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That’s when I began to think of being part of an exclusive fraternity. In the years since my release, I’ve met other members of this reluctant and small fellowship. Because I knew what it felt like to suffer, I could understand their pain, just as Christy had felt mine and I had understood hers.

More than enduring, eventually I was able to do something doctors said I would never be able to do: I learned to walk again. I can stand on my own feet, put one foot in front of the other, and move.

They had warned me that because of the broken knee in my right leg, and the loss of the femur in my left (even with a replaced-and-stretched bone in place), I would not walk again, and if I did, I would be wearing heavy braces. More than once, I came close to losing my left leg, but somehow God took me through each crisis.

Therapy began on my arm about four weeks after the initial operation and on my legs two weeks after that.

About the same time, they put me in what I referred to as a Frankenstein bed. They strapped me to a large board and turned the bed so that my feet were on the floor and I was in a standing position, although still strapped to the bed. Two physical therapists placed a large belt around my waist and walked on either side of me. My legs had atrophied and grown extremely weak, so they helped me take my first steps. It took me days to learn to stand again so that I could put weight on my own legs. My equilibrium had changed because I had grown used to a horizontal position. I became incredibly nauseous each time they raised me into a vertical position. Days passed before I was used to that position enough to take my first step.

I didn’t really learn to walk until after the hospital discharged me. A physical therapist came in every other day to help me. Six months would pass before I learned to walk on my own more than a few steps.

My doctor removed the Ilizarov device eleven and a half months after the accident. After that, I could use a walker and eventually a cane. I didn’t walk without leg braces and a cane for a year and a half after the accident.

My accident occurred in January 1989. They removed the external metal work from my arm fixator in May, but they put internal metal plates down both of the bones of the forearm. Those metal plates stayed there for several more months.

In late November, they removed the fixator from my leg, but that wasn’t the end. After that, I remained in a cast for a long time, and they inserted a plate in my leg—which stayed there for nine years. I was content to leave it there, but they said they had to take it out. My doctor explained that as I aged, the bones, relying on the plate for strength, would become brittle. As I learned, our bones become and remain strong only as a result of tension and use.

During those years with the fixator and the subsequent metal plates, whenever I had to fly, I set off metal detectors from Ohio to California. Rather than go through the customary walk-through detector, I would say to the security people, “I have more stainless steel in me than your silverware drawer at home.”

They would wand me and smile. “You sure do.”

My children took pride in referring to me as “Robopreacher” after the title character in the movie Robocop. After a horrible incident, doctors used high technology and metal plates to restore the policeman so he could fight crime.

Regardless of how barbaric all these rods and wires and plates might have seemed, they worked. People gasped when they saw them embedded in my flesh. Those same people are now awed at my mobility. But under this thin veneer of normalcy, I’m still a work in progress, always adjusting.

9

ENDLESS

ADJUSTMENTS

A friend is always loyal, and a brother is born to help in time of need.

PROVERBS 17:17

It’s amazing how differently people responded after the accident. Several friends and members of South Park Church saw me during those first five days after my accident. Many of those