Tag Archives: writing

October 1, 2025 · 12:45 pm

The white light and a STEMI

I finally pieced together what happened to me.
My office is secure, so I was in there alone and the door was locked. I had just picked up a sandwich from Jimmy Johns and it was on my desk. I hadn’t even opened it.

I remember an immense pain in my chest and an inability to get off the floor. I remember dreaming that I was home in bed with my wife, and then I woke up again. I couldn’t get my breath. The pain was unimaginable. I couldn’t get up, so I started kicking my door from the floor. A co-worker heard me. I passed out again.

When I came to again, the school nursing staff was there with me and the ambulance was on the way. At this point I was in and out of it. I remember unlocking my phone so the nurse could call Susan.

Susan met us at the ER in Faribault. I was in and out, but I woke up for a second and told her that she could have my sandwich. I didn’t get around to it.

They needed to get me to Abbot Northwestern – which is one of the top four heart hospitals in the country. But the storm coming in was too dangerous for the helicopters. So they loaded me into another ambulance. I remember the drivers being very kind but somewhere along the way, I lost consciousness and didn’t regain it again for over 24 hours. I woke with a tube in my throat, and Susan telling me I was going to be OK.

Very soon after that, my pastor came in and read Psalm 27 and prayed with me.

Much later, I found out what had happened. I had a STEMI, (Acute ST elevation myocardial infarction of the inferior wall) which is nicknamed the widow-maker because of the horrible mortality rate. This kind doesn’t sneak up and take you from behind, It is a full assault. When I was 8, my grandpa died of this kind of heart attack. He was only 55.

The doctor told me that often the first symptom is death.

While I was under, I was told that I flat-lined and had to be put on life support. I was on two machines – an ecmo and an impella for something less than 24 hours keeping me alive and the blood oxygenated and flowing. At this point, the doctor told Susan to be prepared for palliative care.

Technically, it is called cardiogenic shock. When they heart goes into cardiogenic shock because of a STEMI, the mortality rate is around 80 percent.

But God had other plans. Because there were so many hundreds of you praying, my heart was ready to go on its own. Yes, I believe that God used the skill of the surgeons and the EMTs and the nursing staff and so many other things to spare my life. God wasn’t ready for me to go yet. The surgeon was pretty astounded and took me off the machines.

I have no memory of any of that.

I have had questions about what I saw. The simple answer is nothing. I have no memories of that whole time.

After I woke, I had hallucinations behind by eyelids whenever I closed my eyes, but for the most part they were ugly and hateful.

I had one horribly ugly nightmare, so bad I talked to several doctors about it. The psychiatrist admits there is mystery, but told me it is most likely the mind trying to formulate and make sense of what the body has been through. That sounds good to me.

As for my view of the afterlife, yes, I believe that when I die I will see Jesus and be with him. But I don’t get my faith from dreams and visions, but from faith in his promises.

My dreams and visions during that time were mostly ugly and frightening.
My moments of calm and peace were from holding my wife’s hand; listening to my pastor read and pray, reading the notes from all of you

I will have some PTSD to work through. I’ll have some PT to do and heart rehab to do.

For those who believe they saw something of the afterlife having the same experience, I don’t judge. People are different. I can only say what my experience was.

I don’t find peace and joy through dreams, but through sitting with the ones who love me and whom I love, reminding each other of God’s promises and resting in our Savior, who promised to never let go of our hands, even in the valley of the shadow of death.

I don’t know what happened to my sandwich. Susan tells me I might have to eventually let it go.

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September 16, 2025 · 5:07 pm

On being woke

I’ve mostly blocked all those who cause me unrest or threaten me. But every once in a while I hear something like, “All my friends say you went woke.”

To me, that’s the strangest insult a professing believer can hurl at someone since “a friend of sinners”.

To be woke is to be awake. And it is the best thing that has happened to me, even though it often makes me want to rise with the roosters and scream at the new day.

I used to sleep through the abuse, the degradation, the sexual harassment, the racism, the horrors of American History –

Is it better being awake? I see the horrors. I feel deeply the hundreds of years of hopelessness degradation and pain inflicted on image-bearers of God in the cotton fields. I can’t even imagine the trauma. I can’t imagine being forced at gunpoint in the middle of the night to cross a river with your small children, watching them drown behind you with nothing you can do about it.

I can’t imagine watching drunken white men with rifles rape your wives and daughters and then kill them in front of you for fun.

And I can’t imagine whitewashing it, as if it didn’t happen. To repent means to fully acknowledge the pain you have caused and turn from it.

So yes, being awake hurts. It feels deep and cutting.

But I can’t sleep again. To be asleep to it is to be dead. To be alive and to love, and to feel brings pain, but also brings longing and hope and the eyes to look for a new day when justice rains down like water on a dusty land. How do you long for justice when you are dead?

I wish that everyone would wake up. I pray that the light of Christ would fill the soul with the same tears that fall over Jerusalem.

O, Evangelical Church in America! How often would Jesus have lifted you up in his loving arms and taught you love and mercy and grace and peace! How often would he have exchanged your nuclear weapons for joy! How often would he have torn down your walls and given you goodness and faith and love! But you would not. You exchanged it for pride and money and sex and entitlement and power. You found another way to break your own heart.

My tears are falling, but I’ll never be asleep again.

Arise, you who sleep, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light (Paul the apostle, from his letter to the Ephesians.)

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August 9, 2025 · 11:35 am

They believe the women,

They just don’t care.

I saw a poll yesterday that said 47 percent of republicans would not change their support of Trump even if his name IS in the Epstein files.

It confirmed what I suspected in the evangelical church for years. It isn’t that they don’t believe women. It’s that they don’t care.

Once we understand that, our approach changes. Instead of trying to convince them that the women are telling the truth, we need to understand that they are not Christian and don’t have an ethical system that has any point of connection with us.

Any ethical system built upon hate is at the root no different than Nazi Germany. They don’t care who their leaders destroy, as long as they hate the same people.

For all of those who are still trying to convince your Right Wing church that you were sexually assaulted, abused, raped or hurt in any other way, or that you have a right to divorce, I hope you will find peace in knowing that the proof won’t matter. It isn’t you.

They just don’t care.

It is like trying to convince a Baal-worshiper not to offer their firstborn child to the Iron Furnace of Molech.

Once you know that, you can do what you need to do to survive and heal and not give a fig what they think. They’ve lost the right to have an opinion about your divorce, your therapist, your choice to have children, your lifestyle, your dress or especially your relationship with Jesus.

To put it very practically in my life, they’ve lost the right to have an opinion about where I go to church, how I handled my “trial”, what I do for a living, what I believe about love and freedom, or what I do with my family.

Once you say that raping a child isn’t a deal-breaker, there is nothing that you have of value to say to me.

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July 2, 2025 · 6:03 pm

On learning to love myself

Healing takes place when stories are told in safe places. I don’t know who said that, but I think it is time to take it seriously.

My mom passed away. Her funeral was the day after my heart attack so I couldn’t attend. I had already said goodbye and wasn’t planning on going anyway. I had already made peace with it.

I can’t carry this shame anymore and I need to speak.

Saying things in a family where saying things is never done takes a lot out of me. But I’m tired of carrying it.

Mom, I’m sad that you couldn’t love me.

I’m sad that I don’t know what a gentle hug or loving caress from a mother feels like. I’m sad that I knew your fists and your paddle more intimately than words of love. I’m sad that I knew your words of contempt or anger and never knew words of intimacy or love.

I know I was a child, and lots of parents wish they had done differently. But I wish that when I was an adult you would have loved me enough to listen. I wish that you could have loved (or at least, liked) the man I became. But I was always a little bit short of whatever made people acceptable. I never knew what that was. And even into my senior years, you carried your belief that I was weird, unacceptable, unlikeable.

I love you, but I wish you had loved me. I’m sad that I wasn’t able to be whatever you were looking for. I’m sad that I was a disappointment to you.

I’m sad of hearing all the stories from friends and relatives that were told about me and how weird I was and how I was just “funny” and not quite up to whatever standard you had for me.

I’m sad that your rejection had ripple effects that I couldn’t foresee, and couldn’t fix. I was just…different. I was just…weird….

I’m sad that your friends gave me a wide berth when I visited and treated me like something was wrong with me. But that is what you believed. I just never knew what that was.

I was just “Well, you know how Sam is…”

I’m sad that you called my mother in law before I got married and told her that my wife should rethink things because I am so weird.

I’m sad that you told me that any girl I might be interested in college couldn’t possibly be interested in me. And that I still didn’t know why. It was such a heavy burden to carry.

I’m sad that I had no one to turn to when I was a child, that the little boy that was me had to try to figure out life by himself. He did it mostly by trying to imitate those who were acceptable.

The little boy didn’t know why mom didn’t love him. He just knew that maybe if he was more like the twins or more like his older brother, she might like him more. So that’s what he tried.

And it was exhausting. I quit trying to be someone else years ago, and had to just settle for never being enough. But I never really learned how to ask for help. I just learned that family didn’t have my back.

My kids weren’t enough. My wife wasn’t enough. I’m sorry that deep down you really believed that we just made up health issues for some reason or another. And I’m really sad that you told all your friends that. And I was really tired of trying to prove to you that we were struggling with severe health issues. So I quit talking about it.

I’m sad that you believed that I wasn’t qualified to be a minister because of….something lacking, I guess.

And I’m sad that you couldn’t love me. I’m sad that you couldn’t like me. And I’m sad that you taught me not to like myself.

So here is what I’m going to start doing, and wish I had done it years ago. I am going to try to give that little boy that you taught me to hate a little love.

He wasn’t weird. He was just trying to figure things out. He was just trying to be loved, safe, and protected.

I’m going to be who I am and stop carrying those things that don’t belong to me. I’m going to try to give myself a break. I’m not going to carry shame and guilt anymore.

I’m not going to listen to that voice that tells me that if I only had more…something…then maybe I’ll be worth loving, and maybe even worth liking a little bit.

But I will still be sad about it. I wish we could have had a relationship that wasn’t based on how much I’ve disappointed you, or disappointed the family, or disappointed people I haven’t even met.

I wish I knew what unconditional love from a mom looked like.

And so I will spend my life giving and receiving love, where I didn’t have it. I will love the little boy that was me (at least try to). And I will try to learn that there are a lot of pretty good things about me.

And I’m sorry that you didn’t see me. Some people say I’m a pretty lovable guy.

And I’m saying this because I love you. But I’m also very tired of living a lie. It isn’t good for anyone.

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June 19, 2025 · 3:34 pm

On Getting Old

I don’t understand what happened. Yesterday, I was doing the Bird with Morris Day and the Time and all of the sudden I got old.

Thank you all for the birthday greetings. I truly love my birthday because of the greetings. There are some that I am like “Hey, they haven’t unfriended me yet!” and that makes me smile a little.

And then a lot of new faces. I love my new friends, my new community. I feel safe for the first time. I love my new church family. I can’t describe to you what it feels like to be safe to grow, to examine theology, to have deep thoughts without fear.

I never had that. Ridicule or anger from my father, or contempt, plotting and hatred from those who vowed to partner with me in ministry. Safety is a new feeling – psychological safety to question, to wonder, to learn and to grow.

And meeting new friends! It is so wonderful to see things from new perspectives and meet people from new backgrounds. I am beginning to understand the holy, catholic church in new ways, and it is truly liberating.

But now I get tired when I do the Bird and my joints ache.

My memories collide with my shame and all of the things I tried to use to hide behind.

I figured that if I acted a certain way, maybe then I can hide from the faces of people and try to pretend that their judgment doesn’t bother me. Maybe then my family of origin would welcome me into their circle. I got so tired of being on the outside wondering what it was like to be acceptable.

But that just dug the hole deeper and deeper

And I am so glad to be learning to be free from the shame of my existence. I won’t go back. I’m tired of hiding who I am.

I have anxiety. I am not at all sure of myself in most situations. I spend a lot of time wondering about things.

Today I wondered what would happen if I tried to play a digeridoo at my cat. My cat did not approve, but it was pretty funny.

I know, this is not appropriate behavior for a man over sixty.

Sigh.

I don’t want to be elderly. I want to listen to 21 pilots with my grandkids, smile at all the ways they want to make the world a little better. I want new legislation, I want everyone to be able to access healthcare; I want everyone in my community to be able to eat healthy food if they want to. And I want them to be able to afford cake and ice cream if they want to.

I don’t ever want to fall into the trap of saying, “Back when I was a kid, things we a ton better” – because they weren’t.

Abuse was rampant, racism wasn’t even hidden, women couldn’t buy houses or have credit cards, and if you had nothing, you starved outside.

I thank God for all of those who had the courage to say “Enough” – And I want to always have that courage. The courage to look at the world and say, “NO. I’m not happy with how we turned out. I’m not happy with our kids being addicted to drugs and violence and porn and alcohol. I’m NOT happy with turning our backs on people with disabilities. I’m not happy with unequal pay and gender bias. I am not happy when LGBTQ kids are kicked out of homes and schools and workplaces. We can do better.”

I’m old. But I’m not dead. And I’m not deceived into thinking that “we had it made back in our day.”

We are better than this. To my kids, I am so ashamed that my generation left you with this. Be better.

As for me, I still love to learn. I still love new ideas. I love listening to Taylor Swift’s new albums and don’t ever think that back in my day we had real music. Get real. We had “Abracadbra. I want to reach out and grab ya.”

Every generation had things that were horrible, and things that we good. Hold fast to the good. Throw out the horrible.

Throw out the racism, misogyny, lust for power and control. Throw out Reaganomics. It’s a bust and a lie. Throw out the garbage you inherited.

Learn to love and to laugh and to stand up to masked thugs.

Let’s have a few more years on this earth.

But seriously, thanks for the Birthday greeting.
I feel like I’ve had to put up with myself for over 60 years now, so I’m going to need some pie.

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