The Plain Values Podcast EP #17 – How Dave Sims Found His Calling After Losing Everything

Dave Sims:

And that was the last time I ever walked. I was riding and we were really going Marlon slow. I mean, we were just riding a bicycle. I mean, my daughter was eight, so we couldn’t be going very fast. I get these two wonderful therapists, neither one of them I’d ever, ever worked with a spinal cord injury patient. And she said, Dave, she sat down, I’ll never forget on the edge of my bed. And the other therapist came in too and she says, Dave, she says, I am so fortunate that we didn’t get this book before we started because according to this book, you can’t do any of the things that you’re doing. I decided, I made a conscious decision to, instead of worrying about what I can’t do, I would focus on what I can do.

Marlin Miller:

Three years ago, a friend of mine and I went out to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho for a homesteading festival. We go out there, we had rented A-V-R-B-O little apartment place. Lo and behold, made a wonderful contact with our friend Dave Sims, Dave’s in a wheelchair. And the last time I was out there, I snagged an hour or so with him and he told us the whole story of how he ended up in the wheelchair, the ways in which the Lord has taken him down that journey and encouraged him, and he’s been able to pass that on to many, many other folks. He’s a wonderful guy you are going to love. Please meet my friend Dave Sims from now until Christmas. Homestead Living has a wonderful gift guide online. You can find **@*************ng.com. You’ll find the link in the notes below. We have a handful of great companies, great products. One of those is a company called Brunt Workwear. They make boots. They have great high quality stuff that are made by American hands. If you’re in the chicken coop, if you’re splitting firewood, if you are gardening and in the patch, you need stuff that is going to hold up. Go to the gift guide and use the code Homestead 10 and it’ll save you 10 bucks.

Dave Sims:

Let’s jump in. We’re here with my buddy Marlon today. My name’s Dave Sims. I’m interviewing Marlon Miller today.

Marlin Miller:

I’m not sure who’s in good beer. Isn. Isn’t that great?

Dave Sims:

Isn’t that awesome?

Marlin Miller:

No. Well, first things first, a little bit of housekeeping. Do you want to share about the pressure things?

Dave Sims:

Yeah, I do. I do. I’ll explain this to you and to the audience. Whoever’s watching, you’re going to see me a lot of times leaning forward like this, and I’m uncomfortable or I’m out of the picture or I’m trying to stay in the picture. But so as a quadriplegic, my biggest enemy is not my biggest enemy actually, but one of my biggest enemies is pressure sores. Pressure sores are what? I just have struggled with ’em for 25 years

As a quadriplegic. And so pressure sores some of your audience who doesn’t know what that means, probably I’ve heard their grandmother talk about bedsores maybe. So bedsores were the same thing. It’s when the blood circulation gets cut off to your skin on bony prominences. And so we are taught to try to do pressure relief so the blood flow can get, so I have to constantly be moving and you do it naturally and you just don’t know you do it. So something I have to deal with all the time, and it used to be embarrassing, but now I don’t really care. It is what it is. It is what it is. Yeah, for sure. I figured that it’s better to be a little embarrassing than to die, so there you go.

Marlin Miller:

That’s a fair point.

Dave Sims:

Yeah.

Marlin Miller:

Well, let’s go back. You and I have known each other for three or

Dave Sims:

Four years, three,

Marlin Miller:

Anyway, I think three years at least. You have this awesome studio. It’s a big shop out the front, and then you have on the other side of this wall is like a small little apartment, right?

Dave Sims:

Yeah, yeah. About a thousand square foot. It’s a nice little apartment. Yeah.

Marlin Miller:

Well, my buddy Chris and I came out here for the first modern home setting conference, which I am pretty sure that it was three years ago, I think this is number three of that conference. And we happened. No sovereign intervention here, I’m sure, but we just happened to rent this for the show. And I remember Chris and I walked in and I go, man, I think this guy likes music.

Dave Sims:

And

Marlin Miller:

So obviously we had no idea of your whole story and your background as a rocker, but then shoot, you and I got to talking and just really quickly became good friends.

Dave Sims:

If I recall, you guys were at the show all that following day Saturday, and I think you were supposed to be in about, I don’t know, five or six o’clock, whatever it was. And next thing you know, you’re texting me at 10 o’clock saying we missed or there’s a flight late or something. And so you guys were in an airport and we’re going to be in until two or three in the morning.

Marlin Miller:

Yeah.

Dave Sims:

So I said, no big deal. I’ll leave the door unlocked for you guys. And you said, yeah, me and Chris will be in. And I’m thinking, Chris, I’m thinking to myself, I never thought of it. I said, honey, I’m hoping that’s Christie. I just hope it’s Christie. Then later something told me, no, it’s me and Chris, the other guy that I was like, no offense intended. And so yeah, so then later he sends me this text saying, just so you know who I am coming in at three in the morning, I Publisher magazine and dah, dah, dah, dah. I didn’t know, wasn’t familiar with the magazine, but was happy to leave it open for you guys. And so I think at the end of that first Saturday you came by

Marlin Miller:

And

Dave Sims:

I was out here doing something and shop door was open, so you popped in and say hi, and next thing you know when the two of us get together, you need to Katie door some time. You need to have some time. We’ve both been given the gift of

Marlin Miller:

Yak, I

Dave Sims:

Think. Yeah, I would say

Marlin Miller:

For sure.

Dave Sims:

I would say, and the other thing I like about the two of us is that if you put the two of us together, you get one good haircut that just barely fantastic.

Marlin Miller:

Good haircut. That’s a good point. That’s a good point. I shave mine off and you don’t have that issue, so well, Dave, let’s go back all the way and let’s just give the audience a bit of a quick 50,000 foot view as to how you ended up in the wheelchair.

Dave Sims:

Gotcha. I was in 1998. I was on a camping trip when this actually happened, when my accident happened and just gotten there and I didn’t know until much later in life looking back, but I was where I shouldn’t have been with whom I shouldn’t have been with at that time. But it was a time in my life when I was not walking with the Lord. I was one of those people that said I was a Christian because I grew up in the church, not automatically. So anyway, I should not have been there and I shouldn’t have been with whom I was with, was going through a divorce. And anyway, we went on this camping trip and I took my two kids and my girlfriend and we got to the campground in eastern Washington and I towed my boat over and I had all of the bicycles in the back of the boat and I said, well, what do you guys want to do first?

We got about an hour before dinnertime. Do you want to go for a boat ride or do you want to go for a bike ride? Oh man, I wish somebody would’ve said boat ride. But we went for a bike ride and that was the last time I ever walked. I was riding and we were really going Marlon slow. I mean we were just riding, my daughter was eight, so we couldn’t be going very fast because she couldn’t go very fast. And so we were all riding together and probably going two or three miles an hour on ground as flat as this floor is, other than it was gravel. And we were going around the edge of the lake and we come up on a curve and I just went to slow down because I wanted to, it was kind of a blind curve and I couldn’t see what was around it. So I went to slow down and my front brake locked up and I mean it was like the old Wiley coyote, kind of a cartoon where the stick in the spokes kind of thing. And it just went over the top almost slow motion. And I hit my head straight into the ground right on top of my head.

Found later that that’s what the doctor’s call. Same thing the football players used to get before the equipment became so much better, but it was called a compression fracture. So it’s not that I snapped my neck back or sideways or anything like that. It was a straight in blunt force

Marlin Miller:

That

Dave Sims:

Just crushed C five. So I landed in a heap on the ground. As I went over that handlebar landed on the ground and instantly couldn’t feel anything below here. I couldn’t move or feel anything. And I was like, oh boy, this is not good. And I kept thinking I had hit a funny bone. It was tingly and I kept thinking that any moment it’s going to come back. And as it did not come back, I was getting scared. It was pretty scary. Never lost consciousness.

And I think probably, probably for the better part of the next year that I went through, I wish that I had died. Now, I don’t really believe that, but for that first year it was really, really a depressing time. And I didn’t realize the miracles that happened along the way, but we were on a closed road on the backside of, I think it’s Park Lake at Sun Lakes Resort. There’s a whole dotted little chain of lakes. And we were going up the one side of that which was all blocked off. So you could access it from one side but not the other. You had to be out ATVing or something. So it wasn’t very often you ever, it wasn’t a through road where somebody could get through, so there wasn’t going to be a traffic on it. We’re in the middle of nowhere. Here I am on the ground, and along comes two guys that had decided to go, I guess trucking. They had their four by four truck or whatever, and they happened to be two paramedics and they were driving around the backside of the lake coming from the other direction out just four by in their truck. And they’d gotten on this road that you couldn’t get on, and they could because of their

Marlin Miller:

Four

Dave Sims:

By four and they got on it, and here they come and they’re two paramedics off duty. And I was just like, I mean, talk about a miracle looking back. So my son at the time who was I think 12, jumped on my bike. It was faster. And he rode to the ranger station and to get help. And in the meantime these guys showed up

Marlin Miller:

Just at the right time,

Dave Sims:

Just boom, I’m laying there in a heap,

Marlin Miller:

Unreal.

Dave Sims:

The girlfriend is crying, my daughter doesn’t know what to do at eight years old and here comes two paramedics, nobody else on that road. So they took care of me and I never found them again. I never got to say I’m sorry. I don’t know if they were even, I don’t even know if they were paramedics. It could have been angels, I don’t know. But one way or another, two paramedics came out of nowhere on that road and they got an ambulance down there to me, eventually took some time and took me up to the nearest town. And in that town, they did what they could. But it was a real small Eastern Washington small town. It had a hospital, but it was a very small kind of thing. They weren’t outfitted for spinal cord injury certainly, but they did have access to the $6,000 at the time, the $6,000 helicopter ride. So got, yeah, they got me in the helicopter and took me in the dark, flew me to Deaconess in Spokane. And I’ll tell you, I mean I’ve never been so terrified. It was dark. I’m strapped into a gurney laying flat, can’t feel anything, can’t scratch my nose, can’t move anything. So you had no arms,

Marlin Miller:

No nothing.

Dave Sims:

You had nothing? Nothing. I couldn’t feel anything from here down. All I could just my face, just that was it.

Marlin Miller:

Okay. So I know that we’ll get there, but I’ve never not known you to be able to do a whole bunch of stuff. How did that whole thing come back?

Dave Sims:

Well, what I didn’t understand it at the time, but when you break your neck, it is different levels of injury. So to be a quadriplegic, I thought that meant all four of your paraplegics don’t work. Well, that’s made sense to me, but actually it has to do with your level of injury. So cervical, which is the C in your neck, there’s C one through C eight. So you can be a C eight quadriplegic and move your fingers, which is and have triceps C seven, you can have triceps. I’m a C five six, I broke C five, so I have return at the C six level. So that means I have biceps, but I have no triceps, so my biceps are pretty strong. But you’re pushing muscle pushing this wheelchair. Is that tricep? And I can’t move my arm uphill. I

Marlin Miller:

Mean,

Dave Sims:

I don’t have that muscle. If I go up like that, eventually I smack myself in the face. So because there’s nothing to hold it, there’s nothing to hold. That muscle doesn’t work. Same with I have no stomach muscles, no back muscles, all of that stuff is just atrophied and gone because they don’t work and certainly no legs or anything else. But when you first get hurt, there’s a lot of bruising to the spinal cord and it’s swollen. And so apparently all the surrounding, that’s a very small area, you think C one through C eight, but it’s a small area. And the bruising I think is what does it. But

Marlin Miller:

I

Dave Sims:

Was within the first week, I could move my arm a little bit, and of course I’m thinking, oh, oh boy, everything’s coming back. Well, actually what was happening to me was a natural phenomenon. I was starting, the bruising would come down, the swelling was coming down. They did the neck surgery and went in and fused, I think C four, five and six together with a titanium plate with a screw in it or some screws in it. And the bone eventually grows over that. So I can’t turn my head as far, but that was all done in the first couple of days, emergency surgery. And so as the swelling came down, I started to be able to move the things that I was going to be able to move from then on. What I didn’t realize, of course, is that at my level of injury, you have certain things. For instance, it’s really interesting. I can pull my wrist back like that. I have that muscle. That’s my wrist extensors, but my wrist flexors, I don’t, can’t go the other way.

Marlin Miller:

So you can’t come up on it.

Dave Sims:

Can’t do that.

Marlin Miller:

Yeah.

Dave Sims:

I have to push up with, so there’s certain muscles that work just like they did before and certain ones that don’t. And it all has to do with the brain being able to connect to that muscle. And it’s really, I kept thinking maybe something amazing was going to happen because I started getting feeling back and I’ve got feeling, but it’s very sporadic feeling.

Marlin Miller:

So

Dave Sims:

Right in this area, I can feel maybe 70%, and then you get down to my knee and I can feel maybe 40%. And then you get down to my calf, I can’t feel it at all. And then you get down to my toes and I can feel 70% again. No kidding. It is like you can poke my toe and I’m going, ouch. But you can poke my calf. And I’m like, when are you going to do it? I don’t feel it. Yeah, that is so crazy. It’s really weird. But the reason I got so excited is I was told at the time that every muscle in your body, these miraculous bodies of ours that are just how anybody could ever believe that they just kind of accidentally got this way is way beyond me. But anyway, that’s for another day. But these miraculous bodies we have, they said that every muscle in the body has two nerves going to it. One nerve is for motor function, the other would be for feeling. And if you’re getting feeling back, you should get some motor function back is what I was told. Because those two nerves travel next to each other.

And I’m probably oversimplifying that. But that’s basically what I understood from the doctors. And so I thought, gosh, maybe I’ll get some movement back. And that didn’t ever happen for me. But what I very, very early on, I was during that era was shortly after the Christopher Reeve accident.

Marlin Miller:

Oh yeah.

Dave Sims:

And Christopher Reeve was a C one, they call it a hangman’s fracture where you break C one and you can’t do anything but move your eyes and you can talk. But it’s a lot of labor just to be able to talk. And so they give them, they call it a sip and puff wheelchair where you blow or suck, and that moves the chair, that air movement from your mouth.

Marlin Miller:

Even just that, I mean, let’s forget about the fact of the unbelievable nature of the body. The fact that God has given us the creativity to create and to make something like a sip, andp puff chair blows my mind. And I don’t know anything about it other than the fact that it’s an incredible thing.

Dave Sims:

Yeah, it is really amazing. And I, all politics aside, don’t care about that. But the Elon Musks of the world, I really am excited and I applaud them because the robotics field and the AI field, I hope they’re smart enough to at least admit that this is a blessing and a gift from God. If they’re not, it is probably, I dunno. But the fact is, is that some of the robotics, they’re going to be able to fit us with prosthetics and be able to walk again and eventually be able to control it with your brainwaves and with, I mean, they’re moving that direction. And it would be a great blessing for people like myself. I mean, if I could stand, could stand enough to just stand for a minute and then sit back down, I wouldn’t have the pressure sore issues that would heal. That would heal.

Marlin Miller:

Yeah, that would

Dave Sims:

Heal even if I couldn’t walk, if I could just stand up. And not to mention that, it gives you a feeling of, I dunno, accomplishment and power a little bit to be able to stand. I mean, I took that for granted. We stand, I took it for granted before, never occurred to me what it would be like to not be able to do that. And I am so used now to being three foot six or what? I’m six foot one, but I’m really three foot six, I think. But I’m just used to it.

Marlin Miller:

Yeah. Well, so now let’s go back even further.

Dave Sims:

Okay.

Marlin Miller:

You have all this music, the studio. Tell us where the roots of all that came from. I mean, you were in a band in Seattle. How did that all come about?

Dave Sims:

Yeah, I was a lead guitarist in a band in Seattle. When I was probably 17, I joined that band and that band started to take off and become regionally successful and large when I was probably 20,

19 or 20. And then really when I was 21, 22, in those early years, early twenties, I mean, we were touring and having a blast and doing all the stuff, the rockstar stuff, but we weren’t, we talked about moving to Los Angeles and getting, I think that God was looking out for me. I’d probably be dead. We didn’t do that. And eventually I went, this has been a lot of fun. I love music. I love playing guitar. I love all that stuff, but I need to make a living and I want to have a family. And so I was smart enough, and eventually everybody in the band ended up turning into careers and being successful in various walks of life. And all of us probably were better at our jobs because of the experience in the band, because

We had been in a position where we were on stage in front of thousands of people, and I was always in sales and management after that. And I always felt like that experience really helped me a lot as far as being in front of people, speaking to groups. I had a lot of people working for me, et cetera, over those next 15 or 20 years until my accident. But I was always a workaholic. Even when I was in the band, I was working, I worked since I was 11 years old after school and summers and always wanted stuff. And my dad always said, if you want a motorcycle, go to work. 11 dad. And he’s like, okay, well, how do you feel about bicycles? Yep. Go get a job. I’ll buy you a bicycle. If you want a motorcycle, you go to work.

Marlin Miller:

Didn’t you tell me a story about a banana bike or something? I thought there was something that you had to bust your butt to save money.

Dave Sims:

That was my first sl, my first Honda. This one, well, that’s not it. But I had wanted my dad and his best friend who happened to be my best friend’s dad. So the two dads, and then we were best friends and we were 11 years old, and our dads went out and a couple of other dads, there was three or four of them went out together and all bought brand new Honda SL one 20 fives, 1971, brand new sl one 20 fives. And we were like, that was the coolest bike. It was so cool. And they made a spitting image of dad’s bike was an SL 70, and they made an SL 70 at that time, and we’re 11 years old. And I wanted an SL 70 so bad. And so my dad’s best friend, which was my best friend’s dad, he bought his boys a brand new SL 70 at the, this was all on a Memorial Day weekend. Okay. He says, you guys got to pay me back. You got to work and pay me back over the summer. That was my buddy, my dad. I said, can you buy me one too? And my dad said, Hey, here’s the deal. You work all summer and then we’ll go get the bike.

You work first, you don’t work afterwards. So that was, I wanted it so bad. So I went to work for my grandfather painting, and I lived with my grandma and grandpa in their trailer at a campground all that summer when I was 11 years old. And I got up at five in the morning and went to work with my grandpa, and he was a painting contractor, and we were doing a big project that’s still there today. They haven’t even changed the name of it. Condo, odell Soul.

Marlin Miller:

Oh my goodness.

Dave Sims:

At the end of the bridge going into Sandpoint, we’re in north Idaho. If you hadn’t guessed, we’re in north Idaho. So you go across that bridge into Sandpoint, and right there on the left, at the end of the bridge is this big condo complex that I painted when I was 11 years old.

Marlin Miller:

Oh, man, I’m

Dave Sims:

Going up there tomorrow. It is really neat that it’s still there. I just think, and there’s the big old sign that says Condo, Dell Soul, SOL. And back in those days, of course, when we did a project, we stained the doors and the cabinets and

We lacquered and we did all the trim work. None of that was pre-finished. We did it all on site, so it was a big project. So I worked there all summer for 50 cents an hour, and I would save my money in this butter container that my can’t believe it’s not butter kind of thing. The old, the little yellow ones. Yeah, little yellow container. So I put all my money in a butter container, I’d save it up, and I put it in the freezer. I thought, well, none of my brothers and sisters, they can’t even reach the freezer because they were all up at the top in those days. And at the end of the summer, I had $256 and some change saved up. I remember that so clearly. And Labor Day weekend, now it’s Labor Day, I still don’t have a motorcycle. And my mom packed us kids up, and we had to go to Boise to visit my grandmother for the Labor Day weekend before school started, and we all did that. Dad had to stay back home to work. And when we pulled in that Monday night, school starts the next day on Tuesday. We pulled in Monday night, coming back home from that weekend, and there was a Honda 70 sitting in the driveway. The summer’s over, no way here. It’s a Honda 70,

But it was not the SL 70 that I wanted so bad. It was a Honda Trail 70. And if you’re a connoisseur of the old Hondas, the Trail 70, very popular, they continued making those. They might even still make ’em, I don’t know, year after year after year. The trail 70 has been a popular item, but to me it looked like a girl. Was it more, it looked like the old Honda nineties with a more rounded seat, and there’s no gas tank on top. It’s got a molded body that comes up and funky looking handlebar and little squatty balloon tires on the front and back. And it was a trail bike. It didn’t have a clutch. It was automatic. And I mean, I wanted the bike that looked like my dad’s bike, which was the SL 70. And that’s what my buddy had. My best friend had an SL 70, and I wanted an SL 70, and by the time I could afford one Marlon, by that time, I had outgrown it and I was too big. And so I ended up eventually getting a two 50, and by the time I was on my own in life and I could buy whatever I wanted to buy, I owned a lot of different dirt bikes, had a Honda 500 for a while and a Honda two 50 for a while, and did all that stuff. But I always dreamed about that little boy in me still wanted that SL 70.

Marlin Miller:

And

Dave Sims:

At 56 or 57 years old, I found a barn. 40 years. Is that when you stayed in the apartment? The yellow one? That’s where the banana thing came it. It’s that bright yellow. They used to make that in three colors. They made it in red, and they made it in that robin blue there, and they made it in that fire, bright yellow.

Marlin Miller:

And

Dave Sims:

The yellow one, I happened to stumble across one on Craigslist or something, and it was a rust bucket covered in it had been sitting literally in a barn up in Wallace, Idaho for 40 years. It had a license plate on it, a Washington license plate from 1973 or 74. And yeah, it was just wow. And so I bought that old rust bug. It just was a unbelievable, filthy, dirty things hanging off it.

Marlin Miller:

And

Dave Sims:

My brother helped me who lives down in Boise, down in southern Idaho. And so we took the bike down there. I would buy parts on the internet and send, have ’em ship to my brother. And out in his barn, he began rebuilding the thing. I finally got my beautiful brand new gorgeous Honda SL, 70 at 60 years old.

Marlin Miller:

60 years old.

Dave Sims:

Yeah.

Marlin Miller:

Wow.

My dad was Pop’s gone for 14 years now, but he got his first bike at I think 13 or 14. And he was an Amish kid and he had motorcycles all up until he passed. He had actually just been started to talk about getting a big gold wing trike. He had wanted to do a big trike for many, many years, and he just never made the switch from his big two wheeler gold wing to the trike. But for a long time, my brother, my sister, and of course Pop had their motorcycles. And I was the only one that never did. I was the only one that never did. I remember jumping onto my brother’s crotch rocket years and years and years ago, and I we’re on this little back county road and it was paved, but I remember jumping on it and buzzing down the road, and I looked down, I’m in second gear and I’m doing 80, 85 miles an hour. And I turned around and I drove home and I said, I can’t do it. I’m an idiot. I’m going to kill myself. If I buy a bike, I would probably kill myself. And there’s another whole story there with my brother and how he got to the point where he said, okay, this is it. I’m done. But I’m just thankful that he didn’t kill himself that day that change happened, because it could have been really, really bad. But anyway,

Dave Sims:

I’ve not heard that. We’ll have to talk about that

Marlin Miller:

Sometime. Yeah. How old were you when your accident happened?

Dave Sims:

38.

Marlin Miller:

38.

Dave Sims:

38.

Marlin Miller:

And you had dropped out of the band? The band kind of dispersed a little

Dave Sims:

Bit. Yeah, we had broken up and we’d gone our separate ways and sometime in the late, mid to late eighties.

Marlin Miller:

Okay,

Dave Sims:

So you were in your mid twenties or something? We were before the Grue, the big Seattle. We were before that

And that time. And we came up with, well, one that people would recognize as Queens Rike. Queens. Rike became a huge, huge worldwide phenomenon. And we used to take vocal lessons with those guys at the same place. And they were nobody. And we were nobody. And we were all in there. There was another band called Rail that got more attention than Queens Rike, because they had won a big national contest. And all of us were just all contemporaries. And we would see each other down at Maestro David Kyle’s studio where we all took vocal lessons and we all shared the same management. And then Queen’s Rike, of course, took off to be huge. And to us, it was just like those guys. Anyway, those guys were really good, actually. But that was all before the big Seattle grunge thing

Marlin Miller:

Happened.

Dave Sims:

Matter of fact, Nirvana, the ironic thing, all the guys from Nirvana and Allison Chains, you could go on and on sound guard. All of these guys were going to their high school dances in school, and we were playing them. Get out of here. No, I’m serious. Oh my goodness. We were playing all these high school and junior high dances, and these guys were looking at us going, I want to be a rock star. Well, they ended up all being rock stars that all came out of Seattle, but all of their schools, we played ’em all at that time. That was a phenomenon since Gone Away. But there was no DJs. People didn’t have a dance and get a dj. They hired a live band. So there was an agency you called and they sent you how much can you afford, how good a band do you want? And playing high school, that might sound, oh, you played high school dances. We didn’t want to play bars. The high school dances would pay us. In 1982, we were getting two and $3,000 for a show.

Marlin Miller:

No kidding.

Dave Sims:

We’re doing a three and a half hour show. And if you went to play a bar, you’d get 300 bucks a night plus tips and whatever, how much you raised at the door or whatever. And you’d have to play till one in the morning. I mean, it was awful. It was horrible.

Marlin Miller:

I mean, a couple grand, that would be, that’s a lot today.

Dave Sims:

I mean, that would’ve been 10 grand or something. I mean, who knows? Yeah. Probably would be the equivalent of that. 50 years ago, typically it was all the girls that would be in the, what do they call that club? Not Deca Club, but whatever the club was that raised all the money for the events. It’d be a bunch of girls on that. And they’d go out and do the car washes and go out and do the whatever it was to plan the dances. And they wanted rockstar stuff. So the bands that were really successful in that, that made the good money were those of us that had the massive PA systems and the massive lights and the massive trucks, and we had all this stuff. It took us forever to set up and forever to break down. But man, for three hours, we could give you a rockstar show like you were in Los Angeles, or you were in the arena or whatever. And those were great days for music, because nowadays they hire a dj and one guy comes out there and plays a bunch of junk back to backs put together. They say it’s art. I guess I don’t,

Marlin Miller:

I don’t know what it is, man. So now let’s go all the way forward. You’re 38, you have the accident.

Dave Sims:

Now I’m a successful businessman.

Marlin Miller:

Okay.

Dave Sims:

I’m working in the electrical industry. I’m a regional manager for a large supply company, and we’re still around today, north Coast Electric. I loved them to pieces. They were a great employer. And I had worked my way up through a couple different supply houses until I had one I was working for, got purchased by North Coast. And so I had worked my way into a position of being a regional manager for this side of the mountains. And it had my dream of moving my family back to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

Marlin Miller:

That

Dave Sims:

Came through that because I hated Seattle. And Seattle. I had moved there after growing up in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. And so I wanted to come back so bad, but every time I tried to come back, wages and everything were so bad in this area. You, there was no lateral move. You could come over here. You just couldn’t make the same kind of money. And now it’s not that way. But at that time it was. And finally I had the opportunity as in the position I was in, and because I was taking care of multiple stores east of the mountains in eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, Montana, Idaho, and through that, gave me the ability to move my family back to Coeur d’Alene. And I kept my office in Spokane, and that was a great thing and life changing. But along with that, Marlon, I mean, I worked my way up the ladder. I totally forgot there was ever a God in the picture. I mean, really, to be honest, I look back and I was at a point in my life where I was so successful and I thought I deserved everything.

And it was not good for my marriage. It was not good as a father. It was not, I mean, I was failing at those. I didn’t know I was failing at those things, but I was failing at those things. And I believe God says, for those that have been, or Jesus says, for those that have been given to me by the Father, I’m not going to lose even one, not even one is what he says. And I believe he was pursuing me, and I kept saying no. I was like, no, thanks. I’m good. I’m actually really good. Everything’s good. Anyway, he didn’t quit pursuing me. And eventually I would stop short of saying, God, I don’t think God causes bad things to happen, but I think he allows, and it probably breaks his heart. He probably cries to allow us to do some of the dumb things we do. But free Will is free will. And he does give us that. And my free will led me to that spot that day. And there I was. So after that happened, and it took me another year or two to finally get it, I still was rebelling.

Marlin Miller:

Did you have to hit a rock bottom to get

Dave Sims:

There? Yeah. Yeah, I did. In my way of rock bottom. I mean, still, I feel so fortunate. Some things happened along the way that I look back and again, in retrospect, you can tell they’re miracles,

Some crazy stuff for financially being taken care of financially. Some crazy stuff happened, but prior to my accident that I would be destitute had it not been that way. But at that point, after my accident, as things were, I was still okay financially, and I had good insurance and I had good a lot of stuff to take care of me. But none of that really matters when all of a sudden you realize you’re in this great big 4,000 square foot house and there’s no wife, and there’s no kids, and there’s no joy and there’s no anything. And I couldn’t dress myself, and I couldn’t feed myself, and I couldn’t go use the bathroom myself, couldn’t do anything by myself.

And I was pretty well done, was ready to go. I wanted to be not here. And I’ll never forget the night. I wish I would’ve written the date down. I did not. I should have. But one night I had just totally given up. I mean, I want to die. I don’t want to be here anymore. And I cried out to the Lord, and I finally gave up, and I finally said, I don’t want to be here. I want you to take me. Please take me, but if you won’t, you don’t. You need to take over because I’ve blown it. I cannot do this anymore, and I’m obviously not good at it, and I need you to take over because I’m done. And the next morning, it was almost like the very next morning, it was almost like something in the world changed, something in the universe changed. It was a different day. It was a new day. I surrendered finally. And the next day, I had probably one of my favorite stories. Best thing that ever happened to me. I had two therapists, an occupational therapist who helps you with stuff. How do we learn to use our hands that don’t work anymore? How do we brush our teeth? How do we

Marlin Miller:

Wash

Dave Sims:

Our face? All those kinds of things. So stuff like dressing, things like that. So that was my occupational therapist. I had a physical therapist that would help me try to learn how to transfer in and out of my wheelchair.

Marlin Miller:

And

Dave Sims:

I had not been able to conquer any of that stuff. So the next morning after I had just given up, surrendered, gave my life to the Lord and said, I’m yours. I’ll do whatever you want. I don’t care anymore. It’s all on you next morning, somehow I was on the top floor of a three story house, and somehow I had managed to not unlock the front door. I used to unlock the front door. And the next morning, the therapist would come in and first one would come in at seven. We’d work on dressing and work on those kinds of things. Second one would come in at eight, we’d work on transfers, and by nine o’clock I would be ready for my day and they would leave. So the next morning, and here they come, and I had locked the door, forgot to unlock it, couldn’t get in the house.

So they’re calling me on a cell phone, what do we do? And I’m trying to get the keypad to work, and the keypad didn’t work, and I think the battery’s dead. So one of them leaves and races over to Radio Shack. We used to have Radio Shack, a place called Radio Shack. They don’t exist anymore, but I remember that. That was the olden days, guys. It was back with records and CDs and stuff. Anyway, so she runs to Radio Shack to get a battery, and then she gets the battery in, and I couldn’t remember the code. We didn’t have the code, so they’re ready to call the fire department and break windows to get into my house. No, they’re just getting ready to smash the windows out of the front of my house. It had been two hours. And I unlocked the front door and opened it up, and they went, what are you doing?

You’re dressed in your wheelchair. And I said, while you guys were trying to get in, I got dressed and got in my chair and came down. I had an elevator to get down the stairs and open the door. And they were like, I was, same thing. It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t efficient, may not have been pretty. But the first time ever by myself, I got dressed and I got in my chair off of that bed, and I went down and opened up the front door. And that was the day that everything changed. And it was the day after that just turning it all over. I mean, really, everything changed from that point. And I say my favorite story, what I love about those two therapists, bless their hearts. I ran into one just a few months ago. I hadn’t seen her in 20 years. She’s like, Dave. And I told her, I said, you are a big star because I have used you in story after story after story. And she goes, how? And I said, do you remember? She said, I do remember her husband was also a therapist, and he worked at the hospital and she was a home therapist. She worked for a home

Marlin Miller:

Health

Dave Sims:

Agency. And these two therapists that were working with me, I was stuck with whoever they had at a home agency because that’s who insurance was having come to my house was the home health agency.

So there was no specialist. So I get these two wonderful therapists. Neither one of them had ever, ever worked with a spinal cord injury patient. They had no idea what they were doing. They understood therapy, but they had no idea what to do with a quadriplegic. And they had no preconceived ideas, nothing. So we worked together for six months, and then that episode happened, and here I am, I’m dressing myself. I’m brushing my teeth, washing my face, doing all these things, feeding myself, transferring in and out. I’d learned that by this time, transferring in and out of my van. I was learning to drive. And right about that time, Christmas comes and her husband, this physical therapist, her husband knew she had been working with a spinal cord patient all this time. And so for Christmas, he gets her the spinal cord therapy book. If there is a Spinal Cord, it’s a book for therapists that spinal cord specialty, a big thick.

She brought it to show it to me, big thick book and hard back. And it was just a gift from her husband because of me. And she said, Dave, she sat down, I’ll never forget on the edge of my bed. And the other therapist came in too, and she says, Dave, she says, I am so fortunate that we didn’t get this book before we started, because according to this book, you can’t do any of the things that you’re doing. And nobody bothered to tell us that. No way. So it was too late. We were already doing

Marlin Miller:

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Dave Sims:

And I said, you know what? You guys are awesome therapists. I don’t care what anybody says, this whole specialty thing, I’m not so sure that’s smart. Because the less they knew, the better,

Marlin Miller:

Because

Dave Sims:

They didn’t know that you can’t do that. Yeah.

Marlin Miller:

That so utterly reminds me of conversations that my wife and I have had about kids with special needs. The tendency, and obviously I’m including paraplegics, quadriplegics, the whole gamut of any need, the tendency, I think, is that you automatically assume that they are not able to do something.

It’s so easy, and it’s so quick to just assume that our son, who mostly nonverbal, so many people, just assume that he can’t do many, many other things because he can’t say a whole lot. And when you get to turn that around and you expect the ability to do something, and then you work at it from that, I don’t want to call it a worldview, but it is almost a worldview to where you’re actually able to do stuff. And I mean, it’s a whole game changer. And that I’m not surprised at all that the book says, well, they’re able to do this, but not that, not

Dave Sims:

That,

Marlin Miller:

Not that,

Dave Sims:

Not that. So don’t even waste your time. Love it.

Marlin Miller:

It’s

Dave Sims:

Amazing. It’s amazing. And I don’t know, I think I’ve told you this before, but that is why I eventually, in working with new injuries and new people myself, and over a period of time we used to do some ministry work with people and disabilities. And that’s why eventually I coined the term less ability because I thought disability is not accurate. What’s a disability? I mean, in the construction world that I’ve been in since I was a little boy, if something’s disabled, it doesn’t work. Throw it away. Well, as somebody reminded me a few years later, how could you be disabled? You got dressed this morning, got in your van and drove to the airport and picked me up. How are you disabled? It’s not even possible, right? I’m like, oh, yeah, I’m not disabled. I’m just kind of less abled. I went, huh?

Marlin Miller:

You could even say different abled. I mean, it’s

Dave Sims:

Not, well, yeah, different. We got a laugh out of it because I said, I’m just less abled. And he actually responded to me and said, I’ve seen some of the people that you work with, and in a lot of cases you’re more abled. And I said, well, thank you. That’s nice. But I used to do these ministry events for people with disabilities to come down to my property. I had that property on the river, which I got taxed out of by the state of Idaho. But anyway, but I used to have five acres on with 200 feet of beach on the Spokane River. And we had a home there, and I had people come down and we’d have these events and we’d have a hundred wheelchairs down there. No, a hundred. Oh my goodness. Wheelchairs. And I had taken the whole front three quarters of an acre along the waterfront, and I had poured sidewalks that meandered used brown concrete and made ’em look like pathways. And we made everything accessible so

You could come down the sidewalks down from the house and go around all the waterfront area and onto the dock and what have you. And it was all accessible, and it was for me, but I was like, I’ve got this incredible blessing that I can do this. I’m going to share it. So we shared it. And so we would do these events, and I needed volunteers to help. So I would ask people at the church, I need some volunteers to help for this event. A bunch of people in wheelchairs, people would sign up to help. And at the end of the day, they would come to me in tears and say, I came here to help. I cannot believe what a blessing it was to me.

Yeah. Changed their whole everything. They couldn’t believe that these people were able to do the things that they were doing. So as you spoke about your children, I mean, I think that I’ve told you this before, what you do is a very high calling. But I think that mean you realize those kids have a heart and they have feelings, and they have, just because they maybe can’t verbalize something or whatever the case may be, doesn’t mean that they don’t have all the other things that God put inside of us. And sometimes they’ve got abilities that we never dream about.

Marlin Miller:

I think our kids are more, I think they’re more in touch with their intuition than what I can even imagine.

Dave Sims:

I would imagine.

Marlin Miller:

I am telling you, it’s incredible, the innocence and the purity and the joy. It’s

Dave Sims:

Amazing in their situation, some of that, they may never grow out of that if they have that childlike. I mean, I think of Jesus saying, unless you become one of these children.

Marlin Miller:

Yep, that’s exactly right.

Dave Sims:

They’re that way for their entire life.

Marlin Miller:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, pop used to always say that you will never find a more Christ-like guy or gal than a kid with Down syndrome. Yeah. I’ve never forgotten that. So I mean, goodness, we’re going on an hour here

Dave Sims:

If you would quit talking.

Marlin Miller:

So give us your two favorite stories of how the Lord has used this whole thing from the church to, I should probably just shut up, but I remember you telling me how you have been able to come by folks who find themselves in a similar situation and encourage the tar out of them when they are at their lowest. And just really, I mean, the Lord just seems to have used you in some pretty incredible ways because of all

Dave Sims:

This. Yeah. And by the way, I really believe you got to be open to let him do that if you let him do it. I think he wants to use us if we’re willing to be used.

And the truth is, and we used to talk about this, if God came to you and said, Hey, I got this great new plan. I got a great new plan that’s going to save whatever you pick a number, a million people are going to be saved for all eternity, or lots of people are going to be saved for all eternity. And I got a scrape boat. It’s going to be great. You’re going to love it. I’m going to include you in it, by the way. It means that you’re going to be paralyzed for the rest of your life, and you’re not going to be able to walk or do anything you in.

Marlin Miller:

Yeah.

Dave Sims:

How many people would it be worth it? How many people, would it be worth it to you to do that? To say, yeah, believe me, I’m not, don’t answer that because I wouldn’t. I don’t think there could be a number for me. I mean, I’m being honest here. I’d be going, oh Lord, I don’t think I like that plan. I don’t like that idea. Let’s come up with something else. So I could not make that decision, but I’ve often wondered, would it be worth it for a million people? Would it be worth it for a hundred thousand people? Or would it be worth it for a thousand people? Or would it be worth it if it was a hundred people? And I keep thinking

From the perspective of the person that was saved for all eternity, all of eternity, from their perspective, it would be worth it just for one. If because of what happened to me, saved one, maybe I wouldn’t have made that decision. But from their perspective, it was worth it for one. And so I’ve had to kind of start thinking that way. What’s their perspective? Maybe that’s more like God’s perspective. Maybe my perspective is a little skewed and not so, and that happened in a lot of ways. I’ll tell you. I’ll try to be quick. But one thing that really happened to me, and for some reason we were just talking about this morning, myself and another person, but I was just sharing with somebody. I had still had a pretty nasty attitude. I was pretty angry with God. This was before I turned my life over. But during that first couple of years, I was angry with God. I was mad. I was trying to negotiate with the creator of the universe. If you heal me and make me walk again, I’ll serve you forever. And I think God was going, oh, you’re still not getting it, Dave, are you? How about you? Just do what I tell you and don’t worry about forever. Don’t worry. I was pretty arrogant. And I remember I was going over to St. Luke’s rehab and visiting new patients, new spinal cord injury patients.

Marlin Miller:

I

Dave Sims:

Was visiting people and talking to ’em and trying to be a bit of a mentor to them because nobody had done that for me. But it didn’t mean, I still didn’t have a pretty arrogant attitude. I was pretty upset. But I was doing that much. And I happened to come in, at that time, I was probably 39 or 40, and I went in to visit a lady, and she was only 52 or 53, had grandchildren. And I did, by the time I was in my early fifties last year, not last year, but alright, whatever. Strike that. Strike that. Edit. Edit. So I go into her room and she had gone to visit her grandchildren in California and took ’em to the local pool. It was hot and took ’em swimming, and she was just swimming in a pool, and it only takes seven and a half pounds of pressure to break your neck. That’s something I learned. That doesn’t sound like very much to me. But she was swimming and hit her head into the end of the pool, broke her neck at C one, same as Christopher Reeve. So I come into this lady’s room to visit her and to talk to her and try to encourage her. And she’s sitting staring straight ahead. All she could do is move her eyes, her mouth a little bit. They were trying to teach her how to use a sip and puff thing I was telling you about.

Marlin Miller:

Yeah.

Dave Sims:

And she looked at me and I was trying to talk to her and be an encouragement to her. And I was realizing I was going nowhere, and I could just see it in her eyes. She was looking at me, and that woman would’ve given anything in the world to be like me. I’m sitting quadriplegic. I can’t walk. I can’t do this, and I can’t do that. And this just sucks. And why God hates me and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this woman would’ve done anything in the world to be like me. And I thought, oh my goodness. You saw

Marlin Miller:

It.

Dave Sims:

Totally, clearly interface never occurred to me that that could be possible. And I could see it clearly. And just that quick, it was like, oh my goodness, what have I done? What am I complaining? What am I whining about? And I’ve, I mean, most people in my situation are, first of all, penniless broke.

They’ve lost their job now, and they have no way of getting anything but social security, seven, 800, $900 a month or something. And I mean, they don’t have anyone to help ’em. Their spouse leaves them. They can’t handle it. Which happened to that lady too. Her husband hung in there as long as he could, but he just couldn’t take it anymore and left. And yeah, it was awful to see that in her eyes, that she was just like, how come, Lord, I couldn’t have been a quadriplegic like him. And that just shook me, really shook me. And so that was the first time that I really began to realize that I needed to reassess things for myself. And anyway, so I did some time crying about that and apologizing and asking for forgiveness for that, and tried to get my attitude straightened out. And I have to teach this to people and salespeople, to my managers and my salespeople under me is that, hey, guys, attitudes 95% of the battle.

I mean, I can teach people the electrical industry. I could teach them all of the parts and pieces and all the catalog numbers. I teach you how to figure ’em all. I can do all of that, but I can’t teach a good attitude. You either got a good attitude or you don’t have a good attitude. And I thought, oh, look what I’ve done. I’ve fallen into that trap. Yeah. So I got out of that as quick as I could and decided I was going to do something positive. I decided that I was going to quit worrying about whether there was going to be a cure like Christopher Reeve. It was all about the cure. All about the cure. And there were a lot of people, I met a lot of people that were in my situation, and they were just going to sit there in front of the TV and smoke dope and vegetate until the cure came. Well, let me tell you something. If a cure came tomorrow, I’d been sitting in this chair for 25 years. You couldn’t get my spinal cord to straighten out enough. I mean, first of all, if I stood up, I’d pass out from blood pressure,

And then once I came to, I’d be bent forward because I’ve been in a sitting position for all these years. I mean, if it were even possible, it would take years and years and years

Of rehab to ever get back to any normalcy. And so I decided, I made a conscious decision to, instead of worrying about what I can’t do, I would focus on what I can do. And my whole life’s focus began to be on what can I do with what I got? And then once I figure out what I can do with what I got, then I’ll help other people figure out how to do those things if they wanted to know. And matter of fact, that’s my goal. Now. I’m wanting now just now to be able to do a podcast or a video thing on YouTube or something. I want to be able to start teaching those things because they were so earth shattering and life changing to me. But anyway, neither here nor there. So that happened. That was a big turning point in my life. Shortly after that, I was going along thinking things were getting better in life, and then I’m thinking, okay, God’s repented, and I’ve got things going the right direction. And I mean, the pride just keeps sneaking back in. I think it just does. I don’t know, but

Marlin Miller:

I can’t relate to that at all. I never do. I know you’re perfect. I never struggled with pride at all. So there you

Dave Sims:

Go. Obviously, of course, that’s a joke. But I had been going pretty good. Next thing you know, I got a pressure sore, and I had been helping volunteering for some financial stuff at our church and helping with a ministry that was doing some financial stuff, helping people with that. I’d been doing that and I thought, I’m doing some things and using the talents God gave me, and now I got a pressure sore. Well, that pressure sore, they had to do surgery. And the next thing you know, it lands me in the hospital and I’m in the hospital for three months. Oh man, I’m flat on my back. Everything that I had gained over the last several years now, it had been four years or so,

Three or four years since my accident, and probably three years. And here I am back in the hospital and now I’m down and there’s just, I’m losing everything again. I’m losing my balance and my strength, and I’m just laying flat on my back for three months. And it was horrible. And so I’m thinking, what have I done? And I’ll hold it maybe. Maybe I’ve come to believe I have the faith. I’ve come to believe God can heal me if he wants to heal me, if that’s what he wants to do, if he decides that’s the best thing for me,

And if he wants to show his power, he can heal me. I thought so. I thought to myself, maybe he is going to heal me and send me home and all’s going to be good, but maybe he’s got me here because there’s somebody that needs to know about the Lord. Right? What was my thought? And I thought, huh, well, yeah, but I’ve already proven that I’m just about stupid enough that that person can walk up to me and say, Hey, I’m the one. And I’d go, huh, what are you talking about? And I’d miss it, right? Yep. So I thought, so I called up a buddy of mine at the church that I had been kind of my supervisor and

Marlin Miller:

Whatever

Dave Sims:

This ministry I was serving in. I said, can you help me? And I told him what I just told you. He was like, huh, this guy’s hilarious. He’s still there today. We laugh about this sometimes, but he gets a big kick out of that. And he goes, okay, here’s what I’ll do. I said, please help me with this. He makes me a sign eight and a half by 11 on a really nice woven nice paper, really nice. So it’s nice. And then he puts it in a frame with a glass cover on it, and it says in great big letters, and it has a thing on the back to set it up, like a picture frame. And it says,

Are you the one? And sets it right in the middle of my hospital room. And so everybody who, every doctor, every nurse, every nutritionist, every physical therapist, every occupational therapist, every visitor, I had people from everywhere on every end of this planet came in that room. And a first thing they said every time is, am I the one what? Then you’ve got to answer, oh, you’re on the spot. You’ve got answer. Nail it. And you’re like, I don’t want the Lord to know that I’m afraid to share my faith. Yeah, now I’m really on, I’m on the spot at this point. And here is just right in the middle of my

Marlin Miller:

Room.

Dave Sims:

I answered that question. Well, funny you should ask. I’m looking for the one that needs to hear about the Lord. And I answered that question 50 or 60 or a hundred times over the next three months, and I just couldn’t, hadn’t found the one. So right at the end of that period, I’d been about three months in the hospital, and doctor comes to me and says, would you like to go to rehab? Medicare allows two weeks per year, 14 days

In rehab. And he said, that’s your year total. So if you go now, you won’t be able to use any later on in the year because it’s pretty strict. 14 days. He said, but I’m thinking that the rehab might do you better than laying here for the last two weeks of your stay, because at least they’ll start getting you up and trying to strengthen you. And he tells me all this stuff, and I said, no, I’ve been to that rehab place before. I think I’d like to go there. And I just wanted to get out of the hospital.

So I went over to the rehab facility. I had 14 days to be there. I got there, I got set up, set up my sign right in the middle of the room. Are you the one, the rehab facilities in Spokane? So there was some group of elders from our Spokane. We had one for our church, had opened a Spokane branch over there. So that group of the elders, many of which I had known from our post falls where I went, they would come out on Wednesday evenings to pray for me and pray with me. And there was four or five of ’em, I think. And they would come out and gather around my hospital bed and they would pray. So I had been at my 14 days in rehab, I was on day, it must’ve been 12, 13, 12, I guess because it was Wednesday, Friday morning, I had to go home. Thursday night was my last night. And then I’ve used up my time.

Medicare is over. You’re done. You have to go home. And so Wednesday evening, that was when the elders had been coming in. They come in to my room and they’re praying and they left. And I was grateful for that. And they left. Here comes this gal after them. Excuse me, can I come in real quiet? And it was a teenager who wouldn’t speak to anybody in the hospital. She was so quiet. And so she was just young and she was embarrassed, and she was naturally, I think just a real quiet person. And she was away from home. Her family was in Lewiston, Idaho, and she was way all by herself. And she had been in a car accident and left paraplegic.

And she comes to my door, excuse me, can I come in? I said, come on in, come on in. She rolls in, and she said, I am so-and-so Tela. I’ll never forget that name. I’ve never heard that name before. Tela. She says, I’m Tela. And I was wondering who those guys are that always come in your room? I just was wondering. I’ve seen ’em in here before. And I said, well, that’s the elders from our church come in to pray with me. Really? She says, tell me about that. So I start talking to her. She’s sitting next to my bed next to the sign that says, are you the one which is right next, right next to her?

Marlin Miller:

And you’re looking right at it?

Dave Sims:

I’m looking at

Marlin Miller:

Her

Dave Sims:

And the sign. So she says, and she’s asking me questions. And I was explaining to her that they’d come to pray with me and dah, dah, dah, dah. And I don’t understand that. And I was explaining to her about Jesus and about the whole thing. And she says to me, I want that. I want that. How do I get that? And I said, well, you can settle this right now. So we sat together and we prayed and she accepted the Lord, and she prayed for him to come and save her and take over her life. And it was a beautiful thing. It was wonderful. And we got done praying, and she was in tears. And she said, what do I do now? What do I do next? And I said, well, when you get back home and the time’s right? Find a church and I’ll help you if I can find the right church. And I said, and then the next thing would be for you to be able to get baptized. What’s that? And so I explained baptism to her and I said, it’s your outward profession of faith. You’re stating that I’m dead to the world and dead to myself, and I’m alive again in Christ and it’s profession of faith. And

When you’re ready, you can do that. She says, I want to do that. I want to do that now. I don’t want to wait. And I was like, okay. And I thought about it, and I said, right across the hallway from here, they had a big shower room that everybody used, so you’d have to reserve it. It was a big room that had showers where you could roll into a wheelchair, and they had some waterproof wheelchairs they put you in and what have you also had what they called the arjo tub. The arjo tub was a great big gigantic tub, and it had a gurney that rolled over it, and you lower yourself down into the water in the gurney, and then the gurney could sit up or way back.

Marlin Miller:

And

Dave Sims:

I went, well, hold it. You know what? I said? You know what, Tela? I could baptize you in that arjo tub. I want to do that. I want to be baptized. I want that. And I said, well, you know what? The chaplain, the hospital chaplain, she comes by every night. I’ll tell her, and so maybe we can baptize you tomorrow. That’d be great. I said, I got to leave Friday morning. It’s Wednesday night. Oh, great. I’m so excited. I want to be baptized. And I was like, this is awesome. So she leaves my room about, I don’t know, nine or 10 o’clock as was her custom. In comes the chaplain. Just stop him by to say

Marlin Miller:

That

Dave Sims:

Very night,

Marlin Miller:

That very night, that very night, same

Dave Sims:

Night every night. She would make her rounds almost every night. I think she pretty much did. And so I knew she’d be by. And so the chaplain comes in, how you doing, Dave? And I said, oh, I’m so excited. Well, you hear what I got to tell you, right? So I told her she wants to be baptized and we can do it in the Arjo tub, and I’m so excited. And she’s looking at me with this look like I’m from Mars. And I’m like, what’s the matter? She goes, I don’t, first of all, I’m responsible for the spiritual wellbeing of the people in this hospital, not you. And I don’t even know this person. She never talks to anybody. I didn’t know she had any needs like this that were spiritual. Secondly, she’s a girl. I’m not even sure you should be talking to her at all because you’re a man. And I’m like, I am just dumbfounded. I’m quadriplegic. She rolled into my room. I can’t even, all the air couldn’t

Marlin Miller:

Taken out of the

Dave Sims:

Balloon. I

Marlin Miller:

Mean, real

Dave Sims:

Quick. All the air was out pretty quick. And I was like, I thought you were going to be really excited. And she goes, well, to be honest with you, I just don’t know if this is a good idea. And I was like, well, okay. And she goes, I’ll have to think about this tonight. I was like, okay, well, I go home Friday morning, so kind of need to do it tomorrow. And then she left. I was really perplexed. And she left. And gosh, 1130 or midnight comes back. She came back to the hospital, comes in my room, we need to talk. And I’m like, she goes, I can’t get this out of my, I don’t think this is a good idea. You shouldn’t even be talking to this person and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I am just so blown away. I can’t believe that you’re not excited.

I thought you’d be so excited. You’d be the one person. And she goes, well, so we talked for a while, and I said, listen, she came in and asked me these things, and she wanted to accept Christ or Savior, and now she wants to be baptized, and I am not pushing anything on her. I did what she asked me to do. And okay, she says, all right, well, okay. I feel a little bit better now. Let me go home and I’ll think on this and we’ll talk tomorrow. I said, okay. So she leaves for the second time that night. Next morning, Thursday. It’s my last full day there. I’ve got one night, and I’m supposed to leave Friday morning because Medicare’s run out. And I get up, I go to therapy. I’m in the middle of therapy at 11 o’clock in the morning, and I’m sitting in this therapy session with a bunch of other people in chairs and over the loudspeaker system.

Overhead comes, Mr. Dave Sims, could you please come to the administration office at the end of floor two? And I remember the therapist, she looks over at me and went, Ooh, we’re in trouble, huh? I was like, I don’t know. And she goes, well, you better get down there and find out what’s going on. I’m like, I don’t know what’s going on. So I go down, they let me leave therapy, and they said, don’t be late because you’ll be late for lunch. So I get down to the end of the hallway to the office, and here sits the chaplain and the hospital administrator. It’s two ladies. And they close the door, and I closed the door. And they proceeded to say, really? You should have never even, you should have just called me. You should have never done any of that. You shouldn’t talk to her.

You shouldn’t have done blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But all that being said, we realized that your heart’s in the right place. And unfortunately, in order to baptize that girl, she’s with foster parents or foster parents, both would’ve to sign off on it. They live in Lewiston in the state prison system. Her real parents would’ve to sign off one’s in a woman’s prison and one’s in a man’s prison, and said, we would have to have the CEO of the hospital sign off on the, she starts listing to all these people. She says, there are 16 people that would’ve to sign off on this,

Marlin Miller:

Oh, my

Dave Sims:

16 and for this to happen. And she said that more than half of them were out of town. And she said, our CEO is back east right now. Everybody’s out of town. She said, if we had a couple of weeks to put this together, maybe, but you’ve unfortunately promised her something that we can’t do. And she said, I said, well, I didn’t really promise her. I just said I would be happy to do it, and I thought you would be happy to do it too. And she said, well, I’m sorry, but it’s just not going to happen. And she’s going all over the hospital this morning telling everybody she’s going to be baptized. And I said, well, I’m not going to go tell her. And she goes, well, I’ll talk to her and tell her that we can’t do it. And I said, all right.

I said, but I’m going to tell you something. I said, there’s a story in the Bible where they pull up and he says, well, there’s water. What hinders me from being baptized? And she said, yeah. And I said, well, if I get to heaven, and Jesus says, ask me, I’m going to say, it wasn’t me. Okay, you get it. I said, it wasn’t my fault. I was willing to do it. Okay. And so anyway, she says, whatever, fine. And I left and went back to my room, and I think that night, it was Thursday night, I had to leave in the morning, and I went for one last time to their gym, had a really beautiful wheelchair accessible gym, all upper body gym.

So I’m up working out for my last time and enrolls Tila. And she’s just, she’s devastated. I heard I can’t be baptized and everything. And I said, yeah, I feel so bad. I’m sorry. There’s nothing. I have no control. And she said, I know. They told me that it was not your fault and that they can’t do it because of the rules, et cetera. And I said, well, either way, you’re good. And when you get home, and we had a nice talk, and she went off back to her room and I went to bed. That was Thursday night. I go to get into bed or to have them help me get into bed, I should say. And my doctor, my physiatrist, that’s my rehab dog, she often made late rounds. She wouldn’t see you every day, but she’d come by a couple times a week. And she usually did it at midnight. She was a real late. It was. But that was just her thing. She would come because she would do whatever she would do during the day, and she wouldn’t have time until midnight. I was leaving the next day. The next morning, she shows up in my room at midnight Thursday night. Hey, Dave, how’s it going? Are you awake? And I’m like, well, yeah, I am now. What’s going on, doctor?

And she says, well, how are you? And I said, I’m doing okay. Ready? Go home. Yeah, yeah. She goes, well, listen. She said, we had a meeting today. They always have a meeting of all of the different departments when they’re getting ready to send somebody home to make sure that they’ve got care when they get home, make sure they’ve got a ramp at their front door to get in with the wheelchair,

Marlin Miller:

All

Dave Sims:

The things that you have to plan for that you’re not maybe plan for. So they have a meeting with all the people, different departments. And so she says, well, we had our meeting about you. And they were wondering, in our meeting it came up that they had mentioned that before you came in here, you come in all the time and visit people and talk to people and encourage people. And several of the department heads said, yeah, he’s really been a lot of help. And she said they thought maybe they wanted to know if you wanted another extra day of therapy. And I said, what do you mean extra day of therapy? Said, well, they were wondering if it might be easier if you went home Saturday instead of tomorrow morning like you’re supposed to. And I said, but my Medicares run out after 14 days. And she says, yeah, I know. They all said that they’d be willing to just write it off and do it for nothing. Just give it to you. Just give it to me a day in the hospital and all the doctors and all the nurses and all of the therapy. And they said, yeah, they just we’re going to give you a day for free. And I was like, I’ve never even heard of that before. What

Marlin Miller:

Kind of what I was thinking, I’ve never heard of that

Dave Sims:

At all. And she goes, yeah, if you would like, you would just go ahead and tomorrow morning instead of getting ready to leave, you would just go ahead and go to therapy and then you could leave Saturday morning. And I’m like, oh my gosh. My wife was going to have to come and get me after getting the kids to school. And we were trying to figure out how we’re going to make it work on time, and it was going to just be a fiasco. Saturday would be so much easier. What’d you say for free? I don’t get it. She said, they offered to do it for free. They said that they really appreciate all the stuff you’ve done. Okay, sure, I’ll do that. And she goes, okay, cool. Don’t leave tomorrow. Just call your wife. Tell her to stay home. Come Saturday. I said, okay, cool.

Friday morning, I woke up, got ready, had my breakfast, and headed to therapy. And they said, Hey, welcome to therapy. You called away yesterday. I’m doing my therapy stuff in this big group setting. Dave Sims, please come to the administrator office on floor two. I’m like, oh, what have I done? Now I’m just like, I’m looking at the physical therapist, and she’s like, you are more trouble than you’re worth. She is kind of giving me a hard time. She says, she says, you better go. And I was like, man, the whole reason I stayed was to get some work there. Anyway, I got rolled down the hallway and opened the door, and here sits the same two ladies, the chaplain and the hospital administrator straighter, and I will never forget as long as I live. She said, well, I heard you were staying an extra day. I said, yeah. And she said, well, the weirdest thing happened. All 16 people called in, get out of here. Everyone, every one of them did. She said, we can’t really explain it. But they all called in and she said, since you’re going to be here, you can baptize her tonight.

Marlin Miller:

Oh my goodness.

Dave Sims:

I still have a hard time telling that story, because that was when I really realized that I am not in control.

Marlin Miller:

That was amazing.

Dave Sims:

That was the craziest thing that evening. Her family came up. They’d had no notice other than they had called in and everybody called in. I’m not sure why I’m calling in, but I’m calling in. And I shook my finger at her and said, what a coincidence, huh? She said, yeah, what a coincidence. So that evening, I got done with all my therapy that evening, and we rolled over to that room and it was good sized room, but not big enough to hold the 50 people that showed up. I mean, there were nurses and doctors, and they were lined up out in the hallway. They were all trying to get a look in. And we put her on a gurney and baptized her in the

Marlin Miller:

On rail

Dave Sims:

In that arjo tub. And she was just absolutely so excited. She was just thrilled that she got to be baptized, and I was so excited for her and the next morning, and I’ve never seen her again. The next morning I got up and my wife picked me up and I went home, and I had been looking for the one, are you the one that sign?

Marlin Miller:

Yep.

Dave Sims:

I’d been looking for the one for three months, and God produced the one three months and one day, one day later than I even had insurance coverage for.

Marlin Miller:

That’s amazing.

Dave Sims:

I mean, I think about that, and I always remember that line and what was it, Bruce Almighty, I think at the end where he goes, now you’re just showing off. You know what I mean?

Marlin Miller:

Yeah. I totally remember.

Dave Sims:

Oh

Marlin Miller:

My goodness. That’s amazing.

Dave Sims:

That was a life-changing event because that could not have been anything but a miracle. There is no way that I could have had any. I couldn’t actually. I tried to and I couldn’t do it.

Marlin Miller:

Yeah, you brought up free will a bit ago. It’s things like these, it’s stories like these Dave that make me wonder how much free will we actually have? And I know we do, and I know that’s a huge can of worms. I totally get it. But I also, I tell you buddy, I don’t really believe in KY dinks that much at all. I really don’t.

Dave Sims:

It’s hard to, after experiencing something like that, it’s hard to not think that

Marlin Miller:

Everything’s

Dave Sims:

In place. It makes you go back and think to yourself, when I went over those handlebars and I spent all that time on the ground and I couldn’t move anything, maybe God was crying. Maybe he was as teary as I am right now, but maybe he knew in advance that he had plans. That’s not the only one. That’s the one that just knocked my socks off. That’s the one that made me go, okay, I get it. I think, yeah, changes changes everything. It really does change everything changes everything. It does. Wow. It just changes everything. And yeah, you kind of go, if somebody tells me there’s no miracles, and I used to think miracles were first New Testament, first century stuff.

Marlin Miller:

That stuff doesn’t happen anymore. Doesn’t happen anymore.

Dave Sims:

And I think that maybe God does it mostly differently now. And I think a lot of that is because too many people want to worship the messenger instead of worshiping the message or the one who gave the messenger the power. And I mean, the apostles experienced this, people trying to fall at their feet and worship them. It wouldn’t work well if you had that kind of miracle going on. But even in this case, God made sure I’m not just going to do a miracle. I’m going to make it so far out of the realm that there’s no way you can take credit for this. There’s not a chance. I couldn’t even have made that up.

Marlin Miller:

That’s unreal.

Dave Sims:

Well, how can we pray for you? Well, I’m good. I’m pretty. Except for pressure sores. Yeah. I have a terrible time with pressure sores. But you can always be praying about that.

Marlin Miller:

This is a great way to just land the plane. As I’ve heard many people say, one of the things that I appreciate, I think the most about you is every time that we talk, almost every time we talk, you always say the same thing. Dave, how’s it going? And what do you say? I’m doing great.

Dave Sims:

How are you?

Marlin Miller:

Well, and well then maybe it’s not every time, quite a few times you say, I’m dying. How are you?

Dave Sims:

Oh

Marlin Miller:

Yeah, I have done that.

Dave Sims:

Yeah, I have done that. I’m dying. How

Marlin Miller:

Are you? And I love that. I do. And it’s not, you know what I’m talking about? I do. Yeah. I forgot. I used to. I love, I used to tease you about that. It’s just a great chunk of context for me because we all are. I mean, we all are. And I so appreciate it. Yeah, that’s funny.

Dave Sims:

Yeah. That’s funny. I’m dying. How are you, Dave? But it is. We are. We’re all dying.

Marlin Miller:

That’s

Dave Sims:

What we’re doing. That’s what We’re just on our way.

Marlin Miller:

Yep. I know. And it’s a crazy thing. It’s just a couple days ago, I mean here in town that the shooting, the ambush and the whole thing happened. It was

Dave Sims:

Tragic thing in our little town of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. That should never have happened. And it’s awful to make the national news for something like that. So you were here for that. You were here.

Marlin Miller:

Yeah. It was pretty wild.

Dave Sims:

It’s amazing to me how many times I’ve seen you since all you did was rent my little Airbnb. Little Airbnb over here.

Marlin Miller:

I know.

Dave Sims:

And here we are,

Marlin Miller:

These kind of friendships. I’m telling you. I’m telling you. These are the best, the ones that just come out of nowhere and you just keep in touch. I hope you know how much we appreciate just the chance to hang out in the studio, which is one thing that we didn’t even talk about.

Dave Sims:

No, we didn’t

Marlin Miller:

Get to that. All of the things you have going on here, just, I just love it.

Dave Sims:

Yeah, well, we got through all that stuff. We don’t have to do all the teary stuff anymore. If you want to hear about some rock and roll, we could do part two.

Marlin Miller:

That sounds like a plan. Ill probably be out here next year or sooner, so maybe we can do that next

Dave Sims:

Time. Yeah. But I always love talking to you,

Marlin Miller:

Dave. Thanks a bunch.

Dave Sims:

This

Marlin Miller:

Is great.

Dave Sims:

I’m not a great speaker, but I’m a little shy, but I’m starting to come out of my shell.

Marlin Miller:

You don’t seem like you’re shy buddy. Starting to come out of my

Dave Sims:

Shell just

Marlin Miller:

A little bit, guys. Thanks a

Dave Sims:

Ton. We so appreciate it. It was wonderful. It was great to see me again. No, no, no, no, no. I’m sorry for that. It was great to see you again. See you guys. Bye.

Marlin Miller:

From now until Christmas. Homestead Living has a wonderful gift guide online. You can find **@*************ng.com. You’ll find the link in the notes below. We have a handful of great companies, great products. One of our partners is a company called Rustic Strength. They are focused on zero carcinogens in the laundry detergents and the cleaning supplies. My own wife was looking at them just recently because she learned that they are as pure as it gets right now. You can use the code Homestead 25 and they will knock a quarter off of your order 25%. So hold my in his book, Rembrandt is in the Wind. Russ Ramsey says that the Bible is the story of the God of the universe telling his people to care for the Sojourner, the poor, the orphan, and the widow. And it’s the story of his people struggling to find the humility to carry out that holy calling guys. That is what plain values is all about. If you got anything out of this podcast, you will probably love plain values in print. You can go to plain values.com to learn more and check it out. Please like, subscribe and leave us a review. Guys love. Thanks so much.