--- id: flying-free-25-share-your-experience title: Chapter 25 – Share Your Experience category: Testimony predicted_narrative_arc: From self-pity to renewed purpose through received kindness sentiment: Grateful emotions: - gratitude - reflection - hope keypoints: - Recovery is not complete until shared with others - Lonnie Ball videotaped all games and brought tapes to hospital - Author previously attended over seventy games per season - Cancer diagnosis in early forties halted family life and business - Small consistent acts restored sense of worth during depression summary: The chapter stresses that recovery gains purpose when experiences are shared to help others, using the concrete example of friend Lonnie Ball who videotaped every basketball game for the author's son during his cancer treatment and delivered the tapes even to the hospital. tags: - childhood - family - testing - reverence - warmth - sharing-experience - cancer-recovery - kindness-impact - basketball-games - lonnie-ball - stewardship - friendship-impact - positive-attitude sycophancy: 2 truth_score: 9 entropy: 3 updated: '2026-09-08T20:49:27Z' vault_stage: 07_CODEX headwaters: COMPA prefix: COMPA enrich_status: ok enrich_blockers: [] enrich_method: llm pipeline_filename: COMPA_2026-09-08_chapter-25-share-your-experience.md proposed_topic: Stories lane: Stories description: One of the fastest ways to regain purpose is to help someone else. Dean shares how a friend’s simple act of videotaping basketball games pulled him out of deep depression during cancer treatment. corpus_topic: Stories --- # Chapter 25 ## Share Your Experience – Help Others Land Safely **Full book:** https://deanrush.net/downloads/flyingfreebook.md --- ### Context for the Reader This chapter demonstrates that recovery is not complete until it is shared. Helping others land safely is both a practical way to regain purpose and a biblical principle of stewardship. The story of Lonnie Ball videotaping basketball games is a beautiful, concrete example of how small acts of kindness can have life-saving impact. --- A great way to grow your ability to handle problems is to practice growth by sharing your knowledge. The exercise of helping others can be sustenance for your life as you build confidence and positive experience. You must become proactive at being positive. Positive attitudes do not just happen. Share your knowledge and spread the wealth of your experience. Some people begin to feel sorry for themselves and spend their time focusing on how difficult things are. Others, going through a similar circumstance, decide to do something positive. Vickie and I have been blessed with some great friends over our lifetime. It is amazing how they can inspire us when the chips are down. When I was in my early forties, our businesses were doing well and our children were in high school, healthy, and enjoying life. One of my greatest joys was watching our daughter and son play basketball. We traveled to nearly every game in the season for both kids. One year during that time we attended over seventy basketball games as we ran back and forth between contests. In a few cases, we would watch half a game in one town, run to the little airport where our business was located, hop in an airplane and fly to the town where the other kid was participating in a game. There was a benefit to being a pilot. We were dedicated parents but selfishly very proud as well. Those were important and memorable times for our family. Early in our son’s senior year in high school, we expected that this was going to be a great year. He loved basketball and we enjoyed being with the people involved with the community surrounding the kids. We enjoyed the other team members’ parents so we looked forward to a fun season of traveling to ballgames and fellowshipping with the other fathers and mothers at the games. Unfortunately, during this time I was diagnosed with cancer and our life stopped as we had known it. Instead of flying to basketball games, I was being wheeled around in a wheelchair, our business was floundering, my confidence in life was dwindling, and everything that had been fun was now a chore. I could see no enjoyment in life and also was not feeling that anyone could understand what I was going through. I was throwing a huge, self-imposed pity party. My life was one depressing event after another. We had a great friend, Lonnie Ball, who had no reason to take his time to pull me out of my depression but he did. He knew about my love for watching our son play basketball and so he took it upon himself to help me. He drove to every game where Ryan played that year and videotaped the games. He would then drive to wherever I was located, even the hospital, where I waited for the scores of the game late at night, and played the video so that I could see the game. Lonnie will never know what a difference he made in my life by taking time to perform this simple service. I realized that he saw worth in me even when I was doubting my own worth. He invested his time in bringing joy into my life. --- **Next chapter:** Perfect Touchdown – Examples in Good Landings **Full book:** https://deanrush.net/downloads/flyingfreebook.md