I am a 61 year old, father of two boys and have been happily married for 33 years. I have been a Physical Education teacher and coach for 38 years and have loved EVERY minute of it. I enjoy making people laugh and feel good about themselves. It’s fun collecting inspiring and heartwarming stories.from people. So, if you have a good story…let me know! I hope you enjoy my page!! :)
Remember:
Everyone is fighting a battle that you know nothing about.
Be kind.
Always.
A group of frogs were traveling through the woods, and two of them fell into a deep pit. When the other frogs saw how deep the pit was, they told the two frogs that they were as good as dead. The two frogs ignored the comments and tried to jump up out of the pit with all their might. The other frogs kept telling them to stop, that they were as good as dead. Finally, one of the frogs took heed to what the other frogs were saying and gave up. He fell down and died.
The other frog continued to jump as hard as he could. Once again, the crowd of frogs yelled at him to stop the pain and just die. He jumped even harder and finally made it out. When he got out, the other frogs said, “Did you not hear us?” The frog explained to them that he was deaf. He thought they were encouraging him the entire time.
Lessons of the story:
There is power of life and death in the tongue. An encouraging word to someone who is down can lift them up and help them make it through the day. So be careful of what you say. Speak life to those who cross your path. The power of words… it is sometimes hard to understand that an encouraging word can go such a long way.
Barbara was driving her six-year-old son, Benjamin, to his piano lesson.
They were late, and Barbara was beginning to think she should have cancelled it. There was always so much to do, and Barbara, a night-duty nurse at the local hospital, had recently worked extra shifts.
She was tired. The sleet storm and icy roads added to her tension. Maybe she should turn the car around.
“Mom!” Ben cried. “Look!” Just ahead, a car had lost control on a patch of ice. As Barbara tapped the brakes, the other car spun wildly rolled over, then crashed sideways into a telephone pole.
Barbara pulled over, skidded to a stop and threw open her door. Thank goodness she was a nurse – she might be able to help these unfortunate passengers.
Then she paused. What about Ben? She couldn’t take him with her. Little boys shouldn’t see scenes like the one she anticipated. But was it safe to leave him alone? What if their car were hit from behind?
For a brief moment Barbara considered going on her way. Someone else was sure to come along. No! “Ben, honey, promise me you’ll stay in the car!”
“I will, Mommy,” he said as she ran, slipping and sliding toward the crash site. It was worse than she’d feared. Two girls of high school age are in the car. One, the blonde on the passenger side, was dead, killed on impact.
The driver however was still breathing. She was unconscious and pinned in the wreckage. Barbara quickly applied pressure to the wound in the teenager’s head while her practiced eye catalogued the other injuries. A broken leg, maybe two, along with probable internal bleeding.
If help came soon, the girl would live.
A trucker had pulled up and was calling for help on his cellular phone. Soon Barbara heard the ambulance sirens. A few moments later she surrendered her lonely post to rescue workers.
“Good job,” one said as he examined the driver’s wounds. “You probably saved her life, ma’am.” Perhaps.
But as Barbara walked back to her car a feeling of sadness overwhelmed her, especially for the family of the girl who had died. Their lives would never be the same. Oh God, why do such things have to happen?
Slowly Barbara opened her car door. What should she tell Benjamin? He was staring at the crash site, his blue eyes huge. “Mom,” he whispered, “did you see it?”
“See what, Honey?” she asked.
“The angel, Mom! He came down from the sky while you were running to the car. And he opened the door, and he took that girl out.”
Barbara’s eyes filled with tears. “Which door, Ben?”
“The passenger side. He took the girl’s hand, and they floated up to Heaven together”
“What about the driver?”
Ben shrugged. “I didn’t see anyone else.”
Later, Barbara was able to meet the families of the victims. They expressed their gratitude for the help she had provided. Barbara was able to give them something more – Ben’s vision.
There was no way he could have known what happened to either of the passengers. Nor could the passenger door have been opened; Barbara had seen its tangle of immovable steel herself. Yet Ben’s account brought consolation to a grieving family. Their daughter was safe in Heaven. And they would see her again.
Imagine there is a bank which credits your account each morning with $86,400.
It carries over no balance from day to day, allows you to keep no such balance, and every evening cancels whatever part of the amount you had failed to use during the day.
What would you do?
Draw out every cent, of course! Well, everyone has such a bank.
Its name is TIME.
Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds.
Every night it writes off, as lost, whatever of this you have failed to invest to good purpose.
It carries over no balance.
It allows no overdraft.
Each day it opens a new account for you.
Each night it burns the remains of the day.
If you fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is yours.
There is no going back. There is no drawing against the “tomorrow.”
You must live in the present on today’s deposits.
Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in health, happiness and success.
The clock is running. Make the most of Today.
To realize the value of ONE YEAR, ask a student who has failed a grade.
To realize the value of ONE MONTH, ask a mother who has given birth to a pre-mature baby.
To realize the value of ONE WEEK, ask an editor of a weekly newspaper.
To realize the value of ONE DAY, ask a daily wage laborer who has kids to feed.
To realize the value of ONE HOUR, ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.
To realize the value of ONE MINUTE, ask a person who has missed the train.
To realize the value of ONE SECOND, ask a person who has avoided an accident.
To realize the value of ONE MILLISECOND, ask the person who has won a silver medal in the Olympics.
Treasure every moment that you have!
And treasure it more because you shared it with someone special,
special enough to spend your time …
remember that Time waits for No One …..
Yesterday is History …
Tomorrow a Mystery …
Today is a Gift.
That is why it is called the Present.
I would like to take this time to thank a fellow blogger friend of mine, Nodz, author of her wonderful blog “Written Thoughts…” for nominating me for the Liebster Award. I am very honored and touched that she thinks enough of my blog to receive this award. I wouldalso like to nominate some friends of mine for this award but before I do, here are some things that I would like to cover:
Liebster Award has few rules that need to be followed:
– Link back the blogger that tagged you – Nominate ten others and answer the questions of the one who tagged you – Ask ten questions for the bloggers you nominate – Let your nominees know of their award
My 10 questions from Nodz:
1. Whom you consider Hero in your life? My high school coach 2. When was the last time you felt extremely happy? 3. What’s your favorite color? Royal Blue 4. Any favorite place you have visited? Germany 5. What’s your favorite food? Italian 6. What’s your greatest dream? To own a successful business & be an awesome teacher/coach 7. If you will be given 3 wishes for the world what would it be? Peace. Diversity. Togetherness 8. Which you prefer to do if given a chance, cooking dishes or baking goodies? Cooking dishes 9. Sunset or sunrise? Why? Sunset…because I am not a morning person. 10. Country you wish to visit someday? Australia
My 10 questions:
1. What makes you smile? 2. What makes you sad? 3. What motivates you? 4. How would you describe your personality? 5. What do you least enjoy doing in life? 6. What is your favorite song? 7. What is your favorite quote and why?
8. How do you relax? 9. What is your favorite song? 10. Why do you blog?
It’s funny how life is. Sometimes when things seem the worst and can’t get any worse, how the outcome turns out totally different from what we expected. What’s the point? The point is, there is ALWAYS hope and life may surprise you and give you a happier, more positive result than what you expected.
I decided to share a story that happened to my brother and I when we were kids that demonstrates this concept in a very personal way…
When my brother and I were growing up, our family would always have pets around the house. My parents were big-time animal lovers which meant that there was never a time that we didn’t have a cat or some other pet around such as gerbils, guinea pigs, salamanders or gold fish.
Primarily, the pet of choice were cats and we usually would have anywhere from 1-5 or six cats running around the house. Every time they were outside and it was time for them to eat their dinner, grandma or my brother, mom or I would simply shake the box of Friskees and those felines would come running.
One of our favorite cats of all time was this black cat that we named Smokey…yep, we named him because he was black…we were very creative back then. Anyway, he was an awesome little thing…he always played with us then would jump up onto our laps at the end of the day, curl up into a ball, then go to sleep and purr.
We lived in a simple, Cape Cod style house and it was located about a block away from a busy highway named Atlantic Avenue. My dad would take that road to drive to work every day as well as my mom. It was also a road that lead directly to the beach…so it was a relatively busy road.
There were many times when we were traveling on the road that we would see the bodies of animals that were hit by oncoming cars along the road, and it would always make us feel bad knowing that somewhere in our neighborhood some kind lost their dear pet.
One morning, my brother and I were in our living room watching TV when my dad called from his work with bad news…Smokey, our beloved pet was dead. He had been hit by a car and my father had seen his body by the roadside.
Needless to say, my brother and I were devastated. We cried and cried. We decided that we would do the right thing. We would go to the road, scoop him up and give him a proper burial…and that’s what we did. I went to the shed and picked out a coal shovel and my brother got a water bucket. We walked to the road, found our cat, put him in the bucket and brought him back home,
We then went to the backyard to my grandma’s garden and chose a beautiful little spot to bury our dear Smokey…and that’s what we did. We even made a little tombstone from a piece of wood and wrote “Smokey” and it date of birth and death on it, just like a real cemetery. After a few final thoughts and maybe even a short prayer for the critter, we said our final good-byes and left crying and heartbroken.
Later in the day, we were getting ready to go to the park and play some baseball. We were standing in the front yard of our house waiting for our friends when, all of a sudden, a real-life miracle happened…we couldn’t believe our eyes as our beloved, dead pet, Smokey came bounding up the sidewalk, meowing and acting like nothing happened. We picked up the cat, jumped up and down in total glee. As we hugged our little buddy, we kept yelling…it’s a miracle! It’s a miracle!
After a while, we looked at each other as said, how is this possible? How could the cat have come back to life? God certainly COULD work in mysterious ways but did He REALLY bring our pet back to life…we had to know for sure.
We decided that we would go back to the grave site that we had made and see for sure how our cat managed to come back to life. Had it really been dead? Maybe it had just been knocked out and we accidentally buried it when it was still alive.
Imagine out great surprise when we arrived at the site and found it totally unchanged. The ground was still the same as we left it and nothing had moved!
What did that mean? We were totally stunned but at the same time we had the biggest smiles on our faces that any kid could have…WE HAD BURIED THE WRONG CAT!!!
When I was growing up, my grandmother lived with us. Her husband, my mom and her built the house that we lived in. Sadly, her husband, my grandpa, died when I was only four years old…so I don’t remember much about him.
My grandma (we called her Grammy) was my second mom. She would always be there when my brother and I got home from school. She would ask us how our day was she always had a tasty snack ready for us.
We learned a lot of things from Grammy during those years and many if these lessons I still use today.
The other day I found this neat little story called “Grandma’s Apron” on dobhran.com and it really brought back a lot of memories of my days as a kid with my grandma. I hope this story touches your heart the same way it did mine. It has a nice little message too!
The principle use of Grandma’s apron was to protect the dress underneath, but along with that, it served as a holder for removing hot pans from the oven. It was wonderful for drying children’s tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears.
From the chicken-coop the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven.
When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids. And when the weather was cold, grandma wrapped it around her arms. Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove.
Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron. From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled it carried out the hulls. In the fall the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees.
When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds.
When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.
It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that “old-time apron” that served so many purposes.
Photo Credit: By TheCulinaryGeek from Chicago, USA via Wikimedia Commons
A little while ago, a mom took her children to a restaurant. Her six-year-old son asked if he could say grace. As they bowed their heads he said, “God is good. God is great. Thank you for the food, and I would even thank you more if mom gets us ice cream for dessert. And Liberty and justice for all! Amen.”
Along with the laughter from the other customers nearby, a woman remarked, “That’s what’s wrong with this country. Kids today don’t even know how to pray. Asking God for ice-cream! Why, I never! “Hearing this, the boy burst into tears and asked, “Did I do it wrong? Is God mad at me?” As his mom held him and assured him that he had done a terrific job and God was certainly not mad at him, an elderly gentleman approached the table. He winked at the little boy and said, “I happen to know that God thought that was a great prayer.” “Really?” the boy asked. “Cross my heart.”
Then in a theatrical whisper he added (indicating the woman whose remark had started this whole thing), “Too bad she never asks God for ice cream. A little ice cream is good for the soul sometimes.”
Naturally, the mother bought her kids ice cream at the end of the meal. Her little boy stared at his for a moment and then did something will forever be remembered…he picked up his sundae and without a word walked over and placed it in front of the woman. With a big smile he told her, “Here, this is for you. Ice cream is good for the soul sometimes, and my soul is good already.
My Good Time Stories 