But most of all I want to thank my wife Karla, who has demonstrated to me over and over again over these past 37 years of marriage, the unconditional love and commitment to the vows we made so long ago to this thing called marriage.

God gave me a good one! It was love at first sight, thoughts of marriage even as she strode confidently into the chemistry lecture hall at Luther College. First I needed to find out her name and then break up with the gal I was dating at the time. Yes for real.

Without my wife by my side I literally would not be alive today. Please keep on reading.

Fifteen years ago today I coded after experiencing massive complications following brain surgery to remove a large AVM in my left frontal lobe.

We spent 46 days in Rochester, MN at the world famous Mayo Clinic hospitals.

The surgery to remove the AVM was successful but the entire experience has forever changed me and my entire family’s lives.

After coming out of the brain surgery I was entirely paralyzed on my right side and unable to speak at all.

I developed a blood infection, scalp infection, then blood clots…in my legs and arms…and eventually in my heart and lungs which lead to my coding 15 years ago today.

When this occurred I was in a rehab room at St. Marys hospital not hooked up to monitors of any kind and by that time I communicated to Karla that she needed to get back home and be with our children, all five four plus hours away. But stubborn Karla insisted that she would go home briefly only if I could successfully push a button to call the nurse, which I eventually proved I could do.

So she was planning to go home the next morning, except that a huge blizzard struck Rochester that evening…you know back in the days when it used to snow.

Anyway I was in a rehab room rehabbing and I had an overwhelming sense of impending doom as though something awful was going to happen. And it did.

In the early morning around 6:30 or so I had a massive seizure that didn’t even stop after I had been given the maximum four doses of Ativan.

My heart stopped beating. I ceased breathing. I coded. The critical care doctor used five different pressers on me to get my blood pressure up and my heart beating again so they could buy some time to figure out what was going on with me.

The doctors discovered that there was a massive blood clot in my heart and twenty or so others in my lungs and so emergency open heart surgery was the only chance they had of saving my life.

So that’s what they did. They cut a slit in my heart and physically removed the clot from my heart and sucked the other clots out of my lungs. And then they put me back together again after just having had brain surgery two weeks to the day earlier.

I would end up spending another 31 days at St. Marys doing every conceivable therapy imaginable. Physical, Occupational, Speech, and my favorite Recreational therapy.

I was dismissed from the hospital on March 27, 2009 on my son Benjamin’s 15th birthday, a full 40 pounds lighter than when I had first entered the hospital.

It’s been a wild ride these past fifteen years…and I still think about this traumatic season of life multiple times every single day.

But this is the thing I have been understanding and appreciating even more than in the years immediately following this season.

It is this. When an individual undergoes a traumatic experience everyone who loves and cares for them also undergoes their own trauma. In my case our family has been changed forever by this season of life. As I mentioned all five of our children were still in the home, our oldest being 17 and youngest 3 years old.

Each of our children has been deeply affected by this life experience, some more deeply than others. And Karla still sleeps lightly and wakes up at the my slightest movement or if she senses that something is wrong with me.

These kinds of things re-wire our brains.

Anyway just wanted to say a huge thank you to Karla and my extended family for all that you did for us during that season of life. And all the rest of you out there…the thousands of you who left comments on the blog or were praying for us in many different parts of the world, or who gave us practical helps like gift cards who followed along during those harrowing days…over 5,000 hits on the blog in a single day! We will never forget the kindnesses that were expressed to us!

Thank you.

I close with the words of Scripture that came to my confused mind as I was coming out of a massive seizure October 23rd, 2008 when this all began:

“Whom have I in heaven but thee and there is nothing on earth I desire besides thee. My flesh and my heart may fail but God is the strength (rock) of my heart and my portion forever” Psalm 73:25-26

My heart and flesh did fail me. At 44 years of age and at the top of my game, I was brought down big time. What great words of truth to buoy us during those troubling months from the first seizure in October, 2008 until the brain surgery in Feb. 2009 and beyond. God is good all the time. It’s in His nature to be good. Even if I had died and left a wife without a husband and five children without their father, still God would have been good.

I do not say this flippantly but rather with a firm conviction in God’s absolute and comprehensive sovereignty over all things, that has been tempered through trials and real life experience in the trenches of life and ministry over the 59 years of my life.

Romans 8:28 “…and we know that for those who love him all things work together for good…” All things. All things.

God took out my heart of stone and replaced it with a heart of flesh. I repented from my sins and made a profession of faith in Jesus as my Lord and Savior. That was the first time I was born again and by far the single most important event that has occurred in my life. Even better than life itself is knowing Jesus as Savior and Lord.

The second time I was born again occurred fourteen years ago today. We were at Mayo Clinic hospitals in Rochester, MN for 46 days after I had massive complications from a brain surgery two weeks prior to remove a large peach sized AVM from the left frontal lobe of my brain.

The day after the surgery as they brought me back into the “real world” that is, not intubated, I found the real world very frustrating indeed. I was completely unable to speak or make any sounds and I was paralyzed (as it turns out only temporarily) on the right side of my body.

The next 13 days post brain surgery there would be plenty of excitement but none so much as what happened 14 years ago today…Karla and I consider these last fourteen years bonus years because humanly speaking the “odds of living” were massively stacked against me.

Fourteen years ago today I coded. Like I said this was two weeks post surgery and I was in a rehab room at St. Marys in Rochester where patients are not hooked up to any monitors…of any kind. The thinking (and rightly so I believe) is that if you’re in good enough shape to go to rehab you don’t need to be monitored…you just need to rehabilitate!

The evening prior to coding I had a pain in my back and so I took half a Tylenol tablet…But also had an overwhelming sense of impending doom…that something was not right.

Karla tells me that I had a seizure around 6 a.m. and was not breathing…so she pressed the call button and the nurse gave me Ativan to stop the seizure (Karla even told her how much she could give me per her work as a biostatistician at an Epilepsy Program…which the nurse did not appreciate…haha). It didn’t work anyway.

What happened next is remarkable. They ended up giving me pressors to get my heart beating again….After they went through the normal ones like epinephrine, norepinephrine, and a couple of others, to no effect they gave me the last one in their arsenal. If this one didn’t work it would have been lights out as far as this earthly life was concerned.

However, with this last pressor they were able to detect a faint heart beat. But during those moments of not breathing until my heart began beating again is when I believe I was born again for a second time. I was dead but not really? I don’t know what to call it.

The heads of departments all gathered together quickly to figure out what could possibly have caused this. Was it the IVC filter that had been placed in my artery (to prevent blood clots from traveling to the heart and lungs) that had now dislodged into my heart?

Before long they determined that it was a large blood clot (the size of a man’s thumb) in my heart and a bunch of other long blood clots in my heart. So the cardiac surgeon did the only thing that could have saved my life. They performed emergency open heart surgery on me just two weeks to the day that they had performed the brain surgery. They cut a hole in my heart and pulled the clot from my heart and also the other clots that were in my lungs. My 44 year old heart looked good! I have seen it.

What a journey my family has been on these last 14 years! The drama and trauma of those days has affected every single person in our family in unique ways. In 2009 we had all five kids at home still…and what was supposed to be a week away and then some close to home rehab, turned into a massive event that has turned our lives inside out, upside down, and forever changed the way we see the world. But one thing remains the same. God.

Psalm 73:25-26 remain my life verses. They were the first words in my confused mind and out of my mouth when I was coming out of my first seizure in October of 2008 that ultimately lead us to the surgeries. “Whom have I in heaven and there is nothing on earth I desire besides thee. My flesh and my heart may fail but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

Oh! that this were the case. I do know that there is nothing my heart should desire more than God. And I know for certainty that my flesh and my heart will fail. But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Amen.

Thank you Karla for being there for me in the darkest hours, the brightest hours, and everything in between. Doing life with you is a great privilege and adventure. Thank you also to all who were, and still are, a part of our journey.

So on this fourteenth bonus year celebration please join with me in singing the doxology. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him all creatures here below. Praise Him above ye heavn’ly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.”

The Evans Family in 2009

Greetings world!

It’s been three full years since I last wrote a blog entry. In fact, I had to think about how to access my own blog! Today marks the 11th anniversary of my brain surgery to remove a large avm (arterio-venous-malformation) that was in the left frontal lobe of my brain.

Karla and I (along with our two oldest sons) had made the decision to go to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota early on in this process. However, we had no idea then of the twists and turns and traumas that we would experience along the way as I would end up spending 46 days at the Mayo hospital when we had been told initially to plan on 7.  If you would like to read an in depth summary of the entire drama you can find it here by clicking here in this summary of events.

On a beach in St. Martyn’s on a recent Carribbean cruise.

Brain surgery. It sounds scary doesn’t it? It was.  Everything about it was terrifying and brought to my mind questions that went all over the place. But from the initial seizure on October 23, 2008 until Feb. 12, 2009 the day of the surgery, my heart was held fast by God Himself who kept me very near to Himself in a good place…even if it wasn’t a safe place by any human measure. 

The very idea of any person taking a saw and cutting into my thick skull was repugnant. And then to actually insert instruments deep into my brain and cut things out and cauterize arteries and the like is even more disgusting, yet also amazing. I will never forget Dr. Frederic Meyer’s name as long as I am alive. At the time he was the head of neurosurgery at Mayo Clinic which is the #1 place in the world for neurosurgery. But still, this was MY brain which made it very very personal. It was only slightly comforting that he was using a brand new million dollar microscope surgical thingy on me.

But still, the very thought of sawing through bone that is designed to protect what is inside was repulsive. When God, in His infinite wisdom designed the human skull He designed it not to cut into but to protect what is there. Likewise the heart is surrounded by the ribs which were also designed by God to protect that all important organ which makes life possible.

It is common knowledge that the average weight of an adult brain is around three pounds. The human brain is the single most complex and intricately designed organ of the human body. Millions take their healthy brains for granted every day.

Inside the human brain lies everything necessary for the human body to function properly. From my biology days I understood that the sympathetic nervous system controls all of the voluntary motions of the body…even as I type these words now. The parasympathetic nervous system controls the thousands of necessary processes that keep us alive with all of our parts working together. Things like your heart beating. Your blood pumping through your veins. Things that you and I have absolutely no control over whatsoever.

The brain is also the center of a person’s personality, soul, and of their very being. I did not want anyone, regardless of their pedigree or qualifications messing around with something that important. But there was not much of a choice to be made. Either live with the high probability (given my age at the time) that this thing could erupt some day which would have likely rendered me dead, or turn myself over to the hands of one of the most highly skilled neurosurgeons in the world. So we did it. We took the leap of faith.

And I will never forget Dr. Meyer (a Jewish man) coming into the room one morning several days after the surgery when I was still unable to speak or move my right side saying to me (because he knew I was a pastor) something to the effect that “This is a long journey and we are in the early pages of Genesis right now.” I remember thinking to myself and trying to speak the words “Yes, I understand that. But every page of Scripture points forward to Jesus the Christ…” But nothing came out.

On this day 11 years ago my avm was successfully removed never to return or cause any more problems…once the Lord safely delivered me again and again from complication after life threatening complication. I find it almost humorous now looking back at the series of events which had to have gone precisely as they did for me to be alive this very evening.

There are so many things that Karla and I now see that God did in preserving my life…when so many others that I have known were not spared. The Butterfly Effect (or chaos theory) is a phenomenon that says a small change in a localized complex system can have a large impact elsewhere…whereby a butterfly’s wing flap in Argentina is said to  impact a tornado that strikes somewhere in Kansas. It makes for highly interesting plot devices in movies and books.

As I think back to the reality of those days far from chaos theory there is no question that I was in the hands of a good God (whether I lived or died) who was absolutely in charge of every detail necessary to keep me alive after the blood clots and coding and emergency open heart surgery two weeks after the brain surgery. Kind of makes you want to go back and read the summary of the drama now doesn’t it?

There is no question in my heart or mind that God is comprehensively sovereign over every single thing in His creation, including every detail of our lives, the exact number of days we will live, how many breaths we will take before we die, the degree and details of every suffering that we will ever experience in this world, and much much more.

I have been married to my wife Karla now for 33 years and the vows we made to one another before God and more than 300 witnesses have become even more ingrained in our souls now than in our blissfully naive 21 and 22 year old selves. “For better for worse, richer or poorer in sickness and in health….I choose you.”

And of course with five children who were all still in the home when these events occurred as the initial seizure occurred on our youngest son’s (Jared’s) third birthday, each has been affected. Some greater than others. When suffering and traumatic events strike one member of the family it strikes the whole family. By the grace of God all five of our children, now ages 14 to 27 seem to be doing very well, both emotionally and spiritually. But it has not been an easy road by any stretch.

I have written over 120,000 words regarding this whole ordeal. I have a title even. “When Your Mess Becomes Your Message.” I completed it five years ago. It remains an unpublished memoir of God’s faithfulness through a great trial. I recognize that it needs to be cut in half or even more than that but at least it’s all there!

I am kind of a numbers guy so I find it fascinating looking at the metrics of the blog which I really haven’t looked at much in the past few years. Since I began this blog in November of 2008 there have been 177,132 page views by 18,108 unique visitors from 140 different countries or territories. Sixty-three percent of these views (111,779) came in 2009 during the height of the drama. The other 37 percent (65,333) of views have occurred over the past ten years.

We have written more than 260 posts on the blog…none in the past three years and yet it continues to minister to people even in the most remote places on this earth. What a ride it has been. And what a ride yet to come! God’s ways are not our ways. His ways are higher than our ways. And given a million possibilities of what the course of my life would have looked like I never could have imagined that at my conception this latent avm would be an object for such glory for God to receive through the miraculous deliverance of my life through the prayers of multitudes of people most of whom I will probably never know. Thank you for reading. Thank you for praying. Thank you for loving our family.

Loved this view of St. Martyn’s Island in early February 2020

See the picture. It was the size of a small peach. The supremely skillful and gifted hands of Dr. Frederic Meyer, then the head of neurosurgery at Mayo Clinic successfully removed this massive congenital mass and it won’t be causing any more problems.

As I was slowly weaned from the ventilator and regained consciousness, my eyes looked to the left to find my wife Karla standing there with a big smile on her beautiful face. She grabbed my hand and squeezed it three times…our super secret signal our entire married life, that we love each other. Karla is my best friend and she was a rock through this entire ordeal as she advocated on my behalf.

My mind was racing 1,000 miles an hour. I took careful note that I didn’t even have a headache, something which I had been prepared to experience. But there were other things that weren’t right. I couldn’t speak a word and I could not move the entire right side of my body. Moreover, it was not a certainty that I would regain either of those fairly important functions. I spoke not a single word the day after surgery, but slept much.

Before that very moment I had never considered the amazing gifts that I had completely taken for granted for 44 years. Speech and movement at will. Here is a link to the entire ordeal  Brief Summary.

How does a person vocalize a thing? How does a person move a thing? It was a fascinating yet simultaneously frustrating experience of the highest order…and I never care to experience anything like it again.

On Valentine’s Day, 2009, I managed to speak a couple of words. In my mind I was carrying what I thought was meaningful dialogue with family gathered around my bed. Only trouble was there were no words coming out, nothing! And then there were some. Karla’s mom asked me if I had considered watching the TV in the room. I said no, first in my mind but then also in reality. A second word I remember saying that same day was “international” as the group gathered around my bed was talking about airports. I have no idea why those word actually ended up in real speech and the thousands of other words I was saying in my mind did not.

As far as movement returning on my right side it was not until roughly five days after surgery that I could move my right big toe just a bit. But it was hugely encouraging to both Karla and me.

I think it is impossible to fully appreciate a thing unless you can no longer do that thing, see that thing…or a person that you loved that has died. Precious people are easier to appreciate and value than the many billions of things that we human beings take for granted in our bodies alone! If you don’t think this is true, then you are mistaken. The intricacies of the human brain itself are utterly astonishing! Human brain transplants are not even theoretically possible.

So on this eve of Valentine’s Day 2017 I beseech every person who reads this not to take anything for granted. Just because you can do it today does not mean you will able to do it tomorrow. Or, to be more accurate just because at the exact moment your eyes saw, and mind understood, and absorbed the meaning of these words does not mean in the next millisecond you will be able to do the same.

Nor do I claim to have a handle on not taking speech and movement for granted. I have experienced not having either of these for a time. It seemed and felt like an eternity, and yet I still am not as thankful as I should be. I can grumble. I can complain. I can bemoan my situation in life.

Because we live in a fallen world this is as it will always be on this side of eternity. But I am certain that Psalm 139 is true…that my unformed body complete with the brain anomaly and all was “knitted together” in my mother’s womb more than 52 years ago. Not by chance, but by a good, loving, and sovereign God who does all things well.

My friends you and I are fearfully and wonderfully made! “Your eyes saw my unformed substance: in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them. How precious are your thoughts, O God!” (Psalm 139:16-17).

So on this eve of Valentine’s Day 2017, consider giving thanks to God for everything! Thank Him for the ability to do anything! Thank Him for your spouse! Thank Him for the pain! (not necessarily one and the same). Thank Him for the trials of life. Thank God that He is in control of all things even though world around us may appear to be on the cusp of a complete implosion. God is always doing way more than we will ever know or appreciate at every single moment of our lives…through every joy and pain.

For myself I will continue in my pursuit of the holy grail of the Christian life: contentment. Yes contentment. The apostle Paul said in Philippians 4:11 “…I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.” Two verses later in this same stream of thought he says “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” Yes, even this seemingly impossible state. A good start on this pursuit would be to stop right now and give thanks to God that you can speak and move.

On the morning of our first full day in we heard from a park ranger that a Grizzly bear had been seen in our camp area the previous day. That got our attention. I’ve been backpacking since I was 18 years old but have never had even one bear encounter, either Black or Grizzly. Moose, deer, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, martens,gray jays, and a large variety of lower mammals that have eaten my entire snack cache, we have encountered. But not bears.

As we began our second day in the Tetons it was a glorious day. September 19, 2014 is the day I snapped this picture. I remember because it is the same day I turned 50 years old. I turned 50 in style, out in some of God’s greatest handiwork that few people ever have the privilege of seeing first hand. Why? Because to get to some of God’s most majestic and glorious creativity and beauty, takes an extraordinary amount of effort to get there in the first place. Oh there are some places like the Grand Canyon, that my family was able to visit last year, that are both glorious and public.

But once a year I prefer to go where relatively few have ever been. Standing atop Mount Whitney (in the Sierra Mountains in California) at 14,494 feet in 2013 and gutting out the 99 switchbacks to get there is a feat that few can say they have achieved. Mt. Whitney is the second highest mountain peak in the lower 48 states.

Oh yes, it can be difficult getting to the heights. It is difficult, sometimes painful, blister inducing, occasionally experiencing freak snowstorms, windstorms, rainstorms…and other unpleasantries….so much so that I have to remind myself of why it’s worth it.

It’s worth it for the occasional breath-taking views. It’s worth it for the camaraderie that develops between the trekkers, each year with its own unique script. It’s worth it because when one is out in the wild one forgets about the troubles he has left behind. It’s worth it because I tend to think less of my problems when in the wilderness and think rightly about my family and the precious gift my wife and children are to me. It’s worth it because God’s creation is worth much and not to see it and explore it is to deprive oneself of something inexpressibly glorious. It’s worth it because it recharges my soul.

So as we continue to make plans to hike in Glacier National Park this next summer, I will remind myself again and again why it’s worth it.

It’s been a little over a year since I last posted on the blog. Two hundred and eighty-seven posts in the last seven plus years…but just one in the last year.

Seven years ago today at approximately 6:00 am I coded. I had brain surgery on Feb. 12, 2009 to remove the massive AVM in the left frontal lobe of my brain. The surgery was a success by neurosurgeon standards as the AVM no longer exists. But post surgery I was initially unable to move the right side of my body or speak a word. Scary stuff!

Two weeks later on February 26, 2009 I coded and if not for my wife Karla I surely would have died. She was in the rehab room with me when I coded. I don’t remember much at all from the night, just a nagging back pain.

The department heads from Cardiology, Neurology, and Vascular collaborated and soon discovered that there was a massive blood clot  in my heart and many more in my lungs. So they did the only thing they could do and performed emergency open heart surgery…a procedure that is rarely performed. The doctors did not expect me to live, but they gave it their best shot.

And with the skillful precision of Dr. Sundt’s scalpel and the prayers of thousands of you (There were 5,794 hits on the blog that day alone) I made it through the second major surgery in just two weeks, and would end up spending a total of 46 days at the Mayo Clinic Hospital, St. Marys.

They were truly life altering, seismic shifting days in the life of our family…and yes we still feel the repercussions even today more than seven years removed. It was a very costly season for this family of seven, and by this I do not mean the $550,000 this whole venture cost the insurance company. That was a mere pittance compared to the greater tolls this did take and would eventually take on our entire family, and me losing my job (in July, 2013) as the pastor of the church I had served for nearly 18 years.

For the past two and a half years we have been attending a church in West Des Moines where we have connected with kind hearted people in a very profound way. We are experiencing true Christian community in a way that we had previously not known. We have all grown as we continue to heal.

Six months ago I completed the book I have written concerning the last six-plus years of our lives. The preliminary title is “When Your Mess Becomes Your Message.” As it sits now it is 200 plus pages long in a single spaced 12 point font in a Word document which would probably translate to 600 plus pages. So we are now going to begin the process of seeking out a publisher who might be interested. And if that doesn’t pan out then we will self publish the story.

Oh yes one more thing, earlier this evening Karla and I also submitted our official entry in the CBS reality show “The Amazing Race.”  We have been talking about this for two years. We love the show and this would be a great time to run it together as we will celebrate 30 years of marriage this December.

There is just one letter difference between the Amazing Race and Amazing Grace. Our lives are both. In addition if we should be selected from the tens of thousands of applicants and win the millions dollar prize that would be twice what Karla would have received from my life insurance policy had I died seven years ago this very day.

This morning we awoke to a text message that said a friend of ours had died after a long bout with cancer. I had just visited with him nine days earlier. And now he is with Jesus, as will all of those who have truly trusted in Christ alone for salvation. I almost got to heaven seven years ago today. Jeb is already there.

The craniotomy was performed by Dr. Frederick Meyer, Chief of Neurosurgery at Mayo Clinic to remove a peach sized arteriovenous-malformation (AVM) from the left frontal lobe of my brain.

In all likelihood it had been there since birth, but I didn’t know it was there until the morning of October 23, 2008 (Jared’s third birthday) when I had a seizure. For 44 years I had lived without any knowledge of this space invader.

Not a single day, perhaps even waking hour, has passed in the last six years but that my mind has wandered into those traumatic, life-altering, seismic -shifting, and nearly life-ending 46 days at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. Dozens of times every day I am taken back to those challenging days. Yes, still, six years out.

The brain surgery. The temporary loss of right side movement. Temporary loss of ability to speak, with no assurance that either would return. Then along came the massive complications. A temperature spike to 106 degrees and blood infection that nearly did me in. Then blood clots. Then pulmonary emboli. One massive clot in my heart the size of a man’s thumb, and twenty three in my lungs. Coding. Emergency open heart surgery just two weeks after brain surgery…then the long, slow climb back.

My whole family has felt, and continues to feel, the weight, but none more than my wife Karla who stuck by her man and demonstrated to me and the entire world what the covenant of marriage entails. Like most people we took our marriage vows seriously, but who could ever have envisioned the storm that blew through our lives six years ago? “For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health.” They are words, but more than just words.

I continue to make progress on the book I am writing about the last six years of our exciting lives. The main focus will be on the five months between discovering this anomaly through the surgery and hospital stay. I am drawing deeply from the blog postings I wrote before the surgery (Nov. 23, 2008-Feb. 11, 2009).

Then during the surgeries and recovery Karla did a tremendous job of keeping the world up to speed on how things were progressing or not. We are approaching 300 posts on the blog that was begun at the beginning of this trial. We wanted to document in real time with real feelings how we were processing all of these things.

Then, on the fifth anniversary of this trial (last year) we blogged in real time over those 46 days, alongside the original posts, to show just how vivid our memories still were over that period of time. Karla added some details and I also share my take on each of those days. Well, okay there were a few days I was truly out of commission. The weird thing about this year is that even the days correspond to one another from six years ago.

So far I have compiled or written about 90,000 words and I hope to finish the first draft by the end of this February.
It was certainly a life shaper! Life is different now. I now have two permanent dents in my skull in which I can balance two hard boiled eggs. How many of you can do that? Yep that’s what I thought.

We are followers of Jesus. This does not mean we have any special exemption from difficulties or problems in this fallen world. On the contrary, one of the least claimed promises of Jesus is found in John 16:34 “In the world you will have tribulation (of all sorts). But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

The glory is in the story…of God and His faithfulness through a fiery trial. Our story could have very easily turned out very differently, with me not even being alive today. But it didn’t. And I’m still alive in spite of the massive odds . Thank you for your faithful prayers during this stormy season.

Thank you God for life. Thank you for every breath. Thank you for the ability to speak, and think, and write. Thank you for the ability to move my limbs at will. Thank you for a great wife and family. Just…thanks.

Filled with thanksgiving,

Mike Evans

In December of 1914, Shackleton and his crew of 27 men (well, 27 and a stowaway) and sixty nine sled dogs sailed from the South Atlantic Island of South Georgia heading to the South Pole. The goal of the expedition was to cross the Antarctic by foot. In his diary that night Shackleton wrote “…now comes the actual work itself…the fight will be good.” Ha. Little did he know!

All of the years of preparation, frustration, and financial challenges were now done and as Lansing writes, “…in the space of a few short hours, life had been reduced from a highly complex existence, with a thousand petty problems, to one of the barest simplicity in which only one real task remained—the achievement of the goal.”

However, just one month after setting sail on the 144 foot long steam powered ship she was beset in an ice pack 150 miles off the northern coast of Antarctica. Remember that the seasons are the opposite in the southern hemisphere. For 21 more months this amazing crew would do what it took to remain alive. Just 30 days into the adventure and the main objective had been entirely abandoned. What happened next, though is the reason why this is the greatest Antarctic survival story in history.

The ship itself was eventually crushed by the ice floes and ten months later she finally gave up the ghost and sank. She had been built for the ice, with a four foot plus thick oak stern and other reinforcements. However, on October 24, 1915 she had to be abandoned for good. The men were now left with just 3 wooden lifeboats that were around 22 feet long.

Ernest Shackleton would provide extraordinary leadership to his crew and amazingly ended up without any loss of life, unless you count the sixty-nine sled dogs, which were shot and then eaten by the men, only as a last resort. The crew also killed thousands of penguins, seals, and a couple of sea lions for food and cooking and lighting oil.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines endurance in the following way: “The act, quality, or power of withstanding hardship or stress.” This book and the adventures of Shackleton and crew epitomize this quality.

After months of going with the floe (pun intended) they eventually broke free from the ice and were able to sail once again, this time in their three life boats. They eventually made their way to a remote island on the northern peninsula of Antarctica called Elephant Island. While they were happy to make landfall it was not even close to a done deal.

On April 9, 1916 Shackleton and seven other men left Elephant Island and the other 20 men to go for help. The only problem was that they had to sail 850 miles north and east to South Georgia Island, where the journey had begun, and where there was a whaling station.

They had to sail through the most treacherous seas on the planet the dreaded Cape Horn, but at least they had a 22 foot little raft with which to withstand the hurricane force winds and tsunami like waves that often accompany these parts. In the U.S. Navy Navy’s Sailing Directions for Antarctica these winds are described in the following way, “…they are often of hurricane intensity and with gust velocities sometimes attaining to 150 to 200 miles per hour.” Scientists believe that waves in this region can exceed 90 feet and travel at 55 miles an hour.

Shackleton and his men experienced the full fury of Cape Horn, and endured everything she could throw at them. On land things are different…for at least one can feel somewhat in control of one’s fate. On the sea, however, there is a helplessness that is visceral. At one point in this crossing as they are bailing out water from a rogue wave and chipping the massive chunks of ice off their boat they look up in envy at the albatross flying overhead…so effortlessly.

Eventually, with the superior navigation of the second in command Worsly, they arrived at South Georgia, on the northwestern shore. They still had another impossible challenge that awaited them. They realized that there was just 22 miles or so by straight line that separated them from the whaling station. But to get there they had to make an incredibly dangerous push over 10,000 foot mountain peaks. So three of the men took off with a fifty foot piece of rope between them and began yet another impossible journey.

There is a particularly poignant moment in this journey when they arrived at the point of an impossible peak, with nightfall quickly coming and fog closing in. They could not stay there for the night or they would die of exposure. So there was really no choice. In desperation Shackleton made the call that all three of them should slide down this mountain like a toboggan. “But what if they hit a rock?” one of the men asked. They hooked themselves together and off they went…. “They screamed—but not in terror necessarily, but simply because they couldn’t help it. It was squeezed out of them by the rapidly mounting pressure.” Two thousand vertical feet later they looked up and “they felt that special kind of pride of a person who in a foolish moment accepts an impossible dare—then pulls it off to perfection.” Ha ha. What teenage boy cannot relate to that feeling?

Hours later they made it to the whaling station where they secured a vessel for the return of the party. The four men who had been left on the western shore of South Georgia Island were picked up the next day. They had made it! They arrived at South Georgia on May 10, 1916, but they would not make it back to rescue the other 22 men at Elephant Island until August 30. By August 20^th, the men who remained on Elephant Island had pretty much resigned themselves to the fact that either Shackleton and crew had been lost in the most treacherous portion of ocean on the planet, or they had succeeded but would now have to winter there, for the ice was beginning to come in again.

For months the castaways on Elephant Island had gone up to the lookout to see if any ship was coming for them. All hope had been lost. But they still went up and looked every single day. Imagine the joy when on August 30, 1916 after 500 some odd days at sea, through bone numbing cold and wet, the word came to the other men that they were being rescued. Shackleton had his flaws to be sure. But with regard to sheer leadership and determination he is unequaled.

Twenty-eight men began the journey and twenty-eight men ended the journey!  Alfred Lansing dedicates this book in the following way: “In appreciation for whatever it is that makes men accomplish the impossible.”

Have you read this book? What did you think?