IS THERE A GOD? Anonymous Consider the following: A 15 year old boy jumps out of a moving car on Main Street in Flushing, NY and comes out of his drunken blackout in the emergency room. He has no injuries at all and is sent home. A 16 year old runs out of road at 110 mph under the Whitestone Bridge. He attempts to turn and the car crashes sideways on the driver’s side, wrapping itself around a light pole. He suffered only a small bump on the head and a bruised ankle. A 16 year old crashes head on into a tree at 80 mph in Springfield Gardens, NY. His only injury is a bloody nose. A drunken 16 year old passes out on the Himalaya ride at Palisades Park. He is saved from being thrown violently from the ride by the girl seated next to him. A drunken 18 year old passes out in a phone booth in 20 degree weather and awakens hours later, freezing but uninjured. A 47 year old Rockland County, NY man gets a call from his almost 18 year old daughter. She went to the Poconos with 3 friends to collect her belongings from an ex-boyfriend who had stolen them. Her car broke down and she had spent the night before huddled in it with her friends, trying to keep warm in the single digit weather. They had only $3.00 left between them and were facing the prospect of a 3 degree night with nowhere to stay. He said to call back and let him know if they found a friend to stay with. If not, he would find them a hotel room. When he hadnt heard from her by morning, he decided to head to the Poconos. When he was passing Stroudsburg he decided to get off and speak to her Navy recruiter to see if they had sought his help. He wanted to go straight off the exit but unknowingly ended up in the left only lane and was forced to turn left. Before he was able to turn around, he saw Schliers Auto Repair, at whose Tannersville location he believed she had left her car the previous day. He stopped in on the off chance that she had actually left her car at this location. She hadnt but she and her friends had stopped in to warm up in the waiting room. The counter man told him he thought she had stayed in the motel across the street. Her father replied that was impossible as they only had $3.00. As he drove away toward the recruiters, he had second thoughts and went back to check the motel. The woman at the desk didnt speak much English and indicated she would get the manager. While waiting, he saw a man crossing the parking lot carrying a vacuum. As soon as he entered the office, the father, assuming he was the manager, asked about his daughter and friends. The man replied, Keri?, Shes in my room.. He thought What a wonderful place that the manager took pity on these kids and helped them out!. Just then, another man entered the office and started yelling at Keris benefactor for having extra people in his room. Obviously, this was actually the manager. The man with the vacuum sent the teens out and as they drove home, she told her dad how she and the boys with her were praying all night the first night that they would be helped as they shivered in her car. The man who let them sleep on the floor of his room was an acquaintance from years back whom she bumped into the night before. The common thread that connects these stories is that they were all about the same person, me. I survived my teenage years despite my accidents, at least 3 drug overdoses, sleeping in the subway, sleeping in fleabag Bowery motels, and fiercely battling the police in Flushing, NY and Bayside, NY when they would interfere with my fun. I was a scrawny boy, barely above 100 pounds yet I had challenged persons who were much bigger whenever I drank. I often woke up in strange places with black eyes and welts of which I had no memory. Often, I would come out of a blackout and find my money, coat, sweater, other possessions would be gone indicating that I had been mugged, probably while passed out. I spent most of the time from age 17 until 20 in a juvenile detention center in upstate NY. Six weeks before my 21st birthday, I wised up and quit drinking. Today, December 3rd, 2008 will be 37 years without a drink and life is sweet! At age 21, I was shot at while dropping my brothers girlfriend off. Her estranged husband and his brother were abducting her kids as we arrived. I went with her to the Coney Island projects looking for the kids in places where the police even refused to accompany us. There are so many times that I should have been killed or severely wounded yet I escaped them all relatively unscathed. Why is that? Why did a string of coincidences lead me to my daughter? If I hadnt decided on the spur of the moment to get off in Stroudsburg; if I hadnt gotten into the wrong lane by mistake; if I didnt notice the second Schliers; if I didnt decide to check at that Schliers; if I had gone right to the motel when the stranger was not yet crossing the parking lot; if all of the actions of that morning hadnt happened in the exact sequence they did, I may have spent the entire day driving all over the Poconos with no sign of her. While I have had fleeting moments of doubt, I have always come back to the thought that there must be a God. The beauty of nature, a sunny sky dotted by wispy clouds, a bird on the wing, a majestic oak, the fragrance and beauty of a rose, a babbling brook, the mighty oceans, the teeming life that exists throughout the Earth, arent accidents of some explosion as far as Im concerned. They all fit together so well to support us on this planet that they had to have been created by a Superior Being. I cant look on the face of a baby without knowing that baby is not an accident of nature. I also cant believe that I survived all that I did without a higher power looking after me. Why me? I dont know but I sure am grateful that I have been spared so often. As far as my daughter goes, perhaps the prayers they were saying were answered. The boys who were with her are from a South Bronx family where faith is an important part of life. Their younger brother wasnt allowed to go with them because his mother feared he might miss Church. When I dropped them off, I met the younger brother, who was as polite and respectful as his older brothers. God must look kindly on their parents for doing such a wonderful job in a very harsh environment. Maybe it wasnt my daughter but those boys He was protecting, perhaps to serve as an example to others? Is there a God? We all have to answer that question for ourselves but as for me, I would say Absolutely, there is!.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 00:24:56 +0000
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