Unstoppable (11 page)

The timing was right for me to become a public speaker because, at that point, I did not have a family to support or any major financial commitments. I’d spent years speaking for free, but fortunately there were people willing to pay to hear me speak. Those fees allowed me to support myself but also covered my speaking expenses for those I wanted to reach who could not afford to pay me.

Sometimes, though, we may be tempted to rush into the things we are passionate about without considering whether the timing is right. Exhibit A:
Me!

My company’s debt problems in 2010 were partly the result of cost overruns incurred in the production of a Christian music video I wanted to do out of my passion for singing, but I did not adequately consider whether the timing was right. The song I performed on the video is “Something More,” which proved to be ironic, since the production costs turned out to be something more than I’d budgeted for—a lot more. I rushed to make my music video, and in my enthusiasm for the project, I let the costs get out of control. I wanted to make a dream into a reality. Someone should have reminded me that dreams don’t die as long as you hold them dear.

That’s not to say the music video wasn’t a great experience. We had a talented team of people, including singer and songwriter Tyrone Wells as well as Matthew Koppin, who led the video production team. We created a movie-quality Christian music video, thanks also to Jon and Esther
Phelps, whose support made it possible to have the first-class song track recorded in their studio with an awesome team of band members flown in from Nashville. I consider the video a success because it reached 1.6 million people on YouTube with a message of hope.

I also learned a valuable lesson. Timing is an important consideration in any endeavor, especially for someone building a business and a brand for the long term. I had just branched out into acting, with the award-winning short film
The Butterfly Circus
. Cranking out a music video so soon after that may have left many people wondering,
What’s Nick up to now? Is he still an evangelist and inspirational speaker, or is he an actor and singer?

One day I hope to be all those things on some level, but there is no rush. I am still in my twenties. I have a few good years left. Impatience is another characteristic of youth, of course. Since the age of sixteen, I’ve been in a rush to prove myself in so many arenas that I’ve often run my poor body ragged, and I’ve sometimes stretched my resources to the breaking point. The financial setbacks with my business served to remind me that I don’t have to do everything all at once.

A friend wrote a humorous book of advice for high school and college graduates, and one of his tidbits is “Hurry up and learn patience.” There is wisdom as well as a little humor in that. The Bible often extols the virtues of patience. In James 5 we’re told, “Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.”

Just because you have the resources today doesn’t mean the timing is right. No doubt, ambition and energy have led to the creation of many great businesses and careers, but timing is critical. That’s why patience is a virtue and taking a leap is a risk. I’m not opposed to risk; in fact, I pride myself on
taking well-calculated risks in which I do everything possible to reduce any potential downside. In the case of the music video, however, I didn’t do enough analysis of all the factors. Remember to consider
all
the risks involved. Do your best to minimize them as you pursue your passion.

Risks often bring rewards, but, as in the case of Caleb, you may have to be patient in awaiting their arrival. Caleb is one of the Bible’s best examples of a truly passionate man who took considerable risks while putting his faith into action. After Moses and the twelve tribes fled Egypt to escape slavery, Moses sent twelve spies into Canaan, the land God had promised them. Ten of the spies reported that the land would be impossible to claim because the inhabitants, whom they described as “giants,” would be impossible to defeat. Only two spies, Caleb and Joshua, said that the people could take the land with God’s help. But Moses chose the advice of the ten over the two. They did not try to take the Promised Land, and some threatened to stone the two spies who had wanted to follow God’s orders.

The Hebrews were then forced to wander in the desert for forty years as punishment for disobeying God’s order to take the land as theirs. Of the twelve spies, only the two who asserted that the people should take the land survived those forty years of wandering. God even hailed Caleb as “my servant,” a term of honor previously used only for Moses.

By the time the Hebrews finally occupied the Promised Land, Caleb was in his eighties, but he was still strong and passionate about his faith. After the victory, God gave Caleb and his descendants the city of Hebron and its outskirts as a reward for following God “wholeheartedly” and for putting his faith into action once again. As the hymn says, “to patient faith
the prize is sure,” and Caleb was rewarded for being a man who never lost his passion for serving God.

Caleb paid a steep price for remaining dedicated. His own people threatened to kill him, and then he was left wandering in the desert with them for four decades before finally leading them to victory. Pursuing your passion will likely bring many rewards, but that does not mean your life will be free of challenges or struggles.

Any dedicated person, whether a nurse, artist, builder, pastor, or performer, can tell you that hard work, sacrifice, and enormous effort are required, even of those who love what they do. I have spent most of the last ten years on airplanes and in hotel rooms around the world in my mission to speak encouragement and faith to as many people as I can. Although I am probably the only frequent flyer who has never complained about legroom on an airplane, constant travel is as exhausting for me as anyone. I have reached millions of people, and I’ve seen many of them renew their faith or become born again, and I am grateful beyond measure for those experiences. Yet pursuing my passion has not been easy. I’ve had to make sacrifices. With God’s help and the support and prayers of those who encourage me in my ministry, I’ve had some wonderful successes. By God’s grace I will be able to build upon them.

Most passion-driven people sacrifice and struggle. Helen Keller overcame deafness and blindness to become an inspiration to people around the world. She said, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”

“Overnight success” is usually the result of many years of hard work. Resting on your laurels is rarely an option. Yet there is probably no greater reward than doing what you were created to do while serving a purpose
greater than yourself. I meet so many men and women in my travels who are on a mission to make a difference by sharing their gifts and knowledge. We share war stories of the road, and we support and encourage one another.

One of my most passionate fellow travelers on the evangelical road is Victor Marx, whose story is remarkable. Victor served in the US Marine Corps, and he is a martial arts expert who holds a seventh-degree black belt in Keichu-Do self-defense, which incorporates elements of karate, judo, jujitsu, kung fu, and street-fighting techniques.

He has trained more than thirty world champions in martial arts as well as Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, and Delta Force. His wife, Eileen, is a former Miss Fitness USA, and as you might imagine, Victor is in great physical shape too. Looking at him, you would be shocked to know that he once considered himself to be damaged goods. He told me that he and I have much in common except that my disability challenges are quite visible while his are hidden from sight, locked inside his mind and spirit.

People often say they don’t know how I’ve created such a meaningful and fulfilling life despite my lack of limbs. Yet I am blessed in more ways than I can count. I think life would be far more difficult for someone who lacks a loving family like the one I had. Sadly, Victor grew up in a broken home, and it is no wonder that he once felt broken himself.

Victor became a Christian while in the service. Ten years ago he was operating a successful chain of martial arts academies in Hawaii while also doing Christian outreach to young people. He was enjoying a very good life with Eileen and their three children when God called. Focus on the
Family, the Colorado-based organization that promotes Christian values, called to recruit him for a leadership position.

No one in his family wanted to leave Hawaii, but Victor and Eileen acted in faith, choosing to trust and obey. Victor did not have a passion to give up his business and join Focus on the Family. He could not understand what God had in mind for him, but like Noah, he yielded to the calling put upon him.

You see, God knew something about Victor that he did not know about himself.

My friend had long suffered from nightmares and anxiety. He attributed some of them to his days in the marines and even to his martial arts combat. He also had flashbacks of violent incidents that he could not fully comprehend, because they did not seem related to the military or martial arts. Some of those flashbacks were revealed during a small-group Bible study that Victor and Eileen participated in with other top staff members from Focus on the Family and their spouses. The study provided a safe environment for them to talk candidly about their lives and feelings.

“We were asked to share our life stories, which was something I’d never done before publicly,” Victor told me. “I always had trust issues.”

Victor attributed his lack of trust to his troubled upbringing in the Deep South. Initially, he shared only the condensed and cleaned-up version of his story with his coworkers that night. He told them his parents had divorced before he was even born. As a child, he never knew his father, who had a history of dealing drugs and promoting prostitution. Growing up, Victor had thought his first stepfather was his real father. Then his mother divorced and married six times. He and his siblings were raised in dysfunction and chaos. Because of his mother’s tumultuous life, Victor attended fourteen schools and lived in seventeen houses by the time he graduated from high school.

When Victor finished giving that brief version of his life, a friend said, “Now we’d like to hear the rest of your story.”

Victor was puzzled by this and unnerved.

“They all were looking at me like I was under suspicion for something,” he recalled.

When he asked what was meant by “the rest of your story,” his friend said, “You can’t have these sorts of things happen in your life without there being more to your story.”

Victor knew these people cared about him. As they probed gently into his life, “The truth came pouring out of me—things that I’d held inside and never told anyone, not even my wife.”

That night marked the beginning of a long period of revelation, reconciliation, and healing for Victor. “It took several years to peel the onion and to come to terms with all that had happened to me,” he said.

Victor had suppressed horrific memories from his childhood, including what he calls the “nonprovables”—meaning abuse to which there were no witnesses—that tend to torment the victims of abuse. One stepfather tortured him, held his head underwater, and put a gun to his head. He had been sexually and physically abused between the ages of three and seven. Once he was molested and left for dead in a locked commercial cooler. He escaped only because family members “found me and thawed me out.”

Victor had suffered unspeakable cruelties. Like most victims of abuse, he harbored deep psychological and emotional hurt as well as intense anger. Much of it he had locked away, which was a credit to the strength of his will. Amazingly, he had succeeded in channeling his anger and violent urges into positive ways through his military career and martial arts training and competitions.

Still, so much had been inflicted upon him that Victor could not manage all the pain. He sought counseling, and his doctors told him that
his flashbacks, as well as some involuntary physical ticks and a mild form of trauma-based Tourette’s syndrome, were related to his posttraumatic stress disorder, which is common in victims of childhood abuse. One psychiatrist told him that his brain had been scrambled by the horrors he had endured, so his mind did not process thoughts in a normal manner and never would.

Along with professional treatment for PTSD, Victor’s powerful faith helped him learn to deal with the revived memories and the trauma they triggered. Over time he shared the story of his childhood and his walk of faith. He found an especially receptive audience in troubled young men and women, including juvenile offenders, gang members, youth prison inmates, foster-care kids, and residents of drug treatment centers. He learned to first capture their interest with martial arts demonstrations and self-deprecating humor, telling them, “I’m a cross between Jackie Chan and Barney Fife.”

Most of the young people Victor speaks to have little patience for adult speakers offering life lessons, but he discovered that his story resonates with troubled young men and women because many of them have suffered physical and sexual abuse as children too.

“I had lived with so much denial, I didn’t realize I even had a story, and I wasn’t sure I should be telling it,” he said. “One day in the early going, I was doing a nun-chucks demonstration for a group of juvenile offenders, and I accidentally hit one of my volunteers in the chin and split it open! I thought God was trying to tell me to stop, and I was worried about ending up in jail for assault, but that day, fifty-three of the seventy-five inmates in that prison gave their lives to Christ.”