Chapter 1: Life Goes On

“What a wonderful day to be alive. Up early on Sunday so I can get to church and fill this beaten and battered body and soul with the Spirit of God.”

A time of rejuvenation of joy and glory Gabriel always looks forward to. He smiles and converses with his God: while so many around him seem somber and just going through the motions. Gabriel leaves church overjoyed to just be alive, but even more so to serve his Lord. In church, afterward at Bible study with his friends and on the way home he just knows this is the day God is going to answer his most poignant prayers. What is life without love?

As Gabriel is driving through his town of Plymouth he says, “My Lord, I serve You with obedience and strength; I fight for her in your name. Help me to help another today.”

Going forward with the belief that even if God does not answer it this day he will eventually: never letting it get you down. You just go on. God will answer the faithful; even if not how you expected.

It was a grey drizzly March morning and nobody but God could have guessed at what lay ahead for two deserving people whose destinies once combined would change the lives of many-a-young girls. But first much work had to be done before even this day would glorify God.

Gabriel is a man of an unbalanced fifty-four years and stands at six foot tall, with brown hair and brown eyes like so many others throughout this marvelous world and his beard is mostly grey; though once upon a time it grew in reddish-orange. Now out of shape and falling apart his favorite catch phrase is ‘My body is falling apart, but my faith is strong.’

One way to understand the present Gabriel is how he is currently dealing with his growing situation. At age fourteen Gabriel had bone marrow cancer in his lower right leg. At eighteen he got second and third degree burns on thirty percent of his body. There was no way he was going to allow nature to scar his body more than his own stupidity could.

Now forty years later that leg and foot is starting to deform. Gabriel’s view on this is gratitude. In 1980 when Gabriel had the cancer it killed ninety percent of the people who caught it. Beyond that all treatment was done by amputation. Gabriel was one of, if not the very first person to get this operation. It left his leg skinny with a slight foot drop, but it did not slow down the teenage boy. It did bring his dream of serving in the Army to a complete and abrupt holt; in anger and drug abuse he made many bad choices for the next ten years. But now after coming home to God; that is being baptized into the Catholic faith in 2019, he is on quite a different journey. With the doctors telling him that the bone in that leg will split on its own in the sight of ten years; he is contemplating the best time to amputate that leg. But first he has to get his left leg strong enough to handle the rehab of doing an above the knee prosthetic leg.

This is where Gabriel finds himself today. He is sitting at his computer desk, in his bedroom that he lives in, passing time by playing video games, watching movies, doing custom pictures, writing and studying the Word of God. He has tried many things to keep his ADHD with OCD tendencies mind busy over the years including painting; which he was just starting to get good at when he lost interest and mannequin photography which morphed from his plan to start a fashion design company. However, he quickly realized he did not have the patience for sewing. Mainly though Gabriel considers himself a writer.

Since getting his high school diploma at the age of twenty-five and through getting his two-year college degree and beyond, his eight novels and a sprinkling of children’s stories he wrote were all fantasy adventure. All of which, after effort and money to get published the ‘real’ way, are posted on a free web page.

Now since coming home to God, Gabriel mostly writes to glorify God and for his three organizations: Saint Gabriel’s Love, Hope and Faith Charter Programs for Girls, named for the archangel Gabriel because of his ability to calm and assure the gentle that everything is going to be okay; Saint Michael’s Battle in the Spirit Prayer Group and Saint Raphael’s Care Program. In one he hopes to raise the world by raising girls, the other he battles demonic forces and the other he will help any and all on an immediate basis. In a nut shell that is Gabriel today. Let us watch how the story unfolds.

Gaze of Joy. Gaze of sorrow. The reasons why are often hid in obscurity. The ability to look past time is a trait to be admired, for it comes from a heart of hope – a belief that things will get better.

So it is that a little girl named Molly all of eleven years old kneels to pray, though nobody taught her, and though her heart is heavy, laden with misery, she feels something moving closer to her. Even though she knows not what, she senses her enemies, her adversaries, her foes feel it also.

Molly is pretty, but it is not something she believes. Her long dirty blonde hair that is parted in the middle was once soft and glistening; now it is matted and contaminated with years of tragedy, hopelessness and lack of attention. No longer her symbol of pride: as hair should be for a girl.

Her normally pristine white skin is even paler as she rarely sees the sun anymore and feels its warmth upon her. Not just warmth of heat, but warmth of hope. You would think because the light bulbs keep burning out with a tink, tink, pop and shadow lingers everywhere that the curtains would be spread as wide as the Red Sea, but no, because birds keep hitting the window at moments of stillness and because faces of bleakness, blackness and shadow peer inside with growls not from this world and then on top of all that shapeless shadows skirt by causing fear and sapping hope: because of these things the curtains remain mostly drawn. Molly’s darkness has become as literal as metaphorical.

Within her eyes, from out of her spirit, though fear, though horror, though why me, though laughter lacking are seen, there is something more. Molly’s eleven years have had too much shadow, but in her eyes, from time to time, it can be seen – the potential of limitless dreams. Yes there are times when courage and hope have the curtains open and Molly gazes out the window or looks up at her aunt Kate that glory, that wonder, that potential, that hope, that love shines through. Because God will be there for all who need – the light will not be denied. And neither will Molly’s plea.

Eyes of pale blue ringed with a darker cobalt blue; though sometimes on a grey drizzly day they can take on the surroundings and look grey themselves. Not this day. This day, though dark in her room, her pretty blue eyes are shinning through.