By Diane Petryk
SUNBURY — Faith and stubbornness.
Put them together and you have a dynamite duo. David Ring is proof of that.
“They told me I’d never finish college, but I did,” he said.
“They told me I’d never find a wife. That no one would ever love a cripple, but on Sept. 5, 1981 ... .”
He looked up at the wedding picture slide projected for the audience. “Ain’t she pretty?” he asked. “We’ve been together over 28 years.”
To past naysayers, though absent, he gave his favorite taunt: “Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah.”
“They told me I would never be a daddy.”
Another slide went up. Four handsome young people from ages 19 to 27, three girls and boy. “They’re all mine.”
And his oldest daughter just had a boy. The baby’s picture went up. “That’s my legacy. Carter David. ... Nah. Nah. Nah Nah.”
Ring fought negativism all his life because he was born with cerebral palsy. It’s brain damage caused by deprivation of oxygen at birth. It left him with damaged muscle coordination that makes it a challenge to walk and pronounce words. And yet he strode into Emmanuel Bible Fellowship Church Sunday and spoke for about two hours.
Yes, he wasn’t speaking “normally,” but he gripped the audience of about 220, alternately making them laugh and cry as he told his story.
At his birth in Jonesboro, Ark., in 1953, he was left for dead for 18 minutes.
“I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” he said. “I’m supposed to be a complete vegetable.”
At school he said, kids would giggle at his handicaps. “They call you every name, but your own.”
As if physical handicaps weren’t enough, when he was 11, his father died, and when he was 14, his mother died.
“I wanted to die. If I couldn’t live with my mama, I didn’t want to live.”
He fell into despair and his family gave up on him, except for one sister — the one who hasn’t been to church in years. She encouraged him to stay in school.
Of the church-going crowd around him at the time, he said: “No one ever came and knocked on my door and said, ‘Hang on.’
“The church fumbled the ball. ... If we don’t give people hope, who will?”
He persevered. He felt God loved him anyway. A great attitude catapulted him to popularity in high school. When he asked the football coach if he could be part of the team, he didn’t mean as quarterback. He was happy to be the water boy.
“I gave it my all,” he said. “I was part of the team. It takes everyone to make a great team.”
Then when he wanted to preach, preachers told him he would never get people to come to hear him speak.
“I have spoken at 6,000 different churches,” he said. “All I can say to that bunch of preachers who said I would never make it is: Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah.”
One secret of his success was probably that he kept showing up. “You don’t show up because someone’s hurt your feelings? Leave the chip at home,” he advised. “You got a load? Dump it.”
Then Ring, who now lives in Nashville, shocked the audience a little by saying he is thankful for the early death of his mother.
“If my mother had not died, I would be in Jonesboro, Ark., a 55-year-old cripple, baby boy,” he said.
Life is not fair, he said, but God is good.
“I am blessed. That’s my story.”
Then he asked, “What are you doing with your story? Are you telling it everywhere you go?”
Everyone has a story, he said. “Does the devil even flinch when you get up in the morning?”
He told the audience he knows many of them are just surviving, not thriving. “When I wake up, I choose every morning what I’m going to become that day. I can be a victim, but I choose not to. ... If you’re not happy, it’s your fault. It’s time to stop blaming someone else for your misery.”
It was a message some of the listeners took to heart. Andrew Francis, 18, found peace of mind. “Life is not going very well for everyone around here nowadays,” he said, but added, “My life challenges seem very little compared to what he has to go through every day.”
Erin Mowery, 13, found the talk encouraging. “If I’m having a bad day, I can just think ‘Keep going on.’ ”
Emma Fahringer, 12, of Sunbury, found it a little easier to cope with her broken leg and the thoughts of all those lost soccer games.
“It’s pretty inspiring — everything he went through,” said Aletha Reitz of Shamokin Dam. “It’s a message relevant for everybody.”
Ed Gibson, of Northumberland, said Ring’s story puts life in perspective “And it’s a great encouragement for those who need a spiritual kick in the pants.”
