Crisis and Encounter

The Fall

"Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall." - Proverbs 16:18 (NIV)

Retirement Hubris

My life was on cruise control for ten years after I received the Ticker Tape message that read, "Write about Me and for Me, Your Lord." I was writing consistently for God in my spare time. Still, the bulk of my attention was directed to teaching, research, writing, and service at the university. The university was changing rapidly, and I was out of step politically and culturally. Although I was tenured and loved my profession, I was beginning to feel the mismatch I experienced with nuclear weapons duty in the military.

I was living the old Native American expression: you can't have both legs in two canoes.

I became eligible for early retirement, took it, and this is when "The Fall" began, although I wasn't aware of it then. God's Word is inerrant, and Proverbs 16:18 is clear: "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall." Pride can be an insidious thing. It's like one's shadow as the morning sun rises directly overhead. Before you know it, you and your shadow are one, but not one with the One you hope to reflect. And time, too, seems to move in slow motion until the crash.

Here's how the Fall began.

Before the ink was dry on my retirement paperwork, I was telling anyone who would listen, "Rose and I are going to live where we want to live and do what we want to do!" If God said, "Are you sure about that?" I wasn't listening. I was too busy planning what I wanted to do! We moved to Kerrville, in the beautiful Texas Hill Country. We knew this area well because it became our favorite RVing escape from the heat of Laredo and the demands of our professions. We bought our dream home and settled into "the Good Life" like the program we used to watch on HGTV many moons ago.

I've always been a wannabe entrepreneur, which has allowed me to have a consulting practice outside the university. But now, unencumbered by the system, I could spread my wings and become the wealthy entrepreneur I dreamed of. Whether I admitted it or not, money had become my idol. I had a "Vision Board" in front of my workspace full of positive affirmation quotes, none from The Bible. I had pictures of a spotless, azure blue, and silver multi-million dollar Prevost motorcoach in the center of the board as if to announce, "I did it MY way!" The image of the fancy Mercedes was there, as was a picture of a Shaolin Monk in orange garb doing a handstand on his left index finger! I'll let you decide what unconscious motivations drove that image to the board. I can imagine the triune God having a conversation, saying, "We need to bring him to his senses before he falls away. He has lost his mind and his way."

God has an amusing, albeit painful, method of stopping the falling away by allowing a fall.

The Crash

It's been said that the last creature to discover water is a fish because it is always immersed in it. I must have been immersed in my idolatry because I didn't have a clue God was unhappy with me. I should have known when I began training for high-speed longboarding with my grandsons that my wheels had fallen off, but nope. I had to ramp up my pride and arrogance by challenging teenagers to a pushup competition, which I won.

Yes, God allowed that to happen because He needed to make sure that I would have a story to tell that didn't involve tripping over our black and white Shih Tzu named Asia.

Now, if there was any question about God's Hand in this, consider when "The Fall" happened: Easter weekend 2016.

I was a grandpa (old man) longboarding without a suit of armor covering my body. No pads... no helmet... the only thing I had less of than my protective gear was common sense. Here was my reasoning: when I was 11 years old, I used to be an animal on a skateboard. Naturally, if I had it then, I still have it now. Did I mention I had lost my mind?

But now... NOWOOOO... I'm really confident. I'm just out for a leisurely slide and boom... I augur into the asphalt... a perfect one-point landing at about 20 MPH on my left elbow. The crash site was a mere 50 yards from where I "won" the pushup competition near the tennis courts.

When I awoke and looked around, I saw the tennis courts and where we had been for the pushup competition. I saw a couple of teenage girls running around the court. I remember thinking my elbow felt like a box of puzzle pieces rattling around inside. Fortunately, I was able to send a MAYDAY... MAYDAY…MAYDAY, call. My wife came to my rescue and got me to the ER at our local hospital. I can laugh about it now, but God decided to send Nurse Ratched, the sadistic nurse in the 1975 film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", as the ER doctor. Little did I know the Great Humbling Beat Down was beginning.

The Great Humbling Beat Down

I needed complete reconstructive surgery to put my Humpty Dumpty elbow back together again. Plates, screws, baling wire, no doubt super glue, and a couple of bungee cords were used during the eight-hour surgery. But when I came out of it, my ego was on fire. I stopped taking pain meds after I was released from the hospital. I took nothing but Tylenol or Advil during physical therapy, which conjures up your inner sadomasochist at the "House of Pain." I had near-zero pronation or supination of my left wrist, and nearly zero extension or flexion in my left elbow. I developed a reputation around the House of Pain, both within the professionals and patients, for my ability to "take the pain." The secret was to reconstruct how we see pain — it's not pain, it's progress! And, while you are in pain, it's essential not to be there to experience it. Maybe that's why I had the image of the Shaolin Monk, who obviously could endure pain.

But this pain was as real as it gets, and if I didn't go through it, I would live the rest of my life with one functional arm instead of two.

God was getting my attention. He had saved me from falling away by allowing a fall that disintegrated my idols and shattered my elbow. It's a good thing I was still a lousy golfer before the Fall! My Blind Squirrel Golf Association days were over.

Let me say a few things about the "Great Humbling Beat Down." In one moment in time, you are invincible; the next, you can't put your pants on and buckle your belt without help. One moment, you are competent, and the next, you are experiencing the difference between a disability and a handicap in real time…in living color. As you know, a disability allows you to do something with difficulty or modification. A handicap prevents you from doing the same. Being "dependent" on Rose was a humbling experience. Still, the humility and being beaten down came from God, not my wife. My Lord and Savior had spared my body and my life. Some who have a fall like I did end up in the morgue, a whole body cast, or with a traumatic brain injury. Oh yes, God was merciful on my body and my soul, but He was going to remind me who was in charge, and it wasn't me.

Salvaging Grace

But hear this, my friends: it's easier to muster the wisdom to humble yourself before the almighty God than to suffer the consequences of His salvaging Fall. We each have a choice to make as it deals with humility: we can learn from others' mistakes (like mine), or we can scoff it off and say, "I'll do it my way." If you choose the latter, there are no guarantees that you'll escape your own "Job" moments. God is sovereign. He does as He wills. But if you decide to throw your pride and arrogance, your ego and your vision board, in God's face as a "believer," just know that you too will experience the humbling beat down and fall from invincibility. Those who have experienced it–know it…those who have not experienced it–will know it. Fortunately, there is Good News and a beautiful Light that awaits the humble believer.

"For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning." - Psalm 30:5 (NIV)

Heavenly Rise, Seeing Jesus

"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." - Psalm 34:18

The Perfect Storm of Brokenness

The Fall was perfect. It yielded perfect pain... perfect suffering... perfect humiliation... perfect dependence... perfect frustration. All of the components that will bring a man to his knees, where God can lift him back up. Going toe-to-toe, eye-to-eye with God, even if unconsciously, is foolish unless you know where you stand with Him. After all, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10). Yet, He also calls us friend: "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you" (John 15:15). The difference between foolishness and faith is knowing where you stand with the Almighty.

So let me tell you how the Lord came close to my broken and contrite heart, and began healing both my spirit and my reconstructed elbow.

The House of Pain vs. Home

As I mentioned in the last chapter, I was a regular at the House of Pain. In this physical therapy clinic, the pain makes your eyes water, but you can't show it. I discovered that physical therapy is the perfect environment to display all the ego and bravado you can muster. How much can we ratchet up the "Pain-O-Meter" today without breaking a sweat? How much adrenaline can flood the system while being on the rack physically, but not spiritually?

I saw some patients who clearly "wimped out" on their PT because they didn't like the pain of pushing through to discover the progress it can bring. But it was more than just a painful means to a functional end. For me, it was also a psychological drive —a regression to a locker room mentality. That said, this is about winning the "I can take more than you" trophy. It wasn't a sanctioned contest. There was no tangible reward to set on the shelf as a reminder that I won. A t-shirt was provided to all participants, regardless of their standing. I still have the t-shirt from that vacation. When I see someone wearing the same t-shirt, I wonder, "Was it given to you, or did you earn it?" No wonder so many have the mistaken belief that you have to earn your way into heaven. For some of us, it's hard-wired into our psyche. When we are at our lowest, we default to that level.Yet there's no audience for the real battle that happens at home.

In pain, the spirit can separate from the mind and fly freely through the endless corridors of heaven, then make a perfect landing back on earth when the "treatment" is over. But at home, during those three-a-day, hour-and-a-half PT sessions when no one else is watching, tears of pain do flow.

It was in one of those flowing sessions when Jesus showed up. Here's how it happened.

The Heavenly Rise Exercise

One of the exercises I did came from Tai Chi, specifically from Cheng Man-ch'ing's Yang Short Form. It's within the beginning movement called "lifting hands, heavenly rise." The movement itself is deceptively simple: you start with both arms hanging naturally at your sides, then slowly and smoothly lift your arms and hands vertically to about chest level, as if you're gently raising something precious toward heaven. In Tai Chi philosophy, this opening movement represents awakening energy and connecting earth to sky—quite literally, a heavenly rise.

But simple doesn't mean easy when one arm is agreeing and the other is screaming out in pain: "I can't do this!" What should have been a flowing, meditative movement had become a test of endurance. Every inch my left arm struggled to rise was a reminder of my limitations, my brokenness—though I wasn't looking for spiritual answers. I was trying to buck up and drive on.

While attempting to push through the pain of "heavenly rise," I'm looking out through the glass in the double doors to our patio. The tears blur my vision of the patio that Rose keeps supplied with beautiful flowers in the spring and summer. I tried to focus on them and her love.

Two Worlds Overlapping

Suddenly, I started to see an image—a vision—of a figure sitting under a tree far in the distance. Initially, it was like a shimmering mirage you might see in the Mongolian desert. Perhaps a better way of describing it is holographic. A likeness of an image, but nearly transparent. It was an overlapping of two worlds that, while separate, could become one. And this other world was compressed into the space of half of our patio. But as the water in my eyes turned to mist and then once again clear, so too did the hologram/mirage become clear. As if walking closer to a figure in the distance made it more vivid, so too did the image become clearer. It was an emerald green meadow all around a single tree... a willow tree. A breeze was blowing through the knee-high grass. The sun was shining, and not a cloud in the sky.

And I saw Jesus sitting under that willow tree.

Please don't ask me why a willow tree. I'm not an arborist, but that's how I can describe it to you. The branches and leaves draped down nearly to the ground, superimposed on my patio. Jesus was wearing a white robe. He had long hair and a beard. His eyes were bright and loving. All of this I would expect if someone told me they had seen Jesus on their patio.

Yes, it does sound crazy, but what happened next I could have never imagined or expected.

Jesus Shows Me How It's Done

As my left arm was struggling to lift beyond waist level—forget chest level—Jesus stood up. He was looking directly at me, but He said nothing. The best way I can describe His demeanor is "calm and peaceful." He didn't assume the coach in the locker room persona, rallying the team of individual players to do the impossible. He didn't give me the sense that "hey, you are David and can slay this giant Goliath!" No pep talk. Not even a broad smile of encouragement. Only a presence that communicated "I love you and I am here for you." And then, He mirrored my clumsy movement as if having perfected the Heavenly Rise movement that no Tai Chi master could replicate. He brought His arms to chest height and waited. The breeze stirred the blades of grass, the willow tree branches with their light green leaves, and Jesus' white robe. I could almost feel it myself, but for now, I'll say it was the air conditioner!

My hands, as if being lifted by a thread, rose to chest level. No pain. Next to seeing Jesus, this was the most remarkable aspect of the experience. For weeks, days, hours, and seconds leading up to the experience, there was excruciating pain. And in a moment, it was gone. The correlation was perfect. Without Jesus, pain is present. With Jesus, pain is gone. Now I know that Jesus is always with you and me. And there will be pain and suffering. However, He had to make it unmistakably clear that my Fall was complete and that He was there to set me anew on the road to sanctification.

Was I in shock? Was I hallucinating? No. I was convinced. Ten years earlier, God showed me a "ticker tape" message and solidified my belief. This experience convinced me that the Holy Spirit is within me, and Jesus is just outside the door.

And then Jesus raised His arms above His head as if reaching toward heaven. And both of my arms, pain-free, moved in perfect unison. I was standing with both arms above my head! I was now the one mirroring the movement of The Master, the King of kings and Lord of lords, in a most human way... lifting my arms to heaven just as Jesus did.

And just like that, Jesus was gone. And just like that, the pain of the moment of realization returned, and my left arm made a controlled crash back to my side.

The Real Heavenly Rise

In the movie Crocodile Dundee, a bad guy pulls a knife on Dundee, who says, "That's not a knife... now that's a knife." It was as if Jesus was saying, "That's not a Heavenly Rise—this is how it's really done! You can do it!"

I'm making light of it now, but that moment was not only pivotal in my physical healing, but my spiritual restoration as well. I have no idea if this is how some people say God works, but as I've said before, you can't argue with someone's experience. There was an old Memorex commercial in the 1970s and 80s that asked consumers, "Is it live or is it Memorex?" The asserted conclusion is that if you listen to music on a high-quality Memorex tape, you would swear it was live. And I'll tell you, I've heard enough music in my life to distinguish live from Memorex. Jesus tells us, "Let no one deceive you" (Matthew 24:4), and my heavenly rise experience was no deception. I no longer needed to echo the words of the father who said, "I believe; help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24).

Jesus is real, and He is present in your times of need. I pray that you never drift off the narrow path and require a "fall" to reconnect you with God. But if you do, know that He will never leave you or forsake you (Hebrews 13:5). He will be with you in your times of need. No matter how many times we might hear this, know that we can count on its truth.