July 2025 – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

July 31, 2025July 30, 2025

Visionaries

What sensibly-thinking (unskilled) laborer surrenders his ditch-digger shovel to chase after and secure an even lesser-paying job?

It seems a reasonable question.

When he spotted the simple flier announcing, “Plumber’s Helper Wanted”, Clyde wasted little time pondering its meaning. Shedding his less-than-promising vocation as dirt-shoveler along open trenches in the nearby neighborhood, he soon found himself loading and unloading lengths of galvanized pipe, odd-looking pipe-threading devices, and a sewage-clearing apparatus nicknamed “the snake”.

A companion question follows the earlier one. What kind of mindset would propel a poor young woman hailing from a dusty Oklahoma village to set out by bus and travel mile upon mile across several states to arrive at a “foreign” destination with scant understanding of what may lie ahead?

By the time the paths of Clyde Baxter and his bride-to-be Thelma Christine finally (after their months of separation) reconverged near a sprawling body of water called San Francisco Bay, they had each unwittingly entered the world of VIM.

Several decades were to crawl by before a Philosophy Professor – Dr. Dallas Willard of another Golden State setting (U.S.C.) – would introduce the VIM acronym.

Vision – Intention – Means

Clyde’s mind and heart had given birth to a vision. To one day marry his sweetheart, Thelma.

Clyde’s vision, however, called for significant risk and extraordinary courage. If his dream of gaining this pretty country girl as his life-long companion were to become reality, both he and Thelma must leave behind the dust-laden, increasingly barren, cotton fields of their beloved Sooner State.

It was a daring, costly venture the couple had struck out on, from the moment Clyde had leapt aboard his first freight train departing Oklahoma. And now, clarity of focus had – across the Greyhound miles – settled more deeply in his fiancé’s soul. There would be no going back. Thelma, too, owned the Vision.

July 24, 2025July 23, 2025

Beyond Commonplace

Clutching her tan suitcase, Thelma stepped aboard the Greyhound bus. With her free hand she swept a film of dust from an empty seat. Dust. It was like a crazed intruder. “What is it like anyway”, Thelma wondered, “the Golden State?”*

During the writing of Living With A Limp I would periodically pause and immerse myself in scenes of the imagination. The aim was to re-live as best I could a crisis here, an adventure there from true-life happenings of a bygone era. I had been granted through the years the luxury of catching bits and pieces of story as shared and then repeated in various settings by my near and distant kin. So LIMP is personal for me.

Many, if not most, works of memoir call up a collection of narratives featuring among the principal characters any number of close family members.

Thelma Christine Bay, the excited, apprehensive. westward-bound country girl, would traverse seventeen hundred miles by bus. My (future) mother had tasted her share of scarcity through most of her growing-up years. The onset of the Great Depression followed immediately by long years of drought across the Southern Plains (forming the Dust Bowl), made survival itself a burdensome day-by-day task.

My mother’s Schulter – eight miles to the south of Okmulgee – Berkeley, Phoenix, Mohave Desert, (again) Berkeley and finally Okmulgee habitations did find her at certain seasons plodding along through that mundane ordinariness common to most of earth’s pilgrims. Still, hers was clearly no insignificant life.

But then, neither is mine. Nor yours.

There is no such thing as an ordinary life**

July 17, 2025

Say What?

Serving up his African cuisine in his modest Washington apartment, Naphtali launched into questions. Ann and I responded, returning the volley.

“Reconnecting with old friends is like opening a time capsule filled with laughter and love.”*

As we rehearsed memories from our East Africa days of the 1980s, one episode evoked a sudden burst of merriment.

Ann and I had, those years ago, invited the young college student (Naphtali) to our Nyeri home for a meal. After a time of dining, I noticed Naphtali’s plate was ready for a refill.

“Let me bring you another serving”, I offered, moving my chair to rise.

When a person is working to master a second language, the occasional slip is bound to surface,

“Oh, no thank you”, Naphatli offered in a most courteous tone. “I am very fine. . . I am fed up.”

Revisiting the fun memory, the special “glow of friendship” common in happy relationships settled over the simple dining area of the Seattle apartment.

I had gently set right our young visitor’s misapplied phrase. And, chuckling in mild embarrassment, Naphtali had taken the correction in gracious stride.

The evening now with our good friend drew to a close. How sweet had been the visit! After prayers, Ann and I moved toward the door. Naphtali beamed his wide smile. And offered up a parting call,

“I do hope this evening you both got very fed up!”

July 10, 2025July 9, 2025

Full Circle Friends

The world of social media, with its myriad features ranging from terrific to terrifying, has brought forward in our day some wondrous random surprises.

The Rockies and the Great Northwest started stealing my soul early on, even ahead of the providential discovery of a Billings, Montana lass whose marital companionship now spans many decades.

Fast forward.

A while back Ann and I were anticipating a special road trip. A long one. Departing Tulsa, we would head northwestwardly. Our travels should in time bring us full circle counter-clockwise back to the Sooner State, catching along the way long overdue snatches of time with family and friends. Enter Facebook.

A heart-skip moment overtook me when the photo of a young East African gent popped up.

“Hey babe, look who’s in Cheyenne, Wyoming!”, I called out.

A quick ‘messaging’ dialogue ensued. Ann and I could hardly wait to enter the Cowboy State and connect afresh with our friend, Seth, and to meet his wife and (now adult) children.

The dinner visit and overnight stay with the “O” family was priceless.

Motoring onwards – up and across Montana and through points further West – we snatched treasured visits (far too briefly) among international student alums of Tulsa University. Treasured friendships had been forged through those campus ministry years.

My social media fiddling had uncovered another revelation. I reached out to Naphtali. Long years had passed since our last meetup.

Ann had, in the early 80s, taught Naphtali accordion, had passed along to him her mother’s squeeze box for his street evangelism work in Nyeri town.

“Hey Naphtali, if you are home there in Seattle when we come through, could we catch an evening together?” Naphtali’s response was immediate, “Oh my. . Of course, Mzee!”

A couple weeks passed and we were in his city. Anticipating our call, our friend and posed a question:

“So now, Mzee, what would you and Sister Ann prefer – dinner out in the American style or some Kenyan food prepared in my kitchen?”

A no brainer, I smiled.

Our Kenyan hosts – transplants to Washington and Wyoming now – lived well the grace of welcoming*. Generosity at home in their bones.

*“Share with the Lord’s people. . practice hospitality”. Romans 12:13

July 3, 2025July 2, 2025

A Tethering

(*note. the account here of a painful ear infection, while written in the present tense, actually references an episode that happened back in May. While I tend to relish sympathies that come my way regardless the conditions that prompt them, I assure my readers that full recovery has happily come and all is well!)

Looking back to the era those years ago, I can appreciate that it had registered with me, even then.

At nine years of age, fighting for survival those long months in a hospital’s polio ward, I could sense (though not in every moment but a lot of the time) the presence of prayer at work. While not equipped at that age to assess – much less articulate – things about the near-tangible element holding my restless soul in check. The tethering cord of heart and mind that kept me going forward, although deprived of the luxury of functioning limbs, was the tethering cord of Hope.

Sitting here now, restless and agitated with piercing stabs sporadically shooting through the regions of my left ear and throat, I am oddly enough, sensing it again. Awareness of hope. Of it’s resilience. Peeking up through the soil of the heart’s garden by way of the compassionate prayers of a loved one. Or a stranger.

A favorite scene pictured in the memoir, Living With a Limp (© Jerry Lout, Amazon) features a nurse. Who, before heading home after her shift at Hillcrest, would often swing by my ward and – catching my attention – cheerily call out, “Goodnight, Jerry, I’m praying for you!”

Hope rooted in someone’s prayer was, I am convinced, ever looping in the background. Even on the day when, in exasperation, I let loose a rude profanity. Unbecoming for that “nice little Christian boy over in muscle-stretch therapy”.

In the wee hours of last night I texted my engineer friend in Houston, Mr. Chen. Alerting him that I would be grateful for a prayer or two uttered on my miserable behalf (every swallow was a visit to the gallows). I knew that he would not likely manage to respond until hours later. Yet, the simple knowledge within me that Chen would at some time or other prevail on my behalf before God, opened afresh the gates of a sweet reservoir of hope.

P.S. The morning’s second visit to Urgent Care this week holds the promise of a battery of antibiotics. So, we hold out in hope.

Trusting Walgreen to come through. Knowing our Lord will companion us forward, regardless.

(*faithful to his character, he has)