Honor, Courage, and Commitment

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A Sermon in our Preachers from the Pew Series by Cary Efaw March 25, 2012
BIBLE PASSAGE: Psalms 118: vs. 1-9

Please pray with me: Oh mighty and gracious God may the words of this sinner of sinners who has stood at the very gates of hell be of comfort to those who hear my words this morning. May I articulate your glory, your power and your love that they might see a different way of how you can and do work in the lives of your people in this world. AMEN.

Early Events: I am starting my story this morning after my return from Vietnam. While I suppose I could begin my story with episodes about my experiences in Nam, I choose not to speak about those. Much of my adult life has been spent trying to suppress those memories and I do not wish to resurrect them now. I mention this simply as a jumping off point for my journey of faith and to set the context of where my faith or more accurately lack of faith stood at this point in my life. I came back from Vietnam to a world that in my mind had changed. I felt isolated, detached and alienated unable to relate what I had experienced to friends & family. There was no honor or positive recognition of my service and sacrifice by this country but only distain for having participated in an unpopular war that America was trying to put behind it. No parades, no thank you for your service, most of the story lines in the papers and movies seemed to involve these drug-crazed vets from Nam who were bent on destruction and were outcasts in the society that had sent them to war. Perhaps that is a too harsh assessment on my part of the reality at the time, but it certainly was my perception. It only got worse when after 1 month upon my discharge from the Marines I found myself on a college campus, filled with hippies, love children, streakers, and conversation topics that professed make love not war. I drank too much and was hurt - I'd given so much & no one cared.

So I withdrew into a shell which further isolated me from those around me. And while I had always believed there was a God I felt he wasn't involved in the world or in my life. I had seen the very darkest side of humanity in war and I concluded there was no way a good God, as I was taught growing up in Sunday school, would have been associated in any way with those events. I sort of dismissed him as an non-entity in my life. To me I had been hardened in battle and life was simply a struggle to survive. I had survived Nam and now I was going to grab life by the throat and squeeze every last drop out of it that I could.

I sincerely doubt that the good people of Calvin Church would have welcomed me into your midst during that period. The only thing holding my world together at this point and keeping me from traveling down a dark and dangerous road was a girl I had met not long after leaving the military. She was a farm girl and a beauty and now has been my wife for 38 1/2 years. I will never be able to thank Kathy enough and I am sure God has a special place in Heaven just for her because it was her love that began turning a dark angry young man's life around. Besides the Vietnam experience I have had 2 near death events in my life. Even in these events I blamed my own stupidity not God - in fact he wasn't part of the equation in my mind. The 1st one occurred in June 1972.

Car Crash: It was June 1972 and I'm in college summer school. Because of issues I was dealing with on my return from Vietnam, my family and I decided it was perhaps better if I moved out of my parent's house. The flashbacks, bad dreams and my volatile attitude was not a good influence on my younger brothers and sister. Fortunately a high school buddy of mine, who had been the Navy, owned a 2 bedroom trailer on his dad's 50 acre farm and he let me stay there basically rent free. The trailer was located in the middle of nowhere which suited me just fine.

My daily routine was I attended classes in the morning, worked on a farm in the afternoons and then either steadied or played softball in the evenings. This particular June day was no different, I got up went to class, worked that afternoon and then went and played a softball game that evening. Usually after the softball game we would head to the bar that sponsored the team and throw a few back, shoot pool or just shoot the breeze. However, I didn't stay long that evening I was in a hurry to get home because I needed to steady for an economics test the next morning. The road leading to the trailer was part 2 lane blacktop (maintained by the state) and part dirt/rock (maintained by the township). The dividing line was on a sharp bend in the road a couple of miles from the trailer. What I didn't know was on this particular day the township had come through and covered it's portion of the road with loose gravel. The intent was to come back the next day and apply a thick, oily tar like substance on the road thus as traffic drove over the road this material would mix with the gravel and form a hard surface not too dissimilar to blacktop. As I drove home faster than I should be at 10 or 11 o'clock at night I came to the bend hit the loose gravel and the car began to slide. Normally you would think that the car would slide into the embankment, bounce off and come to rest in a ditch. I wasn't that lucky because of the angle in which I hit the embankment my front bumper dug deep into the dirt and hit a small tree. This caused the car to flip on its side and slide down the road about 100 feet, then it hit some kind of bump in the road and rolled over on its roof. It took a few seconds for me to realize what had just happened and at this point I am upside down, hanging from my seatbelt and my head resting on the roof. It all happened so fast!

My first thought was, ok I'll roll out of the driver side window and survey the damage to my car. That's when I discovered my 1st problem. My left hand, which had been out the window while driving was pinned underneath the roof of the car, I couldn't free it. Fortunately I carried a tire iron under the front seat of the car. I won't go into detail about why I had a tire iron there, other than to say it had come in handy a few times in the parking lot of some bar when a fight broke out. Using the tire iron I was able to dig around my left hand and bend the end of the roof edge up enough to free my hand. I rolled out of the car.

As I was standing up to survey the damage to my car is when I discovered I had a bigger problem than just a wrecked car. My left hand was crushed, the fingers were pointing in all different directions, and most of my middle finger was gone with only a white bone sticking out. Not only that but every time my heart beat blood would fly out of the top of my hand. I had severely torn up the top of my left hand. I came to realize that because the car had flipped so fast and violently my left hand had been pinned between the gravel road and the driver side door. I grabbed the top of my left hand and applied pressure and lifted my left arm over my head to slow the pumping of blood out of my body. About a 1/4 mile down the road was an old farmhouse with lights on. The people living there had moved in several years ago and their name was Abbott. I didn't know much about them, other than I had ridden the school bus the last couple of years of high school with their oldest son, Bobby. We weren't friends just acquaintances and all I could remember of the family was they were dirt poor and had lots of kids. I began walking toward the farmhouse.

About 1/2 way there I began to get woozy, I was staggering and all I wanted to do was lay down in the middle of the road and go to sleep. Plus my hand was starting to throb and hurt. I understood what was happening - I was going into shock. I knew the symptoms well, I had seen it a number of times in Vietnam. And I knew darn well if I gave into this feeling I would go unconscious, bleed out and die right there on the road. But I was so tired and my legs were starting to buckle. For whatever reason, I surely do not know, a phrase jumped into my head at that moment. I had picked it up in Nam and have no idea who the author is or why it came to my mind just at that time and place. The phrase was " I felt death tickle my ear, LIVE HE SAYS, for I am coming". Like I said, I had no idea why that phrase entered my head, all I do know is it was enough to keep me going and to reach the farmhouse. I can't imagine what Mrs. Abbott must have thought when she answered my knock. First of all its late at night, and as I said earlier I didn't know much about the Abbott's and neither did any of my friends and neighbors - so I can't imagine they got many visitors to begin with. But when she opened the door and saw a man in a softball uniform, covered in blood, with his mangled left hand raised high in the air no doubt there was shock. She slammed the door in my face! Can't say I blame her. However, I was barely conscious at this point and desperate.

Desperate times call for desperate measures! I stepped back and with what strength I had left I kicked the door in. I immediately began barking orders, to call the local sheriff (911 didn't exist then) showed them how to apply a tourniquet to my arm and ordered them to get me some type of antiseptic to clean out my wounds. Needless to say the scene in that old farmhouse was chaotic. It was all I could do to remain conscious until the sheriff got there and I believe I was babbling something or other that probably made the Abbotts think I was a lunatic! When the sheriff arrived he half carried and half threw me into the back seat of his cruiser and with lights flashing and sirens sounding he sped me to Washington Hospital. As I half laid and half sat up in the back of that squad car I couldn't help but think how ironic this was.

 I was very familiar with the flashing lights and sirens but they had always been in my rear view mirror before. I'm in the emergency room having various cuts and abrasions treated when the doctor on duty that night came in and said to me; " son I can't do anything for your left hand except amputate it, rather than do that I am sending you to Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh. I know a bone specialist there who may be able to save part of your left hand". The doctors and nurses at Presby worked 12 hours putting my hand back together, inserting pins, amputating the remainder of my middle finger, and putting skin grafts over the top part of my hand. Much later on a follow up visit the chief medical doctor of that team said they had experimented using a new technique on me. He said traditional medical procedures was of no help in my case and because my vital signs during the operation were so strong they tried a couple of different techniques on my hand. As a result they had a new protocol to use in similar situations and I had even been written up in a medical journal!

After months of self rebilitation (I had no insurance) I regained full use of my hand. My philosophy "People can make stupid mistakes and then must pay for them". Stupid is as stupid does... College had expanded my mind to possibilities of gaining riches if I worked hard enough. Growing up in a farming community I'd hadn't given much thought about money. As long as I had enough money in my pocket to go out and have a good time I was satisfied. I had always worked hard in fact started my 1st job at the age of 12 on the farm of a father of a baseball buddy. But it was in college my thinking began to change, new worlds of possibilities opened up to me and I developed the 30-30 goal. In other words to be making $30k/yr. by the age of 30. That might not seem like much of a goal in light of today's salaries but back in 1975 starting my 1st job after college my salary was $12,900 at the time I was 24 years old - so this was a stretch goal. A new mindset was formulated in my life - that of an ambition to make money, live a comfortable life style & retire early.

As I said earlier in my mind at the time God was not part of these events or my life. I was in a survival mode. I was determined to control everything in my life and conquer all obstacles to reach my goals. I was determined to live by the Marine Corps mantra (Honor, Courage & Commitment) became my modus operendi - my key word mission statement.
 * Honor - to do anything and everything legally to make a good living but I wouldn't cut corners or cheat my way to the top.
* Courage - to never fear any obstacles or assume any task too hard that could stop me short of my goals.
* Commitment - to work tirelessly to never give up and stay the course no matter what life threw at me.

But I had a setback in February 1978 which was my 2nd near death event.

 GAS EXPLOSION It's now February 1978 and life is good for Kathy and I. We have been married for about 4 1/2 years, we both are working and I am closing in on my goal of $30k by age 30. We bought a house south of Pittsburgh in Upper St. Clair, we drive new cars, I even own a 1965 corvette roadster. We are talking about starting a family soon. This particular Sunday my mom and dad are coming over to visit. Our house has a finished basement with a nice fireplace and mom and dad loved to sit by a roaring fire and talk. Kathy is upstairs making lunch for us all and I'm in the basement attempting to build a fire before my parents arrive. It's not working. I work for a big international accounting firm and have been out of town all week.

 It had snowed that week and most of my fire wood was outside covered with snow. I have very little kindling in the house and no dry logs to start the fire with. I've spent the last 1/2 hour trying to dry a couple of logs off enough to start a fire but I can't get them to burn. So I come up with a bright idea. I'll make sure there are no burning embers in the fireplace and then I'll take a small glass put some gasoline in it then pour it on the logs. Let the gas soak into the wood for a few minutes then light the logs. The gas should burn hot enough to get the logs burning. That is exactly what I did and the idea seemed to be working up to the point of where I lit a piece of paper and shoved it into the fireplace.

Suddenly there was an explosion and a basketball size fire ball shot out of the fireplace, hit me squarely in the chest knocking me backwards about 10 feet onto the floor. Not only had I managed to get a fire going in the fireplace but also the carpet and a couch sitting near the fireplace were on fire too. I jumped up gabbing 2 large pillows off the couch and began beating the flames out on the couch and floor all the while yelling for Kathy to get her butt down there and help put the fire out. As I beat the fire out I noticed something strange, the skin on my hands and arms was drooping down like long strands of Lingui.

Moments later my thighs began to burn and I looked down to see my blue jeans were smoking - my legs were on fire. Kathy and I quickly smothered the fire on my thighs and that's when I noticed all the skin on my hands and arms was pretty much gone. I was a blistering mess. I began to get that old feeling back of going into shock and I told Kathy I was going up to the kitchen and lay on the cold tile floor (I was starting to feel the impact of the burns) and she better call an ambulance. As I lay there the pain intensifying, my body swelling up and feeling very nauseated to my stomach wouldn't you know the door bell rang.

My parents were here. Now growing up in the country family and friends visiting customarily knock on the door and immediately open it and announce themselves as they walked into your house. This is what my mother did and as she looked down the hallway and saw me laying on the floor - she went ballistic! She started yelling and screaming what happen to you, what's wrong, oh my God what has happened? Dad who was walking behind her took one look at me and immediately knew what had happened. He didn't know how it happened but he recognized what was wrong with me. You see my dad had left high school at the age of 17 and joined the Marines to fight in WWII. He fought battles on Guadalcanal, the Solomon Islands and was severely wounded on Iwo Jima. Guess what his military specialty was? He carried a flame-thrower! He recognized I was severely burned and he grabbed mom by the waist and half lifted her up and dragged her outside to calm her down. It was about then the ambulance came and took me to Mercy Hospital's Burn Unit.

All the way in the ambulance I begged the paramedics to give me something for the pain. They refused, they said their protocol did not allow them to administer pain medication to burn victims. I would learn later why. I won't go into all that took place in the Burn Unit but will tell a couple of stories. Upon arrival at the hospital a team of doctors and nurses whisked me away to the burn ward and began the debreeding process. The debreeding process for those who don't know is where they scrape and pick off all the burnt flesh in the burn wounds. It's extremely painful and they give you very little sedative while doing it. The reason for this is because they want you to be conscious during the process in case you go into cardiac arrest at which point they change protocol to save your life. Apparently in severe burn cases like mine this was a frequent occurrence and is why the paramedics refused to give me pain medication on the way to the hospital. In my case it was more complicated because I was wearing a polyester shirt at the time of the fire and many of the polyester fibers had melted into my skin. Medical monitoring equipment and burn treatment procedures have come a long way since those days.

 I would go through multiple debreeding processes in my 35+ days stay at Mercy. By the way, the main debreeding room was located at the far end of the basement at Mercy Hospital. It looked like a dungeon with very little lighting, bland walls and a moldy smell. In the room was a large tank, a hoist and platform. I would be wheeled down to the debreeding room in a special cart that tilted. Here was the process. A medical technician would hoist me up then slide me off the cart into a padded wire basket. The basket would be lowered into the tank filled with beta dine, water and other additives(?). Then the scrubbing process would begin. I soon understood why this room was located far and away from the rest of the hospital. I still shiver to this day whenever I think of that special cart coming for me in the Burn Unit. Later that 1st night I am laying in a bed with an aluminum frame over the top of the bed - sort of like a tent to keep the sheets off my wounds.

 The lights are low and I'm struggling mentally to understand what has happened to me. I'm weak, I'm tired, they have strapped my arms and legs down to keep me from scratching my itchy wounds and the morphine they have given me while easing the pain hasn't alleviated all of it. I can't even open my eyes. I hear the voices of 2 people walking into the room. I can only guess they were young interns or resident doctors - I really couldn't make anything out except 2 shadowy figures. One says to the other "I hear we got a new burn patient in today let's check him out". They lift up the sheet to see my naked, blistered body bathed in beta dine and burn ointment. I have 2nd & 3rd degree burns over 40% of my body. One guy lets out a low whistle and says "this guy will never make it to morning". They lower the sheet and walk out. I doubt they knew I was conscious but mentally I said "you SOB don't count me out just yet!"

A few days later when I was conscious more frequently and could tolerate visitors, Kathy informed me she was 6 weeks pregnant with our 1st child - Dawn. I struggled to comprehend what she was saying and I wondered if I would live long enough to see our child. I would undergo more operations for skin grafts to cover the wounds on my arms and legs. The pain was constant before, now I had skin grafts which were itchy on top of being painful. I was not a happy camper and my attitude only worsened. I think at one point I told Kathy to leave me and go find another man that could take care of her and the coming baby because I would probably never get out here or if I did I would be badly crippled and of no use to anyone. She told me to go to Hell. Quite a lady, my wife! Months later the skin grafts were healing and I was wearing a body stocking to protect my skin grafts, which by the way was extremely itchy. The doctors told me I needed to start stretching the skin grafts on my elbows and under my arms to gain flexibility. If I didn't they said my arms would be permanently locked into a position where I would be unable to bend them and would be disabled. I looked like a car with its doors wide open at the time. I tried to do the stretching exercises they showed me but they were extremely painful and I had lost so much muscle tone and strength I struggled to make any progress.

 As the bands of skin hardened the more difficult it became to move at all. In desperation Kathy and I devised a different way to stretch the new skin. I would lay on the floor on my back, Kathy would put one foot on my shoulder and the other on my wrist and slowly force my arms down into a straight position on the floor. Something akin to Christ being crucified on the cross. I would love to be able to tell you that I offered her words of encouragement during this routine, unfortunately nothing could be further from the truth. I ranted, raved, and cussed to no end. The pain was excruciating and nearly drove me out of my mind. Let me remind you, Kathy is now about 8 months pregnant with our 1st child and is dealing with her own issues, wondering what it is like to have a child, feeling insecure about all the changes taking place within her body, wondering about the pain of child birth not to mention dealing with a husband that is completely dependent on her for everything. As good as life had been for us before this accident, it was now one big nightmare. Somehow we survived it and over a period of about a month I gained full use of my arms. Just in time to hold my new baby girl. After recovering from this episode I was more determined than ever to accomplish my goals. I was a little behind on my career schedule and set about to make up for lost time.

So audience you need to ask a question here & here it is - SO CARY, HOW DID THIS WORK OUT FOR YOU?

Well I'm glad you asked and I did a tabulation of sorts over my 35 plus year career.
* I've been fired 6 times
* twice I lost jobs due to plant closings
* 2 businesses I started both failed
* I have filed for unemployment 8 different times in my career

Not exactly an lustrous career! Must be some kind of record... It was these events that caused me to begin an earnest search for God and to try to understand why this was happening to me. I had nowhere else to turn, I had done everything in my power to make my career a success and I had failed miserably through circumstances that seemed to conspire against me.

 While outwardly I put on a brave face, inwardly I felt like a loser, my confidence was gone, and a fog of hopelessness seem to settle over me. Life had not been able to break me physically but I guess you could say mentally I was a broken man and spiritually bankrupt. Hitting rock bottom took on a whole new meaning for me. During this period of time the most influential person in my life was Graham. Through our discussions (he knows of some of the sordid details involving part of my employment history) and the books we read in the Men's Room Group including the follow up discussions - Plus that group's friendship and more importantly their full acceptance of me; became the foundation to begin my new journey to find God. The Men's Group probably never realized how important that connection was to me and still is. Of all the programs and changes Graham has introduced to this church over the years, in my mind, starting this study group has to rank near the top. The influence of this group plus my personal Bible readings and reflections I began the process of coming to grips with the idea that God was in fact part of my life. That the Lord Jesus Christ was in fact walking with me every step of the way and I needed to grow my faith in that hope and to turnover everything to God in prayer & trust he would help me through the difficult times. It was a gradual process and there were many days that I didn't feel God's presence but I held on to the hope that He was in fact there.

Slowly I began to rely less on my emotional state and trusting more in a God who controlled the universe. My prayer life went from one of "questioning why all this stuff was happening to me?" (I would analyze and reanalyze each event trying to figure out what I could have done differently or where to lay the blame for my predicaments) to one where I simply asked God "help me grow my faith and increase my trust in you". Somewhere in the Bible there is a passage that says and I'm paraphrasing "for those that trust in God good things will happen". Each time I felt the stress building, the panic setting in about my situation and what was going to happen to me, my family, our future I would repeat that phrase and a half dozen other favorites I picked up in the Bible. Amazingly each time the stress and panic subsided and I would feel at peace for hours on end. Over time, slowly, I felt the burdens, the guilt and the worry lifted from my shoulders to where I began to have a sense of freedom from the fear, the embarrassment and the pain of my struggles.

My situation had not changed but my mind set had. I experienced joy and a feeling of gratitude not because my circumstances had changed (they had not) but because I sensed that God was strengthening me internally, preparing me for something else of which I had no idea what it was or when it might occur. To tell the truth I still don't. What I do know is that I have made a transformation in thinking and I live by a new mantra these days based on 5 principles.
1. To allow God the freedom to work in my life.
2. To relax & enjoy the ride of life.
3. To take life 1 day @ a time.
4. Everything is turned over to God - including seeking his help to continue to deepen my Faith & Trust in Him.
5. The freedom to let go - I'm no longer in control of my life - God is.

This transformation has given me a new perspective on life. I don't worry about the future like I used too, I'm not concerned of how others may judge me, instead life has become an exploration, a game to see how often I can find the blessings God is granting me each and every day. The material things of this world do not hold the same sway over me as they once did.

Don't get me wrong, I still like nice things, to visit beautiful places and enjoy the various entertainment options that can be had. But their significance in my life have diminished and they are not what I live for anymore. They also do not define me as a person. This is not the message the world offers and at times I feel like a stranger in its midst, but truth is, it feels right, deep down I sense this is what God wants for all of us and He will surely give it to anyone who asks. My understanding of life now is that there are many paths to God. And each of us need to seek, to work at, and find our individual path that will lead us to Him. The key is to ask for his help and not try to do it with only our understanding of how the world works. Another place in the Bible says "God's ways are not man's way" so we need to think differently about our faith and how we go about developing that faith. However we go about it , it all begins with trusting in God and then asking for his help in discovering who we really are and what purpose he has for us in granting us life to begin with. We belong to him, we do not belong to ourselves is a lesson hard to learn. Only when we are willing to let go of our lives do we then begin to live our lives as they were intended to be.

One of the passages in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount is in his discourse that in order for a man to gain his life he must lose it. I think he meant to give up control over our lives. It was through grace that we were granted life and it is thru grace that we can truly live rich lives. As Psalm 118 so elegantly puts it "it is better to trust the Lord than to put confidence in man, it is better to take refuge in Him than in the mightiest king!".

My hope for each of you today and myself would be that we would pursue this goal earnestly and help one another along the way. May the Lord of Lords, the Host of Hosts, the God of Gods grant us the courage and commitment to achieve this endeavor and to honor Him in all things.
AMEM and AMEM.