Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton
Have you ever done something you realize later was a big mistake?
Yeah, that spring-break tattoo qualifies.
So do those words spoken out of anger to someone you love.
Yup, that weekend in Vegas, that decision to try a spray tan, that idea to save money by cutting your own hair, and that regrettable choice to wear capri pants all count.
And yes, in full disclosure, the above are but some of the mistakes I’ve made in my life! While I’m not proud of them, they are a few examples that are relatively safe to own up to in a book my wife, kids, parents, and dear friends might read!
I’m confident you’ve got your list, too.
If you read my first book, On Fire, you know that one of my greatest mistakes was following the example of some kids in my neighborhood as they played with gasoline and fire. As a nine-year-old boy, I couldn’t wait to try to make fire dance myself.
That curiosity led me to sneak into our garage one Saturday morning, when Mom and Dad were out of the house. It guided me toward a five-gallon container of gasoline. Holding a piece of cardboard that I had set on fire in my left hand, I tried to pick up the container of gasoline with my right. I wanted to pour a little bit on the flame to see it come to life.
Before the liquid came out, the fumes inhaled that flame into the metal can and the resulting explosion catapulted me twenty feet to the far side of the garage. It lit me on fire, and the entire garage was in flames as well.
My mistake changed everything. For me. For my family. For my future.
I was burned on 100 percent of my body. Eighty-seven percent of my burns were categorized as third-degree burns, the most severe and most deadly.
Doctors calculate the mortality rate for burn patients by taking the percentage of the body burned and adding the age of the patient. So, doing the math, take 100 percent of the body burned, add the age of nine, and you have a 109 percent likelihood of death.
I had no chance. It was hopeless.
So how am I still here, sharing this second book?
Well, you can read On Fire to learn exactly how it played out, but let me give you the CliffsNotes here. My seventeen-year-old brother and two of my sisters, just eleven and eight, responded to the explosion, acted with undaunted courage, put out the flames that engulfed me, and called 911.
I was fortunate to be placed in the care of exceptional first responders and healthcare providers. They viewed their work not as a job but as a calling. They ignored the statistics, striving instead to provide me every chance to survive.
My community stepped forward during the five months I ultimately spent in the hospital and over the years of recovery that followed. During an incredibly difficult time, we were strengthened by friends who came to visit and the kindness of strangers. Encouraging letters poured in from around the country and around the world. We believe God utilized those serving in my care and worked through even the most arduous experiences to deliver a miracle.
But the morning I was burned, we didn’t know what was going to happen. Everything seemed lost. Our house was decimated. My body was devastated. The fire had burned through my skin, through my fatty tissue, even through my muscle in some areas. My heart raced and breathing was difficult. I was in intense pain.
My life seemed over.
Into this situation, into the emergency room, strode my mother. She saw how grim it was. She saw that my clothes and skin had completely burned off of my body. She knew how close I was to death. It was an indescribably terrible sight, yet Mom bravely walked right over, smoothed back my bangs, and told me she loved me.
Her presence, her voice, filled me with emotions. Since arriving at the hospital I’d wondered what would happen to me. The nurses and doctors were bustling around me, but no one was talking to me. So I responded to her love with a question.
“Mom, am I going to die?”
Without hesitating, she took my right hand gently in hers, and she said the words that would forever change my life: “Do you want to die, John? The choice is yours.”
I didn’t waver in my answer. “I don’t want to die, Mom. I will not die. I want to live!”
Mom nodded. Then she gave me a challenge.
“If you want to live, you’re going to have to fight like you’ve never fought before. You’re going to have to take the hand of God and walk the journey with him. John, it won’t be easy, but Dad and I will be with you. You can do this, but you must fight.”
I nodded back at her, tears streaming down my face.
Before she entered into that room, I was scared, felt alone, and expected to die.
After she spoke, I was absolutely certain I was going to live.
I never wavered in that belief again. There was an uncommon, almost supernatural sense of peace that descended on the room that day, as she ushered in hope and awakened my belief that I could survive. I was going to live, get out, go home, and in time be even better because of this tragedy.
People often ask me: How many times did you think you were going to die, when you were in the hospital as a little guy?
The answer?
Not once, after the conversation with Mom.
I didn’t know what procedures lay ahead. I didn’t know the grueling pain that would be my constant companion. I didn’t know how long my recovery would take. I didn’t know what words like “tracheotomy” or “debridement” or “amputation” even meant—or that I’d experience them in the months ahead. But I knew with absolute certainty I would live.
That belief, that hope, that expectation was everything to me, a child trying to recover, heal, live.
It is a critical factor in why I am alive.
And as unlikely as it may be for me to still be here, it’s just as unlikely that any of us are.
After surviving the fire, after beating those dire odds, I knew that my life was a priceless gift. I stopped taking it for granted. I still don’t. But have you ever contemplated the gift that is your life?
While driving through the stunningly beautiful countryside of Ireland, I had some time to reflect on how miraculous it is that any of us are here.
I was behind the wheel of a full-size van, packed with my family and loaded with luggage, navigating through the exceptionally narrow and curvy roads of Ireland. There were surprising periods of silence when the six of us quietly sat in awe, looking at the beautiful vistas outside our windows.
Silence doesn’t last long with four kids in the family. My oldest son, Jack, broke the reverie when he asked how his mom and I decided where to attend college. Beth told him that she’d almost gone to a different school, in a different city, to become a nurse. But at the last minute she’d chosen the occupational therapy program at St. Louis University.
I told him about a few other schools I had considered, how I narrowed my choice down to just two, why I almost went to college in the South, and how, late in my senior year of high school, I pivoted, stayed close to home and attended St. Louis University.
Beth looked back at the kids and added, “You should be glad we changed our minds. Because if we hadn’t, we never would have met.” Then playfully she added, “And if we hadn’t met, none of you would be here!”
As we continued our drive through the Irish countryside, I thought about the mighty strike of fortune that led to a family of six staring out the windows of a rental van. I soon realized the course of our lives ran much deeper than just our college selection.
Had Beth rushed a different sorority, or had I joined a different fraternity, or had one of us stayed home to study on a chilly January night in 1998, we wouldn’t have met.
If my brother in the fraternity hadn’t invited his friend Beth, or introduced us at the beginning of the night, if I hadn’t indulged in a little liquid courage and asked her onto the dance floor, if she hadn’t been bold enough to take my hand, or if we hadn’t exchanged phone numbers at night’s end, we wouldn’t be traveling this road together.
If I hadn’t stuck with our friendship (even though I wanted more) for three years, during which Beth finally began to see me as something more than her good friend John O’Leary, we wouldn’t have finally had that dinner when she announced that she could see us being more than friends.
That dinner spiraled into three years of dating, sixteen years of marriage…and four kids in the back seat of a van maneuvering over the back roads of Ireland.
I marveled at the miracle that was our life together.
But what about your life?
Have you ever stopped to think about how you got here?
Dr. Ali Binazir, who calls himself “The Happiness Engineer,” decided to do the math. To figure out the probability of you being born. The odds of one sperm (from the 500 million your father produced in his lifetime) combining with one egg (from the 200,000 your mother possessed) into the perfect union of your individual life.
The answer?
One in 400 trillion.1
Yep. Those are the odds.
To put those odds in proper perspective, the odds of winning the virtually impossible-to-win Powerball are 1 in 292 million. Meaning we’re almost two thousand times more likely to win Powerball than to exist. Better go out and buy your tickets!
The prospect of any of us being here is incredibly unlikely. So you can choose to consider your life a lucky accident. A cosmic fluke. Chance.
Or…
(You knew that was coming, didn’t you?)
Or we can look at those odds and realize our life is one of the most stunning gifts, a priceless treasure, a mighty blessing that is truly unfathomable.
Would you say you are acting and leading and loving and living like it?
Are you going to let your life pass by without truly enjoying the adventure?
You, like me, are here, against overwhelming odds. Let’s not take it for granted.
Religious scholar Huston Smith said:
The opposite of the sense of the sacred is not serenity or sobriety. It is drabness; taken-for-grantedness. Lack of interest. The humdrum and prosaic. The deadly sin of acedia.
All other attributes of a realized being must be relativized against this one absolute: an acute sense of the astonishing mystery of everything.2
An acute sense.
Of the astonishing mystery.
Of everything.
That’s awesome.
Children haven’t lost touch with the mystery. They don’t act ordinary, don’t think life is ordinary, and certainly don’t expect tomorrow to be ordinary.
Those who live In Awe can’t wait to see what’s around the corner, and expect wondrous things.
They see the future as filled with limitless possibilities. They embrace the astonishing mystery of everything.
And so can you.