I Can & I Am
As I have just finished watching the World Cup Final, I’m transported back to 2012 when I watched the London Olympics live with a real sense of excitement and pride. However, as I sat in the London stadium it was on the eve of an enormous operation to remove some of the tumour from around my brain stem.
The first operation was 13 hours long and was deemed a success in comparison with what might’ve happened thanks to the skill of the surgeon and prayer support. He told me at the start of the day there was a 30% chance of me being left paralysed. However, after the operation I found myself in intensive care for a week and then as a result of surgery I had a tracheotomy which left me unable to speak, eat or drink for 11 weeks – three of my favourite pastimes!
It was as I lay in hospital, helpless and lonely with a deep sense of forsakenness that the postcard my wife had blue tacked to the end of the bed became true for me. It had the words, “God will never leave you or forsake you.” (Deuteronomy 31:6). It was in this ward where I sometimes saw screens being put around beds and patients being removed because they had died. There I was, as a 40 year old, newly appointed headmaster with a wife and four kids still longing to dream dreams about how life would one day be. Yet suddenly I was catapulted into this place, where my “dorm mates” were dying. It was the proverbial, last chance saloon.
It was here that I needed to learn what it meant to really trust God. My wife bought me an iPad and it was then that I started to listen daily to as many sermons as I could. At the end of my wait I underwent a second operation which left me with only 10% tunnel vision in my right eye. A six week course of daily radiotherapy was to follow soon after.
Moving on, several months later I found myself having to let go of my dream job and at the end of the year I found myself without a job, house or sight.
I think we can call this a mid-life crisis!
I remember being asked by a pupil I taught how I’d got through and my reply developed into a three step mantra I still live by today. Firstly we must look up – here I always remind myself of Psalm 121 that my help comes from God, the maker of heaven and earth. Secondly we must look forward – it is in the future where hopes and possibilities are and if we look back and hold on to our problems, they define us, however if we reflect and try and learn from our problems they refine us. Thirdly we must look out – it is in giving to others that so much self-interest and low mood can be broken and I have found this time and time again in the last six years.
God has wonderfully helped me to establish a charity called I Can and I Am. I spend a lot of time speaking to pupils, teachers and parents in schools about how we can ensure that every pupil academically gifted or not leaves school with an “inflated balloon” of self-belief. In the last few years, God has opened many doors to financial support and opportunities to enable me to speak to thousands of people. I hope and am trusting that this is what I am going to be doing in the years to come.