Out Our Way: Charlie's wheelchair?

     Out our way, more than a few of us show up for church walking stiffly or with a pronounced limp. Some even come in wheelchairs. You take old Charlie now — after “Freckles” went ballistic on him while moving cows up on a friend’s ranch in the Bear Paws, Charlie ended up in the emergency room. That “wreck” and other issues took Charlie out of the saddle and into a wheelchair for his last years of life

I was recovering from open heart surgery a few years before and was going to physical therapy at the hospital, when one day Charlie came wheeling in. He got up out of his wheelchair and hobbled over to the exercise machines beside me and started his workout. By this time I was well into recovery and walking several miles every day as well as doing the regular cardiotherapy routine … but I was hard-pressed to keep up with Charlie. There was never any “quit” in that old cowboy.  

It is not surprising that Charlie and Pat were devout Christians and stalwarts at the Methodist Church. Faith as well as sheer guts were just part of who they were — and in Pat’s case, still is. Sort of reminded me of Dr. David Livingstone, the famous missionary doctor in Africa in the 19th century.

Books and movies have been made about the newspaper reporter, Henry Stanley, who was sent by the New York Herald to find Livingstone when Livingstone went deep into central Africa and seemingly “disappeared.” Stanley eventually found Dr. Livingstone in a remote village in an area few white men had ever seen. His famous, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume,” remains one of the most famous lines in history. Ah, but while the film version ends there, the story does not.

Stanley — who considered himself above religion and proudly proclaimed himself an agnostic if not an atheist — stayed with Livingstone for some time and is reported to have said that he felt compelled to leave Livingstone because the man’s faith was so compelling, he feared he would have been converted himself, even if Livingstone never said a word. Some folks preach the Gospel, but the great ones live it.  

As I age and deal with the aches and pains that go with it plus the extra ones I picked up cowboying with Charlie — “Sure, start cowboying at 60 … what could it hurt?” Oy!  Now I know! — my energy is low and my physical strength weaker. Add to that the disappointments, humiliations, betrayals, heartache and loss of direction over the past few years, the frustration and sense of emptiness sometimes seems overwhelming. Then I remember Charlie.

When do I give up and quit? When did Charlie? Oh, I have moaned and groaned a good deal in the recent past, but of late I have started to recall Charlie’s wheelchair. And although not normally a religious symbol, it has reminded me of his faith and the need for me to remember my own. It is so easy to bewail the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and let them take you down. I have preached on standing up in faith when such trials were far away — but when the Book of Job became more autobiographical than I would have thought possible, I found I was not practicing what I preached. Indeed, I was allowing the emptiness and the darkness to take over. I was starting to quit. 

OK, I have been emotionally tossed and stomped and crippled up just as surely as Charlie was physically up there in the Bear Paws. But Charlie never quit — and he rode that wheelchair, the exercise bikes and the other physical therapy machines in the therapy room just as hard as he rode his cow ponies up on Tiger Ridge and in the Bear Paws. “When do I quit, Charlie?” “When I do!” would be his answer. And like the Apostle Paul — that day never came. 

Blessings,

John Bruington