To Heaven and Back (3 page)

Despite George’s steadying presence, my life was still in a state of pain and turmoil as I entered high school. Most of my friends were involved with drugs and alcohol, and I was spinning out of control. On a chilly night in March, actually on my mom’s birthday, John, Linda, and another friend picked me up in the brand-new Chevy Impala belonging to John’s brother. The ink was still wet on John’s driver’s license, but we encouraged him to drive over some local “rollercoaster hills” on our way to a party in a neighboring town.

Rollercoaster hills are exactly what they sound like … they approximate an amusement park ride.
If you drive fast enough, your stomach rises into your throat when the car crests the hill. The wintery March roads were icy, and the new vinyl seats in the car were smooth and slippery as we began to fly over the hills. Linda insisted that we use the seatbelts, and the audible click of the belt buckles was barely fading when John lost control of the car. We struck a tree as we began to spin and immediately heard the violent tearing sound of the rear compartment being ripped from the passenger compartment of the car.

The impact with the tree catapulted our car to the opposite side of the road, where the front engine compartment was sheared off by hitting a second tree. The passenger compartment, with the four of us still inside, then rolled several times down an embankment before coming to a rest upside down. Although we were left hanging inverted in the car, suspended by the seatbelts that we had so recently fastened, none of us were seriously injured.

During our rolling descent into the ravine, I clearly and loudly heard God tell me, “I am with you.” At that moment, my fear dissolved, and I was even able to marvel at the beauty of the revolving trees and shrubs I saw through the shattering glass window as we tumbled down the hill. This was my first recognizable experience of God’s presence in my life. I marveled at what I had heard and felt but, to be honest, I was quite startled by this experience. I began to consider that God might not be
just a “childish and silly belief” after all. For me, God was real, present, and apparently had more of a plan for my life than I seemed to have.

After this event, my life as a teenager was still confusing although I began to view it as being more meaningful, and containing more of a future than I had previously considered. I began to examine the reality of my behavior, my friends, and my choices. I decided that it was time to take my life more seriously and make some changes. I no longer enjoyed “hanging out” with the crowd on Friday nights, and began to spend more time thinking about my future and what was important to me. I contemplated my goals and how I fit into the bigger picture of the world.

I continued to attend services at both the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches, and also began to intermittently attend the Oakland Road Christian Church with my friend Merry Ann. Although I had been baptized as an infant and confirmed in the Presbyterian Church, I chose to undergo a full-immersion baptism during one of the alter calls at the Oakland Road Christian Church. It makes me chuckle to think about this, as I am pretty much of a social introvert. The very idea of my responding to a public altar call and being immersed in a Plexiglas tank set into the front wall of a full sanctuary is enough to make most of my friends laugh out loud. Regardless, I actually did this and the Holy Spirit must have descended upon me, for when I emerged, I felt
light as a feather. I was energized, euphoric, and ecstatic. I felt cleansed and reborn; I became a new person. God’s promise that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come” (
2 Corinthians 5:17, NIV
) was fulfilled.

Shortly after my baptismal spiritual transformation, I read a church bulletin in which was contained a fundraising notice from an American missionary couple living in the mountains of central Mexico. Although they were not formally trained to do so, this missionary couple was holding Bible camps and running a medical clinic that provided health care to the poverty-stricken people in the mountains surrounding the town of Matehuala, in the state of San Luis Potosi. They were asking for support, and I felt an immediate call to action.

I was fifteen years old, with no money to give the couple and little interest in their evangelical
work, but I thought working in a remote medical clinic would be a grand adventure. I immediately contacted the couple, who warmly welcomed my offer of help. Their only questions were, “How quickly can you come?” and “How long can you stay?” I announced my travel plans to my mother and we were able to arrange for me to receive school credit for my service in Mexico.

Everything fell into place quickly, and I departed for Mexico shortly thereafter. It was a good example (retrospectively, of course) of how easily things come together when one is moving in the direction of God’s will. It has taken many years to truly learn that when everything seems difficult and feels as though you are swimming upstream, it is usually because you are not following the direction of God’s will. When you are doing God’s will, everything seems to happen without much effort or many obstacles.

The missionary couple maintained a home in the city of Matehuala, but spent most of their time in a rustic mountain village several long hours away. It was on our way home one day from this mountain village that our truck became stuck in the mud, as I described in my introduction to this book. While in the mountains, we lived in a small farmhouse and this was where we provided food, Bible classes, and medical care to people living in the surrounding region. We offered a range of medical care, from the treatment of head lice and spider or centipede bites, to the fixing of broken bones and the
surgical treatment of common problems, such as appendicitis. As rudimentary as it was, these villagers viewed ours as the only medical care available to them. There actually was a regional hospital, but it was many hours away and the villagers said they travelled there only when their condition was so grim as to have no hope of returning alive.

This particular missionary couple was quite desperate for help and seemed to be in a situation that was way over their heads. Upon my arrival, they handed me an outdated medical book and told me that I would be responsible for all obstetrical care, including births—even the occasional cesarean section. I had been looking for adventure and had a lot of self-confidence, but I was definitely not prepared for this level of responsibility and wondered if they misunderstood my qualifications.

When I questioned them, they suggested I pray for guidance.

I suggested they were crazy.

I prayed feverishly during my time in the clinic. I supervised easy deliveries, performed difficult deliveries requiring interventions, and performed cesarean sections. Gratefully, we never lost a child or a mother, despite my limited knowledge, limited experience, and limited equipment.

In taking credit for these successes, I believed that I had been a quick learner, good reader, careful
“surgeon,” and so on. Later in my life, once I completed medical school and began my professional training to become an accredited surgeon, it became painfully clear to me that my own efforts had little to do with my early successes. I had merely provided the hands through which God could work. The credit for success belonged squarely on God’s shoulders and I don’t believe all of our patients would have survived without His guidance and intervention.

When I first read the church bulletin that ultimately led me to the Mexican mountains, I had been interested in the medical clinic, but not at all interested in the missionary or evangelical work. I anticipated that the evangelism, the Sunday services, and the Bible camps would be boring and uncomfortable. I believed that spirituality was a private thing and I did not relish the idea of discussing it with others or encouraging their faith. Everyone in the mountain village, including adults and children, attended our Bible camps and I was surprised to discover that their spiritual enthusiasm was both moving and contagious. They had little in the way of material belongings and often had only enough food for one decent meal a day, but they were gracious and quick with their praise and thanksgiving to God for their daily blessings. God was not just a “Sunday thing” for them, and they sang their hymns with genuine joy in their hearts.

It was inspirational to me to see God working in the lives of these remote villagers, and to recognize
that these rural people were just as visible and valuable to God as are the very busy and “important” people from big cities. Clearly, there was nothing about their situation that could separate them from God’s love. The evangelical aspect of this adventure may have pushed my “comfort zone,” but it proved to be anything but boring.

My experiences in the Mexican mountains gave me a clearer vision of the person I wanted to become and I continued to work toward that vision as I finished high school. The ritualized worship services of the Episcopal Church continued to sustain me and I found that their predictability gave a sense of stability to my swirling adolescence. The radiance of the sunlit stained glass windows energized my spirit and the melodic rhythm of the cantor’s voice allowed my soul to take wing.

When the opportunity arose, I also intermittently attended services at the Presbyterian Church, the Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church, and
the non-denominational Christian churches in my family’s community. I have always appreciated the variety of religious denominations that are present in our world. Their different styles of worship and ways of communicating offer people in different stages of their life and spiritual journeys an opportunity to find the place where they feel most comfortable and a place where their faith can grow.

After high school graduation, I began studying at the University of Kentucky where, despite my deepening spirituality, I rarely attended religious services. It seems that God rarely has a seat at the table in our educational system. No one is ever asked to actively discount their faith or beliefs, but university life just doesn’t seem to make room for the spiritual aspects of life and most students just drift away from spirituality. Life for most college students is entirely about the individual; what we are doing, what we think, what we feel, what we want, and what we are planning for our future. Even if we do things during college that are “altruistic,” like volunteering, it is usually because it makes us feel good or looks good on our résumé, not really because we feel called to serve.