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by Charlie Wolcott

One of the interesting things we see through Scripture is how God loves to place his followers into the most hazardous, reckless, and impossible situations. Why does he do that? In Judges 7:2, God tells Gideon to cut his numbers from 32,000, to 10,000 and then to a mere 300 because God did not want Gideon to be able to claim a victory against the Midianites in his own strength. We see this behavior numerous times including the 10 Plagues and Crossing the Red Sea in Exodus chapters 5-14. We see David going against Goliath. We see God using Esther to rescue her people in the book of Esther. We see Joshua conquering Jericho. The list goes on.

I know a thing or two about being in impossible situations as well. One cannot hear my testimony, my life story, without coming to the conclusion that God is real and that he is intimately involved in our lives. This week with Worldview Warriors we have been sharing about things God has done in our lives and I want to share portions of my testimony. My life and adventure really began when I was just a few months old. My brain started swelling and doctors could not figure out what was going on. They told my parents that I was dying and there was nothing they could do. My parents and my church prayed and I was miraculously healed. To this day, my doctors have no idea what it was that was killing me. They only know that afterwards I had dead bacteria in my spinal fluids.

I had a number of moderate learning and physical difficulties growing up. Because of my hip structure and congenital twists in my legs, I could hardly stand upright and walk, let alone run. And specialists gave me no hope. They said, when I was six years old, I would never be able to run and to not expect any improvement. These were the top experts in their fields. It did not take long for me to start running after that.

I didn’t have any reading comprehension or even sports comprehension for most of my early childhood. I could tell you what was on each page but I could not tell you why it was there. I would insist a goose was in a story if someone got goose bumps. I could easily run up and down the soccer field but I never understood why you ran up and down the soccer field. Yet when I was 12 years old, that part of my brain “unlocked” and I suddenly had reading comprehension and I suddenly understood sports. I wasn’t good at sports for a while longer but I understood what was going on. Reading still took a while for me to get but it was like I was starting to learn how to read from scratch at age 12. A couple years later, I started fencing and from there, my skills in other sports shot up as well. We really wish we had found fencing sooner.

During this time I was at a private Christian school, with a strong curriculum, but before I would graduate, I moved onto the mission field outside El Paso, Texas where I finished the same curriculum via homeschooling. Though I graduated with a 4.0 GPA I had a lot of question marks on my life. Would I be able to go to college? Would I be able to drive? Would I be able to live on my own? Would I be able to sustain a job? Most kids graduating high school don’t have issues with these questions, but I did. I don’t have time to go into detail on this here.

To make a longer story short, after a few years working at a local grocery store, I did go to college, at the University of Texas at El Paso and I lived in the dorms. I was still close to home, so I was able to see my parents every weekend because we still went to the same church. I did change my major from Civil Engineering to Computer Science, which at least at the time was one of the top 5 CS programs in the nation. I graduated with a 3.2 GPA, which was pretty good considering my other challenges.

During this time, another issue I had was that I could not explain anything, including math which was my strongest point. I can solve Calculus in my head. But I could not tell you how I did it. My brain simply went too fast and if I tried to slow down I’d lose it. This is also why I stutter when I talk. It doesn’t bother me, but that’s just the way I talk. But right when I switched majors, the ability to explain things “clicked” and all of the sudden I had most of my class coming to me for help to get it. God has since called me towards teaching where I am currently pursuing a teaching position. Yes, I am going for a public speaking position despite my stuttering. Not an issue.

Overall, God has allowed me to go through some intense stuff and this is just the short, short version. I was not supposed to see my first birthday and yet I am alive today. I had no coordination nor physical ability to run, yet today I am pretty good at a variety of sports and I have been a fencer for 16 years. I’m not awesome at it, but I’m decent. I had no reading comprehension until I was 12 and now not only do I read a fair amount, but I am also a published author. Driving was a major concern for me and now I drive just fine. I have had many, many challenging in my life and yet with God at the helm, I have overcome so many of them. And all the glory goes to him. There are so many details I had to skim over in this post, but it will not be in the too far distant future when I start writing a biography about what I have been through and what God has done in my life.