By Mark Crider © 2006

Back when us kids were small there was a little kid two houses down who was blind. Smart little guy too. He could read Braille, I think, at a sixth grade level, and he was only six or seven. The way he ran, played and spoke to you, it would be difficult to tell he was blind from a distance. His eyes looked normal except for the slight cloud or film that seemed to be in their depths.

In the early fifties there were some kind of new eye surgeries that had become available or were experimental; I can’t remember now. Anyway, the parents looked into them and discovered there was one that the doctors thought may give him a chance at some level of eyesight. They knew not what it would be, but they were pretty sure it would be better than complete blindness, which he suffered at the time.

Investigating further they discovered the cost: a staggering sum would be an understatement. Insurance at the time wouldn’t cover it for some reason. The people at church, the whole neighborhood, well, the whole community found out about it after awhile and some started little things to raise money. Gloria, the little crippled girl who owned Shep The Wonder Dog who pulled her around in a carriage her dad had made, started a lemonade stand in front of her house to help. Several of us started a neighborhood vegetable stand selling things from our gardens. They even had rummage sales and lawns were being mowed that didn’t need it. Special collections were being taken up in church for the fund and all of it was going into the fund for his operation. Our efforts made the paper.

The family was contacted and it seems that a hospital out of town and some doctors agreed to do it for whatever amount was in the fund at the end of that summer. They were gone a few days somewhere to get it done and when they returned his whole head was bandaged and he had to be kept inside and quiet for thirty days.

It was a cool, crisp fall evening when it was time to unwrap the bandages. The room had to be darkened. We neighbors were all gathered on their patio barbecuing and had brought all kinds of things to go with it while waiting for the event. Their house was dark and it had gotten so clear with no moon it was eerie. The stars seemed to be flashing like a circus. I went inside to see how things were going just as they opened the venetian blinds a little for him to have his first glimpse of the world. Across the street a neighbors lights were on. He asked what it was and was told the neighbors were home because their lights were on. He had never experienced seeing lights before.

His parents gently led him out onto the patio where we were all gathered watching in anticipation of his first visions. He looked around at all of us who he recognized by our voices, but had never seen. Then he looked up into the sky and exclaimed, “look daddy, God’s home, his lights are on.” There was not a dry eye among us.

© Wake Up With the Wolf Show – 93.1 the Wolf – WPAW.  Please share this with your friends!

Author unknown

When all the words have been written, and all the phrases have been spoken, the great mystery of life will still remain. We may map the terrains of our lives, measure the farthest reaches of the universe, but no amount of searching will ever reveal for certain whether we are all children of chance or part of a great design.

And who among us would have it otherwise? Who would wish to take the mystery out of the experience of looking into a newborn infant’s eyes? Who would not feel in violation of something great if we had knowledge of what has departed when we stare into the face of one who has died? These are the events that made us human, that define the distance between the stars and us.

Still, this life is not easy. Much of its mystery is darkness. Tragedies occur, injustices exist. Bad things befall good people and sufferings are visited upon the innocent. To live we must take the lives of other species, to survive we must leave some of our brothers and sisters by the side of the road. We are prisoners of time, victims of biology, hostages of our own capacity to dream.

At times it all seems too much…impossible to accept.

We must stand against this. The world is a great mysterious place, and it’s possibilities are infinite, governed only by what our hearts can conceive. If we incline our hearts towards the darkness, we will see darkness. If we incline them toward the light, we will see the light.

Those of great heart have always known this. They have understood that, as honorable as it is to see the wrong and try to correct it, a life well lived must somehow celebrate the promise that life provides. The darkness at the limits of our knowledge; the darkness that sometimes seem to surround us is merely a way to make us reach beyond certainty, to make our lives a witness to hope, a testimony to possibility, an urge toward the best and the most honorable impulses that our hearts can conceive.

It is not hard. There is in each of us, no matter how humble, a capacity for love. Even if our lives have not taken the course we had envisioned, even if we are less than the shape of our dreams, we are part of the human family. Somewhere, in the most inconsequential corners of our lives, is the opportunity for love.

If I am blind, I can run my hand across the back of a shell and celebrate beauty. If I have no legs, I can sit in quiet wonder before the restless murmurs of the sea. If I am wounded in spirit, I can reach out my hand to those who are hurting. If I am lonely, I can go among those who are desperate for love. There is no tragedy or injustice so great, no life so small and inconsequential, that we cannot bear witness to the light in the quiet acts and hidden moments of our days.

And who can say which of these acts and moments will make a difference? The universe is vast and is a magical membrane of meaning, stretching across time and space, and it is not given to us to know her secrets and her ways. Perhaps we were placed here to meet the challenge of a single moment; perhaps the touch we give will cause the touch that will change the world.

© Wake Up With the Wolf Show – 93.1 the Wolf – WPAW.  Please share this with your friends!

Author unknown

It was a beautiful Sunday morning. People were filling the church to its full capacity! As they entered, each was given a bulletin filled with announcements, topic of today’s sermon, what songs they would sing and who to pray for.

At the end of the line stood an older man. His clothes were filthy and you could tell that he had not bathed in days. His face was covered with whiskers, for he had not shaved for a very long time. When he reached the usher, he removed his tattered old brown hat in respect. His hair was long, dirty, and a tangled mess. He had no shoes on his feet, and wore only soiled black socks to cover the sores upon his feet. The Usher looked at him turning up his nose at the old man and said, “Uh, I’m sorry sir, but I’m afraid we can’t let you in. You will distract the congregation and we don’t allow anyone to disrupt our service. I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.”

The old man looked down at himself and with a puzzled look on his face, he placed his old brown hat back upon his head and turned to leave. He was sad as he loved to hear the choir sing praises to the Lord. He loved to watch the little children get up in front of the church to sing their little songs. He carried in his pocket a small worn out Bible and loved to see if the minister preached a passage from the Bible that he had underlined. But he was respectful, and didn’t want to cause any commotion, so he hung down his head and walked back down the steps of the big brick church.

He sat down on the brick wall near the edge of the church yard and strained to listen through closed doors and windows to the singing going on in the church. Oh how he wished he could be inside with all the others.

A few minutes had passed by when all of a sudden a younger man came up behind him and sat down near him. He asked the old man what he was doing. He answered, “I was going to go to church today, but they thought I was too filthy, my clothes to old and worn, and they were afraid I would disrupt their service.

“Sorry, I didn’t introduce myself. My name is George.” The two men shook hands, and George couldn’t help but notice that this man had long hair like his. He wore a piece of cloth draped over his body tied with a royal purple sash. He had sandals on his feet, now covered with dust and dirt.

The stranger touched George’s shoulder, and said: “George, don’t feel bad because they won’t let you in. My name is Jesus, and I’ve been trying to get into this same church for years — they won’t let me in either.”

© Wake Up With the Wolf Show – 93.1 the Wolf – WPAW.  Please share this with your friends!

By Steve Goodier

Buckminster Fuller once said, “The minute you choose to do what you really want to do it’s a different kind of life.” And it’s not about what you’re getting PAID to do! If you want to live abundantly, decide what you really want and figure out a way to do it. Be clear and live with intent.

You may have heard of Fred Lebow. Fred complained to his doctor that he lacked energy. His doctor advised him to take up running in order to increase his stamina. He fell in love with it! He was 39 years old when he entered his first race — and did horribly. He beat only one other contestant…a 72-year-old man. But he loved it!

Fred decided what he really wanted to do — and he did it in his spare time. He joined the New York Road Runners Club and organized New York City’s first marathon race. But what Fred truly wanted to do, even more than run, was to bring people together. And that is what he did. He believed that anybody should be able to run — people of all ages, any background, professional or amateur, and of any country. Today, more than 28,000 people of all backgrounds and nationalities compete in the NYC Marathon.

Not everyone in New York was excited about people running through their neighborhoods. Fred was approached by a youth gang that warned him that nobody had better run through their turf. “That’s great,” Fred enthused. “I need someone to protect the runners in your area, and you look like just the fellows to do it.” He gave them each a hat, shirt and jacket and that year, when the marathon went through their neighborhood, these young men proudly guarded the runners along their way.

Fred decided what was truly important to him and he found a way to do it. He lived with intent. That single decision made his life remarkably different.

In 1990, Fred Lebow found he had a brain tumor. In 1992 he ran his final race. He crossed the finish line holding the hand of his friend and Norwegian Olympic medalist, Grete Waitz. A bronze statue was created of Fred in his running clothes, checking his watch. It is now placed at the finish line of every race. Fred died in 1994. But as one sports writer said, “Fate handed him a short race. With his gall, with his love of life, Fred Lebow turned it into a marathon.”

Fred would say that it’s not about how long you live, but how you run the race of life. Do you run it with intent?

© Wake Up With the Wolf Show – 93.1 the Wolf – WPAW.  Please share this with your friends!

Adapted from an article by Ryan Maye Handy in the Colorado Springs Gazette, 10/12/11

Brittany met the man who would later become her husband in Las Vegas in February. It was a whirlwind romance – like something out of novel, as her friends describe it.

She was in town for business, busily ushering a VIP group out of a hotel and onto a golf course. He and some Army buddies were in town for a good time.

When Josh saw Brittany across the hotel lobby, he walked straight over and introduced himself to her.

“I’m Josh,” he said.

She had noticed him, too, but Brittany explained to him, “I’m working.”

Still, Josh won her over with his broad smile and infectious laugh. They met later and danced the night away at a Blue Man Group concert. And they promised to stay in touch.

Four months later, on May 31, Brittany and Josh were married. Only a week later, Josh shipped out for Afghanistan. He had served in the Army six years and considered it the ideal profession.

Brittany says Josh’s insatiable thirst for knowledge fueled his enthusiasm for military life. He completed two tours in Korea, and traveled extensively around Asia, falling in love with Vietnam.

He was looking forward to his deployment to Afghanistan, his first with the 1st Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team in the 4th Infantry Division.

“He was so handsome in uniform,” Brittany said. “The first time I had to see him (in it), I almost passed out.”

With Josh’s deployment happening just days after their wedding, the couple postponed their honeymoon, but spent as much time together as possible.

They decided on a honeymoon trip to Ireland when Josh came home, and Brittany planned to surprise her husband with a castle tour.

This love story might sound like a fairy tale, but recently it became what Brittany calls a nightmare.

On the morning of October tenth, Brittany answered the door of her Kernersville home to see service members in uniform standing before her.
“They were at my porch telling me that he was gone,” she said.

Captain Joshua Lawrence was one of two captains killed in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, when insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade at their unit.

The soldiers, who had both received the Bronze Star, were serving in their first tour of Afghanistan.

Brittany says she hasn’t been able to sleep and is haunted by the thought the man she calls her hero won’t be coming home.

“I thought the day (in June) I had to say good-bye to my soldier was the hardest day of my life,” she said. “I was wrong.”

Still, Brittany is finding strength in her husband’s legacy: the people who loved him. And she remains a steadfast supporter of the U.S. military and their mission to protect this country.

© Wake Up With the Wolf Show – 93.1 the Wolf – WPAW.  Please share this with your friends!

By Bob Perks

Something warm touched my soul as I stood in the cold, early morning hours. The sun breaking the horizon’s grip, poured over the tops of distant trees as a single beam of light glanced off my left shoulder.

My white t-shirt seemed to glow suddenly and with it my heart sighed, “thank God.”

It was a time when darkness filled my days and evening hours were wasted on “what if’s” and “if only.”

I hated the night.  In doing so, my sleep deficit turned my days into a zombie-like existence.  Eventually life seemed like a waste of time.

So what got me through it all?

Through the years I’ve spoken with, smiled at, and sung about my forever confidante making it the focus of many a lonely night.

I’ve walked the shores of distant lands with its familiar face looking after me.  I cried and laughed a hundred times over love lost and gained.  I searched along the mountain side eagerly looking for a better, clearer view of its coming and going.

Seeing it unexpectedly fuller, brighter and in more detail, I’d always rush to a phone to share it with someone, anyone who appreciated the afterglow of day.

Growing up thinking it really was made of cheese, I decided after seeing it through a telescope, it had to be “Swiss.”

In love songs they call it by name,  ”Moon River,” Fly me to the Moon,”  “Shine on Harvest Moon,” “It’s only a Paper Moon,” “Blue Moon,” “Moonlight Sonata” and more.

But what has always stuck with me is when they speak about, “The man in the Moon.”

I just could never see it.

Although the Moon and I go way back and even until this very day, I cannot go out at night without looking for my friend.  I will not even begin to try to convince you that the moon got me through it all.

No, like everything else in my life, it was the “Man behind the moon.”  The Creator of all things.

When I stood on the shore, His waves danced at my feet washing away my cares.

When I cried because young love was ripping my heart out He lifted my spirits by reminding me love will forever be a part of my life.

When I swooned at the very thought of someone loving me in return, He gently said, “I told you so.”

And even when I cursed the night
and wished the moon away
He always seemed to make things right
by giving me the day.

The sun will shine, the birds will sing
and I promise very soon
You’ll see the joy that He will bring
“The Man behind the moon”

© Wake Up With the Wolf Show – 93.1 the Wolf – WPAW.  Please share this with your friends!

By Bob Perks

“It would just look better with the others,” I reasoned.

“But moving it might kill it,” my wife said.

“Still, it looks lost without the others. I’ll do my best,” I replied.

“I never promised you a rose garden.”

Okay, I had to say it.

It’s the title of a song and very appropriate. We purchased three new rose bushes. We already had one in a small enclosed garden and every year it would only yield one or two roses.

But they were beauties.

I believe it happened because all the other plants in that little garden overwhelmed the rose bush.

So, with the addition of three new bushes, I decided to pull the old one out of the garden and place it with the others. I knew the shock of the transfer would cause it to weaken a bit.

It did. In fact, Marianne was right. It almost died.

One of the tallest, single branches, which was the most probable one to produce a rose, slumped dramatically.

After a few days the limp branch nearly touched the ground.

“It’ll come back,” I said trying to convince her I was right in doing this.

After a few days most of the plant seemed to respond.

But, in general, it looked bad.

“Should I cut that branch back?” she asked one day.

“No, just leave it,” I said.

After about a week I approached the plant, cutter in hand, and reaching for it discovered, although still slumped and bent over, it had completely recovered. The branch was strong and firm.

Like author/speaker, Zig Ziglar describes in one of his speeches, “the pan of biscuits was placed in the oven. One biscuit squatted to rise but got cooked in the squat!”

This branch slumped over from the drastic change and nearly succumbed to it all, instead of completely rising up, regained full strength and abilities to produce a single rose.

Like seeing someone with physical challenges you might think they were unable to live life to the fullest. You’d be wrong. I have yet to meet anyone with such challenges who gave in, gave up and let go.

No, they too, were “cooked in the squat” and learned to live within the newly defined life to become all they could be. Strong within the boundaries of their new life, they blossom to become all they were created to be.

What challenges are you facing right now that for the time being have you beaten down?

Call upon every resource necessary and work within the new life God is providing for you.

“Bloom where you are planted.”

Be “bent on survival!”

© Wake Up With the Wolf Show – 93.1 the Wolf – WPAW.  Please share this with your friends!

A 2-year-old girl watches her daddy read her a bedtime story. Nothing unusual there, only this dad is in the military, so he’s reading to her via a pre-recorded video. She still seems to completely love it, and her dad. Just wait until the goodnight hug, when the cuteness bubbles over.

By Michael T. Smith

A few weeks after my first wife, Georgia, was called to heaven, I was cooking dinner for my son and myself. For a vegetable, I decided on frozen peas. As I was cutting open the bag, it slipped from my hands and crashed to the floor. The peas, like marbles, rolled everywhere. I tried to use a broom, but with each swipe the peas rolled across the kitchen, bounced off the wall on the other side and rolled in another direction.

My mental state at the time was fragile. Losing a spouse is an unbearable pain. I got on my hands and knees and pulled them into a pile to dispose of. I was half laughing and half crying as I collected them. I could see the humor in what happened, but it doesn’t take much for a person dealing with grief to break down.

For the next week, every time I was in the kitchen, I would find a pea that had escaped my first cleanup. In a corner, behind a table leg, in the frays at the end of a mat, or hidden under a heater, they kept turning up. Eight months later I pulled out the refrigerator to clean, and found a dozen or so petrified peas hidden underneath.

At the time I found those few remaining peas, I was in a new relationship with a wonderful woman I met in a widow/widower support group. After we married, I was reminded of those peas under the refrigerator. I realized my life had been like that bag of frozen peas. It had shattered. My wife was gone. I was in a new city with a busy job and a son having trouble adjusting to his new surroundings and the loss of his mother. I was a wreck. I was a bag of spilled, frozen peas. My life had come apart and scattered.

When life gets you down; when everything you know comes apart; when you think you can never get through the tough times, remember, it is just a bag of scattered, frozen peas. The peas can be collected and life will move on. You will find all the peas. First the easy peas come together in a pile. You pick them up and start to move on. Later you will find the bigger and harder to find peas. When you pull all the peas together, life will be whole again.

The life you know can be scattered at any time. You will move on, but how fast you collect your peas depends on you. Will you keep scattering them around with a broom, or will you pick them up one-by-one and put your life back together?

How will you collect your peas?

© Wake Up With the Wolf Show – 93.1 the Wolf – WPAW.  Please share this with your friends!

By Bob Perks

If you want to be the first to see what the day has to offer, stand on the hill and be the first to see the sun.

Keep in mind that there is a possibility that someone else is standing on a taller mountain.

It really shouldn’t matter. Eventually, even those down in the valley will see the light.

If you want no part of the day, try staying in bed.

Chances are the sun will find you, still.

The sun waits for no one.

At the back of my property, we placed a converted shed we call “Hope House.”

Long before I am ready the house up on the hill begins to glow ever so brightly.

First the peak and then washing slowly over the top of the door, it reflects back toward where I am standing.

Imagine a spot light on one single object on a darkened stage. There, now fully exposed, the house on the hill beckons me and I run up the pathway in a hurry to claim my spot in the sun before it even kisses the petunias in the window boxes.

For me “Hope” glows in the early morning sun but I need not see it to know it’s always there.

I have seen the sun rise for more than 59 years. It is only lately that I appreciate it more.

Get up before the dawn and with the rising of the sun you will not waste a moment.

For it is not just another day…it is another chance.

So, what does it bring?

That is best answered by asking “What will you bring into it?”

The sun does not bring sadness, nor joy. You do.

The sun does not create success or failure. You do.

The sun does not make opportunities. You do.

God does not sound an alarm nor call your name in the early morning hours begging you to participate.

You must “Rise to meet the sun.”

© Wake Up With the Wolf Show – 93.1 the Wolf – WPAW.  Please share this with your friends!