Thursday, November 27, 2008

Repost: Vietman Veteran

When I was in high school I was a member of our high school’s FFA chapter. Every other year we would go to the National FFA Convention in Louisville, Kentucky (It’s in Indianapolis now). Well the first year that I went one of the guest speakers was a Vietnam veteran who was SEVERLY wounded. He was disfigured and he only had a few fingers and a couple of nubs left on both of his hands as a result of a bomb going off near him in battle.


He said that while he was lying in his hospital bed he was thinking to himself that it would have been better off for everyone back home if he had just died in the explosion. He had his mind set that his wife would no longer love him due to his disfigurment and all of his battle scars. He didn’t want to be dependant on anyone just to maintain a “normal” life and he knew he would have to if he made it home. So as he told us, he made the decision to pull out the IV that was basically keeping him alive. As he was lying there waiting to die, he started to get really hungry. It had turned out that he had pulled out his feeding tube. He took that as a sign from God that He had something bigger planed for this gentleman. He went home and lived as “normal” of a life as he possibly could considering his “condition.”


At the end of his talk with us he sat down at a grand piano and played a piece by Mozart (I believe that was it) and got a standing ovation from several THOUSAND FFA members from around the country. This is just one example of how people make lemonade when they are dealt a bunch of lemons in life.


Peace,


Jamie

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the reminder to fight for what's important in life and follow the plan God has. Happy Thanksgiving.

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  2. Oh, that gave me goose bumps. What an amazing person.

    ReplyDelete

Talk to me goose....