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I almost didn’t write a post about 9/11 this year. That would’ve been a first for me since beginning this blog. Sometimes it was a post, sometimes a video, but it was always something. If not on 9/11, then right around that time.

But this time I thought maybe not, even though it’s been ten years now. A decade. Anyone else feel as strangely about that as I do? I’ve read that scientists are studying why it seems that time speeds up as we grow older. Something in the brain, if I remember correctly. Some chemical or a certain pattern of neurons. Regardless, I remember a time when my days seemed to stretch on into forever. Now they pass so quickly. If there is anything I miss about childhood, it’s that sense of earthly eternity—that permanence.

That’s one reason I wanted to let this 9/11 pass. It feels like only yesterday I sat on the edge of my bed and watched those towers bleed fire and ash. Watched those poor souls jump from stories high, choosing death by gravity over death by immolation. Even now I see them. Those images will haunt me for the rest of my days. But I did not see that yesterday, I saw that ten years ago, and so much has happened since.

Another reason was how politicized the commemoration of 9/11 has become, how over-the-top. I hear religious leaders are not allowed to speak at Ground Zero this year, nor firefighters, nor policemen. I don’t understand how that could be. Then again, I don’t understand much these days. Sometimes I feel as though we’re all galloping toward some final end, and the ones leading the charge are the ones who are supposed to be protecting us.

But mostly, I wanted to let this 9/11 pass because of how strongly I still feel about it. To this day I cannot see an image of those ash-covered people fleeing for their lives or hear Alan Jackson’s “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” or be reminded of the phrase “Let’s roll” without feeling my eyes sting and my throat tighten. Ten years seems a long time to hang on to such emotions. There comes a point when the mourning must stop and time must continue on. We all must learn to let go. After all, life is a straight line. It isn’t a circle.

That’s why I didn’t want to write anything.

And yet here I am, doing just that.

Because no matter how well-intentioned the people who say it’s time to get over it and move on may be, I know I never will. There are some things that should not be whisked away into the haze of our yesterdays to fuse with other memories until it becomes more fiction than fact. There are some stories that should continue to be told and retold not out of a sense of anger, but a sense of honor.

It is human nature to want to set aside pain and cover up old wounds. It is also human nature to hold onto those things because they are a reminder of both the coldness of this world and the faith we must possess to live upon it.

I could forget. I could move on. I could bow my head each September 11 and pause, and then I could move on as if it were any other day.

But I’m afraid if I do I will also forget the men and women who ran toward those flames rather than away.

I will forget an outpouring of love and kindness, of unity, that I had never experienced in my country.

I will forget the stories I heard like the man who believes he was guided to safety by an angel and the man who chose to stay and die in the North Tower rather than abandon his wheelchair-bound friend.

I’m afraid that I will forget not only the horror, but the wonder as well.

Because on that day ten years ago I saw what evil there lurked in the souls of men, and I also saw what grace abides there, too.

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She stared at me, jaw straight and chin high, and said the three words. I stood there looking back at her, my jaw not so straight and my chin normal, not exactly knowing what to say other than to ask her to say it again. In a slow cadence that enunciated perfectly each of the three syllables, she repeated—“God. Hates. Me.”

“God hates you because your mail isn’t here?” I asked.

“Yes. If He wanted, He could make sure it got here. It’s not here. So God hates me.”

It was the sort of logic I’ve gotten accustomed to here at work, a place full of higher learning and lower thinking. And I had no doubt the student in front of me really didn’t mean what she said. She was angry. Frustrated. Down.

“You know the mail’s backed up,” I told her. “The hurricane and all.”

“Didn’t God make the hurricane?”

“Doesn’t the atmosphere or something make the hurricane? Something about the air off the coast of Africa?”

“Doesn’t God make the air off the coast of Africa?”

I could see where this was going.

“I don’t think God hates you,” I said. “The U.S. Postal Service, maybe. But not God.”

My attempt at levity did little to resolve the situation. She grunted and walked off. I told her to check back again tomorrow. She said she would if God hadn’t killed her by then.

That was yesterday. I didn’t see her today—I’m assuming God hasn’t killed her—which is good, considering her mail still hasn’t arrived. I’m still of the opinion that she was kidding about the whole God-hating-her thing, assuming she knows a little about God. You don’t need a lot of knowledge about the Higher Things to know He doesn’t hate anyone, that God is love.

But still.

There have been times when I’ve caught myself thinking that same sort of thing. Maybe not that God hates me, but certainly that He’s ignoring me. That He’s more concerned with keeping the universe expanding and the world turning than little old me. I suppose that’s not as bad as thinking He hates me. I guess it isn’t much better, either.

Aren’t we all at times like that, though? So much of life is fill-in-the-blank. Things are going badly because _________. Often what we give as our answer is more pessimism than optimism. We hurt and we take sick, we fall on hard times, not because others have done so since time immemorial, but because God hates us.

A few months ago, I got the chance to observe a professional jeweler polish silver. The process charmed me. He walked me through the entire process. The secret, he said, was heat. A good silversmith knows just how hot to get the silver before it is molded. Too hot, and it’s ruined. Too cool, and it spoils. The piece he was polishing? Perfect. Just enough heat.

I think God is like that with us. We’re made for better things—Higher Things—than to simply exist. We must be good for something. We must be molded in a fire neither too hot nor too cool. We are all pieces of silver in the Jeweler’s hand.

It is true this world is cracked and made for suffering. But it is also true that by suffering, we are made to heal what cracks we can.

God does not hate us, He simply loves us too much to fill our lives with ease.

One final thing about that jeweler. He told me he’d been sitting there for hours shining that piece of silver. That fact seemed a bit pointless to me. I couldn’t imagine it shining any brighter. I asked him how he would know when it had been polished enough.

“The silver faces the fire,” he said, “but it isn’t done. Then it is molded and polished, but it still isn’t done. The silver is only done when it casts the Jeweler’s reflection.”

Yes.

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Josh Hamilton was just a kid in 1999. The only difference between him and most other kids was that he was given four million dollars to play baseball.

He was a can’t-miss pick, the scouts said. A golden boy. A natural. But two years later he was involved in a car accident, and shortly thereafter began a downward spiral into drugs and alcohol. He was suspended by major league baseball for failing several drug tests. And just like that, The Natural was gone.

His story could have ended there, yet another sad tale of a promising athletic career ruined by personal demons. But somewhere along the way Josh Hamilton found something special that not only helped them beat those demons, but helped resurrect a career most considered dead.

He found faith.

The road back started with The Texas Rangers, who traded for him in 2007. Last year, he won the award for Most Valuable Player in a year that ended with the Rangers winning the American League Championship. When they celebrated afterward, the traditional champagne was replaced with ginger ale for Josh’s benefit.

He’s a favorite with baseball fans and open with his faith, giving glory to Christ rather than turning attention to himself. Josh Hamilton is a humble man. A good man. A natural.

Last Thursday a 39-year-old father named Shannon Stone took his young son Cooper to Arlington to watch the Rangers play. Cooper loves baseball, and he’s a big Josh Hamilton fan. And though the game itself was enough, both father and son knew what they were really there for. As they took their seats in the front row along the railing in left field just in front of Cooper’s favorite player, all they wanted was to catch a ball.

In the second inning a foul ball was hit down the line that Hamilton tossed into the stands. Someone yelled, “Hey, Hamilton, how about the next one?” He turned and saw Shannon sitting with Cooper and gave him a nod.

Another foul ball, this again in Hamilton’s direction, which he picked up and tossed in Shannon’s direction. The father reached for it, thrilled to get the ultimate souvenir.

He fell headfirst twenty feet over the railing onto the concrete below.

Paramedics rushed to the area. Shannon was bleeding was conscious—“Please check on my son,” he said. “My son was up there by himself.” He died before the paramedics could get him to the hospital.

It isn’t enough (at least not enough for me) to say in circumstances like these that sometimes bad things happen. Not enough to say that some things just don’t make sense, that dwelling upon them serves no purpose and the best thing to do is move on. I doubt little Cooper Stone is managing that feat at this moment. I doubt Josh Hamilton is, too.

“It was just hard for me, hearing the little boy screaming for his daddy after he had fallen,” he said, “and then being home with my kids, really hit home last night.”

He said his faith was not shaken, nor would the experience plunge him back into the abyss from which God pulled him four years ago. He plans to speak with Cooper when the time is right, and I have no doubt he will. I can only imagine how difficult that conversation will be.

If I’m honest, I’ll say what bothers me the most about this is the fact that Josh Hamilton was the one who threw that ball into the stands. He with the story of redemption and the lasting faith, rather than another player with perhaps no faith at all. It’s difficult enough as a believer to abide by the jabs and assaults of an increasingly secular world. Harder to know that for reasons unknown, God somehow allowed this man of faith to be involved in the death of a father in front of that father’s son.

Had the ball been thrown a bit harder, had it traveled an inch farther, had it been thrown to someone else, had the pitcher thrown a curve rather than a fastball or the batter taken the pitch rather than swing, this would not have happened.

Or maybe it would have. Maybe all of this is set in stone and our time is our time and there is no changing these things. God has His reasons, however flawed those reasons may seem to pitiable creatures such as we.

I do not know.

That is not the first time I’ve come to that conclusion. I’m sure it will not be the last.

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I suppose you could say it all started for Tommy back when the river took his house. That was six years ago, more or less. Tommy can’t remember if it was six or five. Or seven.

He does remember the house was a bargain—two bedrooms, two baths, 1200 square feet. And then there was the land—ten acres of woods that thinned out right at the river’s edge. Tommy always wanted a place like that, out in the country where everything was slow and the only sounds were the coyotes and the birds.

He settled in and got used to his new life. The divorce had been tough on him (all divorces are), but now the papers were signed and he was ready to move on. Tommy fixed up his new house with some paint and new furniture. Added a deck on the back so he could sit there in the evenings with his dog and watch the water drift by. Tommy said he loved that deck. Sitting there watching that water made him realize that things will always keep moving, that the bad that might be here now will be behind you soon enough.

Tommy was there for three summers when it all happened. It began as a front coming up from the Gulf, welcome news for the farmers and their dry fields. The weatherman said the next two days would be wet ones and that we should all spend the time sharpening the blades on our lawnmowers. Tommy didn’t do that. He couldn’t sit on the deck and watch the river, so he pulled the recliner around toward the window and watched it from inside.

Watched it rain. Then pour. And then the pour became a deluge.

The weatherman said the system stalled over the mountains, churning in a big circle the kept dumping water onto the valley. It rained nonstop for those two days. We all felt like Noah.

By the end of the first day, the river was swollen. By the beginning of the second, water was spilling over the banks. By mid-day, Tommy’s house was gone.

He managed to get out the most important things—pictures of his kids, his dog, the motorcycle. The rest was soaked or swept away. Including the deck, which was soaked while it was being swept away.

Tommy thought his new life would be better than his old one. But as he stood in what was once his front yard a week later, he figured he thought wrong.

There was little doubt in his mind it was God’s doing. The Lord sent the rain, the Lord kept the rain there. The Lord watched as Tommy’s house ended up floating down the river. It was His will, Tommy thought. Had to be. Because if it wasn’t, then that meant the rain was bigger than God. Tommy hadn’t been to church since he was a boy, but he said he knew enough to know God was bigger than the rain.

He knew enough to realize as well that if God allowed all that to happen, it must have been for a reason. I think that’s what kept Tommy going in the months that followed. The insurance check arrived. He used it to buy another house, this one with no river in sight. He settled in once more, with new furniture and new paint (not a deck, though, as this house already had one). Things started looking up. Tommy considered it the start of his third life, and he was glad to be putting the first two behind him. Somewhere in the midst of all that newness, Tommy did something else. He took a drink.

He’d never held much fondness for alcohol. A beer at the ballgame and maybe a shot of liquor during poker with the guys, but nothing else. To hear him say it, Tommy still can’t explain why he decided to pick up a six-pack at the 7-11 that day. He just did. And wouldn’t you know it, the last one tasted even better than the first.

Like I said, that was six years ago. More or less. Tommy can’t remember.

And as it turned out, his third life was even worse than his previous two. He lost his job because of the drinking, which has also started to affect his health—“Can’t have a beer without a smoke,” he often says. He spends his days sitting on the sofa with his dog watching television. The Price is Right is his favorite.

I guess that’s how it goes with some people sometimes, sad as it may be.

Tommy says it’s all God’s fault for sending that stupid rain. It was a catastrophe, he says, and there’s little doubt it was.

But he’ll also say the drinking was his idea. God didn’t have anything to do with that. Which is why I think the catastrophes that God sends are ones we can overcome. It’s the ones we send upon ourselves that we crumble under.

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Of all the depressing news stories of the past year (and there were quite a few, weren’t there?), one very uplifting story sticks in my mind. The fact that it involves arsenic and bacteria may convince you otherwise, but I assure you it really is inspiring. Really.

It seems as though a group of NASA scientists have trained a species of bacteria to survive without phosphorous. That didn’t seem too wonderful a thing to me, but then I read that phosphorous is one of the six essential building blocks of life. Take that one out, no life. In the span of a few short months, the bacteria replaced the phosphorous in their DNA with arsenic, which is poisonous to cellular life.

I’ll admit I quit reading that article halfway through and went on to something that better suited my tastes—something about football, if memory serves me right. But the story stuck in my mind for some reason, and I kept going back to it. There seemed to be something valuable there, some truth that needed to be pondered. I didn’t know what on earth it could be, especially considering the fact that science and I, while acquaintances, wouldn’t be considered friends.

But even if you know as little as I about biology, you have to admit this is pretty interesting news. A group of people have managed to sustain life when life should have been unsustainable. Amazing! Wonderful!

Then again, this is nothing new to most people. History is littered with periods when life seemed impossible and yet thrived nonetheless, times when hope waned and fear gripped us all. Times like the Dark Ages, when disease was rampant and death was a constant menace. Or that first Thanksgiving, with all those starving and cold Pilgrims.

I would imagine those who lived in my neck of the woods didn’t feel much like living during the Civil War.

Same goes for the depression of the 1930s.

I’ve heard stories from soldiers who fought in World War II, those who struggled through winters in Europe and summers in the South Pacific, who felt sure they would never make it home alive.

I’ve heard the same from veterans of Vietnam.

There are times when life is reduced to its most basic essentials—a choice between pushing on and lying down. And it’s in those times when all seems lost and impossible that we discover just how strong we are.

Time and again and through thousands of years, we’ve found that the sweetness of life cannot truly be tasted in the good times, but in the bad. When its preciousness is most apparent.

Of all the stories I read in 2010, that’s the one I’m carrying with me into 2011. Because for many, this is yet another in a long line of dark times. There’s so much uncertainty, so much fear. Our days seem to totter on the edge of some great abyss, and it seems that the only thing keeping this world on an even keel are prayers and what hope we can muster.

It’s worth mentioning that to some degree, every year is the same. People have always been hungry and still oppressed. Governments have always been corrupt. Earthquakes and hurricanes and floods and blizzards have always been with us. We say our times are especially bad because we’re the ones in them. The truth is that there have always been worse.

So for me, when things seem their worst and my fear seems the strongest, I’m going to remember the tiny bacteria that has managed to survive on poison. I’m going to try to emulate that.

I’m going to walk on, and not lie down.

No one is happier than I to see spring finally entrench itself into this year. I am not a fan of winter, of cold mornings and colder nights and darkness at four-thirty in the afternoon. Ba. Humbug.

We are in the main course of May now. The robins have returned outside my living room window, the trees in the yard are heavy with leaves, and I’ve cut the grass three times (a magnificent task, by the way. You learn a lot about God by mowing the yard. Another story for another time, though).

But even with sunshine and seventy degrees here in the valley, the tops of the mountains outside my window were clouded in snowfall just a few weeks ago. I was here, winter was there. And as I looked at that cold, angry storm, I knew it also saw me. Snarling, “I can come down there too, you know. I’m not done just yet.”

Which, ironically, was fine. As anxious as I was to put away the snow shovel and bring out my softball bat, I wasn’t so sure I wanted the cold weather to go away. Because even though spring meant birdsong and porch swings and windows-down-radio-up, it also meant I would have to put away my new slippers.

That they had been on my feet daily since Christmas, gently warming my toes and therefore my very heart, is an unlikely thing for me to say. I’ve never been a slipper guy. They’ve always seemed so un-me, so…girly.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

When I unwrapped them last Christmas morning, my wife asked me to just give them a try. “Please,” she said, emphasis included. Not because I wanted them, not even because I thought I needed them. But to, in her words again, “Finally get you to shut up.”

I love my wife.

You see, the floors in our home were cold. Very. The frigid temperatures coupled with an unwavering determination to cut down on the gas bill kept our thermostat at a barely tolerable sixty-eight degrees this year. By November, I was chilly. By December, I was a Popsicle.

It was easy enough to throw on a sweatshirt or a thicker pair of jeans to make things a bit more comfortable, but that did little to improve the condition of my feet. I tried wool socks, which did the trick so long as I stayed on the carpet in the living room. Venture out from there and onto the hardwood floors of the rest of the house, though, and it was like an ice rink in both temperature and friction. I almost broke a leg one Saturday afternoon carrying a bag of carrots into the kitchen. Almost died from hypothermia waiting for someone to help me, too.

Stupid house, I thought to myself. Stupid cold house with its stupid cold floors. Why didn’t we buy a house with a fireplace in it? Or two fireplaces. And radiant heat in the floors. Oh, yeah. That would be nice. Radiant heat…

Those thoughts were translated into words later on to my wife: “I hate living here, and I hate our life.”

She looked at me, puzzled. What in the world had brought this on? she wondered. Has something terrible happened? Has he finally cracked?

“What made you say that?” she asked.

“My feet are cold.”

Which brought about an even more puzzled look.

But it’s like that with us, isn’t it? We all have the unique talent of turning small inconveniences into major problems. And while I spent months believing that the source of my trouble was a drafty house, the truth was that it was something much closer.

The trouble wasn’t the cold floors. Not the weather, either.

The trouble was me.

There is a lot in my little world I pray that God will change. “Give me more and give me better,” I ask Him. I wonder sometimes if He’s not saying the thing to me.

I wonder if rather than making the rain stop, He’d rather just give me an umbrella. Because you have to learn to smile in the rain as much as you do in the sunshine.

Or if rather than making me comfortable, He’d rather leave me uncomfortable. Because that’s when I learn the most.

Or if rather than giving me a nice warm house, He’d rather just give me a pair of slippers.

Because there isn’t much you can change about your circumstances sometimes. But there is plenty you can change about you.

P.S. – katdish over at Hey look, a chicken! has been kind enough to offer me a guest appearance on her blog every Monday. Nice of her, isn’t it? So why don’t you follow me over there, and I’ll tell you how I learned to live in awe again…

(This post was first published as a column in the Staunton, Virginia News Leader on April 26, 2009)

I have had the hiccups for two days now. Not kidding.

It started as I was putting the kids to bed. One little hic, followed by another, followed by a double: hic-hic.

To my children, this is the funniest thing they have ever seen. Because these are not the sort of tiny urps you can keep to yourself. No, these are violent, thrashing inhalations that scramble my insides and cause the people around me to stare. And aside from a hour or so here and there of blissful calm, they will not stop.

I think I may be going insane.

Hiccups is technically known as singultus. “A quick, involuntary inhalation that follows a spasm of the diaphragm and is suddenly checked by closure of the glottis, producing a short, relatively sharp sound.” So says my dictionary.

Caused by “many central and peripheral nervous system disorders, all from injury or irritation to the phrenic and vagus nerves, as well as toxic or metabolic disorders affecting aforementioned systems.” So says Google. And if you can figure out what exactly that means, please let me know.

As far as cures go, it seems medical science is a little lacking. Drugs, of course, are an option. And also something called “digital rectal massage.”

I’m not sure what that means, either. But no…way.

The tried-and-true cures of holding my breath and getting scared haven’t worked, though my son continues to run up to me and shout “BOO DADDY BOO!!”

Undaunted, I am now studying the possible causes of my condition:

Lack of water. No, that can’t be it.

Eating too fast. A possibility, given the hectic nature of a normal day. But as this began in the peace and quiet of home, I don’t buy it.

Being hungry for a while. Another possibility. But as we had dinner just a few hours before this all started, I’d say no.

Laughing vigorously. A very good possibility.

Talking for too long. Me? No.

Overstretching of the neck. Huh?

Not much help there, either.

So here I sit, trying to type, hitting the backspace whenever my body convulses and renders “type” to “tyyype.”

Still, it isn’t all bad. Charles Osborne had the hiccups from 1922 to 1990, a record sixty-eight years. Since I’m competitive by nature, I now have something to shoot for. And I am slowly building a remarkable set of abs.

Besides, I would much rather have this sort of hiccup than the alternative definition: “To experience a temporary decline, setback, interruption, etc.”

Oh, yes. I’ve had plenty of those.

The interesting thing is that the causes of physical hiccups are the very same as the causes of spiritual ones:

Lack of water. Not the liquid kind. The other: “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again,” Jesus told the woman at the well, “but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

Eating too fast. And not just eating. We judge and condemn and speak and live too fast as well. How much beauty and joy do we miss in this life because we simply won’t slow down? Too much.

Being hungry for a while. Not a good thing for your body. Worse for your soul. Because if you’re hungry enough, even poison tastes good.

Laughing vigorously. Yes, life should be enjoyed. And yes, it should be fun. But let’s not forget that we’re here to make this world a better place. That takes work, serious work, and a lot of it.

Talking for too long. As my Grandma said, “God gave you two ears and one mouth so you can listen twice as much as you talk.” Our words are precious things of mighty power. Use too many of them, though, and both the preciousness and power wane.

Overstretching of the neck. This one hit me particularly hard. I’m always trying to crane my neck to get a better view, whether it’s to where I’m going or where I’ve been. But it’s more important to pay attention to where you are. The best way to make sure tomorrow will be fine and yesterday won’t matter is to take care of today.

How this will end is anyone’s question. But I know this: I would rather hic like this in my gut forever than hic one moment in my life.

The Frisbie family over at Frisbie Family Fun Forever wrote a post the other day about how their family has been thinking a lot about the Depression lately. Not the one now, mind you. Things aren’t that far gone. Not yet, anyway. No, they were talking about the one in the 1930s. Quite possibly the toughest times in our country’s history. They were marveling at the sense of determination and self-reliance that people had to display back then. Not just to get ahead, but to stay alive.

Which got me thinking about a guy down at the gas station named Earl. Not that the gas station is his place of employment, mind you. As Earl’s pushing ninety-six and can’t get around as well as once upon a time, the gas station is just his hangout. It’s the one place in town where he can sit in a booth all day and watch most everyone pass by sooner or later.

Part down historian and part town gossip, he is the self-imposed high mayor and town council, and his booth is his throne. Like Sinatra’s table at Jilly’s, you don’t sit at Earl’s table. Not if you want to stay alive. Earl might be pushing the century mark, but he’s still a pretty tough guy. I’m not sure what he’d do if he caught some unassuming stranger occupying his seat. It’s never happened.

Earl has seen a lot in his ninety-six years: two world wars, four American ones, cars and computers and televisions and telephones. He’s endured the losses of his wife and all five of their children, countless recessions, and one big, nasty Depression.

You might think that all of this would make Earl a little long for this world. That he’d be worn out from all of his years. You’d be wrong, though. There’s no one in this world happier than him. No one.

With all that living, Earl has the advantage of perspective when it comes to the events of these days. He’s seen it all. And since he’s seen it all, there really isn’t much that catches him off guard. Take this current financial mess, for instance.

Me: “How bad’s it going to get, Earl?”

Earl: “Not bad enough that you’ll have to worry.”

Me: “I’m worrying about it now.”

Earl: “Well, you shouldn’t.”

Me: “Why?”

His answer was not framed in financial statistics or a keep-your-chin-up inspirational speech. It was instead four one-syllable words:

“’Cause of the beans.”

The beans, you ask? Yes. Allow me to explain.

Earl was twenty years old in 1932 when he married his wife, Anna. Their first child followed shortly, and their second was born not long afterward. Trying to raise a family in the middle of the Depression was about as easy as it sounds. Work was sparse, pay was sporadic, and hope was nonexistent.

But God always provided what Earl’s family needed. They were poor, yes, but they were not destitute. They all had clothes to wear, a roof over their heads, and beans in the cupboard.

Lots of beans. Beans were cheap back then, Earl says. And since they were so affordable, that’s what was incorporated into every meal. Earl’s family lived off beans for years. According to him, everybody’s family did.

Which maybe wasn’t so bad. I like beans. And Earls says he liked them fine, too. But after eating beans for two meals a day for ten years or so, you start to get a little sick of them. You start to hate them. Earl swore that one day his family wouldn’t have to eat beans anymore, and that would be a fine day indeed.

That day did come. World War II brought work again for our country, and the prosperity afterwards ensured that the tough times were over.

People think the Depression was bad, Earl says. That’s true. But they also think there wasn’t any good in it. That’s not true. Families were strengthened. Faith was strengthened. People were strengthened.

According to Earl, tough times make tough people. And those times made maybe the toughest people we’ve ever had. People who saved the world from the Nazis and the Communists, who landed on the Moon and fought for civil rights.

Hurting might be bad for the body, but it’s good for the soul.

And losing what means much can reveal what means more.

Maybe he’s right.

I’ve read where people are predicting riots in this country. Bloody revolutions. Mass crime. The breakdown of society and the extinction of Christianity. Not me. Not Earl, either. We both think that the sort of people made seventy years ago are the same sort that can be made now. People who won’t be broken by life, but made tougher by it.