flexible

While covering the Arkansas Razorbacks football team in the 1980s I encountered a term for a defensive philosophy entitled, "Bend but don't break."
In other words be flexible but never let your defenses down.
That's a good philosophy to employ when dealing with any adverse circumstance.
Be ever vigilant. Bend your reflexes. But never breakdown.
Or as a friend once said while assembling a tent for me, "Adapt, improvise, overcome."
I had a friend who almost died last week.
He collapsed and was rushed to the hospital.
They diagnosed his blood-sugar count to be 2,150.
In the parlance of doctors, you should be dead.
Nevertheless, my friend persevered and fought off the enemies within his body.
He's now taking insulin shots in the stomach and has drastically changed his eating habits.
I admire his changes.
He now awakens in the morning and drinks coffee and enjoys breakfast.
Something I've never see him do over the course of 10 years of living together, off and on.
But he's made of sterner stuff.
Both of us are PKs. Preacher's kids.
For awhile we lived a charmed life.
But reality intervened.
I endured the hardships of homelessness.
At first I rebelled against God and pondered, "Why me?"
Then I was afforded the window of opportunity to write about homelessness.
I encountered God and took a more religious approach to my life experiences.
I could be a living example of how to cope and not mope.
I could document the experiences and hopefully enlighten others who might find it within their hearts to help others in distress.
I've also written about the realities of dealing with critters, which every homeless individual must encounter. Again I tried to eventually take a philosophical attitude.
Then, the police rudely awakened us.
Again I wrote about the experiences.
There are some of us who are chosen to be the spokesmen.
That's the only logical explanation for what's transpired in my life and my attitudes towards coping.
God helps us endure.
God has a purpose for our lives.
God rewards us when we make the right decisions and handle the adversity with a modicum of aplomb.
I've been blessed this year when a friend offered his apartment to me during the frigid ice ages.
I've also been a little bit of a coward and took the easy way out and checked into a motel when I had some money.
But last night I had the best night of sleep in a long time, in my tent, with three sleeping bags as mattresses and a blanket provided by the kind people at Central United Methodist Church for a Christmas gift.
God bless that blanket!
God bless those who care and share!!
We shall overcome!!