Welcome to Our American Stories, where we uncover the powerful tales that shape our lives. Today, we’re heading to Des Moines, Iowa, thanks to listener Ryan Buck, to share “The Hope Story of John Humphrey.” John lived for baseball, a passion he’d chased since childhood, finding pure joy pitching on the mound. But this idyllic life took an unexpected turn when a subtle symptom revealed a life-threatening heart condition. Doctors delivered a stark diagnosis: a severe arrhythmia that could prove fatal at any instant, leaving John, his parents Jennifer and Mark, and their home church at Lutheran Church of Hope, searching for answers and strength.
Facing a critical decision about a risky surgery to implant an ICD or pacemaker, John initially resisted, unwilling to miss his beloved baseball season or give up his dream. Yet, even as he played a monumental game with his life on the line, surrounded by prayers, a profound sense of peace and joy emerged. This is a story of faith, resilience, and the incredible journey John took with his family and community, finding happiness and courage in the face of fear. Discover how John Humphrey’s determination transformed a frightening medical challenge into a beacon of hope and an embrace of life’s precious moments.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
Speaker 1: This is Our American Stories, and as you know, we tell stories about everything here on this show, and we love hearing from you, the listeners. Your stories are some of our favorites. Our next story is brought to us by Ryan Buck in Des Moines, Iowa, home of our great affiliate Ten Forty WHO. It’s called “The Hope Story of John Humphrey” because it was made for the Humphrey family and their friends at the Lutheran Church of Hope, their home church in West Des Moines. We will be hearing from John, his mother Jennifer, and his father Mark. Let’s take a listen.
00:01:02
Speaker 2: I’ve played baseball since I was three or four years old. I’ve always loved it. Play it every single summer. It makes me happy. I feel good when I play baseball, especially when I pitching is my favorite thing about baseball. My mom was a nurse, and she listened to me one day and she thought something was wrong.
00:01:27
Speaker 3: He came in from playing basketball one day, and he was like, “Why, and my heart feels like it’s beating the really hard.” So I grabbed my stethoscope and listened to him.
00:01:41
Speaker 2: And I could hear it, and so I went into the doctor to get that checked out. And while he was there, he said, “You have a family history of heart problems. I want to get you into a cardiologist just to see.”
00:01:53
Speaker 4: And Doctor Law walked in and brought his mentor with him from the University of Michigan, and they both looked at at John, and they looked at Jennifer and I, and they said, “John has a very serious arrhythmia that could take his life at any moment.”
00:02:13
Speaker 2: He said, “There’s no easy way to put this. That’s not my job to put it easy. It’s my job to take care of you.” He said, “You only see beats like this or strips like these on people in the hospital, and they have these beats like this right before they die.”
00:02:32
Speaker 5: “Your son could die at any time with the next heartbeat. We don’t know.”
00:02:38
Speaker 3: “We don’t know how he’s alive right now.”
00:02:42
Speaker 5: “We’ve not seen anything like this.”
00:02:45
Speaker 2: The doctor said, “I want to go in. I want to put an ICD in pacemaker.” He said, “Going into my heart is like going into a minefield.” They didn’t really think it would be successful. The likelihood of it being successful was very low.
00:03:07
Speaker 3: We said, “You’re having this.” He didn’t want it. He didn’t want it placed. He didn’t want to have to miss any of his baseball season. It was the state tournament was coming up, and he was not going to let his team down.
00:03:22
Speaker 2: I tried to fight it. I was like, “If I get this, I feel like my dream of playing sports is just done. I feel like I’ll be a different person. And what if it messes with my heart or makes it worse?” I just don’t—I didn’t want to have anything to do with it.
00:03:37
Speaker 3: We let him. I sat on them—no, the bleachers, holding an AED.
00:03:45
Speaker 4: It was a little bit emotional because—and we got the word that anytime this arrhythmia could take him out. But he wanted to pitch, so we prayed a lot. We prayed as a team.
00:03:59
Speaker 2: I wasn’t worried. I was just really at peace playing, and I was having.
00:04:03
Speaker 5: It, just a good time.
00:04:04
Speaker 4: And he went out there, and he went the full game, won the game from the mound, pitched a two-hitter, struck out fourteen, and walked one. And that kid hadn’t picked up a baseball in three to four weeks before that game. And I greeted him as he came off the mound, and I just looked at him and said, “Let’s say a prayer because, you know, God just lifted you up today, and you certainly have inspired a lot of people that know your story.” And he just had this big smile on his face as we walked off the fields.
00:04:45
Speaker 2: I walked with my mom, and we sat on some benches and just kind of absorbed everything around us, and I just came to the conclusion, like, “Okay, sometimes you just have to give things up to live the best life you can. I can’t worry about this.” So I had a lot of people praying for me. My surgeon, he reads a devotion; his daughter send them a devotion every day before he goes into surgery. Because we got around in a circle, my family, and then the surgeon. We all prayed together, and I hadn’t read my devotion yet, but that was actually what I prayed. I prayed that God just guide his hands through my heart and just do good things, please, and just hope—hopefully everything works. And so that was just one of those things, like God saying, “Hey, I’m right here with you.” When I was giving a hug to my parents, saying goodbye before I went into the operating room, I was kind of worried and nervous. But then, as soon as I stepped in the operating room, I just was really happy. It was kind of undescribable, like it’s weird how, in the scariest—what should have been the scariest time of my life, moment of my life—I was, I think, probably the happiest I’ve been ever.
00:05:58
Speaker 3: It’s a great sign to see before going in, and so John walked through the doorway, and the last thing I saw before the door closed was John sitting on the edge of the bed, laughing.
00:06:12
Speaker 2: I just started smiling, and I tried to lighten up the room because those people were probably really nervous. So even when I laid down and right before I went under, I was smiling, and I was just like thinking, “Oh, how great is life!” Even though I probably shouldn’t have had that point of view. Then it was definitely God. He was definitely holding me up. He was right there, and it was just a really, really reassuring feeling, like, “Hey, I’m here. You’re gonna be okay.” And so I was just happy, and so he just made me happy. When I woke up, I felt like God’s hand was right on my chest, and he was saying, “You’re okay. Everything went perfectly fine.” It was the best feeling I’ve ever had in my life. It was all-encompassing joy and love and peace, and I just felt right, right at home. I just felt perfect, and so I kind of started bawling right then because that was a really big, powerful moment.
00:07:14
Speaker 5: The first thing that he could say when he could speak was, “Glory!” He beat to God with tears running down his face. My husband said, “Babe, why is he crying? Is he hurting?” I said, “He’s not crying because he’s hurty. He’s crying because he realizes there is a God. There is a God, and he is good.”
00:07:45
Speaker 2: Hi. Passion, Mike. Thank you for your prayers.
00:07:49
Speaker 5: “I made it.”
00:07:50
Speaker 2: “God is good. Glory to God! Thank you. Prayer is very strong thing, and so when I woke up from surgery, I was kind of recovering a little bit, coming back to my senses, and I just had another aha moment, like, ‘Oh my gosh, prayer works!’ And that was just one of the coolest moments of the whole thing, because prayer went from like you feel like you have to, to just like kind of say hi to God or whatever and give thanks, to more of a connection with God and an outreach to God. Even though it was a bad situation, it brought a lot of good out of it because I got reconnected with people, got reconnected with myself, and I discovered Christ a lot more, and I discovered life more, too. He pretty much just changed everything, changed my whole life, really, but he changed it for the good, definitely, because I think I’m a better person now than I was before. So, yeah, stick with God for sure.”
00:08:49
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to John Humphrey, and my goodness, prayer is a very strong thing, indeed, especially when you get families and communities praying together in unit and for a common cause. The Humphrey family story—and that is John, Jennifer his mom, and Mark his father—all of their stories, so many other stories like it here in this great country, here on Our American Stories.
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