The Sender

by Dr. Kevin Elko, Bill Beusay

Genres: Christian Fiction; Contemporary Christian; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Sometimes the right words make all the difference A few months ago he was a high school football coach. Now Charlie Cristo is a cancer patient, battling not only an aggressive disease but also years of bitterness and disappointment. Then anonymous letters start arriving from a source known only as The Sender. Lift your spirits. Work the process. Help one another. The short, wise counsel in the letters challenged Charlie Cristo to fight the disease ravaging his body and the anger threatening his soul. What will you do with The Sender's advice?

Release date: May 3, 2016

Publisher: Worthy

Print pages: 256

Sample

Dr. Elko gave me a phrase I used in the 2015 NFC Championship Game: “Live the Moment.” I taught that to the team. They did.

Ron Rivera, Head Coach, Carolina Panthers

Dr. Kevin Elko shares a unique lens to view through and a powerful message to grow into. He has a servant’s heart that will make you better personally and professionally.

Clint Hurdle, Manager, Pittsburgh Pirates

I have been fortunate to know Dr. Elko, both personally and professionally for over 20 years. I have watched his teaching, insights and creative ideas play a huge role in not only my career, but that of many others in the world of highly competitive sports. He is a tremendous mentor and a great resource for advice. His concepts on training the mind and motivating individuals, are always in the forefront and on the cutting edge!

Butch Davis, Head Football Coach University of Miami,ESPN Game Day Analyst

Dr. Elko is the best guest in the history of our show. His conversations with us are always compelling and important. His messages to the audience are always heartfelt and filled with compassion. You’ll love this book.

Paul Finebaum, Host, The Finebaum Show,SEC Network, ESPN

Dr. Elko has been a blessing in my life. I am a better leader and connector because of his guidance. His way of looking at leadership and core values hits home to coaches, men, fathers, and athletes. He is caring and direct and cuts to the point with his own incredible stories and genuine realism. Success as a leader is about connection and Dr. Elko knows exactly how to connect and deliver his message!

Dave Doren, Head Football Coach,North Carolina State University

The message in this book is a game changer that helps people meet their potential. It will transform your life so you can impact others in so many ways. This message has been a part of the culture of our championship teams.

Sarah Patterson, Legendary University of AlabamaGymnastic Coach

Dr. Elko’s message on the power of grit had a lot to do with our championship at Florida State—we teach it over and over. The message in this book will take you higher, it did the Noles.

Jimbo Fisher, Head Football Coach,Florida State University

Dr. Elko’s message, which is in The Sender, focused our team and was a big part of our run to the College World Series. And it will help elevate your organization to new heights.

Dan McDonnell, Head Baseball Coach,The University of Louisville

I’ve known Dr. Elko for almost twenty years. His presence, delivery method, and words are timeless. No matter the audience, he always makes a connection with the audience that makes you feel that he is speaking directly to you. I’ve personally witnessed him talking to groups ranging from financial advisors to national championship football teams and results are always the same. Everyone leaves his talks with a better understanding of themselves and how life’s obstacles are what you make them. He helped me personally in my own fight with cancer and I know that he will help you too.

Tom Moffit, Head Football Strength Coach,Louisiana State University

This exact message and these letters sent to Coach Pagano are what I listened to as soon as I got my [cancer] diagnosis and started on my journey,

Chris Mortensen, ESPN NFL Analyst

Dr. Elko is the best I’ve seen in helping young men focus on “keeping the main thing the main thing”! He has given us the tools to help manage daily conflicts and stress while helping our team “lock in” and remove outside distractions. He helps better prepare our student athletes both on and off the field.

Scott Cochran, Head Football Strength Coach,The University of Alabama

I’ve known Dr. Elko for a decade. It wasn’t until I found myself using his phrases in my everyday life that I realized the profound impact he has had on my life. Through his powerful words and teachings he shows us how to embrace times of challenge with courage, hope, and a little humor.

Greg P. Cicotte, Head of U.S. Wealth Managementand Distribution,Jackson National Life Insurance Company



SEVERAL GAMES INTO THE 2012 pro football season, Indianapolis Colts Head Coach Chuck Pagano was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia. It was a devastating revelation that brought major outpouring of attention and care from both inside and outside the NFL. Chuck immediately relinquished his role as head coach and entered into an onerous 90-day chemo protocol. His team, inspired by the plight of their severely ill leader rallied and nearly made it to the Superbowl.

In the spring of 2014 I was having a casual conversation with renowned sports performance consultant Kevin Elko Ph.D. who shared an amazing footnote to the story. Kevin consults with many pro and college level football teams. He was a very close friend of Pagano’s. Every day for the entire 90-day chemotherapy treatment cycle he’d sent his friend Chuck an audio-letter of encouragement, stories, anecdotes and motivation. Every day. Kevin shared these letters with me, all 90 of them. I read the transcripts and was thunderstruck by what was there. I immediately thought that everyone in any position of life, good or bad should be so lucky to have a friend like Kevin sending them letters like these. They were just that good. Simple, funny, homespun and touching in every way. Probably Kevin’s best work ever.

Fiction allows you great latitude in storytelling. So, starting with little more than a pile of letters we created this fictional tale. It’s an account of a football coach struck down with cancer. Coach Charlie Cristo is “every man” fighting in the trenches of life, then is completely blindsided by a dreaded illness. But through a series of anonymous, daily letters our coach Charlie learns some profound life lessons, faith lessons, and faces tests on each of them. Some tests he passes and others not so much. But he practices and grows and changes.

The letters that appear in this book are the actual letters Elko sent to Pagano.

Our hope is that this story touches you and causes you to consider some of your own personal challenges and lessons. Our hope is that you take these lessons and use them in your own journey. Our hope is that you find a way to serve others with what you learn here. Our hope is that you’ll fight and sweat and grind and love no matter what happens to you. And our hope is that you’ll write someone that you love a letter of encouragement, triumph and peace because you’ve been changed by what happened to you here.



THERE’S NO SELF-PITY with cancer . . .

Charlie winced, rolled over and looked out the window. It was gray and gloomy.

Or is it “There’s no self-pity in football”? he wondered, trying to get his mind off the pain. He’d read that somewhere and couldn’t remember. He squinted into the fog outside his window, trying to recall. His head was just as hazy as it was outside—the drugs did that to him. His arm ached from the needles. The docs had suggested installing a port-a-cath, but he’d resisted. It sounded terminal to him. It was time for it, though. His throat was raw. The hospital bedsheets caught, then tugged and twisted his bad leg. His body twitched back hard.

“God, that hurt!” He cursed, gritting and wincing again.

Everything hurt during chemo: bone pain, nausea, and that constant headache. This was way worse than he had feared. His spirit grew dark. The only thing he felt like doing was crying. But that was not allowed. Then, the unthinkable words drifted through his brain fog—“God, please let me die.” Ache upon ache.

The cancer had been diagnosed just two months back but Charlie’s outlook on life was already pretty bleak. He’d been unhappy, discontented, for a long time. He’d lost touch with joy, was wrapped up in worry. Gotta make more money. Who will pay the bills? Pay for college for the girls? Will I be there to dance at their weddings? Everybody seems to be going about their lives at full speed. What about me? He’d been plagued by thoughts like this for some time. The cancer just inflamed all his old anxieties.

But now his body was dwindling too. He could see that in the mirror.

From time to time, his patience would snap and he’d explode at somebody. Anybody would do, as long as he got it out. He had to get his mind off this killing pain and fatigue; his screwed-up balance; meat-red sore throat; fever; the dryness, metal taste and ulcers in his mouth; baldness . . . and the constant allover ache. And this was only phase one of three. Daily body massages eased the throbbing, but the relief only lasted so long. The nurses kept a close watch on his meds, but most of the time he just wanted another hit.

The cancer support group wasn’t helping much. “You’ll get better!” they’d say, pouring forth heaping ladles of chicken-soup encouragement.

Oh my God, please . . . wipe those smiles off your faces, he’d think, his voice echoing angrily inside his head. Just shut up; you have no clue. You lie here for a month and then see if you’re so chirpy. Their sunny bull crap was more than he could take most days.

Charlie talked to himself a lot.

His mind drifted again. He felt empty, angry, pained, driven, hopeless. Emotional and spiritual agony blackened every moment. He was limp from exhaustion. Vince Lombardi’s words drifted into his thoughts, something Lombardi was quoted as saying shortly before he succumbed to cancer: Fatigue makes cowards of us all.

Charlie chafed, grimaced, and clenched his teeth in defiance, but he’d spent all the energy he could muster. He was just too tired to fight. Maybe he was a coward. Or maybe he was just tired of being tired and beaten up over and over again.

And then, just when his mind-set couldn’t get worse, it did.

His thoughts hopscotched around with little purpose or control. He drifted more deeply into his positively messed-up situation: his aimless and frustrating career, money problems, his new job now hanging by a thread, a wife who’d emotionally checked out, and now cancer. Cancer. The word evoked so much. He could see it clearly within him: dark and ghoulish; gray-black sludge in his bones, caustic yellow-jelly pus leaching into his aching joints, dark bruises on his skin, bones sticking out all over, the feeling of being eaten alive from the inside by a dark, smelly, fiery demon.

He was angry, resentful, and hated everything. And it was all compounded by unyielding exhaustion.

His psyche raced round and round in silent desperation. Then that fat, obnoxious nursing assistant came in. The one with bad breath and the tattoos that made her look cheap. She was good with those needles though. No pain. He never gave her enough credit for that. How could she have wrecked herself with all that ink? Disgusting, he thought.

Snapping at the nursing staff was his trademark. His reputation as a difficult and angry patient had ballooned recently. The truth was he’d been snapping at people for years. He couldn’t remember when it started. All he knew was that his uncontrolled anger and attitude issues had gotten him canned—or simply not renewed—at coaching job after coaching job. It cost him a lot of friendships too. Through his own actions he’d become an empty, cussing, hurting mess. It was an appalling dilemma with no way out. He wanted to just collapse and cry, but he had already collapsed and the tears would not come. There was no bottom left. But there’s no self-pity in cancer.

His vision, attitude, and demeanor were completely septic; his hope was gone. The disease owned Charlie.



HE MUST’VE DOZED OFF during the pity party he wasn’t supposed to have. He awoke in a surprisingly pleasant post-nap mood. That was rare. What wasn’t rare was how low he could crash when Bing walked in.

Bing Macklemore was a round man with a fat face as red as a cherry. He was receiving therapy in a room down the hall. He had considerably more energy than Charlie and seemed to constantly seek attention. He was loud, obnoxious, and chatty. He chafed on Charlie. He was a professional gambler, winning a fortune playing poker online and telling anyone who would listen just how great he was. He gabbed constantly.

Always good for a few lies, Charlie thought as he watched that swollen, crimson moon face . . .