"Miracle Boat" Book Release Coming in Summer 2022

 

I have written Miracle Boat which is a Christian fiction book to be released by Ambassador

International - August 2022. It is a story of Dalton Russell who is in a vice grip of grief over

two suicidal deaths of loved ones in his life - Dalton's dad and his best friend.  He longs

to have one more conversation with them to tell him how much they mean to him and toanswer the many questions of what led to their demise.  Dalton receives a gift

from the grave - his best friend's fishing boat which he and his family restore to

running condition.  

 

Dalton takes the boat out on the lake and begins to receive heavenly visits from

loved ones who have crossed over into the spirit realm.  His wish is fulfilled and

he receives the answers he longs for to bring closure to the deaths of his loved

ones. Then, Dalton takes others out in the miracle boat and they receive

heavenly visits from their loved ones.  All of these experiences help to lift Dalton

out of his grief of depression, restore his family life, reignites his professional life

and provides a spiritual gift to those who experience a moment with the miracle boat.

 

It is very typical that an author’s first book of fiction tends to be autobiographical. 

John Grisham’s A Time to Kill is one of the best examples, probably because he

and I are graduates of Mississippi State University.  

 

I am a survior of several suicides in my life.  My dad took his life when I was 13

years old.  Daddy was bi-polar.  Daddy and I fished together on Guntersville Lake

one week prior to his death.  That was the last father and son experience that we had.  

 

A month after Daddy's death, I met Mike Williams who went on to become a ministerial

mentor to me as well as one of my closest friends and best fishing buddy.  I met Mike

at Weatherly Heights Baptist Church in a hallway behind the sanctuary while working

on an Eagle Scout project with my friend Mark Barnett.  Mike grinned broadly and shook

my hand, said, “It’s so nice to meet you Dean.” and he kept shaking my hand.  From

there a friendship was born that would lead to us sharing our love for fishing, boats and

being near a body of water.

 

Six days after I turned 40 years old, Mike took his life after battling depression.  I saw

the years of Daddy’s battle with depression.  I was not aware of Mike’s battle.  Missing

my dad and Mike inspired me to write Miracle Boat.  

 

After years of talking with people who were grief stricken over the death of loved ones,

I heard a common theme as nearly all of them wish they could have one more

conversation with their loved one - a real 2-way back and forth conversation, see their

facial expressions and feel their hug.  Miracle Boat brings this dream into a fictional form

of reality of what it could be like if we could reach beyond the wall of death.

 

My experience of my dad's death in 1982 was the springboard to learning more about

depression and doing what I can to avoid going down the same path as Daddy.  My

desire in writing Miracle Boat is to help save at least one life from suicide and to help

everyone who reads it realize they are uniquely and wonderfully made with a God

given purpose to fulfill in this life on Earth.  In other words - you matter so don't take

yourself out.  It took multiple men and dad's to fulfill the role of the one dad in my life. 

My dad was an aerospace engineer who did the wind tunnel work on NASA's moon

rocket - the Saturn 5 - and the Space Shuttle.  The weekend he died, he was supposed

to do a pad inspection of the Space Shuttle at Cape Canaveral.  He had an amazing mind

and capability that was emotionally clouded by bi-polar disorder.  

 

Children who experienced a parent who completed suicide are at a higher risk of

attempting and completing suicide.  Some common effects of suicide on friends and

family members are:

 

• Extreme guilt for not preventing the suicide

• Failure because a person they loved felt unloved and completed suicide

• Anger or resentment at the person who chose to take his or her own life

• Confusion

• Distress over unresolved issues (many of which often exist in families where

• one person has a mental illness, which is common in people who die by suicide.

(From "Effects on Suicide on Family Members, Loved Ones" by Natasha Tracy at Healthy Place

- https://www.healthyplace.com/suicide/effects-of-suicide-on-family-members-loved-ones)

 

Miracle Boat weaves the story of the Russell family in a way to overcome the obstacles of

created by suicidal loss and live life to God's fullest intent.  It tells the story of parents who

love their children and share with their children the love of fishing and being outdoors. 

It tells the story of meaningful lasting friendships.

 

In January 2021 while in the midst of editing Miracle Boat with the staff of Ambassador

International, Mike Willams' son Daniel took his life - falling victim to the effects as mentioned

above.  Now, Daniel’s mother and sister carry the weight of grief over losing a husband, father,

son and brother.  I hope that Miracle Boat will aid in helping others to reconsider this path of

personal destruction as well as realize the beauty of the gifts and talents given to each of us.

 

I am far from being an expert on suicide or depression, but I hope that my life experience is

relatable and know that life goes on.  I was once a person who had to be carried through

darkness and now I am here to help carry others through their darkness.

I am looking forward to hearing what all of you have to say about Miracle Boat - good or bad. 

I just hope people will read it.  Miracle Boat is the first of a 3-part series.  I’m looking forward

to writing the sequel and seeing where it leads.

Healing Waters of Golden Pond

Lake Guntersville photo by Dean A. Johnson

Ernest Thompson’s play and screen play, On Golden Pond, has been lasting inspiration to me ever since I saw the movie version in 1981.  The combination of the beautiful images of New Hampshire’s Squam Lake combined with the moving music by Dave Grusin captured my attention as a soothing retreat to nature for healing, restoration, and inspiration.
 

The story is intriguing of a man, Norman Thayer, coming into contact with the reality of aging and feeling that he no longer is making a contribution in life.  His family has made regular summer visits to Golden Pond for a summer retreat, but this year he feels closer to death than life itself.  It is an unexpected visit by a teenage boy, Billy, who reignites the fire and restoration of life to Norman.

I first saw this movie as a teenager myself not too long after the death of my dad.  It moved me!  It lifted me!  It made me want to visit the lakes of New Hampshire to seek and find healing, restoration and inspiration.  As a young fisherman, I wanted to ply the waters of Squam Lake for trout and smallmouth bass while soaking in the scenic beauty of woods, water and rock.

THEN, magic struck!  My granddaddy took me on a fall fishing trip to Guntersville Lake in North Alabama.  While in the boat, I sensed healing from my grief, a connection with my dad, restoring of my soul and inspiration to keep going to the next day.  I REALIZED that Guntersville Lake was my own “Golden Pond.”  Better yet, it was only a 45 minute drive from my home in Huntsville, Alabama.

From that day on, I had a longing to spend as much time as I could at my golden pond in Guntersville.  Thirty years later, I still seek Guntersville Lake as a place of healing waters, restoration, connectedness to God, restoring my soul and spirit and inspiration for tomorrow.

Guntersville Lake has helped me: relive time spend with my dad and grieve his loss; develop my fishing skills; gain a deeper understanding of the natural world and God’s Kingdom; deepen my relationships with family members and friends; retreat from the hectic work-a-day world of customer service and church ministry; grieve the loss of a dear friend; propose to my wife; celebrate birthdays and anniversaries with my wife and children; and inspire me into business ideas and ministerial opportunities; and how to be a better husband and parent.

In the coming chapters, I will share with you the healing waters of Golden Pond mixed with characters from life intermingled with the beauties of the lake. In this, I hope that you will discover or recover your own place of healing, restoration and inspiration.  Feel free to provide your comments as we journey through this together.

Giving Thanks for Sacrifice

 Since I was a boy, one of my heroes has been Eddie Rickenbacker.  Born in 1890, Rickenbacker was a race driver in the teens of 1900 and raced in the first Indy 500’s.  This led to him becoming a fighter pilot during World War I where he was the U.S. Ace of Aces by shooting down the most German aircraft.  After the war, he started a car company, Rickenbacker Motors, and owned and operated Indianapolis Motor Speedway until 1945.  Then he became the president of Eastern Air Lines.  He was a mover and a shaker in the world of automobiles and aviation.  Through his years, he had many brushes with death, but survived them all before passing away in 1973.  The most notable of his brushes with death is when he was lost at sea for 26 days floating in a life raft following a plane crash in 1942 while delivering a secret message to General Douglas MacArthur on behalf of the Secretary of War and President Roosevelt.

This story is told well by author Max Lucado’s "In the Eye of the Storm", pp.221, 225-226. 

It happened every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the sun resembled a giant orange and was starting to dip into the blue ocean.

Old Ed came strolling along the beach to his favorite pier. Clutched in his bony hand was a bucket of shrimp. Ed walks out to the end of the pier, where it seems he almost has the world to himself. The glow of the sun is a golden bronze now.

Everybody's gone, except for a few joggers on the beach. Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed is alone with his thoughts...and his bucket of shrimp.

Before long, however, he is no longer alone. Up in the sky a thousand white dots come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier.

Before long, dozens of seagulls have enveloped him, their wings fluttering and flapping wildly. Ed stands there tossing shrimp to the hungry birds.  As he does, if you listen closely, you can hear him say with a smile, 'Thank you. Thank you.'

In a few short minutes the bucket is empty. But Ed doesn't leave.  He stands there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and place.

When he finally turns around and begins to walk back toward the beach, a few of the birds hop along the pier with him until he gets to the stairs, and then they, too, fly away. And old Ed quietly makes his way down to the end of the beach and on home.

If you were sitting there on the pier with your fishing line in the water, Ed might seem like “a funny old duck,” as my dad used to say. Or, "a guy who's a sandwich shy of a picnic," as my kids might say. To onlookers, he's just another old codger, lost in his own weird world, feeding the seagulls with a
bucket full of shrimp. 

To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange or very empty. They can seem altogether unimportant....maybe even a lot of nonsense.

Old folks often do strange things, at least in the eyes of Boomers and Busters.

Most of them would probably write Old Ed off, down there in Florida. That's too bad. They'd do well to know him better.

His full name: Eddie Rickenbacker. He was a famous hero back in World War II. On one of his flying missions across the Pacific, he and his seven-member crew went down. Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft.

Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on the rough waters of the Pacific. They fought the sun. They fought sharks... Most of all, they fought hunger. By the eighth day their rations ran out. No food. No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were.

They needed a miracle. That afternoon they had a simple devotional service and prayed for a miracle. They tried to nap. Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap over his nose. Time dragged. All he could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft.

Suddenly, Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap.

It was a seagull!

Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck.  He tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew made a meal - a very slight meal for eight men - of it. Then they used the intestines for bait.  With it, they caught fish, which gave them food and more bait...and the cycle continued. With that simple survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued (after 24 days at sea.)

Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first life-saving seagull.  And he never stopped saying, “Thank you.”  That's why almost every Friday night he would walk to the end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp and a heart full of gratitude.

We have one who sacrificed His life so that we could LIVE a life of forgiveness, fulfillment, abundance, service, love and joy!  May each day, we find a way to “throw our shrimp” to Him and say, “Thanks.”

Dean's photo of portrait of Eddie Rickenbacker at National Air and Space Museum

Rickenbacker's Army Air Corps uniform

Little Things Can Have a HUGE Impact

Photo by Dean A. Johnson

In his book, Messy Spirituality, Michael Yaconelli tells the story of small, tiny, acts by people that have a HUGE impact. 

During the last months of World War II, the British conducted daily bombing raids over Berlin.  The bombers would take off from an airstrip in England and fly surrounded by smaller fighter planes whose job it was to keep German fighters from attacking the bombers, which were easy targets.

One night after a successful bombing raid, as they were heading for the safety of England, the bombers were attacked by a large group of German fighter planes. Somehow, during the dogfight, one bomber found itself flying alone with no protection, and suddenly, a German fighter appeared out of nowhere.  The crew of the bomber watched as the German plane moved closer and closer, until finally, it was in range.  They prepared for the worst and watched helplessly as tracer bullets began spitting from the fighter.  Bullets whizzed by them, over and under until THUD!  THUD!  THUD!  THUD!  THUD!  Five bullets slammed into the fuselage of the bomber near the gas tank.  The crew braced for the explosion, but nothing happened.  They could see fuel pouring from the bullet holes, but there was no explosion.  Miraculously, they were able to make it back to their base and get off the plane.

A few hours after they had landed, one of the mechanics showed up in the crew’s barracks.  He had found five bullets inside the fuel tanks, crumpled but not exploded.  He handed them to the pilot.  The pilot carefully opened the shells and to the crew’s amazement found each one empty of gunpowder.  Inside one was a tiny wad of paper.  When he unfolded the paper, he found a note which read,

“We are Polish POWs – forced to make bullets in factory.  When guards do not look, we do not fill with powder.  Is not much, but is best we can do.  Please tell family we are alive.

The note was signed by four Polish prisoners of war.

Five tiny bullets, out of millions and millions of bullets made during the war, made all the difference for the crewman of a British bomber...

…Spirituality is about doing the tiny work of God, little acts, small responses to God’s presence in our lives…Tiny becomes huge when Jesus is involved.”  (Michael Yaconelli, Messy Spirituality (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2002), 108-109. 

Every day, consider how your small acts of today can impact someone else tomorrow.  With God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit in our lives, we are asked to perform small, tiny, even miniscule acts of kindness to others just as Jesus did as He walked in the small area of the world in Jerusalem.  As Michael Yaconelli says, “Tiny becomes HUGE when Jesus is involved.”

Paying Attention

Photo by Dean Johnson

In late April 2015, Corporate Chaplains of America hosted a regional training conference in Dallas, Texas for us chaplains.  During the conference, Matt Baldwin spoke to us from Psalm 51.  What caught my attention was Psalm 51:3-6 and 10-12;

“For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned

And done what is evil in your sight…

 

…Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
you taught me wisdom in that secret place.

“Create in me a pure heart, O God, 

and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” (NIV)

Matt related a story from his life that reminded us to pay attention to when God speaks to us in the small things because they can have big consequences.  Matt’s story reminded me of a story from my own life.  In 1984, my paternal grandmother, Grandmother McVay, was in poor health.  During the month of August, I kept thinking, “I need to write a letter to Grandmother.”  I kept putting it off because I was busy with my high school studies, high school band and my Boy Scout troop.  This feeling became more and more intense until one morning; I awoke from my sleep writing the letter in my head.  Once awake, I joined my mother for breakfast and was told that Grandmother had passed away.

Immediately, I thought, “That’s why that letter came to me so vividly.”  I was disappointed that I hadn’t written the letter, however, my dad’s twin sister, Aunt Joyce DID write a letter to Grandmother.  This letter expressed many things that I had been thinking.  It was a beautiful expression from daughter to mother of the extraordinary example of womanhood and motherhood that she represented.

Now, when I sense God saying to me, “Send them a note of what they mean to you.”  I try to get on it as quick as possible. 

Every day, God is speaking to us that provide us guidance and protection.  It may come in a message as we are driving such as, “Take a different route today.” To keep me out of an accident.  It could be a red light that slows me down that prevents injury up ahead.  He could be telling us something in caring for our children such as, “Move that hot coffee mug away from the edge of the counter.”  So that toddler James doesn’t reach up and grab it, spill it and burns him.  It could be to pray for someone – RIGHT NOW.

There are many other examples and I would love to hear yours as well.  We have to pay attention to when God speaks to us, be steadfast in our action knowing that we are prone to make transgressions.   Seek Him, pay attention and He will give us the wisdom we need when we need it.