Handicap’s Triumph
John Bartel was a healthy, athletic, twenty-year-old young man who was gradually taking full charge of the family dairy farm with all its multiple duties.
It was a beautiful spring day in the lusciously green Fraser Valley, British Columbia. The grass was just right for filling the huge silos for winter feed. John was busily unloading the heavy fodder into the silage cutter and blower when a large bunch momentarily stopped the conveyer belt. By sheer habit, John stepped on the guilty bunch to get it moving again while his eyes selected the next place to insert his pitchfork, when he felt a tug on his right leg and he watched in horror as his foot and then his leg were shredded and sent up into the silo.
When he finally extracted himself, all he had left was a three-inch stub. Praying earnestly all the while, he undid his pant belt and used it as a tourniquet to stop the profuse bleeding. Painfully, he dragged himself into the milk parlor of the dairy and called for an ambulance.
A few days after the operation and cleanup, he sat in his wheelchair in the hospital sun room, feeling sorry for himself and wishing himself dead rather than handicapped for the rest of his life. He noticed another wheelchair enter the room. A middle-aged man sat there with a blanket around him and looked at John with some disdain and said, “Young man, shame on you whining away like that here. You should be thankful that you are alive and healthy!” John replied a bit tersely, “You don’t understand. My leg is gone forever!” “Well, then, look at this,” replied the man as he threw off the blanket and revealed two stubs about as long as John’s. He then continued, “Young man, get well; then go out there and prove to the world that you can do as much with one leg as anyone else who has his two legs.”
John went back to the farm and after a number of fittings, had a mechanical leg and foot made to suit his needs. He milks up to seventy cows at a time for his livelihood. He has taken over full possession of the family farm. John swims and water-skis (he always slaloms), he was featured in a sports magazine a few years ago as an ardent downhill skier. John Bartel married my niece. When I officiated at the wedding, I suggested they could remain standing for the prayer of blessing, but John said, “No way, I can kneel down and get up like everyone else on my own when the prayer is over.”
They have a fine family of three children. John takes the oldest boy, now eight, to the top of the five thousand foot Mount Cheam as they both ride their trail motor bikes along that mountain trail. John and his wife Margaret were the youth leaders in their church for a number of years. He is now about thirty-three and has proven that he can do everything with only one leg and more than others can do with two, at least nearly everything. He can’t stand only on his mechanical leg. He has a good sense of humor and a living, practical faith in the determination to succeed. And he is successful in so many ways and an encouragement and example to everyone. John would say, “I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me.”
Sporting Obstacles
On November 8, 1970, there was a hard-fought game between the New Orleans Saints and the Detroit Lions. The game was nip and tuck, and it came down to the last final seconds to see who would win. The crowd gasped as they realized that the Saints were going to try a field goal of sixty-three yards. To try something that had never been done before in the history of man would certainly take a Goliath of a person. The crowd looked for a man with a size 45 shoe and a chest as big as the back of a semi. But instead, they saw a man run out onto the field who had no fingers on his right hand, no toes on his right foot, and only half of his kicking foot. When Tom Dempsey kicked that ball, he set history for professional football and set a world record that had never been done before. The beautiful thought about Tom Dempsey is not that he won a football game, but that he saw an obstacle and refused to be handicapped.
Ignoring Handicaps
In a small town in the midwest where I spent six years of my early youth, there lived a mentally retarded adult named Myron. It was during Depression years and there was no place for Myron to be “kept” but at home. He lived there with his mother and they survived on the work that Myron did as a gardener.
He had a proverbial “green thumb,” and the places there he did the gardening were easy to identify. The lawns, shrubs, hedges, flowers—all showed care, skill, and loving attention. Myron also did “volunteer” work. He cut grass, raked leaves, and planted flowers in what would otherwise have been unsightly vacant lots. He was probably best known for his “oil can.” He always carried a small can of lubricating oil in his hip pocket. A squeaky door or hinge or gate always got a “free” dose from Myron’s oil can.
Never a Sunday went by that Myron was not in church with his mother.
Yes, we boys tried to “tease” him. But he always got the better of us because he refused to be anything but cheerful, full of good humor, and totally unflappable.
Myron died a few years after I left town to attend college. It was not easy to arrange, but I went back for the funeral. I was not prepared for what I saw. It seemed that everyone in town had decided to attend the funeral and there were scores of others, like myself, who had traveled from distant places to be there.
Without consciously attempting to do so, Myron had patterned for us the kind of life that really matters. No, he had not achieved fame, fortune, or honor. But he had been a worker, an optimist, an “easer of tensions” and a faithful churchman. He was a man who “overcame” a handicap that he didn’t even know he had.
What Do You Walk On?
When William Pitt was prime minister of Great Britain, he moved about painfully on crutches. A man came to him one day complaining that he had been given an impossible task. In response, Pitt picked up his crutches and shook them at the man. “Impossible, sir?” he shouted. “I walk on impossibilities.”
Demosthenes on the Podium
When Demosthenes, the famed Greek orator, first spoke in public, he was hissed off the platform. His voice was harsh and weak and his appearance unimpressive. He determined that his fellow citizens would yet appreciate his words, so he practiced day and night. He shaved half his head so no one would want to invite him to social events. To overcome a stammer, he recited with pebbles in his mouth and yelled against the thunders of the Aegean Sea so his voice would get louder. He stood beneath a suspended sword to train himself not to favor a shoulder that kept hitching. He practiced facial expressions in front of a mirror. It’s not surprising that when he next appeared in public he moved the Greek nation.
He and another orator spoke on a matter of national concern. When his companion concluded his speech, the crowd said, “What marvelous oratory!” But when Demosthenes finished, they cried with one voice, “Let us go and fight Philip!” –Jay Oswald Sanders
God’s Attention Getters
Happinessce Jones is a renowned concert organist and teacher at Baylor University. Several years ago, she played the first full concert on the new pipe organ at the Crystal Cathedral in California, which cost over $1 million. At the age of sixteen, she was a piano major at the University of Texas. A sprained wrist interrupted her promising career as a pianist. For six weeks, she could not touch a keyboard. Not wanting to waste the time, she decided to learn to play organ pedals with her feet, and a new career was born! “God has a way,” she relates, “to get your attention and say, ‘Hey, I have something better for you to do.’”
And He Did
Born on a Kansas farm and educated in a one-room school, he lived a tough and difficult existence as a boy. Glenn and his brother kept the school’s fire going, and one morning when the boys poured kerosene on live coals, the stove blew sky high. Glenn would have escaped, but his brother had been left behind. Rushing back to help, he suffered terrible burns as did his brother. His brother died, and Glenn’s legs sustained severe damage.
The story does not end there, however. Glenn had long dreamed of making a track record. Through a period of discouragement, disappointment, and threatened meaninglessness, he somehow kept going. More, he made up his mind that he would walk again—and he did! That he would run—and he did! That he would discipline himself—and he did! That he would master the mile—and he did! That he would break the international record—and he did!
Glenn Cunningham purposed in his heart. The purpose in a person’s heart captures the soul and has power to transform the ugliest circumstances into the richest blessings.
Handicapped and Sporting
The late singer and actor Gordon MacRae told this story:
It seems that Arnold Palmer was invited to come to a convention of blind golfers. He asked the golfers how they were able to know what direction to hit the ball. One blind golfer explained that the caddy went out ahead of him with a little bell which he would ring as he stood near the hole. The blind golfer would then hit the ball toward the sound of the bell. Arnold asked how well it worked, and the blind golfer said that it worked so well he was willing to take on Arnold Palmer for a round of golf; and just to make it interesting, was willing to bet Palmer ten thousand dollars he could beat him. Well, this just blew Palmer’s mind. He pressed him, but the man insisted he was willing to bet that amount on his ability to beat Palmer. So, the deal was struck. Palmer said, “OK. What time do we tee off?” And the blind man said, “10:30, tonight!”
A Parable of Unity
During Vacation Bible School last week, my wife had an experience with her primary class that she says she will never forget. Her class was interrupted on Wednesday about an hour before dismissal, when a new student was brought in. The little boy had one arm missing, and since the class was almost over, she had no opportunity to learn any of the details about the cause or his state of adjustment. She was very nervous and afraid that one of the other children would comment on his handicap and embarrass him. There was no opportunity to caution them, so she proceeded as carefully as possible. As the class time came to a close, she began to relax. She asked the class to join her in their usual closing ceremony. “Let’s make our churches,” she said. “Here’s the church and here’s the steeple, open the doors and there’s . . . .” The awful truth of her own actions struck her. The very thing she had feared that the children would do, she had done. As she stood there speechless, the little girl sitting next to the boy reached over with her left hand and placed it up to his right hand and said, “Davey, let’s make the church together.” This story may be seen as a parable of our search for oneness in Christ: to put our inadequate, handicapped lives alongside the lives of others and to pray, “Let’s make the church together.”
Wizard of Electricity
Charles Steinmetz, the electrical genius, and one of the founding fathers of the colossal General Electric, was crippled from birth. His body was grotesque; he was so short in stature that he looked like a dwarf; he was a hunchback.
His mother died before he was one year old. His father was comparatively poor, but was determined that as far as possible, young Charles would have a thorough education. Charles couldn’t run and play games as normal boys did, so he made up his mind that he would devote himself to science. He set this goal: “I will make discoveries that will help other people.”
When he immigrated to the US, he could not speak a word of English. The port authorities were tempted to return him to his native Switzerland. His face was swollen from the cold he had endured on the boat passage across the Atlantic. He was dwarfed and misshapen in body. His sight was defective. His clothes were shabby.
But Charles stayed, and even found a job that paid him twelve dollars a week. And he showed amazing abilities. The infant company, General Electric, quickly realized that in Charles Steinmetz they had one of the greatest experts in the world in the field of electricity. His career was marked by unparalleled research and development.
When Steinmetz died in 1923, one writer said, “This deformed hunchback had the mind of an angel and the soul of a seer.” Though he was twisted and dwarfed in body, Charles Steinmetz was a giant in mind and spirit.
Two Ways of Responding
The paraplegics were in the news recently. One was Kenneth Wright, a high school football star and later, an avid wrestler, boxer, hunter, and skin diver. A broken neck sustained in a wrestling match in 1979 left him paralyzed from the chest down. He underwent therapy, and his doctors were hopeful that one day he would be able to walk with the help of braces and crutches. But, apparently, the former athlete could not reconcile himself to his physical disability. He prevailed upon two of his best friends to take him in his wheelchair to a wooded area, where they left him alone with a twelve-gauge shotgun. After they left, he held the shotgun to his abdomen and pulled the trigger. Kenneth Wright, twenty-four, committed suicide. The second paraplegic in the news was Jim McGowan. Thirty years ago, at the age of nineteen, Jim was stabbed and left paralyzed from the middle of his chest down. He is now confined to a wheelchair. But he made the news recently when he made a successful parachute jump, landing on his target in the middle of Lake Wallenpaupack in the Poconos. Newspeople learned a number of things about Jim. He lives alone, cooks his meals, washes his clothes, and cleans his house. He drives himself in his specially equipped automobile. He has written three books, and he did the photography for our country’s first book on the history of wheelchair sports. Two men with handicaps: one chose life and the other one didn’t. As Robert Frost wrote: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference.”
I Was There
I have a dear friend, Bill Mann, who has one of the great singing voices in the Christian church in this nation. I remember some years ago, he told me about the most special concert in his life. It was after the concert was over and he returned to his dressing room. Waiting for him there was a woman who was blind, deaf, and mute. Through the lady who was with her, she asked if he would sing for her the last song he sang in the concert. “Surely,” he said.
And standing only five inches from his face, and placing her fingers on his lips and on his vocal cords, he sang again, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” As he finished singing, a tear trickled down the face of Helen Keller. Indistinctly, she said, as the words were repeated by the lady with her: “I was there!”
“Deaf, blind, mute from birth?” you say. “Isn’t that too much for one individual to bear?”
No, as a matter of fact, of all the women in this nation, there was probably no contemporary who gave others more insight into the meaning of suffering than Helen Keller, or more insight into the love of God.