Sunday night church services used to be as common as Wonder Bread in America. Altars were common, too. I remember the solid walnut altars—dark, rich, brown—one on the left and one on the right at the front of the sanctuary.

Standing in front of the large sign, I had to laugh out loud. And I have to admit that my laughter was just a tad cynical.

Because the lights in the operating room were so bright, I squinted. Two nurses, one on my left and the other on my right, were watching over me. Both were pleasant, friendly and busy. The anesthesiologist was cracking jokes as he stood behind the nurse on my left.

When each of our five children were around ten months old, they would point with their tiny forefingers and say, “What’s that?” Prompted by their curiosity, those were some of the first words they ever put together.

Some people say I am “over saved.”

Too much Jesus they say. Well, if they only knew.

In 1979 Van Halen’s hit, “Runnin’ with the Devil,” was my theme song. Deliverance along the road of salvation took time, because I didn’t know what I was stuck in—or what was stuck in me.

City buses pass constantly through the German Colony in Jerusalem. Mom and I boarded one for the ten-minute ride to her office at Bridges for Peace, a Christian ministry helping Jewish people return home to Israel.

When I was seven years old, I liked to watch a futuristic cartoon character named George Jetson and his wife, Jane, on our old black-and-white TV. They had a robot maid named Rosie, which was pretty cool, but it was also amazing to see George and Jane talk to their son Elroy—and even George’s boss, Mr. Spacely—on a video phone. This was a piece of hardware that allowed them to actually see and speak to people in other locations. Back in 1962, that was a pretty wild idea—the stuff of some far-future society, where everyone lives in little Space Needles.

The buzzing chatter around the rodeo arena went still. Everything slowed down except my heart rate. All I could hear was the leather creaking in the saddle and a slight jingle as I gently tugged on the big bay horse’s reins and backed him into the chute.

When I was in my teens, our low-profile part of the world had a couple of AM stations available for our musical enjoyment. One was country-western, and the other contemporary rock. Our high school piped in the rock station during lunch, much to the student body glee.

Even the switchbacks are lung-sucking steep on Mickinnick Trail. But the views and vistas looking East over Lake Pend Oreille are so breathtakingly beautiful, it’s worth every strenuous step. Or at least—that’s what Nancy and I kept telling ourselves as we labored up the three-mile route.