The self-destructor
“Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.”
Randy Travis is alive. He is not dead. He is, however, buried…somewhere deep in my Amazon Music collection of 2,000+ songs. A few days ago, I asked Alexa to set the player to “random†and she selected Travis’ classic “1982†to begin.
Operator, please connect me with 1982
I need to make apologies for what i didn’t do
I sure do need to tell her that i’ve thought the whole thing through
And now it’s clear that she is what i should have held on to
It was only 1986 when he was singing with such longing about 1982. I wonder how much more strongly those yearnings might have become in the decades to follow.
Take me home, country road…
Travis was a significant voice to me in the ‘80s. I was living in California. Having grown up on the kind of country music Travis and others like him were resurrecting, I had strayed. It was all about contemporary Christian, the blues, or Rock ‘n’ Roll for me then. I happened onto a Randy Travis song while scouring the radio in my 1979 Oldsmobile – it featured the sad-but-true gas-conversion diesel engine, but that’s another story – and it drew me back to my Texas cowboy roots. Before long, I was buying country cassettes – Travis, Garth Brooks, Clint Black (who would become my favorite from the era), Keith Whitley, and others – and wearing them out. There was an honesty in their music, a raw-boned frankness, not to mention they were turning phrases that touched off emotions and fired off memories of a simpler time and place.
Leave them boys alone and let ‘em sing their song…
It felt like they were singing what they lived. Turns out, they were.
Keith Whitley recorded 19 hit singles between his debut in 1984 and his alcohol-induced death in ‘89. During that time, he married country singer Lorrie Morgan, who tried to save him and couldn’t. He had made hits with songs like I’m No Stranger to the Rain and Hard Livin’.
Clint Black wrote and recorded edgy, soulful, mournful songs like Killin’ Time, A Better Man, and Loving Blind. Then, he fell in love for real, began a long and happy marriage, and lost his mojo. Happy people just don’t feel the sad songs down in their bones.
Garth Brooks was the biggest showman of them all and maybe the least sincere. Hard to tell whether the sap he oozed was from the heart of the tree or just manufactured outside the soul and bottled up, but he possessed the charisma and the talent to transcend country music. He crossed over and became an icon of that generation. Who can forget Friends in Low Places, The Dance, or Unanswered Prayers? Who didn’t feel the ominous power when he sang The Thunder Rolls?
Garth became too big for his own sanity. He decided he would create an alter ego with a backstory. He introduced “Chris Gaines†to the world and the world laughed him to scorn and oblivion, at least for a decade or so.
None of these crooners were more raw or real or flawed than Randy Travis.
Newly released video shows Randy Travis’ naked DUI arrest near Dallas
“Travis, 58, was arrested shortly before midnight on Aug. 7, 2012, after crashing his car just outside Tioga, about 60 miles north of Dallas.
In the dashcam video, Travis first tries to run from troopers as they yell at him to come back. He then demands that they take him home, but the troopers point out that he was just in a serious wreck.
â€I’m as fine as a damn dandy,†Travis says”
Travis experienced a career plunge that was as life-changing as his meteoric rise had been. Stardom changed him. He had become entitled and, he thought, exempt from the consequences of bad decisions.
Randy Travis Reveals Alcohol Wasn’t Solely to Blame in 2012 Arrest
“Randy Travis made headlines around the world when he was arrested in 2012 after he crashed his car in a construction zone, and was found naked in the road. Travis, who had also walked into a convenience store earlier that night, not wearing clothes and asking for cigarettes, was charged with driving under the influence, threatening police officers and retaliating against a police officer. He was later released after paying $21,500 bail.”
A stroke ends a streak
It was not a stroke of bad luck or a streak of bad songs that took down this country giant. Travis enjoyed a packed travel schedule and venues filled to the gills in 2013 when everything changed forever…
Singer Randy Travis: Regaining His Voice — and His Life — After a Massive Stroke
“In July 2013, country music star Randy Travis went to the emergency room complaining of congestion. The 54-year-old had a packed schedule with tour dates and an acting role in an upcoming TV pilot. But all of that was put on hold. Travis was admitted to Heart Hospital Baylor in Dallas, where he was treated for dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) caused by a viral infection of the heart. With DCM, heart chambers enlarge and do not pump blood sufficiently.
At one point, his heart stopped completely and doctors rushed to put him on life support and into an induced coma, a procedure that can help protect the brain.
When he came out of that coma 48 hours later, physicians discovered that Travis had suffered a stroke, which had affected the entire central region of his left brain. Doctors suspected that a blood clot had formed in his heart and traveled to his brain, causing the trauma.
During a second coma when Travis’s lungs had collapsed and he was placed on life support, medical providers told his then-fiancee, Mary, that he had a 1 percent chance of survival and she should consider taking him off life support.
“I went to his bedside and asked him if he wanted to keep fighting,†says Mary, who became Travis’s wife in 2015. “A little tear fell out of his eye and I knew he wasn’t ready to give up.â€
Mary turned to the doctors and told them to get on board keeping him alive. And they did.
Now, six years post injury, Travis spends most of his time at his ranch with Mary, and attends a weekly Bible study class in a nearby town. Because the stroke has severely limited his ability to talk, Mary stays by his side at most times to help him communicate.”
Silenced by stroke, Randy Travis is ready to reconnect with fans at CMA Fest
“Randy Travis flatlined. During a serious struggle with cardiomyopathy in 2013, the legendary country singer’s heart stopped beating, and intensive care doctors at a Texas hospital shocked him back to life. Three days later, his family learned he’d suffered a massive stroke.
Travis spent nearly six months in hospitals in Texas and Tennessee — about six weeks of it in a coma.”
Success is not for the weak!
Adversity may bring the weak to his knees, but prosperity can wreck even the strongest of men (or women). I have never been impressed by the men who never succumb to temptations they never faced. Don’t brag to me that you never did what you never had the opportunity to do in the first place. Resisting nonexistent temptation is easy.
With success, notoriety, achievement, or recognition, comes temptation. When you have everything you could possibly want, it is easy to desire even more. Consider the power plays currently exercised by the tech giants. Amazon, Google, and Apple recently teamed up – or acted independently – to crush an upstart social media platform that dared to provide a voice to the people they had determined did not deserve to be heard. More importantly, the upstart threatened to cut into their space.
“The frailty of the human condition is not bolstered or improved by success. It is exposed.”
The frailty of the human condition is not bolstered or improved by success. It is exposed. David fell to temptation with Bathsheba because he was the king and he had exposure and access other men did not. You can credit the foot soldier for not going after her if you want, but maybe they didn’t because they couldn’t.
Success and achievement are, in a very real sense, their own reward. They are also their own temptation.
For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more. – Jesus Christ, Luke 12:48
I’m No Stranger to the Rain
If you want to have something, do something, or be something, be prepared to be tried and tested. I have learned the hard way that I was built for adversity. I can wade through rivers of shit, endure years of stress and strife, and come out the other end, bloodied but unbeaten.
Success has been another story. I perfected self-destruction and practiced it more than once.
The Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 10:12, “Be careful when you think you are standing strong, lest you fall.â€
In Proverbs 16:18, Solomon wrote, “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.â€
The wise king knew this from observation, experience, and divine inspiration.
When you are in adversity, it is easy to admit your vulnerability and seek the help of the Lord or others. You know you are in a fight, so you fight.
When, however, the battle is over and you rise above your vanquished foe victorious, that is when pride sets in. That is when the great King David surveys his kingdom, basking in the glories of his achievements, only to discover unexpected temptation. He leaned on the Lord when he fought with Goliath, contended with King Saul, and defeated the Philistines. All those years of adversity found him strong, faithful, true.
But then along came success…