Adam Custin with parents Heidi and Joe Custin.
Adam Custin and his parents tell one of the most heartwarming stories I’ve heard in a long time.
Adam was 14 when he first attempted suicide, a total shock to the family. Years of agony for Adam and his parents followed, more suicide attempts, in and out of psychiatric facilities, in and out of school, drug abuse, fits of rage.
And then last November he took a massive overdose of drugs and lapsed into a coma. Doctors said he was brain-dead, his heart and liver badly damaged. Machines kept him alive. On the advice of doctors, his parents took him off of life support.
They bought a cemetery plot and a casket. They asked his friends to be pall bearers. The minister was preparing his funeral service.
And then he woke up.
And told stories about meeting and talking with God.
I write about it on Saturday’s religion page.
Also Saturday, I write about one of the last of the huge tent revivalists, a man who preached decades ago under what was then called the largest gospel tent in the world.
He turns 80 on Monday, and is still doing tent revivals. At his Tulsa revival, which ends Saturday night, crowds numbered in the 100s not the 1000s.
I also interviewed his stepdaughter, who grew up in his shadow and wrote a poignant book about her early life under the big tent. Coincidentally, she spoke in Tulsa just before he started his 10-day revival. She and her stepfather present a very different picture of what happened in that family on the old sawdust trail.
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