Messages From My Friend

inspirational real life stories celebrating compassion, empathy, and personal triumph during adversity

Archives for April 2019

Teaching a Child to be Generous

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Teaching a Child to be Generous

In this day and age, teaching a child to be generous is against all odds. The Culture’s gratuitous gravitational force of “What’s in it for me?” is buttressed by the social media’s message of “Selfies”. The relentless bombardment of “personal tweets” reduces the resolve to be concerned about others to the rubble of Dresden. A child is defenseless against the push-pull of Madison Avenue wants and Wall Street’s provision to satisfy them.

My friend taught his son about being generous by teaching him about donating.

One way to encourage a child’s generosity is to give the child a dollar at the beginning of the Sunday Service. Letting the child hold the buck in his hand from the beginning of the service makes it his/hers. It’s now his/her buck.

When he collection basket comes around, let him/her watch you put your money into the basket, then let him/her put the dollar into the basket. Do that every Sunday, from the age of 5, and never stop, even into adulthood.

A few months ago, my friend left his wallet in the car. His 32-year old son happened to join him for the Sunday Church Service. When the collection basket was a few pews away, my friend realized that he didn’t have his wallet. He left it in the car. He felt a tug on his arm. His son handed him a buck. Their eyes met. Nothing was said. They both smiled when my friend dropped the buck into the basket.

My friend’s son is now a generous donor at his church and in the community where he lives.

Putting a “Buck in the Basket” each Sunday is an act of Love.

Guidance from the Greatest Generation

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Guidance from the Greatest Generation

My Friend’s Father-in-Law was a member of the “Greatest Generation. He served as a navigator on a bomber plane in WWII. After the war, he graduated from Northwestern University, and worked his way up from a salesman to Executive Vice president and Treasurer of the town’s 3rd largest employer. He married and helped his wife raise three children who all graduated from college.

One of his proudest moments was in 1971, announcing his daughter’s engagement at the company’s Christmas party. His darkest hour happened only ten days later. A stranger walked into his office and asked, “Are you Ed?” “Yes”, he replied. The stranger then said, “You’re Fired.” Ed was stunned. While Ed was still reeling in disbelief, the stranger said, “I we won’t need to have a guard watch you pack up your things. Just leave before noon”, then he turned, and left.

That whole episode seemed surreal. Dazed, Ed sat in his chair, wondering, “What just happened?” He collected himself and called his closest friend in the company. Before Ed said anything, his friend said that he was fired and given until noon to get out. Those two friends called other company executives and Division Managers, and learned that a version of that same story happened to all of them as well.

The recent company buy-out (caused by the death of the company’s founder) was partially being financed by the funded pension accounts of long-term executives and Division Managers. Those funds totaled over five million dollars. The much larger purchasing company also had sufficient managers to replace the fired employees, at lower salaries. (Then, pension benefits didn’t vest until after 30 years of service. (Congress changed the vesting period to 5 years, because of this Draconian acquisition abuse.) Too late to save Ed.

So, Ed lost $400,000 dollars of his pension funds, an additional $500,000 in his company Whole Life Insurance Policy, and his annual salary of $75,000. (Adjusted in today’s dollars, Ed’s loss would be 5 times those amounts.) Ed lost his entire financial life, in a blink of an eye.

Ed & The “Greatest Generation”responded with “Triumph over Disaster”, With a Significantly Different Response to the “last Line” of the above YouTube Music Video

The joy of his daughter’s wedding evaporated into the burden of overwhelming expense. Yet, Ed straightened his shoulders, stiffened is lip, and treated “Disaster” with the same grace and elan as he treated “Triumph”. (Kipling would have been proud.)

Ed found a well-paying job that provided a wonderful wedding, allowed his 2 sons to get their college degrees, and allowed his wife to stay in her home. A remarkable recovery from circumstances that would have buckled the knees of the strongest man. (Men had jumped off buildings after losing far less.)

But even Ed’s resolve couldn’t navigate around the inevitable outcome of his doctor’s diagnosis: “Ed, you need heart surgery, and aggressive treatment for the large cancerous tumor found on top of your heart.” Yet, Ed’s reaction to that devastating medical news and painful treatments was the same as dealing with the flak exploding all around his plane during WWII, the egregious theft of his earned retirement funds, and career challenges since bring fired.

It’s been decades since Ed’s passing, but his legacy of courage and grace under pressure served as a font of wisdom and guidance for my friend, when he met the inevitable “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” Ed now rests in the palm of God’s hand, and his spirit lives in the hearts of the lives that he touched.

Ed’s life personifies the “Guidance of the Greatest Generation”:

The Above YouTube Music Video Captures the Essence of the “Greatest Generation”

Unrelated Events and the Continuum of Grace

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Unrelated Events and the Continuum of Grace

My friend shared with me a series of unrelated events, that ended with unexpected, unplanned, beneficial outcomes, which he attributed to the continuum of God’s Grace, throughout. In chronological order, here are the events:

My friend attended a seminar about overcoming obstacles and life-challenges by faith in God, professional intervention, and spiritual support from friends. The seminar was conducted by an author who chronicled her awful experience, and the steps to overcome it. That author was one of 16 other women authors, who described their traumas & loss, in the transformational book, entitled, “The Breakthrough Effect”.

My friend wrote an angry “Letter-to-the-Editor” about New York State’s heinous legislation of depraved indifference to life,, allowing a recently born, healthy baby, living outside its mother’s womb, to be killed with the mutual consent of the mother and the abortion doctor (who failed to abort the baby while inside the mother’s womb). My friend sent a draft of his letter to his daughter, a doctor, for her review.

My friend was stunned by his daughter’s response. Her close friend had an awful, gut-wrenching, soul searching, rare pregnancy experience that threatened her life & the life of the baby inside her womb. Rather than have both persons die, a medical procedure was required for the baby to be euthanized outside the womb. Both, mother and baby would have died if the procedure were performed with the baby inside the womb. His daughter explained that was the original intent of the New York Law.

Then, my fiend met an acquaintance who was bemoaning the fact that he was given a book that bored him. It was a gift from a friend that he didn’t want to offend. So, he only read a few dozen pages before he copied the “Prayer of Mother Theresa”, which he found compelling.

My also friend copied that prayer, because it was the perfect inspiration to the dilemma of the “Letter-to-the-Editor” descried above. My friend went home and wrote a blog post that addressed the tragic situation of his daughter’s friend, while rebuking legislative dire outcomes, not originally intended to be Law

My friend attended a Saturday Bible Study small group discussion to tell about the “chance occurrence” of getting Mother Theresa’s prayer, to rewrite a letter, that made his daughter happy, instead of upset. But the group was more focused on the prayer request from a member who described the complex surgery that his wife needed, and that he was fired the day before, from a job that he successfully performed for over 20 years. He now had NO HEALTH INSURANCE NOR INCOME to pay for the medical help his wife needed

My friend gave the distressed member the book, “The Breakthrough Effect”. The broken man read the back cover, some stuff on the inside, and the introduction to Kimberly’s story. He said, “This is EXACTLY WHAT MY WIFE NEEDS”, and thanked my friend, profusely. (My friend brought that book by mistake, instead of his Bible. He dressed in the dark, not to wake his wife, and reached for the “wrong book”, on his dresser.)

Perhaps, God’s Grace guided him to reach for the “Right Book”, which was needed for the “Right Person”, at the “Right Time”. These series of unrelated events, with the unseen continuum of God’s grace throughput, resulted in unexpected, unplanned, beneficial outcomes.

The Above YouTube Music Video Expresses the Essence of Amazing Grace.

When the cynical tell my friend that those events are just “Chance Circumstances”, he replies, “No. They are “Divine Synchronicity”.”                And he punctuates his comment with Einstein’s observation about the Universe “God doesn’t roll dice.”