“Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Matthew 19:26 (NIV)
Yesterday I spent the day with a high school friend who moved to Israel forty years ago. We usually get together at least once whenever he comes in for a visit.
Larry is my age and we both lived on the same city block in Chicago, and attended the same schools growing up. We later lost contact with each other until one of our high school reunions a few years ago. I can still remember his tragic accident, when he was seven years old and hit by a car right on our residential side street. He sustained a traumatic brain injury, was hospitalized, and eventually recovered enough to return to school.
His right eye turns outward ever since the accident, but he can see. Both his hands tremor, but over all, he recovered enough cognitively, to finish school all the way through to the college level. He has learned to use the steadier hand to hold the other hand, as he manages to eat and sign his name, but can no longer drive.
He shared a story with me from his childhood years, regarding how hard it was to adjust returning to school after his brain injury. Four years after his accident, we were in the same 6th grade class together with a teacher named Mrs. Snow. One day Larry became very frustrated and couldn’t complete his work due to his hand tremor, which made it hard to write. He started crying and said out loud, “I can’t do it!” Mrs. Snow firmly said “Don’t say I can’t, say I can and I will!”
At first that sounded harsh and incompassionate, but today Larry credits Mrs. Snow as the person who set him in the right direction to adapt and adjust to a new way of living, and he stopped feeling sorry for himself ever since that. He told me he never says the phrase, “I can’t.” Larry went on to graduate from high school, finished college and got a driver’s license. He even once took flying lessons and learned to fly a plane. I never knew how much Mrs. Snow had positively influenced him.
When he came to the US for a visit back in 2009, he searched for Mrs. Snow to tell her how much she had helped him. He found a phone number, and spoke to her daughter in law, who told Larry that Mrs. Snow now lives in a Nursing home but still has perfect function, mentally.
Larry got in touch with Mrs. Snow by phone and she remembered him as if it were 1963 when she taught our class. They talked about those days when Larry struggled with his injury related deficits, and he thanked her for never letting him sulk in self pity. He told her how she changed his life perspective for the best. Mrs. Snow was ‘105’ years old when they spoke that day, but passed away soon afterward.
All things are possible with God, including our restoration to spiritual and psychological wholeness, by adjusting to any new phase in our life. God doesn’t want us to get stuck in self pity, but to move forward and say to ourselves, “I can and I will.”That was the same spirit reflected by a strong inspiring, lady and departed grade school teacher, Mrs. Snow.
Lord, help all of us who are in a transition stage of life to adjust and move forward saying “I can and I will, in Jesus name.” Amen
