Sometimes I think about all the problems everybody has and how sometimes we really feel trapped and lost.
We dont know where to turn or who to turn to. We run circles and worry and cry. Sometimes we just need to be lifted up and we need to BELIEVE that there is still hope and good somewhere nearby no matter how things are going now. Dont be discouraged and never give up or forget that everything happens for a reason and in the end everything will work out.
(This is actually a story I wrote. Hope it's not too bad)
A small and poor village close to the coast had always been blessed with good feelings of friendship and happiness. Unlike their neighboring towns, the village had no wealth. Instead they had something better than money. While the wealthy only concerned themselves with how much more money they could make the villagers concerned themselves with more important matters.
Each day the villagers would wake up early to work as best as they could to feed their families with any scraps of money they could receive. But never did they regret this lifestyle. Everyone was perfectly happy even with the small amount of money and the few loaves of bread they ate a week. All the villagers knew one another and were practically one big family. Children were thinner than they should have been but they were happier, always running around laughing and playing. Everybody felt blessed until a child fell ill.
With only a weak mother to support him there was little hope for the boy. He was thinner than all the other village kids and his mother, who’d given all her food to her son was even worse. Both on the brink of death but neither ready to give up. Every day his mother rose early and went to work in the fields in the sweltering sun with only the intention of feeding her son, completely neglecting that she hadn’t eaten in several days. One day, with the image of her son in mind, she fell to her knees, her eyes shutting before she hit the ground.
Several men and woman ran to her side. Her heart was slowing down considerably and her breathing had grown shallow. She whispered her sons name and apologized as a single tear fell from her eye and she laid to rest. The entire village gathered together in the village square, each bringing a bit of food or money along. Together all the men and women gathered bringing anything they could spare. A little girl followed and hearing the adults mention that they hadn’t gathered enough and that it wasn’t possible. It was hopeless. The little girl ran home, coming back with her hands clasped tightly. She cried before the adults and told them she had all they needed. She unclasped her hands. In her palm sat in white baby dove. Its eyes had barely opened and it was almost pink from being a newborn but one thing was very clear and visible, the dove had a broken wing. The adults all looked confused and the girl smiled walking out with the bird.
She took it to the ill little boy and handed it to him. With a smile she promised as long as he carried it he’d get better, everything would get better.
The little girl worked alongside the adults in the fields and anything she made she contributed to the already growing pile of money and food. Each day she carried food to the boy but he only grew worse with time. The little girl also seemed to be growing weaker from all the hard labor she refused to stop doing. The boy shared a bit of his bread with the dove each day and day by day the food seemed to be just enough.
The adults, with help from the little girl, refused to let the boy die and so kept working and contributing money. The girl grew weaker and weaker working hard labor in the sun and giving her food to the boy until finally after a long day’s work she contributed her money to the rest of the money they’d all been saving up. She counted it and with a grin took it all. She started feeling dizzy and sick but despite that she ran to the closest town and headed straight to the shop. With all the money that had been raised she bought what the little boy needed, a small jar of medicine, something the villagers didn’t know much about and never had the money to buy.
Finally she got to the boy just in time and made him take it. She smiled and sat on his bedside as he fell asleep with the dove lying beside him. The girl touched the birds wing and smiled. When the boy woke up the girl was gone, he was better and the bird was flying around to its hearts content, chirping in joy.
In that single moment the boy heard a whisper: “The bird’s name is Hope”
Have you ever been saved from embarrassment by a kindly soul who absorbs the ridicule? These are the kind of people who are friends for life. Check this story out.
There is a nine-year-old kid sitting at his desk and all of a sudden, there is a puddle between his feet and the front of his pants are wet. He thinks his heart is going to stop because he cannot possibly imagine how this has happened.
It’s never happened before, and he knows that when the boys find out he will never hear the end of it. When the girls find out, they’ll never speak to him again as long as he lives.
The boy believes his heart is going to stop, he puts his head down and prays — “Dear God, this is an emergency! I need help now! Five minutes from now I’m dead meat.”
He looks up from his prayer and here comes the teacher with a look in her eyes that says he has been discovered.
As the teacher is walking toward him, a classmate named Susie is carrying a goldfish bowl that is filled with water. Susie trips in front of the teacher and inexplicably dumps the bowl of water in the boy’s lap.
The boy pretends to be angry, but all the while is saying to himself, “Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord!”
Now all of a sudden, instead of being the object of ridicule, the boy is the object of sympathy. The teacher rushes him downstairs and gives him gym shorts to put on while his pants dry out. All the other children are on their hands and knees cleaning up around his desk. The sympathy is wonderful. But as life would have it, the ridicule that should have been his has been transferred to someone else – Susie.
She tries to help, but they tell her to get out. “You’ve done enough, you klutz!” Finally, at the end of the day, as they are waiting for the bus, the boy walks over to Susie and whispers, “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”
Susie whispers back, “I wet my pants once too.”
With a timid voice and idolizing eyes, the little boy greeted his father as he returned from work, "Daddy, how much do you make an hour?"
Greatly surprised, but giving his boy a glaring look, the father said: "Look, son, not even your mother knows that. Don't bother me now, I'm tired."
"But Daddy, just tell me please!? How much do you make an hour," the boy insisted.
The father finally giving up replied: " Twenty dollars per hour."
"Okay, Daddy? Could you loan me ten dollars?" the boy asked.
Showing restlessness and positively disturbed, the father yelled:
"So that was the reason you asked how much I earn, right?? Go to sleep and don't bother me anymore!"
It was already dark and the father was meditating on what he had said and was feeling guilty. Maybe he thought, his son wanted to buy something.
Finally, trying to ease his mind, the father went to his son's room.
"Are you asleep son?" asled the father.
"No, Daddy. Why?" replied the boy partially asleep.
"Here's the money you asked for earlier," the father said.
"Thanks, Daddy!" rejoiced the son, while putting his hand under his pillow and removing some money.
"Now I have enough! Now I have twenty dollars!" the boy said to his father, who was gazing at his son, confused at what his son just said. "Daddy could you sell me one hour of your time?"
Mark was walking home from school one day when he noticed the boy ahead of him had tripped and dropped all of the books he was carrying, along with two sweaters, a baseball bat, a glove and a small tape recorder. Mark knelt down and helped the boy pick up the scattered articles. Since they were going the same way, he helped to carry part of the burden. As they walked Mark discovered the boy's name was Bill, that he loved video games, baseball and history, and that he was having lots of trouble with his other subjects and that he had just broken up with his girlfriend. They arrived at Bill's home first and Mark was invited in for a Coke and to watch some television. The afternoon passed pleasantly with a few laughs and some shared small talk, then Mark went home. They continued to see each other around school, had lunch together once or twice, then both graduated from junior high school. They ended up in the same high school where they had brief contacts over the years. Finally the long awaited senior year came and three weeks before graduation, Bill asked Mark if they could talk.
Bill reminded him of the day years ago when they had first met. "Did you ever wonder why I was carrying so many things home that day?" asked Bill. Mark nodded. "You see, I cleaned out my locker because I didn't want to leave a mess for anyone else. I had stored away some of my mothers sleeping pills and I was going home to commit suicide. But after we spent some time together talking and laughing, I realized that if I had killed myself, I would have missed that time and so many others that might follow. So you see, Mark, when you picked up those books that day, you did a lot more, you saved my life."
