If God is There, He is There
When we face the edge of death, especially for our children, it can be agonizing. We must remember that God is still with us, and our commitment to Him hasn’t changed. In this episode, Pa discusses when Jeremiah unexpectedly started having seizures and went into a coma that no doctor could explain and therefore treat. Pa had an Abrahamic moment where he had to be completely honest with God and turn all control over to Him. Until each of us do this, we’ll live in fear. We must trust Him with all things, especially our family.
Jeremiah: Today what we’re going to talk about is a little story that I think will probably ring true with a lot of people. I know a lot of us have struggles in our life with family members who are sick or dying, and I think Pa probably has some good perspective on some of that.
I’ll share my part of it, and then I’ll let you take off. I only remember a very little piece of it. I think I was in the 8th grade. We were at a football game, watching my brother play, and I had a seizure in the car. And that’s actually the last part I remember. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever asked you what actually happened after I had the seizure. I don’t even remember, obviously.
Pa: Well, we were in the stands watching the game, as you said, and this little girl came up, who was a friend of yours.
And she said, “Mike, Jeremiah just fell over.”
And I mean, I said, “What? What do you mean ‘fell over?”
She said, “He just fell over, and he won’t wake up. And I can’t get him to wake up.”
And I thought, “Well, okay. That seems strange.” So I went down to where the Jeep was parked, and I found out that you were unconscious. And so I told Sarah, who was with me, “I said get in the truck. We’ve got to take him to the doctor, to the hospital. This was in Tarzan, which was a long way from any hospital that I knew of. All I thought in my mind was, “I’ve got to get him to Lubbock to the hospital.” So I drove, and I mean that Jeep went 95 miles an hour, because that’s as fast as I could drive it. And then when I got to Lamesa, I went to the emergency room, and the doctor said that it was true. You were having some kind of seizure and that they didn’t know what it was or what kind it was, not epileptic but trauma.
And they said, “So we can’t take care of him. We’ve got to get him to the hospital in Lubbock.” And they said, “We’re going to have to take him by ambulance.”
And I’m like, “Dude, the ambulance is slower than me, but if you’re going.” And I said, “Is he going to be all right?”
And he said, “Well, he’s already had two more seizures while he’s here, so we don’t know.”
So I tell him, “I’m going with you.”
And they said, “Well, you’re not supposed to ride in the ambulance.”
And I said, “Yes, I am, period. Bottom line, get me in there. It doesn’t matter.” And so I rode in the ambulance all the way up there. And on the way up there, you kept having seizures. And we got there, and they took you to the emergency room. We were just on pins and needles waiting, trying to find out.
And the first doctor came out, and he said, “You know, Mr. Riggins, I don’t know what’s wrong with him. Quite truthful. I do not know. We’re running tests. We’ll run every test we can to find out.” So, as it happened, they went back, and they ran the test. We were there all night long, and a new set of doctors came on the next morning.
They bring out more tests, and they say, “You know what? We don’t know. We don’t know what it is: neurological, but beyond that, we do not know whatever it is.” But they said, “Here’s the thing. We have a neurologist, a world-renowned neurologist visiting from Australia, and he’s here. He said that he’d look at your son to try to determine what was wrong.”
So he came in and examined you. And he came out, and he told us, “You know what? I’ve seen everything. I can’t tell you what’s wrong.”
We said, “Well, will he live? Will he come out of it? Is he going to die?”
He said, “I can’t tell you. No way of knowing. We’ve never seen a situation like this before. I have never, as an expert – as a worldwide expert – I’ve never seen this. We do not know how to treat it.”
So all the next day, you’re still in a coma. This started on Friday night. So Saturday night, you’re still in a coma, and we had nothing. People were – friends, relatives, everybody – came up to pray with us and, “Oh yes, it would be all right.” And . . . Of course I hadn’t slept since Friday morning.
This was Saturday afternoon, and they still said, “We don’t know. We don’t know if he has a chance to live or die. We cannot tell you anything.”
And so I remember very distinctly. They were all saying, “Oh, it’s okay.” Everybody tries to tell you things to cheer you up.
And I went into the bathroom, in the waiting room, and I looked in the mirror. And I looked at God, and I said, “God, if he can’t live, I can’t live either.” I said, “I’m not threatening You. I’m not bargaining with You. I’m telling you from the depth of my heart. If he dies, I will be no good to You, because I’ll be dead on the inside.” And I walked out.
And that night, still there was nothing.
They were all up there, and they said, “Well, this is Saturday night. We’ll call church off,” because I was a pastor.
And I said, “No, tomorrow’s Sunday. I’m going to be in the pulpit. That’s where I belong.” And I was going to leave, and I said, “I’ll just leave tonight and be there in the morning. And I said, “That’s just where I belong.”
And then you woke up. You just woke up. You just plain. . . like you’d been asleep. You just woke up. And the doctors came in, and they were shocked and amazed. He said, “We don’t know. We don’t know why. We don’t know what was wrong. We don’t know anything else. But he’s just, he just woke up, and he doesn’t even remember anything, like nothing happened. And as far as we know, we’ve run the test, he has no brain damage at all. There’s nothing wrong with him at all.”
And I said, “Okay. Well, he’s awake. I’m going to church, and I will do my job, not my job, my calling. I will go to where my comfort is.” So I went, and I preached, and I came back. And we met the doctor one last time, and I said, “So, doctor, can we expect this to happen again?”
He said, “I don’t know. We don’t know why it happened the first time. We don’t know if it’ll happen again. We can’t say.”
And I said, “So, we walk by faith. If God is there, God is there. If God so deems it necessary to do this, then God will deem it necessary to do, but my faith is in God and His eternal love.” And it’s been all these years with nothing having happened. And so, I knew at that moment that God had heard my prayer, when I was in the bathroom, because it was as sincere as I could make it. It was sincere. You can’t make sincerity. But I said, “I will die if he dies.” And I didn’t mean I would die physically, but I would die on the inside. And there would be nothing left of me.
When you came home, we did what very dedicated – and what some people would say stupid – people do; we took you to church. We went back to church, because that’s where you go. That’s where your home is. That’s where your security is. That’s where your peace is. And so, it never has come back again.
Jeremiah: Yeah, that’s a pretty powerful story. That’s a lot of pieces I hadn’t heard before, and I was there.
Pa: You weren’t there, but you were there. Yes, you were there, but you weren’t there.
Jeremiah: That’s a powerful story, Pa. You know, you and I pretty frequently talk about the inevitability of life – the great mystery of life – both of us being counselors, is death. Death is the great mystery of life. It’s the final adventure, the last frontier. But death is the universal human experience, probably more so than any other experience. We all face it at some point. So when you have people dealing with death, the possibility of death, looking at those things, what do you tell them?
Pa: I could not speak as a counselor, but speaking as a Christian, I would say sometimes in life all of us experience that Abrahamic moment with His friendship with God – and God did ask him to sacrifice his own son, his only son. I think it comes down to the fact of us being so completely honest with God. And you know that, in your heart, because I knew if you’d died, I knew it was the best thing for you. Not me. It was the best thing for you.
And I have to say, if we can’t trust God, then we would live in such a fearful world that all of us would live in depression and submit to suicide at some point. The only hope we have is in Christ, the only hope we have, because we can’t do anything. We’re helpless. Just like when you were there. I was totally helpless. The doctors were helpless. There was no one that knew anything or was even willing to make a guess. But God and His angels knew what He was doing and why He was doing it: putting us to the test.
And sometimes, whether your loved one lives or dies, it’s like Paul said in, ‘If I live, I live unto the Lord, and if I die, I die unto the Lord. So whether I live or die, I am the Lord’s.’ (Romans 14:8) You know. And once we cross that threshold, where there is no fear of death, as Christ said, ‘Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?’ (1 Corinthians 15:55) They don’t have any victory anymore. It’s because God has removed that and given life and hope, and all I can say is in everything, we are small, insignificant as far as power, creatures on this earth, but God loves us. And if we can hold on to the infinitely powerful, infinitely loving, infinitely caring Father; that is our source.
Jeremiah: You know, there’s always a mystery in Christianity. The idea that oftentimes we find God at the end of suffering, that suffering somehow is where we find God. You have Job, and you have Jesus. And through all this suffering they find God inside of that. I think as I get older, one of the things I kind of start to see, you could speak a lot more than me, is that as we lose ourselves, as we get older, as we go through suffering in life, we realize – much like you said – that we don’t have the control over the situation and that we don’t affect much change. But that at the end of losing ourselves – or losing who we are – is where we really find God.
Pa: I think you go through things like this, and sometimes it makes you clarify what you really hold to, who you really are. Because I remember, whenever I told people I’d be preaching Sunday morning in the pulpit, and they were just, “Why are you? You can’t go. You can’t leave. You can’t. You can’t. You can’t. You shouldn’t. Take care of yourself.”
And I said, “That’s where I belong. That’s where God is. That’s where God wants me. And regardless of the circumstances around me, I am going to fulfill the vow of commitment I made to the Lord.” And I think a lot of times people don’t know that they have a vow of commitment to the Lord until they come close to being here, being there, losing, and having. But I think once you know that you know what you believe, I am convinced that Him, who I have set my faith upon, is able to take care of me and my family. And so, He takes care of my family.
My obligation is to take care of His. And to do that in dailiness. You don’t have to be a minister. You don’t have to stand at a pulpit to do that. You just have to be able to invest and care and show everybody, ‘No, I love God because, God is God. He’s the best friend. He cares.’ No one else cares. No one can care. No one can do anything. If they did care, they couldn’t do anything. But God gave us His only begotten Son to love us. If we can see that and manifest that and walk into that, then I don’t think there would be a struggle that we could ever not overcome.
Jeremiah: Yeah. And to live in the joy and the peace and the love now, and not the anticipation of things to come.
Pa: Absolutely. I know that whatever comes, ‘No height, no depth, no principalities, nor powers, things present, things to come shall not separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus.’ (Romans 8:35) And I think that scripture, on that Sunday morning when I made that statement, was like an affirmation that didn’t go in my mind but went all the way through my soul . . . and logged there.
Jeremiah: Well, thanks for sharing that story with us today, Pa.
Pa: Well, you’re welcome. I’m sorry it’s emotional, but after all these years, it still is very much so.
Jeremiah: Understandable.
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