When we were living in the desert, God began my walk. I used to listen to Dr. James Dobson, Chuck Swindoll, Charles Stanley, Kay Arthur, and John MacArthur every day. I would take notes, and God was touching my heart and feeding my spirit, and it was awesome! I did that for several years. He had brought me back to Dr. Dobson recently, and I started listening to his podcasts and ordering his books. I was being so blessed again. I was so grateful that he was still helping us, but my heart just broke when I heard he went home. I shouted "Hallelujah!" for him, but I was miserable for us. 😢 I can’t wait until we’re all together again, and I can hug him and thank him in person! I can’t wait until my heart stops grieving. 💔 If there was ever a time that we needed godly men like Dr. Dobson, it’s now. But God is good, and He is well able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above and beyond all that we could dare hope, think, or ask. Thank you so much, God, and thank you, Dr. Dobson. 🥲
PreviousI started listening to some of the Focus on the Family broadcasts when I was in high school, and Dr. Dobson was advocating homeschooling and a book by Raymond and Dorothy Moore called Better Late Than Early. It made an impression on me. As a result of this, my children were homeschooled and did very well academically, thanks to that influence. I met Dr. Dobson when I was 27 years old and had challenged him to a basketball game. When I arrived, I was the only African-American there. He sought me out to come down to his court and play the next game. (I remember thinking that I don’t think I would have had the character to interrupt my game to reach out to someone else who had walked into my church gymnasium and was a stranger.) He didn’t know that I was the physician who had challenged him. It told me that he was not prejudiced. Later, he invited me to interview/participate in his Physician’s Advisory Council. We shared stories about personal heart attacks. When he called me after his heart attack, somehow he found me even though I was working in the ICU, at the naval hospital in Guam. Some years later, when I had a heart attack, I had a chance to speak to him, even though he was on a writing trip and didn’t normally take phone calls during that time. I shared with him a book called Reversing Your Heart Disease by Dr. Dean Ornish. I think it may have been a factor in the fact that he became vegetarian. I believe that it extended his life. Long before some people had accused him of only being concerned about unborn babies, and not children who were already here, Jim and Shirley demonstrated love and caring by adopting Ryan. And this was also before starting a program that recommended that churches should adopt kids out of the foster care system. Once when I was meeting with him in his office about a serious personal issue, he received a phone call from Ryan and told his secretary that, unless it was an emergency, he would have to call him back. That he would give me the priority of the moment, despite a phone call from his son, told me a lot about his character. When we had a physician’s conference, and a group that I sang with gave a concert of hymns and African-American spirituals, he asked us privately to sing one of the songs again, and he sang with us. We shared these and other memories. May God bless Shirley, Ryan, and Danae as they deal with this tremendous loss. We can all thank God that we can look forward to heaven where we will not suffer these losses.
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