Category: Jerry’s Reflections

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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)

©2025 Jerry Lout

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Turbulent Times

Yogi Berra’s famed quote, “It’s déjà vu all over again”, popped into mind Easter weekend here at our new home of Ada, Oklahoma.

An F-1 tornado slammed the town Easter Eve just weeks after Ada’s first twister of the season assailed us with her mischief on March 4th . While Ann and I knew our early March move to this fine college town would be somewhat eventful, neither of us guessed Mother Nature would make such a fuss. We’re left wondering how often we may find ourselves hunkering down afresh in the little “safe space” inside our modest abode.

Oklahoma residents, along with plenty of our bordering “tornado alley” neighbors, can call up stories – from entertaining, to instructive, to deeply sorrowful – from the vast numbers of twister touchdowns across our windswept plains. Once, on a nighttime drive on Interstate 40, I got captivated by a large continuous light show as a sprawling thunderstorm edged toward Bristow and its environs. All was pitch dark except for the spectacular flashes of lightning. Pulling to the shoulder, I drew out my iphone, set the camera to video and caught several seconds of the light show. And discovered upon reviewing the clip the next day that a quite-visible cloud-to-ground tornado had been captured on my device.

And, then there was the heart-stopping moment when Ann and I discovered that our son Scott – en route to his college campus after a weekend away – narrowly escaped a direct encounter with a 200 mph Category Four. He had intended to swing into Bruce’s Truck Stop, Catoosa to air up a low tire, but a minor carburetor issue delayed him a few minutes. By the time he was approaching Catoosa, traffic had backed up as emergency vehicles raced to the site. Tragically, seven lives were lost in the vicinity, six of these at Bruce’s Stop.

Citizens of the Sooner State are found every year keeping their human radar keenly sharpened (eyes to the skies, ears to the meteorologists). Particularly in the Springtime season stretching from early April to early June. This is a time to mindfully employ the counsel of an especially wise Rabi of long years past (and present),

“Watch and pray”*.

©2023 Jerry Lout                                                                              *Matthew 26:41. Jesus

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Tropical Twister

As I guided my Suzuki dirt bike onto the path leading to our remote Africa home, something felt different. What was it?

The narrative unfolds in detail in the Amazon-published memoir, Giants in the Rough*.

A distressing spectacle now caught my eye. Just adjacent to my family’s home stood our African pastor’s house. . . its’ roof missing!

The past hours had found me miles away on a pastoral visit to another leader’s home.

While the land of Kenya was no stranger to the occasional disturbances of nature (mild earth tremors along its ancient Rift Valley, floodings from torrential downpours), the thought of an Oklahoma-style tornado blowing in seemed quite remote.

Though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam. . God is our refuge and strength. Psalms 46:1-3 NIV

To my relief, I found my wife and our two little ones safe and unscathed in our still-in-tact dwelling.

I crossed the few meters over to Pastor Moseti’s place. Large remnants of twisted corrugated metal sheets and shredded lumber – the makings of his former rooftop – adorned the limbs of nearby Eucalyptus Trees. The pastor, who survived the horrific storm without a scratch, recounted, in measured disbelief, his up-close encounter.

As a deluge of rainfall and raucous winds assailed the mission station, William Moseti stood gazing out his front window.

“I was watching the roof of your own house over there”, he exclaimed. “It was lifting, then settling. . . lifting then settling, and I thought, surely that roof might get taken away!”

Suddenly, Moseti heard a great ripping and crashing above him. Able now in the aftermath of it all to relate his story from a place of safety, the pastor concluded with his trademark smile,

“And now I was quickly getting very wet.”

©2025 Jerry Lout                                               *GIANTS  https://shorturl.at/o9WxG

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Sign Of Spring

“You’re from the Sooner State, eh? Isn’t that called ‘Tornado Alley’?”

We Oklahomans have gotten used to being associated with such a dubious label. Not surprisingly so.

My wife and I got another up close and personal reminder a few weeks back.

We  had moved from our longtime residence of beautiful Tulsa to the lovely south-central town of Ada (growing expansion of family through one’s adult children carries a magnetic tug). The move remains a little bitter-sweet, as T-town has for a lot of years served as a special spot on our map to call home. Yet, we’re still in Okie-land, still citizens of the notorious Alley.

In the wee hours of our fourth morning settling into our new address, Ann and I began getting acquainted with our apartment’s little hallway. Crouching there in our “safe space” as tornado warning sirens blared, we rode out the minutes with reasonable calm.

A bit later the storm moved on and life resumed as normal. Sort of.

As dawn emerged and the day stretched forward, we and our fellow Ada-ites reflected thankfully that – while the town suffered significant structural damages – the community was spared any dire personal harm.

And then a curious revelation.

A couple days after the twister’s westward-to-eastward dance across town, we spotted a stationary metallic object poised upright near a young tree behind the apartment. It was a common kind of object, we realized. And, in a different circumstance and place, would have generated no cause for puzzlement.

The stop sign, fully intact – complete with sturdy support post – stood upright, freshly transplanted, half-hidden amidst immature branches of our young backyard tree.

While signposts of this design are universally known as alert mechanisms calling for keen and immediate attention – on this occasion, mere feet from our back door – the surprise drop-in guest did indeed give us pause!

And now (who knows where?) there likely sits at some town intersection, another, but a bit forlorn, red-and-white octagonal marker. Troubled by the abrupt absence of a fellow loyal guardian in the noble service of public safety.

©2025 Jerry Lout

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An Island Revisited

Irish pirates had kidnapped Patrick as his family was enjoying a holiday at the sea. He was just days away from celebrating his sixteenth birthday.*

Appealing in prayer to heaven during his six years in captivity laboring as a slave, Patrick met the Lord and readily yielded up his life. A dream alerting him that he would be rescued was followed by another dream, notifying him that a ship awaited him. The ship would bring him back to his homeland. Patrick set out toward the port and soon found himself aboard the vessel.

Patrick’s time back in Britain eventually drew to a close as a result of yet another dream. This dream featured a voice with clear Irish accent calling out,

“We beg you, come back and walk once more among us.”

His appeal to church leaders about returning to Ireland as a bearer of Christ’s love was met with sharp resistance. Everyone feared the barbaric Druids who ruled much of the island would come after Patrick and kill him. Responding to his heart’s prevailing conviction he set out on his own, and the saga of an island nation’s spiritual transformation was born.

Patrick’s years of fruitfulness – proclaiming Christ in his adopted Ireland – were nevertheless marked with intense opposition time and again. At least one attempt was made at finishing him off with poison. He writes,

“As every day arrives, I expect either sudden death or deception, or being taken back as a slave or some such other misfortune. But I fear none of these, since I look to the promise of heaven and have flung myself into the hands of the all-powerful God, who rules as Lord everywhere.”

So, Saint Patrick’s account, penned in his own Confessions, brings to us the gift of – as Paul Harvey would have said – the rest of the story.

©2025 Jerry Lout                                                 *The Real Story of St. Patrick – V.O.M.

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Slave Boy

The shock was mildly traumatic for a seven-year-old on that March morning. A gaggle of elementary children, rushing toward a handful of their unsuspecting classmates – myself included.

Eyes flashed in mischievous glee, small hands stretching our direction. Too late we discovered our necks and arms were targets. The chubby fingers of our young assailants had been poised to strike any person in their line of vision – those whose garments did not display the magic color green.

The inevitable pinch followed. “Ouch!”

That morning at Wilson Grade School I got rudely introduced to a curiously labeled holiday – Saint Patrick’s.

To the surprise of many (leprechaun folklore and emerald-tinted beer aside), the ancient account of the authentic Saint Pat of history yields elements of intrigue. Patrick’s story rallies the imagination, stirs emotions, and inspires.

Saint Patrick, oddly enough, was not himself Irish.

The 16-year-old of fourth-century Britain was kidnapped and whisked off to Ireland by a band of marauding invaders. Sold into slavery he labored for years as a herdsman. In prayer he turned to Christ. The spiritual discipline of prayer would come to mark the pilgrim forever.

The pages of Patrick’s autobiography, Confessions, disclose a surprising turn of events lying ahead for this shepherd-boy slave. A dream came to him one night. In the dream, a voice spoke to him,

“Soon you will be returning to your own country”. What could this mean?

©2025 Jerry Lout

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Salute to Maidens

(dear readers, thanks for kindly indulging a shout-out. We celebrate a granddaughter’s graduation and commissioning tomorrow, May 23, 2025, at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis. Well done, “amazing” Grace.)

Social media was abuzz a while back as myriads of accolades found their way to devices of all kinds, lavishing praise upon a host of individuals – daughters, wives, mothers, sisters, grandmothers. A nonstop flow of celebration spotlighted this distinctive sector of humanity occupying our planet.

Women.*

Which prompted me to reflect on a select list (not exhaustive by any means) of ladies who’ve especially affected my life from “back when”. The exercise gave rise to awakened feelings of gratitude.

*My country-girl mother, Thelma Christine Bay Lout, riding urban buses day after day across the busy metropolis of Tulsa, just to sit for hours at my bedside. Prayers accompanied her presence through those three months of my residency in Hillcrest Hospital’s Polio Ward. When specialists voiced no assurance that my paralyzed legs might ever again bear up my body’s weight, mom weathered the prognosis. Loving me. Interceding for me.

*The evening eighteen-year-old Alice Ann Barnes – sitting next to me beneath a Billings, Montana street lamp – pondered my request as I timidly asked her to become my wife. The marriage proposal included a fine-print detail I felt I should in fairness share, “You and I would likely be living overseas. Probably Africa.”

Ann Smiled (a positive sign?). Then responded,

“When I was nine-years-old I told my parents I was going to grow up and be a missionary in Africa”.

Ann’s ‘yes’ resulted in some daring moves. Leaving her Big Sky country, venturing to live in Oklahoma, Texas, then New York. Afterwards, it was Kenya and Tanzania. Our first child (Julie), then our second (Scott), and finally our thirdborn (Amy), each drew in their first baby breaths in a delivery room of Nairobi Hospital. In time – decades later – Ann would work as a Registered Nurse in a large medical center back again in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The facility’s name rang a bell. Hillcrest Hospital, whose original facility (same location), had once served as a place of shelter and care for the uniquely ill. Children and youth besieged by a virus called poliomyelitis.

*She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future. (The Proverbs Woman, Prov. 31:25)

©2025 Jerry Lout

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Interior Design

“Jerry, when are you going to stop apologizing for who you are not?”

My periodic coffee meetups with Dave had tooled along for a couple years’ when he delivered the gut-punch question. Straightforward as he was, I had not met with such terse language from my esteemed life coach friend. Now moving into my seventh decade of life on Planet Earth, the months going forward would witness to the truth that Dave’s provocative challenge came at a good moment.

Like many people afflicted with the self-questionings common to classic naval gazers, I had grown fairly adept at masking my personal insecurities. Being a person with something of a quick wit, I could without realizing it employ a periodic splash of comedic humor, which could in turn detract from my inbuilt fear of failure. Lighthearted levity, I would afterward see, can serve as a handy denial mechanism.

A curiosity stirred inside me about the Panera Bread friend seated across our table. What was it about Dave that got himself out of bed each morning? What fueled his relentless desire to help men – a lot of men by now – to move into life’s slow lane and think reflectively? Many of us gents, I came to realize could gain a thing or two from doses of down-to-earth wisdom.

Among the special toolbox instruments wielded by this retired airline industry professional was the tool of helping me uncover a short list of fundamental things that make me tick. For a good while I had carried an unspoken yearning to understand what it was that had been making me get out of bed each morning!

Your One Degree, states the website blurb, is a personalized, coach driven program helping you discover and implement your unique God-given Design.*

Dave’s question that day over coffee blew open a window, making way for a breeze of revelation to waft in. I had been much aware in a general sense that I, like all image-bearers, had been created on purpose, yes by design. These sessions with Dave Jewitt and the thing he had dubbed “Your One Degree” had been wakening a truth in me. I am invited to quite intentionally cooperate with the Divine in unleashing (even at this senior age) still further elements of life-giving juices. All this in the company of and under the administration of the Spirit. God’s truth-anchored Spirit.

I am now pretty much done apologizing for the person I am not.

Gems of life-shifting perspectives can emerge in varying kinds of settings. It seems that – amidst them at least – God carries a fondness for coffee shops.

©2025 Jerry Lout                                                                 *www.youronedegree.com

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Promising Prospect

Those surprise happenings that all of a sudden spring up in our lives. Such a moment came when Ann and I learned that our nephew Todd and his wife Karena were selected as backup singers for Andy Williams in his popular Branson show.

As special as this was, we grew happier still when word came of the debut of a blockbuster theatrical production in the same family-friendly entertainment center. Branson, Missouri nestles along the shores of Table Rock Lake in the glorious Ozark Mountains

Learning that Todd and Karena would be portraying a range of varying characters in scenes of The Promise – a robust contemporary musical depicting Jesus’ life – we reached out to some T.U. students for a special kind of road trip.

During one of these excursions as our van negotiated the scenic landscapes of Ozark Country, a young man – a father-to-be – broached the subjects of conscience and of faith. Mr. Ming displayed an intensity of emotion.

The child had been conceived at an inconvenient time. Their discussions over the unplanned pregnancy found the couple grappling over the pros and cons of a probable impending “procedure”.

 

Later on, after taking in The Promise production – a beautifully choreographed musical – and afterwards enjoying a nice chat with my “celebrity” nephew and niece, our group boarded the van for our return to Tulsa. Along the highway route, the earlier conversation resumed.

Mr. Ming, leaned forward from his place behind the driver’s seat, volleying question after question on the value and possible dignity of life. We spoke of the precious worth of each created person. Our back-and-forth dialogue ignited still more questions. Scripture was brought into play.

Through the days that followed Mr and Mrs. Ming and their unsettled minds were privately presented to heaven by believing friends.

Weeks passed. Months rolled by. Weighing their options in view of a freshly illumined conscience the couple made their call. And, when into the family circle the new little one entered the young parents pressed forward with deeper assurance than ever into their own infancy pilgrimage. Trust in God – author and guardian of life – was their new North Star.

©2025 Jerry Lout

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Fun Night

“It’s Friday, so tonight I’m off to the Fun Mosque!”

“Fun Mosque?”

Throughout my years I had never considered these words as linked. Would not have thought of the pair as a compatible couple. Now, here was my friend and ministry colleague, Terry – a knowing smile lighting his face – more than happy to address my puzzled expression.

“Yeah”, he chuckled, “I’ve taken to calling it that.”

“You probably know the place”, he went on, “the little mosque a few miles out where this group of nominal Muslims from (he mentioned a country) meet up every week. I’m friend to several of the guys. We have a fun time visiting over any number of things, including culture and faith. . . or no faith.”

My friendship with Terry got its’ launch in 2007 at a Panera Bread on 41st Street. He and his wife had served for years in the Middle East – responding to Jesus’ call to “make disciples of all nations”. Both are fluent in Arabic. Now – after a long, difficult but fruitful season overseas – they had settled back in Tulsa. Hearing of our campus work, Terry phoned. We arranged a meetup over coffee. He soon joined the staff. Our friend-and-co-worker relationship grew rich and deep over the years.

“Most of my ‘Fun-Mosque friends’”, Terry was now explaining, “have little use for religion of any kind.” He continued,

“Witnessing firsthand the heavy-handed way their country’s leaders have for years tried to impose their brand of Islam on the citizens it. . . well, it’s turned them off.” Terry sipped his coffee.

“Still, most all these guys are quite welcoming of new friends. They’re warm and engaging. They bring out food as we carry on visiting, joking, laughing, and sharing stories.

“And we talk serious things as well”, Terry went on after a pause.

“Occasionally, I get asked a question by one or two of the fun mosque guys about my faith. When that happens, I tend to share more about Jesus than about ‘Christianity’ as a formalized religion. This is a favorite time of the week for me, no question – sitting cross-legged there on the floor sipping hot tea with them,

“Fun.”

©2025 Jerry Lout