When I was younger, “gay” meant the same as “happy.”  I remember the night I approached
the podium at a meeting of some 200 people in Toronto, Canada. The audience became
silent as I stepped up to the microphone. With the confidence I’d developed throughout the
years of public speaking, I grinned broadly and announced to the crowd, “My name is Happy,
and I’m gay!” Everyone stood up and applauded this announcement. Then, with quick thinking,
I added; “But I’m not homosexual!” The deifying boos was even louder than the applause!
You see this was a lesbian and gay meeting at which I had been invited to share my story of
faith, hope, and forgiveness. For more than one-half hour the audience laughed, cheered and
sobbed as I openly shared about my past, feeling no shame about it. As I left the podium to
return to my seat in the back row, I was greeted all the way with handshakes and hugs —
and even a few kisses!

I’ve been permitted to live eight times; I guess you could say I’m a cat with nine lives for
I still have one left. I’ll share a couple.

My premature birth. Car smash-up at age 17, and I was unconscious for nine days. Drug
over-dose at age 51 — There’s more, but I want to share the eighth time. On October 30,
1997, I lay in bed all day suffering from dizziness, and vertigo. I got up in the middle of the
night to use the bathroom. Groggily, I staggered down the hall. Dizziness overtook me, and
I fell backward, inside the bathtub, striking my head. I also felt a horrific pain shooting through
my spine, and thought; “This could be it. This could be the end!”… “Actually, I could have broken
my neck and died that night, or possibly been crippled, and confined to a wheelchair for the
rest of my life?!” But God had a purpose — for richer blessings to follow.

Inevitably there were six motivational books to write in the near future, and 300,000 miles
to travel across North America in those following nine years. But the best gift of all was
overcoming my dyslexia, on my 65th birthday. “Thank you Lord, for I have met many like I was,
and you saw fit to heal me!” Now I can reach out to others, and pass on the same faith, and
forgiveness, that I have experienced.