Regina Brett - God Never Blinks: 50 Lessons for Lifes Little Detours

Copyright 2010 by Regina Brett

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First eBook Edition: April 2010

Grateful acknowledgment is made to quote from the following:

Columns that originally appeared in the Plain Dealer are reprinted with permission of the Plain Dealer Publishing Co. The Plain Dealer holds the copright for columns written by Regina Brett from 2000 to 2009. All rights reserved.

Columns that originally appeared in the Beacon Journal are reprinted with permission from the Beacon Journal Publishing Co. Inc. The Beacon Journal holds the copyright for columns written by Regina Brett from 1994 to 2000. All rights reserved.

Lines from A Fathers Story by Andre Dubus, The Times Are Never So Bad, copyright 1983 (Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc., 1983) are reprinted by permission.

The excerpt from Alcoholics Anonymous is reprinted with permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (AAWS). Permission to reprint this excerpt, which orginally ran on page 552 of the Third Edition, does not mean that AAWS has reviewed or approved the contents of this publication, or that AAWS necessarily agrees with the views expressed herein. A.A. is a program of recovery from alcoholism onlyuse of this excerpt in connection with programs and activities that are patterned after A.A., but that address other problems, or in any other non-A.A context, does not imply otherwise.

David Chilton, The Wealthy Barber: The Common Sense Guide to Successful Financial Planning (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998). Excerpt used by permission.

Pastor Rick Warren for permission to use the quote in Lesson 31.

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ISBN: 978-0-446-56967-5

For Asher and Julia

my bookends

M y friend Kathy once sent me an excerpt from the book Dandelion Wine. In Ray Bradburys book about one vintage summer, a boy has taken ill. No one can figure out what is wrong. Hes simply overwhelmed by life. No one seems able to help him until Mr. Jonas, the junk man, comes along.

He whispers to the boy who lies asleep on a cot in the yard. Mr. Jonas tells him to rest quiet and listen, then reaches up and picks an apple off a tree. He lingers long enough to tell the boy a secret he carries inside him, one I didnt know I carried in me. Some folks arrive in this world fragile. Like tender fruit, they bruise easier, cry more often, and turn sad young. Mr. Jonas knows all this because hes one of those people.

The words stir something in the boy and he recovers.

The words stirred something in me. Some people bruise easier. Im one of those people.

It took me 40 years to find and hold on to happiness. I always felt that at the moment I was born, God must have blinked. He missed the occasion and never knew I had arrived. My parents had 11 children. While I love my parents and my five brothers and five sisters deeply, some days I felt lost in the litter. As Kathy often pointed out, I seemed to be the runt of that litter. I ended up confused by the nuns at age 6, a lost soul who drank too much at 16, an unwed mother at 21, a college graduate at 30, a single mother for 18 years, and finally, a wife at 40, married to a man who treated me like a queen.

Then I got cancer at 41. It took a year to fight it, then a year to recover from the fight.

When I turned 45, I lay in bed reflecting on all life had taught me. My soul sprang a leak and ideas flowed out. My pen simply caught them and set the words on paper. I typed them up and turned them into a newspaper column of the 45 lessons life taught me. My editor hated it. So did his editor. I asked them to run it anyway. The Plain Dealer readers in Cleveland loved it.

Cancer made me bold enough to speak up to the bosses. Once youve had cancer and been sick, bald, and weak from chemotherapy and radiation, there arent a lot worse things anyone can do to you. Turning 45 was a victory for me. Breast cancer left me doubting I would see the odometer roll over that far. Three of my aunts died from it at 42, 44, and 56, so it didnt look good.

But I kept living. When I hit 50, I added five more lessons and the paper ran the column again. Then something amazing happened. People across the country began to forward the column. Ministers, nurses, and social workers requested reprints to run in newsletters, church bulletins, and small-town newspapers. People of all religions and those of none at all could relate. While some of the lessons speak of God, people found in them universal truths. Ive heard from agnostics and atheists who carry the list of lessons in their wallets and keep it tacked to their work cubicles and stuck under refrigerator magnets. The lessons are posted on blogs and websites by people all over the world. Every week since the column ran, people have e-mailed from Australia to Zanesville, Ohio, asking for copies. That column is the most popular one Ive written in my 24 years as a journalist.

Most of these essays originally appeared in the Plain Dealer or the Beacon Journal. Some of them are originals.

These lessons are lifes gifts to me, and mine to you.

T he hat always came back, more faded yet stronger than ever.

Frank started it.

I had undergone my first chemotherapy and couldnt imagine being bald. Then I saw a guy wearing a baseball cap bearing these words: LIFE IS GOOD.

Life didnt feel good and it was about to feel worse, so I asked the guy where he got the hat. Two days later, Frank drove across town and stopped by my house and gave me one. Frank is a magical kind of guy. A house painter by trade, he lives by two simple words: Get to.

They remind him to be grateful for everything. Instead of saying, I have to go to work today, Frank tells himself, I get to go to work. Instead of saying, I have to get groceries, he gets to. Instead of saying, I have to take the kids to baseball practice, he gets to. It works for everything.

The hat on anyone but Frank might not have carried the same power. It was navy blue with an oval patch that announced its message in white letters.

And life was good. Even though my hair fell out, my body grew weak, my eyebrows fell off. Instead of wearing a wig, I wore that hat as my answer to cancer, as my billboard to the world. People love to stare at a bald woman. They got a message back when they gawked.

Gradually, I got well, my hair grew back, and I put the hat away until a friend got cancer and asked about that hat I used to wear. She wanted one. At first I didnt want to part with mine. It was like my binky, my security blanket. But I had to pass it on. If I didnt, the luck might run out. She made a promise to get well and pass the hat on to another woman. Instead, she gave it back to me to pass on to another survivor.