A State of Grace

I have always lived in state of Grace as long as I can remember. If you don't believe in God or Buddha you might also say I am extremely lucky. However, for me, I live in a state of Grace with God.

The place I consciously can take this the earliest to is when I was dying of whooping cough at age 2 and Archangel Michael came and saved my life. The next experience was very different. I was 6 and I was fighting over a toy with another 6 year old at his house and we began to fight over a toy. So, we grabbed each others faces as we rolled along the floor and screamed in pain. Then my friend's mother told me to leave which I did. What I thought about was that fighting for any reason other than to stay alive was really really stupid. So, being an intelligent kid I decided not to fight unless someone was trying to kill me and then I would kill them if necessary. I haven't really changed my point of view about this ever since.

Then next, I was 8 years old and walking home from Horace Mann School in Glendale California to 524 South Belmont Street where I lived then (it's torn down now and replaced I think with apartments). This would be 1956 then. A boy who was my friend was crying about how his mother didn't have money and strange men came over all the time and didn't have a father or a bicycle or a car. I stupidly, (because I was 8) said, "Oh. I have a car, a bicycle and two parents and we have our own house, at which point this boy jumped on me and knocked me down in a jealous rage. I knew why he did this and felt sorry for the boy so I fended off his blows because I was bigger and stronger than him but I refused to hurt him. So, when my father drove up he asked me why I didn't defend myself other than fend off his blows? I told my Dad the story and said I felt very sorry for this boy as he didn't have a father, his mother didn't have a job, and he didn't have a bicycle. I told him I couldn't hurt someone as pathetic as this.

My father gained amazing respect for me after this.

And I think this was when I started to notice the Grace in my life. I was 8 and I noticed God was taking pretty good care of me compared to most other people I knew then.

And pretty much this has continued into the present ongoing.

I watched how things that would kill almost anyone else I knew didn't kill me. I just sort of recovered a lot like Lazarus or something. I looked up to many many people but watched them die from stupid things mostly through the years. I even watched my own father die from a prostate cancer that he could have been healed from but he was too much into preventative medicine and not enough into regular MDs to have survived at that time. This was very difficult for me to watch him die when he didn't need to. But, I have learned from this a lot. So, by grace in all the infinite ways God has kept me alive until today.

Will I live to 100 or even 10,000 years old? Maybe. But, I also know I'm just as likely to pass on right now so I've learned to be prepared for it any moment by God's Grace.