I can’t do a better job of introducing Regina Brett than she does in the first few pages of her new book, “God Never Blinks: 50 Lessons for Life’s Little Detour,” where she writes:
It took me 40 years to find and hold onto 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 them and my five brothers and five sisters deeply, some days I felt lost in the litter. I ended up confused by the nuns at 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.??
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. I’ve 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.
These lessons are life’s gifts to me, and mine to you.
I had the pleasure of meeting Regina at a media retreat (or Breakfast Club) of sorts. For three days, we were locked in a room, held captive by two media coaches, until we could naturally recite brilliant sound bites. It was hard not to fall in love with her–as one of her snappy soundbites (a description of her Catholic childhood) was “It was like a church exploded in our living room!” I stole that phrase from her and used it in my media gigs.
It’s hard to pick my top ten. Part of me wants to pick the ones that were the hardest to learn, like the ones cancer taught me. Part of me wants to pick the ones that I use the most every day. Here’s a mix:
Lesson 28: “Forgive everyone everything.” This one sets you free for good.
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