What Happened To You?

I don't know who to thank. During a lunchtime basketball game in high school I went up for a rebound and came down sitting. Someone took my legs out from under me. It was an accident. The one that kept me out of Vietnam.

My birth date was drawn as #91 in the lottery. But, I flunked my pre-induction physical and went from 1-A to 4-F in a moment of time. Because the fall broke my back—the fifth lumbar vertebrae was 75% off center.

I've always been grateful though because I've thought that I wouldn't have been as smart as Forrest Gump. I wouldn't have run. More likely I'd have been like Bubba, Forrest's best good friend. I'd have gotten shot. But instead of either scenario, I faced life in a wheelchair.

Over the next twenty years that injury left me crippled with increasing partial paralysis in both legs. Then, one summer night in Phoenix, I got my second miracle. (I'll write about the first one later.)

Of course, I didn't want to live in a wheelchair. I didn't want to be in pain. So I attended a crusade.

I can't tell you what happened or how. I can't tell you why then and not before that night. But I can tell you that instantly something happened. And I've been pain free since then.

Maybe that's not as dramatic as when I died, but that's another story. Sometimes life is less about what happened to you and more about what didn't happen.