He lost his legs but found the spirit
digg it!
Facebook
del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit
BY COLLEEN KENNEY / Lincoln Journal Star
He didn’t see the drunk driver until it was too late. He’d been helping a man push his car to the side of the road.
He didn’t have time to run out of the way, even though he was 20 years old and athletic and had two strong legs. The drunk’s car cut off his legs.
He saw them twitching in the street. A woman brought one over to him.
In the ambulance, he saw a vision of hell — people trying to get out of the fire. He didn’t want to go into the fire.
Please don’t let me die!
You won’t die, he heard an ambulance worker say.
But Leroy Duffie wasn’t talking to the ambulance worker. For the first time in his life, he was talking to God.
Look forward
“Once we ask forgiveness for our sins, we’re not to look back. But we are to look forward.”
Pastor Leroy Duffie walks across the altar of his church, a one-story building in a salvage yard on North 33rd Street. The building is beside the train tracks. It has old brown paint.
“You look back when you’re driving a car, so that you may not run into something. But when you’re going down the freeway, you’re looking forward.”
“Halleluiah!” a woman in red shouts from the front row.
“We need to let Him take control of the steering wheel in our life. You now why? Because we are reckless drivers.”
“Amen!” the woman in red shouts.
Pastor Duffie rents the building from a salvage yard. The building used to be a thrift store. There’s no insulation. He’s fixing the place up. For now, it has bars on the front door and windows, frayed gray carpet, plywood showing in parts of the floor.
It has rows of chairs he bought for a buck each, and four cushioned seats he pulled out of a van. They face the podium, on which is a cross.
Behind the podium is a banner on the wall: I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me.
“Take your burdens to the Lord and leave them there!”
Pastor Duffie has been in Lincoln the past 15 years, with a few years in Oklahoma City in-between. He also is a mechanic. He paints and details autos, working out of the garage of his home just north of Bryan LGH Medical Center East.
This Sunday morning, he wears long plaid shorts. His legs show. They are brown legs, to match his African-American brown skin. They have metal hinges and a few scratches in the old brown paint.
He needs new legs.
His voice grows softer. He shakes his head.
“Give Him all kinds of your junk, stuff from years ago, give it all to Him. … I left my burdens there years ago. If I hadn’t, I’d be shattered.”
Salvation Ministries
One day, he needed a car door and stopped by this salvage yard, Star City Auto Salvage & Sales. It was winter. George Skorohod, the owner, pointed him out back. He saw Leroy Duffie walk through waist-deep snow, carrying the car door back on his shoulder.
When he realized Leroy did all that without legs, he was stunned.
They became friends. He lets the pastor pay a little rent here, a little there, as he can.
You won’t meet a harder-working man, says the owner of the salvage yard.
The pastor made a sign and put it over the front door: Rock of Salvation Ministries.
Fewer than a dozen people entered the door this morning. But they fill the main room with singing and shouts.
“I remember one time, when I first lost my legs. Amen. I went to a little church. I was invited to this little church and I looked at it, and I wasn’t a believer. I looked at that little building and I said, ‘Man, I don’t want to go in there. Come on. There will be too much whooping and hollering and jumping.’
“But it was in that little church where I found Jesus. Amen. The flesh part of me didn’t want to go there, because of the way the building looked on the outside.”
The woman in red yells out: “But what was on the inside? Amen!”
They go back and forth like that for an hour. He preaches. She echoes. He smiles. She smiles.
“The spirit of God is in us, ain’t that right?”
“Amen!”
“We can carry the spirit of God outside. When we look at Jesus, he was a young man, but he did many miracles. Ain’t that right? And they was astonished. Amen. By him being so young. But there was one thing he had.”
“Come on!”
“He had the spirit!”
He wanted to walk
He grew up in Texas, one of 21 kids. At the time the car cut off his legs, he was a groundskeeper for the city of Dallas. He played basketball and football.
He stayed in the hospital a long time. He used a wheelchair. Sometimes he’d use a skateboard to get around (still does, when he works on cars). He grew depressed, angry. He smoked marijuana, for maybe a year and a half, until a friend introduced him to that little church, where he wheeled himself to the altar one Sunday morning and gave his life to God.
He told God that he wanted to walk.
He’d been making excuses for staying in a wheelchair. He’d believed people who told him he’d never be able to walk again.
Then one day, he decided to get fitted for prosthetic legs.
He fell.
He looked around to see who was watching. Sometimes people looked at him in disgust. Is he drunk?
He got back up on crutches and tried again. The legs and the crutches hurt. He heard a voice inside him say, Go back to the wheelchair. But he didn’t listen to that voice. He got back up.
He fell hundreds of times more. He thought of Jesus falling on his way to be crucified.
God, he prayed, you’ve got to fix this thing. Come on. You got to fix this.
One day, he was in the supermarket, in an aisle, and he realized he hadn’t even brought his crutches.
He was walking.
He head a voice say: It wasn’t the crutches that was holding you up. It was Me.
Praying for a good man The woman in red is a large woman with a pretty face.
She is the mother of two, a boy and a girl who both are here; who both memorized their Bible verses and recited them at the front of the church. She is a student at Southeast Community College. She wants to counsel children.
In 1994, she was 34 years old. She wanted children desperately. But first, she wanted a husband. She prayed for a good man.
One night she had a dream: She is getting married. But the man she is marrying has no legs.
“I woke up from that dream saying, ‘OK, God, what kind of deal is this? That can’t be right.’”
The next week, her pastor told her he was going to introduce her to a man who was an awesome man of God, someone who would make a great husband.
“But …”
Stacey Duffie smiles as she tells this story.
“I said, Oh, gosh. What’s the ‘but’? He says, ‘But … he don’t have no legs.’”
Cute walk “When I had my real legs, I had this cute little walk.”
Pastor Duffie, now 55 years old, walks across the altar. His arms are swinging, his body swaying, his prosthetic legs trying to imitate that old walk.
His wife and his small flock laugh.
What matters now, he says, is that he’s walking with God.
He encourages them to walk out the doors and go out to people who need them.
“If I never get a nice place to worship, hey, I’m content. Because I can go outside the door and I can take this church I got right here over there in me and I can take it over there, out of this junkyard …”
He walks to the front door with the iron bars.
“I used to say, ‘Lord, why me?’ But why NOT me?’”
'You'll be all right'
One Christmas years ago, he was ringing the Salvation Army bell outside a store in Oklahoma City.
A woman walked up to him on crutches. He could see she had just one leg. He asked her how she was doing.
Oh, as you can see, she said, I’m not doing so well.
Now why’s that?
I have only one leg.
You’ll be all right, he said. Girl, if I had one leg, I’d probably be trying to sign up with the Dallas Cowboys.
He rolled up his pant legs.
Drug addicts.
He rolls up his pant legs.
Drug dealers.
He rolls up his pant legs. Sometimes they tell him they don’t know another way.
He tells them there is another way.
Drunks.
He rolls up his pant legs. He tells them about his accident, about the drunk driver. He stresses that point.
“The purpose of the church is to reach lost souls, people that are hurting. Ain’t that right? Ain’t that right?”
He doesn’t need a podium to preach. Or this building. Or two strong legs. And often, even though he’s good with words, he doesn’t need them, either.
Just love, powered by the spirit.
And falling.
And getting back up.
Many mornings, he says, he wakes up and doesn’t want to strap on his legs. He sits on the side of the bed a few minutes and talks to God, “Lord, I thank you for this day. Give me strength.”
Then he walks again.
Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.
Post Your Comment
Standards and RulesYour posted comment will appear after it has been approved.
Frequently asked questions about story commenting.
Blessed wrote on July 13, 2008 7:55 am:
Matthew wrote on July 13, 2008 9:16 am:
We all can learn something from this story and this man who does "all things through Christ which strengthens him" "
Reader wrote on July 13, 2008 9:19 am:
Scott wrote on July 13, 2008 9:28 am:
jo wrote on July 13, 2008 5:48 pm:
Steve Ems wrote on July 13, 2008 8:49 pm:
zippy wrote on July 14, 2008 8:56 am:
Kay wrote on July 14, 2008 9:32 am:
Nina wrote on July 14, 2008 12:15 pm:
Jeannie wrote on July 14, 2008 12:50 pm:
Jai wrote on July 15, 2008 2:56 pm:
Lereisha Duffie wrote on July 16, 2008 9:39 am:
Lottie Alexander wrote on July 16, 2008 9:40 am:
Lottie Alexander wrote on July 16, 2008 10:32 am:
Unknown wrote on July 27, 2008 11:28 pm: