Hope for Your Heart: Finding Strength in Life's Storms (12 page)

Sam spent nearly seven years as a prisoner of war, including forty-two months in solitary confinement. Held in the infamous Hanoi Hilton, he spent seventy-two days in leg stocks. When that torture ended, he was forced into leg irons for two and a half years. Weighing two hundred pounds when shot down, Sam shrank to around one hundred and twenty pounds, barely surviving on the occasional “meal” of weeds, pig fat, white rice, or pumpkin soup.

Sam became part of a group of eleven prisoners known as “the Alcatraz Gang.” Separated from other POWs, these men were placed in solitary confinement for courageously resisting their captors’ efforts to extract information through torture and other means.

“Alcatraz” was a special facility in a courtyard behind the North Vietnamese Ministry of National Defense. The men were kept in separate 3 x 9 foot cells. Each had a bare light bulb that burned around the clock to disrupt sleeping. The prisoners were locked in irons each night.

But Sam was not the only hero in his family. His wife spent two years wondering whether her husband was alive or dead, another two years without any contact from him, and still another three years worrying whether he would make it home at all. Throughout, Shirley kept her household together and raised their three children as a “single” parent.

Finally, on February 14, 1973, Sam returned home to the country he loved, fought for, and suffered so sacrificially to protect. His family waited anxiously as he spoke to the press and then raced to greet him, to touch him, to look into his eyes, to wrap their arms around him.

His children—Bob, Gini, and Beverly—allowed Shirley the first embrace. A few moments later, the three grown children (ages twenty-one, nineteen, and sixteen) surrounded and enveloped in their arms the father they had not seen since they were fourteen, twelve, and nine.

After his distinguished military career as a war hero and decorated combat veteran who was awarded two Purple Hearts and two Silver Stars, Sam accepted another leadership challenge. In 1991 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, known among his colleagues and constituents as a man of deep conviction and faith.

Along with a delegation of U.S. legislators, Sam later returned to the place of his seven-year captivity. Although three decades had passed, horrific memories came flooding back during the hour-long tour of the prison . . . the shackles, the cramped cells, the coded taps that kept the POWs sane.

Yet in spite of the monstrous treatment he had received, Sam heard no apologies or acknowledgment of his POW status during meetings with top Vietnamese officials.

Shirley said the sight of a mannequin shackled to a bed in a way that made standing impossible caused her to weep, envisioning her husband in such a position for months on end.

“It was much more stark and depressing than anything I could think of,” she said. “He said many times that the Lord was with him all the way through, and I’m sure he was, because I don’t know how you could get through it without having a strong faith.”
⁵

Asked how he survived such cruel and inhumane treatment for so many years, Sam points to two things—his comrades and his Christian faith. He recites his favorite Scripture: “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar . . . like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (Isa. 40:29–31).

Through all the torture during captivity, through all the harrowing experiences of flying combat missions, and through all the frustrations of wrangling over congressional legislation, Sam has never failed to give credit to God for providing him needed hope and courage.

As Sam Johnson knows all too well, hardship, fear, and pain—all part of life’s inevitable storms—should prompt us to reach out and grasp that solitary Anchor that holds us like no other can.

Jesus was Sam Johnson’s anchor for his soul when his body was battered beyond measure. When Sam’s emotions churned like crashing waves, Jesus brought peace and power to withstand the mental affronts continually bombarding his mind.

To know joy in life, to glean all God desires for us in the midst of hurricane-sized trouble, we must face the storm. To do that, we need the steadfast anchor of God’s hope to hold us. His strength keeps us steady and strong, sturdy and ever-standing.

The deepest trials or the deepest failures in your life cannot thwart God’s faithfulness to you. Do you know the genuine goodness of God in your life—His immense mercy, His constant compassion, His everlasting love? He will be faithful to you forever. Do you know how to experience such a hope that will anchor you through any storm? Repeatedly say when you are in the midst of the storm, “I will hope in him” (Lam. 3:24 esv).

(Lamentations 3:19–25)

How to Put Your Hope in Him

“Everybody’s lost hope,” confessed Councilman Jay LaFont of Grand Isle, Louisiana, following the worst environmental catastrophe in United States history. On April 20, 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded off Louisiana’s coast, killing eleven people. The mile-deep well then began spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico . . . unchecked for months . . . closing the area’s beaches and crippling its fishing industry. “As long as you have something to look forward to, a little glimmer of hope, you can move on,” LaFont told reporters. “But this just drained everything out of us.”
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Fortunately, the scenario couldn’t be more different for individuals living near . . . and working on . . . the oil platformHibernia off the coast of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. Residents and workers there are filled with hope, aware of the enormous amount of time and resources invested to build a structure that is said to be virtually indestructible.

The Hibernia’s meticulous design incorporates a GBS (gravity-based structure) system that anchors it to the North Atlantic seabed two hundred and sixty-five feet below the water. The total structure from the ocean floor to the top of the derrick is 738 feet high, with construction costs of over six billion dollars.

Simply stated, the structure is
immovable
. It has to be! It sits in the middle of “iceberg alley,” where icebergs can be as large as ocean liners. Sixteen huge concrete “teeth” surround the Hibernia. These teeth were expensive additions, designed to distribute the force of an iceberg over the entire structure and into the seabed, should one ever get close.

Radio operators plot and monitor all icebergs within twenty-seven miles of the oil rig. Any icebergs that come close are “lassoed” and towed away from the platform by powerful supply ships. Smaller bergs are simply diverted by using the ship’s propeller wash or high-pressure water cannons. As rugged and as strong as this platform is, and as prepared as it is for icebergs to strike, the owners have no intention of allowing an iceberg anywhere near Hibernia.

But if something unpreventable comes its way, the Hibernia is anchored, rooted, and ready. Built to withstand a million-ton iceberg, designers claim it can actually withstand a six-million-ton iceberg, and even then it will still be functional. (Statistics indicate that a million-ton iceberg occurs only once every five hundred years, and supposedly one as large as six million tons comes around once every ten thousand years.
⁷
)

As sturdy and secure as the massive Hibernia is, know that you have a source of protection that far exceeds any defense built by human hands. When storms rage in your life, the Lord Himself is your Anchor . . . your staunch and steady hope. When trouble like a massive iceberg threatens you, remember this: Because Jesus is your Anchor, He will give you
an anchored life
.

He is your help and your hope. He will sustain you, and He will hold you . . . safe and secure. The Bible promises:

You will be secure, because there is
hope
;
you will look about you and take your rest in safety. (Job 11:18)

Two tiny Korean orphans—sisters, ages three and six—stepped through the door of their new home. The towering apartment building must have seemed like an enchanted palace.

They still had on the plain, threadbare clothes they’d worn at the orphanage. Their close-cropped haircuts were identical and utilitarian. The girls held hands as they walked cautiously into their new world.

“It wasn’t how they were dressed that identified them as lost kids,” said my friend John. “It was the wary, guarded look in their eyes. They clearly expected something bad to happen any minute.”

John was an American businessman who spoke fluent Korean, a rarity among Western foreigners living there. He’d been asked by Barbara and Lamar, a couple from his church, to be present when they brought home their newly adopted daughters. The parents spoke little Korean and feared the girls would not fully understand they had a new and permanent home now.

At lunchtime Barbara served soup, sandwiches, applesauce, and glasses of cold milk. Lamar started to say grace when both girls immediately seized the milk and drank it down without stopping. Then, as the astonished adults looked on, they ate everything on their plates as fast as they could.

“It nearly broke my heart,” John recounted. “Every crumb was gone in about three minutes.”

Talking with the girls, John learned that children at the orphanage never hesitated to eat any food they were given or someone else would take it. In
that
world you looked out for yourself or got left behind. Insecurity was a way of life.

Over the next few months a physical transformation took place in the beautiful young sisters. Their hair grew out, and Barbara styled it with curls and ribbons. Each received a new wardrobe to replace their shabby orphanage uniforms. They had soft beds and toys of their own for the first time ever. No girls were ever more cared for than these two.

Even so, the shadow of fear that followed them through the door that day was not dispelled quickly. Trust doesn’t come naturally to children conditioned to expect only hardship and lack. Several years passed before they fully accepted the love, protection, and provision that were theirs.

“Barbara and Lamar had to patiently establish two things that come relatively easily to most conscientious parents,” John explained. “They had to prove that they
could
keep their promises and that they always
would
keep them.”

Clearly the girls reserved their hope in a brighter future until they were sure their new parents would not let them down, as so many other people had.