A gas station. Rural east Texas. A young man sits in front of the ice machine, and he’s babbling nonsense. He is shirtless. He is dirty. People pass him as they walk into the convenience store.

But one old man doesn’t.

Because this old man has been homeless before. He knows what’s going on. The old man knows that about 30 percent of homeless persons are mentally ill. He knows that 30 percent are addicted. He knows this kid is probably blitzed out of his gourd on a substance.

The old man knows all this because he was once that guy.

The old man makes a few calls. In a few minutes an Episcopal priest and a few other church members are standing before the young shirtless man. They are asking him if he has anywhere to spend the night. They’re offering him a hand.

The young man sees the priest’s collar and he starts to cry.

“Please help me,” the kid sobs. “I don’t want to live like this anymore.”

Within

minutes, the kid is taken to the hospital. An anonymous donor pays for him to visit rehab. The kid is clean within a month. That was 15 years ago. Today, the kid is an employee at the same rehab that saved him.

Cincinnati. Her family moved to this town for work. After a year, she learned her husband was having an affair. Her competition was a 22-year-old. She caught them in the act. And she almost had a nervous breakdown.

After the divorce, she never thought she would love again. So she raised kids on her own. She got a job working at K-Mart. She disappeared into the throngs of working-class Americans.

Until she met Ron. Ron was a widower with three kids of his own. He worked in the stock room. He was cute. One day, he worked up the nerve to ask her out. He asked…

Happy 11th birthday, Becca. I hope you eat enough cake to qualify as a misdemeanor.

There is one thing I want you to remember on this wondrous day:

Whenever you think you’ve had too much cake, whenever you think your tummy can’t hold any more, force yourself to eat ONE more teensy-weensy little slice.

Because one can never eat enough cake.

Being 11 is pretty fun. It is, however, the beginning of the end. Because next year you’ll be 12, well on your way to teenagehood. And you’ll suddenly know it all.

When I was 13, I thought my mother was so incredibly ignorant it was staggering. Then I turned 20 and I was shocked at how much my mother had learned in those seven years.

But you aren’t like me. I was a dense boy. You, on the other hand, are a wise child.

You’ve been through a lot in your life. Your story isn’t mine to tell, but I’ll hit the highlights:

Your biological mother was an addict. You were left lying on your

backside for the first several months of your infancy so that the back of your head was flat. You are blind.

But you were adopted by unbelievably beautiful parents, and you have become the most impressive person I have ever met. Hands down.

For starters, after you went blind, you could have given up. You could have quit trying. Instead, you started taking up new life skills.

You tried out for your school play and landed a major role. You wrote poetry. You took up new musical instruments such as the harp, the cigar-box guitar, the piano, and you started taking singing lessons. You started learning braille.

I’ll never forget when we first met. We were at a restaurant. And do you know what I noticed about you first? You laughed a lot.

You laughed without abandon. Without holding back. You cackled good and…

Margie answered her phone. “Hello?”

“Hello?” said a girl’s voice. “Someone told me your husband worked on old cars?”

“My husband? Where’d you hear that? Who is this?”

Margie’s elderly husband did in fact work on cars. It was a lifelong hobby, and he was pretty good at it. He found cars, bought them for a steal, then resold them. Viva la retirement.

Whenever Margie asked him why he worked on cars, he would always answer, “Why the heck not?” Only he didn’t say “heck.”

“He’s not a professional,” Margie said into the phone. “He doesn’t fix cars for a living, but, well… I don’t know if he’d be interested in helping.”

“Oh, okay, I’m sorry for bothering you, ma’am.”

“What was it you needed, sweetie? Maybe I can at least ask him when he gets home.”

Long silence.

Two strangers. Stuck on the phone.

“Well, ma’am, my car, they say it needs a new transmission. I can’t afford to pay what the mechanic charges. And I really need a car for work.”

“Let me take your number.”

“Ain’t got no number, I’m calling from a payphone.”

“A payphone?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Oh, dear.”

Margie looked at her

side table to see photographs of a girl she once knew. A blond child, much like the girl on the phone. A daughter who overdosed.

“It’s none of my business,” said Margie. “But are you in trouble?”

“I’m okay. It’s just, well…” Long pause. “My parents kicked me out.”

“Honey, I don't mean to pry—and you can tell me to get lost—but may I ask why your parents kicked you out?”

Now there were sniffles on the line. “Well, I’ve been going through a lot of stuff. It’s been...” More sniffs. “Hard, ma’am.”

“Call me Margie.”

“I’m pregnant.”

Margie didn’t want to be nosy, but then, “I want to meet you, sweetheart.”

“This payphone’s about to disconnect, ma’am, it’s telling me…

Tea cakes. Oh, that takes me back.

Yeah, I remember tea cakes. My mother used to hold church get-togethers at our house, with her friends in the Women’s Fundamentalist Brigade.

Each week, they met in our living room to talk about mortal sin, human depravity, the horrors of hell, and dancing.

These upright women were supposed to be reading their Bibles and praying and talking about how bad missionaries have it. But instead, they spoke in hushed whispers about which woman in town had gone into childlabor six months after her own wedding.

Even so, the church meetings at our house were a great event. All the women arrived, wearing fancy clothes. Lots of polyester. Tall hair, laden with enough hairspray to qualify as a fire hazard. Coral lipstick—the official shade of nice women.

Most of the women wore pearls. “But,” my mother was quick to point out on one occasion, “hardly any of us wears REAL pearls.”

“But,” I asked, “if they’re not real, what are they?”

“Whatever was on sale at Belk.”

The living room would smell like

Estée Lauder, Opium, and Chanel No. 5. If you were a little boy, and you were to walk through this room without a gas mask, you would die.

But it’s the tea cakes I remember most. Because tea cakes are essentially big cookies, and I love cookies.

However—and I can’t stress this enough—don’t ever call teacakes “cookies.” Especially in the presence of the woman who baked them, otherwise she will castrate you with quilting shears.

They are “tea cakes.”

The difference between a tea cake and a cookie is subtle but important. A cookie is a large, dense, floury wafer made with sugar, butter, flour, eggs, and milk.

A tea cake, however, is a large, dense floury wafer made with sugar, butter, flour, eggs, and milk.

Is everyone clear on that?

These women would bring tea cakes of all varieties…

I want to tell you a story. In February of 1979, a 7-year-old named Chris Grecius, of Scottsdale, Arizona, found out he had leukemia.

It was the end of the world. No, it was worse than that. It felt like the end of a family. Chris’s mother was devastated.

In the late 1970s, there weren’t many kids coming back from the L-word. Chris was informed that he was dying. It was a living nightmare.

One fateful day, Chris casually remarked to his mother that he wished he could have grown up to become a policeman. For a parent, the news was a knife to the gut.

Chris’s wish was common knowledge, of course. Anyone who knew little Chris, knew that he liked to dress up as a cop and run around the backyard, chasing bad guys, occasionally shouting, “FREEZE!” to neighborhood dogs and various woodland creatures.

But something about this was different. Chris was making an official request.

News of Chris’s interest in the police department spread. In those days, Scottsdale was, essentially, a

big small town, so word got around pretty quickly.

When Chris was hospitalized, a family friend spoke with Arizona Department of Public Safety Officer Ron Cox, and the department launched a plan to make Chris’s wish come true.

Lt. Col. Dick Schaefer of the DPS got involved. He gave Chris a campaign hat, like state troopers wear. He polished one of his old badges and pinned it to Chris’s chest. Then, he officially swore Chris in as Arizona's first and only honorary 7-year-old peace officer.

The police department didn’t stop there. Someone gave Chris a helicopter tour of Phoenix. Chris got to drive a police car. The officers let him talk on the radio.

But the icing on the proverbial cake was when the officers commissioned an official police uniform for Chris. They delivered this uniform to Chris at the hospital that spring, and they made…

You’re going to make it.

I know you don’t feel great right now. I know you’re having a crappy day. A crappy month. A crappy decade. I know this isn’t your best life.

I know your whole world is falling apart. I know your father is dying of pancreatic cancer. I know your daughter just passed away from a drug overdose. I get it.

Your grandchild has life threatening bone cancer. Your car was repossessed last night. Your dog died. You’re ill.

Your husband cheated on you with a younger woman. Your dad has a neurological disease. Your mother passed away. Your dad died by suicide. You are going blind.

You have breast cancer. You’ve lost everything. You’re a young man who was convicted by a jury of your peers, and now you’re probably going to jail. You are an alcoholic, and you don’t know what to do about it.

You’re scared. You don’t sleep. You don’t eat. The doctor is suggesting chemo.

At night, sometimes, you lie there wondering what the point is. Why keep living? Why live a life that’s nothing but pain? You’re starting to

lose steam. You’re starting to get tired.

I don’t blame you. But—and I want you to listen to me closely here—you are going to make it.

I actually believe this. Wholeheartedly. In fact, I would bet a million dollars on it.

Sadly, I don’t have a million bucks because I am an English major. So—let just me empty my wallet here—I will happily bet $11 cash that you are going to be okay.

Now, I know what you’re thinking:

“This schmuck doesn’t even know me. How the heck can he know whether I’ll be okay? He’s just writing a bunch of hyper-emotional B.S. He doesn’t know my life.”

And you know what? You’re absolutely right, to be perfectly frank. For starters, I DON’T know anything, so how can I know whether you’ll…

Ash Wednesday. The first day of Lent. I saw him in a Birmingham supermarket. He was young. Latino. Maybe 11 or 12. He was wandering through the aisles, helping random people.

I have been writing this column for a decade now. Some days it’s a struggle. Some days you can’t find things to write about. Some days you come up dry and resolve to give up and get a job at Old Navy.

Other days, a column falls into your lap. This kid was a gift from the column gods.

I was visiting the supermarket to buy beer and necessities. The kid was in my aisle, helping an elderly woman reach something from the top shelf. I eavesdropped on their conversation.

“You don’t have help me,” said the old lady. “I’m perfectly capable of reaching this on my own.”

“Please, let me,” said the kid in a pronounced Latino accent. “It would be my pleasure to help you.”

I saw the kid again. This time in the Cheez-It aisle. I was buying Bold Cheddar Cheez-It

Grooves. You have not lived until you’ve eaten Bold Cheddar Cheez-It Grooves. The kid was helping someone else. A middle-aged woman. He was lugging the woman’s heavy basket. I was touched.

When the kid passed me, I noticed the ash mark on his forehead. And that’s when I realized today was Ash Wednesday.

I don’t keep up with the traditional church calendar because I did not grow up celebrating many traditionally observed holy days.

Ash Wednesday is a day when millions of Christians around the globe participate in fasting, abstinence and prayer for 40 days until Easter.

Sadly, my family was Southern Baptist. In my religious tradition, we practiced 40 years of uptightness until you got constipated and your preacher ran off to Miami with his secretary.

I followed the boy around the store, taking mental notes.

I saw him in a checkout lane. He…

There was something about the way he walked. I could tell he was a stray. Sometimes you can just tell.

I squatted and called him. “Here boy.” Then I clicked my tongue like Roy Rogers calling Trigger. “C’mon boy.”

He had pitbull in him. That was evident. I could tell by the broad face and the knife-like eyes.

Most U.S. strays are pitbulls. My friend, John, works at animal shelters. He said people buy pitbulls thinking they’ll be cool dogs to have. But they aren’t prepared for stubbornness and tenacity. A pitbull makes a mule look reasonable.

So the dog usually gets canned. Some take the dog to animal shelters. Many don’t. Many exemplary citizens just drop their dogs off on busy highways. To some people, dogs aren’t God’s creatures. To some people, dogs are just lifeless pieces of walking, defecating meat.

I have a pitbull-mix named Otis. He was found walking the streets of Defuniak Springs, Florida. He hadn’t eaten in days.

“Come here, boy.”

The old boy came trotting toward me. He was beautiful. Muscular torso.

Amber eyes. His coat was smoky gray. He was sweeter than a Chilton County peach.

There was blood all over him. Someone had tried to crop his ears, but had butchered him. It looked like they’d cut him with box cutters. His ears were almost completely removed, open wounds, his ear holes were exposed. Blood was caked on his face. He was frightened.

It took a whole hour to gain his trust. When I was sure he trusted me—really trusted me—I lifted him into my truck.

He rode in my passenger seat the whole way to the shelter. I lifted him out of my truck because he was limping badly. Plus, I didn’t want him to run.

I removed my own belt, and used it as a leash. I walked into the animal shelter holding my pants up with half of my…

Father Dave was a good guy. You would have liked him. He had white hair. A warm smile. Good sense of humor. He was Irish to the core.

He was one of those clergymen who just got it. They say he could look at you and you just knew, this guy understands me.

Which is a rarity in the priesthood. A lot of times, a Catholic priest grows numb to the world around him. After all, he’s seen everything. Heard everything. It’s easy to get desensitized.

But not David.

David Gerard O’Connell was born on August 16, 1953, in Cork, Ireland. A sweet baby with a constant smile.

He was born into hard times. Ireland was no cakewalk in the ‘50s. Ireland was pure poverty. Ireland was neither a safe nor a happy place. Nearly 80,000 were unemployed. Half the country was hungry. People died of starvation.

And, bonus, the Catholic church wasn’t making things any easier. Hundreds of thousands of young women who got pregnant outside marriage were forced to give

up their infants, or were sent to mental institutions. It was the Great Depression on steroids.

And that’s the era David was born into. He grew up during a miserable period of world history. He grew up the son of a farmer. He had nothing.

But he was a good kid. Cheerful. Kind. He went to college in Dublin, and when forced with a choice of academic major, he chose to study God.

David could have studied anything he wanted with his bright mind. He could have pursued business. He could have chased after his fortune. But he chose the ministry.

He became an ordained priest at 26 years old. He was baby faced and wholesome. Beautifully naive. He had no earthly idea what he was getting into. Thank God.

The Church sent him to Los Angeles, of all places. A humble boy from Cork, Ireland, sent to…