Thursday, April 19, 2007

Built Lord Tough

Some people are just positive thinkers. Now, most of my crew isn't. Number 1 Son, Milady, and I all have that "ray of sunshine" missing. As my mother-in-law once said to her husband, "you'd pick up a free puppy and look at its hindend".

Not Jeff. Jeff looks at things from the sunny side of life. It took us almost a year of going to our church before we realized that he wasn't the children's minister. Jeff has run the 3-5th grade ministry at our church for at least 9 years now, on top of his day job owning his own contracting business and his "night job" as a husband and father of 6 kids.

A couple of weeks ago, Jeff had some form of seizure or attack on the way home from work, and lost control of his Ford truck. He doesn't remember the truck entering one end of a house, and exiting the other end. Now, Jeff vaguely remembers the firefighters saying that he must be dead when they were getting him out of that Ford truck. At the time, he woke up asking why he was in the parade.

The doctors of course ruled out drugs or alcohol, and found that Jeff had broken several bones in his back. They also had to restrict his pain medicine, since there was a fear it could cause another seizure.

Sunday, Jeff was at church. He was in a plastic brace, and you could tell he hurt, but he was smiling and talking to everyone. When Milady and I tried to be gentle and shake hands, he pulled each of us into a strong hug. He was talking about how he knew it was the Lord who saved him, and that he's already talked to Ford about using "Built Lord Tough" as a theme for wristbands and a speaking tour. He's going to talk about "The Lord, Me, and a Ford", and how the Lord and his Ford pickup saved his life.

It takes a truly Godly man to feel that way about such a tragedy. Instead of kicking back, he's turned to God and is going right on. I for one am humbled.

If you'd like for Jeff to come talk to you and your church, Email me, and I'll pass the request along.

Prayer Request: Jeff still wants and needs a lot of prayer, because he's facing the possibility of other surgeries to his back, and months of healing and rehabilitation. His family also is going to need a lot of help getting past this.

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