Losing Oliver allowed me to live again.

Friends reminded me I was loved; strangers shared my pain. A single block in a challenged neighborhood became my world, and I saw that this world was beautiful. Words of wisdom came from everywhere, filling my heart.

I’m through trying to be whatever person I have been trying to be because, obviously, I’m doing something wrong,” I said to him. “I want you to take over. I’m not giving up. I’m just surrendering to you. I am done trying to fulfill whatever expectations I thought I had to fulfill. I want you to make me into the person I am supposed to be.

We have to trust in the things that happen as happening for a reason.

If a man can fly, well then, I believe I flew down that street. For a brief moment, in my fifty-five years of living, I was finally the baseball hero rounding third base in game seven of the World Series, bursting with speed, madly dashing for victory, the crowd cheering for me to “Run!

If you can endure tribulations and, as it says in Proverbs 3, “let love and faithfulness never leave you,” you will gain the wisdom that brings true well-being

I’m not married. I have no family of my own. I drive people to airports for a living. And I live with my dog. That’s it. That’s all I have. That’s my life. So whoever took Oliver, they didn’t just take my cell phone or car or computer. They took my whole life. You’re looking at a broken man, And that’s why I’m here. I have love in my heart, and I need your help.

God, give me the strength I need to be truthful but not spiteful. Help me to use your tools, God, to find Oliver.

It isn’t so much what you have but what you believe that defines who you are and how you live.

To be human is to endure hardship, and to endure hardship means that we are alive. And being alive is the greatest gift.