O Stories

A YOUNG woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard. She was tired of fighting and struggling.  Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on fire. In the first, she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let these sit and boil, without saying a word. In about 20 minutes, she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl.  She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her daughter, she asked, "Tell me, what do you see?" The mother asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. She then asked her to break an egg.  After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, she asked her to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma.  ...

    The mouse trap A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package. “What food might this contain?” the mouse wondered. He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.  Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning: “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!”  The chicken raised her head and said “Mr Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me.”  The pig sympathised, but said “I am so very sorry, Mr Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray.”  The cow said, “Mr Mouse, I’m sorry for you, but it's no skin off my nose.”  So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer's mousetrap alone.  That very night a sound was heard throughout the house — like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught....

                     Be Happy Now! WE CONVINCE ourselves that life will be better after we get married, have a baby, then another. Then we're frustrated that the kids aren't old enough and we'll be more content when they are. After that, we're frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with. We'll certainly be happy when they're out of that stage.                        We tell ourselves that our life will be complete when our spouse gets his or her act together, when we get a nicer car, are able to go on a nice vacation, when we retire. The truth is, there's no better time to be happy than right now. If not now, when? Your life will always be filled with challenges. It's best to admit this to yourself and decide to be happy anyway. One of my favorite quotes, “For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was alw...

   A different kind of athlete We found out that Jenny was hearing impaired, when she was four and a half years old. Several surgeries and speech classes later, when she was seven, we found out that Jenny had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRV).  She could not put pressure on the heels of her feet, so she walked on tiptoe, and when the pain became unbearable, I carried her. Jenny was fortunate, though, because she did not suffer the deformities, often associated with JRV.  All through grade school, and on into high school, Jenny suffered, yet never complained.  Jenny, a beautiful blonde, with warm brown eyes, was never a cheerleader. She never competed in a sport. She took the same health class four years in a row, just so she could pass with a substitute credit each year. No one in the Charleston, South Carolina School System knew what to do with Jenny. The perimeters were, simply, not in place to deal with a student, who was both active ...

            Disabled love The Creightons were very proud of their son, Frank. When he went to college, naturally they missed him; but he wrote and they looked forward to his letters and saw him on weekends. Then Frank was drafted into the army. After he had been in the army about five months, he received his call to go to Vietnam. Of course, the parents’ anxiety was greater than ever before. And ever week they heard from him and were thankful for his well-being. Then one week went by without a letter ,two weeks and finally three. At the end of the third week a telegram came, saying, “We regret to inform you that your son has been missing for three weeks and is presumed to have been killed in action while fighting for his country.” The parents were grieved. They tried to accept the situation and go on living, but it was tragically lonesome. About three weeks later, however, the phone rang. A voice on the other end said,...

       On oars of courage In 1982 Steven Callahan was crossing the Atlantic alone in his sailboat when it struck something and sank. He was out of the shipping lanes and floating in a life raft, alone. His supplies were few. His fishermen found him seventy-six days later (the longest anyone has survived a shipwreck on a life raft alone), he was alive -- much skinnier than he was when he started, but alive. His account of how he survived is fascinating. His ingenuity -- how he managed to catch fish, how he fixed his solar still (evaporates sea water to make fresh) -- is very interesting. But the thing that caught my eye was how he managed to keep himself going when all hope seemed lost, when there seemed no point in continuing the struggle, when he was suffering greatly, when his life raft was punctured and after more than a week struggling with his weak body to fix it, it was still leaking air and wearing him out to keep pumping it up. H...