Lynn Taylor tells about his recovery from a car accident (which nearly derailed him from becoming a fighter pilot) and a heartfelt experience God had with him as he helped one of his sons.

Episode Discussion Points

• The incredible story of how he became a screenwriter and how his story is going to become a movie.

• The car accident that derailed his dream

• The miracle that happened for him to be released from the hospital so he and his fiance could still get married (in a full leg cast and in a wheelchair).

• How he was confident he would get back in shape, but if not it wasn’t going to be because he gave up.

• Lessons of patience when plans get delayed

• You need a team to support you in your life to help you achieve your dreams

• How he almost gave up on his dream during fighter pilot training due to sheer exhaustion, and the talk with his wife that kept him going.

• He believes life isn’t a test—it is more like a school. We are here to learn and grow.

• What Aristotle’s “golden mean” means to him

• How God looks at us as His children and His goals for us as His sons and daughters

• The transformative spiritual experience he had talking to his son one day when God taught him how he views all His children: with peace, compassion and love.

• Here is what he told his son, “I love you. Everything is going to be okay. Just don’t quit.”

• “You decide what goes on in your head and in your heart.”

• Let negative emotions flow through you and if you are stuck in an emotion like anger, you can ask God to help you get rid of it. He is always willing to take it.

• If you know you need to let something go, but are having a hard time, pray for the desire to let that feeling or emotion go as a baby step forward.

• In the midst of a POW training how he found a little bright spot and was able to pass a message of hope throughout his company by acting on it.

• “If you ever feel alone it is usually because you are looking inward, not outward.” Serve others, or allow them to serve you as needed.

• Serving and being served perpetuates love. God didn’t mean for us to live life alone.

• When life is like a hurricane, remember to “Be still and know that I am God.”

• God isn’t going to set you up to fail.

Some of my Favorite Quotes

• “The rough memories fall into shadow.”

• “As long as there was any chance at all, I was going to pursue it with every chance that I had.”

• “Life is like a gym. It is a mental, emotional, spiritual gym.”

• Your attitude may not influence your destination, but it definitely influences your journey.”

Connect with Lynn

• Website: https://lynnsense.com/

#tamarakanderson #storiesofhopeinhardtimes #podcast #hope #God #hardtimes #caraccident #recovery #fighterpilot #goals #dreams #resilience #children #love

Transcription

You can find the transcription of today's episode here:

Lynn  0:03 

One or two o'clock in the morning, and I was waiting for my turn to drive so I was asleep on the backseat. I woke up looking down the centerline of the highway. My first thought was, “This ain’t right.” My second thought was, “Ow.” My third thought was, “Where's Donna?”

 

Tamara Anderson  0:31 

Welcome to Stories of Hope in Hard Times, the show that explores how people endure and even thrive in difficult times, all with God's help. I'm your host, Tamara K. Anderson. Join me on a journey to find inspiring stories of hope and wisdom learned in life's hardest moments.

My guest today was born in Mexico, but raised in Arizona. While he was in college, he married his calculus tutor. That's pretty cool. Which proved to be a wise move as she helped him through even greater difficulties than calculus. After graduating from college with a degree in aerospace engineering, he joined the Air Force and became a fighter pilot, flying the A-10 Thunderbolt II, also known as the “Warthog.” After 10 years in the Air Force, he entered the civilian world, where he has changed careers six times. He now lives in Ogden, Utah with his wife of 28 years, close to his four sons. His hobbies include philosophy, writing, role playing games, and charity cosplay. I'm pleased to present Lynn Taylor. Lynn, are you ready to share your story of hope?

 

Lynn  1:45 

I am. Thank you.

 

Tamara Anderson  1:47 

Ah, well, I'm excited to have Lynn. He's been one of those people have wanted to have on the podcast for a couple years now.

 

Lynn  1:55 

Yeah, it’s been a couple years since we first met.

 

Tamara Anderson  1:57 

I finally tackled him and said, “You're doing this.” No, just kidding. But to break the ice, Lynn has a really interesting story about a screenplay that I thought would be fun to talk about today. So why don't you tell me your story about a screenplay?

 

Lynn  2:12 

So the way I ended up in this, I wrote a novel. I always wanted to write and I wrote the first draft of a novel. I didn't know what to do with it. Found a writing coach, and went to a writing conference. I like to be helpful. I don’t like sitting there, idle, and watching people work. There were some people bustling about. So I went to the lady running the conference, I said, “What can I do to help?” She's like, “Well, we don't really have anything.” And then a lady walked in the door right next to us, and she said, “Oh, actually, this is Cathy. Get her settled in and get her whatever she needs.” Okay. “Hi, Kathy. I'm Lynn. Here, there's a seat next to me. Come sit down. We can be friends for the next three days. Whatever you need, I'm happy to get for you.”

She didn't really need much. She was a little distracted, sending a text on the phone. She put her phone down and said, “He's got till Sunday to get back to me or I'm giving it to somebody else.” That's kind of an odd thing to say. “I don't mean to pry, but is everything okay?” She said, “Yeah, I just sent a screenplay to,” and she mentioned a rather prominent actor, who I had seen several of his movies. “When you say this actor, do you mean the guy that's been in this, and this, and this other thing?” “Yeah, that's the one.” “Oh. Who are you?” So we started talking, she had time now. She was a film producer. She was there looking for stories and books that might be good to turn into movies. My book was not anywhere close to that. But I was curious. I'm not a screenwriter. I'm a novelist. But I'm asking her questions because I love to learn about things. So she's talking about the process. Usually, somebody will write a script, and then they look for somebody to sponsor it. They look for funding, and then they go and get it made. She said, “But there's this one idea that's been out there for a while. They've got some money to make the movie, but they've just never really found the right script for it.” Okay, well, I'll bite. “What's the idea?” She said, “Well, they want to make a movie to the music of Air Supply.” I remember listening to Air Supply.

And again, I'm not really thinking of myself as a screenwriter. But the conference goes on and I can't get this thought out of my head. It sticks in there. Day one of the conference gets done. I've got an hour drive home and that's on my mind the whole drive home. So I get home and end up listening to air supply for an hour.

 

Tamara Anderson  4:40 

Singing to the oldies!

 

Lynn  4:43 

Kind of these old songs, and ideas start coming to me. I'm thinking kind of like Mamma Mia, they probably want something in a more contemporary setting. But I'm thinking like a period piece, like maybe Pride and Prejudice with maybe some Romeo and Juliet elements. I write some notes and then I finally go to bed. Get up the next day, and I'm asking Cathy a little bit more about this. I was thinking about this a little bit more, and asking questions, like, “Who's your market,” and things like that. Then I say, “Did they have any ideas in mind?” She said, “Well, they were thinking maybe a period piece, maybe something like Pride and Prejudice with some Romeo and Juliet elements.” You're kidding me. So I just dropped my pen on the counter and said, “Okay, I'll tell you what. When I get to a stopping point in my book, I'll give it a shot.” I don't know anything about screenwriting. But I can learn. I've learned other things in the past. So I got to a stopping point, and I did everything that I could to learn about screenwriting and took several months. I ended up writing a screenplay to the music of Air Supply and handed it off to her. She said, “I love it. I want to make it.” And then COVID hit. So it's kind of been on the shelf for a while. But now that things are picking up again, I actually got a call earlier this week that a couple other projects higher up the list look like they're gonna get made. Assuming all goes well, this might be made in a year or two.

 

Tamara Anderson  6:26 

And then I can say, “I know somebody famous.”

 

Lynn  6:29 

You can introduce me to them.

 

Tamara Anderson  6:33 

Oh, my gosh, this is so fun. So Lynn is just an amazing guy. He has lived a life and it hasn't been free from difficulty. In fact, you were approaching a very monumental event in your life when a tragedy happened.

 

Lynn  6:49 

Yes, Yeah, it was pretty significant. So I was in college. As you mentioned,I was going through this aerospace engineering degree, which was in and of itself difficult, because I should have been an English major. But this was my path to accomplish my dream of flying fighters in the Air Force, was getting an aerospace engineering degree. It's a long convoluted story, but I needed help with calculus. Math is not my thing.

 

Tamara Anderson  7:23 

Hey, we should bump on that, because it's not my thing, either.

 

Lynn  7:27 

But I realized that I had to get through this in order to accomplish my dream. So I needed help. I had a calculus tutor. She was amazing in many ways. So I took a couple years off of school, got back into school, she was there. We met beginning of September. We were engaged middle of October.

 

Tamara Anderson  7:52 

Oh, wow. How often were you hanging out?

 

Lynn  7:55 

It was daily. Well, we had classes together. We ended up going to church together. Everything in our lives, it was a small school, just kind of aligned, where we had to see each other every day. It was a happy thing. So yeah, it took me longer to figure it out than it did her. But anyway, so we got engaged middle of October, we wanted to get married in between semesters, which was in December. Wow. So we were going to school in Arizona. Her family is from North Carolina. So the plan was, in between semesters, finish our finals for the semester, hop in the car. There's another friend going with us, we're gonna drive back east, taking turns driving. So we got about 60 miles east of El Paso at about one or two o'clock in the morning, and I was waiting for my turn to drive. So I was asleep on the backseat. I woke up looking down the centerline of the highway. My first thought was, “Well, this ain't right.” My second thought was, “Ow.” My third thought was, “Where's Donna? Where's my wife?” Fortunately, she was right there. What had happened was, this was back before a whole lot of developments like the rumble strips on the side of the road and GPS and everything else. So the two of them in the front were trying to navigate, and in figuring out the exits and everything else, started to drift a little bit, and then realizing you're drifting, over corrected. I ended up getting thrown out of the car in a 75 mile an hour rollover.

 

Tamara Anderson  9:41 

Lynn! Ouch!

 

Lynn  9:43 

So prior to this, I had been on track. I was in good shape. My grades were doing pretty good. I was looking like I was I was going to achieve my dream, my childhood dream of being a pilot in the Air Force. Now, my body was pretty broken. My left knee was shattered. I was a bleeding mess on the highway. Fortunately, there were a couple of truck drivers that arrived. They just happened upon us pretty soon after that. They blocked it off and radioed for an ambulance. The closest ambulance was an hour away in El Paso. So I'm laying on the road. Side note, my fiancée is there. I know from my first aid training that I need to stay conscious. So I'm walking her through the questions that she has should ask me. “Okay, my name is, my birthday is.” I start running out of things to talk about and stay awake. The thought hits me, I'm like, “Oh, I might be going out on a limb here. But are we engaged?” “Yeah, we're supposed to get married next week.” I’m like, “Okay, I was afraid I just proposed.”

 

Tamara Anderson  10:58 

You bumped your head a little bit there.

 

Lynn  10:59 

Yeah, I still got some scars. Fortunately, the hair grew over. So the ambulance loads us up. It's an hour ride back. We get to El Paso. On the first turn, we realized they didn't secure my pallet to the ambulance and I slid off. Yeah, that hurt. We get there. Turns out my knee had been shattered. Coincidentally, the best person available to reconstruct my knee happened to be on call that night. I don't believe in coincidences.

 

Tamara  11:30

No I don’t either

 

Lynn 

Yeah. So all of that. There were several other, I want to call them minor miracles. But to me, they weren't very minor. Everything worked out, as far as my recovery. Part of it, they were unable to release me from the hospital because I had a fever. Also, coincidentally, I have an aunt and uncle who live in El Paso.

 

Tamara  11:57

Oh, that's a miracle.

 

Lynn  11:59

So they were able to take care of my friends, my fiancée and friend. He came in and brought somebody in, they gave me a blessing that I would be able to, you know, get better and be released from the hospital. They gave me that on that evening. The next morning, everything was fine, and I got released.

 

Tamara Anderson  12:22 

Are you kidding me?

 

Lynn  12:24

No.

 

Tamara  12:24

Even your knee?

 

Lynn  12:25 

Oh, no, no, sorry. Sorry. I was still in a full leg cast. But like the fever was gone. All of the checkboxes that the medical folks insisted had to be okay for me to be released from the hospital. Everything, all of the like the fever, and all of the other indicators cleared up overnight. I was released the next morning. Wow. So I stayed with my aunt and uncle for a day, then flew back to Arizona, and then we flew out to North Carolina. Actually, I think we flew straight to D.C. I hadn't even met her family.

 

Tamara Anderson  12:56 

Did you still get married on the same day?

 

Lynn  12:58 

We got we got married right on schedule. Full leg cast, in a wheelchair. We weren't gonna wait another semester. We already waited long enough.

 

Tamara Anderson  13:13 

That is crazy.

 

Lynn  13:14 

But that started a long process of physical therapy and rehabilitation to get back into enough shape to qualify to fly for the Air Force. That was a long road.

 

Tamara Anderson  13:28 

Now let me ask you, because sometimes when we hit road bumps like this we have like an inner battle inside like, “Oh, this is too hard. Maybe I shouldn't do it.” Did you ever doubt that idea, that dream? Did you want to give up? Were you discouraged ever?

 

Lynn  13:51 

Probably, but I don't remember. A lot of times, the rough memories kind of fall into shadow. The bright ones… I mean, some things that do come into my mind are when I'm going across campus, on crutches, and my foot hits an uneven spot a pavement. I've got this pain that shoots up my leg. But I think that what comes back to me more than anything is just determination. As long as there was any chance at all, I was going to pursue it with everything that I had. I was confident that things were going to work out, and if not, that's okay. But it's not going to be because I gave up. If it's not going to happen, it's going to be because somebody else tells me, “Sorry, you ran a good race, but it's just not going to happen.” It’s not going to be because I decided I didn't want it.

 

Tamara Anderson  14:55 

Right. Yeah, that makes sense. Wow. That's powerful. Tell me what that rehab looked like. I mean, obviously, it wasn't easy.

 

Lynn  15:07 

No, it wasn't. Actually, fortunately I had a supportive ROTC detachment. They let me delay my field training a year, because I was in no shape to go. The results of field training play into the whole scoring system, there's a whole lot, your physical fitness test, all of those things. My endurance was never quite the same after that. But I think the determination that I had, the commitment and the drive had to factor into the commander's recommendations on whether or not I would be a good fit for that career field. Because there are a lot of factors. It's not just physical fitness. It's also grades, which, again, that calculus tutor helped immensely on. She also helped me through a lot of the rest of this. She helped to support me in areas where I couldn't cover everything, and allowed me to focus on what I had to do. So a lot of the, you know, the push-ups, and sit ups, and a mile and a half run, and 600 yard dash, and all these different things. I just had to keep improving, and improving, and improving until I hit those standards, where I was accomplishing what I needed to do to qualify. So it was a lot of pain, a lot of physical pain. But you just need to push through it. In saying that, I should clarify that it's not at the point of injuring myself again. But when your leg is immobilized, and in full leg cast for several weeks, the muscles atrophy and the joints kind of freeze up, and it's painful to restore that strength and flexibility.

 

Tamara Anderson  16:54 

Yeah. So I'm hearing a couple of key components that you seem to be kind of talking around of lessons learned. One is patience. Some things just take time. They do. And another one I'm hearing is that you need to allow other people in your life to help you sometimes to achieve big milestones.

 

Lynn  17:18 

Absolutely. I can't think of any really worthwhile achievement in history that did not involve someone else in some way, shape, or form. Whether it's through a mentor, or encouragement, even just a supplier of materials for you to build what it is you're going to build. I heard something that stuck with me years and years ago, that to truly make an apple pie from scratch, you first have to create an apple.

 

Tamara Anderson  17:53 

That's a good point.

 

Lynn  17:55 

So with that, have a team. It is just more fun with a team anyway, because you get to share in that joy of achievement with the team and whatever role they fill. It's never fun to celebrate alone.

 

Tamara Anderson  18:13 

No, you're right. It's not. Now you’ve got to finish the story. Did you make it? Obviously.

 

Lynn  18:20 

I did. I did. Yes. So I I'm always a little hesitant to mention this because it feels a little bit like bragging. I’ve got to acknowledge, it is an honor. So I was selected, not only for pilot training, I was selected for a course called the Euro NATO Joint Jet Pilot Program. It’s not just pilot training, but it's where a lot of our European and NATO allies also come to this base in the United States for training. This particular training has more of a fighter pilot focus to it. You get a higher percentage of getting into a fighter through this program. It's very selective to get in to begin with. So I was able to go through that program, which was a wonderful experience and probably one of the biggest challenges in my life. I almost quit, actually. Here I was, on track for my lifelong dream. They designed it to be challenging, part of it out of necessity, because you've got all these different classes going through at the same time. Sometimes you have to do night flying and sometimes day flying. So they would transition between early week and late week, early week, late week, like every week. So your circadian rhythms are always getting messed up. They've got constant testing and quizzing you on the fly, and if you mess anything up, you don't fly that day. It's a really grueling training program that lasts for a year. You've got six months in one airplane, and then you transition into the next one for another six months. So you're learning a whole other aircraft in that second half.

We had an infant born just before this. It was our second kid. So I'm a husband and father going through fighter pilot training. My wife is just doing an amazing job. But she needs to sleep on occasion, too. So I remember, I was sitting on the floor, in the dark, in the living room, three o'clock in the morning, cradling a crying infant in my arms. I am physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. I just start crying. That's all I can do. I've got nothing left. I'm thinking, “Okay, I don't I don't think I can do this. I'm done.” So I talked to my wife about it. The next day, I said, “I don't think I can keep this up.” She looked me in the eye, and she said, “You're not quitting. I know it's hard. I know it's hard. But you'll get through this. Just keep doing the best that you can. You wanted this your whole life. You can't quit.” So with that encouragement, I was like, “Well, okay.” She took that option off the table. She didn't validate my desire to quit. So with her encouragement, I kept going. I ended up, obviously making it through that. I'm very grateful for that.

So when I say that she's gotten me through a lot of other things, since calculus, pilot training was harder than calculus. I didn't think anything was harder than calculus. But I made it through. And sure enough, just like going to school doesn't really reflect real life, pilot training didn't really reflect what being an actual fighter squadron was. It was a lot harder, with good reason. Because I mean, you go to war. It's a very demanding sort of a schedule. They’ve got to make sure that the hardest thing you've ever done is go through training, because you don't want to get through training and then run into the hardest thing you've ever done and find out when they really need you to perform the you can't do it. So I totally understand and appreciate all of that. They prepare you really, really well. You're putting these people in charge of multimillion dollar pieces of equipment that can be incredibly destructive if you don't use them properly. So I ended up going through pilot training, and ended up in the A-10. I didn't know it at the time, but it ended up being the perfect fit for me. Every different flying community has their own personality, and it just was a perfect fit. I loved it.

 

Tamara Anderson  22:51 

Yay. So it was worth it in the end?

 

Lynn  22:55 

Oh yes, absolutely was. I'm grateful for the support that I had, especially for my wife and her getting me through that. But there were a lot of other people, that even though it seems like they're pressuring you, and making life hard, they also want you to succeed. They just want it. Sometimes I think that's kind of what life is. We've got this perspective that, you know, life is a test. I, personally, don't think life is a test so much as a school, that we're not here to be tested and judged. We're here to learn and grow. It's kind of hard sometimes, by design. Because if it was a resort situation all the time, where would the growth be? We wouldn't come out on the end of this experience better, and stronger, and more valuable.

 

Tamara Anderson  23:49 

Yeah, no, that's, that's absolutely true. I remember when I was a young parent, wishing that I could kind of put a bubble around my kids and prevent any of these hard things from happening to them that happened to me growing up. The longer I've been a parent, an the, I guess, perspective, the longer I've had this perspective, I've realized I shouldn't want to shield my kids from every hard thing, because if I do, how will they ever grow?

 

Lynn  24:21 

Exactly. I probably didn't use the exact right word. I said, “Makes us more valuable.” I mean, we are, regardless of our skills and capabilities. We are all immensely valuable, incalculable value of each individual human being, but we become, just better as we improve in our skills and everything else. Like you said, if we shield our kids, we are depriving them of that opportunity for growth. Now, at the same time, one of my heroes is Aristotle. He's got this philosophy known as the golden mean, where the ideal lies in between the two extremes. So you've got to use wisdom and judgment in all things. I mean, you don't want your kids to, like, wander into the pool and drown. But you want them to learn how to swim. To learn how to swim, they've got to be exposed to the potential of drowning. You do it in a way that minimizes the risk, but you don't shield them completely.

 

Tamara Anderson  25:31 

Yeah. You know what's interesting? Here's a question I'm just going to throw at you. Do you think God looks at us the same way as we look at our kids? Like He wants us to grow? Maybe, sometimes we feel like we've been thrown in the pool, and we were drowning a little bit, you know? Yeah. But I don't know, what do you think?

 

Lynn  25:53 

Absolutely. Why else would we be here? I mean, I don't see us as like an ant farm, that He's just like, “Oh, wow, let's see what happens.” We're here for a purpose. Sometimes we think that's like a narrow purpose. I tend to think there may be some specific things that would be good for us to achieve. But I think the overarching purpose is for us to just gain experience, and learn, and grow, and be better, and learn how to make good decisions, and learn how to love each other, and persevere through hard things. We, by design, don't have the full view of why we're going through all of this. Like in pilot training, there's some of the things that they would have us do, and at the time, like, this makes no sense. Why are we doing this? Well, they've been doing this training a while, they understand why they're doing this. Once you get into the real world, and you get operational, you can look back and go, “Oh, now I understand. Now I see why they put us through that exact training, because I'm using it now.” And I have to think that in the hereafter, everything here is for our benefit. We just need to do our best to learn and grow with everything that comes at us. As long as we keep moving forward, as long as we don't quit, and we don't give up on ourselves, we will grow in whatever way we're supposed to.

 

Tamara Anderson  27:36 

Wow, that's powerful. Thank you for sharing that. We're going to take a quick break, but when we get back, Lynn is going to share with us a really interesting experience he had with one of his children, that taught him a great perspective on how God looks at us. Stay tuned.

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And we're back. I've been talking to Lynn Taylor about some really crazy experiences he had in his life, where he was trying to reach his dream of becoming an Air Force fighter pilot. It kind of got crushed and delayed because of a car accident that he was in, and the lessons he learned along the way. Now we're going to transition into a different topic. We were talking before we started recording the podcast a little bit about an experience you had with one of your children that taught you a really godlike perspective of how God sees. Would you mind sharing?

 

Lynn  30:02 

Yeah, I can share that. It's very personal, and you'll understand as I share, why that is. So I've had two, I would say, transformative spiritual experiences in my life. So the second one, and this is actually where a lot of things I just mentioned, the understanding of that came from, from this experience. So I have four boys. I've developed a really good relationship with them where I feel like they can come and talk to me about anything. And they have, which is why I feel comfortable saying that. But we also had a little bit of a code of when they needed to talk about some heavy subject. They’d say, “Hey, can we go in your office and talk?” So it's a closed door, it's just us, nobody's going to overhear, and nothing that is said in there goes to anybody else. I'll tell you about my experience in this. So he says this, and we've talked about things before. I know exactly what it is he's going to say. My first response was frustration. What I wanted to say was, “Are you kidding me? Again? What is wrong with you? Why is this still an issue?” But I knew that was the wrong answer. I didn't know what the right answer was. I felt kind of helpless and powerless in that moment, to overcome. I'm going to damage our relationship with the words that are in my head right now. So it's maybe 30 steps to my office. So we stand up, we start walking, and I start praying. Now he's ahead of me and I say, “Heavenly Father, I'm going to mess this up. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say. But I know what is in me right now is the wrong answer.” Then I asked the question. I said, “Please show me how you would handle this.”

And He did. I asked that question, and in that moment, all of that frustration, and anger, and just all of those negative emotions just washed out of me. I know it wasn't me, because I didn't have the capability in that moment to do that. That all went away. It was replaced by compassion and love. So I'm looking at my son walking ahead of me. All I have for him is peace, understanding, and love. Whatever he's about to say, that's all that's there. So that was the first 10 steps, and the next 10 steps, it hits me. I'm like, “Oh, my goodness, this is how you've been dealing with me my whole life.” I took full advantage of being a teenager. I had some things that I would not be surprised if my parents had that same emotional response to me when I was a teenager. But I understood that God had this same love, and patience, and compassion for me, with everything that I had done, that I felt. I had resolved all of it. But even then, in the moment when that was happening, He still saw me that way. Then, the last 10 steps into my office, I realized it, then everything opened up and I was like, “Oh my goodness, this is how you see everybody. Everybody from the best person to the absolute worst person who has ever walked the earth, you have this exact same unbounded compassion and love for them.” And it changed my world. Because now I had a glimpse of seeing everybody else that same way. Not that I mastered it, but it changed something inside of me where there was no going back. So I still get frustrated with people on occasion. I'm still very human in that regard. But it's become a lot easier for me to just remember that moment, and remember that, “Okay. I want to see you the way our mutual Father in Heaven sees you.” Sometimes it's a bit of reminder and I still have to go back to that place, but that compassion is there, that love is there.

So I sit down with my son. I just tell him, “Okay, tell me what's on your mind.” He just lets it all out. He's in pain, and he's struggling with things. Gets it all out. I just look him in the eye and say, “Thank you for letting me know. Here's what I want you to know. I love you. It's gonna be okay. Just don't quit.” Because that is exactly what God would have told him in that moment. “I love you. Everything's gonna be okay. Just don't quit.”

 

Tamara Anderson  35:29 

Wow. There's some powerful life lessons there. It seems to repeat throughout your life, you know, don't quit. You’re loved. You have people around you that love you, when you were younger and gotten the accident, and now it's coming full circle when you learn that's how God, not only views you, but your son and teaching him that same core concept. Wow. That's powerful. That's really, really powerful.

 

Lynn  36:02

I'm very grateful for that experience. It's what I needed. It's helped me many times since then.

 

Tamara Anderson  36:10 

Tthat's such a powerful life lesson. What other life lessons have you learned?

 

Lynn  36:16 

Well, some of the other things that I live by, they're still trials, they're still challenges, it's just part of life. You just kind of accept that that's gonna come and just decide how you're going to deal with those. So one of the things that I've concluded is that you decide what goes on in your head and in your heart. It may not be easy to keep that inner peace, but it's just like a muscle that you can exercise it and make it stronger. So instead of living in the anger, the rage, or whatever those negative emotions are, you can you still feel them. You allow yourself to experience those, but you don't hold them. You just let them flow through.

 

Tamara Anderson  37:01 

Now, you applied this principle of praying to God, ask for help. I've actually done that before, when I felt really, really angry inside. Sometimes it was with kids, and sometimes also other people. But I've actually prayed and it does work. “God, I don't want to feel this way anymore, but I can't help that this is what I’m feeling. Can you help me get rid of it?” He does.

 

Lynn  37:27 

He does. What I found though, one of the tricks, is if you ever asked for help getting rid of that, and it doesn't go away, take a look to see if you're gripping tighter. Because if you're offering it up and saying, “Here, take this.” Yeah, He'll take it. Unless you're clenching onto it really tight.

 

Tamara Anderson  37:50 

I really don't want to get rid of it. Right? Yeah, I want you to take it, but I don't want to give it up.

 

Lynn  37:56 

Yeah, because He’s not going to force it away from you. But if you seriously, you're like, “Hey, I really want to be rid of this,” it'll go away. Like that muscle, it might take some practice. It might not go away as quick as you want. But the more you practice that, the quicker it'll go.

 

Tamara Anderson  38:16 

You know, this reminds me of a time in my life when I learned a key principle. I can't remember what it was I was supposed to pray for. I think it was I needed to forgive somebody but had no desire to forgive them. You know, I know I'm supposed to do. I remember, it finally dawned on me that I can't pray that I'll forgive them. I can maybe pray for the first baby step, which was for God to give me the desire to forgive. Yes. So sometimes you have to, if you can't pray for the one thing, maybe break it down into baby steps. Maybe, “God, give me the desire to do that next step.” Sometimes you have to break it down into smaller if you're gripping on too hard, right?

 

Lynn  38:59 

Oh, yeah. That's a brilliant approach. It really is, because it is a process. And it's not always an easy process.

 

Tamara Anderson  39:08 

Yeah. So would you apply the same principle say, because you were talking about attitude. Do you talk to God about how you want your attitude to be? How do you do that?

 

Lynn  39:24 

So I get an idea in my mind of the kind of person I want to be. I think, “Okay, if I want to be that type of person, what do I need to do? How do I view things? And this is where studying, not only in scriptures, but philosophy, I mentioned Aristotle, things like that. There are a lot of brilliant thinkers who share some really insightful perspectives on problems, and challenges, and how to deal with things. So there's a lot of things, both in scripture and just thinkers in the world. I think if you go and look at philosophers, throughout history, prominent folks, there are some really, really wise words on how to deal with struggles, a lot of Stoic philosophers in particular. Marcus Aurelius has got some great works out there. He focused on death a lot, but also a lot of trials and things like that. Basically, the perspective is really what makes the difference as you're going through trials. If you think, “Woe is me,” well, then yeah, you're gonna be miserable about it. But if you're looking at it more as an opportunity for personal growth, and a chance to flex your muscles, because like, when you go to the gym, you expect it to be challenging. You don't go to the gym for a spa experience. So if you go to the gym expecting a spa experience, you're really in the wrong place.

Life is like a gym. It's a mental, emotional, spiritual gym. So when the inevitable challenges come, don't kick against them, just ride with them. It's like, “Okay, well, I will overcome this too. Let's just get through it as quick as we can.” Your attitude may not influence your destination, but it definitely influences the journey. I like having fun on my journeys.

So going through training, one of the trainings you go through is survival, evasion, resistance, and escape training called SERE training. Part of that is you get trained as a prisoner of war. Now, a lot of it's classified. I can't really talk about a lot of it. But there's a piece that I can probably share. So being a prisoner of war, it's a miserable experience, as you might imagine, and the training is really, really good. I'm glad I never have to go through it again. But at one point, they've got all of us where we're all lined up. We can't see anything. We're blindfolded, too. It's a big part of it. But they've got us all with our hands on the shoulders of the person in front of us, and keep us all in an orderly line. There's some obnoxious music, if you can call it that, being played, and it's all designed to just disorient and everything else you can imagine. So we're standing there in line. I don't even know how many days we've been in this training. It's just miserable. But I notice on what would almost pass for music, there's a little bit of a rhythm to it. So I got my hands on the shoulders, the person in front of me. Can't see anybody. I don't know who this is. I start pulsing my fingers in time with the rhythm, sort of just trying to let him know, “Hey, we're in this together. I'm with you.” I’m saying, “I see you,” even though I can't see. But we just kind of send them a little subtle message of, “Hey, you know what, it's going to be okay. You're not alone.”

So the training is all done. We're in our debrief, where we're all kind of talking about what we learned and everything else. Somebody says, “There's one partner in the training, somebody started doing this thing on my shoulders.” Somebody else was like, “Yeah, that happened to me, too.” Somebody else says, “Yeah, the same thing.” What ended up happening, because it was the person behind me, I was kind of moving my shoulders a little bit too with them. It was like a conga line, the whole line ended up doing this. This message got passed along throughout the whole line. It brightened everybody's day. I had no idea. I was just doing what I could in the moment and ended up transforming the experience enough, they remember that out of everything else. So yeah, even in the depths of a miserable experience, if you choose to see a bright spot and do something fun with it, it can make it just a little bit nicer.

 

Tamara Anderson  44:30 

And it can impact, not only you, but those around you as well.

 

Lynn  44:36

And you don't know how far that will ripple?

 

Tamara Anderson  4:38

No, you don't. All the way up the line.

 

Lynn  44:41 

All the way up and down the line.

 

Tamara Anderson  44:44 

That is powerful.

 

Lynn  44:45 

And one of the things that we mentioned before about how you're never really alone. I found that if you ever feel alone, it's because you're looking inward instead of outward. I mean, depression is a real thing. I've experienced that. I understand that in the depths of depression that you need more help to get out of that, yes. But we're talking just generally, it's possible to be miserable and unhappy. But in many times, in many cases, it's by choice, that you haven't chosen to reach out of yourself and ask for help and have somebody help brighten your day. You're kind of, “Woe is me.” When I say, “Look towards somebody else,” one of two ways I found is providing service to somebody else. It’s a great way to feel better about yourself. There's a whole lot of psychology involved in that one. But also, if you need help, let somebody know you need help. Because they're living their own life and dealing with their own struggles. Give them an opportunity to feel good about helping somebody else as well. We are all in this together. Life is not meant to be lived alone.

 

Tamara Anderson  46:09 

No, you’re absolutely right on that. That's powerful. Thank you. I 100% agree. I learned that the hard way, too. I was in a car accident once, too. I learned the hard way that I had to humble myself and let people serve me. But the fascinating thing to me that I learned through that experience was I learned to love the people that served me so much. Because I couldn't do anything at the time. I learned that as you serve others, it's a cycle of love. The person serving feels love, they love the person they're serving, and the person who's receiving the service can also feel love. So I think God meant for us to love and serve one another, and kind of be His hands here on Earth. Kind of going back to your wife being your helper in calculus, and then as you're recovering from your accident, you know, that it just amplified your love.

 

Lynn  47:11 

Absolutely. I think many times we get stuck in this and call it a cultural paradigm of being self-sufficient, and, “I can do this. I don't need help.” But what a selfish way to live. Because you enjoy helping other people. Why would you deprive them of the opportunity of helping somebody else, especially somebody they love? Because there's so many people that love you. Whoever you are, you're loved. Develop those relationships. Gi\ve people an opportunity to serve the person that they love. Yeah, because that just strengthens bonds, and creates such rich experiences in somebody's life. Why would you deprive somebody of that?

 

Tamara Anderson  47:52 

Yeah, no, I love that. That's beautiful. Now has there been a Bible verse that has become particularly meaningful to you, as you have gone through your ups and downs?

 

Lynn  48:05 

One that I really, really like, and there's lots that I like, but one in particular, I like it because it also ties into a hymn that's probably the most meaningful hymn to me. But Psalm 46:10, just the first part of that. It says, “Be still and know that I am God.” Because life can be tempestuous. It can be rough, and busy, and everything else. Usually, when everything gets all hectic and crazy, which can happen at any time, sometimes that happened in flying, but like in family relationships, and in work, and everything else, there's plenty of opportunity for things to just be chaotic. At those times, something that helps me to ground and come back to kind of the eye of the hurricane where there's that peace is just, “Be still and know that I am God.” He's got this. This goes back to that experience with my son, that whatever happens, He knows you. He loves you unconditionally. Everything is going to work out okay in the end, because He's got you, and He would not put his children in a situation, like we talked about before, they’ve got to learn and grow. But you're not going to set them up to fail, right? You're going to set up every single one of them to succeed, whatever way that looks like, even if they in the moment feel like, “Oh, this is going to fail.” Trust that He's got it and He has your best interests at heart. Whatever that looks like. We may not know what that looks like. But when it's all said and done, it's going to be okay.

 

Tamara Anderson  49:46 

Yeah. Someday I'll understand. I got that as an answer once when I was praying, too. “Someday you’ll understand.” I might want to understand now, but sometimes we have to wait for the perspective, right?

 

Lynn  49:59 

Oh, absolutely, because we haven't grown into that yet. Yeah, that is over the horizon. We just got to keep walking

 

Tamara Anderson  50:04 

Trust that I can see that. 20 years down the road, you'll be glad this happened. But I’m not very glad right now.

 

Lynn  50:09 

Yeah, there's a bit of that, which I think also was by design. Because if we understood the answer, if you had the answer key while we're working on the problem, we would never learn how to work the problem.

 

Tamara Anderson  50:26 

That's true. It's further growth. Yeah, that's awesome.

 

Lynn  50:30 

Another calculus reference.

 

Tamara Anderson  50:33 

I guess you learned a little something there. Yeah. That's awesome. Now Lynn, tell us what you got in the works and how we can keep tabs with you and connect with you.

 

Lynn  50:46 

Oh, wow. Okay, well. So right now, I'm doing a bit of writing. I've got, so there's the screenplay that we mentioned, I've got another one in the works that I'm really excited about. I hope it gets made. There's a whole lot of pieces in the screenwriting world.

 

Tamara Anderson  51:02 

If you would like to connect with Lynn, and learn more about his projects, you can find him at lynnsense.com. So, Lynn, this has been so, so amazing. There are people out there who are really struggling right now. What words of advice would you leave them with as we close this episode?

 

Lynn  51:29 

Oh, wow. The words I think that come to mind. Most are you are not alone. If you feel alone, you need to reach out. You need to look for people to serve and look for people. You can pray for that and say, “Hey, help me identify the people that will help me through. I need people I can connect with, people who understand me.” Realize you are not alone. Second of all, just don't quit. Just keep going through whatever. Actually just saw a quote, just this morning that comes to mind, from a cowboy book. It said, “If you find yourself riding through hell, keep riding.” So don't quit. Look for people to share the journey with you, that bring joy in your journey. Share that with them. And then just keep going.

 

Tamara Anderson  52:32 

Hey, thanks so much for listening to today's show. If you like what you heard, subscribe so you can get your weekly dose of powerful stories of hope. I know there are many of you out there who are going through a hard time, and I hope you found useful things that you can apply to your own life in today's podcast. If you'd like to access the show notes of today's show, please visit my website, storiesofhopepodcast.com. There you will find a summary of today's show, the transcript, and one of my favorite takeaways. You know, if someone kept coming to mind during today's episode, perhaps that means that you should share this episode with them. Maybe there was a story shared, or quote, or a scripture verse that they really, really need to hear. So go ahead and share this podcast. May God bless you, especially if you're struggling, with hope to carry on, and the strength to keep going when things get tough. Remember to walk with Christ and He will help you bear the burden. And above all else, remember God loves you.

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