May 30, 2024 • 19 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, our next story comes to us from a listener in West Virginia. Here’s Joe Quinn with his story.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Up next, a
story from a listener in West Virginia. Here's Joe Quinn
with his story.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
On the morning of April thirtieth, twenty nineteen, I got
back into acting after raising a family. And then on
April thirtieth, at five point thirty in the morning, when
I was putting my boots on getting ready for work,
I felt something funny. It wasn't funny like ha ha funny.
(00:44):
It was funny like, well.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
That was weird.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
So I started to ye my boots and a little
bit of a hard feeling in my right hand. It
wasn't working very well. I looked at myself in the
mirror and I stuck my tongue out and my right
side of my face is sagged and went, oh, oh god,
I'm having a stroke. So I went upstairs with my
(01:08):
right legs starting to dwindle, and I.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Wanted to tell my wife I'm having a stroke.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
And I couldn't talk. So that was the beginning of
a real tumultuous journey. I always knew I was adopted,
always for my earliest, earliest recollection. My parents made sure
(01:35):
I knew that I was adopted. So I guess it
was important, but to me it didn't matter. I had
my mom and dad, and.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
As I grew up, it was I was just a
little tyke.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
And I remember my dad had a infinity for alcohol.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
He drank.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
And I remember one time I was uh seven, I
hit a home run in Little League baseball and that's
all I ever had was at one home run because
my dad he he sort of staggered out of the
bleachers and and he was from Louisiana, he was a
(02:21):
Southerner and my mother was from Germany.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
She was a war bride.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Well, my dad come staggering out of the bleachers and
he goes he didn't know he had home run.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
I'll always remember that, you know.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
He said that I was stepping in a bucket and
I was just swinging, trying to protect myself.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
That wasn't the only time. I mean, I boxed the
same thing.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
It was kind of a bizarre relationship with my dad.
I think he treated me like his little brother, like
I was a sibling, and you know, bilding a rivalry
over the affections of mom. He said, let's put the
gloves on there. Let's put the gloves on and get
down in the basement box a little bit, so he
(03:13):
I was again run seven or eight, and man, he
knocked me cold.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
He just he just bam. I broke my nose and.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Chipped my front teeth and I woke up and said, no, no, no,
don't make a scene.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
MoMA loves box anymore. But that's just the way. Then.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
I really didn't have any sort of a model to
look to look to. I kind of mounted myself after
people in the movies. That's all I had. Especially brew
A powerful movie for me when I was growing up
at about that time was Cool Hand Luke Paul Newman,
(03:54):
and that was a powerful movie for me. Another one
was two thousand and one that came out. I thought, wow,
that was really powerful. I didn't understand it, but it
was powerful, and I thought it was great, and I thought,
that's where I want to be. I thought about being
in the movies and being an actor and turned look
(04:18):
for something.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
I was looking for something.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Well, I got some weights and I started listing the
weights in the basement, and all of a sudden I
had something.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
There was something, so.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
I wanted the Marine Corps out of high school again
the weightlifting. As you know, I was made a platoon
leader in boot camp.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Uh, and you know, they.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Used me to show people how to do push ups,
you know, and it just all the way through it
turned to a pretty good thing. And I got out
of service, started competing right away, and I got more
and more now I was you know, people were like
asking me how to get ready for a show, and
(05:07):
and how do I do this?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
How do you do that?
Speaker 2 (05:10):
All of a sudden, I really developed in somebody that
when you mentioned my name people in oh, oh the bodybuilder.
You know, I got a lot of attention. I felt
people like me and people like having me around. My
mom was from Germany. She was kind of a well
she was from Germany, and they kind of says it all.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I mean, she was very strict and very forthright with.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Everything, with everything, the way you ate, the way you sat,
the way you talked. She expected a certain thing and
of people, and she's expected people to act a certain
way and have a certain decorum about themselves too.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
I got a.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Service, and I majored in theater, and then that was
at the end of it. Dad was really the straw
that brookes the camel's back.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
With my parents, they.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Were like, oh, theater, what are you doing major in
business or finance, a law, get into pre law. You'd
be a good lawyer, and then do some community theater
on his side. What's the matter with you? Anyway, as
I got older, I'd ask God, what the heck do
(06:26):
you let those two people adopt me for?
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Just didn't make any sense? Huh? You know?
Speaker 2 (06:34):
I mean there was nothing there, nothing, no support. But
I'll tell you what. Weightlifting gave me an identity. He
gave me something that I was good at. It gave
me something I could be proud of. It gave me
something that people liked me and respecting me and would
asked me questions and.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Asked me to help them. And I thought, well, fantastic,
I got something I really do. I felt like I
was really in.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Something good with good people with substantial things to do. Well. Anyway,
after I got through college and my parents first want
to go with my mother. She had a cancer or
the liver, and I was sitting at her bedside when
she died. My dad, almost a year to the day later,
(07:25):
he had gone back to Louisiana.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
He had lung cancer.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
I looked at him and he was in the living
room there, his a house coat on he was done
close to seventy pounds of his time.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
He was getting really close to the end, and.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
I thought, for one second I was gonna go over
there and say, let's put the gloves on. Come on,
let's put them all and now I'm just gonna hit
him as hard as I could. Was It's just a
straight right hand. It by right down in the middle
and just say, how do you like it? That's absurd.
(08:09):
You don't replay evil for evil. It's really much more powerful.
I just forgave them, both of them. But the problems
really persisted because when my parents had passed away, I
mistakenly thought, sure.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Now they're gone, my life would be fine. No.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
No, my first wife that ended, my second wife that
also ended because of my shenanigans. Is because of my
bad behavior. I just could not shed that feeling that
was following me everywhere.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
And that was it. I'm worthless.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
And you've been listening to Joe Quinn share his story
and what is story it is? It starts with abandonment
and he is ultimately adopted and was told he was
adopted from the earliest time. He had a bizarre relationship
with his own father, who drank too much moreover, it
was almost a sibling rivalry between he and his father
(09:18):
over his mother. You heard that boxing story, Just how bizarre.
He modeled himself after people in the movies, people like
Paul Newman from the epic classic Cool Hand Luke, and
in the end he found meaning and identity lifting weights
and also in the pursuit of the arts in acting.
(09:39):
But anger, resentment, and shame and a feeling of worthlessness
prevailed in his life. When we come back, more of
Joe Quinn's story and check out his documentary Diary of
a Bodybuilder, a diary offabodybuilder dot com. More of Joe
Quinn's story here on our American Stories, And we're back
(10:09):
with our American stories, and with Joe Quinn's story. Let's
pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
This first therapist I saw it, He goes, well, first
of all, you do know you're an abuse child. And
I just burst into tears. I mean it was like
a flood, and I mean it was really a powerful experience,
cathartic in fact. Then I got to my third wife
(10:40):
and oh well that almost made it.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
But he eventually the torment of.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Where I came from, fueled by alcohol, its still told
me to do terrible things. Eventually, two thousand and five,
February sixth I went to my first meeting the program AA.
I thank God for AA, and I'm in it today.
(11:14):
I sponsored people and I close in and here on
seventeen years of sobriety, So I dealt with it. At
this point in my life, I feel as though I've
I've got a handle on things, but from a very
different respective following that stroke I had in April of
(11:38):
twenty nineteen. So that that's the biggest challenge I've had
in my life. My parents are not my challenge anymore.
And the weightlifting, as it came through the gamut, it
was solid, it was stable, it was something I could
counter and I didn't need anybody else like if I
(12:03):
was if I was a boxer, I need a trainer,
I need a sparring partner, you know what I mean.
But you you loved weights just going on in the
basement and set your dumbbells and your barbell down and
turn some music out and get to work, you know,
And you can do that anywhere. It's always there whenever
(12:26):
you need it, except when you have a stroke. I
don't mean that to sound procedures. But it's really hard
for me. I miss it. I miss it terribly, terribly.
It's like the death, a death of a family member
that I can't work out.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
My body beliink is cut short. I was.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
I remember competing at the Nationals in Pittsburgh in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
I remember being on stage and looking out.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Over a dark aratorium with people, and I would say
close to seventy percent maybe more were on their cell phones.
They weren't even watching, watching my posing routine. And I
love posing. I loved I won Best Poser at to
get some contests, and I was.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
I didn't feel offended or angry. I felt sad. This
is the end.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
They took some pictures of us, and a friend of
mine sent me the pictures after they were developed, and
I had to tell you, I I did not look
good in those stupid pictures. It looked ridiculous in those shorts.
(13:57):
Those speedos reminds me of when I used to ride
my bicycle out to the end of Peer over there
in the summers, and the old men would be out
there just standing or talking.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
And weren't these speedos looking still and ridiculous? When I
saw myself.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
I felt like, Wow, I looked just like those old
dudes that were hanging out at the end of the
peer over there of North.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Avenue Beach, and I mean they look bad. So I
thought was being looking like that. I mean, aesthetics are gone,
They're out the window.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
I'm not going to be part of that anymore.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
No, in my life, I became a Christian when I
was eighteen years old in the Marine Corps. And in
spite of my struggles, I've always seen the peace and uh.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
The power and the real victory and and everything was here.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
In my drunken and often drunken and angry tirades against
God was a verse that he always came to mind
that neither this man uh sin nor his parents sinned.
(15:37):
Is he was born blind so that God could be glorified.
So I was put into that situation, into that uh challenge,
and that hell, into that cesspool for an opportunity for
(16:01):
God to be glorified. I think that His glory is
evident even in spite of those people.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
I love the Lord.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I have grown to understand it's just how powerful He is,
especially through the stroke and through this.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Lightest challenge in life.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
That is probably the biggest thing I've ever undertake, aside
from my death, that I'm not afraid to die anymore
because I was in the midst of terror after that stroke.
Terror and that war doesn't even do with justice. I
hope to God no one has to go through what
(16:48):
I did with a stroke. It's just what an awful experience.
But on the flip side of all that is that
God's going to be glorified in that stroke. God's going
to be glorified in my life, and that's all that matters,
because I feel that I was created to bring Him
glory in spite of who I am. But now in
(17:12):
my life, I have God. I've beautiful home, beautiful wife,
I have an absolutely beautiful life I do in spite
of having a stroke. I feel positive, I feel empowered.
I feel that because of forgiveness. Solely because of forgiveness,
(17:38):
I've been able to release all the past issues and
anomalies and things that were just evil in certain instances
that brought me up, but it forged me into the
exact person I think God had in mind. And it's
(18:00):
not for me. My life's not mine, My life's his.
It's it's to give him glory, and that's why I
hope I do, and that's what I strive for in
spite of all the flaws that I have.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
And a great job on the production as always by
Greg Hengler and a special thanks to Joe Quinn for
sharing his story. To learn more about Quinn, check out
his documentary called Diary of a Bodybuilder at diaryofabodybuilder dot
com and the Damn Burst when his therapist told him
later in life, you know you were an abused child.
(18:38):
In two thousand and six, we learned he went to
his first AA meeting. Thank God for AA, he said,
And he's closing in on seventeen years of sobriety. But
the biggest challenge of his life wasn't his parents anymore.
It was his stroke. He'd lost weightlifting, he'd lost his identity,
but he was searching for real peace and power and
(18:58):
he found it through his faith walk I'm not afraid
to die anymore. I was created to bring God glory
despite who I am. I have a beautiful home, wife
and life and feel positive and empowered. And I couldn't
have done it without forgiveness. The story of Joe Quinn,
of his fall and his redemption here on our American stories.
And we continue with our American stories. Up next, a
story from a listener in West Virginia. Here's Joe Quinn
with his story.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
On the morning of April thirtieth, twenty nineteen, I got
back into acting after raising a family. And then on
April thirtieth, at five point thirty in the morning, when
I was putting my boots on getting ready for work,
I felt something funny. It wasn't funny like ha ha funny.
(00:44):
It was funny like, well.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
That was weird.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
So I started to ye my boots and a little
bit of a hard feeling in my right hand. It
wasn't working very well. I looked at myself in the
mirror and I stuck my tongue out and my right
side of my face is sagged and went, oh, oh god,
I'm having a stroke. So I went upstairs with my
(01:08):
right legs starting to dwindle, and I.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Wanted to tell my wife I'm having a stroke.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
And I couldn't talk. So that was the beginning of
a real tumultuous journey. I always knew I was adopted,
always for my earliest, earliest recollection. My parents made sure
(01:35):
I knew that I was adopted. So I guess it
was important, but to me it didn't matter. I had
my mom and dad, and.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
As I grew up, it was I was just a
little tyke.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
And I remember my dad had a infinity for alcohol.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
He drank.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
And I remember one time I was uh seven, I
hit a home run in Little League baseball and that's
all I ever had was at one home run because
my dad he he sort of staggered out of the
bleachers and and he was from Louisiana, he was a
(02:21):
Southerner and my mother was from Germany.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
She was a war bride.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Well, my dad come staggering out of the bleachers and
he goes he didn't know he had home run.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
I'll always remember that, you know.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
He said that I was stepping in a bucket and
I was just swinging, trying to protect myself.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
That wasn't the only time. I mean, I boxed the
same thing.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
It was kind of a bizarre relationship with my dad.
I think he treated me like his little brother, like
I was a sibling, and you know, bilding a rivalry
over the affections of mom. He said, let's put the
gloves on there. Let's put the gloves on and get
down in the basement box a little bit, so he
(03:13):
I was again run seven or eight, and man, he
knocked me cold.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
He just he just bam. I broke my nose and.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Chipped my front teeth and I woke up and said, no, no, no,
don't make a scene.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
MoMA loves box anymore. But that's just the way. Then.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
I really didn't have any sort of a model to
look to look to. I kind of mounted myself after
people in the movies. That's all I had. Especially brew
A powerful movie for me when I was growing up
at about that time was Cool Hand Luke Paul Newman,
(03:54):
and that was a powerful movie for me. Another one
was two thousand and one that came out. I thought, wow,
that was really powerful. I didn't understand it, but it
was powerful, and I thought it was great, and I thought,
that's where I want to be. I thought about being
in the movies and being an actor and turned look
(04:18):
for something.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
I was looking for something.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Well, I got some weights and I started listing the
weights in the basement, and all of a sudden I
had something.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
There was something, so.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
I wanted the Marine Corps out of high school again
the weightlifting. As you know, I was made a platoon
leader in boot camp.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Uh, and you know, they.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Used me to show people how to do push ups,
you know, and it just all the way through it
turned to a pretty good thing. And I got out
of service, started competing right away, and I got more
and more now I was you know, people were like
asking me how to get ready for a show, and
(05:07):
and how do I do this?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
How do you do that?
Speaker 2 (05:10):
All of a sudden, I really developed in somebody that
when you mentioned my name people in oh, oh the bodybuilder.
You know, I got a lot of attention. I felt
people like me and people like having me around. My
mom was from Germany. She was kind of a well
she was from Germany, and they kind of says it all.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I mean, she was very strict and very forthright with.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Everything, with everything, the way you ate, the way you sat,
the way you talked. She expected a certain thing and
of people, and she's expected people to act a certain
way and have a certain decorum about themselves too.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
I got a.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Service, and I majored in theater, and then that was
at the end of it. Dad was really the straw
that brookes the camel's back.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
With my parents, they.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Were like, oh, theater, what are you doing major in
business or finance, a law, get into pre law. You'd
be a good lawyer, and then do some community theater
on his side. What's the matter with you? Anyway, as
I got older, I'd ask God, what the heck do
(06:26):
you let those two people adopt me for?
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Just didn't make any sense? Huh? You know?
Speaker 2 (06:34):
I mean there was nothing there, nothing, no support. But
I'll tell you what. Weightlifting gave me an identity. He
gave me something that I was good at. It gave
me something I could be proud of. It gave me
something that people liked me and respecting me and would
asked me questions and.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Asked me to help them. And I thought, well, fantastic,
I got something I really do. I felt like I
was really in.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Something good with good people with substantial things to do. Well. Anyway,
after I got through college and my parents first want
to go with my mother. She had a cancer or
the liver, and I was sitting at her bedside when
she died. My dad, almost a year to the day later,
(07:25):
he had gone back to Louisiana.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
He had lung cancer.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
I looked at him and he was in the living
room there, his a house coat on he was done
close to seventy pounds of his time.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
He was getting really close to the end, and.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
I thought, for one second I was gonna go over
there and say, let's put the gloves on. Come on,
let's put them all and now I'm just gonna hit
him as hard as I could. Was It's just a
straight right hand. It by right down in the middle
and just say, how do you like it? That's absurd.
(08:09):
You don't replay evil for evil. It's really much more powerful.
I just forgave them, both of them. But the problems
really persisted because when my parents had passed away, I
mistakenly thought, sure.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Now they're gone, my life would be fine. No.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
No, my first wife that ended, my second wife that
also ended because of my shenanigans. Is because of my
bad behavior. I just could not shed that feeling that
was following me everywhere.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
And that was it. I'm worthless.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
And you've been listening to Joe Quinn share his story
and what is story it is? It starts with abandonment
and he is ultimately adopted and was told he was
adopted from the earliest time. He had a bizarre relationship
with his own father, who drank too much moreover, it
was almost a sibling rivalry between he and his father
(09:18):
over his mother. You heard that boxing story, Just how bizarre.
He modeled himself after people in the movies, people like
Paul Newman from the epic classic Cool Hand Luke, and
in the end he found meaning and identity lifting weights
and also in the pursuit of the arts in acting.
(09:39):
But anger, resentment, and shame and a feeling of worthlessness
prevailed in his life. When we come back, more of
Joe Quinn's story and check out his documentary Diary of
a Bodybuilder, a diary offabodybuilder dot com. More of Joe
Quinn's story here on our American Stories, And we're back
(10:09):
with our American stories, and with Joe Quinn's story. Let's
pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
This first therapist I saw it, He goes, well, first
of all, you do know you're an abuse child. And
I just burst into tears. I mean it was like
a flood, and I mean it was really a powerful experience,
cathartic in fact. Then I got to my third wife
(10:40):
and oh well that almost made it.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
But he eventually the torment of.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Where I came from, fueled by alcohol, its still told
me to do terrible things. Eventually, two thousand and five,
February sixth I went to my first meeting the program AA.
I thank God for AA, and I'm in it today.
(11:14):
I sponsored people and I close in and here on
seventeen years of sobriety, So I dealt with it. At
this point in my life, I feel as though I've
I've got a handle on things, but from a very
different respective following that stroke I had in April of
(11:38):
twenty nineteen. So that that's the biggest challenge I've had
in my life. My parents are not my challenge anymore.
And the weightlifting, as it came through the gamut, it
was solid, it was stable, it was something I could
counter and I didn't need anybody else like if I
(12:03):
was if I was a boxer, I need a trainer,
I need a sparring partner, you know what I mean.
But you you loved weights just going on in the
basement and set your dumbbells and your barbell down and
turn some music out and get to work, you know,
And you can do that anywhere. It's always there whenever
(12:26):
you need it, except when you have a stroke. I
don't mean that to sound procedures. But it's really hard
for me. I miss it. I miss it terribly, terribly.
It's like the death, a death of a family member
that I can't work out.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
My body beliink is cut short. I was.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
I remember competing at the Nationals in Pittsburgh in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
I remember being on stage and looking out.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Over a dark aratorium with people, and I would say
close to seventy percent maybe more were on their cell phones.
They weren't even watching, watching my posing routine. And I
love posing. I loved I won Best Poser at to
get some contests, and I was.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
I didn't feel offended or angry. I felt sad. This
is the end.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
They took some pictures of us, and a friend of
mine sent me the pictures after they were developed, and
I had to tell you, I I did not look
good in those stupid pictures. It looked ridiculous in those shorts.
(13:57):
Those speedos reminds me of when I used to ride
my bicycle out to the end of Peer over there
in the summers, and the old men would be out
there just standing or talking.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
And weren't these speedos looking still and ridiculous? When I
saw myself.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
I felt like, Wow, I looked just like those old
dudes that were hanging out at the end of the
peer over there of North.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Avenue Beach, and I mean they look bad. So I
thought was being looking like that. I mean, aesthetics are gone,
They're out the window.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
I'm not going to be part of that anymore.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
No, in my life, I became a Christian when I
was eighteen years old in the Marine Corps. And in
spite of my struggles, I've always seen the peace and uh.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
The power and the real victory and and everything was here.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
In my drunken and often drunken and angry tirades against
God was a verse that he always came to mind
that neither this man uh sin nor his parents sinned.
(15:37):
Is he was born blind so that God could be glorified.
So I was put into that situation, into that uh challenge,
and that hell, into that cesspool for an opportunity for
(16:01):
God to be glorified. I think that His glory is
evident even in spite of those people.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
I love the Lord.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I have grown to understand it's just how powerful He is,
especially through the stroke and through this.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Lightest challenge in life.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
That is probably the biggest thing I've ever undertake, aside
from my death, that I'm not afraid to die anymore
because I was in the midst of terror after that stroke.
Terror and that war doesn't even do with justice. I
hope to God no one has to go through what
(16:48):
I did with a stroke. It's just what an awful experience.
But on the flip side of all that is that
God's going to be glorified in that stroke. God's going
to be glorified in my life, and that's all that matters,
because I feel that I was created to bring Him
glory in spite of who I am. But now in
(17:12):
my life, I have God. I've beautiful home, beautiful wife,
I have an absolutely beautiful life I do in spite
of having a stroke. I feel positive, I feel empowered.
I feel that because of forgiveness. Solely because of forgiveness,
(17:38):
I've been able to release all the past issues and
anomalies and things that were just evil in certain instances
that brought me up, but it forged me into the
exact person I think God had in mind. And it's
(18:00):
not for me. My life's not mine, My life's his.
It's it's to give him glory, and that's why I
hope I do, and that's what I strive for in
spite of all the flaws that I have.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
And a great job on the production as always by
Greg Hengler and a special thanks to Joe Quinn for
sharing his story. To learn more about Quinn, check out
his documentary called Diary of a Bodybuilder at diaryofabodybuilder dot
com and the Damn Burst when his therapist told him
later in life, you know you were an abused child.
(18:38):
In two thousand and six, we learned he went to
his first AA meeting. Thank God for AA, he said,
And he's closing in on seventeen years of sobriety. But
the biggest challenge of his life wasn't his parents anymore.
It was his stroke. He'd lost weightlifting, he'd lost his identity,
but he was searching for real peace and power and
(18:58):
he found it through his faith walk I'm not afraid
to die anymore. I was created to bring God glory
despite who I am. I have a beautiful home, wife
and life and feel positive and empowered. And I couldn't
have done it without forgiveness. The story of Joe Quinn,
of his fall and his redemption here on our American stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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