One man's relentless steps to victory
- David Lane
- Sep 30, 2025
- 4 min read
A dear friend’s mother grew up in a house with dirt floors, no electricity, and no indoor plumbing. At the age of 19, he and the love of his life married on May 25, and he finished college in 1978, aged 23.
In 1993, he ran for office and became only the second Republican since Reconstruction to serve as his state’s lieutenant governor. When he arrived to assume his duties, the doors to his office had been nailed shut from the inside, the furniture and equipment had been removed, and the budget had been zeroed out. After 59 days of public outcry, the doors finally opened, and he moved into the office he had been elected to hold.
I’ve often wondered what made him so tough.
He wrote last week:
“We married young - one of us still in college, the other working full-time so we could afford tuition one at a time. Not long into our first year, back pain began to creep in. Doctors called it a ‘textbook’ slipped disc and scheduled surgery.
The day before, a myelogram changed everything. I was ushered from the crowded waiting room into a small private one - the kind where bad news arrives. There would be no disc surgery. It was a tumor inside the spinal canal. A neurosurgeon told us it was likely malignant and probably inoperable. If he tried to remove it, the best outcome might be paralysis from the waist down.
The operation took place 50 years ago today. He opened the canal and removed the tumor, unsure whether there would be feeling below the lumbar region. We waited. Hours later, a few toes flickered - hope, small as a candle.
Prayers poured in. Six weeks of radiation followed, with warnings that we would almost certainly never have children. Every day, I drove 150 miles round-trip for 6 minutes on the radiation table, a bed built in the backseat because she couldn’t sit. We lived in a two-room duplex. Bills piled up; small envelopes with $5 and $10 arrived from strangers. Slowly, she learned to walk again - strength returning in teaspoons, not buckets.
Then the first impossible thing happened: a son the next year. We lost our next child. Two years later, another son. Two years after that, a daughter; 3 children, we were told we would never have. Decades brought valleys and peaks, risks that failed and others that exceeded every dream. Today, 7 grandchildren run through the house like echoes of those early miracles.
For most, this date is just a square on the calendar. For us, it’s holy ground. God didn’t arrive in blinding light; He built us a road, one hard step at a time. We learned that when you hit bottom, it’s solid - and when God is all you have, you find He is all you need. We don’t know the future, but after living the past, we know this: God is good. All the time.”1
Two truths from Scripture frame my dear friend’s life.
First, Solomon cautions in Proverbs 24: 10 that “If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is limited.”
William McKane [1921-2004], the distinguished Old Testament scholar and Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages at St Andrews, notes that a man does not know his reserves until severe demands are laid upon him:
“It is when a man is hemmed in and trapped by adverse circumstances that his powers of endurance are stretched, and an estimate of his toughness and stamina can be made. Of course, kōaḥ here is not physical strength narrowly conceived, but an all-round grittiness and sinewy determination, which includes physical endurance, but also embraces mental toughness and moral courage.”
Second, Solomon explains in Proverbs 4:8 the promises attached to Wisdom: “Exalt her, and she will promote you; she will bring you to honor when you embrace her.”2
Bruce K. Waltke observes that Wisdom’s communicable attributes - “shrewdness, discretion, counsel, resourcefulness, and heroic strength” - equip rulers to govern well.
Michael V. Fox adds: “Wisdom will grant you a splendid diadem and shield you,” and God’s protection is not an external reward but “a consequence intrinsic” to knowing Wisdom.
Our dear friend’s story embodies what God promises to those who love Him and keep His commandments. The husband and narrator is Mike Huckabee; his wife is Janet Huckabee. Her neurosurgeon was Dr. Thomas Fletcher in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Mike Huckabee: Little-Known Facts from a Gritty Upbringing.
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A Gideon stands.
David Lane American Renewal Project
1. Mike Huckabee, X/Twitter post, Sept. 29, 2025. 2. See Proverbs 8:15 - Wisdom enables “kings to reign and rulers to decree justice.” |
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