INTERVIEW : LINDSAY THOMAS - Robert H. Schuller
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RHS: ROBERT H. SCHULLER
LT: LINDSAY THOMAS
03/23/2003

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RHS: My guest this morning is an inspiration.
Lindsay Thomas, I want you to stand up here a minute, and they’ve seen my daughter with her prosthesis. But they’ve never seen anybody with two prosthesis walk as well as you do. Look at that. You’re fantastic. She was eighteen years old, I believe, when you had the accident.
LT: I was.
RHS: But that wasn’t the first obstacle this little girl had to face. The first one was back in Seoul. What happened?
LT: I was born in Seoul, Korea and as an infant I was left on a doorstep of a police station. I was challenged to survive on my own. I was too young to have hope and to trust in others. But God had a plan for me. His plan was that I would be adopted and at seven and a half months old, I was adopted into a family in the state of Iowa. So I was brought into the United States and that’s where I was raised.
RHS: What happened at the age of eighteen?
LT: I just graduated early from high school and I was anxious to grow up and to be independent so I moved to Des Moines, Iowa which is about three hours away from where my parents lived and where I was raised. And I began working at the local Olive Garden and attending college classes and one evening after work and after school, I decided that I would take up a part time roofing job just a two-day thing with some friends.
RHS: Roofing?
LT: Roofing.
RHS: You mean, hammering shingles on the top of buildings.
LT: Yeah. You know I’m always looking for something new to learn, and so that was..
RHS: Well that is something new. Yeah
LT: Yeah.
RHS: Carry on.
LT: So that evening after all my activities, I decided that I would go to Waverly, Iowa which is about two and a half hours away from Des Moines, and begin that job the next morning. So I left about eight o clock in the evening and thought that I’d get there probably about ten or ten-thirty, not too late, just in time to get some sleep and go to the job the next day.
Well, on my way up to Waverly, I began to get a little bit drowsy. And one thing led to the next. I decided that because I was drowsy I would crack the window and turn the music up, but all of a sudden I noticed that I’d missed my exit. It was a shock to me because I’d driven this route many, many times and this never happens to me. I didn’t panic. I just went up to the next exit and turned around. But that was a turn that changed my life forever.
I fell asleep behind the wheel of my vehicle before I made it back onto the interstate. And my car.. I don’t remember anything. My car went off the road, down a steep grassy hill until it crashed into a cement interstate support. That is where I was left for the next five days. Nobody could see me from the interstate. And I could barely see the cars that were driving up and down the interstate. And I was scared because I didn’t know if anybody would find me. Because my family didn’t know that I was going to this job and I didn’t know if I could rely on my friends to let them know that I hadn’t made it there. All I could do was hope and pray that somebody would find me and that I would make it out of this situation alive.
I tried to get out of the car but my legs were trapped by the car. At first I thought maybe just my pant legs were caught by part of the car, and, because I felt no pain. Well, Thursday morning came. Friday came. And the weekend came and I was still in that car. I had no food and very little water when I was in the car.
RHS: Where did you get the water?
LT: I got the water from a bottle.. I used the bottle cap and I scooped water from the creek that was flowing, the water was flowing through the car. And I scooped the water and that’s how I drank water for five days.
RHS: Then what?
LT: Then after the weekend came, Monday, April 30th was the fifth day that I was in the car. It started to rain and that rain became like sleet. And it felt like pins and needles on my skin. And I pulled the blanket that I had in the car, I pulled it over my head to protect myself from the rain. Well, as I pulled the blanket over my head and I began to lay my head down on the steering wheel, I heard a voice. Now you have to understand that after five days in a car, you don’t, you don’t know if you’re dying. You don’t know what’s happening when you hear a voice because I hadn’t heard the sound of a human’s voice for five days.
A man’s voice called out "hello, can you hear me?" And I just paused. It was like my heart stopped. I didn’t know what to think. And so I just listened very closely, very intensely. And I heard it again. It said, "hello can you hear me?" And this time I answered. I said, "yes I can hear you." And the man later told me, he about fell off the car. He was so in shock that somebody was alive in that car.
The two gentlemen that rescued me were Iowa Department of transportation workers. They were not looking for me. They were just out doing their job and they happened to see a set of tire tracks that were going off the road. They appeared to be fresh tire tracks and I think they were meant to be there that day. And that’s when the rescue started.
I was air lifted to the nearest hospital and reunited with my family. They were just so thankful just to have me there and have me alive. And that’s when I found out that they would have to amputate my legs in order to save my life. My body was infected with gangrene. And I’d many other injuries from the accident. My family was devastated that I would have to lose both my legs. They wondered what this young girl, their daughter, would do because I was a runner. I liked to cycle. I liked to swim. I was in all kinds of activities. And the doctors told me that I would probably never walk again. My mom said I would and I believed in her and I believed in the Lord and I knew that I’d walk again. I wasn’t going to let anything stop me. Well and that’s what brought me here today.
RHS: You wrote me a letter.
LT: I did.
RHS: And I was so touched by it. And I want to give you a gift, which I think you’ll like. It’s a book I wrote. It’s a very deluxe edition. It’s in leather. You know the title.
LT: I do. "Tough times never last. Tough people do."
RHS: Wow.
LT: You know I read your book in high school. I was a junior in high school and as we all do, we go through tough times. And I was given that book by my parents and I read it and that quote stuck with me. And in my car for five days, that’s the quote I remembered, and what I thought of for five days. And I thought of that through my recovery. And that’s what led me to write you.
RHS: Oh, I’m very proud of you. The other book, the companion book is "Tough Minded Faith for Tender Hearted People." You’re a tough person with a tender heart and you love God and it really shows. Thank you. And..
LT: Thank you.
RHS: Dear God, bless her with a future that will surprise her with joy. You dropped a line when we were talking earlier today.
LT: Yeah.
RHS: I loved the line. It’s your personal collection of words.
LT: Yes.
RHS: Wow, It would have made a good Schuller slogan. What is it?
LT: Experience is the hardest teacher because it gives a test first, and the lessons afterwards.
I believe in each and every one of you. And I want each and every one of you to leave here today knowing that you can do anything that you want to do with the hand of the Lord. And remember, experience is the hardest teacher because it gives a test first and the lessons afterwards.