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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday July 23, 2001 Volume III Number 30 |
FOCUS - Hazardous Duty
Not long ago while visiting a friend in his office, I stopped to take a closer look at the oil painting on his wall.
The artist captured the scene’s drama. The crew focused on the momentary crisis. (Actually, it was one of a long succession of crises.) Their safety lines secured them to the deck. In a howling wind, they moved along a slippery wet surface, pulling ropes and turning cranks, one gathering in the spinnaker, another bear-hugging the main mast, another battling a wooden spoked steering wheel as a massive wave crashed across the hull, and everyone braced. A high-performance racing sailboat caught in a raging storm on high seas - the painter got it.
On the matting just inside the frame was a brass plaque that read, “NO PLACE FOR THE FAINTHEARTED.”
I turned to my friend and asked, “so that’s what it’s like around here, huh?” I looked outside his office door at the landscape of cubicles, filled with busy people chattering on the telephones, tapping on keyboards, and chasing down the aisles with fists full of paper. He smiled and said, “I guess you might say that.”
What a telling and descriptive phrase. Fainthearted. Faint of heart. Not what you need if you want to survive a storm at sea.
If someone was asked to describe you, my guess is that you would not consider it a compliment to be described as faint of heart. It implies cowardice. Timidity. Indecisiveness. Absence of nerve. Absence of character.
So sailing is no place for the fainthearted. Neither is business. Nor parenting for that matter.
* * * * * * *
Dave is a good community man. And a devoted dad. A successful insurance excecutive.
You’ll find him at the local gym most any day of the week. When he’s not lifting weights, he’ll be on the racquetball court playing hard at an A level. In the afternoons, you’ll see him out there on the baseball field, coaching the neighborhood boys, including his own twin sons, teaching them the subtleties of the game.
This week, we saw him on Thursday morning, just like we do every week. But this time, he had a nasty gash on the bridge of his nose. Black and blue marks just under both eyes. “Hey Dave, WHAT HAPPENED?”
He laughed. “You won’t believe this one.”
The game was close.
As Coach Dave sat in the dugout watching his team at bat, things were tense. He knew they should win this one. With two outs, bases loaded, in the final inning his son Kyle picked up his bat, adjusted his helmet, tapped his cleats with the end of the bat and walked into the batter’s box. Dave looked over to his wife Sheila in the bleachers. She was wringing her hands, “C’mon, Kyle,” she called out, “you can DO it!”
Kyle is a chip off the old block. He takes his practice swings looking like a major leaguer, the same confidence and a little flair. You might think he would be nervous about the pressure of the moment, but just like his dad, you can tell he’s lovin’ the opportunity baseball creates to shine like a lighthouse as all eyes in the place focus on the duel that is about to begin center stage. From the plate, Kyle gives the pitcher a blinkless stare. The pitcher’s eyes are moving from his coach to the catcher and down to the mound and somewhere deep into his mit, thinkin’ hard about what the next throw will look like. Fastball. Curveball. Slider. Change up. Kyle is staring him down as if to say, “Go ‘head, give me whatever you’ve got. I’m ready.”
Coach Dave works hard to treat all his boys the same. Even though the twins are on his team, he tries hard not to favor them. When he walks on the field, they all call him “Coach.” So as Kyle prepares for the first pitch, Dave keeps his seat on the bench. He’s feelin’ anxious as his son positions himself to win the game, or lose it for that matter, he’s got a white knuckle grip on the bench and he unconsciously tightens his lip, but he doesn’t want anyone to notice. So he doesn’t say anything. He just watches. With intensity.
After seven or eight pitches, Kyle fouls off a couple, and the count is full – three balls, two strikes. There’s electricity in the air as the pitcher winds up, and fires a fastball low and away. Kyle steps into it with the form he developed over hours in the batting cage and the crack of the bat could be heard for miles. The ball soars up and away toward center field and the entire crowd jumps to their feet screaming.
And so does Dave. In his excitement, his spring-loaded legs propel him skyward off the bench in reckless celebration, directly into a four by four cross beam running across the low cover of the dugout. Dave never sees it. The full force of his muscled body makes impact, taking the hit across the bridge of his nose.
As Kyle’s ball floats over the fence, a Grand Slam homerun, way beyond the center fielder’s glove, Dave’s team explodes in cheers and empties the dugout running and jumping to welcome the young hero as he rounds third base. Kyle trots around the bases looking like he knew this would happen all along, and the subtle grin on his face says, no big deal, all in a day’s work. Sheila shrieks with delight, along with the other moms and dads in the bleachers, high fives all around.
And Coach Dave, unnoticed, lay groaning in the dirt on the floor of the dugout holding his nose and bleeding, nearly unconscious.
Parenting.
No place for the fainthearted.
* * * * * * *
When I saw Sharon a couple weeks ago, she wore a hefty canvas boot strapped to her foot with Velcro. She limped.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I broke my toe.”
I started laughing. I don’t know why I laugh at calamities of this variety. It isn’t very sensitive, really. It’s borderline sick, even. Maybe it’s because I’ve been there. Maybe it’s because, as calamities go this one isn’t all THAT serious and while it’s an annoying little distraction that involves pain with just about every step, it’ll heal. Eventually. Maybe it’s because things like stubbed toes are so eminently avoidable, and involve momentary lapses in concentration or the failure to notice rather obvious obstacles in ones path or that big Velcro boots are so apparent to everyone and so embarrassing to explain. Maybe it’s all those things. But broken toes make me laugh. And Sharon laughed, too.
She spends her summer days chasing three boys around the house – ages eight, six and three. It’s an endless parade of laundry loads, pick-up, clean-up, taxi, spills, falls, bruises and bumps. Her entire life is a distraction.
So no wonder, when reaching to catch a glass of milk teetering on a tabletop across the room, her toe caught a corner wall. And broke.
And now it hurts.
It slows her down a little. But only a little.
It hasn’t changed the boys a bit. Or the workload.
Parenting. No place for the fainthearted.
Sharon’s heart is anything but faint.
Good thing.
* * * * * * *
The story came to me this week via e-mail from the opposite end of the globe. Literally. Somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean.
Craig has lived and worked with this family on a small Micronesian Island for over a decade. He’s committed his life to this under-developed part of the world, teaching indigenous people to improve their lives. Craig is big on literacy. He and his wife Sarah have learned a unique, ancient language. For ten years, they’ve been reducing that language to writing, and teaching the people who speak it how to read. They’ve already written several books, and for the first time, opened a library in the village where people can come and read in their own language. To date, Craig has completed several books of the New Testament.
It’s demanding, relentless, sometimes thankless work.
Just a couple weeks ago, Craig took his family to a secluded island for a well deserved get-away. They set up camp on a sandy beach, and in the balmy ocean breezes played and explored and climbed and swam, snorkeling in a blue lagoon, chasing colorful tropical fish underwater and generally charging up the family batteries.
Once home again in their little village, Craig noticed a gathering of agitated townspeople shaking fists and shouting epithets. Scenes like this have become all-to-common in this unstable corner of the world. Apparently that day, a non-islander made trouble in the streets and the mob rallied seeking revenge. Instant street justice. The stranger, understanding the threat, broke free and ran full speed down the street. The angry crowd chased him.
Craig looked at his family and shrugged. Well, it was sure nice out there on the sunny beach, but here we are back to reality, huh kids?
As they made their way home and round their familiar corner, Craig was the first to see it. The angry mob surrounded their house, shouting and calling and beckoning… demanding that whoever was inside come out.
Craig looked at Sarah. And then at his four children. And then at the house and the stirred up crowd.
“Take the kids over to Anna’s house.” Anna was a friend who lived on the other end of the village. “Stay there until I come and get you.”
Sarah sensed the danger. So did the children. Reluctantly, they did as Craig said.
Craig pushed aside the people surrounding his front door. He is known and respected in the community, and the people knew the fugitive had chosen the American’s house as refuge. Craig entered in, aware that his life could well be in danger, and found the man, a slight, shivering, sweaty, unwelcome guest, terrified, crouched in the corner of the back bedroom. Horror stricken but harmless. Craig ordered, “Stand up.” The man obeyed. No weapons. He understood the trade language Craig learned long ago. “Sit down in that chair over there, and don’t you dare move.” The man complied.
Craig went back to his front porch and addressed the crowd. “I want you all to go home.” But they refused, saying the insurrectionist should be given up to the mob. In a scene reminiscent of a Bible story, they cried, “Release him!” But Craig does not believe in mob rule.
So he took his SAT (satellite) Phone, and dialed the only police department in the area, the next island over. It took six long hours. Craig sat waiting with the intruder who still shivered with fright. When the police finally arrived, the armed officers escorted him through the jeering crowd and on to an official motor craft leaving Craig, shaken but strong, to go and recover his family. The crowd, exhausted and spent, dispersed.
That night, in the living room of their home in the village, Craig and his family held hands in a circle and prayed a heartfelt prayer of gratitude.
Sleep did not come easily.
True story.
Micronesia.
No place for the fainthearted.
* * * * * * *
When Doug turned fifty, his wife and kids threw him a party. We were there… just a couple months ago.
That’s where we became acquainted with Doug’s son Ryan. Doug is athletic and musical tall and even at fifty-years of age, he’s holding steady at six foot two. His “little” boy has him by an inch or two.
Ryan and his sister Jessica, played dueling Masters of Ceremony at Doug’s party, held at a beautiful hotel in Newport Beach on a balmy Saturday night. Both of them articulate, attractive and fun had the whole gang laughing hysterically at their father’s historic passages from high school days in the sixties ‘til now. They led a photographic and video tour of Doug’s colorful life and part of the amusement that night was to observe how our friend’s kids had grown into such winsome, likeable young adults. Jessica, a California State rated long distance runner and now cable television news anchor, and Ryan, a college graduate and writer and sometime stand-up comic kept us entertained that memorable joyful night.
We had no notion then of the tragedy that would strike just a few weeks later.
Three weeks ago, Ryan took his bathing suit and towel to a rooftop somewhere in Southern California to catch some rays. He wanted a tan. But with one simple tragic misstep, he tripped and fell through a skylight on that roof, freefalling a full three stories, plunging headlong into a concrete floor below.
Minutes later, Doug’s telephone rang. His lazy Sunday afternoon was interrupted by a high speed run to a downtown emergency room where his son lay unconscious.
This terrific young man, brimming with potential and spirit and a lifetime of achievement before him, this good kid with friends and family and a calendared wedding date to a beautiful young woman with a diamond ring, his fiancé; this apple of a father’s eye lay broken in a hospital bed hooked to a respirator and life-preserving machines barely clinging to the life he embraced so fully for all of his twenty-four years.
My friend Doug, his good wife Victoria and Ryan’s extended family and multitudes of friends have been standing vigil these three weeks as Ryan remains in a deep coma, in a crucible somewhere between life and death.
Doug is joined by all of us in praying for a miracle. Supernatural intervention.
Ryan Corbin’s grandfather is Pat Boone. We heard Larry King announce Wednesday night last week that Pat and his daughter, Ryan’s mother Lindy, would be his guests “to talk about the tragic fall of his (Pat Boone’s) grandson, and how the family is finding the ability to cope in this the most unimaginable kind of agony for a parent and a grandparent.” So said Larry King at sign-off that night. But then word came the next day that the Boones were bumped from the highly rated national CNN news interview program, Larry King Live! because other more compelling stories must take precedence. We tuned in to find that empty banter and steamy speculation about a missing Washington intern and a philandering Congressman were more important to the nation television viewing audience, I guess, than Ryan Corbin.
And that same quasi-sensational story continued to take priority for a long succession of nightly Larry King programs.
Such times are these.
* * * * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader. You may well be a parent. You know the risks. And the rewards.
Leadership. Business. Parenting. No place for the fainthearted in any of them.
Every one of us parents knows that on any given day, the next phone call could bring devastation to our family. Somehow we get through the days… and at the end, we whisper a prayer of thanks for a full day of simple safety and survival.
Parenting is hazardous duty.
Whether it is a busted nose, or a broken toe, or a broken into house… or worse of all, a tragic accident threatening the life of a beloved child… anything can happen. You may have suffered one or more of life’s distractions, maybe even this week.
Picture that sailboat, tossed about by wind and waves, and a crew, answering the command of their Captain and holding on, staying strong, all the way into safe harbor.
There is a safe harbor. A haven of rest.
Someday, we’ll enter in. Our Captain will get us there. He promised He would. Trust Him.
Between now and then; hang on. Don’t let your heart grow faint.
You are not alone.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2001
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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