Story behing "It Is Well With My Soul!"
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Who Killed Yasser Arafat?
By Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, July 3, 2012
Yasser Arafat died on November 11, 2004, of a mysterious ailment. His enemies spread the rumor he had AIDS: David Frum, with typical classiness, claimed he had contracted AIDS as a consequence of having sex with his bodyguards. Now, however, it has been revealed Arafat was poisoned: the cause of his death was exposure to very high levels of polonium-210, a rare radioactive substance. An investigation conducted by Al Jazeera showed Arafat’s personal items, released to the media organization by his widow, contained several times the normal level of polonium that would normally be detected on such items. The Palestinian leader’s terminal symptoms were similar to those experienced by victims of polonium poisoning: the substance targets the gastrointestinal tract and the subject wastes away.
Arafat’s Ramallah compound had been bombed several times by the Israelis, and they had the place surrounded—yet still he persisted. They couldn’t get him out. Worse, his plight was becoming a metaphor for the condition of his people, who were—and still are—prisoners in their own land. A former adviser claimed he was poisoned by the Israelis, who detained the Palestinian ambulance used to deliver Arafat’s medications to the Ramallah compound. At the time, one tended to write this off as a purely polemical exercise: in light of the new evidence, however, the question has to be asked.
Simply by continuing to exist in the face of such a sustained assault, Arafat was defeating the Israelis every day. They had to get rid of him. Did they? We’ll never know for sure, but it is worth noting that Israeli threats to kill him preceded his untimely death by less than a year. As is well-known, Israeli intelligence has carried out numerous assassinations: it is simply another tool in their international operations, one they have never hesitated to utilize. A passport-falsification scheme involving New Zealand, Britain, France, Spain, and a number of other countries was widely believed to have been meant to equip the Mossad’s crack team of assassins, who could slip into—and out of—target areas at will.
The Israelis hated Arafat with a particular passion, for two reasons:
1) His longevity—The Palestinian movement is thick with factions, but thin when it comes to recognizable leaders. Arafat was the principal leader, and no one since his death has achieved his stature. He was a political survivor, having lived through numerous assassination attempts, and deflected the schemes of internal enemies to displace him. Simply by sticking around for so long, he became a living symbol of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination—and that is one big reason why the Israelis got rid of him.
2) His secularism—The Israelis encouraged the growth of groups such as Hamas in the beginning, in order to split away the more religious elements from the decidedly secular Palestine Liberation Organization/Fatah, which Arafat headed. It is easy to sell the Palestinians as crazed jihadists when a group like Hamas or Islamic Jihad is the most visible champion of their cause: the secular PLO presented the Israelis with a public relations problem. There’s another reason for the Israelis to have knocked him off.
One aspect of this case is extremely odd: polonium-210 is the same poison Alexander Litvinenko was dosed with. Litvinenko, a former KGB official, converted to Islam, joined the Chechen rebels, and became an associate of Boris Berezovsky, the notorious Russian oligarch wanted on charges of embezzlement in his home country. Litvinenko and Berezovsky are the Russian version of 9/11 Truthers: they believe practically every terrorist attack on Russian cities has been “staged” by Vladimir Putin in order to keep him in power. When he became ill, Litvinenko charged the Russian spy agency with poisoning him—although that seems highly unlikely.
Polonium-210 isn’t something you can buy off the shelf at your local Walmart. It isn’t even something a mad scientist might cook up in his home lab. About 100 grams are produced each year for specialized technical uses. The only entities with access to this sort of thing are state actors, or, at least, a private organization with very substantial resources at its disposal.
What’s interesting is that a diplomatic cable, dated Dec. 26, 2006 and published by WikiLeaks, details the conversation of a US diplomat with Russian spook Anatoly Safonov in which Safonov claims the Russians told the British about the importation of “nuclear materials” into London during the Litvinenko affair—and were told that the whole thing was “under control before the poisoning took place.” In the course of the same conversation, Safonov—Putin’s chief representative on terrorism-related matters—went on to describe a number of threats and their possible sources:
“Safonov noted the daunting number of countries that posed particular terrorism threats, mentioning North Korea, Pakistan, South Africa, Libya, Iran, India, and Israel (sic?). He described a range of dangers, stressing the more immediate threats posed by nuclear and biological terrorism, but also acknowledging the risks of chemical terrorism.”
While the use of “sic” is meant to indicate our diplomat’s incredulity at the inclusion of Israel in this list, what we now know about how Arafat died should tear away the blinders from several sets of eyes—yes, even at the US State Department.
Friday, July 6, 2012
Diabetes: The Dark Side of the Gulf´s Economic Boom
Reuters, July 4, 2012
DUBAI (Reuters)—Dhari al-Fadli, a patient being treated at a diabetes clinic in Kuwait, is a victim of the dark side of his country’s economic boom.
After his weight hit a peak of 123 kg (271 pounds), Fadli developed such serious diabetes that he had to inject himself with insulin before every meal. Helped by the insertion of a gastric balloon into his stomach to reduce hunger, he has now lost enough weight to stop the injections, but still has to take diabetic medication.
“We’re all overweight in my family…We have a saying that if you don’t have diabetes, you’re not a Kuwaiti,” said Fadli, a 49-year-old father of five.
In fact, more than one in five Kuwaitis suffer from the disease.
Oil wealth has given Kuwait and nearby countries in the Gulf some of the highest per capita incomes in the world. But it has also created lifestyles—overeating, high-sugar diets, cushy jobs and heavy reliance on automobiles for transport—that are leading to an explosion of diabetes in the region, experts say.
Five of the 10 countries where diabetes is most prevalent are located in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, according to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), an umbrella organisation of more than 200 national associations.
Kuwait is No. 3 while Qatar is sixth, Saudi Arabia seventh, Bahrain eighth and the United Arab Emirates No. 10. The rest of the top 10 are Pacific island nations with much smaller populations, apart from Lebanon which comes in fifth.
A staggering 21.1 percent of people in Kuwait are diabetes sufferers while prevalence rates are around 20 percent in other GCC countries, IDF figures show. In the United States, the rate is 9.6 percent; worldwide, it is 8.5 percent.
The problem is so widespread in Kuwait, said Abdulmuhsen al-Shammari, an endocrinologist working at Mubarak al-Kabeer Hospital in the country, that “it is now normal for half a dinner party to be diabetic and for them to ask for each other’s medication after they eat”.
Genetic factors apparently contribute to the Gulf’s high incidence of diabetes, an incurable disease in which the body has difficulty absorbing sugars and which is closely associated with obesity, scientists say. It can lead to cardiovascular problems, blindness, strokes and kidney disease.
“Research suggests that people (in the Gulf) have a lower set-point at which their body-mass index levels trigger the onset of diabetes,” said Maha Taysir, endocrinologist at the Imperial College London Diabetes Clinic (ICLDC) in Abu Dhabi.
However, even expatriates living in the Gulf have a higher incidence of diabetes than they do in their home countries, Taysir said. This suggests lifestyles are a major reason for the region’s problem.
Just two or three generations ago, many inhabitants of region made their living through strenuous work such as fishing, goat-herding and pearl-diving.
The development of the Gulf’s oil riches changed lifestyles drastically, luring tens of thousands of people into comfortable jobs at lavishly funded state enterprises, or allowing them to live on ample unemployment benefits. Physically tough jobs in the GCC, such as construction and oil field operation, are almost entirely done by millions of foreign workers.
Gulf rulers responded to last year’s political unrest in the Middle East by increasing welfare benefits for their citizens to buy social peace, which some officials in the Gulf have conceded privately risks further reducing the pressure on people to work.
“Exercise is the single most important factor for reducing diabetes … but it takes a lot of work to get patients here to follow a lifestyle they really don’t want to,” Taysir said.
Some Gulf residents believe the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein in 1990-1991 may have contributed indirectly to the spread of obesity by fostering a junk food culture. Fast food outlets blossomed in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other countries where thousands of U.S. troops were stationed, and remained part of daily life after the troops withdrew.
DUBAI (Reuters)—Dhari al-Fadli, a patient being treated at a diabetes clinic in Kuwait, is a victim of the dark side of his country’s economic boom.
After his weight hit a peak of 123 kg (271 pounds), Fadli developed such serious diabetes that he had to inject himself with insulin before every meal. Helped by the insertion of a gastric balloon into his stomach to reduce hunger, he has now lost enough weight to stop the injections, but still has to take diabetic medication.
“We’re all overweight in my family…We have a saying that if you don’t have diabetes, you’re not a Kuwaiti,” said Fadli, a 49-year-old father of five.
In fact, more than one in five Kuwaitis suffer from the disease.
Oil wealth has given Kuwait and nearby countries in the Gulf some of the highest per capita incomes in the world. But it has also created lifestyles—overeating, high-sugar diets, cushy jobs and heavy reliance on automobiles for transport—that are leading to an explosion of diabetes in the region, experts say.
Five of the 10 countries where diabetes is most prevalent are located in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, according to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), an umbrella organisation of more than 200 national associations.
Kuwait is No. 3 while Qatar is sixth, Saudi Arabia seventh, Bahrain eighth and the United Arab Emirates No. 10. The rest of the top 10 are Pacific island nations with much smaller populations, apart from Lebanon which comes in fifth.
A staggering 21.1 percent of people in Kuwait are diabetes sufferers while prevalence rates are around 20 percent in other GCC countries, IDF figures show. In the United States, the rate is 9.6 percent; worldwide, it is 8.5 percent.
The problem is so widespread in Kuwait, said Abdulmuhsen al-Shammari, an endocrinologist working at Mubarak al-Kabeer Hospital in the country, that “it is now normal for half a dinner party to be diabetic and for them to ask for each other’s medication after they eat”.
Genetic factors apparently contribute to the Gulf’s high incidence of diabetes, an incurable disease in which the body has difficulty absorbing sugars and which is closely associated with obesity, scientists say. It can lead to cardiovascular problems, blindness, strokes and kidney disease.
“Research suggests that people (in the Gulf) have a lower set-point at which their body-mass index levels trigger the onset of diabetes,” said Maha Taysir, endocrinologist at the Imperial College London Diabetes Clinic (ICLDC) in Abu Dhabi.
However, even expatriates living in the Gulf have a higher incidence of diabetes than they do in their home countries, Taysir said. This suggests lifestyles are a major reason for the region’s problem.
Just two or three generations ago, many inhabitants of region made their living through strenuous work such as fishing, goat-herding and pearl-diving.
The development of the Gulf’s oil riches changed lifestyles drastically, luring tens of thousands of people into comfortable jobs at lavishly funded state enterprises, or allowing them to live on ample unemployment benefits. Physically tough jobs in the GCC, such as construction and oil field operation, are almost entirely done by millions of foreign workers.
Gulf rulers responded to last year’s political unrest in the Middle East by increasing welfare benefits for their citizens to buy social peace, which some officials in the Gulf have conceded privately risks further reducing the pressure on people to work.
“Exercise is the single most important factor for reducing diabetes … but it takes a lot of work to get patients here to follow a lifestyle they really don’t want to,” Taysir said.
Some Gulf residents believe the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein in 1990-1991 may have contributed indirectly to the spread of obesity by fostering a junk food culture. Fast food outlets blossomed in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other countries where thousands of U.S. troops were stationed, and remained part of daily life after the troops withdrew.
What Killed Yasser Arafat?
By Al Jazeera, July 03, 2012
It was a scene that riveted the world for weeks: The ailing Yasser Arafat, first besieged by Israeli tanks in his Ramallah compound, then shuttled to Paris, where he spent his final days undergoing a barrage of medical tests in a French military hospital.
Eight years after his death, it remains a mystery exactly what killed the longtime Palestinian leader. Tests conducted in Paris found no obvious traces of poison in Arafat’s system. Rumors abound about what might have killed him—cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, even allegations that he was infected with HIV.
A nine-month investigation by Al Jazeera has revealed that none of those rumors were true: Arafat was in good health until he suddenly fell ill on October 12, 2004.
More importantly, tests reveal that Arafat’s final personal belongings—his clothes, his toothbrush, even his iconic kaffiyeh—contained abnormal levels of polonium, a rare, highly radioactive element. Those personal effects, which were analyzed at the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, were variously stained with Arafat’s blood, sweat, saliva and urine. The tests carried out on those samples suggested that there was a high level of polonium inside his body when he died.
“I can confirm to you that we measured an unexplained, elevated amount of unsupported polonium-210 in the belongings of Mr. Arafat that contained stains of biological fluids,” said Dr. Francois Bochud, the director of the institute.
The institute studied Arafat’s personal effects, which his widow provided to Al Jazeera, the first time they had been examined by a laboratory. Doctors did not find any traces of common heavy metals or conventional poisons, so they turned their attention to more obscure elements, including polonium.
It is a highly radioactive element used, among other things, to power spacecraft. Marie Curie discovered it in 1898, and her daughter Irene was among the first people it killed: She died of leukemia several years after an accidental polonium exposure in her laboratory.
At least two people connected with Israel’s nuclear program also reportedly died after exposure to the element, according to the limited literature on the subject.
But polonium’s most famous victim was Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian spy-turned-dissident who died in London in 2006 after a lingering illness. A British inquiry found that he was poisoned with polonium slipped into his tea at a sushi restaurant.
There is little scientific consensus about the symptoms of polonium poisoning, mostly because there are so few recorded cases. Litvinenko suffered severe diarrhea, weight loss, and vomiting, all of which were symptoms Arafat exhibited in the days and weeks after he initially fell ill.
Animal studies have found similar symptoms, which lingered for weeks—depending on the dosage—until the subject died. “The primary radiation target… is the gastrointestinal tract,” said an American study conducted in 1991, “activating the ‘vomiting centre’ in the brainstem.”
Scientists in Lausanne found elevated levels of the element on Arafat’s belongings—in some cases, they were ten times higher than those on control subjects, random samples which were tested for comparison.
The lab’s results were reported in millibecquerels (mBq), a scientific unit used to measure radioactivity.
Polonium-210, the isotope found on Arafat’s belongings, has a half-life of 138 days, meaning that half of the substance decays roughly every four-and-a-half months. “Even in case of a poisoning similar to the Litvinenko case, only traces of the order of a few [millibecquerels] were expected to be found in [the] year 2012,” the institute noted in its report to Al Jazeera.
But Arafat’s personal effects, particularly those with bodily fluids on them, registered much higher levels of the element. His toothbrushes had polonium levels of 54mBq; the urine stain on his underwear, 180mBq.
Further tests, conducted over a three-month period from March until June, concluded that most of that polonium—between 60 and 80 per cent, depending on the sample—was “unsupported,” meaning that it did not come from natural sources.
How to Make Optimism Work for You!
By Jane E. Brody, NY Times, July 2, 2012
My recent column on optimism drew hundreds of comments from readers who testified to the value of living life as a glass half full. But one in particular—from a 90-year-old man living in Calabasas, Calif.—was especially telling. The reader, William Richmond, wrote that a phrase in the column, “Fake it until you make it,” summed up his long and very successful life.
His approach to life could serve as a battle plan for the millions of recent college graduates now searching for work in an unforgiving job market, as well as for older adults trying to re-enter the workplace after a long hiatus and those who lost jobs and must now reinvent themselves.
In 1946, after serving nearly four years as a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps, Mr. Richmond said he returned to civilian life “certain I could conquer anything I went after.”
After all, he’d managed to fly solo and safely land a Piper Cub after just six hours of training, then spent the next year learning to be a pilot. “Do it, then learn how—I guess if it’s good enough for the Marines…,” he wrote.
Mr. Richmond loved jazz and, having been handed a drum to play in his middle school band in Rockford, Ill., he decided to go to Los Angeles to become a professional musician.
“I wasn’t very good, but I could keep pretty good time and could look like I knew what I was doing,” he wrote. “In a few months I actually got a job in a downtown bar and in due time was playing in a big band.”
But recognizing his musical limitations, he then enrolled in a music college to learn how to be a professional drummer, after which he worked almost nonstop for 15 years in big-name bands, playing for singers like Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra—and finally for Jerry Lewis.
Noting Mr. Richmond’s ability to make people laugh, Mr. Lewis asked him up to write jokes, then a movie, “The Ladies Man” (1961), which was a success even though his collaborator, Mel Brooks, quit early on, leaving Mr. Richmond, a complete novice, to write it. After taking a class in screenwriting, Mr. Richmond wrote six more movies for Mr. Lewis, and followed that with 30 years as a professional comedy writer on countless TV shows before retiring at age 73.
“The important thing,” Mr. Richmond said in an interview, “is to visualize what you want and go after it. Be ready for an opening—serendipity—all the time.”
Elaine Fox, a psychologist at the University of Essex in England and author of an informative new book on the science of optimism, “Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain,” says positive thinking is not the main thing about optimism.
“What really makes the difference is action,” she told me. “If you sit back passively, you won’t get the job you want.”
Her book includes the story of Madam C. J. Walker (1867-1919), born to former slaves, orphaned by age 7, married at 14 and divorced at 20. Undeterred by racism and sexism, she became perhaps America’s first black millionaire by founding a company that made hair-care products.
“Madam Walker’s rags-to-riches story was fueled primarily by her irrepressible can-do attitude,” Dr. Fox wrote. “Setbacks were tackled head on with tireless energy.”
After Thomas Edison unsuccessfully tried more than 10,000 different ways to develop an electric lamp, Dr. Fox wrote, “he famously proclaimed: ‘I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.’ “
In an interview, Dr. Fox said: “The important thing is having a sense of control over your life, your destiny. When you have a setback, you feel you can do something about it.”
Or, as she wrote: “Optimism is not so much about feeling happy, nor necessarily a belief that everything will be fine, but about how we respond when times get tough. Optimists tend to keep going, even when it seems as if the whole world is against them.”
Sometimes a little bluffing helps. Mr. Richmond said he got his first professional break by telling other musicians he was a great drummer. One thing led to another, until he got a job with a band that was to play one-nighters on the road for nine months.
“After the first night, I was fired—I just wasn’t good enough,” he recalled. “But they had to keep me until they found a replacement, and gradually I started to play better and better, so I kept the job.”
Many people trying to enter (or re-enter) the job market have found that it helps to put yourself where you want to be, even if it involves a monetary sacrifice.
Robin Seligman-Schmidt of Manhattan was 52 when she decided look for work in the fields she had studied in school: art and interior design.
She started by volunteering at the Leo Baeck Institute, a research library in New York that houses German-Jewish archives and art. “I worked with an art curator cataloging and doing odds and ends,” she said, and that led to a paid position as consultant for “Destination Shanghai”—an exhibition of work by and about German and Austrian Jews who escaped to China during World War II, now on display at the institute.
“Through volunteering you might find something totally different that you’d never done before or even thought of before,” was Ms. Seligman-Schmidt’s advice to job seekers of all ages. “Do something to keep your mind going, and you might find something that really interests you.”
Dr. Fox has shown that while brain circuits vary from person to person, it is possible to strengthen what she calls the “sunny” brain and weaken the “rainy” brain.
Among the science-based “retraining” methods she describes in her book are these:
* Face your fears head on. Step outside your comfort zone to help eliminate fear, anxiety and negative thoughts that can stand in the way of success.
* Re-evaluate events in your everyday life. Tell yourself that maybe things aren’t so bad.
* Practice mindful meditation. Allow feelings and thoughts to pass through your mind without judging or reacting to them; that helps create a sense of detachment from negative experiences.
* Take control over how you feel instead of letting feelings control you. A sense that you control your destiny can help you bounce back from setbacks and maximize your enjoyment of life.
* Laugh. Use positive feelings to counter negative ones.
* Be fully engaged. Get involved in activities that are meaningful to you, whether it’s a career, hobby, sport or volunteering. Do it, as Bill Richmond says. Then learn how.
My recent column on optimism drew hundreds of comments from readers who testified to the value of living life as a glass half full. But one in particular—from a 90-year-old man living in Calabasas, Calif.—was especially telling. The reader, William Richmond, wrote that a phrase in the column, “Fake it until you make it,” summed up his long and very successful life.
His approach to life could serve as a battle plan for the millions of recent college graduates now searching for work in an unforgiving job market, as well as for older adults trying to re-enter the workplace after a long hiatus and those who lost jobs and must now reinvent themselves.
In 1946, after serving nearly four years as a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps, Mr. Richmond said he returned to civilian life “certain I could conquer anything I went after.”
After all, he’d managed to fly solo and safely land a Piper Cub after just six hours of training, then spent the next year learning to be a pilot. “Do it, then learn how—I guess if it’s good enough for the Marines…,” he wrote.
Mr. Richmond loved jazz and, having been handed a drum to play in his middle school band in Rockford, Ill., he decided to go to Los Angeles to become a professional musician.
“I wasn’t very good, but I could keep pretty good time and could look like I knew what I was doing,” he wrote. “In a few months I actually got a job in a downtown bar and in due time was playing in a big band.”
But recognizing his musical limitations, he then enrolled in a music college to learn how to be a professional drummer, after which he worked almost nonstop for 15 years in big-name bands, playing for singers like Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra—and finally for Jerry Lewis.
Noting Mr. Richmond’s ability to make people laugh, Mr. Lewis asked him up to write jokes, then a movie, “The Ladies Man” (1961), which was a success even though his collaborator, Mel Brooks, quit early on, leaving Mr. Richmond, a complete novice, to write it. After taking a class in screenwriting, Mr. Richmond wrote six more movies for Mr. Lewis, and followed that with 30 years as a professional comedy writer on countless TV shows before retiring at age 73.
“The important thing,” Mr. Richmond said in an interview, “is to visualize what you want and go after it. Be ready for an opening—serendipity—all the time.”
Elaine Fox, a psychologist at the University of Essex in England and author of an informative new book on the science of optimism, “Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain,” says positive thinking is not the main thing about optimism.
“What really makes the difference is action,” she told me. “If you sit back passively, you won’t get the job you want.”
Her book includes the story of Madam C. J. Walker (1867-1919), born to former slaves, orphaned by age 7, married at 14 and divorced at 20. Undeterred by racism and sexism, she became perhaps America’s first black millionaire by founding a company that made hair-care products.
“Madam Walker’s rags-to-riches story was fueled primarily by her irrepressible can-do attitude,” Dr. Fox wrote. “Setbacks were tackled head on with tireless energy.”
After Thomas Edison unsuccessfully tried more than 10,000 different ways to develop an electric lamp, Dr. Fox wrote, “he famously proclaimed: ‘I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.’ “
In an interview, Dr. Fox said: “The important thing is having a sense of control over your life, your destiny. When you have a setback, you feel you can do something about it.”
Or, as she wrote: “Optimism is not so much about feeling happy, nor necessarily a belief that everything will be fine, but about how we respond when times get tough. Optimists tend to keep going, even when it seems as if the whole world is against them.”
Sometimes a little bluffing helps. Mr. Richmond said he got his first professional break by telling other musicians he was a great drummer. One thing led to another, until he got a job with a band that was to play one-nighters on the road for nine months.
“After the first night, I was fired—I just wasn’t good enough,” he recalled. “But they had to keep me until they found a replacement, and gradually I started to play better and better, so I kept the job.”
Many people trying to enter (or re-enter) the job market have found that it helps to put yourself where you want to be, even if it involves a monetary sacrifice.
Robin Seligman-Schmidt of Manhattan was 52 when she decided look for work in the fields she had studied in school: art and interior design.
She started by volunteering at the Leo Baeck Institute, a research library in New York that houses German-Jewish archives and art. “I worked with an art curator cataloging and doing odds and ends,” she said, and that led to a paid position as consultant for “Destination Shanghai”—an exhibition of work by and about German and Austrian Jews who escaped to China during World War II, now on display at the institute.
“Through volunteering you might find something totally different that you’d never done before or even thought of before,” was Ms. Seligman-Schmidt’s advice to job seekers of all ages. “Do something to keep your mind going, and you might find something that really interests you.”
Dr. Fox has shown that while brain circuits vary from person to person, it is possible to strengthen what she calls the “sunny” brain and weaken the “rainy” brain.
Among the science-based “retraining” methods she describes in her book are these:
* Face your fears head on. Step outside your comfort zone to help eliminate fear, anxiety and negative thoughts that can stand in the way of success.
* Re-evaluate events in your everyday life. Tell yourself that maybe things aren’t so bad.
* Practice mindful meditation. Allow feelings and thoughts to pass through your mind without judging or reacting to them; that helps create a sense of detachment from negative experiences.
* Take control over how you feel instead of letting feelings control you. A sense that you control your destiny can help you bounce back from setbacks and maximize your enjoyment of life.
* Laugh. Use positive feelings to counter negative ones.
* Be fully engaged. Get involved in activities that are meaningful to you, whether it’s a career, hobby, sport or volunteering. Do it, as Bill Richmond says. Then learn how.
Burn the Ships!- The Tiller Family Testimony-
Let me add my welcome to everybody at all of our locations. I am loving the ‘Voices’ series. Last weekend, Bob Goff blew us away. Next weekend, Lysa TerKeurst, New York Times bestselling author is going to be a huge blessing. But this weekend, you are in for a treat. It is so wonderful to have the Tiller family with us. We have become friends over the last several months and I love their hearts and their stories. Revelation 12 says that we overcome the enemy by the blood of the Lamb and by the Word of our testimony. I think our testimonies are so critical. So tonight, we are in for an incredible treat as John comes and shares the story of their family and some of the challenges they’ve faced but the way they have overcome. So would you give a huge NCC welcome to John Tiller as he comes to share with us?
[John]
Thanks Pastor Mark. Isn’t it cool to be in church on Saturday night! I’ll tell you what, I like church and I like theater. I like movies. Our lives are kind of like making a movie. We all have dreams and plans for our lives, a script for how we think things in our lives should go. A lot of times, things stay on script and sometimes they go off script and when that happens, like actors in a movie, we need to do a little ‘improv’ improvise, make a few adjustments to account for the things we didn’t plan for. Most of the time, life goes right back on script and it’s no big deal. But sometimes when life goes off script, it goes so far off script that it involves pain, real pain, and we’re just not sure what to do.
In 2003 at 29 years old, my life was going pretty much according to the script I had envisioned. It might be something like the way you’ve envisioned your script. I had a great business. I had a great wife. I mean, I had a great wife and I had a great business! I had a nice home on a few acres. I even had an SUV with Onstar and heated leather seats! Life was pretty good. But best of all, I had a perfect healthy three year old baby boy named Eli. Eli wasn’t just any baby body. You see, much like Pastor prayed for a few moments ago, we had lost a baby early on in our marriage. It took us five years of deep agonizing prayer before God gave us this son and he was perfectly healthy. Now he was three years old and life was going even better than I had envisioned. But scripts can change at just a moment’s notice. Take a look.
[video clip of Eli] [video of news clips about Eli falling from a second-story window]
That was not the script that I had planned for me or for my family. On an unseasonably warm morning in January of 2003, we left one window open in our house. My son was playing in his second-story playroom over the garage and his mom was in just the next room working on the computer when she heard an unusual silence. She went to check it out. She walked into the room and called for Eli and there was no answer. She quickly scanned the room and all of his toys were spread all over the place like normal, but there was one toy that was conspicuously out of place. He had one of those little plastic Playschool table and chairs sets and he had taken one of the chairs and pulled it all the way across the room and under that one window. Her fears came true when she looked up at that window and she saw that the protective window screen was missing. She went over and looked out the window and 13 feet below laid our only child, our precious three year old, lifeless. She ran down the stairs grabbing the phone to call 911. That day I was working in my real estate business. I was interviewing for the job of selling a large property. I was walking the perimeter of 27 acres and I remember my phone kept buzzing but I was with the owner interviewing for the job and I kept thinking, ‘Can’t these person just leave me alone? Don’t they know I’m busy?’ It just kept buzzing. After the appointment, I got in my SUV and I drove to the end of the long driveway and I had several messages. The first one was no big deal, it was a good friend just asking to do lunch. The next two were the message that would change my life forever. They were Trisha, my wife, in a panicked voice, ‘John come quick, Eli has fallen from a window! Please hurry!’ The next one in an agonizing voice, ‘John the police and the rescue squad are here, they are taking him to the hospital, please meet us there.’ It was like standing in the surf and being hit from behind by a gigantic wave. I didn’t know what was going on but I knew that it was not good. So I threw my truck into gear and headed toward the hospital and continued to listen to my messages. The next one came in a stoic voice, ‘John this is Virginia State Police Special Agent Adams, your son has been insured and he is being med-flown to the Medical College of Virginia. Your wife and her mother are with me. Please meet them there.’ I thought, ‘Wow, this must be really bad if they’ve decided to med-flight him to a university hospital.’ The next message though I was totally unprepared for. It was the Chaplain at the university hospital telling me where to meet her when I got there. You see, I didn’t have much experience with Chaplains and hospitals and how that all worked. The only time I thought a Chaplain called was when your loved one had already died. This was devastating! My life had just gone way off script! What do you do when life goes so far off script that you don’t know what to do?
Experts say that in crisis, we go back to what we know or what it is that we truly believe. I was at the bottom of the bottom and my world was spinning out of control. All I could think to do was pray, and I remember that prayer on that drive. ‘God, I don’t’ know what’s going on. I don’t know if he is dead or alive. Please don’t let him die! It just wouldn’t make any sense! But God I know, after what we’ve been through, You love him even more than I do, so no matter what happens, I trust You and I will continue to serve You no matter what.’ I did all that I knew to do. I remembered that Psalm 22:3 where it says that God inhabits the praises of his people and I needed God more than ever before so I turned up the worship music in my cd player as loud as I could for the rest of the drive to the hospital.
Many people hear that story and they have one of two reactions to how I responded, they either say, ‘John, you are super spiritual! I hope if I was ever in a situation like that I could handle it the same way.’ Or they say, ‘Come on man! Seriously? Your kid’s life is hanging on the line and you just turned up the music and praised God? Right.’ Well, I’m not super spiritual. I have struggles every day just like everyone else. And at the time, I couldn’t explain my response either, but after thinking about it, I think that my response was actually predictable and I think that yours would be too.
Leadership expert John Maxwell makes a case in his book Today Matters that we really only make a handful of true decisions in life. We spend the rest of our lives managing those decisions that we’ve already made. We might make a decision to live out our faith or to live healthy and to eat right and exercise, to take care of our family, to serve others or to manage our money well. But there are only a handful of true decisions in life that we make and then beyond that, we simply manage those decisions.
In 1519, Spanish conqueror Hernando Cortez set out on the last leg of his trip to Vera Cruz, Mexico from Cuba. He had 500 soldiers and 100 sailors and 16 horses and 11 ships. They had set out to conquer the largest known land and treasure in the world from the Aztec Indians. If they could capture this land and this treasure, it would be the biggest thing anyone had ever done. In fact, for 600 years, others had tried to conquer this exact same land and all had failed. Cortez reminded his men on the way that if they could capture this land and this treasure, it would change their lives and the lives of their families forever. As they landed in Mexico, he needed to give a pretty good rally speech. In his speech, he gave three words that would demand commitment, three words that would eliminate the option to fail. Those three words in his final speech, “Burn the ships!” “If we are to go back, we will go back on their ships!” So they set fire to the ships that they had sailed in on. They were committed to their goal and to their new lives. No matter the cost, even if the cost was life itself.
You see, our decision to follow Christ is much the same. When we make a decision to follow Him, we’ve got to burn the ships to our past without Him.
Eight years before my son’s accident, Trisha and I knew we wanted to have a family. And we knew that going to church was probably a good thing to do if we wanted to start a family. So we did. I thought maybe even I could get my ticket punched to go to heaven someday if I really did well when I went to church. What happened though is I really got a lot more than my ticket punched. You see, those people in that church, they loved on me and they gave me time to check out these claims that Jesus made about Himself. Then when the time was right, they let me know that God has an imperative, an imperative for each of us to make a decision about our own faith and I knew it was time for me to make a decision. There were two things in the Bible that I knew I would have to believe on faith or choose not to believe. See, I figured out early on that God is bigger than my own understanding, so I would never understand everything there was to understand about faith. That’s why they call it faith, apparently! The created would never fully understand the Creator. So for me there were two primary decisions that I had to make. The first one is found in II Timothy 3:16-17. This is where the Bible says about itself that all Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. This means that the Bible says that the Bible is God’s Word to us, and if I was going to believe that, then I would have to treat the Bible as an instruction manual of sorts for my own life.
The second big thing I would have to take on faith is found in the gospel of John, Chapter 14 verse 6 where Jesus makes an amazing claim about Himself. He says I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. Jesus was claiming to be the only way to God, so I would have to choose to accept or deny that claim Jesus made about Himself. The question for me was, would I believe these things as truth. For me, I knew my decision had eternal consequences and I knew that even a decision to not make a decision was a decision to not follow Christ. The facts were in front of me. So that year, I decided to believe and I decided to follow Christ.
In 1519, Hernando Cortez made a decision to burn the ships to his past. Eight years before my son’s accident, I made a decision to burn the ships to my past without God.
My response that day was predictable. I was simply managing a decision that I had already made to follow God no matter what.
On that day of the accident, I arrived at the hospital to find that my son was hanging on to life. When I arrived in the emergency room, I discovered that the doctors did one and only one thing, the big issue, he fell straight on his head, none of his body was hurt except for his head. But that fall cracked his skull and it created pressure inside his brain, life-threatening swelling and pressure. So the only thing the doctors did was they drilled a hole in the top of his skull and placed a tube to drain the pressure and to drain the excess fluid. For the next three weeks, my son laid unconscious in the hospital, and no matter how hard I pressed them, those doctors could not tell me if he would survive. I wanted desperately to understand what was going on, so I began to interrogate God. Why God? Why do little boys fall from windows? Why did my little boy fall from that window? Why him? Why me? Why God why?
Maybe you’ve asked that same question in your circumstances. Why God? I looked to the Scripture for an answer and it turns out that ‘Why God’ is not a new question at all. In fact, Jesus hit it head on in John 9. It’s a fantastic chapter and I really encourage you this week to read the whole thing, but today I’m just going to talk about the first three verses. Here’s what the NIV says:
1 As Jesus went along, he saw a man who was blind. He had been blind since he was born. 2 Jesus' disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned? Was this man born blind because he sinned? Or did his parents sin?"
They are asking ‘Why?’ In that day, and I think in some circles today, there are people who believe that if someone if suffering from some disease or affliction, they’ve actually committed a sin, either a sin they committed or possibly even a family sin. Jesus answers that and his answer is fascinating. He said:
3 "It isn't because this man sinned," said Jesus. "It isn't because his parents sinned. This happened so that God's work could be shown in his life.
I love how Eugene Peterson interprets Jesus’ response in his version of the Bible, The Message. He says that when the disciples asked why bad things happen, Jesus responds this way: Jesus said, "You're asking the wrong question. You're looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do.
See, in our humanness, we lack God’s eternal perspective. Sometimes we miss the forest of eternity for the trees of today. I think it is easy to miss the fact that there are certain things that have to happen here and now, even though they are painful because we live in a fallen world, that provide purpose for eternity. I think Jesus is saying that in this life no matter our circumstances, we’ve got to stop looking for someone or something to blame, and instead, look for what God can do.
Burn the ships and look for what God can do!
Many people literally around the world prayed for our son. God saved him! He saved his life! I’m convinced of it. But that wasn’t the end of the story. It wasn’t the end of the movie. It really just marked the beginning of a journey, the beginning of a journey where we would work and we would pray for his healing, his full and complete healing. The journey started with him having to relearn every basic human function from thought to speech to mobility. I’m really thankful he is alive, but 10 years later, despite our best efforts, despite great faith that God would heal him, he still has severe symptoms. We don’t know if he will be completely healed this side of heaven. Now, at 12 years old, he has a severe stutter. The entire left side of his body is weak from head to toe. When he walks, he walks with a cane, and for long distances he needs a wheelchair. His vision is severely impaired. His short-term memory is too impaired. He is not the well child I had in my script. Since Eli’s accident, Trisha and I have done everything humanly possible to make our son well. We’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on uninsured medical equipment. For the first three years after the accident, Trisha and Eli literally spent 80 percent of their waking hours in therapy. We had faith that he would be completely healed. We knew it was going to happen. We knew this was another miracle that God was going to perform, so we just kept praying and we kept waiting. And we waited and we waited and we knew that one day, we’d be standing in front of crowds like you saying, ‘Look what the Lord has done! He has completely healed our son.’ But that’s not what happened. The movie of our lives has been all about continuous improvisation.
We’ve met many doctors and therapists through Eli’s treatment. Every one of them would tell you that a patient’s propensity to heal is directly related to the acceptance of their condition. In other words, when we burn the ships to our old scripts and accept our new script and instead of denying that it exists or spending all of our time trying to fix it, we actually heal more quickly. After three years of doing everything we could for our son, there was still more that we could, should and would do. But it was time for us to accept his current condition and choose to live life with disability. You see, this disability was something we couldn’t remove and God was choosing to not completely heal. So we had to burn the ship to our old scripts and look for what God could do with our new script.
So for the past five years or so, we’ve accepted life with disability. That doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped praying for my son like any father in this room, I’d give my right arm to see my son heal. I’d give my own life. It’s like Jesus said though, there is no such cause and effect there either. So instead, I have to choose to look for what God can do. I’m not perfect though! There are still times when I have pity-parties for myself, times when I go back to dreaming about my old script because I think that’s better than what God can do with my new script. I’m wired to be competitive. I like to win. Winning is not everything, but, well, actually, it is! Like many fathers in this room, when I found out that I was going to have my first baby boy, I started making all the dreams and the plans in our script for how we were going to live our life together and how, eventually, we would start throwing a ball and start playing organized sports. You know those two or three or four years, those are momma’s years. I couldn’t wait for him to turn four years old so we could do all those things together and I could teach him those things, the things a dad does for his kid. Once again though, the accident changed that script. It was just unreasonable to think that Eli would be able to play any kind of sports. I remember there was a day a couple of years ago that I was driving down the road with some fathers who were friends of mine and they were talking about all the dreams and the plans that they had for their kids and how theirs kids were now playing sports and how they were achieving those goals and doing so well, and I remember thinking to myself, ‘Hello guys, don’t you see me here? I had those same dreams, those same plans for my kid and they will never be, so would you please stop talking about how great your kids are doing and all the great accomplishments they are achieving!’ I didn’t want to hear it. I was still mourning the death of my old script.
When Trisha later told me that Eli had been invited to play baseball in a league for special needs kids, I was very skeptical and very resistant. I wasn’t going to put my son on a field where he would fail. That was just wrong. There are lots of people who just don’t know what to do so they try to do things and it just doesn’t work out, and I didn’t want this to be one of those things. It would just be wrong. Turns out though that I was the one who was wrong. The Miracle League is a different kind of baseball league where the kids don’t fail at all. They come to town and the first thing they do is build a flat, rubberized field so kids with wheelchairs, canes and walkers don’t have any obstacles. And if they do fall, it’s soft. When they play, every kid has a teen-age or adult buddy that they play with. The only rules – every kid hits and every kid gets on base and every kid scores. If you saw them play, you’d call it a miracle. When I saw those kids, it makes me realize that I don’t have the problems that I think I have. I see these kids really play baseball by overcoming their physical and emotional challenges, and they are playing in a league in which they never would have otherwise been able to play. The Miracle League is one of the best examples that you’ll find of burning the ships to your old scripts and looking for what God can do.
About a year ago, the Miracle League did a black-tie fundraiser hosted by the local Richmond baseball team and it was at the Richmond Marriott and there were 450 attendees who paid $100 a plate. We still like baseball, we just invite the players in from other towns. So Daryl Strawberry was there, Major League Hall of Famer, and pitching sensation Javier Lopez was there also. Eli was asked to lead the crowd and he led the crowd in singing the crowd-favorite Take Me Out To The Ballgame. After singing the song, he told people why it is that he loves to play baseball in the Miracle League. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. He had everyone hanging on every word. By the end of the night, he had helped them raise lots of money for kids to play baseball. And by the end of the night, Eli was signing autographs with the pros!
The Miracle League is just one example of the great things that God has done through my new script. We’ve seen lots of miracles that I don’t have time to share with you all of them today, but there have been lots. And there is one thing I can tell you for sure, those miracles never would have happened if life had gone according to my old script. Burn the ships and look for what God can do!
Say that with me, burn the ships and look for what God can do. Is it time in your life? Is it time to make a decision to serve God with everything that you have? Is it time to burn the ships to your past without Him? Is there somewhere that life has gone so far off script that you weren’t sure what to do and you are looking for something or someone to blame where instead maybe it is time, instead of looking for someone or something to blame, maybe it is time to look for what God can do.
I’d like to pray with you about that now.
God, your Word says that You are the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, that You have plans to prosper us and not plans to harm us, plans for hope and a future, but sometimes it is really hard for us to see that. Sometimes life just doesn’t go according to the script that we had hoped for. God I pray that tonight an today that You would give us courage, courage to burn the ships to our pasts of doubt and blame and courage to look instead for what You can do. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
This is my wife Trisha and our son Eli. Eli has a few words that he would like to share just for you in a song.
[Eli]
I look for God’s power every day. He is way bigger than my own understanding. God’s saved me from my accident in 2003 God basically showed me in the hospital that He truly was going to take care of me. He sure did! And it brought me here today. The song that I’m about to sing is by Chris Tomlin. It is called I Will Rise. I like this song because it talks about what will happen when we die. We will have eternal life with God in heaven. We will be praising God. But we don’t have to wait until we die for everything to be okay because we have a God who loves us and takes care of us. I hope you like this song too.
There's a peace I've come to know
Though my heart and flesh may fail
There's an anchor for my soul
I can say "It is well"
Jesus has overcome
And the grave is overwhelmed
The victory is won
He is risen from the dead
[Chorus:]
And I will rise when He calls my name
No more sorrow, no more pain
I will rise on eagles' wings
Before my God fall on my knees
And rise
I will rise
There's a day that's drawing near
When this darkness breaks to light
And the shadows disappear
And my faith shall be my eyes
Jesus has overcome
And the grave is overwhelmed
The victory is won
He is risen from the dead
[Chorus:]
And I will rise when He calls my name
No more sorrow, no more pain
I will rise on eagles' wings
Before my God fall on my knees
And rise
I will rise
And I hear the voice of many angels sing,
"Worthy is the Lamb"
And I hear the cry of every longing heart,
"Worthy is the Lamb"
[Chorus:]
And I will rise when He calls my name
No more sorrow, no more pain
I will rise on eagles' wings
Before my God fall on my knees
And rise
I will rise
[Mark]
We’ve had the privilege of sharing the stage together three times now I’ve heard John share their story and it gets me every time! Eli, thank you for blessing us! I know Chris Tomlin wrote that song but I’ll take you singing it any day! Can we express our love and appreciation to the Tiller family one more time?
