Arab Portraits

Arab Portraits

In 1991, I spent several days in Beirut, Lebanon. It was ill advised for American citizens to set foot in the war-ravished nation at the time, and illegal to do so from the standpoint of the American government. The illegality was partially a result of numerous acts of terror inflicted on American personnel in the mid-eighties, particularly the Embassy bombing that killed 63 and the Marine barracks bombing that killed 241 American soldiers. The latter caused the Reagan administration to withdraw all U.S. forces from Lebanon.

During my days in Beirut, I encountered a city and people that undermined depictions portrayed in the Western media. When I journeyed beyond the bombed out city into greater Lebanon, I experienced the same. But for a few billboards flashing anti-American sentiment, the supposed hatred of Americans was unseen in the areas of the country in which I traveled. No one was burning American flags or chanting "death to America." I never once heard the term "The Great Satan" in reference to me as an American or the United States in general.

On one trek, I crossed the mountains of Lebanon and entered the Bekaa Valley, traveling as far north as the city of Baalbek, a known Hezbollah stronghold. Though I attracted cross looks and drew curious stares, never once was I threatened or made to feel unwelcome by the general populace. Most of what I encountered contradicted the images being transmitted across Western airwaves, depicting an illiterate people blinded by hatred and powered by religious fanaticism. In fact, once I chose to look beneath the muddled exterior and beyond prejudice, I stumbled upon portraits of life that undermined the media's representation of the Arab people as a whole.

With my arrival in Beirut, I was consciously aware that certain hostile viewpoints did exist, and those beliefs could activate at anytime during my stay in Lebanon. Attentively, I took in my surroundings when I'd venture out to experience the Lebanese culture, feeling some urgency to safeguard myself from potential danger that might be lurking in the shadows. In hindsight, I recognize such caution was more a result of flawed preconceptions created by the nonsensical rhetoric of the Western media, forming some images in my mind of the Arab world that were anything but true.

Throughout my time in Lebanon, I met no one who openly spoke hostile words in my presence. Though I found myself in one chilling situation where the stakes were high, it was an isolated incident, materializing as a result of my ignorant curiosity, and not because someone targeted my nationality or ethnicity.

While in Lebanon, militant Islamic groups were still holding U.S. citizens as hostages. This included the journalist Terry Anderson whom I've written about previously. His seven-year ordeal in Lebanon was both a riveting and harrowing tale of survival. And this crisis was always at the forefront of my thoughts, further fostering my early prejudgments.

My first night in Beirut, I was greeted by a power outage, something one might expect in a country emerging from the throes of a seventeen-year civil war.  Minutes later, an explosion rocked the city. My sparse hotel shook violently in the wake of the blast. Once the building stabilized, I darted to the window and peered outside. In the moonlight, an ominous funnel of thick smoke mushroomed skyward. Some radical group had blown up the clock tower of the American University just down the hill from my quarters. The explosion solidified every preconceived notion I held about Beirut and the Arab world, which grew in measure the first half of the following day.

I woke up early the next morning, and soon was moving around the city. Near the university, military personnel had cordoned off the area. Of what military group, I was uncertain. Throughout Beirut, checkpoints were set up and manned by various groups brandishing weapons. Some of these factions were the official Lebanese Army, others a hodgepodge of militant Islamic groups, yet others various factions of the Christian militia.  Neighborhood bands of unaffiliated armed men also manned inspection points, as did foreign troops such as the Syrian army.  All of this was a result of wobbly peace accords set into motion and the ever-present sectarian tensions between rival Sunni and Shiite factions, along with the encroaching presence of Hezbollah (Party of God), the Shiite political movement and terrorist group backed by Iran.

By noon, I had crossed more than a half-dozen checkpoints. Initially, this was intimidating, reinforcing my preconceptions of the Arab world. But by midday, I had grown accustomed to the blockades and was able to occupy myself with the task of uncovering Beirut. And what I discovered was enlightening.

On the surface, I found chaos and destruction, and a physically obliterated Beirut. Hamra Street, often labeled the Champs-Elysees of the Arab world, was anything but a romantic boulevard lined with blossom trees, outdoor cafes, and trendy shops. Every building had suffered damage. Embankments of rubble replaced the dreamy ambience of decor, eradicating most signs of life. Yet, amidst such desolation, I witnessed a stunning gesture of kindness from a woman who went out of her way to approach me, directing me away from impending trouble looming nearby. Such acts of kindness became the norm, leading me to discover a resilient and beautiful people.

At dusk, I stood on the Corniche, the famed roadway running alongside the sapphire waters of the Mediterranean. The panoramic view was spectacular, the great sea stretching endlessly west, the mountains of Lebanon jutting skyward to the east, cradling the city in an ostensive nest. As the auburn hues of the setting sun washed over the city and the last hints of pink fell from the sky, I immediately understood why Beirut was called the Paris of the Middle East. Even in war, Beirut was spectacularly stunning.

Aside from Beirut's natural beauty, I found a deeper beauty in the Lebanese people. In the midst of great uncertainty, and in a time of death and loss and suffering, I found a people who defied every impression conveyed about them in the Western media. I did not find hatred or religious fanaticism; I found elevated levels of compassion, love, and kindness.

Often, certain areas of the world look like they're on fire with malevolence and hatred when you watch the news. You see isolated images of people shaking their fists, committing certain acts, and a long-lasting opinion frames itself in your subconscious. Soon your view of others, people you've never met, is skewed by prejudice. Preconceptions develop, causing judgments to be cast without ever knowing a person or a story or a place.

In my travels throughout the Middle East, I've always found the Arab people to be lively, passionate, benevolent, sympathetic, and kindhearted, similar to any other people group on this planet, and not unlike most Americans. Beyond the obvious cultural differences, lay dreams, hopes, and desires congruent with our view of the world. The great majority of Arab men and women work hard to make a better life for themselves and their families. They hope to live in peace and security, to find their lives in the folds of blessing. They love their children and grandchildren as much as you and I. At a heart level, they're no different from any Westerner.

Arab people have extended grace to me in a plethora of circumstances in more than two decades of traipsing the globe. To this day, I carry fond memories of such encounters – a cab driver in Palestine, a hotelier in Cairo, a flight attendant in Amman, a restaurant owner in Beirut.  Concerning the latter, the man’s restaurant was blown up and his livelihood destroyed, yet his disposition on life remained intact as he said, "It's okay, it's just material loss. I still have the most important treasure ... my family. I will not hate those who did this to me because if you love more, you win."

It's unfortunate that images in the media shape and mold our Western viewpoint of other people groups and in no uncertain manner, paint Middle Easterners, specifically those of Arab descent, in the darkest light, colored by extreme prejudice and bigotry. This kind of targeted discrimination has created some of the greatest atrocities and injustices by leaders and governments worldwide, including our own.

One does not need to travel far to revisit the days of Stalin or Hitler or Mao. Following the horrific events of 9/11, our own government embarked on a witch hunt, profiling and targeting Arab citizens, looking to atone for the massive breakdown and failure of our billion dollar intelligence agencies. To this day, Guantanamo houses men who've never been charged with a crime. Over half of the 166 prisoners at the detention center are unindicted. Most have been held captive for more than a decade, unable to have contact with their wives and children. Recently, certain John Grisham books were banned from the prison, rejected because "their legal content is problematic."

A Defense Department spokesman said the following when asked for explanation of the Grisham ban: "We will continue to provide them with appropriate reading materials based on what we believe is consistent with our responsibility to maintain good order and humane treatment. The detainees in our charge are humanely treated with multiple outlets for enrichment." Grisham retorted, "My knee-jerk reaction, in response to their humaneness, is to ask where does waterboarding fit in? Gitmo is a sad perversion of American justice."

I ask two deeper questions: What kind of "humaneness" and "enrichment" is found when you've separated men from their wives and children illegally? If you cannot charge a man with a crime, what's "humane" about holding him captive because of his ethnicity?

In closing, I'd like to address one last portrait of the Arab world, the chemical weapons attacks in Syria.  I can't comprehend how one can view images of innocent women and children gasping for air, dying as their respiratory systems shut down due to sarin gas, and not be resolute to do whatever it takes to prevent such further atrocities.  To dismiss these horrifying acts simply because they involve people of a foreign land is inhumane.  If the nations of the world had taken such a stance during the last century when Hitler was gassing Jews, Poles, Czechs, Slavs, Hungarians, Romanians, along with Christians, people of The Resistance, and other ethnic and religious groups, the world would look much different today. Absent intervention, the death toll of the Holocaust would have far exceeded the eleven million now known.  May we remind ourselves of a chilling truth: Neutrality pledges silent allegiance to the perpetrators of such acts.

Like Jesus Does

Music is a harmony that unites the spiritual and emotional with the physical in the human experience.  Often, in a four-minute song, we hear something we've been feeling for an extended period of time.  We hear verses we've desired to convey in spoken or written word, but have failed because we couldn't find the exact words to intelligibly communicate our sentiment.

"Like Jesus Does," is a song by Eric Church that powerfully communicates something I've wanted to say for a long time, but I couldn't quite find the appropriate words.  There's a general perception that men find it difficult to connect with their emotions and to express those emotions.  I believe this perception is somewhat misguided.  We do connect; we just bury those connections inside.  Men are not emotionless.  Next time you're on an airplane, or on some form of public transport, notice how many men are wearing ear buds or headphones.  And compare that with women.  Men are wrapped in the folds of music because song allows men to reach some safe emotional connection.  Music transports a man's feelings to the forefront of his thoughts.

Men are a complex mix of masculinity, ego, emotion, and spirituality.  Growing up, I was told by a wide range of voices, "You'll never understand a woman.  Don't even try.  It's a hopeless cause, they're much too complex."  There have certainly been experiences in my life where I've believed this was the Herculean truth of life.  Every man on this planet would probably concur.  However, I don't believe this to be true about women.  In fact, I believe the opposite.  A man can understand a woman if he desires to do so.  And "Like Jesus Does" reiterates this belief for me.  Deep in the heart of every woman sits a hope: to be loved and to be free to love with all her heart.

Contrary to popular opinion, women are not as complex as men make them out to be.  Most women desire a life partner.  A woman hopes for a faithful man who will love her, cherish her, adore her, and place her first in his life; a man who will treat her like the princess God has designed her to be; a man who will live and act like a man; a man who will give her his time, his heart, his dreams, his emotions; a man who will stand strong in her weakness, in life's storms, one who will protect and provide.

Without question, for a period of years, I failed greatly at being this kind of a man. I put the women in my life through unspeakable chaos and heartache because I was not the man God had designed me to be.  I was anything but a good husband during that time period.  I was an imposter, a fraud, a chameleon, a liar, a cheater.  I was just about everything except the man I was called to be.  Perhaps that's why "Like Jesus Does" resonates with me, why it connects emotionally.  When you've gone through the fire of failure, the crucible of change, of transformation, everything takes on a new perspective.  The world no longer looks the same, it's radically altered in every dimension of life.

Men can appear to be a series of contradictions.  If you're a woman reading this, you've no doubt experienced such contradictions in a man's life.  Many of the incongruities you've encountered are magnified larger by a man's propensity to bury his emotions – his fears and hurts and failures and hopes – making him seem emotionless.  But I can assure you that men are not emotionless.  In fact, we are deeply emotional, but we often bury our emotions inside.  The contradictions we encounter often block emotion in the context of our relationships.

As I look back, I've found contradictions in my life that stunted emotion and devastated my marriages.  For example, I have this enormous ability to undergo deep, dark trials per se, yet my spirit is easily wounded by another's words.  And in those wounds, I tend to bury my feelings, harboring unpleasant emotions.  Another contradiction: I am extremely sensitive to the greater needs of the world, the suffering of humanity, but am often insensitive to the needs of those closest to me. Such a contradiction only pushed my spouse away, injuring her spirit, making her feel less as a person.  One more: In years past, I spoke to thousands about loyalty and commitment, yet lacked integrity in my own life on these issues.  There was a great disconnect between my spoken word and personal actions.  And this contradiction only diminished my life and destroyed the trust of my wife, devaluing her in every way imaginable.  

I suspect, most of us have struggled at some point with what we want for our lives and the shortcomings we face while wrestling with personal flaws.  The contradictions.  When such contradictions are prevalent in a man's life, he has a tendency to bury the fallout internally, and in doing so, compresses emotion and lives in denial to himself.

It's such contradictions, paradoxes, that caused "Like Jesus Does" to resonate with my spirit.  The song speaks of a love that pushes through flaws, of commitment that surges through failure and overcomes.  It speaks of love the way God designed love to be – unconditional.  For me, love has been something distant, existing more in my imagination and memory than in the reality of my life, in terms of how I displayed love, how I conveyed love through personal actions.  

Seeing this deficiency, the contradictions, has caused my belief in love to develop and grow while in prison.  But the foundation of this love has shifted.  It's no longer the same self-serving, selfish love that dominated some of my life and was ever present in my marriages.  It's a love that empowers, that stretches, that looks to others first and foremost.

At heart, I am a romantic, but my romanticism has become more pragmatic.  I have a dream of love and family that nourishes me when the physical reality of its existence is barren.  In my imagined future, I see the reality of my hope reaching fulfillment through cosmic serendipity – God working in ways that extend beyond my imaginings and understanding. (Ephesians 3:20)

Love is the indestructibility of life, an experience, when true to its nature, propels us away from ourselves and toward the world and the lives of others.  Only unconditional love can remove the contradictions in people's lives.  So I write to all you brave and amazing women who stand through every storm of life and love the men in your life "Like Jesus Does."  Thank you for standing strong through the difficulty of contradictions in a man's life.

I write to the men who've been blessed to have a woman in your life who loves you "Like Jesus Does."  You have the greatest blessing you could ever ask for.  Treasure that special lady God has given you.  Adopt these magical, yet poignant words from Nelson Mandela.  Store them in your heart: "When you love a woman you don't see her faults.  The love is everything.  You don't pay attention to the things others may find wrong with her.  You just love her."

And I write to the incredible women in my life who love me "Like Jesus Does."  Mom, both my mother-in-laws, and T, T, T, and R.  Thank you for your constant support and unconditional love.  And of course, the three most beautiful girls in the world, my daughters: S, A, S.  Thank you for loving me "Like Jesus Does."

I'm a long gone Waylon song on vinyl.

I'm a back row sinner at a tent revival.

She believes in me like she believes her Bible.

She loves me like Jesus does.

I'm a left foot leaning on a souped up Chevy.

I'm a good ole boy drinkin' whiskey and rye on the levee.

But she carries me when my sins make me heavy.

She loves me like Jesus does.

All the crazy in my dreams,

Both my broken wings,

Every single piece of everything I am.

She knows the man I ain't,

She forgives me when I can't.

That devil, man, he don't stand a chance.

She loves me like Jesus does.

[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsty.com/eric-church-she-loves-me-like-jesus-does-lyrics.html ]

I always thought she'd give up on me one day.

Wash her hands of me leave me staring down some runway.

But I thank God each night and twice on Sunday

That she loves me like Jesus does.

All the crazy in my dreams,

Both my broken wings,

Every single piece of who I am.

She knows the man I ain't,

She forgives me when I can't.

That devil man, he don't have a prayer.

She loves me like Jesus does.

Yeah she knows the man I ain't.

She forgives me when I can't.

That devil, man, he don't stand a chance.

Cause she loves me like Jesus does.

I'm a long gone Waylon song on vinyl.

Love Behind Bars

I yearned for her love.

She sat there, eyes agleam with tears, phone in hand.  Nothing was said, nothing needed to be said.  I understood her pain.  It was I who gave birth to it.  Without speaking, she had spoken.  She spoke fluently.  The language of heartbreak.  Her eyes spoke of the lonely nights to come. Our child in her arms spoke of the broken home.  This was my doing.  All of it.

Tears fell from her eyes as if her spirit had erupted into a thunderstorm.  It would be years before the forecast could change. I wanted to embrace her and our angel, to protest that this storm would pass.  But no words would suffice.  She placed the phone down with a ballerina's grace and put her manicured hand to the Plexiglas.  She longed for my touch, wanted to feel the hands that had brought her pleasure, to touch the strength she had come to know.  I placed my hand on the glass in return.

We connected. 

Our kindred spirits. 

Together again.

Everything important in life rested between those two imprints. 

A lifetime of togetherness.

The good and the bad.

The family we had. 

Our love. 

Our hopes. 

Our dreams.

Our fears.

Our sorrows.

All of it, right there, in that finite space, between two hands.

She stared back through the glass, with tear-laced eyes.  She was as beautiful as the sunrise.  She was the kind of beautiful that would make an atheist believe. That was her.  So beautiful.  Inside and out.  The most beautiful woman in the world, in all of creation.  Her beauty gave me strength.  It caused me to believe.  In her.  In us.  In love.  In our family.

In that moment, I saw a new day.  I saw a new life.  I saw a miracle.  I mouthed, "I love you."  As tears streamed down my face, as tears fell from her face, as our hands were aligned in togetherness, she mouthed, "I love you too, but I can't do this."

I Am Fear

Today, I came across a thought-provoking definition of Fear.  Fear is perhaps the most crippling emotion, robbing us of both our present and future.  It steals dreams, stifles love, buries forgiveness, and quarantines hope.  Fear is the one negative emotion mentioned throughout the Bible repeatedly.  The words, "Fear not" appear in God's word 365 times; seemingly one for each day of the year.

Reflect for a moment on how fear has infiltrated your life and heart.  Ask yourself, "What am I afraid of and what does it cost me?  What has it cost me and why did I allow fear to envelop my life at certain times?"   As you do, consider this definition from an unnamed source: 

"I am Fear.  I am the menace that lurks in the paths of life, never visible to the eye but sharply felt in the heart.  I am the father of despair, the brother of procrastination, the enemy of progress, the tool of tyranny. 

Born of ignorance and nursed on misguided thought, I have darkened more hopes, stifled more ambitions, shattered more ideals and prevented more accomplishments than history could record.

Like the changing chameleon, I assume many disguises.  I masquerade as caution.  I am sometimes known as doubt or worry.  But whatever I'm called, I am still fear, the obstacle of achievement.

I know no master but one; its name is Understanding.  I have no power but what the human mind gives me, and I vanish completely when the light of Understanding reveals the facts as they really are, for I am really nothing ... I am Fear."

If we find the courage to acknowledge our fears, we take the first step to controlling those same fears.  By taking this step, we open our hearts to understanding and are able to move past our fears and press toward the higher forces in life such as love and empathy and forgiveness, those forces that unleash hope and healing and faith.

The Unexpected Path of Blessing

No matter where we are in life, no matter what injury or scars envelop us, we can find the good in the bad if we search hard enough.  Sometimes we reach a place in life where we feel a little off balance.  We lose our feeling of identity and subsequently lose our sense of uniqueness and destiny, betraying our own individuality.  Searching questions storm our spirit asking of ourselves, "Who am I?  What's my place?  Where do I fit?  Am I being true to myself, my gifts, my desires, my perceived calling?  The world can all of a sudden become a mirror replicating images that appear real but in truth are mere reflections.

Sometimes we get to a place where we must grant ourselves permission to listen; to eavesdrop on our own heart, to hear ourselves think and allow ourselves to feel.  We must pause and pay attention to what we feel, and to fit those feelings within a frame of thought and fact.  In doing so, we open up our lives to understanding that can alter perspective, aiding us to not judge a situation prematurely.  In most episodes of our lives, there are many moving parts, unseen elements working in the background.  The surface image is not always the truest image.

This time for me has allowed this to occur.  I've been able to identify issues in my past that carried separation, a detachment of some sort that deprived my life of blessing.  I saw everything clearly and saw that separation for what it was and how it impacted my life, mostly robbing me of destiny, leaving me off balance and vulnerable.  I could see where life's mirror cast an image that was anything but true.  I recognized when it wasn't my true image in the mirror; it was somebody else's.  I saw how the good and bad came, how love and loss arrived.  I saw where I made excuses and accepted things that were not true to who I am as a person.

One area of separation I saw is I had this tremendous fear of failure, though at the time I did not even recognize this detachment.  I was not going to let people down and in retrospect that mentality hurt me.  It drove me and drove me.  And this led to some of the missteps.  I explicitly connect this fear, this separation and relentless pushing of myself, to some of the choices I made, to some of the mistakes that caused my life and marriage to unravel.  Deep down, I only hoped to provide a wonderful life for my wife and three daughters and prodigious gain for my investors.  Below all the surface stuff, the visible images created, the facade of illusion and interpretation and implications of story and spin in the public eye, this was my underlying and one true motive.  And the separation, my inability to recognize the disconnect, allowed a lot of bad to infest my life, leaving me to believe blessing may never come again.

Such infractions of bad, as you can imagine or have experienced, have a tendency to cloud perspective on how the wave of blessing unfurls in our lives.  Surprisingly, the way we normally perceive blessing is quite contrary to how blessing arrives.  Routinely a pattern forms in our mind that says, "This good thing leads to this good thing and that good thing leads to blessing."  Though such a process is true, it's not always the norm nor as frequent as we might expect.  As I've studied Scripture and chased the path of blessing through the lives of various characters filling the Bible's pages, I find a pattern contradicting our common perception of how blessing arrives.  Recurrently I find "this bad thing leads to this bad thing and that bad thing leads to this good thing--blessing."

I revisited the story of Joseph and found this divergent pattern of blessing dominating his life and story.  The bad (his brothers' jealousy) led to a bad thing (Joseph thrown in a pit and left to die) led to another bad thing (Joseph sold into slavery) and that bad thing led to an unimaginable blessing of Joseph finding favor and being made the viceroy of a very wealthy and prominent man in Egypt.  Later in his life the same pattern of blessing reappears: a proper act of rejecting the advances of his boss's wife led to a bad thing (Joseph thrown in prison) led to another bad thing (Joseph forgotten in prison) led to an astonishing blessing of Joseph rediscovering his gifts and becoming Prime Minister of Egypt.  Ultimately this blessing led to the rescue of the very people who betrayed Joseph--his brothers--and this led to his entire family being saved from financial ruin and possible death.

The outcome of blessing in Joseph's life was something he could not foresee when he was in the throes of trouble and hardship.  When only bad surrounded him, it must have been difficult for him to consider, let alone comprehend, that he was on the path to blessing.  If anything, he must have believed the opposite.  But in spite of that separation, the detachment from truth, Joseph discovered a key.  And that key unlocked the door of blessing in his life: Joseph embraced his state of affairs and did not dismiss or waste the years when the bad enveloped him.  He embraced his circumstance and never allowed actions or choices, be it his own or those of another, to destroy him.  He could have allowed the bad years to make him bitter and negative.  But he chose the opposite.  He was determined to trust God by continuing to do his best, to give his all, and to be productive amidst the chaos encumbering his life.

By embracing where we are, we permit God to fight our battles when we are powerless to do so ourselves.  At the same time, we unlock the door of blessing, enabling good to come from the carnage and wreckage the bad has brought.  Don't shortchange or dismiss the bad in your life because inevitably something good comes from it, and sometimes, the greatest blessing flows from something we never imagined could lead to blessing.

One of the greatest writers in history, Fyodor Dostoevsky experienced this pattern of blessing.  Early in his life the Tsar of Russia, Nicholas I, sentenced him to 10 years in prison.  Prison became a crucible of religious faith for him as he pored over the New Testament.  He described a process in which the blunt reality of human evil convinced him of the need for redemption.  Then through the living witness of believers in prison, he saw the possibility of transformation.  And this led to his conversion and subsequent search to extract meaning from the horrendous experience of life in a Siberian prison camp.  Eventually the bad engulfing his life led to an unbelievable blessing: Dostoevsky discovered his gift for writing and this led to the authoring of Crimes and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, arguably the two greatest novels in history.

In a similar way I've experienced this same pattern of blessing.  Nearly a year ago a friend approached me with a novel he was writing, asking for my critique and opinion.  Reading the text, I immediately recognized the potential of a fascinating story that could reach publication.  I also saw the need to tighten the writing with tension and suspense.  So I agreed to help and this began my foray into the world of fiction writing.  A year later, a 600 page novel is now complete, undergoing the next phase of the publishing process.  This effort of assisting with the writing of a novel not only reignited my love for writing, it also fanned the flame of fiction writing in my heart which has led to an unforeseen blessing in my life.

In the beginning I was very tepid about my ability to write fiction.  Honestly, I didn't believe I possessed the skill set to perform such a task.  But the effort of aiding another coupled with the relentless pursuit of developing this skill in my life has resulted in an unexpected blessing I never imagined could be found in this type of experience, which I can only label as bad.

I launched my expedition of writing fiction by penning a short romantic story centered in Italy involving an American man and Italian woman.  The writing brims with exotica and imagery, supporting a plot line that surges forward and pulls the reader along, culminating with a heart tugging ending in which two broken lives find wholeness, healing, and love. 

I distributed the short story to various men and women who read extensively, asking for an honest critique of the work.  As I awaited feedback, I pressed forward in outlining a suspense novel that's been on my heart to write for some time, a propulsive thriller bearing a social conscience.  The story originates in the United States and expands into Europe, fueled by a dilemma that a likeable protagonist faces, "What do you do when the only right thing to do is the wrong thing to do?"  It's a riveting tale of love and loss and power and corruption, coalescing dilemmas seen daily in today's headlines, while taking the reader on a ride through twisting plots leading to a soaring climax.

As I delved into the early stages of writing this novel, reviews came back on the short story.  I was taken aback by the comments.  All critiques were favorable, the most common reactions being "moving, gripping, heartrending, tearjerker."  More dumbfounding was the advice I received from each reviewer: "Turn this story into a full-fledged novel and screenplay; it possesses all the elements that could lead to a blockbuster book and movie."  So I've followed this advice and begun this journey.

In every bad thing we can find something good if we move forward, lay the past to rest, and press ahead with our future, doing what we can to right our wrongs and remain true to those dreams God placed in our heart.  In this context we experience blessing and we allow God to help us discover gifts we never knew we had.

We can navigate situations in which the unknown predominates and our understanding is limited.  We grow and improve through adversity.  We must learn to benefit from disorder in our lives.  Modernity has been obsessed with comfort and cosmetic stability, but by making ourselves too comfortable and attempting to eliminate volatility from our lives, we make our spirits fragile.  We miss out on blessings that come from the bad, the disorder, and the pain.  Don't accept the bad or ignore the bad.  Use it to pursue what's good.  Discover the immense blessing that's found in the bad.

Right now, I'm at a place where I dismiss negative energy, the status quo of life.  I reject the monologue a place like this tries to throw on me, the rhetoric of what others perceive prison does to one's life.  I reject advice that desires to temper me, "Don't love as hard, don't work out so hard, don't laugh so hard."  When you lose your life it grants a perspective unfound in the commonality of living.  You stop to take stock of the world around you.  I do my best to view life through a lens that recognizes, "this bad thing may have led to this bad thing and that bad thing will lead to a good thing--blessing.”  This time in my life could very well be the gift that God gave to usher in the miracle of restitution in my legal situation and one that will provide for my daughters' futures.

By pushing through my comfort zone and exhorting my spirit through the bad, I've been able to train an emotional muscle that serves me well today.  All of us on a daily basis have opportunity to move forward or backward or stay put.  Today, I know to move forward.  Always.  Life's blessings await.  And they await you as well.

And a Child Shall Lead Us

Three beautiful girls are the most treasured individuals in my life.  As a father, directly and indirectly, my world revolves around my daughters.  Through the course of each day, my thoughts consciously connect with their world and lives.  This comes in the form of memories and hopes, reflections of our past and imaginations on how I envision their future.

My sense of awareness is heightened by the separation that engulfs us and the good things I hope to see unfold in their lives.  It's also raised by personal experiences I've lived in my travels throughout the world, especially those many sojourns into troubled lands where I've witnessed the dumbfounding paradox of human behavior, the best and worst of humanity.

Whenever a story breaks depicting the harshness and cruelty of injury inflicted by cowardly individuals on the life of another, especially a child, and even more so a girl, there is a very personal fury I feel.  And the fury rises when the act committed was driven by hate, ignorance, and a depraved self-righteousness of individuals who believe they are acting in obedience to God and honoring the truths of His decrees.  Such was the case with the shooting of 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai on October 9 in the lush Swat Valley of Pakistan.

Malala became known around the world in 2009 when at age 11 her diary dispatches were published by the BBC Urdu service.  Her writings both charmed and alarmed the greater world about life under the oppressive shadow of Taliban occupation.  In published accounts, she conveys her simple desire for all Pakistani girls, including herself, to be allowed to attend school and receive an education.  It was such hopes and dreams that made her a prominent target of the Taliban.

Malala's hometown of Mingora became the center of Taliban violence beginning in 2007 when the religious group pushed its way to power.  Staunch opponents of female education, the Taliban terrorized students and teachers, bombing hundreds of schools and forcing remaining schools to close their doors to girls.  Though their acts of violence paralyzed the area in fear, they could not silence the voice of a young girl nor kill her dream.

Despite the intimidation, Malala continued to write and speak.  It was such boldness and courage that triggered the horrifying event of October 9 when Taliban gunmen stopped a bus transporting her home from school.  The gunmen boarded the bus, asked for Malala by name, then shot her in the head and neck at point-blank range.  Miraculously she survived.  And the storm that has ensued from this spineless act could very well produce what billions of dollars and a decade of war have been unable to accomplish: The end of the Taliban.

As Malala clings to life in a hospital in England, she has become an international hero - a change agent.  Like Mandela, King, and Ghandi, her stand has exposed the ugliness of fanatics who hoped to silence her and put an end to her dream.  Her selfless courage has again brought to light the cancer of extremism and a self-serving righteousness that wanders meticulously through our world masquerading under the name of God in various forms.  You need not travel to Pakistan to find it; it's very much alive here in the United States, in our own institutions of faith.  The supposed trademarks of Christianity – love, forgiveness, acceptance – are often conspicuously absent in our representations and endeavors, cloaked in the shroud of some form of holiness that is nothing but polarizing, and in many respects, one diametrically opposed to those traits that should govern the life of a person who claims to be a Christian.  Shockingly, our actions are often not much different from those of the Taliban.

The incongruity found in the tragic act of repulsive evil inflicted on Malala is this:  If your religion espouses certain beliefs and truly practices such proclamations – as the Taliban does – why would you not be grateful for someone who broadcasts your tenets of faith to the entire world?  It's apparent their act of retaliation against the most defenseless of all, a child, reveals the true nature of hate and fear and control that governs their belief system as well as their hearts: rules of ideology that run counter to God and His true nature.  May all of us who call ourselves Christians examine our own hearts and ask a searing question:  How often are our acts of commission and omission, our thoughts and attitudes toward others, similar in spirit to the Taliban?

And a child shall lead us.  Sometimes it takes the innocent and altruistic act of a child to wake us from our slumber.  In their courageous and humble undertakings we see what has been unseen in the rhetoric and cruelty of prejudice, in the history and drama that has enveloped centuries of living and stifled the hopes and dreams of uncounted millions.  The innocence and purity of the solitary pursuit of a dream bursting in the heart of a young girl in Central Asia could very well become the great tipping point to arouse the consciousness of not only the nation of Pakistan, but also the entire world.

So Malala, we in the free world stand with you and pray for your miraculous recovery.  You could very well be remembered in history as the girl who brought the evil regime of the Taliban to its ultimate demise because you dared to demand more in voicing your dream. "I have the right to speak up.  I have the right of education.  I have the right to sing."  In the end you will win.  And because of you, my girls win, as do all young girls on this planet.

The Boy They Couldn't Kill

The English language has a million words, but only one for the two kinds of forgiveness. This is a major failure. The two kinds may be similar at the molecular level but they are far removed in magnitude. Like a candle flame and a volcano, an April shower and a hurricane, a soft tremor beneath your feet and the great San Francisco earthquake.

The first kind of forgiveness is the easy kind. Someone wounds you, and in time this offender comes to see what he has done. He returns to lay the wound at your feet. And when you reach down to pull him up a sort of charge passes between you, a cleansing force that refreshes both souls.

Candle flame and volcano. The second kind of forgiveness is a rare occurrence that becomes rarer as the wound grows more severe. In this case the offender gives nothing. He never comes to you. And when you go to him, he turns you away. This leaves you alone with your open wound and a solitary choice. No one will blame you either way. But the wound is yours to keep, or let go, and that choice may plot the course for the rest of your life.

One night 13 years ago a wound was opened in the dark, in a place deep in the abdomen that surgeons call the seat of the soul. The wound was a subterranean river, and it was not closed off until there was no more blood to lose. Professional athletes have done many terrible things over the years, but this was probably the worst. An unborn boy lay in the dark near the rising lake of his mother's blood, and soon he would join her on the brink of death.

The mother had a mother, and this story is about her. She came from the Piedmont of North Carolina, with its valleys full of corn and cotton, and her people were good and prosperous. You can go to Kings Mountain today and find Jack Adams Road, named for her father. He was one of six brothers who sang in a gospel group and worshipped in a redbrick edifice called Mount Olive Baptist Church. You can go to this church today and see the place where Saundra Adams grew up. That is her name. Saundra Adams. What she learned at Mount Olive was an overwhelming sense of gratitude for life. The sense that you don't wake up unless God opens your eyes, don't see the rising sun unless God pulls it from the horizon, don't put food in your mouth unless God helps you hold the fork. And you do all these things and you rejoice.

Saundra was 16 when she and a boy gave in to their desires, and she was 17 when Cherica was born. About to start her senior year in high school. Saundra's father was plowing his cornfield when she went into labor, and he wanted to finish, so they were late to the hospital. There Saundra was in the backseat of that Chevy Caprice, trying to hold Cherica in, and Cherica kept coming, and Saundra kept holding, and Cherica kept coming, and from the day she was born to the day she died she had a bald spot on top of her head about the size of her mother's fingertip.

It was 1975 in rural North Carolina. A girl in this situation was expected to move away or at least quit school. But they were Adamses, hardworking, successful, and her mother and father expected her to graduate. They would help with the baby. They were disappointed by her reckless behavior, but Jack was thrilled for another chance to sustain the Adams bloodline. He took Cherica riding on his tractor and told her she would have many children.

After graduation Saundra's parents said, Go on to college. Make something of yourself. We'll keep Cherica. You can see her every weekend. So Saundra did. She got a psychology degree from UNC-Charlotte and a good job in personnel at IBM. And she brought Cherica to Charlotte to grow up.

Cherica grew up fast, and soon she was living a fast life. She had these deep brown eyes and this willowy frame, and the men took note. She modeled in clothing advertisements and sold real estate. She earned enough to buy a black BMW and a red Mitsubishi coupé. She danced at the Diamond Club and ran in the circles of the newly rich. She mingled with the Hornets and the Panthers, and one day at a barbecue in the summer of 1998 she met a young wide receiver named Rae Carruth.

Although her lifestyle may have suggested otherwise, Cherica was in some ways an old-fashioned woman. Her grandfather's words had stayed with her. She wanted a wedding, a husband and many children. A whole football team, she used to say. Once she and her mother watched a movie in which a woman couldn't have children, and her mother, through modern technology, carried the child for her daughter and gave birth to her own grandchild.

Mom, Cherica said, would you do that for me?

Girl, yes, Saundra said.

It was Mother's Day 1999 when Cherica gave Saundra the news. You don't have to carry it for me, she said. I'm gonna have my own.

Cherica was thrilled about her unborn son. She read My First Bible out loud and immersed him in the music of Bach and Beethoven. And although Saundra rejoiced with Cherica, because she saw every life as a gift from God, she knew it would be complicated. Cherica wanted to give the baby the Carruth name, but her mother was against it. If you're not married when the baby comes into this world, Saundra said, he needs to be an Adams.

Rae Carruth didn't want him to be anything. Carruth's life was quickly diverging from the script. After making the NFL All-Rookie team in 1997, when he led all first-year players with 44 catches, for 545 yards, he had missed most of the '98 season with a broken right foot. He felt shunned by his Carolina teammates and stayed home alone, playing football on his PlayStation. He planned to come back stronger than ever in '99, but in September he was benched for part of the game after dropping a crucial pass in a two-point loss to the Jaguars. In mid-October, against the 49ers, he suffered a left-ankle sprain that would keep him out for a month. Another season was derailed. His career was going nowhere. And now another woman would soon be demanding child support.

Carruth knew a guy called New York and another guy called Little Man. New York weighed 286 pounds and would do anything for money and plenty of things for free. He had once stood on a roof for several hours, throwing glass window panes down at the police. He had once set a fellow prison inmate on fire. Little Man was not so frightening, but he knew his way around a gun and a crack deal. For someone who wanted to solve a problem outside the law, New York and Little Man appeared to be useful men.

Cherica went to a childbirth class, and Carruth went with her. New York later testified under oath about that. He said Carruth told him to meet them after the class and beat up Cherica and make her lose the baby. But New York didn't show. He was nothing if not a con man, so he strung Carruth along. One time New York agreed to find Cherica at her apartment and kill the kid there. Another time he was going to ambush her behind a restaurant. He took cash payments of $300 and $2,000 and kept delaying. Finally, they settled on a plan to murder Cherica.

On Nov. 15, 1999, when Cherica was about seven months pregnant, she got a call at her apartment. Carruth wanted to take her to the movies. Cherica fired up the BMW and drove to his house. From there, she called her mother. Strange men were coming and going. She saw an odd transaction that involved bootleg satellite television. Something's not right, she told Saundra. I don't know why I'm even here.

Just cancel the movie, Saundra said. Tell him you're not going. You're just gonna leave. Saundra stayed on the phone with Cherica and heard her repeat these things to Carruth. And she heard Carruth talk her daughter back into going.

No, no, no, he said. I'm going. I'm leaving right now. Let's get your things. Let's go to the car. And they got in his tricked-out white Ford Expedition and headed off to the Regal Cinemas for a late screening of The Bone Collector, with plans to return to Carruth's house afterward.

Cherica's roommate later testified that around midnight she got a phone call. Cherica was heading home. Carruth was coming with her. This was a total surprise. Cherica had left the apartment in disarray. She asked the roommate to straighten up her bedroom. A prosecutor would later say this change of venue was a crucial part of Carruth's plan. It was 10 miles north from his house to Cherica's apartment. He drove the white Expedition, and she followed in the black BMW. Behind her was a gold Nissan Maxima that contained Little Man and New York.

Rea Road is one of the prettiest drives in metropolitan Charlotte. Going north from I-485, it's a winding four-lane avenue divided by a tree-lined median. You cross a bridge over Four Mile Creek, and at Pineville-Matthews Road you can see the breathtaking crown-shaped sanctuary of Calvary Church. From there the road narrows to three lanes, then two, and it slopes down to a hollow that's secluded on both sides by trees and underbrush. There, at about 12:30 a.m., Rae Carruth came to a sudden halt.

Cherica hit the brakes.

The gold Maxima pulled around and stopped on her left.

She was trapped.

New York had a Charter Arms five-shot .38 Special revolver, and he emptied all five rounds into the BMW. The Expedition pulled away, taking Carruth to a friend's house to play video games. Little Man turned the Maxima around in a driveway and headed south. But as he sped up the hill and saw the lonely hollow receding in the rear-view mirror, he caught a glimpse of the BMW's brake lights flashing red in the dark. And he knew they had left the job undone.

At 12:31 that morning, a wireless phone call was placed to the Mecklenburg County 911 dispatch center. The recording is 12 minutes and six seconds long. It is the sound of a woman dying.

DISPATCHER: 911 Baker. Do you need police, fire or medic?

CHERICA ADAMS: Police. I've been shot. I've been shot.

Between deep breaths and moaning, and honking her horn to seek help from local residents, Cherica described her vehicle, her wounds and her precise location. She also said the words that would send Rae Carruth to prison.

MEDIC: O.K. How did this happen?

CHERICA: I was following my baby's daddy, Rae Carruth, the football player.

(A few questions later)

CHERICA: He was in the car in front of me and he slowed down and somebody pulled up beside me and did this.

MEDIC: And then where'd [Carruth] go?

CHERICA: He just left.

Four of the five bullets had found their mark. Three lodged in her flesh without serious harm. But one left a trail of destruction. It pierced her left side and passed through her abdomen, crossing her right chest, coming to rest near her right armpit. Along the way it tore her stomach and large intestine and made innumerable holes in her small intestine. It penetrated her liver, her diaphragm, her lung. It cut her pancreas in half. It severed the splenic artery and vein, opening such a fountain of blood that she eventually lost it all, and more. The tireless doctors at Carolinas Medical Center kept replacing the blood through intravenous lines, and she kept losing it. Six liters. One hundred fifty percent.

The lethal bullet missed the boy, just as the four other shots did. It missed his mother's uterus by an inch or two. But her blood was his blood. It flowed through the uterine artery to the placenta and gave him the nutrients and oxygen he needed to live. Now the blood was diverted. It was pooling in his mother's chest. And the unborn child began to suffocate.

Nearly 70 minutes passed from the time of the shooting to the time the boy was delivered by emergency C-section. Ten more and he might have been stillborn, according to Docia Hickey, the neonatologist who helped save his life. But the effects of those 70 minutes would be irreversible. Without oxygen, cells began to die in his cerebellum and basal ganglia. There was tissue death in the brain. The human body is quite adept at self-healing and regeneration. But lost brain cells are gone forever.

The boy came into the world, and he was blue.

Saundra says she found her daughter after the C-section in one of her last moments of lucid speech, and she asked Cherica a question.

Do you want him to be a Carruth or an Adams?

Adams, Cherica said.

And so the blue boy became Chancellor Lee Adams.

A week passed. On Nov. 25 the police rounded up Carruth and three other suspects: Van Brett Watkins (New York), Michael Kennedy (Little Man) and Stanley Abraham, a friend of Little Man's who was in the car that night. All were charged with multiple felonies, including attempted murder and intent to kill an unborn child. Carruth was released on $3 million bond.

On Dec. 14, 1999, four weeks after she found the strength to make the call that saved her unborn son's life, Cherica Adams died. Just before the end, Saundra lay down beside her daughter. "I love you," she said. And Cherica left just the way she had come, in the grasp of her mother's hands.

Within an hour or two, Saundra's lawyer had filed a motion in Mecklenburg District Court. By the end of the day a judge had signed an order granting Saundra Adams emergency custody of her grandson. She would carry a child for her daughter after all.

On Jan. 19, 2001, after a two-month criminal trial, the jurors delivered a split decision: They found Carruth guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, of using an instrument to destroy an unborn child and of shooting into an occupied vehicle, but not guilty of first-degree murder. That meant he would not face the death penalty. The judge had some leeway in determining his prison sentence, and Saundra Adams was called to testify.

"Chancellor has cerebral palsy because of this act," she said, facing the judge from the witness stand. "This heinous act. You know, thank—we do thank God that he's still alive. You know, he is our miracle child. Because he was not supposed to be here if that plan had been implemented properly. But Chancellor is alive, and he's got such a strong will. Just like his mom. He is fighting for his life."

She went on, her voice gaining force.

"Every day. I see that in Chancellor every day. Chancellor at 14 months old is not even doing the things that some four-month-olds do. Chancellor can't hold onto this ball. Chancellor can't pick up a spoon and hold a spoon.” Her voice rose to a place of righteous fury.

"He has trouble even holding a rattle in his hand and rattling. He's not sitting up. Talk about first step—he can't even, he's not even near a point of taking a first step. The doctors are telling me that he might not even take a first step till he might even be three years old, or older. But yet Chancellor has such a strong will and such a great personality. And that's the trait that I hope—maybe he did get some of that from his father.

"Because I do believe in miracles, I know that Chancellor will be better. We're gonna give him lots of love, and I know that God is, is working things out already for him to be totally and completely well. And in my heart, even though Rae Carruth has not shown one single ounce of remorse, to me or anyone in my family, there's not been one 'I'm sorry about what happened to your daughter.'

"But in my heart, because I'm a Christian, as an act of my will, and because I know it's out of obedience to God, I am forgiving Rae Carruth."

Eleven years later. Hot day in June. You wait in a T.G.I. Friday's on the north side of Charlotte, looking through the glass toward the parking lot. A metallic-blue minivan pulls into the handicapped-only space by the front door. She gets out of the driver's seat and comes around to the near side. The sliding door opens, and you see him for the first time.

It's hard to say what makes you cry. His face, perhaps, with his father's light skin, his mother's dark lashes and deep brown eyes, lit up with joy when he sees his grandmother's face. Or his body, slim and muscular, athletic if not for the hands that curl inward and the right leg that won't stand straight. Or the way her hand rests on his back as she guides him across the asphalt. Or the way he walks, lurching, as if his skeleton were a rusty machine.

They hurtle down I-77, singing Gospel music together, and he sways from side to side, and his voice is a fervent and joyful moan. They visit his godmother, Judy Williams, who feeds him fried potatoes and onions, and then they go to physical therapy, where his therapist, Amy Sturkey, is teaching him to walk on his own.

"Work those hips for me, Sweet Pea," she says as he bounces on a small trampoline. "Tell that hip to come over and join the party."

She stands by him, and he starts to fall, and fear shows on his face, because he can't catch himself, because his brain was damaged in those minutes when his mother's blood was diverted, but now Sturkey catches him, and he smiles again. He won't quit. Step up, step down, right, left, deathly serious, neck bulging with the effort, jerking like a baby and bent like an old man, so easy to damage, so hard to repair, and when he is done his grandmother holds him, his breathing soft but deep, and she whispers in his ear. "Rest on G-Mom's shoulder a little bit."

And he does, and soon they're off to another structured activity, this time in a church gymnasium with the Allegro Foundation, where children with autism, Down syndrome and cerebral palsy gather to play and learn. Could he have run the 40-yard dash in 4.29 seconds like his father? Could he have caught a deep pass over the middle in the NFL? A teenage volunteer throws him an orange beach ball, pillow-soft, over and over from three feet away, and Rae Carruth's son can catch it only half the time. An athlete? Yes, Chancellor Lee Adams is an athlete. He won a gold medal last April, in the 30 meters, in a motorized wheelchair, at the Mecklenburg County Special Olympics.

A football player? Yes again. Last year at a park in Charlotte he played in a flag football game with other kids of similar ability. Someone tossed the ball in his lap and he took off in that motor chair with the flag trailing behind him. Every few yards he would stop, and the defenders would close in, and G-Mom would yell, Keep going! Keep going fast! And he would go again, just out of their reach, and stop again, and go again, and finally G-Mom ran to him and the coaches ran to him and he smiled and laughed with delight because he could tell from their reactions that he had done something very good. And that good thing turned out to be a touchdown.

His grandmother leaves the gym for a moment, for a respite from all that intensity, and he sees that she is gone. He turns to you, sensing that you must know something, and he looks into your eyes. And he holds the eye contact without fear or shame. The purity in his gaze is astonishing, like a clean white flame, and then he asks that question again.

She could have filled him with hate, for his father and his Carruth blood; or anger, for the loss of his mother; or bitterness, for the loss of who he could have been. She filled him with something more powerful. He hardly ever cried as a baby, so quick was she to feed him and hold him and change his diapers, and as time went on he seemed to cry only for others. He would cry if one child hit another child, or at the suffering of a movie character, or when his godmother had a nosebleed. When G-Mom had food poisoning, so severe she had to crawl along the floor, there he was, crawling beside her.

She taught him that the rain was a shower of God's blessing, and he believed her, so that when his schoolmates ran inside to stay dry he just stood there and let it fall on him. She taught him that he could do anything, that he had no limits, even though a neurologist told her he would never walk or talk, and now of course he can do both. He can ride horses. He started sixth grade at the end of August. He makes his bed and cleans his room without being told. He wakes up smiling and goes to sleep smiling and in between he looks like the happiest person in the world. On the spectrum of cerebral palsy, he is somewhere near the middle. Conventional wisdom says he will always need help, always be catching up, never quite get to normal. But you never know. Medical technology is advancing. He runs through his therapy with a blazing intensity, and Sturkey thinks he could one day dress himself, prepare his own meals and walk safely around his own home. His grandmother believes he will get a job, get married, prolong the Adams bloodline and do many other amazing things. It may not be wise to bet against her.

They're in the minivan again, driving toward home. You want to go with them, but she will drop you off at your hotel instead. She is polite but firm. The home is Lee's sanctuary. No strangers allowed. It's late afternoon now, the heavy air draped over the Piedmont like a blanket pulled too soon from the dryer, and Saundra Adams is talking about Rae Carruth.

"I'm not gonna have anything negative to say about him," she says. "I thank him for my grandson. I thank him for my grandson."

There is a long silence.

"After what you've lost," you say.

"Like I say," she says, "you can focus on what you've lost or what you have left. So I didn't lose. I have my grandson. I have my daughter with me in my heart, always. I have her with me through Lee. So I don't focus on loss. I mean, I think she's in Heaven, with God, so that's definitely not a loss. So I've got a lot left, and a lot of hope left, and a lot to live for, and to be able to help my grandson to become the wonderful man he's meant to be. I haven't lost anything.

"Really, I've gained. I've been pushed into my role and destiny."

This story was edited and adapted from an article written by Thomas Lake in the September 17, 2012 issue of Sports Illustrated magazine.