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A Roadside Memorial

We used to live across from a man who watched our house every single day. Even worse, he was constantly leering at our kids. Anywhere else, you’d call the cops on him. 

But in Florida, you elect him to the Neighborhood Association board.

It was as if that nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz from Bewitched lived across the street. Every day, he doted on his manicured lawn and watched for us to break one of a thousand neighborhood rules. I’m pretty sure filing that report was the greatest joy of his week. He probably giggled as he typed.

Some might call him a “grumpy old man”, but age wasn’t his problem. Old age doesn’t make you mean, it only intensifies the person you already are. So if you’re kind and optimistic, you simply become more so with time. 

But if you’re bitter, you’ll metastasize into a full-blown curmudgeon by 65.

Thankfully, time works just as strong in the other direction. For example, last week I watched an older gentleman as he helped his wife out of the car. I hope I wasn’t like my creepy neighbor, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of them as I sat sipping my coffee. 

I noticed them first as the man opened his trunk. He lifted a wheelchair out of that trunk and set it on the side walk next to the passenger side door. He carefully locked the wheels in place so it wouldn’t roll when his wife sat down. He opened her door and lovingly guided her out of the car and over to the chair. 

He was careful not to rush her, and made sure she didn’t waver or make a misstep. It was the perfect picture of what a marriage should be toward the end of our years. As I watched I thought to myself, “That’s the man I want to be when I get older.” 

Coincidently, there’s a good chance I’ll get to replay that scene myself one day. And it’s all because of a stump on a side road in East Tennessee that serves as a memorial in our family…

Over 20 years ago, my wife had a terrible car wreck. We were living in East Tennessee where I worked at a church. My wife Dawn was driving home after the service one Sunday when she lost control of the car. She over-corrected and careened off the road into a tree at full speed. She was driving my daughter who was around 5, and my son who was a few months old. 

One other detail. She was pregnant.

I came upon the scene to see all three family members laying across someone’s front yard, with paramedics busily caring for them. I remember the chaos, the uncertainty of what to do. I remember the huge tree they hit, and the mark our car left on it. I remember our van, and how the middle front section had compacted in on my wife’s right leg. She didn’t even realize her ankle was crushed as she frantically tried to get to our kids. As she went to put weight on it, her leg collapsed under her.

An hour later I was pacing outside the emergency room, as teams of medical staff attended to my family. I was frantically trying to hold myself together, while inwardly wondering if my wife would ever walk again and if I was about to lose both my children and our unborn baby. Desperate prayers flashed across my mind, but I was unable to focus on anything. 

But everything changed when I saw the face of my pastor as he walked down the hall toward me. I remember how I buried my head in his shoulder as he hugged me. He didn’t say much, because he was too wise to through meaningless words into my fear. But he was there, and that meant everything to me.

The next week was spent in the hospital, going from one floor to the next to check on my wife and kids, all in separate rooms. My infant son was probably in the best condition, suffering only a broken foot. I held my daughter’s hand as she lay in children’s intensive care, her head wrapped and her face swollen. She had a hematoma on her brain, and they warned there could be serious complications. 

My wife was hooked up to machines in the maternity wing, as doctors tried to treat her while monitoring our unborn child. I spent every night there that week, rubbing her limbs as they ached, calling for the nurse, hopping from floor to floor.

Thankfully, the hematoma on my daughter’s brain went away without surgery, and the doctors determined my unborn daughter was unaffected by the trauma. However, my wife’s leg would never be the same. We entered into a long and painful recovery process at home, with the extra burden of taking care of our kids. I wasn’t sure how I would meet their needs and care for my wife. 

But in the midst of our darkest moment, God shown a spotlight on all our blessings.

First, I learned the power of a church. Church members I hardly knew started showing up to clean the house, mow the lawn and care for the kids. Bags full of food and fully-prepared meals were brought to our home every day without fail for more than a month. We felt the love of God’s family joining their arms around us to meet every challenge. To this day that experience defines for me what a real church can be and should be.

Second, my wife and I became bonded together as never before. We probably gained ten years’ worth of trust in each other after just one month’s time. Where my wife had served me so many times before, now I was the one serving her. I was able to prove my love to her in very tangible ways. Without going into too much detail, let’s just say there’s a bond that comes from emptying someone’s Porto-Potty every day!

To this day, her recovery period has been the defining moment of our marriage. If there was ever a chance we might drift apart, God drove a stake through its heart that month. We’ve never come close to doubting each other’s love since then. 

So what could have been a horrible tragedy became a sacred, God-breathed experience. What could have made us bitter and resentful about life did just the opposite. Now we love each other more than before, and we know every moment together is a gift from God!

The same things you think life sends to destroy you may also be the greatest vehicles of God’s blessings in your life. The only difference is in how you respond.

When I see my wife suffering today with continued pain in her leg, I suppose I could curse God for allowing it to happen. I could be bitter when I see her scars and the atrophy from an ankle that no longer bends.

Instead, I know I’m blessed to realize all I could have lost, and all I still have left!

So it makes me sad to hear people complain from minor disappointments. They think God owes them a perfect life untouched by trouble. They completely miss the fact those troubles bring great blessings as well.

The difference is found in you. Do you see life with faith or fatalism? Your outlook is the key.

The correct response to trials is not “why me” but “it’s my turn”. Problems are my turn to grow into the person I always hoped I’d become. Challenges are God’s refining fire that molds me into a much stronger man who shines in the midst of darkness. 

While I still grieve for my wife’s pain, I look forward to proving my love for her the rest of our lives. My trust in God tells me it was our most painful experiences that strengthened that love. So why be bitter at when God uses even the worst things to bless us?

We’ve all heard it said life can make you bitter or better. We’ve all heard it because it’s true. The only difference between that grumpy old man across the street and the sweet man caring helping his wife into her wheelchair is how they chose to respond to hardship.

Sometimes when we return to Tennessee, I drive by where Dawn had that accident. Over the years, I’ve looked for the mark our car left on that huge tree. I noticed one year the tree looked like it was dying. Then on the next trip it was gone! Someone had cut it down. 

All that was left was a stump.

Both my wife and that tree received the same trauma that day. But one of them endured it to thrive while the other one died. Same blow – different response.

So…which one will you choose to be – the survivor who blossomed into something beautiful, or the stump that an accident left behind?

2 Comments

  • Ruth Ingulrud
    Posted July 29, 2020 at 3:31 am

    I read your story about the tree and the accident. Very moving and powerful. Thank you for sharing. I’m still recovering from a snapped Achilles’ tendon three years ago, but I can run and bike now – still building up muscle. God can indeed bury blessings in tragedy. With Grace, we find them. I notice that you are an adoptive dad! Wonderful. I have just started a ministry here in Japan, a nonprofit that teaches English to kids in orphanages. Details at JOEE.jp. I recently quit my job teaching at a private Christian school to do this full time. Launched our first online fundraiser. Trusting God to make the NPO grow and be effective. Blessings to you!

    • Leanne Gonzalez
      Posted July 31, 2020 at 11:35 pm

      This is so good, thank you for sharing. Have you written a devotional yet? I believe the greatest moments of growing in faith, being able to minister to others and knowing beyond doubt the love that God has for us are in the hardest, darkest times that only God could bring us out from. I’ve seen some darkness in my life but the Lord met it with His light and formed me in the fire.

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Our dream house was a 120-year old 3-story Victorian home. It was just a few blocks away from one of the loveliest parks in the city and the same distance from the church I pastored. I could literally walk to work, and did so on many mornings. How convenient!

Unlike the other brick houses that lined the streets nearby, this one was painted light yellow and stood apart from the rest. Plaster reliefs of baby angels wrapped around the base of the house. They represented the children of the original owners, making the structure even more unique. It also had a three-car garage at the back of it. Few houses in this older section of town had one as large, and many people resorted to parking on the street. But not us! On just an average salary, we had bought one of the nicest places to live in the area. 

I had always dreamed of owning a Victorian home. I had performed the role of Prof. Henry Higgins from the musical My Fair Lady right before we moved to our new city. So I was primed to live the life of the English gentleman, sipping tea in my beautiful old house. I loved the old wood, the stained glass windows, and our “penthouse suite” for my wife and me on the top floor. We’d be sequestered away from the noise of our little girls playing below us. It all seemed so ideal.

But it turned out to be anything but ideal. Our “Golden House”, as our little girls came to call it, was not so golden. In fact, our dream house almost killed us, quite literally. 

One afternoon I got a call at the church. It was Dawn, my wife, and she was sobbing hysterically. Finally I was able to make out enough of her words to understand what was happening.

“I fell…come home!”

Almost 20 years ago, my wife had been in a bad car accident that crushed her right leg. That ankle couldn’t turn at all. So as I ran the 5 blocks to my home, I knew what had happened.

When I got to the house, I found Dawn in the basement. She was headed to the washer and drier there, and had misjudged a step going down. She hit the concrete floor hard.

After getting her to the hospital, thankfully we learned nothing had been broken. However, that would be just the first of several falls for Dawn down those steps. We eventually moved the washer and drier up to the second floor, which helped a little. But the bottom line was a three-story house with narrow stairways were not meant for a woman who had challenges with mobility.

I also learned having your bedroom on the third-floor is not a good idea for a chubby guy in his mid-50s. There were a few days I wondered if I’d still be alive by the time I reached the top floor. Though I began on the stairway to the bedroom, I might end up on the stairway to heaven…

Then there was the city. Dawn and I always loved culture, restaurants, theater and all the things a great city has to offer. So living there, we felt like kids in a candy store. There was always some new restaurant to explore, always a show playing somewhere, and interesting people living all around us. It seemed ideal.

Except for crime. And taxes. Many cities are big on those, and ours was no exception. We had both in abundance.

One of our regular nightly diversions was watching the notifications on our community’s “Next Door App” alert us to all the recent shootings and hold-ups around us. One of us would hear gunshots, and I’d watch for the posts to pop up. I’d then calculate how close it was to our home. Many were within just a few blocks, some just down the street. 

We would occasionally get notices of some tax we hadn’t paid. Usually, we neglected to pay because the city had neglected to ever send a bill. Then one day, you get a notice you’re being sent to a collections agency, even though you still hadn’t received a bill yourself. 

Once we got a bill for trash pick-up. We were confused because we paid a refuse bill on time every month. But a lady on the phone informed us what we had paid was in fact only the garbage bill. There was completely different bill that was a tax for just having trash pick up available to us in the city. This bill was paying for the “possibility” our trash might be picked up. No kidding.

I’m sure they’re still probably working on a way to collect a tax on our taxes. 

All of this added together was a painful lesson on the difference between perception and reality. After we first moved to that city and were still living in an apartment, I walked down those very streets and fantasized about how wonderful living there would be. When we found the Golden House, we rejoiced and basically cried out, “Here, take our money” to the realtor. 

But the view from the outside of a situation is always much different from the inside. Nothing is ever quite what you expect…with houses, or with life.

The problem with so many of the things we want is it’s too often based on an illusion. We think a thing, a person, or a situation will bring happiness. But happiness is never found in those things outside of us.

Real happiness only happens from the inside out.

There’s an old fashioned Bible word for this foolishness: covetousness. The prohibition against coveting is actually the 10th and final commandment. It’s easily skimmed over in favor of the more R-rated commandments against murder or adultery. Simply wanting your neighbors stuff as opposed to stealing it or killing for it seems like no big deal in comparison.

But coveting is like a powerful drug. The addict never gets enough. Once he gets that one thing he’s obsessed over, he’s disappointed to realize it doesn’t fulfill his needs and he moves on to something more. The new car he’d wanted all his life now sits in the garage most days. She can’t even remember why she bought that purse now. That’s how coveting works: whatever you get, it’s never enough. You’re always left wanting something else, and even more addicted to your desires.

Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor; And this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 2:10-11

Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. - Luke 12:15

There was nothing wrong with us wanting a house. But it was very wrong of me to think that it would bring us so much happiness on its own. The ideal life and fulfillment I was expecting from a house was unreasonable. 

That kind of happiness only comes from God’s address, not mine.

Inevitably, we become like kids on the day after Christmas. We’ve opened every package, played with every toy, and we’re already bored with them. The newness wore off in a day, all because we were expecting too much from them to begin with.

Most homes stop being dream houses the minute we walk into them. Reality inevitably sets in, and the “house porn” on the realtor’s website is now just a bunch of plaster and dry wall. 

We finally made it out of our dream house before it killed us. No, we didn't run screaming from it in the middle of the night like in the Shining or the Amityville Horror. When we left, it did take quite a bite out of our finances, and we had to sell for quite a bit less than we'd paid. But the wound was worth it for the lesson we learned.

We’re in a new place now, in a much smaller city. We’re renting a little one-story house we’re hoping to buy soon. We're in a little neighborhood where we hardly ever lock our front door. It's pretty boring compared to city life, but that’s just fine with me.

I’ve discovered what really makes a “dream house”. The dream is not the house, it’s the people you put in it. Regardless of the size or location, those people are what makes life worthwhile. 

Everything else is just a dream. And all that glitters is not a golden house.

Our dream house was a 120-year old 3-story Victorian home. It was just a few blocks away from one of the loveliest parks in the city and the same distance from the church I pastored. I could literally walk to work, and did so on many mornings. How convenient!

Unlike the other brick houses that lined the streets nearby, this one was painted light yellow and stood apart from the rest. Plaster reliefs of baby angels wrapped around the base of the house. They represented the children of the original owners, making the structure even more unique. It also had a three-car garage at the back of it. Few houses in this older section of town had one as large, and many people resorted to parking on the street. But not us! On just an average salary, we had bought one of the nicest places to live in the area. 

I had always dreamed of owning a Victorian home. I had performed the role of Prof. Henry Higgins from the musical My Fair Lady right before we moved to our new city. So I was primed to live the life of the English gentleman, sipping tea in my beautiful old house. I loved the old wood, the stained glass windows, and our “penthouse suite” for my wife and me on the top floor. We’d be sequestered away from the noise of our little girls playing below us. It all seemed so ideal.

But it turned out to be anything but ideal. Our “Golden House”, as our little girls came to call it, was not so golden. In fact, our dream house almost killed us, quite literally. 

One afternoon I got a call at the church. It was Dawn, my wife, and she was sobbing hysterically. Finally I was able to make out enough of her words to understand what was happening.

“I fell…come home!”

Almost 20 years ago, my wife had been in a bad car accident that crushed her right leg. That ankle couldn’t turn at all. So as I ran the 5 blocks to my home, I knew what had happened.

When I got to the house, I found Dawn in the basement. She was headed to the washer and drier there, and had misjudged a step going down. She hit the concrete floor hard.

After getting her to the hospital, thankfully we learned nothing had been broken. However, that would be just the first of several falls for Dawn down those steps. We eventually moved the washer and drier up to the second floor, which helped a little. But the bottom line was a three-story house with narrow stairways were not meant for a woman who had challenges with mobility.

I also learned having your bedroom on the third-floor is not a good idea for a chubby guy in his mid-50s. There were a few days I wondered if I’d still be alive by the time I reached the top floor. Though I began on the stairway to the bedroom, I might end up on the stairway to heaven…

Then there was the city. Dawn and I always loved culture, restaurants, theater and all the things a great city has to offer. So living there, we felt like kids in a candy store. There was always some new restaurant to explore, always a show playing somewhere, and interesting people living all around us. It seemed ideal.

Except for crime. And taxes. Many cities are big on those, and ours was no exception. We had both in abundance.

One of our regular nightly diversions was watching the notifications on our community’s “Next Door App” alert us to all the recent shootings and hold-ups around us. One of us would hear gunshots, and I’d watch for the posts to pop up. I’d then calculate how close it was to our home. Many were within just a few blocks, some just down the street. 

We would occasionally get notices of some tax we hadn’t paid. Usually, we neglected to pay because the city had neglected to ever send a bill. Then one day, you get a notice you’re being sent to a collections agency, even though you still hadn’t received a bill yourself. 

Once we got a bill for trash pick-up. We were confused because we paid a refuse bill on time every month. But a lady on the phone informed us what we had paid was in fact only the garbage bill. There was completely different bill that was a tax for just having trash pick up available to us in the city. This bill was paying for the “possibility” our trash might be picked up. No kidding.

I’m sure they’re still probably working on a way to collect a tax on our taxes. 

All of this added together was a painful lesson on the difference between perception and reality. After we first moved to that city and were still living in an apartment, I walked down those very streets and fantasized about how wonderful living there would be. When we found the Golden House, we rejoiced and basically cried out, “Here, take our money” to the realtor. 

But the view from the outside of a situation is always much different from the inside. Nothing is ever quite what you expect…with houses, or with life.

The problem with so many of the things we want is it’s too often based on an illusion. We think a thing, a person, or a situation will bring happiness. But happiness is never found in those things outside of us.

Real happiness only happens from the inside out.

There’s an old fashioned Bible word for this foolishness: covetousness. The prohibition against coveting is actually the 10th and final commandment. It’s easily skimmed over in favor of the more R-rated commandments against murder or adultery. Simply wanting your neighbors stuff as opposed to stealing it or killing for it seems like no big deal in comparison.

But coveting is like a powerful drug. The addict never gets enough. Once he gets that one thing he’s obsessed over, he’s disappointed to realize it doesn’t fulfill his needs and he moves on to something more. The new car he’d wanted all his life now sits in the garage most days. She can’t even remember why she bought that purse now. That’s how coveting works: whatever you get, it’s never enough. You’re always left wanting something else, and even more addicted to your desires.

Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor; And this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 2:10-11

Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. - Luke 12:15

There was nothing wrong with us wanting a house. But it was very wrong of me to think that it would bring us so much happiness on its own. The ideal life and fulfillment I was expecting from a house was unreasonable. 

That kind of happiness only comes from God’s address, not mine.

Inevitably, we become like kids on the day after Christmas. We’ve opened every package, played with every toy, and we’re already bored with them. The newness wore off in a day, all because we were expecting too much from them to begin with.

Most homes stop being dream houses the minute we walk into them. Reality inevitably sets in, and the “house porn” on the realtor’s website is now just a bunch of plaster and dry wall. 

We finally made it out of our dream house before it killed us. No, we didn't run screaming from it in the middle of the night like in the Shining or the Amityville Horror. When we left, it did take quite a bite out of our finances, and we had to sell for quite a bit less than we'd paid. But the wound was worth it for the lesson we learned.

We’re in a new place now, in a much smaller city. We’re renting a little one-story house we’re hoping to buy soon. We're in a little neighborhood where we hardly ever lock our front door. It's pretty boring compared to city life, but that’s just fine with me.

I’ve discovered what really makes a “dream house”. The dream is not the house, it’s the people you put in it. Regardless of the size or location, those people are what makes life worthwhile. 

Everything else is just a dream. And all that glitters is not a golden house.