Chicken Soup for the Soul: NASCAR
BY: Darrell Waltrip
As I look through this book and I look at all the people who have contributed to it -- whether it's our current champion Jimmie Johnson or former champions like Tony Stewart, or even my brother Michael -- one thing pops out at me all the way through these stories. Someone, somehow, somewhere, had an impact on all these people's lives. Someone did something kind, someone said something encouraging, or someone just walked up and just gave them a hug.
It's obvious to me that in all of our lives, there are people like that. There have been people like that in my own life, who have impacted me in a positive kind of way.
The first one was Max Helton. Max was the founding father of the Motor Racing Outreach ministry, along with me and my wife Stevie, Lake Speed and his wife Rice, and Bobby and Kim Hillin.
Max was such a great encouragement to me because of his faithfulness. That's the other thing you see as you read through these stories -- how committed all these people are. They all have goals, and all they're looking for in most cases is someone to pat them on the back and tell them they're doing a good job.
In my life, that person was Max Helton.
One of the best things Max ever told me was, "D.W., good guys go to hell." That has stuck with me ever since, because in my life, up until I was saved, I thought I was a good guy. I never did anything bad; I never did anything wrong. But Max made it perfectly clear to me that good guys go to hell if they don't have that personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That saved my soul. It saved my life.
That was what Max did for me. And he didn't do it just for me; he did it for everybody. He was just that kind of guy.
Another person in my life that was a game-changer was Bill France, Jr.
Bill Jr. was a hard man, and on several occasions I witnessed to him about his salvation. Bill wasn't interested. He didn't want to hear it.
One time he said to me -- and these are his words -- "Let me get this straight. As long as I make my deal before they put me in the box, I'm gonna go to the same place you do, right?"
And I said, "Bill, that's exactly right, but here's the downside of that. If you wait until then, you'll never get the benefits of your salvation."
I think that impacted him. And I know, because I talked to his wife Betty Jane and some of the other people who were around him, that he gave his life to the Lord before he passed away. So that was always encouraging to me.
In fact, one of the sweetest moments of my entire career was at the NASCAR awards banquet in 2000, when Bill France gave me the Award of Excellence, the Lifetime Achievement Award. He was sitting down in the front, right in front of the stage at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. He was in a wheelchair; he had just gotten out of the hospital.
I can still see him sitting there, looking up at me. I could tell he was hurting, but he wanted to be there to see me get that award. Of all the awards I have ever gotten, of all the things I have ever accomplished, that was the greatest moment for me. You know, we had been adversaries since 1972. We started our careers at the same time, and we had bumped heads on many occasions. To see him make the effort to get there that night really impacted my heart.
Dale Earnhardt was another special person to me. People ask me all the time about Dale and whether he was a Christian. My wife in particular knows about this, because Stevie used to put Scriptures in his car every Sunday from 1994 until the day he died in 2001. Those Scriptures didn't save him, but Stevie also witnessed to Dale personally on many occasions.
My wife is a godly woman. She knows that he was saved, and she knows Dale Earnhardt went to Heaven.
Those are three of the people in my life who had a tremendous impact on me.
And I believe the people who read the stories shared in this book will be impacted in some way, too.
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