From Discouraging Disability to Developing Leader

From Discouraging Disability to Developing Leader: An Honor Academy Success Story From the Frontline

 

With knife in hand, Kyle Phelps was at rock bottom and ready to take his own life in the spring of 2004. A freshman in college, he was having a hard time adjusting to life on his own and he hadn’t been able to make any close friends at school. He was flunking all his courses and felt helpless to change. Kyle has cerebral palsy which he says has been a challenge his whole life.“I guess I didn’t realize how much my parents did for me at home,” he said. At home he had been an example and people looked up to him for his drive and determination. Even with a handicap that challenged his mobility he was able to participate on his high school swim team.

“I had always told the people around me to push me and never let me give up but here I had gone and given up on myself,” Kyle said about his life at college.

However, before he went through with his suicide, it suddenly struck him that he didn’t know what would come next. “I always believed in heaven and hell,” he said “and I didn’t think that killing myself would get me to heaven…”

But the thing that really got to him was when he thought about his friends and family at home. “I had this vision of my close friends from home all torn up and struggling just because I couldn’t make it through one year of college. I felt that by killing myself I’d be a bigger failure than I already was. I threw down the knife and called out to God. ‘Talk to me! Let me know there’s a reason for my life!’”

A week went by and he hadn’t heard anything, so again he asked, “Please! Send me someone who knows you!”

Within a few days Kyle’s uncle called him up to see how he was doing. “He knew everything!” Kyle said. “Not all the details but he knew something was wrong and that I was hurting and that I needed some answers.”

Kyle went to spend a weekend with his uncle. On Friday night they spent four hours discussing the Bible and if it was the truth, then on Saturday they watched The Passion of the Christ. After church on Sunday Kyle was ready to make a decision about all that they had seen and discussed. That Sunday in the spring of 2004 he decided to follow Christ.

With new hope he headed back to school for a second year after a summer at home only to find that his old problems where waiting for him. “Something needed to change or I was going to go right back to feeling worthless and frustrated.” Kyle said.

He went to visit his sister at a Battle Cry Leadership Summit event and found what he was looking for. “When I heard Ron [Luce] speak I knew that what the Honor Academy offered was what I needed. I needed something intense that would help train me to live a life full of purpose.”

However he still had a few reservations. “I was a little nervous signing up because I didn’t want to start something that I couldn’t do physically.” (Interns go through intense physical training which prepares them for Life Transforming Events that involve mountain climbing, fasting, running and many more personally stretching activities.) “But I told God that if he got my application approved then I would do it and not back down.”

An Honor Academy Admissions supervisor met with Kyle to discuss his disability before he was approved. He admitted that having cerebral palsy and being forced to use a walker to get around would make things difficult, even on a daily basis - let alone the added challenges. But Kyle’s new attitude simply said, “God created me with a disability and the courage to deal with it.”

Kyle has been at the Honor Academy for a month-and-a-half now and is confident that he’s right where God wants him. He made it through Gauntlet, a “boot-camp” like initiation interns go through first thing to whip them into shape physically and spiritually right from the start. He plans on meeting each and every physical challenge that comes his way unless he is specifically prohibited by staff for his own safety, and even then he says he’ll try his hardest to do whatever he can to participate. “I’m still seeking to be an example,” he says, “because people who don’t believe in God need a demonstration of what it means to be a follower of Christ.” He feels that his disability just makes the strength God gives him more obvious.

Kyle is looking forward to a year of learning and growing in the Lord. I asked him if he had any idea of what God wanted him to do and he honestly said he didn’t know yet. “I don’t know for sure yet, but I think God’s going to use what I’ve gone through mentally as a result of my disability to help others facing the same challenges.”

He went on to say, “When people tell you your whole life that because of a disability you can’t do this or you can’t do that you start to believe it. Soon you don’t think you can do anything. It’s a horrible place to be.”

As we continued to chat he told me about a time when he watched a Dr. Phil show on T.V. and was extremely upset at the fact that; here was this guy talking into people’s lives yet he had never gone through what they are going through himself.

“When it comes to living with a disability and dealing with the problems involved,” Kyle said “I’ve been there and God’s given me a voice that can help people.”

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