Inspiring Tear-Jerkers
/ Eight Short Stories
There is nothing like
reading an inspiring, often tear-jerking, true story – one that leaves you
feeling uplifted and encouraged! We all
need the encouragement of reading incidents in others lives where the hand of
God has become very evident… or where God’s love is being practiced. I believe all of the 8 short stories below are
true. They are among my favorites. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did! Whistler
What Goes Around Comes
Around
When
I was working as a disc jockey in
I
was very controversial in radio. I had
offended someone in an editorial that I had done about a promoter who was
bringing entertainers into town who were not the original members of a
particular group. The person I exposed
literally took a contract out on me!
One
night I was coming home at about two o’clock in the morning. I had just finished working at a night club
where I was the emcee. As I began to
open my door, a man came out from behind the side of my house and said, “Are
you Les Brown?”
I
said, “Yes, sir.”
He
said, “I need to talk to you. I was sent
here to carry out a contract on you.”
“Me?
Why?” I asked.
He
said, “Well, there’s a promoter that’s very upset about the money you cost him
when you said that the group that was coming to town was not the real group.”
“Are
you going to do something to me?” I asked.
He
said, “No.” And I didn’t want him to change his mind! I was just glad!
He
continued. “My mother was in Grant Hospital and she wrote me about how you came
in one day and sat down and talked to her and read Scripture to her. She was so impressed that this morning disc
jockey, who didn’t know her, came in and did that. She wrote me about you when I was in the
Les Brown
~/~/~/~/~/~/~/~
Don’t Let It End This Way
The hospital was unusually
quiet that bleak January evening, quiet and still, like the air before a
storm. I stood in the nurses’ station on
the seventh floor and glanced at the clock.
It was 9:00 P.M.
I threw a stethoscope around
my neck and headed for room 712, last room of the hall. Room 712 had a new patient, Mr.
Williams. A man alone. A man strangely silent
about his family.
As I entered the room, Mr.
Williams looked up eagerly, but dropped his eyes when he saw it was only his
nurse. I pressed the stethoscope over
his chest and listened. Strong, slow, even beating.
Just what I wanted to hear. There seemed little indication he had
suffered a slight heart attack a few hours earlier.
He looked up from his
starched white bed. “Nurse, would you .
. .” He
hesitated, tears filling his eyes. Once before he had started to ask me a question, but had changed
his mind.
I touched his hand, waiting.
He brushed away a tear. “Would you call my daughter? Tell her I’ve had a heart attack. A slight one. You see, I live alone and she is the only
family I have.” His respiration suddenly
sped up.
I turned his nasal oxygen up
to eight liters a minute. “Of course
I’ll call her,” I
said, studying his face.
He gripped the sheets and
pulled himself forward, his face tense with urgency. “Will you call her right away – as soon as
you can?” He was breathing fast – too
fast.
“I’ll call her first thing,” I said, patting his
shoulder. “Now you get some rest.”
I flipped off the light. He closed his eyes, such young blue eyes in
this 50-year-old face.
Room 712 was dark except for
a faint night-light under the sink.
Oxygen gurgled in the green tubes above his bed. Reluctant to leave, I moved through the shadowy
silence to the window. The panes were
cold. Below, a foggy mist curled through
the hospital parking lot. Above, snow
clouds quilted the night sky. I
shivered.
“Nurse,” he called. “Could you get me a pencil and paper?”
I dug a scrap of yellow paper
and a pen from my pocket and set it on the bedside table.
“Thank you,” he said.
I smiled at him and left.
I walked back to the nurses’
station and sat in a squeaky swivel chair by the phone. Mr. Williams’ daughter was listed on his
chart as the next of kin. I got her
number from information and dialed. Her
soft voice answered.
Janie, this is Sue Kidd, a
registered nurse at the hospital. I’m
calling about your father. He was
admitted today with a slight heart attack and . . . “
“No!” she screamed into
the phone, startling me. “He’s not dying
is he?” It was more a painful plea than
a question.
“His condition is stable at
the moment,” I
said , trying hard to sound convincing.
Silence. I bit my lip.
“You must not let him
die!” she
said. Her voice was so utterly
compelling that my hand trembled on the phone.
“He is getting the very best
care.”
“But you don’t understand,” she pleaded. “My daddy and I haven’t spoken in almost a
year. We had a terrible argument on my
twenty-first birthday, over my boyfriend.
I ran out of the house. I . . . I
haven’t been back. All these months I’ve
wanted to go to him for forgiveness. The
last thing I said to him was,
“I hate you.’”
Her voice cracked and I heard
her heave great agonizing sobs. I sat,
listening, tear’s burning my eyes. A
father and daughter, so lost to each other!
Then I was thinking of my own father, many miles away. It had been so long since I had said I love
you.
As Janie struggled to control
her tears, I breathed a prayer. “Please
God, let his daughter find forgiveness.”
“I’m coming, now! I’ll be there in 30 minutes,” she said. Click. She had hung up.
I tried to busy myself with a
stack of charts on the desk. I couldn’t
concentrate. Room 712. I knew I had to get back to 712. I hurried down the hall nearly in a run. I opened the door.
Mr. Williams lay
unmoving. I reached for his pulse. There was none.
“Code 99. Room 712. Code 99. Stat.” The alert was shooting through the hospital
within seconds after I called the switchboard through the intercom by the bed.
Mr. Williams had had a
cardiac arrest.
With lightning speed I
leveled the bed and bent over his mouth, breathing air into his lungs. I positioned my head over his chest and
compressed. One, two,
three. I tried to count. At 15, I moved back to his mouth and breathed
as deeply as I could. Where was
help? Again I compressed and
breathed. Compressed and breathed. He could not die!
“Oh, God,” I prayed. “His daughter is coming. Don’t let it end this way.”
The door burst open. Doctors and nurses poured into the room,
pushing emergency equipment. A doctor
took over the manual compression of the heart.
A tube was inserted through his mouth as an airway. Nurses plunged syringes of medicine into the
intravenous tubing.
I connected the heart
monitor. Nothing. Not a beat.
My own heart pounded. “God, don’t
let it end like this. Not in bitterness
and hatred. His daughter is coming Let her find peace.”
“Stand back,” cried a
doctor. I handed him the paddles for the
electrical shock to the heart. He placed
them on Mr. William’s chest.
Over and over we tried. But nothing. No response.
Mr Williams was dead.
A nurse unplugged the
oxygen. The gurgling stopped. One by one they left, grim and silent.
How could this happen? How? I
stood by his bed, stunned. A cold wind
rattled the window, pelting the panes with snow. Outside – everywhere – seemed a bed of
blackness, cold and dark. How could I face his
daughter?
When I left the room, I saw
her against the wall by a water fountain.
A doctor, who had been in 712 only moments before, stood at her side,
talking to her, gripping her elbow. Then he moved on, leaving her slumped against
the wall.
Such pathetic hurt reflected
from her face. Such wounded eyes. She knew.
The doctor had told her her father was gone.
I took her hand and led her
into the nurses’ lounge. We sat on the
little green stools, neither saying a word.
She stared straight at a pharmaceutical calendar, glass-faced, almost
breakable-looking. “Janie, I’m so
sorry,” I said. It was pitifully
inadequate.
“I never hated him, you
know. I loved him,” she said.
God, please help her, I prayed.
Suddenly she whirled toward
me. “I want to see him.”
My first thought was, Why put yourself through more pain? Seeing him will only make it worse. But I got up and wrapped my arm around
her. We walked slowly down the corridor
to 712. Outside the door I squeezed her
hand, wishing she would change her mind.
She pushed open the door.
We moved to the bed, huddled
together, taking small steps in unison.
Janie leaned over the bed and buried her face in the sheets.
I tried not to look at her,
at this sad, sad good-bye. I backed
against the bedside table. My hand fell
upon a scrap of yellow paper. I picked
it up. I read:
My dearest Janie, I
forgive you. I pray you will also
forgive me. I know that you love me.
I
love you, too. Daddy.
The note was shaking in my
hands as I thrust it toward Janie. She
read it once. Then
twice. Her tortured face grew
radiant. Peace began to glisten in her
eyes. She hugged the scrap of paper to
her breast.
“Thank you, God,” I whispered,
looking up at the window. A few crystal
stars blinked through the blackness. A
snowflake hit the window and melted away, gone forever.
Life seemed as fragile as a
snowflake on the window. But thank you,
God, that relationships, sometimes as fragile as
snowflakes, can be mended together again.
But there is not a moment to spare.
I crept from the room and
hurried to the phone. I would call my
own father. I would say, “I love you.”
Sue Kidd
~/~/~/~/~/~/~/~
The Circus
Once
when I was a teenager, my father and I were standing in line to buy tickets for
the circus. Finally, there was only one
family between us and the ticket counter.
This family made a big impression on me.
There were eight children, all probably under the age of 12.
You
could tell they didn’t have a lot of money.
Their clothes were not expensive, but they were clean. The children were well behaved, all of them
standing in line, two-by-two behind their parents, holding hands. They were excitedly jabbering about the
clowns, elephants and other acts they would see that night. One could sense they had never been to the
circus before. It promised to be a
highlight for their young lives.
The
father and mother were at the head of the pack standing proud as could be. The mother was holding her husband’s hand,
looking up at him as if to say, “You’re my knight in shining armor.” He was
smiling and basking in pride, looking at her as if to reply, “You got that
right.”
The
ticket lady asked the father how many tickets he wanted. He proudly responded, “Please let me buy
eight children’s tickets and two adult tickets so I can take my family to the
circus.”
The
ticket lady quoted the price. The man’s
wife let go of his hand, her head dropped, the man’s lip began to quiver.
The
father leaned a little closer and asked, “How much did you say?” The ticket lady again quoted the price. The man didn’t have enough money. How was he supposed to turn and tell his
eight kids that he didn’t have enough money to take them to the circus?
Seeing
what was going on, my dad put his hand into his pocket, pulled out a $20 bill
and dropped it on the ground. (We were
not wealthy in any sense of the word!)
My father reached down, picked up the bill, tapped the man on the
shoulder and said, “Excuse me, sir, this fell out of
your pocket.”
The
man knew what was going on. He wasn’t
begging for a handout but certainly appreciated the help in a desperate,
heartbreaking, embarrassing situation.
He looked straight into my dad’s eyes, took my dad’s hand in both of
his, squeezed tightly onto the $20 bill, and with his lip quivering and a tear
streaming down his cheek, he replied, “Thank you, thank you, sir. This really means a lot to me and my family.”
My
father and I went back to our car and drove home. We didn’t go to the circus that night, but we
didn’t go without.
Dan Clark
~/~/~/~/~/~/~/~
Stranger at Union Station
It was a small aluminum
cross, not much to look at. A message
was inscribed on it crossword-puzzle fashion, with GOD stamped on the crossbeam so that the O was in the center and LOVES
YOU ran vertically through it.
I
started carrying the cross in my pocket, the way I had carried a “good deed
coin” when I was a Boy Scout. Every time
I helped someone, I moved the cross to the other pocket, just as I had done
with the coin. After a few months the
cross became a reminder not to do good deeds arbitrarily, but to watch for what
God wanted me to do, consciously, each and every day.
Then
I was called back home to
It
would take them a few hours, so I decided to stop at the station’s all-night
restaurant. At least I could
people-watch. Inside it was quiet, no
surprise considering the late hour.
There were a few other customers, waiting half asleep, as I was. I took a table by the entrance and sipped my
coffee.
I noticed a middle-aged
woman slip into a seat at the table catty-corner to mine. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary
about her, but for some reason she caught my attention. She was wearing what I’d call a Hoosier
conservative outfit: a nondescript jacket and a plain dress. She sat quietly, swirls of steam from her
coffee drifting in front of her. She
wore the same bored, tired expression most of us travelers did. Still, I found myself looking up at her again.
Then I heard something: Give her your cross.
The voice seemed to come from
inside me, but the sound wasn’t in my ears or my mind. It was just there. I shook my head, puzzled.
Give her your cross. The same
words.
I glanced around to see if
anyone else had heard the voice. But no
one was even looking in my direction. I
didn’t want to give my cross to a complete strange. It meant something to me. Besides, she didn’t need my cross. She looked fine to me, not like some of the
obviously-down-on-their-luck types I had tried to help in the past.
This is ridiculous, I thought. I got up to leave
when I felt a firm pressure on my chest, as if a huge hand were holding me in
place.
The voice came again, strong
and sure: Tell her it’s from me.
There was such unmistakable
command in the words that I didn’t think to disobey. I reached into my pocket and dug out my
cross, its lightness feeling familiar in my grasp. Then I strode directly to the woman’s table,
thinking I could deliver the gift and escape quickly.
Close up, I noticed her eyes
were vacant. She had her hand positioned
awkwardly, halfway in the purse resting on her lap. I laid the cross on the table and heard
myself say, “God wants me to give you this.”
The woman read the
inscription on it and started to cry.
“Are you okay, ma’am?” I asked,
taken aback.
She nodded and slowly
withdrew her hand from her purse. Shock
hit me full force when I saw
what she was pulling out – a .25-caliber pistol.
“I came here to have my last
cup of coffee,” the woman said. “My
daughter was killed a few months ago, and my husband just left me. I thought God had abandoned me too.”
“You made me realize he’s
still with me.” She cradled the cross in
her palm and read its message once more.
Then she looked down at the gun.
“Please, take it away. I know I’m
going to be all right.”
I removed the ammunition
clip. “I’ll take this. But I think you need to get rid of the gun
yourself,” I
answered carefully, looking her straight in the eye, “so you know you’ll never
be tempted by it again.”
For a few moments her gaze
locked with mine. Then she nodded once
in understanding and returned the pistol to her purse.
“Thank you,” she said,
wrapping her fingers tightly around the metal of the cross. “I have never needed these words more.”
Clutching the cross to her
chest, she walked out the door. I
watched as she disappeared into the night.
Sometimes you can figure out when another person is in need. Other times you are called to the spot where
God and love intersect.
Perry Roll
~/~/~/~/~/~/~/~
Covered by the Cloud
It was a morning in early
March 1945, a clear and sunny day. I was
24 years old and a member of the U.S. Army’s 35th Infantry Division,
137th Infantry, Company I.
Along with several other companies of American troops, we were making
our way through dense woods in the German Rhineland. Our objective was to reach and take the town
of
For hours we had pressed
through an unrelenting thicket. Shortly
after midday word was passed that there was a clearing ahead. At last, we thought, the going would be
easier. But then we approached a large
stone house, behind which huddled a handful of wounded, bleeding soldiers – who
had tried to cross the clearing and failed.
Before us
stretched at least 200 yards of open ground – bordered on the far side by more
thick woods. As the first of us appeared on the edge of
the clearing there was an angry rat-tat-tat, and a ferocious volley of bullets
sent soil spinning as far as we could see.
Three nests of German machine guns, spaced 50 yards apart and protected
by the crest of a small hill to the left, were firing at the field. As we got our bearings it was determined the
machine guns were so well placed that our weapons couldn’t reach them.
To cross that field meant
suicide. Yet we had no choice. The Germans had blockaded every other route
into the town. In order to move on and
secure a victory, we had to move
forward.
I slumped against a tree,
appalled at the grim situation. I
thought of home, of my wife, and my five-month-old son. I had kissed him good-bye just after he was
born. I thought I might never see my
family again, and the possibility was overwhelming.
I dropped to my knees. “God,” I pleaded desperately, “You’ve got to
do something. . . . Please do
something.”
Moments later the order was
given to advance. Grasping my M-1 rifle,
I got to my feet and started forward.
After reaching the edge of the clearing I took a deep breath. But just before I stepped out from the cover,
I glanced to the left.
I stopped and stared in
amazement. A white cloud – a long fluffy
white cloud – had appeared out of nowhere.
It dropped from over the trees and covered the area. The German’s line of fire was obscured by
the thick foggy mist.
All of us bolted into the
clearing and raced for our lives. The
only sounds were of combat boots thudding against the soft earth as men dashed
into the clearing, scrambling to reach the safety of the other side before the
mist lifted. With each step the woods
opposite came closer and closer. I was
almost across! My pulse pounding in my
ears, I lunged into the thicket and threw myself behind a tree.
I turned and watched as other
soldiers following me dove frantically into the woods, some carrying and
dragging the wounded. This has got to be God’s doing, I
thought. I’m going to see what happens now.
The instant the last man
reached safety, the cloud vanished! The
day was again clear and bright. I can’t believe this.
The enemy, apparently
thinking we were still pinned down behind the stone house on the other side,
must have radioed their artillery.
Minutes later the building was blown to bits. But our company was safe and we quickly moved
on.
We reached Ossenburg and went on to secure more areas for the
Allies. But the image of that cloud was
never far from my mind. I had seen the
sort of smoke screens that were sometimes set off to obscure troop activity in
such a situation. That cloud had been
different. It had appeared out of
nowhere and saved our lives.
Two weeks later, as we
bivouacked in eastern
Who could forget her? I
smiled. Everybody called Mrs. Tankersly the prayer warrior. Frankly, I sometimes thought she carried it a
bit too far.
“Well,” continued my mother,
“Mrs. Tankersly telephoned me one morning from the
defense plant where she works. She said
the Lord had awakened her the night before at one o’clock and told her,
‘Spencer January is in serious trouble.
Get up now and pray for him!’”
My mother went on to explain
that Mrs. Tankersly had interceded for me in prayer
until six o’clock the next morning, when she had to go to her job. “She told me the last thing she prayed before
getting off her knees was
this . . .” – here I paused to catch my breath – “’Lord,
whatever danger Spencer is in, just cover him with a cloud!’”
I sat there for a long time
holding the letter in my trembling hands.
My mind raced, quickly calculating.
Yes, the hours Mrs. Tankersly was praying
would have indeed corresponded to the time we were approaching the
clearing. And 6:00
A.M.? With a seven-hour time
difference, her prayer for a cloud would have been uttered at one o’clock –
just the time Company I was getting ready to make its daring dash.
From that moment on, I
intensified my prayer life. For the past
52 years I have gotten up early every morning to pray for others. I am convinced there is no substitute for the
power of prayer and its ability to comfort and sustain others, even those
facing the valley of the shadow of death.
Spencer January
~/~/~/~/~/~/~/~
The Test
Six minutes to six, said the
clock over the information booth in
unfailingly.
Lt. Blandford
remembered one day in particular, the worst of the fighting, when his plane had
been caught in the midst of a pack of enemy planes.
In one of those letters, he
had confessed to her that often he felt fear, and only a few days before this
battle, he had received her answer: “Of course you fear...all brave men
do." Next time you doubt yourself,
I want you to hear my voice reciting to you: 'Yea, though I
walk through the
He was going to hear her
voice now. Four minutes to six.
A girl passed closer to him,
and Lt. Blandford started. she
was wearing a flower, but it was not the little red rose they had agreed upon.
Besides, this girl was only about eighteen, and Hollis Maynel
had told him she was 30. "What of it?" he had answered, "I'm
32." He was 29.
His mind went back to that
book he had read in the training camp. "Of
Human Bondage" it was; and throughout the book were notes in a woman's handwriting. He had never believed that a woman could see
into a man's heart so tenderly, so understandingly. Her name was on the bookplate: Hollis Maynell. He got a hold of a
shipped out, but they had gone on writing. For thirteen
months she had faithfully replied. When
his letters did not arrive, she wrote anyway, and now he believed he loved her,
and she loved him.
But she had refused all his
pleas to send him her photograph. She
had explained: "If your feeling for
me had no reality, what I look like won't matter. Suppose I am beautiful. I'd always be haunted that you had been
taking a chance on just that, and that kind of love would disgust me. Suppose that I'm plain, (and you must admit
that this is more likely), then I'd always fear that you were only going on
writing because you were lonely and had no one else. No, don't ask for my picture. When you come to
One minute to six...he
flipped the pages of the book he held. Then Lt. Blandford's
heart leapt.
A young woman was coming
toward him. Her figure was long and slim;
her blond hair lay back in curls from delicate ears. Her eyes were blue as flowers, her lips and
chin had a gentle firmness. In her pale-green
suit, she was like springtime come alive.
He started toward her, forgetting to notice that she was wearing no
rose, and as he moved, a small, provocative smile curved her lips.
"Going my way,
soldier?" she murmured.
He made one step closer to
her. Then he saw Hollis Maynell.
She was standing almost
directly behind the girl, a woman well past 40, her graying hair tucked under a
worn hat. She was more than plump. Her thick-ankled
feet were thrust into
low-heeled shoes. But she
wore a red rose on her rumpled coat. The
girl in the green suit was walking quickly away.
Blandford felt as though he were being split in two, so keen
was his desire to follow the girl, yet so deep was his longing for the woman
whose spirit had truly companioned and upheld his own, and there she
stood. He could see her pale face was
gentle and sensible; her gray eyes had a warm twinkle.
Lt. Blandford
did not hesitate. His fingers gripped
the worn copy of "Of Human Bondage" which was to identify him to
her. This would not be love, but it
would be something special, a friendship for which he had been and must be ever
grateful...
He squared his shoulders,
saluted, and held the book out toward the woman, although even while he spoke
he felt the bitterness of his disappointment.
"I'm Lt. Blandford, and you're Miss Maynell.
I'm so glad you could meet me. May--may
I take you to dinner?"
The woman's face broadened in
a tolerant smile. "I don't know what
this is all about, son," she answered. "That young lady in the green suit,
she begged me to wear this rose on my coat. And she said that if you asked me
to go out with you, I should tell you she's waiting for you in that restaurant
across the street. She said it was some
kind of test."
~/~/~/~/~/~/~/~
You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore
The elderly caretaker of a peaceful
lonely cemetery received a check every month from a woman, an invalid in a
hospital in a nearby city. The check was
to buy fresh flowers for the grave of her son, who had been killed in an
automobile accident a couple years before.
One day a car drove into the
cemetery and stopped in front of the caretaker’s ivy-covered administration
building. A man was driving the
car. In the back seat sat an elderly
lady, pale as death, her eyes half-closed.
“The lady is too ill to
walk,” the driver told the caretaker.
“Would you mind coming with us to her son’s grave – she has a favor to
ask of you. You see, she is dying, and
she has asked me, as an old family friend, to bring her out here for one last
look at her son’s grave.”
“Is this Mrs. Wilson?” the caretaker
asked. The man nodded.
“Yes, I know who she is. She’s the one who has been sending me a check
every month to put flowers on her son’s grave.”
The caretaker followed the man to the car and got in beside the
woman. She was frail and obviously near
death. But there was something else
about her face, the caretaker noted – the eyes dark
and sullen, hiding some deep, long-lasting hurt.
“I am Mrs. Wilson,” she
whispered. “Every month for the past two
years –“
“Yes, I know. I have attended to it, just as you asked.”
“I have come here today,” she
went on, “because the doctors tell me I have only a few weeks left. I shall not be sorry to go. There is nothing left to live for. But before I die, I wanted to come here for
one last look and to make arrangements with you to keep on placing the flowers
on my son’s grave.”
She seemed exhausted – the
effort to speak sapping her strength.
The car made its way down a narrow, gravel road to the grave. When they reached the grave, the woman, with
what appeared to be great effort, raised herself
slightly and gazed out the window at her son’s tombstone. There was no sound during the moments that
followed – only the chirping of the birds in the tall, old trees scattered
among the graves.
Finally, the caretaker
spoke. “You know, Ma’am, I was always
sorry you kept sending the money for the flowers.”
The woman seemed at first not
to hear. Then slowly she turned toward
him. “Sorry?” she whispered. “Do you realize what you are saying – my son
. . .”
“Yes, I know,” he said
gently. “But, you see, I belong to a
church group that every week visits hospitals, asylums, prisons. There are live people in those places who need cheering up, and most of them love flowers –
they can see them and smell them. That grave
–“ he said, “over there – there’s no one
living, no one to see and smell the beauty of the flowers . . .” he looked
away, his voice trailing off.
The woman did not answer, but
just kept staring at the grave of her son.
After what seemed like hours, she lifted her hand and the man drove them
back to the caretaker’s building. He got
out and without a word they drove off. I’ve offended her, he thought. I
shouldn’t have said what I did.
Some months later, however,
he was astonished to have another visit from the woman. This time there was no driver. She was driving the car herself! The caretaker could hardly believe his eyes.
“You were right,” she told
him, “about the flowers. That’s why
there have been no more checks. After I
got back to the hospital, I couldn’t get your words out of my mind. So I started buying flowers for the others in
the hospital who didn’t have any. It
gave me such a feeling of joy to see how much they enjoyed them – and from a
total stranger. It made them happy, but
more than that, it made me happy.
“The doctors don’t know, “ she went on, “what is suddenly making me well, but I do!”
Bits & Pieces