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Somebody at the hospital confirms the news: a fatal heart attack, the type known as…the widowmaker.
look for me there, by Luke Russert (writing about the sudden death of his famous father tim russert.)
I just began listening to a new book on Audible™, Look For Me There by Luke Russert, on my drive into the office this morning. I am hearing him recount the death of his famous father, Tim Russert, longtime anchor of Meet the Press, NBC’s staple Sunday Morning news digest. He writes, “Somebody at the hospital confirms the news: a fatal heart attack, the type known as…the widowmaker.”
Patrick Henry famously thundered into the enthusiasm for an American revolution, “Give me liberty or give me death!” On July 4th, we celebrate the liberty bought for us by the deaths and sacrifices of the original American patriots.
One year ago tomorrow, on July 4, 2022, I nearly got liberty and death. I was moments away from being liberated from this earthly realm. I was this close to death but I had no idea. I knew I had not felt right for a few days or even weeks. I knew that on occasion this not feeling right thing included weird pains on both sides of my chest. I did not know – or accept – that these strange pains were heart-related.
On the morning of the fourth, the pain was alarming. It was severe, pervasive, and frightening. My wife rushed me to the nearest hospital. The facts of my case were these:
- My Lower Anterior Descending Artery was 99.9% blocked.
- The LAD, as the artery is called, is more widely known as “the widow-maker.”
- I had no business being able to walk into that emergency room; I should have been dead.
- I needed and received two stents in the LAD.
A Hell of a year
Between that Independence Day to remember and this one, I lost my mother. She died in January of this year. Bear with me, then, if I seem a little sentimental or a whole bunch reflective. It has been a Hell of a year.
Standing on death’s porch and knocking on the door will make you think. Losing the last parent you had on earth and finding yourself an orphan in the world, even if you are past 60, will make you think. At least it has me. I have been thinking and feeling quite a bit the past few days. I have been observing my observations since that fated fourth. I have tried to analyze how it has changed me, or how it hasn’t but maybe should.
So, not quite like Moses coming down from Sinai, but exactly like a man coming out of death’s shadow, I present you with, not the Ten Commandments but the Ten Amendments, you might call them. I do not mean to suggest I am offering amendments to God’s law as given to Moses. That law is perfect, universal, and needs no amendment other than the one Jesus offered to “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and love thy neighbor as thyself.”
What I mean is this: these are amendments to my personal mindset, amendments to my behavior, and what I aspire to learn and live accordingly.
Ten Observations of a dying man to dying people.
First Amendment: Some things are worth fighting for but few things are worth fighting over.
My wife and I married very young. We were each a couple of months shy of 19. Our birthdays are five days apart. We are each a firstborn child. We are each strong-willed and each stubborn in our own way. Consequently, our marriage was chock full of fights – big ones and little ones, serious ones and silly ones. As we matured, the fights lessened. We found more places for common ground and compromise. This has been essential to a marriage lasting more than four decades and counting.
I have learned it is far better to fight for my wife than with her. It is better to fight alongside her for the things people we love than to fight over things that only matter at the moment if they matter at all.
I have found that people who fight over things are usually small and selfish while those who fight for the things they love and believe in tend toward selflessness and sacrifice. Hollering on Twitter and calling other people bad names is not fighting for something. It is a waste of time, which is to say, a waste of life. Screaming and yelling at your significant other just to get your way is not fighting for something important. You can get your way and lose your way at the same time. Ask your favorite divorce attorney if it isn’t true. Ask your kids. Ask yourself.
Second Amendment: Every action (and inaction) has consequences and some have repercussions
In the funniest scene in the movie Life, starring Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence, Murphy’s character is trying to get his bluff in on a group of hardened criminals at the prison dinner table. He says, “You f*** around with me, there’s gonna be consequences and repercussions.”
In the next scene, he is getting the stuffing beaten out of him by the biggest of the convicts, the consequences and repercussions of popping off to the wrong crowd.
Not all consequences are repercussions, thank God. Decisions and actions can produce positive consequences, too.
In 2017, I was in my corner office, looking out the window across the way at AT&T Stadium, the steel, glass, and chrome pride of Jerry Jones and home of the Dallas Cowboys. I was at the height of my career journey (well, the journey since my ministry days, at least). My cell phone rang and a familiar face popped up on the screen. It was not just a contact but a great friend and former colleague from my days running the roads as a catastrophe claims adjuster. Hurricanes Harvey and Irma had hit back-to-back in the Gulf of Mexico. Harvey drenched Texas and Irma battered Florida. My friend’s brother-in-law (who was also my friend) was half-owner of an independent adjusting firm. The other half of the ownership was held by another friend. They needed me. Well, they needed everyone they could get their hands on but they wanted me.
I said no.
They called again. This time, I said yes. The consequences of changing my mind and going with my gut despite being in a great position where I was has made all the difference in my career.
Can you think of a time when you made a poor decision or took actions that had repercussions? What about the time your decision or action paid great dividends in your life?
Third Amendment: Some damage is irreparable
You can damage a relationship to the point that it will never be the same after. There may be healing and forgiveness but the scars will always be there. Trust is a hard thing to earn and an easy thing to lose. I have seen it. I have done it.
At the company where I work, our mantra is this: We deliver faith and trust.
When I first heard it, I thought it redundant and silly. Aren’t faith and trust the same thing? The answer is no. They are not. They are synonyms and there may be sentences where either would work but they are not the same.
Faith is taking the knowledge you have and acting on it. You believe because of the evidence or you believe because of past experience.
Trust is a thing that is earned over time. You earn trust by being faithful and true, by being consistent, and by delivering on your promises.
The way I break it down for my colleagues is this: when a new client elects to give us their business, they are putting their faith in us; when they keep giving us their business, it is because we honored their faith and they now trust us.
Do that in your marriage. Do that with your kids. Do that with your friends. Do that and keep doing that. Deliver faith and trust.
Fourth Amendment: Nothing matters but everyone does
Another way to put it: No thing matters but every person does.
Things are just things. Some are vital to your welfare, to be sure. None of them, however, are more important than people. People matter. Every person matters. All lives matter. It is hard to sink lower as a human than when you believe and act like you are more important than someone – anyone – else.
Fifth Amendment: What I give gives back to me.
Getting things is fun. As a kid, Christmas was a magical day of the year for me. Unwrapping those presents from beneath the tinsel tree was wonderful. (Yes, my mother had one of those bottle-brush silver trees that looked like tinsel.) The magic of Christmas soon fades, however, and the shiny new toys lose their luster and, eventually, their appeal.
A big part of growing up and maturing is learning that Jesus was spot on: It is more blessed to give than to receive.
The other night, rather than turning on the TV and finding something to watch, I sat next to my wife and watched videos on her phone with her. Most of the videos were Tik Tok channels where people surprised unsuspecting strangers with a gift, usually one of money. The reactions were amazing. I thought about how good it feels to give like that to someone – to give without provocation and without expectation of anything in return. Then, the skeptic in me thought about how these people do expect something in return. They expect “likes” and “shares” on their channel. They expect to monetize their Tik Tok or Facebook page, or both. I would still rather watch people give to others for likes and follows than watch them punk others for the same.
But what about the widow’s mite? What about the quiet gift no one sees or notices, the one that comes from the heart and has no strings attached?
I have learned that what I give gives back to me and what it gives me never loses its luster.
Sixth Amendment: Love without truth is mush
There is no dishonesty in true love. There is no hidden agenda. The one who puts all of his efforts into the chase, into the romancing, just to get to the “goods” is not a lover and never could be, never will be. Love is not what you get. Stop thinking of it that way. That sort of imitation love may feel good for a moment but it does damage that lasts.
Seventh Amendment: Truth without love is harsh
On the other side of love gone astray, for the one who is hurt or fooled by another, there is the tendency to wrap yourself in ethereal bubble wrap in order to protect your heart from further damage. That will not heal nor lead to happiness.
Stop resharing memes about how you are the center of your universe and you will never let someone off the mat who disappointed you, or how you will never trust again. I see these things flying around social media ad nauseum. They are generated and reshared by hurting people who believe the way to stop the bleeding is to shut down, close off the spigot, and trust no one. They soon become the people sharing memes about how much they hate people.
Truth has hard edges and if it is not softened by love it will cut and bruise…and leave you loveless.
Healthy relationships thrive where the truth is practiced in love.
Eighth Amendment: Ordinary only needs a little extra to be extraordinary
Most of life is on a plain, not a plateau. Consequently, many people (if not most) spend the ordinary moments waiting for, or looking forward to, the extraordinary ones. They live for the weekend or for PTO or vacation. They live for the big ticket celebrations like weddings or Christmas.
I have learned that I can put in a little extra effort or care and make extraordinary moments out of ordinary ones. Just the other day, in a humdrum moment during the workday, I texted my wife a heart symbol just to tell her I love her. She responded, “You have no idea how badly I needed that.” Extraordinary emerged like Clark Kent from a phone booth in a cape with an S on his chest and no glasses.
I was driving to work a few days ago and one of my best friends, Keith Craft, a coworker, called. It could have been anything. He could have been asking about something at work or sharing a rough moment. Instead, he said, “I just needed my Gene fix today.” Hello, extraordinary. That fuel powered me through another ordinary day in an extraordinary way.
My other Keith, whose surname is Day, and who is as true as the day is long, texted me out of the blue on Sunday, June 11, 2023. Thanks for being part of my people. I love you and value your friendship, brother. Every time I preach, a part of you comes through.
I was driving when that text came through. I do not mind sharing that I pulled over and wept. It has been a long time since I was a preacher trying to influence people for the God I love from behind a pulpit on any sort of regular basis. A long, long time. But Keith was one of the people there back then. He was one of my people. Today, he is an influential pastor in West Forth Worth and has been for more than 20 years.
Hello, extraordinary.
All it takes is a little selflessness, a little love, or a thoughtful deed to make ordinary extra. Or a little elbow grease. Or a little sweat. Put your heart into the mundane moment or put your back into it, and squeeze from it the nectar of love, the essence of life.
Ninth Amendment: Time flies whether I do or not
The occasion of my heart attack feels like yesterday. It was, in fact, a year full of yesterdays ago.
That is how time works. It flies.
Jillian Scudder wrote this for Forbes magazine on April 27, 2016:
With our best measurements of our own speed around the center of the galaxy, we’ve estimated our speed to sit somewhere around 220 kilometers every second, or 492,126 miles per hour. Our last set of numbers once again does not add easily, as the solar system sits at a 60 degree angle relative to the Milky Way galaxy – so if you do the math again, you can work out that we can at most add or subtract 34,156 mph to our sideways speed, getting us to somewhere between 526,282 mph and 457,970 mph. You’ll only hit those extremes once a year, at the right time of day, and it will only last an instant – most of the time we’ll be sitting somewhere much closer to the 492,126 mph average.
Jillian Scudder, Forbes Magazine
Even when we sit still, we are flying through space. We are also flying through time. Live long enough and 25 years ago will seem like yesterday. When I was a kid, Christmas seemed like it came around every 10 years or so. It was forever getting here. Now, it is every other day.
There is really no time to waste. It is too fleeting, too precious, and in much too short supply for any of us to waste it. I will, however, suggest that sitting still, being in the moment, soaking in the sun, feeling the raindrops on your cheeks, or holding your baby in your arms…these are no waste of time.
Tenth Amendment: A legacy is a fragile thing
Sometimes (too often), I get despondent about my writing. I complain that no one reads anymore and those who do certainly do not read what I write. My complaining is mostly to my wife, the one whose empathetic ear I have filled with my hopes, my dreams, my wins, my losses, my misgivings, my fears, and my disappointments for more than four decades.
“Don’t write for them,” she responded recently. “Write because that is you. Who needs it will read it. Maybe it won’t be today or tomorrow but it will find them when they are ready.”
She is wise.
I write, not because I can. Sometimes, I doubt whether I can at all. I write because I must. I try not to write because I have to say something but because I have something to say.
I know that someday time will end for me and I will be swept into eternity. What I will leave behind in the lives of my children, and their children, and their children, and in the hearts and minds of my friends, and for the readers of the things I wrote will be my legacy.
I also know because I have blown it big time a few times that a legacy is fragile.
Someone I care about was telling me of his deceased grandmother a few months back. He said, “She was the wickedest person I ever knew.”
Wow.
A legacy is a fragile thing.
Addendum
These are my amendments based on my experiences, my beliefs, and my brush with death. What are yours?
As you consider your answer, let me share something from the great Apostle Paul as he contemplated his own mortality and the real possibility of his imminent death.
Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.
Philippians 1:18-26, English Standard Version (The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®) copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles)
“For to me to live is Christ…”
Now, that is an amendment worth making.
Happy Independence Day! God bless America. God bless you.