A Message from the Past

A Message from the Past

How do you deal with sad things like missed opportunities or things you regret in your past?  I have some incidents from twenty years ago that periodically come up in my dreams.  I wake up filled with sadness, but since we can’t undo what happened in the past, how do you learn to live with it?

 

A great question.  I’ve had several kinds of regrets that used to plague me periodically in my dreams.  Some, like things I did wrong or that hurt someone, I have learned to go back to the people involved and make what amends I can. (E.g. I paid off a debt I “forgot,” and told people I had hurt that I’ve realized what I had done and how they must have felt, and asked their forgiveness.)  Other things I have just had to confess to God or a spiritual counselor and ask God to help me use the painful situation to show sensitivity toward others, and to take the time to love and help people I meet who come to me.

But sometimes there are totally unexpected opportunities to find healing one could never have caused or predicted.  For example, recently I had an unexpected opportunity to possibly find healing for a painful situation that occurred while I was in college at Oklahoma University sixty-four years ago.  Last spring I got a letter from the new basketball coach at O.U., Lon Kruger.  Lon and the athletic department were going to institute a weekend celebration to which all living players who had ever lettered in basketball would be invited to come back to O.U. for a celebration get-together.  Among other things there was to be an exhibition game, and the letter said that anyone who wanted to play in that game would receive a complimentary game uniform.

First let’s go back to when I was in the ninth grade.  I saw my first basketball game and became fascinated.  I told the coach I would do anything he told me to do if he would give me a chance.  And he did.  I worked diligently, developed some skills and became a starter on the Tulsa Central High School basketball team that was undefeated during the regular season.

Later, after World War II was over and I got out of the Navy in the summer of 1946, I enrolled at Oklahoma University.  My high school coach must have given me a very good recommendation because I got a basketball scholarship job.

When I got to the campus I learned that twenty-seven returning veterans showed up to play that year, young men who had lettered in basketball in college, mostly at O.U., and then had been in the service during the years of the Second World War.  Nine had been All-Conference and two players had been All-American (Gerald Tucker and Allie Paine).  Coach Bruce Drake  was building the most talented team in O.U. history to that point, a team that got to the national finals game in the spring of 1947 against Holy Cross with Bob Cousey, et al.

My freshman year was a fabulous experience.  I told Bruce Drake the same thing I had told my high school coach:  “I will do whatever it takes to make the team.”  I realized that I was going up against the best players in America every day in practice.  But I worked very hard and in my sophomore year began to travel with and play on the team.

Then during the Christmas holidays, I told the coach that I could not go to the New Orleans invitational basketball tournament because my brother, Earle, was killed the year before and my parents were going to be alone at Christmas.  He understood, and O.U. still had a great deal of available talent from the previous year.

But during that Christmas break I went with some friends to a party in Enid, OK, about sixty miles away. The car was going 90 mph down a highway that had the dirt washed away from the concrete slab.  The right tires slipped off the edge of the slab and the driver tried to whip the car back on the road.  The car flipped into the air and rolled 270 yards down a hill.  I broke my neck and they didn’t know if I’d be paralyzed or even live.

I remember praying—not knowing what was going to happen, and I turned my future over to God.

I went through a long rehab and after a lot of hard and uncomfortable work (and a lot of the grace of God through a great spinal surgeon) I recovered much of the use of my body, but not enough that I was cleared to play again.  Bruce Drake saw that I lettered in basketball in 1947-48 year.

I tried hanging around at practice, but felt like a leech, since I had nothing to offer.  Finally I couldn’t enjoy going to the games, so I quietly withdrew from O.U. basketball and began to build a new life.  But something started happening then that I never told anyone but my wife until recently.  I would have a dream that I was playing basketball at O.U. again.  And I’d wake up from the dream and cry like a little boy.  That started in 1948 and happened periodically for years.

So when I got that letter from coach Kruger I first just thought it might really be fun to “go back home to O.U.” and meet some of the players I’d heard about.  Then a thought hit me.  I called coach Kruger and asked him if he had a good sense of humor.  He chuckled and then I said, “I’m a letterman, and I’d like to get a uniform and be a part of that game.”

He said, “Fine.  We’d love to have you do that.”

I said, “The problem is, I’m 84 years old.  I can still shoot the ball a little and I’d like to warm up with the team.  But—if someone tries to put me in the game, I’ll put out a contract on them.”

He laughed and said, “Fill out the form.  We’d love to have you.”

The thought that had hit me (as a man with a degree in Psychological Counseling) was that if I signed up, suited up, and showed up on the court for that game, it might lay to rest that ache in my gut that caused the dreams about having to quit playing basketball.

So I got a new pair of basketball shoes and began to practice handling a basketball and shooting close in shots so I wouldn’t fall down or otherwise shame myself.

When Andrea and I got to the hotel in Norman, we discovered that this was a lot bigger deal than we had planned on.  At the banquet the night before the game, I realized that we were sitting in the midst of a bunch of All-Americans, retired NBA players and other really outstanding players from the past forty or fifty years.  Some of them still played in the NBA or on European teams overseas.  And there were two outstanding coaches who had been named “Coach of the Year” during their time at O.U.  Also I discovered that the exhibition game had been advertised, the public invited, and was going to be in the O.U. game facility where the varsity games were played.

When the two teams (Red and Cream) were ready to go onto the court, I trotted out and was introduced on the Cream Team, “84-year old Keith Miller from the class of 1947-48.”  I tried to jog onto the court as if I were a younger man (of 60 or 70).  And somehow the sight of an 84 year old man with a white beard in an O.U. basketball uniform must have triggered something inside that crowd, because although I couldn’t hear it, Andrea told me that the crowd’s response was very positive and big.

Photo courtesy of Karl Dickinson. To see more, click above.

Both teams ran the warm-up drills and shot a few baskets.  When I’d hit one a student section on our end of the court would cheer, and when I’d miss, they’d go “awwww,” sadly.

And then the game was on.  It proved to be very rough and competitive.  It ended in a tie and the Cream Team won in overtime.  Every five minutes a new five players would be substituted.  Three times coach Sampson tried to send me in.  Although the game was so rough the first injury was a torn quadriceps tendon, there was no letup.  But still, the third time coach pointed at me to go in, I almost did!  You talk about insanity—I couldn’t even keep up running the length of the court.  But the thought crossed my mind, “Maybe I’ll get lucky!”

After the game the audience brought the prepared autograph pages out onto the court and kids and grownups alike came for autographs.  Since I was the oldest person, my name was listed first.  So I looked in the eyes of and encouraged a lot of little boys who were star struck by the whole experience—but no one more than the 84-year-old in an O.U. uniform who was burying the pain of his past, and being born into a new life as a “real player” in a life filled with gratitude to God.

Thank you, Lord, that it’s not over until it’s over.  You stay with us all the way with your loving and healing presence.  Help me to be aware that many people have painful circumstances and unmet dreams from the past that you can fulfill in their hearts.  In Jesus’ name, amen.

“People brought anybody with an ailment, whether mental, emotional, or physical.  Jesus healed them, one and all.”

– Matthew 4:24, The Message

“Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.”

– Hippocrates

Ancient Greek Physician, referred to as the Father of Western Medicine

What Does It Take to Begin?

What Does It Take to Begin?

Dear Keith, I don’t know what the matter with me is.  I have a good job and a caring family, but inside my head when I’m alone I seem to have some sort of secretive and self-defeating mental/emotional disease.  I find myself drinking and eating too much, and masturbating while looking at pornography.  And I’m a church-going Christian. 

I can’t bring myself to go for professional help because I feel like I couldn’t deal with the shame of admitting these behaviors to another person.  But I’m getting more and more isolated and frightened because I have nearly gotten caught at one or more of these habits several times recently. 

I feel like I have a terminal disease that is out to kill me.  I know that’s ridiculous, but it feels true.  Do you have any ideas about what I’m describing?

 

Oh yes!  Although the specific behaviors vary a lot, the disease beneath the behaviors you described so clearly is the experience of virtually all people on a serious spiritual journey. The apostle Paul describes the way it worked in his life near the end of his ministry.

“I’m full of myself…what I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise.  So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for me and then do it, it becomes obvious that…I need something more!  For I know the law but still can’t keep it, and the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help!  I realize that I don’t have what it takes.  I can will it, but I can’t do it.  I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway.  My decisions such as they are don’t result in action.  Something has gone wrong deep within me, and gets the better of me every time.  It happens so regularly that its predictable…Parts of me rebel and just when I least expect it, they take charge.” (Romans 7:15-23)

Although there isn’t space here to describe all that happened to me before I got to the place of powerlessness you described in your question, but I finally did.  I went for help to a treatment center, faced this spiritual “disease,” and although I’d been a sincere converted Christian for years, I discovered how to surrender to God the parts of my life that I was afraid to face with anyone and enter a process of spiritual transformation with a group of other people who wanted to face their conflicting inner lives and desires.

That was twenty-six years ago.  All I can tell you is that one day at a time—sometimes one hour at a time, I have learned how to face the hidden inner urges and pain that is part of every spiritual life.  I wrote three books about things I learned that have helped me face the powerful inner compulsions that once seemed impervious to change (The Secret Life of the Soul, A Hunger for Healing, and Compelled to Control).

But I believe the most striking thing about this spiritual disease (that Paul called sin and that others call the addiction disease) is that even though the kinds of things and solutions that can bring you all the help you need are available by admitting you need help and surrendering to God—the disease “tells you” that these things will NOT in fact help YOU.

To let you know how strong the negative message coming from this spiritual disease is, after twenty-six years in a spiritual recovery program that has changed virtually all my relationships and ways of letting God transform my life, last Saturday morning I almost did not go to the men’s group that has been most helpful to me for years in facing my problems and finding new solutions.  Recently I have been dealing with pain in my neck and right shoulder that is evidently connected with a broken neck I experienced in a car wreck when I was nineteen years old.  Now this pain is not even about something sinful or bad but it has been keeping me from sleeping.  I was starting to isolate and believe there was no help or support I could receive from the group.  (After all my issue was about physical pain that I could not get to stop, not compulsive behavior.)

But at the last minute, I went to the meeting and shared what was happening to me.  As I did so, I addressed some of the young men saying, “One of the worst things about this spiritual disease we share is that it tells us that meeting together will not help us.  But I want to tell you that in the next 30 days some of you will be tempted not to come share what is happening to you.  But if you listen to the disease and don’t come and share, the disease is just waiting to get you to believe that only what it tells you to do (like drinking, over-eating or compulsive selfish thoughts or sexual escape) will bring you relief.  And that’s the way it will finally ruin your life and kill you.”  When I had shared, I sat quietly and realized that I was calm and that the pain had quieted somehow.

Christians have an especially difficult time believing that going to church can help them.  And of course, if you attend a church where neither the clergy nor the congregation is dealing openly with the real areas of life that need healing, it may be very difficult to find a safe place to share.  But Jesus spent a great deal of his time alleviating the pain of the people with whom he worked and taught and I believe he was telling us that surrendering our lives to the God he called Father is the beginning of a life of healing.

Dear Lord, Thank you that when we have the courage to face who we really are, you can accept us and help us to become the persons you designed us to be.  Help us to find and walk with others walking with you.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

“Nothing, I suspect, is more astonishing in any man’s life than the discovery that there do exist people very, very like himself.”  C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

 

“How often we hide behind masks and hug delusions with compulsive passions, because we are afraid to be known, to be loved. … We cannot really respect a person unless we know him.  We cannot love what we do not know.”   Fr. William McNamara, The Art of Being Human

 

I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question? The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.  (Romans 7:24-25)

 

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