainly are cool and advanced and all, but I have to say that you’re the runner-up; your sister Jenni is cooler.”

Swonam Kieran Roul:

“I really enjoyed this reflection. It feels like we’ve traded these deep, personal connections and family stories for a more ‘comfortable’ but less soulful way of living. Reading about your mom’s angel reminds me of what it’s like to have a real sense of wonder. Nostalgia is such a powerful force. It’s amazing how a single memory can ground us more than anything modern technology has to offer. This was a very moving read, James. The kind of story that stays with you.”

Race to the Throne:

“I read this yesterday, then turned around and read it to my mother. LOL I see angels. It’s not something I talk about a lot because you always have people who doubt. I have always struggled with the world’s view of them where they look like babies and play harps. I also didn’t like when someone passes away, and their loved ones talk about them turning into angels.

It took a while to work through that. I love hearing these stories now!

I was in a near wreck when I was 18. I won’t go into the whole story, but I felt two hands push me out of that car. I was by myself. I believe it was angels.

Another story someone else told me: I worked a local southern gospel radio station around the same time. There was a song out called “Entertaining Angels” and one of the women who was in the group called for me to interview her. I asked her where she got the inspiration for the song. She said it was different stories, but one of the band members had a daughter who had become very ill. Her mother rushed her to the ER, but no one was helping them.

All of a sudden, this man appeared, picked up her daughter and carried her through the ER doors, past the doctors and nurses and all the chaos. He kept turning through different hallways and went through different doors and finally went into an empty room and put the girl down. He said someone would be there with them in a moment. The man walked out, and the next moment a nurse walked in. She was startled and asked how on earth they got in that room.

The mother explained the man that just left the room brought them in there. The nurse said there was no man when she came down the hall to the room. They glanced out and didn’t see anyone. She said she believes it was an angel.

It’s absolutely fascinating. I’m adding that Billy Graham book to my list to read!”

Me:

That’s so amazing, Thank you so much for sharing. God is so good. I know people who have said they have seen angels. One person, named Howard Storm, has an interesting story. He was an atheist and had emergency serious surgery while leading an art tour in Europe. He had two out-of-body experiences; one where he went to hell and one where he went to heaven. After that he became a believer but had never gone to church. When he came back to the US he decided to go to a church, which was a quiet mainstream kind of church. When he went in, as the congregation was singing some traditional hymns, he saw angels hoovering over the congregation. They were all worshiping extravagantly. He fell to his knees in wonder. He tells about this in one of his books.

Anyway, I believe angels are all around. I’ve heard many Muslims are having dreams these days about Jesus. Maybe that’s the work of angels.

Race to the Throne:

“Not a lot of people are receptive to it, which is why I keep quiet. Also, people tend to lift angels up a bit more. I’ve had people ask me what the angels are saying to me, but it’s not so much what they’re saying... I’ve not heard them speak. But in seeing them, I ask God why I’m seeing them.

Sometimes it’s because I need to pray about something. Sometimes I need to talk to the person I’m seeing them standing over. Sometimes I tell them, sometimes I don’t. Those are amazing moments. I first started seeing them when I was a little girl in church.

We went to a TINY little country church in the Blue Ridge mountains… tiny little southern church. Mainly just family gathering. But I would see lights around the preachers. Sometimes they glowed so bright I couldn’t see them. I remember the first time I saw a picture of a halo around someone in a picture, and I thought it was an artist showing that light I was seeing. I said something about it being around people, and she said it’s not real, it’s just an artist’s way of saying someone was holy.

It confused me and I didn’t say anything else. LOL I’m not sure when it occurred to me that they were angels. I only see them as shadows, but they’re look like light instead of dark. And sometimes they’re very active. Sometimes when I see them over someone, they’re so bright that I can’t see the person’s face. It’s kindly distracting. LOL

But I’ve had incredible opportunities and conversations when I pray into it. I appreciate the ones who have encouraged me and helped me with it as I’ve “grown” in this.

The Muslims… I did work in the refugee camps in France back in 2016. The majority of them were Muslims. We spent time in the Jungle in Calais and then went to a volunteer camp in Dunkirk. It was really interesting. For the most part, they were respectful. One man came up to me one day and pointed in my face and said, “F you and F America!” and I thought oooo, I’m gonna pray for you. LOL

So, I just smiled and got to talking to him. He had watched his whole family killed in his home country and he was very bitter. I listened to him as he told his story. I don’t remember all of his story, and I wish I did. I just remember he was so bitter and heartbroken. I asked if I could pray for him, and he said yes. I told him, “Now I pray to Jesus…” He said, “Oh He was a good prophet!”

I just smiled because no, he wasn’t just a prophet, but I wasn’t going to debate that in the moment, I was going to pray for him. LOL I started praying, and immediately said, “We thank you, Jesus, for creating this man with the heart of a lion.” And he gave his shocked “HAH!” kinda laugh and just STARED at me for the rest of the prayer. I don’t remember what else I prayed… just him staring at me. LOL When I ended my prayer, he said “My name MEANS lion!”

He went off with just this complete look of shock and awe and disbelief. I had told him God sees him and knows him. We never saw him again after that. He had said he was leaving the camp that night. But ah. All of it’s amazing. I don’t see how people don’t believe in God’s angel army… we serve a supernatural God, and I believe there are things that we just won’t understand on this side. But oh, it’s so fun when we catch glimpses of what goes on in the spiritual!! :) Thank you for letting me chat and share. And for sharing your stories!!”

Thank you so much my Substack friends for sharing.I hope to hear from more of you about your angelic encounters or really, any supernatural God experience you’ve had. God is so good. He loves to love on us and take care of us.

If you are still here, pressing the ‘like’ button would be like, awesome.

I’m sure I’m being totally objective when I tell you that my mom was an amazing woman. She was marvelously maternal. Gave birth to six children, all of whom are almost as cool as I am. Almost. They would all agree with me as to her exceptional love and care for each of us. A model mother she was, in my highly esteemed opinion.

After my youngest sibling was of school age, Mom decided to change things up a bit. Thus began a new and challenging chapter in her life. She finally learned how to drive and got her driver’s license in her mid-thirties. She then decided to go back to school, which I thought was very impressive. Who knew where this might lead? To some people my mom came across as kind of a dumb blond (sorry about that sexist stereotype), but it turns out she did extremely well in her new school classes. She was actually very brilliant. That might explain how I came to be such a highly evolved human being.

Mom decided to take courses in computer programming, of all things (she must have had a premonition about how this field would explode). After she graduated from Seattle Community College in Computer Programming (she was one of the first three women that graduated in this department) she got a job as, guess what, a computer programmer, at General Telephone in Everett. Her commute from our home in Issaquah, took her through Redmond and onto the newly completed I-405 Freeway.

On one particularly memorable morning, on her way to work, she was driving her little VW bug, enjoying her commute. Traffic was surprisingly light that day. She happened to be driving in the left lane of the freeway. As this was literally the infancy of her career, she was thinking happy thoughts about her new well-earned job. She was so proud of the way her life was shaping up. But those thoughts were suddenly and dramatically interrupted when a strange out-of-the-world occurrence happened. Something she would remember the rest of her life.

Out of nowhere, she suddenly heard a voice whispering urgently to her. Mind you, no one else was in the car. The voice said, “You have to get out of this lane and move to the right lane! NOW! There’s going to be a car coming the wrong way in this very lane at a very high rate of speed. If you don’t move out of this lane you will likely have a head-on collision and die!” As far as I know she had never had such an experience before or after. Very bewildered, she looked around the car, as if expecting to see someone there. No one else was in the car. Understanding that even if she was just having a weird fantasy, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to change lanes, so she did just that. Thank God!

A moment later, a car came racing down the wrong way in the very lane she had been in. Just as the voice had warned. I have to repeat this. A car came racing down the wrong way on the freeway in the very lane my mom was driving in. My mom watched in baffled amazement. She couldn’t believe her eyes. Exactly as she had been warned. She couldn’t reconcile the experience she had just had. It was unworldly. She was literally shaking, knowing that a couple of moments ago she could have died in a fiery crash. How often do you see a car driving the wrong direction down the freeway? Virtually never.

She never forgot this. She told me about it forty years later.

My mom was never one to tell untruths or exaggerate in any way. She just quietly shared it with me matter-of-factly, but also as an extremely profound personal spiritual experience. Her life had very likely been saved. As to the voice? Certainly, nobody can ever prove anything, however I believe my mom’s story. I believe it was an angel on assignment. Protecting her.

You can believe what you want. I happen to believe in Almighty God and His host of angels. Many of those angels are on assignment here on earth for our benefit. There are numerous accounts in the Bible of this kind of angelic activity. I’m just glad they were looking after my mom that day.

In Billy Graham’s book, ‘Angels, God’s Secret Agents’, he comprehensively explains the purpose of angels in our world today. Many people think of angels as fairies or mythical creatures but I believe that the highly respected Billy Graham gives them their due creedence. He provides many compelling real life stories of angels coming to the rescue of His people. He emphatically states that “Millions of angels are at God’s command and at our service.” He also states that “God has commissioned these angels to aid His children in their struggles against Satan.”

There are over three hundred places in the Bible referencing where angels come to the aid of His children. For example, in Acts 27:23-25, Paul exhorts his shipmates on a ship about to be shipwrecked, “Last night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve stood beside me and said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand trial before Caesar; and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you.’”

If you believe in the birth of Jesus, then surely you must believe in angels. In case you’ve forgotten, the angel Gabriel visited Mary announcing she would conceive Jesus by the Holy Spirit. An angel visitied Joseph, reassuring him to take Mary as his wife. An angel appeared to the sheperds to announce the birth of a Saviour, which was followed by a ‘multitude of the heavenly host’ praising God. Later, an angel warned Joseph to take Mary and Jesus into Egypt to escape King Herod’s plan to kill Jesus.

Besides the multiple stories of how angels were involved in Bible times, there are countless testimonies in contemporary times as to the action of angels, generally to protect or lead God’s children. While I won’t write about any of these accounts in this article, I will share a story that a church friend of mine shared with me. She was a policewoman at the time this took place. I think it’s an amazing story, but you be the judge.

This is what she told me:

“In the mid 90’s while working the midnight shift, something unbelievable happened. I was working as a training unit. I was the trainer. It was the trainee’s very first shift. We were dispatched to an apartment complex. The call was described as a very large fight in the parking lot.

According to the caller there were three separate buildings and all the people in the buildings were fighting. Several broken beer bottles, a machete, several bricks and anything people could find to injure each other with were being used in the fight. Also, the caller said there were at least fifty people fighting. Fifty! There was no back-up in the area that we were working, so any back-ups had to come from another team, which would take a while.

I explained our options to my trainee. We could wait until back-up showed up and risk serious injuries to the people fighting, or we could respond. This was a teaching moment. I couldn’t let the fight continue. So, we drove to the apartment as a ‘code 3’, which means light and siren.

We drove into the parking lot fast and slammed on the brakes. I told my trainee to point his gun at people but not to shoot anyone. I used my PA system and told everyone to get on the ground. We got out of the car leaving the emergency light on. I yelled at the people again, telling them to stay on the ground. We were extremely outnumbered and back-up was still 10-15 minutes away.

To my surprise, the people obeyed and stayed on the ground until help arrived. Arrests were made and injuries treated. Several of the combatants wanted to know where the other people went. When I asked for clarification, they all said that they saw an army of people standing behind my car. The people did not want to fight anymore as the people behind us were very large and strong.

I knew that God’s army showed up to protect not only us but the people there. I believe God saved us that day.”

This is from a friend I personally know and, like my mom, wouldn’t exaggerate or tell an untruth. God loves us so much He sends His angels for our protection. There’s likely millions of such stories but oftentimes the beneficiary may not even realize the help or protection he or she is receiving. Hebrews 13:2 says “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” How many times have we been helped by angels without even realizing it.

I worship you Jesus for Your amazing and creative plan for us. Thank You Lord for assigning Your angels to lead us and protect us.

Have fond memories as a child of a massive, majestic Sequoia tree ruling the countryside in California. So magnificent. Trees are…incredible. They proudly hold their branches up, praising God. Can you imagine life in a treeless world.

I’ve always loved trees. A little confession, some of my best friends have been trees. I’m pretty sure they listen to me.

As a kid, I built a two-story fort with several large fir trees as the foundational corners. I was really proud of this great accomplishment, until the day the whole thing collapsed, nearly killing me. I can’t blame it on the trees. It was my inferior construction techniques.

Years later I had the pleasure of building a rope swing for my three kids. It hung from a large branch of one of my favorite trees. I built a rickety stand where one could grab the rope and swing out high over our lake. The only problem was, if the swinger got frightened and didn’t drop properly into the water, they likely swung violently back into the tree. Our kids lost a few of their friends that way. Not the tree’s fault.

My most notable close tree encounter was when the Volkswagen bug I was driving had a head-on collision with a massive fir tree, sorrowfully depicted in my story, ‘My Near Death Experience’. I was the one that was inebriated, not the tree.

Though I love my tree friends, don’t call me a ‘tree hugger’. The little sticky pitch you get from hugging trees always irritates me. Now that I live in Arizona, I’ve learned not to hug the tree-like Sahuaro cactuses. They’re not nearly as friendly as Northwest trees; leaving hundreds of nasty sharp spines. After a few times hugging them, I came to the highly evolved decision that it was pointless. They didn’t want to be hugged. Not to mention, sleeping with dozens of little needles sticking in your body is a bit uncomfortable.

In the mid-nineties, while living in Snohomish, WA, I had a friend and sometime business partner, Randy, who happened to be a logger. Now don’t chastise me for having a logger as a friend. If you do a little research, you’ll find that there are actually more trees in this country now than there were a hundred years ago.

Randy was an interesting guy; he was a lot of fun and best of all, he loved our kids. He also wasn’t shy about expressing his opinions. He had some interesting insights into the Spotted Owl ruling, which drastically affected his industry.

At some point Randy and I decided to put our heads together to try to find a project that had timber but could also be developed into residential acreage lots. I had come to the extremely difficult and evolved conclusion that the cutting of trees was actually ok. I’m pretty sure a tree doesn’t experience that much pain when a chainsaw bites its teeth into it.

Here’s the thing: there’s money in them thar trees. So, making a little money from the trees and from the subdividing of the land seemed to make sense. A double profit so to speak. In my deepest analysis, I determined one could probably make at least double minimum wage in this kind of endeavor.

It wasn’t long before a possible project showed up at our doorsteps. Just a little beyond the scope of what I had in mind. It was a 10,000-acre parcel in Eastern Washington called the Rainwater Ranch near Walla Walla. The typical person lives on less than a ¼ acre lot. This was 10,000 acres. Get your head around that. Price? $4,000,000. Just a tad beyond our price range. There was that. But think big, right?

Not being swayed by a seemingly impossible opportunity, we decided to drive over and peruse it. It turned out to be beautiful country, complete with lovely meandering streams. We noticed that there were definitely trees on the property, so that was a positive.

Randy and I decided to plow forward; see what we could do. Randy sent a forester over to the property to do a preliminary assessment of the quantity, quality and species of timber that could be harvested. He started negotiating with a timber company that would be the ultimate buyer of the timber. He also started doing research on potential logging companies and worked on securing a timber harvest permit. It was going to be a bit tricky as, get this, the logs would need to be placed on rafts and floated down the Columbia River.

I got the easy part. Negotiate with the sellers for the best possible price and terms for the property and design a preliminary layout of lots. I must say it was pretty awesome the way it all started coming together.

I ended up negotiating a price of $3,500,000. Here’s a mindblower; after some serious negotiations, the timber company agreed that, as an advance against the timber, they would put up enough funding to cover the down payment of $2,000,000 as well as some of the start-up costs. This was exceptionally cool. Totally out-of-sight. We found that there was sufficient timber on the property to make it profitable. We hired loggers that were of sufficient scale to handle the job and at a reasonable cost. It was time for Randy and I to do a little jig, although, sorry, no video.

The property was zoned forty acres per parcel so there would be plenty of residential lots to sell. We laid out the road system so that the logging company would build the roads not only to access the timber areas but also for residential lots. This was amazing. We were in hog heaven (whatever that is). And then this...

A realtor friend approached us with a compelling proposal. He told us that we could flip the project to his client for close to a million dollars, net to us! We were told that he was an experienced timber guy. We hadn’t even closed on our deal, but we could put a million dollars in our pockets without any further work on the project ourselves. He would take over everything; manage the loggers, pay the seller ($100k per month) and deliver logs to the timber company.

We would likely make more if we did the project ourselves, but what the heck. That could take a number of years. The proverbial saying, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Maybe. We weren’t so sure we wanted to go this route but for some reason we decided to.

We went to the attorney’s office in downtown Seattle to sign the papers. I’ll never forget the scene; there were stacks of documents on all available surfaces in the large conference room. We literally walked around this huge conference room to sign all the documents, probably around fifty. We had to sign corporately and personally. Julie didn’t have a good feeling about it but Randy and I, being the eternal optimists we were, didn’t pay her much attention, much to our ultimate regret.

But Randy and I were happy. With some of the funds the timber company was advancing and the first payment from our buyer, we walked away with around $300,000 in our pocket. And that was just the beginning. Now that we were in the big bucks, we celebrated big time by going to a high falutin restaurant in Seattle. And then this…

Two months later we get a call from the sellers of the ranch. The first payment from our buyer to the seller in the amount of $100 grand bounced. Seriously. Bounced. They were obviously concerned. This was not a happy call. Now ask yourself, who would write a check of that size and not have it covered?

Randy and I were starting to get a little concerned, because not only were we expecting a ton more money to come our way, but we were also still on the hook for the payments to the seller and commitments to the timber company and the logging company. Whoa!

And then the unraveling began. Serious unraveling. The nightmare started. We found that our buyer had already run out of money (he may have naively thought money from the sale of logs would have come in by then). The land sellers were threatening to sue. The timber company was threatening to sue. The logging company was threatening to sue. Suddenly we were in Sue City. Not a happy place to be.

Our buyer, Andy, may have been cooperative and let us take back the project, but his father (who was a wealthy and experienced logger) advised him against it for some undisclosed reason. In fact, every time we came up with a viable solution, his father gave it the thumbs down. Not sure why. He wasn’t our favorite character at the time.

This was becoming the mother of all nightmares. We were stuck. The high-priced legal advice we received was that the only thing we could do at this point was take the project into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This wasn’t the solution we were hoping for, but seeing as we had no choice, that’s what we did. This at least gave us some breathing room to see what could be done.

The bankruptcy ultimately went on endlessly, for about twelve months with many court appearances and filings from our attorneys and the attorneys representing all the other parties. Our attorneys were sympathetic and nice, but extremely expensive. Maybe you would be able to maintain your cool, but the whole thing was extremely high stress for me. I think my blood pressure popped up to around 500.

Finally though, a bit of good news. A little light in the darkness. A new timber company came to the table and submitted an offer to the court. The offer would pay off the sellers and the other timber company, as well as settle the logging company liens. As there was really no other alternative, the offer was accepted by the court.

The bottom line for Randy and I? Nada. Nothing came to us out of the new purchase. Unfortunately. All but about fifty bucks of the original $300,000 was paid to our attorneys and for court costs. The good news was that the bankruptcy attorneys took Randy and I and our wives out for a fancy dinner. And honestly it was quite enjoyable. And we did still have the fifty bucks, so there’s that.

So why did this happen to me? What’s the moral of the story? I should have listened to the Holy Spirit. Surely I was being warned. I shouldn’t have done the flip. And of course I should have listened to my wife. She often knows didly about a given business situation, but she always seems to know whether it’s a ‘no’ or a ‘go’. Thinking retrospectively (which I’m super good at) we should have done the deal ourselves and not flipped it. That Julie would have gone along with. I apologized to the Lord and to my wife and have hopefully learned my lesson. It was a God-given opportunity that we squandered.

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Belize. An enchanting land known for its pristine reefs, mystical Mayan ruins and tropical jungles. I was privileged to have been given the opportunity to start a corporation there to develop Belizean real estate. We hoped this might be an exciting new chapter in our lives. In 1995, I needed to check on project progess, so Julie and I and our three sweet children flew to this tiny tropical country, anticipating some phenomenal family fun to go along with my business. But…

Tim, my Belize business partner was kind enough to lend us his old Chevy Vega. Although the car was more suited for the wrecking yard, at least it ran. Marginally. Being the super evolved navigators we were, we finally figured out how to get out of Belize City, hit the Southern Highway, and headed for our destination, Punta Gorda.

Coming from the Pacific Northwest, we weren’t accustomed to the trying tropical heat and, not surprisingly, the Vega had no working air conditioner. We had only been on the highway an hour or so when everyone was begging for some cool refreshments. We finally came upon a roadside stand with the familiar iconic Coca Cola sign. The ‘stand’ wouldn’t qualify as an actual ‘stand’ even by the lowest third world standards. Garbage strewn around. Unidentified foul smells waffling in the air. The stand attendant, oblivious to it all, was smiling through countless missing teeth, happy to have some customers.

We exited the Vega, stretched our legs, and went up to see what they had. Our oldest son, Joshua, was kind enough to hold our little six-month-old daughter, Jasmine. How sweet. He loves his baby sister. While we were busy making our purchases, it came to our attention that Joshua was no longer holding Jasmine but had thoughtfully handed her off to a little girl that presumably lived at the roadside shack. Although it’s nice to share things, in this case not so much. The little girl had rivers of liquid snot draining like a waterfall out of her nose and was giving little Jasmine multiple kisses on the mouth. We immediately grabbed Jasmine away, ignoring any appearance of ugly American rudeness.

This was my family’s introduction to the quaint little country of Belize; a crapped-out car, a crapped-out roadside ‘stand’, a sick girl contaminating our daughter. I could tell this was going to be the vacation of a lifetime. A dream come true.

The adventure continued when we got to Punta Gorda. My partner graciously allowed us to stay in his home and, in fact, let us use the master bedroom. When evening came, our entire family retired to the master suite. We weren’t allowed to use toilet paper, because of the crapped out septic system, so that was interesting. We put both boys on a futon on the floor while baby Jasmine slept in the king bed with Julie and me.

Within a few minutes of settling down Julie suddenly shrieked. “There’s a scorpion scooting across the floor! It’s just a few feet from the boys!” I jumped up and sure enough, there was a huge poisonous scorpion zeroing in for the kill. Our boys were the targets. Our commotion stirred the rest of the household and soon, my partner’s son, John, came in. When he saw the scorpion, he smiled and came to our rescue.

He was acutely acquainted with the local scorpions and liked to play some kind of game with them before disposing of them. I suppose you could call it entertainment, but we weren’t enjoying it that much. He did get rid of the scorpion though. Thank God for that. We didn’t sleep well that night. Of course we prayed for protection and God took care of us.

The next day, together with my partner and his family, we chartered a little boat to enjoy the exotic Caribbean Sea. The boatman was a large black man, a Garifuna, who spoke little, if any English. (Here’s a free educational note for you - the Garifunas are a unique and small group of descendents of West Africans who survived slave shipwrecks. They were exiled to Central America by the British in the late 18th century and formed several villages in Belize). There you go, read enough of my stories and you might actually learn something.

Our first stop was a pristine idyllic little tropical island with a sandy beach and a scattering of beautiful tropical trees. Probably five acres in size. No inhabitants. This was more like it. This was how I envisioned rural tropics. One could get used to this.

Whoops. My four-year-old son suddenly had to go to the bathroom. Number two. He insisted he needed a toilet. I tried to convince him that we were miles away from civilization. No need for toilets here. Nevertheless, he absolutely insisted that he needed a toilet. After going back and forth for some time I finally convinced him that half of a coconut shell was actually a toilet. A tropical toilet. That worked. He was happy and did his business in style.

Our next stop was to take the boat up the Sarstoon River which ran along the border between Belize and Guatemala. This was an amazing slow-moving river meandering through the thick jungle. We saw a huge variety of exotic tropical birds. I’m pretty sure I saw some monkeys sneaking peeks at us from behind the banana tree leaves. Geckos and Iguanas proudly strutted their stuff from tree branches overhead. Crocodiles were undoubtedly lurking beneath the surface of the water. Perfect day trip.

Rabbit trail: Tim told me that a few years earlier he and a friend from Chicago often went deep in the jungle hunting jaguars (when that was still legal). They oftentimes came across substantial Mayan ruins hidden in caves throughout the jungle. One time they were confronted by a large crocodile. Tim told me that for some reason his friend spontaneously jumped on the back of the crocodile and rode it like he was in some kind of rudimentary reptile rodeo. The croc immediately rolled into a river with his friend holding on for dear life. Finally, in a rare moment of sanity, he disembarked and swam to shore with all limbs intact.

Back to my story. We felt like we were in another world. Which we were. Jurassic Park-like. Then things started getting even more interesting…

After a few miles of traversing up the river, skirting between low hanging branches, we reached a quaint primitive village situated on the Guatemalan side of the river. There was a little dock there and what appeared to be mini marina. Tim’s plan was that we would purchase gas there for our return trip. One tiny little snag. They no longer had a gas pump. No gas. At all. Humm. Not good.

Let me put the situation in perspective for you. We’re miles up a marginally navigable river, in a wild uncharted jungle. Our gas tank was on empty. We’re in a Guatemalan village with our three young kids with no visas (it was illegal to be in Guatemala without a visa). We have no idea how friendly the villagers would be. I was pretty sure they weren’t cannibals but… one never knows. This was great. Things couldn’t be better. How insane was I to put my family in this kind of risk.

We soon learned that there was literally no gas station in the village. At this point there is no taking the boat back. Being as highly evolved as I am, I suggested to Julie that we gather up the kids and hike back. Once in a while Julie is even more evolved than I am, and she said, “You really want to hike multiple miles through the jungle with its poisonous snakes, spiders, jaguars and who knows what else?” Get real Jim!”. At that time there were an estimated to be over 1,000 jaguars in the tiny country of Belize.

What about swimming? I’m a pretty good swimmer. But I wasn’t sure if I could balance baby Jasmine on my back while swimming. Also not sure of the boys’ ability to swim miles down the river then across the bay back to Punta Gorda. Probably not the best idea I’ve had. Not to mention that there were estimated to be over 15,000 crocodiles in the rivers of the country and little Jasmine would surely be a delightful delicacy. There must be some kind of solution here, but what is it?

Fortunately, not everything was bad. We learned that on the far side of the village was a paved road that led… somewhere. Sounded like the embryo of an idea. With that exhilarating and exciting information, our boatman grabbed the two empty five gallon gas cans from the boat and headed through the village toward the road. Although we had just met, we were hoping we would see him again.

By this time, we determined that the villagers appeared to be friendly. They didn’t appear to be headhunters. In fact, they gathered around looking curiously at us as though we had just descended from outer space. They were particularly infatuated with baby Jasmine. The way they were acting, I don’t think they had ever seen a white baby before, especially as beautiful and exotic as our little baby. Although we didn’t understand their Mayan dialect, we understood their gestured request. The women were begging us to let them hold baby Jasmine, like she was a Mayan god or something. Maybe a fulfillment of some ancient prophecy.

Once we determined that none of them had snot flooding down their faces or looked sick, Julie reluctantly handed Jasmine to one of the women. She reciprocated by giving us a huge smile, like she just got a baby doll for Christmas. After a few minutes of inter-cultural bonding with baby Jasmine, she then passed her along to another of the Mayan women. Over the next hour or so, as we’re apprehensively looking on, Jasmine must have gotten held by every woman in the village. I’m pretty sure they have this written in their historical archives as the event of the century. This was a foreshadow of Jasmine’s many later international adventures.

Finally, to our great relief, along came our boatman with both gas cans full of fuel. Apparently, he had hitchhiked up the road to a gas station and then hitchhiked back again. This was good as it was starting to get late in the afternoon. After saying goodbye to our new Guatemalan friends and making sure none of our precious children had been secretly stolen away or eaten by a crocodile, we headed back down the river.

When we got to the Amatique Bay in the Caribbean, on our way back to Punta Gorda, the wind had picked up and the waves were frighteningly high, with whitecaps. A bit unnerving in the little boat. As we sped our way through the swells, my hat blew off. Of course. The boatman turned around to retrieve it, but Julie yelled, “Forget it! I want to get back, NOW!” Apparently, she had had enough adventure for the day.

It took me a couple years, but I eventually got over losing my hat.

Nothing like a fun family adventure. Despite the traveling trials of this story, Belize was part of our particular God-given inheritance. It was nice that the family could be there to help launch it. In another story I’ll discuss how we stumbled upon the most incredible international real estate project one could imagine. One that God led us to. Thank you Jesus for leading us, guiding us and protecting us.

If you think you would like to ride a wild crocodile, push the ‘like’ button and I’ll try to arrange it.