I Get Knocked Down, But God Gets Me Up Again

By Sydney Douglas Smith

In this book, I will share with you some inspirational stories of my own as well as other people’s experiences of resilience and what I call "bouncebackability", some poems, anecdotes, quotes and practical lessons to apply to your life to help you learn to brush yourself off and get back up again.

I am not proud of everything I have done, but I have done some things of which I can be proud. I ask those whom I have knocked down in life to please forgive me for the bad things I did to you. I hold no grudges, nor harbor any animosity toward people who have hurt me or "knocked me down", in fact I pray to God that he will give me the ability to forgive and love you.

This is my story and I am telling the facts as I remember them. They are real. Sometimes when I remember them I cry, sometimes I can laugh, sometimes I recall the lessons, but the thing that dwells the most is the love that I have felt.

Thank you to my wife Ruby who has stuck with me through a great deal of hurt, especially before I became a Christian and learned to love her.
I love all of my children and grand-children and I love all Ruby's children and grand-children who I consider to be my own. Though at times some of us have not been as close as I would have wanted and this certainly not by my design.

God bless and keep you all and give you the resilience you need to get up when you are down.
Sydney Douglas Smith.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sydney Douglas Smith
• Release date: May 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370069101

Sydney Douglas Smith

I was born into a "working class" family and spent my childhood learning to "be happy with what you have" My father was the hard working head of a very poor but very loving family.I was bullied by my peers and by the education system and I came to believe the many negative things that were told me such as; "You are a stupid boy", "You can never learn", "You will never be anything in your life".In addition I was brought up in an age where Class and religious distinctions and prejudices decided what sort of a person you were destined to become and more or less how you were to live your life. Any signs of ambition were quickly stifled by a lifestyle and social system driven by the upper class.An inherited work ethic and the ability to care deeply for others (especially the under-dog) are among the life gifts that carried me through-out my early years even though I didn't have a relationship with God then. I found God later in life (about 45), and this led me to college where I learned that I wasn't stupid after all, and I could learn new skills, using my gifts and be valuable to God and other people. I became a Counsellor with Lifeline, and attained many qualifications I thought I could never get.Yes I have been knocked down in life, quite a few times. Sometimes because of wrong decisions I have made, sometimes when others have hurt me and sometimes just because of life, but through it all there has been a great God who even in the depths of my hurt, fear and sorrow has just reached down, taken my hand and gently lifted me!My theme song is a re-written version of the tub-thumping song “ I get knocked down, he lifts me up again”It helps also that I have had a good wife who has stuck by me in the hard times and helped me celebrate the good times, thank you Ruby for being there to lift and encourage me and also keeping me grounded when I get above myself.I currently have a small Life Coaching practice where I teach and mentor “Bright Endings” in a one-on-one environment or group workshops where people can and do move past the mistakes and disappointments of the past and even learning to appreciate some of the lessons learned to help create for themselves a “Bright Ending”After a lifetime of many failures and some great success stories I have learned to lean on God in the tough times and thank Him for everything.We are not able to go back and change the beginnings, undo the mistakes or redo the regrets in our story! BUT we can start now and write a brand new ending.I am living in the peace and calm that comes as we are able to find what I call the "sweet spot' in our life that is the purpose for us which I am sure we are pre-destined to be before we were born.

Book preview

FOREWORD

"Tubthumping, informally known by its prominent lyric I Get Knocked Down", is a song released by the British anarcho-punk band Chumbawamba on 11 August 1997. It was their most successful single, peaking at number two on the UK Singles Chart. It topped the charts in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Italy, and New Zealand and peaked at number six in the United States. It was also used as a theme song for Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves.

The term tubthumper is commonly used for someone, often a politician, seeming to jump on the bandwagon with a populist idea. The liner notes on the album Tubthumper, from which Tubthumping was the first single, put the song in a radical context, quoting a UK anti-road protester, Paris 1968 graffiti, details about the famous McLibel case and the short story The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.

Tubthumping was placed at number 12 in Rolling Stone's list of the 20 Most Annoying Songs Most recently, Matthew Wilkening of AOL Radio ranked the song at number 35 on the list of the 100 Worst Songs Ever, exclaiming as if in command, Please, let's all keep knocking [Chumbawamba] down. I don't care what they say, eventually they'll stay down for good.

The band has performed the song with alternative lyrics on numerous occasions. When performing on the Late Show with David Letterman, a chant of Free Mumia Abu-Jamal accompanied only by a drumbeat preceded the final chorus. At the 1998 BRIT Awards, the band performed the song with the added line New Labour sold out the dockers, just like they'll sell out the rest of us in protest at the New Labour government's refusal to support the Liverpool dockers' strike. A French version of the song was produced for the French-Canadian market.

The song was played as the Flight Day 4 wake up call during the final Space Shuttle STS-135 mission and flight of Atlantis in July 2011 for astronaut Sandy Magnus.

The band received an offer of $1.5 million from Nike to use the song in a World Cup Advertisement According to the band it took about thirty seconds to say no. They did, however, license the song to American video game company Electronic Arts for use as the opening theme of the game World Cup '98, and in television advertisements for the National Accident Helpline, a profit-making firm specialising in personal injury lawyers.

This Tubthumping song I get knocked down, but I get up again or just a couple of the lines of it really seems to be my theme song in life.

The one line I get up again encourages me so much, it reminds me that in spite of everything that life throws at me, no matter who in life hurts me, even when circumstances are against me, no matter how many times I get knocked down I am not dead (yet) so I get up again. Spiritually I am aware that God is ultimately the one responsible for getting me back up again and so the song for me says I get Knocked down, He gets me up again, He's never gonna leave me down.

Not always ready to defeat whatever knocked me down, but I do get up!

I haven’t always learned the lesson that I should have, but I got up!

I may be going to be knocked down again, but I will get up!

In other words, You are never going to keep me down.

Life isn't meant to be easy, it's meant to be LIVED. Sometimes good, other times rough. But with every up and down, you learn lessons that make you STRONGER. (Unknown)

The other way I have learned to look at this fact, is that I know that at least some of the times that I have been knocked down, I didn’t have what was required to just get back up again and face life.

Yet I got up again!

In this book, I will share with you some inspirational stories of my own as well as other people’s experiences of resilience and what I call bouncebackability, some poems, anecdotes, quotes and practical lessons to apply to your life to help you learn to brush yourself off and get back up again.

I am not proud of everything I have done, but I have done some things of which I can be proud. I ask those whom I have knocked down in life to please forgive me for the bad things I did to you.

I hold no grudges, nor harbor any animosity toward people who have hurt me or knocked me down, in fact I pray to God that he will give me the ability to forgive and love you.

This is my story and I am telling the facts as I remember them. They are real. Sometimes when I remember them I cry, sometimes I can laugh, sometimes I recall the lessons, but the thing that dwells the most is the love that I have felt.

Thank you to my wife Ruby who has stuck with me through a great deal of hurt, especially before I became a Christian and learned to love her.

I love all of my children and grand-children and I love all Ruby's children and grand-children who I consider to be my own. Though at times some of us have not been as close as I would have wanted and this certainly not by my design.

God bless and keep you all and give you the resilience you need to get up when you are down.

Sydney Douglas Smith.

Have you ever got to the other side of a really hard time in your life, a time when you didn’t know what to do and how you would get through it all and then all of a sudden it is over and you think to yourself I don’t know how I got through that, but I did?

I have and that is probably why the following is one of my favorite poems.

TEXT: 2 Corinthians 4:8, 9

"We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed."

As we come to this message it is the last five words of verse 9 that I want us to think about: cast down, but not destroyed. We may be knocked down but we are never knocked out. The Living Bible has it: We get knocked down, but we get up again and keep going. Now those words express the exact thought and meaning of what the Apostle Paul is trying to get across to us. Paul was knocked to the ground many times, but he was never permanently grounded. Through all the trials, struggles and failures God always, through Christ, gave him the strength to get up and get back in the race.  

It is interesting to note the contrast between Paul's OUTWARD CIRCUMSTANCES and INWARD COMFORT. Outwardly troubled on every side, inwardly not distressed. Outwardly perplexed, but inwardly not in despair. Outwardly persecuted, but inwardly not forsaken. Outwardly cast down, but inwardly not destroyed. As with Paul so with us. When faced with defeat, we too can have the inner strength through Christ to turn failure into victory.  

To all of you who have experienced an agonizing defeat, because of whatever reason, listen to these words: You may be at the end of your ROPE, but you are not at the end of your HOPE. You may be down in the deep ditches of defeat and despair, but you need not stay there. Through Christ you can get up again and go on. As someone has put it: Man's extremity is God's opportunity. When we are at our worst, God is at His best. When we are down, God is up. When we can't, God can. When we are at rock bottom, God begins to work. It's true! Look at the record.  

Adam was down, but God lifted him. Jacob was down, but God lifted him. Joseph was down, but God lifted him. Moses was down, but God lifted him. David was down, but God lifted him. Samson was down, but God lifted him. Peter was down, but God lifted him. The whole history of mankind testifies to the fact that God is the great LIFTER. He is the great FIXER. He fixes broken hearts, broken hopes, broken homes and broken health. There is not a problem that Christ cannot fix. He brings beauty out of ugly situations.

Lisa Curry said, "In life, we all get knocked down. The winner gets up, the loser stays down.

While you keep getting up, you’re never defeated."

Butterflies are Free by Meredith Murray

It is hard for me to believe it has been five years since my near-fatal car accident. On June 20, 1995, my life was changed forever.

I think of my experience as a metamorphosis, like that of a caterpillar into a butterfly. My cocoon was my coma; my recovery was my metamorphosis. My transformation took five stages: the Egg, the Caterpillar, the Cocoon, Emerging from the Chrysalis, and the Butterfly.

Like the butterfly, I am unique. I look different. I cannot do many things I was able to do before my transformation. Yet, I am still the same person. The same name. The same body. And parallel to a butterfly's entity, I have undergone a complete change.

The Egg

I am not proud of my choices and my life before June 20, 1995. I do not have reasons or excuses for my self-destructive behavior. From ages 13 to 25, I did most everything a parent would not want their child to do. If you can imagine it, I did it. The remarkable thing is, somehow, I survived the drugs, the abuse, and the suicide attempts. My scars are emotional and psychological, as well as tangible. I was submerged in an abyss I had created for myself. My self-esteem was so low at this time, I believed I was ugly and worthless. I rationalized that I would be better off dead.

The Caterpillar

The night of my accident, I was driving on a two-lane, desert road late at night. There were no street lights. All that was visible was the moon shadows across the desert, as far as the eye could see.

As the road curved, I saw only the headlights of the 16-wheeler coming toward me, in my lane. I quickly veered to the right, but my wheels went off the road and onto the soft-shoulder. My brand-new Ford Escort went into a skid. My car flipped, end over end, four times and threw me 100 feet into the sagebrush and sand.

I remember nothing. I can only describe what happened because I read the police report. I cannot remember the paramedics trying to resuscitate me as I lay helpless and limp like a caterpillar on the ground. I have no recollection of the helicopter that airlifted me, with no vital signs, to the hospital.

Where did I go? Was I dead? What did I see when I flat lined? These are all questions that remain unanswered in my head. Will I ever know the truth? Does a caterpillar remember what it was like to be larvae after it transforms into a butterfly?

The Cocoon

My family often calls to mind the extraordinary feelings of joy they felt when I finally emerged from my week-long comatose slumber. I imagine it was like witnessing a caterpillar coming out of its cocoon, changing from one life form into another. I was transforming into a new form of myself.

When the doctor's removed my ventilator, I struggled and gasped for air with every breath. I wonder if a newborn baby feels that way what it takes its first breath of life? I had no short term memory. I saw an object in the corner of the room. It looked like a big box, but there were little people laughing and walking around inside of it. A lot of noise was coming from this strange machine. My visitors were watching it. What was it called? They told me what the name was. It was like hearing the word television for the first time.

It did not feel like I was really me. I touched my head and part of my hair had been shaved so the doctors could drill a hole into my skull. They implanted a gauge that measured the pressure in my brain. It stayed there for a week. I could hear myself talking, but I did not know where the words were coming from. It was such a strange experience.

Nothing happened when I tried to move my left arm and leg. They were there, but they did not respond. I do remember the pain. The excruciating pain. I could not sleep at night. When I moved the pain was unbearable. It even hurt when I blinked my eyes.

My body was not working. I am told I could not hold on to anything. When they put something in my hand, it would just drop open. It was not receiving the messages my brain was sending. Or maybe my brain was not sending any messages.

My brain was not retaining information either. People would tell me things and I would forget what they said, or even if they said anything. I did not know where I was, who called, or who visited. I was very distressed. All day long I cried.

Nevertheless, I do have one memory of this time. July 1, 1995 at 3:15 AM, I fell out of my hospital bed. The nurses forgot to put the guard rails up. I woke up, and not remembering where I was or