When one greets another, a smile soothes apprehension but also shows power — the power to deal with just about any and all circumstances that life has thrown at that person. Passers-by may wonder: “Why and how is he still smiling?”
From birth, he was and is the only male of that household. At the age of six, he experienced a lifechanging tragedy. He’d been hit by a drunk driver, which sent him as high as a telephone pole only to come back down and bust his head open on the windshield of the driver’s car. His brain trauma would present as psychomotive seizures that grew into grand mal seizures. These occurrences hindered him and his ability to live a “normal” life.
But life halts for no soul. He held onto his seat of life and played the cards that were dealt. Though his comprehension skills and compatibility with friends were at an all-time low, he held onto others’ wishes, hopes and dreams of change. His mother spoke to him during the last month of him being 12 and asked him how he’d feel about meeting and even going to live with his father. At 12 years old, he thought those ideas sounded awesome.
But when the son was supposed to meet his father for the very first time — his 13-year-old birthday gift, the father didn’t show. It turned out the father was in the hospital; the day after the son’s 13th birthday, the mother received a phone call notifying that the father had been declared deceased.
Informing the child of why he couldn’t and wouldn’t be able to meet his father brought about another complication that the child had to deal and live with. Now at the age of 13 years old, he was out on the streets trying to figure out how to be a man and how to live life. He came face-to-face with this cruel, dog-eat-dog world.
The mother always had love and open arms for her baby, but out of his love and respect for her, he stayed far away — in hopes of preventing any consequences of his actions from harming her and her safety.
Within his travels up and down the highways and byways of life, a new objective emerged: retaining and matching the energy that the environment — from various places and stages of life — projected onto him. Having chosen to be a leader, he shares smiles to show the strength that our almighty creator God has given him. God has carried him through so much as from a young age and still carries him through dilemmas nowadays, from diabetes to open heart surgery, ashe strives to bring comfort to others through greeting them with a smile.
As challenges in life continue to present themselves and we look for ways to solve them, it is best not to gloom over them. In a state of glooming, there is no light, and without light, there isn’t any life. Looking toward life is to look towards the wonders of our almighty creator God’s will. It’s His will: if He brought you to it, he’ll bring you through it, too.