Its holiday time and most people will be seeking new gifts from family, friends, lovers and other people. But I want to thank God for all of the blessings He has given me.
The best thing that God gave me was life, many lives because I should have been dead and gone so many times.
I have been stabbed. I have been shot. I have been ill.
Another gift God gave me was a good, strong brain. He gave me the sense to recognize that gift and the courage, strength and desire to use my brain for good.
My God-given brain gift enabled me to think, to imagine, to create, to compose and to write almost anything and become one of the world’s most known “unknown” journalists!
Years ago right around this time of year I was in a horrific car accident that resulted in damage to my brain.
Regular Gantt Report readers know the story. I couldn’t walk or talk, I couldn’t feed, bathe or clothe myself, I couldn’t exercise but I could still recognize, I could still analyze, I could still think.
I spent months in general hospitals and rehabilitation hospitals, all during the holiday season and afterwards I spent years as an outpatient where I lived at home and had to go back to hospitals for needed physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy and other kinds of rehab therapy.
But I kept my faith because no one could have saved me but God! God took away almost everything I had taken for granted my physical appearance, my strength, my professional career, my bank roll, my credit, my significant other, my friends (?) and more.
I remember lying on a stretcher in the hospital trauma center and the neurological surgeon saying to me, “Mr. Gantt, you have two alternatives. We can give you something and you may be able to get off of this stretcher and go back home.” I asked him, what are the side effects and he said, “The new and untested treatment might kill you”. So, I said, what’s the other alternative and he responded, “You can work hard and rehab yourself”.
I chose option two. Now look at me. When I park in the disabled parking space sometimes I am harassed because people are too stupid to understand that a brain disability is the worst disability you can have. The brain controls everything. And, it takes brain cells longer to repair than any cells in your body. I may never fully recover and I may never be cured of my injury but I look better and can do more than some people that don’t take care of themselves.
Some day, sooner than you think, I’ll be the way singer Rick James was. I’ll be rich, bitch!
What God took from me he gave it back in abundance!
Anyway, I write about my life sometimes to inspire people to believe in God but also believe in you. Don’t be so ungrateful. Appreciate and be thankful for all that God can, has and will do for you!
It’s good to believe in your health providers but doctors can’t do what you and God can do. God won’t let you die until it is time for you to die! (Buy Gantt’s latest book, “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing” onAmazon.com and from bookstores everywhere. Contact Lucius at www.allworldconsultants.net. And, if you want to, “Like” The Gantt Report page on Facebook.)
Lucius is a contributing columnist to NNPA newspapers around the nation, and the author of “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing,” available on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere.