Top 10 Lines From ‘The First Phone Call From Heaven’ by Mitch Albom

I am a big fan of Mitch Albom. I look up to his ability to tell a story in much the same way that football fans look up to Aaron Rogers’ ability to throw a football. The man simply has a way with words.

This belief was reinforced when I read his 2013 book The First Phone Call From Heaven, a moving story about a small town on Lake Michigan that gets worldwide attention when its citizens start receiving phone calls from the afterlife. The book is fiction, but there are many great quotes that apply to the day-to-day struggles and successes we experience.

Here are 10 awesome lines from the book:

  1. Fear is how you lose your life . . . a little bit at a time. . . What we give to fear, we take away from . . . faith.”

  2. There are two stories for every life; the one you live & the one others tell.”

  3. Sometimes, questions are more hurtful than insults.”

  4. Miracles happen quietly every day – in an operating room, on a stormy sea, in the sudden appearance of a road side stranger. They are rarely tallied. No one keeps score.”

  5. The words people do not speak are louder than the ones they do.”

  6. The pain we suffer is a way to make us appreciate what comes next.”

  7. Faith, it is said, is better than belief, because belief is when someone else does the thinking.”

  8. Bad news has no limits. We often feel it should, like a rainstorm that can’t possibly get any heavier. But a storm can always worsen, & the burdens of life can too.”

  9. The pain you go through in life doesn’t really touch you . . . not the real you. . . . You are so much lighter than you think.”

  10. Desire sets our compass, but real life steers our course.”

The Face of a Fighter

A very small percentage of the population will every have to experience a bone marrow transplant. TNT sideline reporter Craig Sager just underwent his third.

“It’s less than 1 percent of the total number of transplants,” said Dr. Muzaffar Qazilbash, Sager’s stem cell transplantation physician. “It’s very rare to have three transplants.”

If you expect Sager to feel broken down and beaten, you are wrong. He is tackling this new challenge head on with a smile on his face. The same smile that was there for the first transplant…and the second.

As Sager continues his fight against acute myeloid leukemia, he whats to share some important words:

Man, life is too beautiful, too wonderful, there’s just too many things. It’s not just you. It’s your family and kids and all. Fight. Fight until the end. Fight as hard as you can.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/tnts-sager-third-bone-marrow-225514626.html?format=embed

Sager is able to keep fighting thanks to the generosity of an unnamed 20-year-old male donor. If you would like to help others in their fight, sign up to be a part of the bone marrow registry at bethematch.org.

5 More Reasons I Don’t Trust Coconuts

If you read yesterday’s Wonder Why Wednesday post, you know I am leery of coconuts. After publishing that post, I thought maybe I had been too hard on them, so I decided to do some research and get to know this weird fruit a little better.

Turns out, I didn’t like what I found. Here are 5 things I learned that make me trust coconuts even less than I did yesterday:

  1. They are neither coco nor nut – they are technically a drupe, which has to be the most depressing name for a fruit.
  2. Coconut water can be a substitute for blood plasma – sure it can…either that or it is a ploy to infect our blood stream.
  3. The white part of the coconut is called coconut meat – now they are trying to take over meat?!? What’s next, we will learn the brown part on the outside is called coconut pizza?
  4. The origin of the coconut has been lost to history – seems to me like they are running from something.
  5. Burning the husk acts as mosquito repellent – Basically they are only good when you light them on fire.

 

Sources: Top Food Facts & Science Kids