September 9, 2025 • 17 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Cliff Shiepe was working his dream job on the backlot of Disney when his body began to fail. A series of unexplained fevers sent him from studio sets to his childhood bedroom, where he would spend the next decade bedridden. Doctors couldn’t explain what was happening. Most people would have given up. Cliff didn’t. He leaned on his faith, the unwavering care of his mother, and a quiet hope that healing was still possible. Cliff joins us to share his remarkable story. Cliff's website is CliffFalls.com. Be sure to check it out!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people coming to you from the city where the West begins,
Fort Worth, Texas. And we love sharing faith stories with
you on this show. Send yours to our American Stories
dot com. Up next is exactly that, a faith story.
(00:31):
Here to tell it is the author of Cliff Falls
and Guideposts magazine contributor Cliff Shipe. We begin our story
in Boston. Take it away, Cliff.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
We moved to California when I was four. We left
in a nor'easter. We were the last plan out and
my dad took me into the restroom. We had taken
off all our winter coats, the scarfs, the jackets, and
we put them on the hooks. And so when I
washed my hands, I turned towards the hooks for my
dad to take them down so we could put our
(01:05):
winter coats on again. And I felt this hand on
my shoulder, and my dad said, we are never going
to need that stuff again. We got on the plane
and landed in southern California in January and it was
seventy six degrees. The Christmas decorations were still up and
(01:29):
my dad had the taxi driver go down Hollywood Boulevard
and Beverly Hills, and that was just the lens of
coming to California, of the possibility of a new beginning.
So when I was in fifth grade, my parents did
something wonderful. They told my sister and I that we
(01:49):
could pick ten shares of any stock. My sister picked
McDonald's and I picked Disney. As a result, every year
I would get the Androi Report in the mail. I
felt like an owner right a little fifth grader, but
I would read about coming attractions, what worked, what failed,
what they were planning on doing, and then seeing the reality.
(02:10):
I always wanted to work at Disney. That was always
my goal to work on the back lot at the studio.
And there was this one temping agency, these two wonderful
Jewish women. I can still remember one with a poodle,
smoking as she held the poodle, and they placed temps
only for the presidents, the chairman's and the top producers
on the back lot, and so I worked for everyone.
(02:33):
But my first temp job at Disney had the biggest
impact on me. I was working at a place called
Disney Character Voices, and they were responsible for the voiceovers
for all the rides and the movies, and I saw
a man who had been let go to no fault
of his own. He was a little bit older. They
(02:54):
were downsizing, was during a recession, and this man's specialty
was knowing all the different characters, all the intricacies, like
the difference between Chip and Dale, the difference between Poluto
and Goofy. And he was packing up his cube and
all these hundreds of figurines each character, wrapping them up
(03:14):
in tissue paper and putting them in a box. And
I watched a grown man fall apart. He didn't just
lose a job, he lost his identity. And I knew
in that moment, having idealized Disney, that I wasn't going
to make the same mistake. And then I started getting
(03:37):
a series of fevers one hundred and five, one hundred
and six, one hundred and seven, zero point eight, and
that one I don't even remember. A friend called my
mom to come to my place, and I have a
vague memory of her at the bedside, and I just
remember waking up in my childhood bedroom at my parents' house.
(04:02):
And the strange thing is I was getting these fevers,
and then I'd recover and I'd be okay, and the
doctors are like, oh, it'll run its course, it'll run
its course. Well it wasn't running its course. So I
didn't know what to do. But the desert is about
two hours away from where I was living, and there's
(04:22):
an area called Lakinta, Indian Wells, and there was a
new resort there. I got a good rate, and I'm like,
I'll just go there for two nights. I'll just sleep.
I realized pretty soon that it was a mistake. The
symptoms that I had at home of vertigo and the
room starting to spin, feeling sick right after I ate.
(04:44):
It felt like I was in the snow globe. Somebody
had just picked up and was shaking. And in that
moment I made an unwise choice. I should have gone
to the hospital instead. At about two in the morning,
I tried to drive home and I got about a
mile away on a deserted street, and my body was
shaking so much trembling. And in that moment, you don't
(05:08):
have the objectivity to say, oh, my body's shutting down,
I'm going into septics shock. You just know how bad
you feel. But that's what was happening, and I literally
stopped the car in the middle of the street, praying
to God, don't let me die here. And I still
can't remember when I got out, if I collapsed or
I just kind of settled down in the middle of
the street, And I have no memory how long I
(05:31):
was there. The remarkable thing is, somehow eventually I made
it back to the hotel, and I went into the
lobby and all the workers were there vacuuming and cleaning,
and there was this side lobby and there was this
little trickling fountain, and I spent that night listening to
that fountain, looking out those windows into the darkness, waiting
(05:56):
for the sun to come up. And I was never
the same after that night. I would return to my apartment,
thinking it was only going to be a few months.
I had packed up in salvaged boxes from a dumbster
at a supermarket, some of them still smelled like produce,
and everything I own got put in these boxes and
(06:17):
moved to my parents' house, thinking it would only be
a few months. And in truth, fifteen years went by.
Even after I was healthy again, this health crisis went
on for almost ten years, three bedridden, the rest starts
and stops. I saw seventy doctors the first seven years.
(06:40):
Everything that meant life to me was taken away.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
And you've been listening to Cliff Scheite tell one heck
of a personal story, starting in the end with his
move to California. He became a part of the Disney
family as an intern, and then came the sickness, and
then years and years of struggle. To find out more
about what Cliff's up to, go to Cliffthalls dot com.
(07:04):
That's Clifffalls dot com. When we come back, more of
the story of Cliff Shipe here on our American Stories
(07:28):
pleahabibe here, and I'd like to encourage you to subscribe
to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify,
or wherever you get our podcasts. Any story you missed
or want to hear again can be found there daily again.
Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts,
(07:50):
the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It
helps us keep these great American stories coming. And we
returned to our American Stories and the story of Cliff's Shipe.
(08:14):
When we last left off, Cliff had lost everything his apartment,
his dream job on the back lot of Disney, and
most important.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
His health.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
He would end up bedridden for three years and find
himself in his childhood bedroom during the prime of his youth.
One of the oddest things about it all was he
and his doctors had no idea what was going on.
Let's return to the story here again.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Is Cliff. Everything I've learned about belief I've learned from
my mom. If you've ever been on an airplane and
this terrible turbulence and you look at the stewardess and
you're like, if she's calm, we're all right. That was
my mom. Maybe three years in I'm in bed and
(09:02):
I hear my mom at the end of the hallway, Cliff,
buy you up. She knocks on the door and opens
it and she's standing in the doorway with a cake
that's lit with candles and streamers. I'm like, what is this.
What are you doing? Mom? It's not my birthday? And
she goes, you don't know what today is. I'm like,
what is it, mom? She goes, Today's your pity party.
(09:26):
We're throwing you a pity party. For the next hour
or so. We're going to talk about what a raw deal.
This is how you with a good kid and you're
still the one who kind of got sick. And then
when we're done eating cake, I'm going to kick you
in the pants. I'm going to start working the problem.
We were in this together. And I will tell you
that is the smartest thing she ever did, because so
(09:47):
many people won't move on and do what they can
do until someone in the land of the living acknowledges
the reality of what has happened. And she did that
for me. I didn't know for years. She would go
to the church and pray and cry. And there was
a house a block from the church on the way
(10:08):
home that had this beautiful garden up front. And my
mom told me years later that she would stop her
car and just look at that garden and wipe her
tears and pull herself together so she could come home
and be strong. And one day she came home and
she couldn't wipe the tears away, and it was obvious,
and she said, Cliff, I did something today that I
never thought I would do. I said a prayer that God,
(10:30):
you know I love Cliff more than anything, but you
love them more than I do. She put me on
the altar, and she said to God, if you want
him back, I give them to you. If not, heal them.
I can't do this anymore. I watched her surrender and
I had said I had surrendered many times, but I
(10:51):
had seven years in. I ended up at a research center.
They said that whatever was going on, you now have
a bacteria in your system that's throughout your body and
it can't fight it. They tried me on multiple courses
of antibiotics for months. It didn't kill it off. They
(11:13):
even gave me predigested food that they give stroke victims
because when you eat it feeds the bacteria so it
never dies. But that didn't work. And finally I said, well,
what will work? And this doctor will never forget it.
He looked at me and he goes, maybe a fast
and I said, you mean like three days before Easter.
I can do that and he said no, it would
(11:33):
have to be water only for about ten or eleven
days to completely starmin out of your system and without
skipping a beat. I said okay, and he goes, okay,
you're going to do that. I would have done anything.
So ten days it was ten and a half days
nothing but water, and I will tell you, in that
waiting room when they test the bacteria, you have to
(11:54):
breathe into this bag every fifteen minutes for three hours.
The only magazine they had in that waiting room was
Bon Appetite. I was reading about food in my lowest momentary.
But the amazing thing, the miraculous thing, is after the
ten eleven days it was eradicated. I had a new
(12:14):
measure of healing that I hadn't had in ten years.
So I'm healthy, but I'm keeping to myself. I don't
know if you've ever seen the movie Castaway with Tom
Hanks when he's on the deserted island. I cry like
a baby in that thing. And it's not when he's
on the island. It's when he tries to come home
and he realizes that time has just moved on. And
that is a little bit what happened to me. I'd
(12:37):
run into friends from the past. Everyone's married with kids,
or their first home or their second home, or their
new job. And I am living as if I was
Reprimblinkole or something. When I was pursuing acting and Disney
even and building my life, I was holding onto my
(12:58):
dreams so tightly, and I kept being confronted with the
reality that the dream isn't really what you expected. So
how do you surrender a dream but not surrender the
desire that inspired it. I got an invitation one Christmas
from one friend who had been there for me, and
(13:22):
she said, I've moved to Pasadena, Cliff, and I know
you don't do these things, but please just stop by
my Christmas party. I just want to give you a hub.
So I'm driving up El Molino looking for this place,
and I see all these cars parked out front, and
I quickly realize that her apartment is kitty corner to
my old apartment where I used to live all those
years ago, And as chance or God would have it,
(13:46):
the only parking spot open was right in front of
my apartment. So I get out and it's all decorated
elaborately for Christmas. And there was this young kid in
the bushes and he covered, you know, with strings of
light and I said, you know, this is really impressive.
You've done a good job. It was a little over
(14:06):
the top, and he goes, you know that, snowman, those
were pumpkins from Halloween. I spray painted them, and I'm like, really, obviously,
I realized that prior to him telling me, and I
just as almost a throwaway, said, you know, I used
to live here fifteen years ago in that apartment, that
one right up on the top floor with the Harvard
(14:27):
floors and fireplace. And he looked at me, he goes,
that's my apartment. And then he said something that was
the most unexpected. He said, do you want to see it?
I answered yes, before I could even consider the question.
I walked up those steps with carpeted steps and into
that apartment, hearing that same squeak of the door, and
(14:49):
over the fireplace there was this little brass emblem that
my girlfriend at the time had given me and I
had hammered it into place. And he said, I was
wondering where that came from. None of the other places
have that. And I looked around, opened the closets, just kitchen,
and this was all mine at one point, and that mattered.
I will say that I left that apartment knowing that
(15:11):
I had finally come back. It was time for a
new dream. And I woke up one morning I said, Mom,
I can't spend another day in that bedroom. I can't
do it. I packed up my car and I drove
up north, and this irritability and anger, I dare say
a righteous anger came up inside of me and I said, Okay, God,
(15:32):
you didn't promise that the friends would still be there,
the job would still be there. But you know what
you did promise green pastures, still waters, green pastures. You've
promised me peace. Where is my peace? When are you
going to show up? Now? I showed up at a
church I used to go to and volunteer at. Nobody
knew I was coming, and I kind of signed up
to work with the I did sign up to work
(15:54):
with the high school department writing dramas. And they said,
you know, there are some families who will up the
volunteers and the interns at the church until you find housing.
And there's a family in the Patola Valley and I
got the address, and so I'm driving down this valley
and it is pouring rain and it's a winding road
(16:14):
and I'm thinking, where's my peace? Well? I arrived at
the home and the family was so nice, and they
actually made to the bedroom and I fell asleep and
thinking how did I end up in this spot? The
next morning, I felt the sun against my face as
it was coming through the mini blinds, and as I
pulled the cord and the blinds inched up, I realized
(16:38):
in that moment, it's the Patola Valley. But all that
time I thought I was winding down into the valley,
I was actually ascending. I was high on the hill
on the mountaintop, and I didn't know it. And I
looked out that window, and you know what was exactly
out that window. Green pastures. It's far as I can see,
(17:01):
rolling green on obstructed pastures. And it was like God
was saying to me. You know, for some reason, God
sometimes sounds like Frank Sinatra in my head, you want
a green pastor's kid, there's your green pastures. Who's your God?
Who's your God? Who do you believe? He was going
to get me to where I needed to be, even
if I didn't understand it. And had you told me
(17:23):
those years ago when I packed up my stuff and
moved out of my apartment, that I was going to
be an author, not an actor.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Monta Montgomery. Be sure to check out
Cliffshipe's website at Cliff falls dot com. That's cliff falls
dot com. Cliffshipe story a beautiful one. Here on our
American stories, I remember
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people coming to you from the city where the West begins,
Fort Worth, Texas. And we love sharing faith stories with
you on this show. Send yours to our American Stories
dot com. Up next is exactly that, a faith story.
(00:31):
Here to tell it is the author of Cliff Falls
and Guideposts magazine contributor Cliff Shipe. We begin our story
in Boston. Take it away, Cliff.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
We moved to California when I was four. We left
in a nor'easter. We were the last plan out and
my dad took me into the restroom. We had taken
off all our winter coats, the scarfs, the jackets, and
we put them on the hooks. And so when I
washed my hands, I turned towards the hooks for my
dad to take them down so we could put our
(01:05):
winter coats on again. And I felt this hand on
my shoulder, and my dad said, we are never going
to need that stuff again. We got on the plane
and landed in southern California in January and it was
seventy six degrees. The Christmas decorations were still up and
(01:29):
my dad had the taxi driver go down Hollywood Boulevard
and Beverly Hills, and that was just the lens of
coming to California, of the possibility of a new beginning.
So when I was in fifth grade, my parents did
something wonderful. They told my sister and I that we
(01:49):
could pick ten shares of any stock. My sister picked
McDonald's and I picked Disney. As a result, every year
I would get the Androi Report in the mail. I
felt like an owner right a little fifth grader, but
I would read about coming attractions, what worked, what failed,
what they were planning on doing, and then seeing the reality.
(02:10):
I always wanted to work at Disney. That was always
my goal to work on the back lot at the studio.
And there was this one temping agency, these two wonderful
Jewish women. I can still remember one with a poodle,
smoking as she held the poodle, and they placed temps
only for the presidents, the chairman's and the top producers
on the back lot, and so I worked for everyone.
(02:33):
But my first temp job at Disney had the biggest
impact on me. I was working at a place called
Disney Character Voices, and they were responsible for the voiceovers
for all the rides and the movies, and I saw
a man who had been let go to no fault
of his own. He was a little bit older. They
(02:54):
were downsizing, was during a recession, and this man's specialty
was knowing all the different characters, all the intricacies, like
the difference between Chip and Dale, the difference between Poluto
and Goofy. And he was packing up his cube and
all these hundreds of figurines each character, wrapping them up
(03:14):
in tissue paper and putting them in a box. And
I watched a grown man fall apart. He didn't just
lose a job, he lost his identity. And I knew
in that moment, having idealized Disney, that I wasn't going
to make the same mistake. And then I started getting
(03:37):
a series of fevers one hundred and five, one hundred
and six, one hundred and seven, zero point eight, and
that one I don't even remember. A friend called my
mom to come to my place, and I have a
vague memory of her at the bedside, and I just
remember waking up in my childhood bedroom at my parents' house.
(04:02):
And the strange thing is I was getting these fevers,
and then I'd recover and I'd be okay, and the
doctors are like, oh, it'll run its course, it'll run
its course. Well it wasn't running its course. So I
didn't know what to do. But the desert is about
two hours away from where I was living, and there's
(04:22):
an area called Lakinta, Indian Wells, and there was a
new resort there. I got a good rate, and I'm like,
I'll just go there for two nights. I'll just sleep.
I realized pretty soon that it was a mistake. The
symptoms that I had at home of vertigo and the
room starting to spin, feeling sick right after I ate.
(04:44):
It felt like I was in the snow globe. Somebody
had just picked up and was shaking. And in that
moment I made an unwise choice. I should have gone
to the hospital instead. At about two in the morning,
I tried to drive home and I got about a
mile away on a deserted street, and my body was
shaking so much trembling. And in that moment, you don't
(05:08):
have the objectivity to say, oh, my body's shutting down,
I'm going into septics shock. You just know how bad
you feel. But that's what was happening, and I literally
stopped the car in the middle of the street, praying
to God, don't let me die here. And I still
can't remember when I got out, if I collapsed or
I just kind of settled down in the middle of
the street, And I have no memory how long I
(05:31):
was there. The remarkable thing is, somehow eventually I made
it back to the hotel, and I went into the
lobby and all the workers were there vacuuming and cleaning,
and there was this side lobby and there was this
little trickling fountain, and I spent that night listening to
that fountain, looking out those windows into the darkness, waiting
(05:56):
for the sun to come up. And I was never
the same after that night. I would return to my apartment,
thinking it was only going to be a few months.
I had packed up in salvaged boxes from a dumbster
at a supermarket, some of them still smelled like produce,
and everything I own got put in these boxes and
(06:17):
moved to my parents' house, thinking it would only be
a few months. And in truth, fifteen years went by.
Even after I was healthy again, this health crisis went
on for almost ten years, three bedridden, the rest starts
and stops. I saw seventy doctors the first seven years.
(06:40):
Everything that meant life to me was taken away.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
And you've been listening to Cliff Scheite tell one heck
of a personal story, starting in the end with his
move to California. He became a part of the Disney
family as an intern, and then came the sickness, and
then years and years of struggle. To find out more
about what Cliff's up to, go to Cliffthalls dot com.
(07:04):
That's Clifffalls dot com. When we come back, more of
the story of Cliff Shipe here on our American Stories
(07:28):
pleahabibe here, and I'd like to encourage you to subscribe
to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify,
or wherever you get our podcasts. Any story you missed
or want to hear again can be found there daily again.
Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts,
(07:50):
the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It
helps us keep these great American stories coming. And we
returned to our American Stories and the story of Cliff's Shipe.
(08:14):
When we last left off, Cliff had lost everything his apartment,
his dream job on the back lot of Disney, and
most important.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
His health.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
He would end up bedridden for three years and find
himself in his childhood bedroom during the prime of his youth.
One of the oddest things about it all was he
and his doctors had no idea what was going on.
Let's return to the story here again.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Is Cliff. Everything I've learned about belief I've learned from
my mom. If you've ever been on an airplane and
this terrible turbulence and you look at the stewardess and
you're like, if she's calm, we're all right. That was
my mom. Maybe three years in I'm in bed and
(09:02):
I hear my mom at the end of the hallway, Cliff,
buy you up. She knocks on the door and opens
it and she's standing in the doorway with a cake
that's lit with candles and streamers. I'm like, what is this.
What are you doing? Mom? It's not my birthday? And
she goes, you don't know what today is. I'm like,
what is it, mom? She goes, Today's your pity party.
(09:26):
We're throwing you a pity party. For the next hour
or so. We're going to talk about what a raw deal.
This is how you with a good kid and you're
still the one who kind of got sick. And then
when we're done eating cake, I'm going to kick you
in the pants. I'm going to start working the problem.
We were in this together. And I will tell you
that is the smartest thing she ever did, because so
(09:47):
many people won't move on and do what they can
do until someone in the land of the living acknowledges
the reality of what has happened. And she did that
for me. I didn't know for years. She would go
to the church and pray and cry. And there was
a house a block from the church on the way
(10:08):
home that had this beautiful garden up front. And my
mom told me years later that she would stop her
car and just look at that garden and wipe her
tears and pull herself together so she could come home
and be strong. And one day she came home and
she couldn't wipe the tears away, and it was obvious,
and she said, Cliff, I did something today that I
never thought I would do. I said a prayer that God,
(10:30):
you know I love Cliff more than anything, but you
love them more than I do. She put me on
the altar, and she said to God, if you want
him back, I give them to you. If not, heal them.
I can't do this anymore. I watched her surrender and
I had said I had surrendered many times, but I
(10:51):
had seven years in. I ended up at a research center.
They said that whatever was going on, you now have
a bacteria in your system that's throughout your body and
it can't fight it. They tried me on multiple courses
of antibiotics for months. It didn't kill it off. They
(11:13):
even gave me predigested food that they give stroke victims
because when you eat it feeds the bacteria so it
never dies. But that didn't work. And finally I said, well,
what will work? And this doctor will never forget it.
He looked at me and he goes, maybe a fast
and I said, you mean like three days before Easter.
I can do that and he said no, it would
(11:33):
have to be water only for about ten or eleven
days to completely starmin out of your system and without
skipping a beat. I said okay, and he goes, okay,
you're going to do that. I would have done anything.
So ten days it was ten and a half days
nothing but water, and I will tell you, in that
waiting room when they test the bacteria, you have to
(11:54):
breathe into this bag every fifteen minutes for three hours.
The only magazine they had in that waiting room was
Bon Appetite. I was reading about food in my lowest momentary.
But the amazing thing, the miraculous thing, is after the
ten eleven days it was eradicated. I had a new
(12:14):
measure of healing that I hadn't had in ten years.
So I'm healthy, but I'm keeping to myself. I don't
know if you've ever seen the movie Castaway with Tom
Hanks when he's on the deserted island. I cry like
a baby in that thing. And it's not when he's
on the island. It's when he tries to come home
and he realizes that time has just moved on. And
that is a little bit what happened to me. I'd
(12:37):
run into friends from the past. Everyone's married with kids,
or their first home or their second home, or their
new job. And I am living as if I was
Reprimblinkole or something. When I was pursuing acting and Disney
even and building my life, I was holding onto my
(12:58):
dreams so tightly, and I kept being confronted with the
reality that the dream isn't really what you expected. So
how do you surrender a dream but not surrender the
desire that inspired it. I got an invitation one Christmas
from one friend who had been there for me, and
(13:22):
she said, I've moved to Pasadena, Cliff, and I know
you don't do these things, but please just stop by
my Christmas party. I just want to give you a hub.
So I'm driving up El Molino looking for this place,
and I see all these cars parked out front, and
I quickly realize that her apartment is kitty corner to
my old apartment where I used to live all those
years ago, And as chance or God would have it,
(13:46):
the only parking spot open was right in front of
my apartment. So I get out and it's all decorated
elaborately for Christmas. And there was this young kid in
the bushes and he covered, you know, with strings of
light and I said, you know, this is really impressive.
You've done a good job. It was a little over
(14:06):
the top, and he goes, you know that, snowman, those
were pumpkins from Halloween. I spray painted them, and I'm like, really, obviously,
I realized that prior to him telling me, and I
just as almost a throwaway, said, you know, I used
to live here fifteen years ago in that apartment, that
one right up on the top floor with the Harvard
(14:27):
floors and fireplace. And he looked at me, he goes,
that's my apartment. And then he said something that was
the most unexpected. He said, do you want to see it?
I answered yes, before I could even consider the question.
I walked up those steps with carpeted steps and into
that apartment, hearing that same squeak of the door, and
(14:49):
over the fireplace there was this little brass emblem that
my girlfriend at the time had given me and I
had hammered it into place. And he said, I was
wondering where that came from. None of the other places
have that. And I looked around, opened the closets, just kitchen,
and this was all mine at one point, and that mattered.
I will say that I left that apartment knowing that
(15:11):
I had finally come back. It was time for a
new dream. And I woke up one morning I said, Mom,
I can't spend another day in that bedroom. I can't
do it. I packed up my car and I drove
up north, and this irritability and anger, I dare say
a righteous anger came up inside of me and I said, Okay, God,
(15:32):
you didn't promise that the friends would still be there,
the job would still be there. But you know what
you did promise green pastures, still waters, green pastures. You've
promised me peace. Where is my peace? When are you
going to show up? Now? I showed up at a
church I used to go to and volunteer at. Nobody
knew I was coming, and I kind of signed up
to work with the I did sign up to work
(15:54):
with the high school department writing dramas. And they said,
you know, there are some families who will up the
volunteers and the interns at the church until you find housing.
And there's a family in the Patola Valley and I
got the address, and so I'm driving down this valley
and it is pouring rain and it's a winding road
(16:14):
and I'm thinking, where's my peace? Well? I arrived at
the home and the family was so nice, and they
actually made to the bedroom and I fell asleep and
thinking how did I end up in this spot? The
next morning, I felt the sun against my face as
it was coming through the mini blinds, and as I
pulled the cord and the blinds inched up, I realized
(16:38):
in that moment, it's the Patola Valley. But all that
time I thought I was winding down into the valley,
I was actually ascending. I was high on the hill
on the mountaintop, and I didn't know it. And I
looked out that window, and you know what was exactly
out that window. Green pastures. It's far as I can see,
(17:01):
rolling green on obstructed pastures. And it was like God
was saying to me. You know, for some reason, God
sometimes sounds like Frank Sinatra in my head, you want
a green pastor's kid, there's your green pastures. Who's your God?
Who's your God? Who do you believe? He was going
to get me to where I needed to be, even
if I didn't understand it. And had you told me
(17:23):
those years ago when I packed up my stuff and
moved out of my apartment, that I was going to
be an author, not an actor.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Monta Montgomery. Be sure to check out
Cliffshipe's website at Cliff falls dot com. That's cliff falls
dot com. Cliffshipe story a beautiful one. Here on our
American stories, I remember
Host
Lee Habeeb
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