Stay the Course...: Win Your Race

By Brian Webster

Brian R. Webster is a physician assistant, who has pursued God most of his adult life. He lost his two best friends in high school, due to an amusement park ride accident. He came close to dying, as well. He's practiced medicine in various specialties, Substance Abuse, and in maximum security prisons. His first wife, a severe diabetic, went blind on their honeymoon. Later, she died from two separate breast cancers after almost twenty years of marriage. Amidst the struggles and adversities in Brian's life, he has continued trusting and pursuing God. As Paul said in the analogy of his life, "I have fought the good fight, and have finished my race." Christians, who are followers of Christ, have their own race to run. It is a marathon, not a sprint. The race only ends at death. Then, the trophy is presented to the victor, by God. The crowd observing the race is comprised of everyone encountered during their lifetime. Just like the Iron-Man races, the supporters are there to cheer at the finish line. This book is designed to encourage runners to fight discouragement and struggles during various life storms; to continue their trust in God; to complete their race. - This book is ideal for encouraging personal growth in Bible studies. - This book can aid in strengthening individuals in their personal relationship with Christ. - This book can help Christ's followers better deal with personal tragedy, PTSD, fear, anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. And, to better understand how Satan uses distractions and diversions in his attempts to remove us from our race for God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098028060

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Stay the Course...

Win Your Race

Brian R Webster

ISBN 978-1-0980-2805-3 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-0980-2806-0 (digital)

Copyright © 2020 by Brian R Webster

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

God's Plan

Satan's Plan

Personal Tragedy

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Spiritual Warfare

Personal Attacks

Substance Abuse

Spiritual Assignments

Bibliography

Iwant to dedicate this book to my wife, Debbie. She has been with me during this endeavor from the onset. She has encouraged me, and gently criticized my writing style, to keep me on course for a more readable book. I could not have sent this book to the publisher without her loving guidance.

Although she is now, sitting at the feet of Jesus, in heaven, I want to thank my first wife, Launa, for the love and courage she demonstrated throughout our marriage. Although blind, her spiritual insight was 20/20. I want to thank my daughter, Heather, her husband, Chris, and our grandchildren for giving me an audience to write for, to encourage them to remain on their own, personal races.

Jaime and Michael became my daughter and son, when Debbie and I blended our families. I pray this book encourage them as they continue to pursue God, and, that by running their own race, will provide all God intends for them, their spouses, and our grandchildren.

My father-in-law, Larry Mays, demonstrated God's grace during his own lifetime, and ultimate battle with multiple myeloma. He showed me the importance of daily time with the Lord, and how it influenced his own race. He was instrumental in leading many to Christ.

My thanks, also goes to Sandra Mays, my mother-in-law, who also helped edit this book, and gave me many personal thoughts for my writing.

I also dedicate this book to my friends who were involved in the tragic Bob-Lo accident, and to all those families impacted by the trauma of that horrific day.

I have seen many people who left their own race for God, and the influences Satan and his demons have played, in leading them from their race. Satan's many distractions and schemes have sent millions of good people to their spiritual deaths. Good people scurrying around in search of their personal holy grail, and away from God is the specialty of our adversary, the devil, his pawns, and his demons.

Satan's pawns are those who unwittingly perform evil, in pursuit of their own financial gain, or sense of power, for fulfilling their personal egotistical goals.

It's for all of the people mentioned above that I dedicate this book.

Preface

My story is a very dynamic one. Looking back on my life, I can now see how God was working behind the scenes, my entire life.

I attended a well-known denominational church in Detroit, Michigan, from the time I was born, in 1947 until 1968. On August 25, 1965, while on summer break from high school, the youth group from my church, decided to go to an amusement park on an island in the Detroit River, called Bob-Lo. It was the premier amusement park for the region. There were two large ferries at the piers in Detroit, that transported hundreds of people at a time, to and from the island.

The trip took about one hour and forty-five minutes each way. There were nine of us, on the trip to Bob-Lo. We were going to celebrate the first person from our youth group to leave for college after Labor Day. We rode all the rides we desired, and on the way to catch the ferry back to Detroit, we stopped at one, final ride. It was a relatively benign ride that went in a large circle, on an undulating track. The maximum height of the track would have been about twelve feet, I would guess. All nine of us squeezed into one of the circular cars, with a central steering-wheel-type handhold. What we were unaware of, was that the large spring that counters centrifugal force, broke on this car a week earlier. They had tied the car back on with a large chain, to keep it in service.

Well…when it hit the peak of an undulation, the chain snapped, and everyone was catapulted out. Some landed on their feet and only had minor sprains. However, six others, like me, were thrown head-first, like rockets through a wooden fence surrounding the ride. As I went through, I experienced two skull fractures, multiple vertebrae fractures, and facial and jaw fractures. My jaw was not wired for about five days because they expected me to die, so why put me through the pain of the process. The doctor replied, It's as if God held my head together. It could have popped like a pumpkin, with fractures on both sides of my skull. This was this first time I could see God working in my life.

My best friend, Tom, was killed instantly. My other best friend, Larry, was in a coma for three years before he finally died. A girl, Linda, who had previously taken ballet and piano lessons, was in a coma for weeks. When she was finally discharged from the hospital, she had severe residual balance issues, which has required her to permanently use a walker to ambulate.

Because the ferry ride would have taken too long to get us the emergency aid we required, we were taken from the island by speedboat to Ontario, Canada. We were then taken to a hospital in Windsor, Ontario. After driving approximately twenty miles through the rain, by ambulance, and other commandeered vehicles, we arrived for medical triage at the hospital. For lack of space, I sat in the front seat of the ambulance, with the driver. When we arrived at the Catholic hospital, Registered Nurses, who were also nuns, were offering pain medication in pre-drawn syringes to those in the group. I declined it initially, but, then began feeling pain, so I requested an injection. This is no longer standard practice at hospitals.

My parents were notified that I was at Hotel Dieu (French, for House of God), in Windsor, Ontario. Their initial response was, what was I doing at a hotel in Windsor? They were then told about the accident, and that I was in a hospital. I was hospitalized for about ten days. Tom's parents learned of his death while watching the evening news.

As a result of the accident, I was unable to graduate from high school with my graduating class, as I had to remain at home for six months to heal. During my convalescing time, I was called by the military draft to go to Vietnam. I was declared 4F, Medically Unfit, and was excluded from war. God was again working behind the scenes. Throughout my life I've been able to see, or reflect back on times, where only God could have directed the circumstances.

As a result of the accident, in 1965, at age eighteen, I coined a phrase: Many who were going to repent at the eleventh hour…died at ten-thirty. As a young person suddenly surrounded by horrific scenes and death, my personal reflections gave me this concept. Death doesn't follow any script. We can't put off getting right with God, until it's a more convenient time, in our busy lives. Many never get that opportunity. Hmmm.

After high school, I went to a junior college, where I met the woman, who later became my wife, Launa. She was diabetic, with some vision issues. What did a nineteen-year-old kid know? We got married when we were twenty. On our honeymoon, she experienced retinal detachment and, became blind. This happened only two weeks after my best friend, Larry's funeral. The hopes and dreams of newlyweds were dramatically changed, however, anger with God never fit into my equation

I was working at the time, but Detroit's freeway system made me very frustrated, because I always stuck in traffic. I was offered a job forty miles away. We decided we didn't want to move that far. A few weeks later, my eldest brother, living in Colorado Springs, Colorado, said he could get me a job in construction. He was the CFO for a large residential construction company. At that time, I got the crazy idea to move to Colorado. Nothing in that decision, was logical.

In 1970, as a result of a Lay Witness Mission; Christians from Kansas shared their testimonies, at the church we were attending in Colorado Springs, Colorado. My wife, Launa, and I attended the meeting out of mere curiosity. We were both saved that Sunday afternoon, only two weeks after moving 1,340 miles, from Detroit to Colorado Springs, Colorado. Hmmm.

We weren't horrible people. We weren't drug dealers. We were good people, trying our best to survive in life. When we were saved, at that Lay Witness Mission, that afternoon, we were convicted that we were among one of Satan's most prolific groups. We were complacent Christians. We were never engaged in our own race for God. We weren't runners. We didn't even know what kind of footwear we required. God led us to a place where we learned; in small Christian groups.

A few years later, my wife became pregnant. I was unemployed at the time. We had both been very ill from severe Mononucleosis, a viral infection. I had the worst sore throat of my life. I took the maximum doses of various over the counter medications. When they wore off, just swallowing, would awaken me from sleep. The pregnancy with our daughter, was unplanned. When the doctors diagnosed her pregnancy, they recommended that we terminate the pregnancy, because of the risks to Launa, from her diabetes. We adamantly declined. We trusted God.

During that time, I had applied to several hospitals for training as a respiratory therapist, a relatively new profession in medicine. As a result of the Bob-Lo accident, going into medicine had always been in the back of my mind. The hospitals all told me they wanted me in their programs but needed to wait for government funding.

This was in September. In October, November, and December, I kept contacting them about the funding. They all finally replied, Sometime, next year. Now, still unemployed, I was getting really concerned.

My neighbor was an Army Cobra helicopter pilot stationed at Fort Carson. He told me the military was the best place for me. He highly recommended the Air Force to me. Immediate, full medical care for my wife, was a top priority for me. I went down to the US Air Force recruiter and signed up, with the guarantee for me to become a corpsman. Becoming a physician assistant was now my intended goal.

The day after I signed up with the Air Force, on January 11th, the three hospitals all called, asking me when I could start. They had finally gotten their funding. Alas, I was already committed to the US Air Force. Somehow, again, I saw the Lord in all this.

Our healthy daughter was born while I was at basic training. My wife had done fine during her pregnancy.

The year I applied for the Air Force Physician Assistant Training Program, fashioned after the Duke University program, I was accepted. There were three hundred applicants for the thirty slots. I again saw God's hand in the midst of my life, when I was accepted.

I became a certified physician assistant in 1982. Unfortunately, by that time, I knew too much about the medical issues my wife was facing. This made what was happening with her, more difficult for me. She developed an estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer and had a single mastectomy, at that time.

On the first dose of chemotherapy, the doctor inadvertently overdosed her. She spent two weeks in reverse isolation to help her immune system recover…to keep her alive. She never tried chemotherapy again. She had lost trust in her doctors. She then went on to radiation therapy.

A few years later, she developed a second, separate, estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer in the other breast. She had a second mastectomy. Everything the doctors had tried, failed. She lost her battle with cancer, just shy of our twentieth anniversary.

I met a wonderful woman at our church in Colorado Springs, Debbie, and we married. At this writing, we've celebrated our thirtieth anniversary.

My daughter, Heather, has been a strong Christian all her life. When she was three years old, we attended a Methodist church, in Colorado Springs, as well as a Bible church there. On Sunday mornings, my three-year-old would ask, "Are we going to ‘church', or to ‘Jesus' church?' It didn't take many Sundays to figure out which church would get our full attention. She has since become an RN/BSN, working in labor and delivery, in Colorado Springs. She lives there, with her wonderful husband, Christopher, a daughter Christina, and son Nathaniel.

I am also a master's candidate in Marriage, Family and Child Counseling through Chapman University. It took me over ten, long years to complete the curricula because of Launa's many medical issues. Another complicating factor was the fact that I had to wait for courses to be offered, at my current military assignments. Moving in the military was very difficult for this. When we arrived at a new location, they had either just finished the class, or the class I still required, wasn't being offered for another year. By the time I had completed all of the courses, I took the exams, but the program had changed. Needless to say, I didn't pass. I inquired about writing a paper. They merely told me that I could always just start over. After ten years, the turmoil of my life, and the loss of Launa, I couldn't do that, again. I was fortunate to have the education, the experience, and information I did have. I've used it throughout