Overcoming Guilt
Here is your Sunday STORY on: THE LOVE OF WISDOM: Frequently things happen in our life that we have little control over, yet must learn to adapt to change. There is little that is anything more certain than change. It will happen every day. In our love of wisdom it would seem appropriate to grasp certain eventualities, come to terms with them and be prepared for their effect. Sometimes we are dealt with a bad hand and expected to come out on top. We need to practice being positive and turning an initial negative situation into something more optimistic. Today's story has a little of this thread of positive ness amongst its plot, but the miracle we witness from the effort is not financial but the emotion of needing to help; when those more fortunate see a NEED, and see an individual trying to overcome a battle, generosity will often spill from their soul. SIX HUNGRY BABIES In September 1960 I woke up one morning with six hungry babies and just 75 cents in my pocket. Their father was gone. The boys ranged from three months to seven years; their sister was two. Their Dad had never been much more than a presence they feared. Whenever they heard his tires crunch on the gravel driveway they would scramble to hide under their beds. He did manage to leave $15 a week to buy groceries. Now that he had decided to leave, there would be no more beatings, but no food either. If there was a welfare system in effect in southern Indiana at that time, I certainly knew nothing about it. I scrubbed the kids until they looked brand new and then put on my best homemade dress. I loaded them into the rusty old 51 Chevy and drove off to find a job. The seven of us went to every factory, store, and restaurant in our small town. No luck. The kids stayed crammed into the car and tried to be quiet while I tried to convince whoever would listen that I was willing to learn or do anything. I had to have a job. Still no luck. The last place we went to, just a few miles out of town, was an old Root Beer Barrel drive-in that had been converted to a truck stop. It was called the Big Wheel. An old lady named Granny owned the place and she peeked out of the window from time to time at all those kids. She needed someone on the graveyard shift; 11 at night until seven in the morning. She paid 65 cents an hour, and I could start that night. I raced home and called the teenager down the street that baby-sat for people. I bargained with her to come and sleep on my sofa for a dollar a night. She could arrive with her pyjamas on and the kids would already be asleep. This seemed like a good arrangement to her, so we made a deal. That night when the little ones and I knelt to say our prayers, we all thanked God for finding Mommy a job. And so I started at the Big Wheel. When I got home in the mornings I woke the baby-sitter up and sent her home with one dollar of my tip money -- fully half of what I averaged every night. As the weeks went by, heating bills added a strain to my meagre wage. The tires on the old Chevy had the consistency of penny balloons and began to leak. I had to fill them with air on the way to work and again every morning before I could go home. One bleak fall morning, I dragged myself to the car to go home and found four tires in the back seat. New tires. There was no note, no nothing, just those beautiful brand new tires. Had angels taken up residence in Indiana? I wondered. I made a deal with the owner of the local service station. In exchange for his mounting the new tires, I would clean up his office. I remember it took me a lot longer to scrub his floor than it did for him to do the tires. I was now working six nights instead of five, and it still wasn't enough. Christmas was coming, and I knew there would be no money for toys for the kids. I found a can of red paint and started repairing and painting some old toys. Then I hid them in the basement so there would be something for Santa to deliver on Christmas morning. Clothes were a worry too. I was sewing patches on top of patches on the boys pants, and soon they would be too far gone to repair. On Christmas Eve the usual customers were drinking coffee in the Big Wheel. These were the truckers, Les, Frank, and Jim, and a state trooper named Joe. A few musicians were hanging around after a gig at the Legion and were dropping nickels in the pinball machine. The regulars all just sat around and talked through the wee hours of the morning and then left to get home before the sun came up. When it was time for me to go home at seven o'clock on Christmas morning I hurried to the car. I was hoping the kids wouldn't wake up before I managed to get home and get the presents from the basement and place them under the tree. (We had cut down a small cedar tree by the side of the road down by the dump.) It was still dark and I couldn't see much, but there appeared to be some dark shadows in the car -- or was that just a trick of the night? Something certainly looked different, but it was hard to tell what. When I reached the car I peered warily into one of the side windows. Then my jaw dropped in amazement. My old battered Chevy was filled full to the top with boxes of all shapes and sizes. I quickly opened the driver's side door, scrambled inside and kneeled in the front facing the back seat. Reaching back, I pulled off the lid of the top box. Inside was whole case of little blue jeans, sizes 2-10! I looked inside another box: It was full of shirts to go with the jeans. Then I peeked inside some of the other boxes: There was candy, nuts, bananas, and bags of groceries. There was an enormous ham for baking, and canned vegetables and potatoes. There was pudding and Jell-O and cookies, pie filling and flour. There was a whole bag of laundry supplies and cleaning items, and there were five toy trucks and one beautiful little doll. As I drove back through empty streets as the sun slowly rose on the most amazing Christmas Day of my life, I was sobbing with gratitude. And I will never forget the joy on the faces of my little ones that precious morning. Yes, there were angels in Indiana that long-ago December . . . . and they all hung out at the Big Wheel truck stop. (Unknown Author) QUOTE: "A strong positive mental attitude will create more miracles than any wonder drug.' (Patricia Neal)
Overcoming Guilt
Self-acceptance no 4 - Overcoming Guilt and Shame
Overcoming Guilt & Remorse
Next page: Spiritual
Overcoming Guilt News
EDITORIAL; Curious Contents of the Digital Library
13 Oct 2011 at 12:00am Perhaps you haven't read Mrs. Molesworth's ''Uncanny Tales'' or C. Schweigger's ''Schweigger on Squint.'' Perhaps you missed ''How to Be Happy Though Married'' or the Farmers' Bulletin devoted to ''House Rats and Mice.'' No worries. They are available in 24 digital formats, including versions to suit just about any e-book reader you own. These...Read more...
ESSAY; The Rap on Happiness
31 Jan 2010 at 12:00am 
Smart people often talk trash about happiness, and worse than trash about books on happiness, and they have been doing so for centuries -- just as long as other people have been pursuing happiness and writing books about it. The fashion is to bemoan happiness studies and positive psychology as being the work not of the Devil (the Devil is kind of...Read more...
THE WEEK AHEAD | JAN. 3- JAN.9
3 Jan 2010 at 12:00am Television Mike Hale With a new decade beginning, PBS gets introspective, offering a pair of three-part series that delve into human nature. ''THIS EMOTIONAL LIFE,'' Monday through Wednesday at 9 p.m. on most stations, is hosted by Daniel Gilbert, the author of ''Stumbling on Happiness'' and a psychologist at Harvard, where he is known as Professor...Read more...
CHILDREN'S BOOKS; Happy to Be Me . . . . . . or Me!
10 May 2009 at 12:00am 
LITTLE OINK By Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Illustrated by Jen Corace Unpaged. Chronicle Books. $14.99. (Ages 3 and up) SPOON By Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Illustrated by Scott Magoon Unpaged. Disney Hyperion Books. $15.99. (Ages 2 to 6) YES DAY! By Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld Unpaged. HarperCollins Publishers. $14.99. (Ages 4 to 8)...Read more...
|
|
|
|
|
|
