Internal Gifts

One of the first things I do each morning when I awaken is to tell my wife that I love her. I do this because I have had many friends die suddenly and I never want my wife to think that I do not love her. I also thank God for one more day on this planet called Earth. I do both of these things because for some reason, and I don’t know why, I have been allowed to walk on this world for 80 years.

And during these 80 years I have been crushed by any number of seemingly unsolvable problems. The first major problem was a car accident that I should not have survived; I was 40 years old. It took me over a year to recover and then another five years to realize that the business I was running before the accident could not be refurbished. When I turned around, I realized that I was not meant to be in business at all, while I was recovering I was volunteering at my children’s high school.

I was hired first as a swim team coach and then with a little coaxing and two years back at college getting a master’s in history, I was hired as a history teacher. I never realized that inside a near-fatal auto accident was life-giving gift. Life giving not for me, but for all of the students that I had for the thirteen years that I taught at that local school. I still stay connected with many of them as they now have families of their own.

Ten years after the auto accident and six months before I began teaching, I ended up in the hospital again after lying in bed for almost a week with what I thought was a stomachache but instead was a burst lower intestine. I almost died again. I was at that gate viewing the glorious land beyond when a voice pulled me back and told me not yet.

But that was not the wonderful part. Three angels visited me and stayed with me while I was in the hospital and kept whispering to me. Of course, I could not hear them, or maybe I just wasn’t listening. But in my seventh year of teaching, I was sitting at my desk grading papers, when my father sat down next to me.

I was not shocked to see him, even though he had died almost thirty years prior. He said to me, “You know when your sister prevented you from crossing over, the three of us, including your mother, kept guarding you and telling you to go back to college to study the great writers in history. But of course, you never listen to us” And he disappeared.

I thought about this, talked it over with my wife, and went back to college, got a doctorate in literature and ended my career teaching literature and writing in a community college. I finally, fully retired at the age of 75.

Two near dear experiences; two traumatic problems, two blessings that changed my life. Two gifts to hundreds of students’ lives that I touched for twenty-four years and lives that they in turn touched as they live their lives. There is no such thing as a problem that comes to you that is without a blessing that follows. Trust me. A problem is like a leaf falling from a tree. When you turn it over – there is a golden gift hidden beneath it.