Wernher von Braun
A couple of years ago, I went through an experience that impacted my belief system to such an extent that it forever altered the way I view the world. At the time, I was involved in a human potential organization called LifeSpring. Fifty other individuals and I were going through a three-month training named The Leadership Program. My epiphany began at one of our weekly meetings when the individuals running the program came to us with a challenge. They said they wanted us to feed breakfast to 1,000 homeless people in downtown Los Angeles. Furthermore, we were also to acquire clothing that we were to give away. And most important of all, we were not to spend a single dime of our own money.
Now, since none of us were in the catering business or had ever come close to doing anything like this, my first reaction was, "Jeeze, this is going to really be a stretch to pull off." However, then they added, "By the way, we want you guys to do all of this on Saturday morning." They were telling us this on Thursday night, so I quickly
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upgraded my prognosis to I-M-P-O-S-S-I-B-L-E! I don't think I was alone.
Looking around the room, I saw 50 faces that were blanker than a freshly washed chalkboard. The fact was, none of us had a single clue as to how to even begin to pull something like this off. It was at this point that something amazing happened. Since none of us wanted to admit that we couldn't handle their challenge, we all said, with perfectly straight faces, "Okay. Yeah, sure we can do this, no problem."
Then one person said, "Okay, we need to break up into teams. We need one team to get the food and another to work on getting equipment to cook it with." Then somebody else said, 'I have a truck; we could use it to pick up the equipment."
"Great!" we all chirped.
Then somebody else piped up with, "We need a team to be in charge of getting the entertainment and the donated clothing together." Before I knew it, I was in charge of the communication team.
By 2:00 A.M., we had made a list of every task we could think of that needed to be done, delegated it to the appropriate team, and then headed off for home to try to get some sleep. I remember thinking as I laid my head down on my pillow, "My God, I have no idea how we're going to do this, not even a clue . . . but we're going to give it our best shot!"
At 6:00 A.M. my alarm went off, and a few minutes later my two teammates showed up. The three of us, along with the rest of the team, had exactly 24 hours to see if we could turn the feeding of 1,000 homeless people into a reality.
We pulled out the phone book and began calling everybody on our list who we thought could help us. My first call was to Von's corporate headquarters. After explaining what we were doing, I was told that we had to submit our request for food in writing and that it would take two
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weeks for it to be processed. I patiently explained that we didn't have two weeks and that we needed the food that same day, preferably before nightfall. The regional manager said she would get back to me within an hour.
I called Western Bagel pleaded my case, and to my delight, the owner said, "Okay." Suddenly, we had ourselves 1,200 bagels! Next, while I was on the phone with Zacky Farms trying to get us some chicken and some more eggs, my "call waiting" went off. It was one of the guys calling to say that he had stopped by Hansen's Juices and they had a truckload of fresh squeezed carrot, watermelon and other assorted juices they would be willing to donatea definite home run that brought high-fives all around.
The Von's regional manager called back and said she had procured all kinds of food for us, including 600 loaves of bread! Ten minutes later someone else called to tell me they had arranged for 500 burritos to be donated. In fact, it seemed like every 10 minutes someone from the team was calling up, telling me that they got someone to donate X amount of something! "Wow," I thought. "Could we really be pulling it off?"
Finally, at midnight, after 18 straight hours of work, I found myself at a Winchell's Donuts picking up 800 donuts and carefully packing them in one side of my hatchback, so I'd have room for the 1,200 bagels I was scheduled to pick up at 5:00 A.M.
After a few hours of much needed rest, I hopped into my car, whipped by Western Bagel and picked up the bagels (my car now smelled like a bakery), and headed for downtown Los Angeles. It was Saturday morning and I was pumped up. As I pulled into the parking lot at around 5:45 A.M., I could see team members setting up large industrial barbecues, inflating helium balloons and positioning the Porta-Potties. (We thought of everything.)
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I quickly hopped out of my car and began unloading the bags of bagels and boxes of donuts. By 7:00 A.M., a line had started to form outside the parking lot gate. As word began to spread throughout the poverty-stricken neighborhood about our hot breakfast program, the line began to grow until it extended down the street and around an entire city block.
By 7:45 A.M., men, women and even small children were beginning to come through the food lines, their plates piled high with hot barbecued chicken, scrambled eggs, burritos, bagels, donuts and many other goodies. Behind them were the many neatly folded piles of clothing that by day's end would be all snapped up. As the loud speakers from the DJ booth blasted out the stirring words of We Are the World, I looked over the sea of contented faces of all colors and ages, happily devouring their plates of food. By the time we ran out of food at 11:00 A.M., we had fed a total of 1,140 homeless people.
Afterwards, my teammates and the homeless people were dancing to the music in a joyous celebration that just seemed to happen naturally. During the dancing, two homeless men came up to me and said the breakfast was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for them, and that it was the first time they had ever attended a meal program where a fight had not broken out. As he squeezed my hand, I felt a lump in my throat. We had done it. We had fed over 1,000 homeless people with less than 48 hours notice. It was a personal experience that made a deep impression on me. Now when people tell me that they would like to do something but think it would be impossible, I think to myself, "Yeah, I know what you mean. I used to think that way myself. . ."
Michael Jeffreys
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The Impossible Just Takes a Little Longer
I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say definitely what is and what is not possible.
Henry Ford
At the age of 20, I was happier than I had ever been before in my life. I was active physically: I was a competitive water-skier and snow-skier, and played golf, tennis, racquetball, basketball and volleyball. I even bowled on a league. I ran nearly every day. I had just started a new tennis court construction company, so my financial future looked exciting and bright. I was engaged to the most beautiful woman in the world. Then the tragedy occurredor at least some called it that:
I awoke with a sudden jolt to the sound of twisting metal and breaking glass. As quickly as it all started, it was quiet again. Opening my eyes, my whole world was darkness. As my senses began to return, I could feel the warmth of blood covering my face. Then the pain. It was excruciating and overwhelming. I could hear voices calling my name as I slipped away again into unconsciousness.
Leaving my family in California on a beautiful Christmas evening, I had headed for Utah with a friend of
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mine. I was going there to spend the rest of the holidays with my fiancée, Dallas. We were to finish our upcoming wedding plansour marriage was to be in five short weeks. I drove for the first eight hours of the trip, then, being somewhat tired and my friend having rested during that time, I climbed from the driver's seat into the passenger seat. I fastened my seat belt, and my friend drove away into the dark. After driving for another hour and a half, he fell asleep at the wheel. The car hit a cement abutment, went up and over the top of it, and rolled down the side of the road a number of times.
When the car finally came to a stop, I was gone. I had been ejected from the vehicle and had broken my neck on the desert floor. I was paralyzed from the chest down. Once I was tak
en by ambulance to a hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada, the doctor announced that I was now a quadriplegic. I lost the use of my feet and legs. I lost the use of my stomach muscles and two out of my three major chest muscles. I lost the use of my right triceps. I lost most of the use and strength in my shoulders and arms. And I lost the complete use of my hands.
This is where my new life began.
The doctors said I would have to dream new dreams and think new thoughts. They said because of my new physical condition, I would never work againI was pretty excited about that one, though, because only 93 percent of those in my condition don't work. They told me that I would never drive again; that for the rest of my life I would be completely dependent on others to eat, get dressed or even to get from place to place. They said that I should never expect to get married because . . . who would want me? They concluded that I would never again play in any kind of athletic sport or competitive activity. For the first time in my young life, I was really afraid. I was afraid that what they said might really be true.
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While lying in that hospital bed in Las Vegas, I wondered where all my hopes and dreams had gone. I wondered if I would ever be made whole again. I wondered if I would work, get married, have a family and enjoy any of the activities of life that had previously brought me such joy.
During this critical time of natural doubts and fears, when my whole world seemed so dark, my mother came to my bedside and whispered in my ear, ''Art, while the difficult takes time . . . the impossible just takes a little longer." Suddenly a once darkened room began to fill with the light of hope and faith that tomorrow would be better.
Since hearing those words 11 years ago, I am now president of my own company. I am a professional speaker and a published authorSome Miracles Take Time. I travel more than 200,000 miles a year sharing the message of The Impossible Just Takes a Little LongerTM to Fortune 500 companies, national associations, sales organizations and youth groups, with some audiences exceeding 10,000 people. In 1992, I was named the Young Entrepreneur of the Year by the Small Business Administration for a six-state region. In 1994, Success magazine honored me as one of the Great Comebacks of the Year. These are dreams that have come true for me in my life. These dreams came true not in spite of my circumstances . . . but, perhaps, because of them.
Since that day I have learned to drive. I go where I want to go and I do what I want to do. I am completely independent and I take care of myself. Since that day, I have had feeling return to my body and have gained back some of the use and function of my right triceps.
I got married to that same beautiful and wonderful girl a year and a half after that fateful day. In 1992, Dallas, my wife, was named Mrs. Utah and was third runner-up to Mrs. USA! We have two childrena three-year-old
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daughter named McKenzie Raeanne and a one-month-old son named Dalton Arthurthe joys of our lives.
I have also returned to the world of sports. I have learned to swim, scuba dive and parasailas far as I know I am the first quadriplegic of record to parasail. I have learned to snow ski. I have also learned to play full-contact rugby. I figure they can't hurt me any worse! I also race wheelchairs in 10Ks and marathons. On July 10, 1993, I became the first quadriplegic in the world to race 32 miles in seven days between Salt Lake City and St. George, Utahprobably not one of the brightest things I have ever done, but certainly one of the most difficult.
Why have I done all of these things? Because a long time ago I chose to listen to the voice of my mother and to my heart rather than to the concourse of dissenting voices around me, which included medical professionals. I decided that my current circumstances did not mean I had to let go of my dreams. I found a reason to hope again. I learned that dreams are never destroyed by circumstances; dreams are born in the heart and mind, and only there can they ever die. Because while the difficult takes time, the impossible just takes a little longer.
Art E. Berg
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The Day I Met Daniel
The dedicated life is the life worth living.
Annie Dillard
Every man has his own destiny; the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.
Henry Miller
Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.
Prov. 3:56
It was an unusually cold day for the month of May. Spring had arrived and everything was alive with color. But a cold front from the north had brought winter's chill back to Indiana.
I sat with two friends in the picture window of a quaint restaurant just off the corner of the town square. The food and the company were both especially good that day. As we talked, my attention was drawn outside, across the
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street. There, walking into town, was a man who appeared to be carrying all his worldly goods on his back. He was carrying a well-worn sign that read, "I will work for food."
My heart sank. I brought him to the attention of my friends and noticed that others around us had stopped eating to focus on him. Heads moved in a mixture of sadness and disbelief. We continued with our meal, but his image lingered in my mind.
We finished our meal and went our separate ways. I had errands to do and quickly set out to accomplish them. I glanced toward the town square, looking somewhat half-heartedly for the strange visitor. I was fearful, knowing that seeing him again would call for some response.
I drove through town and saw nothing of him. I made some purchases at a store and got back in my car. Deep within me, the spirit of God kept speaking to me: "Don't go back to the office until you've at least driven once more around the square."
And so, with some hesitancy, I headed back into town. As I turned the square's third corner, I saw him. He was standing on the steps of the stone-front church, going through his sack. I stopped and looked, feeling both compelled to speak to him yet wanting to drive on. The empty parking space on the corner seemed to be a sign from God: an invitation to park. I pulled in, got out and approached the town's newest visitor.
"Looking for the pastor?" I asked.
"Not really," he replied. "Just resting."
"Have you eaten today?"
"Oh, I ate something early this morning."
"Would you like to have lunch with me?"
"Do you have some work I could do for you?"
"No work," I replied. "I commute here to work from the city, but I would like to take you to lunch."
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"Sure," he replied with a smile. As he began to gather his things, I asked some surface questions.
"Where you headed?"
"St. Louis."
"Where are you from?"
"Oh, all over; mostly Florida."
"How long you been walking?"
"Fourteen years," came the reply.
I knew I had met someone unusual.
We sat across from each other in the same restaurant I had left only minutes earlier. His hair was long and straight, and he had a neatly trimmed dark beard. His skin was deeply tanned, and his face was weathered slightly beyond his 38 years. His eyes were dark yet clear, and he spoke with an eloquence and articulation that was startling. He removed his jacket to reveal a bright red T-shirt that said, "Jesus is The Never Ending Story."
Then Daniel's story began to unfold. He had seen rough times early in life. He'd made some wrong choices and reaped the consequences. Fourteen years earlier, while backpacking across the country, he had stopped on the beach in Daytona. He tried to hire on with some men who were putting up a large tent and some equipment. A concert, he thought. He was hired, but the tent would house not a concert but revival services, and in those services he saw life more clearly. He gave his life over to God.
"Nothing's been the same since," he said. "I felt the Lord telling me to keep walking, and so I did, some 14 years now."
A 3rd Serving of Chicken Soup for the Soul Page 27