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Products are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company, Independence American Insurance Company, or MS Transverse Insurance Company and administered by PetsBest Insurance Services LLC. $1 a day premium based on 2024 average new policyholder data for accident and illness plans pets aged 0 to 10. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories. Up next, a story about a prayer that led to the making of one of America's most beloved movies. Braveheart.
It doesn't happen often. At the 2011 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., The keynote speaker wasn't a pastor, politician, or head of state. It was acclaimed Hollywood screenwriter and director Randall Wallace. Uh He wrote or directed some great American films, Secretariat. The man in the iron mask.
and the American War classic We Were Soldiers, which she wrote and directed. But the movie he'll be most remembered for was the 1995 classic Braveheart. which he wrote and which would go on to win five Oscars, including Best Picture. The film stirred the hearts of millions when it was released and still does as it plays in regular rotation. on cable and streaming channels.
But this great American movie didn't have a probable start. Indeed, it was birthed by a prayer. A prayer prayed not from a writer pleading to God for inspiration, but out of desperation. He started this speech by talking about his life growing up in Lynchburg, Virginia. and then came two powerful stories that shaped his life.
One about a tough patch. What Christians call a valley story in his father's life. and then one in his own. My father was a salesman. who loved his customers.
And he won promotion after promotion. Until one day The company he had worked for for 20 years, a family-owned business. was sold to a group of investors who knew nothing about the business. But they believed the way to increase profits was to fire all the old guys and hire younger ones who were cheaper. and my father was one of the old ones.
He was 38 years old.
Now I always believed that my father Uh had lived his life wanting to please the father he had never had. His father had died before he was born. The grandfather he had told me about was my mother's father, not his. Uh He had never been fired from anything. He was the best and the bravest man I ever knew.
And he came apart. Randall Wallace was just getting started. While he's in the hospital, My sister and I were farmed out to relatives. At one point we lived in a house that had no indoor plumbing. Yeah.
When I told my father about that, he said, well, Rich people have a canopy over their beds. I guess we've got a can of pea under ours. And that's when I knew my daddy would be all right. The last sale he made for the company that fired him. was for $90,000.
That was in 1961. The first sale He made When he came out of the hospital, it was for 90 cents. He worked 100 hours a week. He clawed his way back. to tremendous success.
God bless America. God bless my daddy. Then Wallace talked about his own life. starting with his journey up the Entertainment Mountain. His first job was humbling, and in retrospect it was a funny job.
as humbling experiences can be. if we let them. A first job was in Nashville working at a theme park. managing a show that featured live animals who played musical instruments. I'm not making this up.
I had a piano playing pig. Right. Named Pigarachi. I had a drum-playing duck named Bert Batquack. You can imagine how proud my parents were.
Wallace kept writing and working. He moved to Los Angeles and landed a job at one of the top TV production studios in the city. He married, had two beautiful sons, and remodeled an old house that would become his family home. Things were getting better than he could have ever dreamed until they didn't. Then the Writers' Guild went out on strike.
And that caused the thriving company that I was working for to void my contract. And the strike went on forever. And when it was over, I had no savings. and no job. And nobody would return my phone calls.
I'm sure that's never happened where you've worked. Ah! And one day, I mean, I kept trying. I was always good at trying. But I was sitting at my desk and I was staring at nothing and I had a knot in my stomach and I looked down at my hands and they were trembling and I realized I was breaking down the way my father had.
And I was afraid that I was betraying my Father. and my mother and my grandmother and my grandfather. And my greatest fear of all was that I was going to let down my sons. The room got even quieter as Wallace continued his testimony. is confessional.
So I got down on my knees. I had nowhere else to go. And I prayed a simple prayer. I said, Lord. What I really care about right now, what really matters to me, are those boys.
And maybe they don't need to grow up. in a great big house with a swimming pool. And a lot of bathrooms. Maybe they need to grow up in a little house with one bathroom or no bathrooms at all. Maybe they need to see what a man does when he gets knocked down, the way my father showed me.
And if that's what's best for them. Then I pray you let me take it. But I pray if I go down in this fight, Did I not do it on my knees to someone else? Yeah. But standing up with my flag flying.
I got up. Yeah. Can I Wrote the words. It led to brave heart. The audience gasped.
There was no applause. The moment was too real. Too profound for such a reaction. Wallace then turned from the personal to the eternal. and the story of Jesus' crucifixion.
If we took a freeze frame of Golgotha, On the day that Jesus was crucified, and ask someone unfamiliar with the story. To guess who was the victor in that scene. They'd be unlikely to say The one hanging on the cross in the middle. It was from that cross that Jesus cried, My God, why have you forsaken me? And that cry does not amaze me.
What does amaze me is that while one of the thieves crucified next to Jesus mocked him. the other acknowledged the justice of his punishment. and ask Jesus for help. And in the agonies of the crucifixion, Jesus was able to say, Today you'll be with me in paradise. It seems to me that Jesus' response to that thief.
was not just The answer to that thieves' prayer at the moment, it was the answer to every prayer that thief. never prayed. If God is God at all, God hears our prayers whether we pray them or not.
So why pray at all?
Well, for me, it's not because God needs to know my prayers. It's because I do. Moments later, Wallast finished up his thoughts. on the importance and the power. A prayer.
I'm not a theologian. I'm not looking for logic. I'm only trying to understand my experience that prayer matters. Does it change the mind of God? I don't know.
All I can tell you is that it changes me. Yeah. The story of how Braveheart came to be. and Randall Wallace's personal reflections and stories on the power of prayer. This is our American stories.
Hot take. You can disagree with someone and not hate them. I know, really groundbreaking stuff. But lately, that line seems blurry because hate is rising across communities in all kinds of ways, and Jewish communities are getting a lot of it right now. You don't have to agree with people, you just have to not be awful.
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