How We Survived Grief and Tradegy.....
After losing my first wife Diane to breast cancer and contemplating suicide in 2001, I ventured to Dallas, Texas for the winter. At a Valentine’s day party in 2002 I noticed a very attractive lady as she approached the table I was seated at with several other people. She asked if anyone was sitting in a seat near me. I jokingly replied you are! She and her two lady friends then sat down at the table with us.

I learned that her name was Lanita and that she was originally from a town in East Texas called Palestine. As we talked that evening I told her about my wife’s death a few months earlier. I was still grieving Diane’s loss and somehow felt that I was the only one who had experienced such pain. I soon learned that Lanita had gone through tremendous grief in her life as well.

 When she was in her early twenties she and her husband Steve Ewers lost their first child Stephen Jr. in death when he was only 4 days old. Over the next few years she and Steve had 4 other children. They were a prosperous, happy young family. Steve had a good job and was a great father who provided well for his family. Then at a summer outing when Lanita was 29 years old tragedy struck their family again. Sadly her husband and childhood sweetheart Steve died in a boating accident as Lanita and her children looked on.

The trauma and pain for Lanita and the children was monumental. Lanita and the children went to counseling. But there was little time for grieving for Lanita. She now had four children to care for on her own and her daughter Jaynna was very ill.  Jaynna was born with severe digestive problems. Her stomach, intestines and bladder didn’t function. Most children with this disease died from malnutrition or infection. Lanita was her daughter’s caregiver. She loved and nurtured her as well as any mother could. A year and a half later Lanita and her children would visit the cemetery again to bury little 2 year old Jaynna after she died and went home to be with the Lord.

Amazingly, several years later she was engaged to be married when she learned that her fiancée was an alcoholic. When she saw that he wasn’t going to change she broke off the engagement. That very day her former fiancée shot himself to death. One can only imagine the shock, pain and emotional upheaval this created for her and her children Jennifer, Joseph and Julie.

 Through the passage of time there has been emotional healing for Lanita. She and I dated for five months and  married in the summer of 2002. Life isn’t perfect for us but we are happy and thankful for each other. We feel the Lord has led us to be an encouragement to others who have been knocked down by life. That’s one of the reasons I wrote Fight The Good Fight.

 We want you to know that life can be enjoyable again even after great heartache and pain in your life. Someone once said. “When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.” And Sir Winston Churchill said. “If you are going through hell, keep going.” In Fight The Good Fight, I use the illustration of a boxer I managed in 1985.  Darryl “Fast Fists” Fuller was knocked down in the very first round of his Continental of America’s championship bout. It was embarrassing and painful for Darryl to get knocked down in a televised fight. Had he stayed down he would have never known the exhilaration of getting up and winning a championship. But he got up and continued to fight and won the championship with an 11th round technical knockout over Kel Robin.

Many times our greatest accomplishments in life come after we’ve been knocked down. Failure isn’t getting knocked down. We all get knocked down. Failure is not getting up. You down drown by falling in the water. You drown by not getting up. The great heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey said. “A champion is someone who gets up even when he can’t.

Our message to you is that as long as you have breath you can still do something positive about your circumstances. Don't quit, don’t throw in the towel, keep going, God isn’t through with you yet. Your greatest accomplishments can still be ahead of you.