Life Testimony: Part 2

Good evening again.

Good to be back here again with y'all.

I believe last night when we stopped talking, I was mentioned about being in a rehab facility, inpatient, where they had helped me get back to work and driving, and that my dad and brothers had modified one of our pieces of logging equipment so that I could operate it. And I think I mentioned maybe some of the things that I enjoyed about working in the woods with my brothers and operating equipment. For those of you that may not be familiar with logging in different parts of the country, they do it differently, different areas. But in our area, most of the way the logging is done is have a machine. Someone runs a machine, cuts the trees down.

Another one drives a skitter and drags the trees up to a clearing where they process them. And then we have our knuckle boom loaders are just stationary pieces of equipment. We pull them in with a semi or a log skitter, and they have outriggers, stabilizers, and they stay in one spot.

And that's the piece that I run. And then they have delimiters on them and hydraulic bucking saws where I can take the trees, delim them, cut the tops off, and cut them up to lengths and sort the different species and grades and stockpile them and load log trucks and stuff.

And so that's pretty much my job. And it's easy for the guys to come check on me when they come in, drag trees in every so often, and this skitter guy will jump off and make sure I don't need something if we don't have cell service or two-way radios.

And I was mentioning that one of the things I like so much about running knuckle boom, operating loaders, is just being out of the wheelchair and feeling normal, feeling like I was still doing my same job just in a different way.

And it got me thinking that my disability, my injury, isn't obvious when I'm out working in the woods. I thought there's a lot of other people like that, that they have hard things to deal with. Some of it's physical. Some of it's more in the mind. And we don't know what they're dealing with.

Their hardships aren't obvious. Some of it is with them personally. Other times, it may be in our families, in our churches, in our relationships.

It could be with spouses, siblings, friends, job stress, children that aren't going the way their parents would wish them to. It made me be a lot more sympathetic to people that they may not understand kind of the way they act. We think that they may not understand the way they act or say the things they say sometimes, and we don't know what's triggering some of their different ways of relating.

I think we all have hard things to deal with, and if we haven't had hard things to deal with, we probably will at some point.

I had things. I had a really good, fun life. I just liked life. When I was 18, I could get my CDL, and I liked my job, and I didn't care if I thought, "Man, it'd be fun just to stay 18 and 19 for five years."

And that doesn't have to be just in the teenage years. There's different periods of our lives that are really easy and we really enjoy, and there's other periods of our lives that have a lot of hardship.

I've been asked about my regrets, regretting the speed that I was driving.

And I do. I often regret that. I think, "What if I would have been driving the speed limit, doing what I was supposed to do, just obeying the laws? How different things may have been." But my biggest regrets are probably similar to most people's. There are the times that I went against my parents' wishes, didn't follow the church guidelines that I'm a part of. I was a bad example to my younger siblings and other people in the youth group.

Some of the stuff I watched, some of the music I listened to, some of the anger habits that I allowed myself to form, my language. And maybe it's also easy to think, "What's wrong with some of those things?"

Just like driving, if it's okay to speed a little bit, why is it wrong to speed a lot?

High speeds, you're a lot bigger threat and a danger to other people that are on the road. I'm fortunate that I didn't hit or injure someone else. I could have gone across the median, hit another person, sent another family member into eternity, sent someone there that wasn't prepared to die, killed someone's father or mother.

And you would think that after a life-changing event like what I had, you would think I would just kind of snap into shape and that I would be over all my stuff, that I would just pretty much do what's right. I would just do everything I should. I wouldn't have any of my struggles anymore. But I didn't.

I had some real purity problems, struggles before my accident. Like I mentioned, thoughts and language and listening to things I shouldn't. And for a while, it seemed like I was really close to God and I had victory in a lot of these things. But the devil's no respecter of persons. He hates all of us, and he's on a relentless campaign to take every soul down that he can. And especially if he can get us when we're young, if he can get us to form wrong habits, the older we get, the deeper they get, and the harder they are to break.

I think sometimes God must have been so frustrated and so disappointed, and I imagine he probably just could have just shaken me sometime and said, "Son, what are you thinking? What are you doing? I gave you a second chance. I saved your life." Literally pulled me back from the edge of eternity. I wasn't ready to die.

And in the last less than a minute, God pulled me back and gave me another chance. Another thing I liked about kind of working out there by myself was that I had a lot more opportunity to talk to God. First Thessalonians 5:17 is a pretty simple verse. Pray without ceasing.

I think part of prayer, part of that praying without ceasing, is just having a daily communication with God, just kind of an open dialogue with God. And you're never going to be a bother to God. God always has time to listen.

And I kind of got in the habit of just talking to God, telling him everything, just kind of conversing with him. And it seemed kind of silly sometimes because I'd explain the situation I was in, whether it was things that were bothering me or things that were. I would just kind of talk to God and tell him everything.

I would encourage y'all to get in the habit of that, practice doing that too. When you're really frustrated or discouraged or you need someone to blow off to, you can go on a walk or a drive and just talk to God out loud, just like you would to your parents or a grandpa or a best friend. There's something about voicing our troubles and putting them into words that can help me sort through them. When things are really bothering me and my mind would just kind of get in a turmoil and things just all kind of ball together, and it'd be things about my injury, my future, just everything would get mixed together. And I found if I start talking out loud to God, putting them into words, just hearing myself speak them was able to sort through them a little bit better.

Sometimes things that seem so serious in our minds, when we say them out loud, put them into words, when we actually hear what we're thinking, they can maybe sound a little bit silly.

One of the great things about God is that he listens all the way to the end, and he won't butt in and defend the other side, and he keeps a secret. Don't have to worry about him twisting what you say and spreading it around to others.

Just making God your best friend and trying to thank him for the bad things that happen in your life too. I was listening to some messages or a series one time at work, and this guy was talking about thanking God for the hard things that come into our life.

And he said, "Just try thanking God for the things in your life that you don't like." And I thought, "Man, I can't do that. God knows my heart. I can't lie to God." And I told God, I said, "I really appreciate salvation. I appreciate you saving my soul. I know you gave me a second chance and everything."

And I'm thankful for my family and my church and the opportunities and the support that I have, but I'm just not thankful for the wheelchair right now. I hate being in a wheelchair. I hate being different.

And it seemed like God started kind of working on me after that for a while. I just keep thinking about that, being thankful for the opportunities that I had versus just being thankful for the accident, for the injury itself.

It seemed like God has this kind way of just sort of bringing us around the bend, getting us accustomed to new ideas and thought processes. And it seemed like he started showing me the trend that my life was on and maybe the direction that I was headed before I got paralyzed.

And if I hadn't gotten paralyzed, I probably would have just stayed in this state of a little bit of victory, a little bit of defeat, up and down. And if I had gotten married that way, if I'd started a family, it could have been a disaster of a husband and a father and a family.

Being part of a church family is a real privilege. I remember making really painful, embarrassing confessions, and I thought, "I just can't face these preachers again." I mentioned the same things again. I think that was one of the tools that Satan really got me with for a while after my injury. And I think he does it to everybody, but one of the ways he would kind of get me was I thought, "I'm enough of a bother to other people. They do enough other things to help me.

Can't I at least get my mind, my emotions, my inner life? Can't I at least do that on my own? Is there not one thing that I can do on my own? Do I have to bother someone else with my struggles?"

Don't let Satan prevent you from getting help. Don't make some of the same mistakes I did. Your church leaders and your church people, they love you, and they care about your soul. It may not always feel like love, the advice they give, or maybe sometimes a correction or something, but they care about your eternal destiny and whether you'll have happiness or torment.

I often drive through the same area where my accident occurred. It's just about a mile from the gravel road that her folks live on. I drive through it every time I go for doctor visits and checkups. It's always kind of sobering, kind of gives me just a different feeling when I drive through there. And I often think there could be a cross in the ditch.

And where would I be if I'd died there at the scene of the accident? I don't think I would have went to heaven, even if I wouldn't have had any other personal struggles. Driving at that speed, I can hardly imagine that I could have heard God say, "Well done."

And I was 19 when I got hurt. It's been 19 years now. And I think 19 years in hell is not even getting started compared to eternity. And the difficulties and the pain and heartache that I think I've gone through and endured since then are nothing compared to eternity away from God and in torment, being in hell versus being in a wheelchair.

Anyone in hell would long to be in a wheelchair, or any hardship that we can imagine on earth is paradise in comparison.

And just staying close to God is probably about the only way or the easiest way that I was able to come to grips and be okay, learn to be okay with a wheelchair. I love the song, "Mercy's Free."

There's a couple of phrases in there that describe really well what God did for me at my accident. It says, "Did Christ, when I was sin-pursuing, pity me, pity me? Did he snatch my soul from ruin? Can it be? Can it be?"

Also like the chorus of the one version of "Reach Out to Jesus," it says, "Reach out to Jesus with love he's reaching out to you. He's so sympathetic, understanding, kind, and true. His touch will heal you. His love will really make you whole. Oh, why not reach out to Jesus, and he will satisfy your soul?"

He may not heal all our ailments and our sicknesses, but he can heal the holes in our hearts and the feelings of sadness and discouragement. There's victory in staying close to God. And probably some of the best ways for me was listening to good music, listening to upbuilding music. There was a time in my teens where gospel music, a cappella music, was just kind of boring and mundane. And if that's all I had to listen to, I just assumed I'd listen to anything.

And I kind of got in the habit of just listening to the Bible. And it's tremendously powerful. Not just reading the Bible, that's important, but also listening to it while you're working.

It has the power to keep you awake and to help you go to sleep at night if you need to. And listening to the words of Jesus, listening to the Bible stories, even in our subconscious mind, they can minister to our needs. And God can also help you if you ask him. If you feel like you're losing the hunger for the Bible and for Christian music, ask God to help you with that. And I remember just asking God, "Just help me enjoy it again. I don't know where I lost it." But I believe he did. And now some of the music that I thought was so boring in my teens, I really enjoy it now.

I just refuse to let go of God. Just call on God. It may not always feel like he's there, but he is. The devil wants us to go on feelings instead of facts. And just go on the facts. Listen to the Bible. Jesus is there. Just refuse to let go. And it seemed like God I know God never gave up on me, but there was a few times when God just did miracles, and it made me feel so small and unworthy.

None of y'all ride with me in a vehicle. I'll tell you a few stories. They say you won't be afraid to ride with me. But after I got my truck and I drove around a fair amount by myself, and the first truck I had was used when I got it.

I still have it. I drive it for work. It's an '02 Chevy 2500. And we didn't know it at the time, but it had a faulty ECM, and it would idle really low. And sometimes if you it could stall if I wasn't careful. And we were logging back on this conservation land. It was really steep back in there. And coming in, we had this really steep hill to go down, conservation road. Coming out in the evenings, it was really steep. It was bad enough that part of the time, all I could see over the hood was sky. The tree line would completely disappear. It was just the hood and the sky, and then I would pop out on top.

And I would always have to hit four-wheel drive. When I would come out of there, it would just spin out. And I had an electronic gas and brake. My hand would set in a bracket similar to what we made in the loader. And forward was gas, back was brake, and there was no in between. So I was either going or I was braking.

And I left work before my brothers. I was heading home by myself, and they were still back there doing equipment maintenance. And I realized it when I was partway up the hill that I had forgotten to put it in four-wheel drive, and I knew I was going to spin out. And sure enough, I got halfway up the hill, and it spun out. And so I stopped on the hill, and I have to take my hand off the throttle to hit the four-wheel drive button. And I knew it was going to start rolling back. I think I tried to put it in park. Anyway, however, I had to start off again, but I had to go from brake to forwards.

And I was afraid it was going to stall, and sure enough, it did. And I started rolling backwards. And this hill wasn't real long. It was an eighth of a mile, but it had a curve right in the middle and a pretty steep bank down into the woods. And the job we were doing was we were cleaning up blown-down timber. There were huge oak trees that were blown over, and these root wads were like they were six, eight feet tall sticking out of the ground. They'd leave pretty good holes.

And so I started rolling backwards. And the other thing on that truck, the guys that modified it didn't do a very good job. I was supposed to have backup steering where if it stalled, I could hit a button, and I would have backup power steering.

That was always semi-functional, and of course, it wasn't working this time. And so I was there. The steering wheel was locked. I wasn't strong enough to move it. I mean, it wasn't locked, but I couldn't turn it when it wasn't running. I was rolling straight back, and I was looking in my rearview mirror, and there was this huge root wad down at the bottom of the hill that I was heading straight for. And sure enough, I couldn't make the curve. I rolled down over this bank, and I was going it wasn't going real fast, but I was probably going at least 20 mile an hour in reverse. And I just thought, "Man, this is going to smash the back of my truck in, and I can't really afford an insurance claim."

And I watched that thing just come right up to my tailgate, and the truck just came to a stop. There was no jerk. There was no bang. There was nothing. It just stopped. And I just felt like there was someone around me. I just had to look all around to see if anyone was around. And I started my truck and went back home.

I did put it in four-wheel drive that time. And none of us boys were married then. We're all single. We're at home. And I told them what happened that night at suppertime. And next morning, one of the guys was riding with me and came down the hill and around the curve, and we could see plainly my tracks through the grass. And it came down, and the spacing from the wheel tracks in the grass to the tree stump wad there, my back bumper must have been just within inches of it.

There was another time. I was going over to another community. Farmington, Missouri, was another church over there. And the only route is just really windy, hilly, sharp curves, two-lane roads. And I think it was one of the first times I was going over there. And it was already dark.

My siblings were with me. And I popped over this hill, and I wasn't speeding this time, but traffic was stopped right in the road, just over the brow of the hill. There was just like three cars that were stopped waiting for someone to turn.

And I always had to drive a little bit more cautious just because my reaction time may not be quite as quick with hand controls. And there was just not really time for me to stop. And I thought, "Oh, man, I'm going to rear-end these people." And I couldn't go in the other lane because there was a string of oncoming traffic. And while I was contemplating what to do and trying to slow down, all of a sudden, the road just appeared clear in front of me. I just saw lights flashing past my window, and I looked in my mirror, and that same string of traffic was behind me.

I still can't really explain it. I asked my siblings. I said, "Man, what was that?" Everyone was just quiet for a while because there was no explanation. And at first, I thought, "Man, I must have just been seeing something." But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that somehow God put me in front of those vehicles. And this was during the time that I wasn't the most victorious person. And it made me feel so small and unworthy. And it seemed like God was there just telling me, "I'm not giving up on you.

I saved your life once. I did all those miracles there. I can just keep on doing them. And God won't give up on you either.

Don't give up on God." There was one more that happened more recently. It was while Carrie and I were dating.

I was on my way to a doctor visit. I was by myself again. And like I mentioned, I have a three-pin bracket that my hand sets in. There's one pin that my hand slides over and one on either side of my wrist. And that thing just rotates. It's like kind of a ball on a steering wheel. I set my hand in, and I can just turn the wheel.

And we live on a two-lane road similar to some of the ones out here, and it tees into a four-lane highway about 12 miles from our house.

And when I came up to the intersection to turn onto the four-lane, I came to a stop there waiting for traffic. And I took my hand off the wheel for something, and that pin just came off, and my hand just fell off on the floor.

And here, the swivel part inside, it was a metal machined pin, and it had been broken off. I don't know how long it had broken or where it was broken.

But there was a parking lot across the road. So I waited till traffic was clear, and I just kind of went straight across and parked. And the guys were working in the shop that day, so I called them, and they brought a bracket down from my other truck, and I put it on, and I was able to go to my doctor's appointment. But I thought, if that would have happened a minute earlier or a minute later, half a minute, 15 seconds even maybe on that curvy two-lane road or even after I pulled out into four-lane traffic, very likely I would have had an accident. I thought, again, it's just another token of God's goodness.

Not everyone is so fortunate as me. There's another guy in our town. He's just about my age, a little bit older than me. His injury happened a few years after mine. He was working for the electric company. He was up in a bucket truck, and he did everything correctly. They had disconnected the lines, the high-tension lines, but there was some stray voltage in the lines. And when they went to make connection again, he got electrocuted, and it blew him out of the bucket truck, and he broke his neck at C5, same as mine.

And he's had just a series of things happen to him after his accident. His wife left him. They had just a little toddler.

She left him. He was left with the girl.

He started a cabinet shop. Some of the other local guys had helped him. His cabinet shop burned, and he lost most of his equipment in there. He had a truck set up just about like mine.

And we have these levers on our keys. I'll show you here towards the end that stick down off the key so we can start to twist the key.

And for some reason, his was longer than what it was necessary. And he went to get pizza one night for supper, and he had the pizza box sitting on his lap while he was driving. And he went to slow down for a curve, and that pizza box slid forward and shut his truck off. He lost power steering. He went down over a bank and totaled his truck.

Later on, he got another one and had another accident. I don't know what the issue was. Totaled that one too.

It seemed like I escaped so many close calls, and I had all kinds of family support. I have a better marriage than I deserve. And he's had all these extreme hardships. He told me he said later that losing his wife and his marriage was a lot harder than getting paralyzed.

And he still has his faith. I mean, he's real active in this church. He does a lot of Bible studies and works with men's accountability and stuff. I thought, "How did I get fortunate?

Would I keep my faith if I had to go through all the extra hardships that he did?" Another thing that was real good for me was going to prison ministry. We have a high-security prison about 40 miles from our area, and I went there for a few years until COVID shut it down. We go there every Thursday night. And just seeing grown men that were locked up for life, some of them were just as changed as you could imagine and as sorry for their crimes as they could be. And they reached out to other men in the prison and led Bible studies. One of them was the administrator for our group. And he was there for life.

It didn't matter how sorry he was. He was there for life. I thought, "If I would have been raised the way they were without the church family, it very easily could have been me in there." If you get the chance to do prison ministry, it's a really good opportunity to go in there and see just the way people live. I often felt really confined in a wheelchair, but I would never feel so liberated and free as I did every Thursday night coming out of that prison.

After all the miracles and good things that God gave me and did for me, he brought Carrie into my life yet too. And aside from God and saving my soul and then my life, she's probably been about the best thing that's happened to me.

Hi, everyone. I'm Carrie Woodcock, and I used to be Carrie Mischler. And I'm originally from Seymour, Missouri, which is about an hour away from Somersville, Missouri, which is where we now live. And I'm at Josh when he came to speak at a Bible school I was attending.

Well, I didn't actually meet him there and never talked to him. I was too scared too. He had a lot of other people around him after the service and just seemed like this really popular person. And so it wasn't until later that I actually got to talk to him. I was teaching school at the time in Seymour, and I had gotten a break to go to Bible school with my two sisters.

And I really didn't want to go that year, but somehow they convinced me to go with them. And I didn't really know Josh at all besides I knew that he had been in a bad car accident, and he was in a wheelchair.

And I remember discussing him with some of my friends before he came to give his talk. But what I don't remember is what one of my friends reminded me later after we started dating. She says that I mentioned to her that I thought he was kind of cute. So anyway, the first time I actually talked to Josh was when his dad had broken his hip, and he was in the hospital. And my parents knew his parents.

So my family went in to visit his dad because the hospital he was in wasn't far away from where we lived. And Josh happened to be in there too when we got there, and so we got to finally meet.

And when we were at the hospital, my mom invited him. She had heard his talk, and she invited him over for supper if he was ever going through our town. And he said he actually did when he went into Springfield for wound care. And he was driving in about every other week back then. So my mom kept inviting him for supper, and my family and I became well acquainted with him. And we started to really like him, and he just became a good family friend. His story was so good that I invited him to come talk to my students, and they loved it. And then I invited his youth group over for volleyball. And then my younger siblings started going with him to the doctor.

And I liked him, but I thought, "He's just a good friend." And then one day, my friend Melissa asked me, "What are you going to tell him when he asks you out on a date?" And I was floored. "He's not going to," I sputtered. But I thought and prayed about it. What was I going to say? Did he have the qualities I was looking for in a husband? Is it so important that he can walk? Is he godly? How will he treat me? One thing I did know was that I would rather have someone who would treat me well and not be able to walk than someone who could walk perfectly and might treat me like trash.

And anyway, about a month later, Josh asked to court me. He had talked to my parents before and then made sure it was also okay with my siblings. And we started dating and had so much fun. It wasn't without its bumps and worries, though.

And also, I wasn't used to looking ahead of time to see if the places we were going to go on our dates were wheelchair accessible or paved or had ramps. And Josh has an interesting story to tell about a police that helped us one time.

So one Saturday morning, we were going on a date, and we left pretty early in the morning. And we came up to this one intersection, and the low oil light came on on my truck. And right across the road, there was a state trooper sitting there. So I just pulled off, pulled across and around on his passenger side, rolled down my window, and he kind of looked at me and said, "Hey, could you check my oil?

My low oil light just came on, and I'm in a wheelchair in here." And I don't think he believed me at first because you can't tell my truck is modified at all. When the doors are closed from the outside, you have to really look to tell that there's any modifications. And he kind of looked back and he started giving me these things like, "Oh, it's liability. We can't even check tires or anything." And I said, "Okay." Well, I said, "Well, can you at least show my girlfriend where the dipstick was?" And he kind of perks up. And so she gets up and walks around. He saw her. And oh, he gets out. And I had to run my doors out so they could pop the hood.

And then he could see that I was in a wheelchair. And so she comes up there, and he's like, "Oh, oh, you're going to get your clothes dirty." So he reaches in there and checks it three times, and it was a court low. And I said, "Well, I got more oil in the back." And the jug was kind of dirty from being around in my truck. It's dusty under the tonic cover. And he said, "Oh, I know the guy that owns a service shop up the road. I'll just call him up, and I'll get him to open up early."

And all right, great. So he gets out of his cell phone and calls the guy up, and it's still 7:30 in the morning. So I said, "Yeah, he'll open up." So he gets in his car and escorts us back up the road to get a clean court of oil. And he adds it for me and everything, gets us set back on the road. And I thought, "Man, I'm taking her everywhere."

I taught another year of school, and then we got married on August 15th, 2020, in the middle of COVID. Missouri wasn't too strict on COVID regulations, so we were privileged to have 600 people at our wedding. For our honeymoon, we went to Nevada. It was 1,000 miles away. It was kind of scary as we had never gone that far by ourselves before. But I know God worked everything out perfectly because all went well. And we were able to go on an antelope hunt, and Josh shot a big antelope.

Amazingly, we didn't have to have any outside help. The first year we were married, the second year we were married definitely had a lot more challenges. We both got COVID for about a week, and I was actually sicker than him. I was worried because his diaphragm doesn't have full function.

So I wasn't sure if he'd be able to breathe okay, but God was so good in only giving him a light case. Then in January of 2022, I had knee surgery. Three years before that, I had injured my knee playing soccer with my students, and it just kept getting worse and worse. My kneecap kept popping out again and again, and I'd have to push it back in. And I think I tore my ACL from all that happening. And then December of 2021, I tore both of the meniscus in my knee. So Josh and I were both in wheelchairs for a while.

I could use crutches too, but it was just kind of hard to do some of my household stuff with crutches. So anyway, surgery was able to fix all that, but the recovery was more major than we had expected, and I was down for a while. So for about a month, his brothers came to help him, and my mom and sisters came to help me. And I guess it was good for my pride to have people help us.

Like I said, the recovery from surgery was major with nine months of painful therapy. And right after surgery, my quad muscle quit working, so we had to shock it to activate it. And then we focused on getting my range of motion back and strengthening it. And now it's pretty much back to normal with only kneeling being a little painful.

And then in June of 2022, Josh had tailbone surgery. He had infected bone that they were able to remove, but it left a hole big enough to set a pop can in. They sent us home with a PICC line and wound VAC. And thankfully, Josh had this standing chair.

This isn't his regular wheelchair, but we're so glad for it. He had a setback just a couple of months ago when bone chips started working their way up to the surface. And we're not sure why, but thankfully, they stopped.

He's also had issues with sores and blisters on his feet from standing too long, so he has to be careful not to stand too long. I would say he is probably about 80% healed. So hopefully, in another two or three months, he can go back to work in the woods and drive his truck. But in all these hard things, God has been there, and he's been so good.

I brought a few items along, just kind of daily activity things that I'll show you how I kind of manipulate them. And then Carrie's going to read a poem at the end, and then we'll open it up for questions.

Let's see. First,

this here is called a tenodesis splint.

And it operates off of my wrist function, holds my thumb and forefinger stationary.

Let's see.

Takes a little bit to put it on.

It's easier to put it on when I don't have stuff here that I could knock on the floor. But anyway, so if I let my wrist down, my thumb and forefinger open up. When I raise it, they pinch together. And it works pretty well for manipulating small objects or self-care, things like that. I used to have to wear it a lot, but I've learned to work without it a little bit better than I could to start with. Let's see.

Coffee mug. If I just put my thumb through the loop, kind of let the mug rest against my palm, I can hold a regular coffee mug and use it pretty well. I always have to hold it at a little bit of an angle when I pick it up. So I usually only fill it three-fourths of the way full.

I have to be careful about handling hot coffee because I only have feeling on the inside of my hand, so burn it if I'm not careful.

Water glass. Wrist action. Again, kind of have to hold it at a little bit of an angle.

And once again, it's easier if it's not quite all the way full.

I like the glasses that aren't too tall and heavy. Or if they're tapered a little bit at the top, that makes it even easier.

Silverware.

I figured out if I just put my silverware between my index finger and my second finger and hold it pretty well that way, can't take too big of bites or make it too heavy. Sometimes I have to kind of chase my food around a little bit, but it works okay.

I think I may have mentioned that I do pretty much all of the bookwork for our business there for the logging and the sawmill side. And I figured out I can do the same thing with a pen. If I put it between my index finger and my second finger, I use those pens with grippy rubber around the bottom.

And Pentel makes a certain brand or model that has an extra grippy rubber. So I order them by the box on eBay. And then I can just pec type. I can't use a regular mouse very well, but a laptop works good. The scroll pad, I can use it pretty well for QuickBooks and such.

These are the keys for my truck. And like I mentioned, they kind of made the key made it kind of L-shaped, like there's a little bit of a lever hanging down. And if I just drape the remotes across the back of my hand, then the key is pointing in toward the ignition. I can just shove it into the ignition and then just use my knuckle to pull back on the key to start it.

Cell phone.

I usually just leave my phone sitting on the armrest of my chair here. I can just use my thumb to type. I use an iPhone, so I use Siri quite a bit for texting or voice texting or Bluetooth. Let's see.

Oh, a few of the other things that I kind of learned, I always like to give myself my own haircuts before I got hurt. Afterward, I was kind of back to getting haircuts from mom again.

But I figured out if I can use a regular hair clipper, if I hold it way down by the guard and if I kind of run my hair through the clipper instead of the clipper through my hair, it works better in my other chair where I can just kind of I can lean way over and hang my head over as far as I can. It's kind of like an ostrich putting its head in the sand. But anyway, then I can use the hair clipper that way.

I use a regular razor.

I can hold it with two hands to shave my face. But for the back of my neck, if I just put it between my fingers like a pen or a spoon, I can shave the back of my neck okay.

I kind of discovered that when I pull my wrist up, my thumb naturally just kind of pushes my index finger over against the second one. So I can hold it pretty good that way.

I think there's a picture of me hunting on there shooting a gun.

I don't think I mentioned anything about it last night, but after I got hurt, one of my friends in town that has a welding shop, he made a bracket that would just slide over the window of my truck. If I just roll it up about an inch or two, this bracket will clip over the window and will hold a rifle. And it's pretty much balanced on the window. It swivels whichever way.

And then I can just hunt from my truck. Originally, he had this plate on there where I would push on a plate, and it would pull the trigger. But then I got one of those SIP and Puff trigger actuators. It just has this electric actuator that bolts onto the trigger. Then it has a vacuum-operated actuator that fastens just fastened onto the stock, Velcros on. It has a straw there. When I suck on the straw, it pulls the trigger.

So I like to tell children that the downside is I can't tell jokes when I'm hunting anymore. Don't want to start laughing when you have a semi-automatic, so.

I often wondered about that, those guys that have a SIP and Puff wheelchair. It'd be a bad deal if they get the hiccups.

My truck also has not very good pictures on there, but I just have a GMC 1500 now as my main truck or my good truck. It was a regular truck when I bought it. I sent it over to Indiana to a company that modified it. They cut both doors off on the driver's side and cut the floor out. They lowered the floor like eight inches. I think they had to drop the frame a little bit for the lowered floor.

And they welded the doors back together in the middle. And there's a two-stage beam under the back seat with an electric cylinder inside of it. And they fasten those doors to the end of that beam, and those doors just slide straight out away from the truck. And then there's a platform that lets down to the ground. So I'll just back onto the platform right beside the front tire. I'll just back in on the platform that lifts up, and the doors slide in shut.

And all my other factory controls are still there, the foot pedals, steering wheel, and everything. My gas and brake is all manual. I had issues with the electronic gas and brake, so we tore all those out of my truck, and we put a manual one in. It's just a lever with rods going down to the pedals, forward as brake and down as gas. So I don't have to worry about any issues like I had before. And anyone else can drive it. When we first got married, before I got a car for Carrie, she drove one of my trucks around. And my brothers still do. Sometimes I'll have to use my truck to run for parts.

We get a lot of looks in town when the doors slide out and you get out. And sometimes it's a liability. Things take longer in town because everybody wants to see my truck. Carrie says, "Yeah, we have to plan extra time because somebody's going to be asking about it."

Okay. I have a poem here called Pray Without Ceasing that Josh wrote. In darkest hours of deep despair, and when you're burdened down with care, when family's gone and friends are far, when God seems out beyond a star, when death has taken loved ones dear, when all you seem to feel is fear, when all your dreams have crashed and burned and people seem so unconcerned, Jesus says, "Don't cease to pray. I've been right with you all the way. I love you far more than you know, and I've gone through the things you go. I died for you upon that cross. My friends ran off. I felt such loss. It brings me pain when you are sad.

Please let me be your second dad. If young or old, at work or play, I always hear the things you say. Whenever something steals your peace, please tell me and never cease. Keep calling out. Keep holding on. Just talk to me as you walk on."