“Are you crazy? Have you absolutely lost it?” “How could you possibly ever call getting shot and blown completely off of a porch a blessing?” Let’s step back a minute and look back at the time leading up to this occasion. I was a Detroit Police Officer who always worked the streets. I was raised in a smaller town that was similar to Detroit in many ways. It was industrial, rough, poor, in a Great Lakes port city across the state from Detroit. The vehicle engines and countless other products that were produced were sent to Detroit for final assembly. They were produced in Muskegon meaning that, when Detroit was up, so was my hometown of Muskegon Heights and when Detroit was down, so was Muskegon Heights. One difference was – the downturn would come at home before it hit the production in Detroit, and would stay a little longer after Detroit would start to recover. The people were much the same in both cities so, when I went to Detroit, I had to change very little about almost everything. I had been drinking alcoholically since my late teens and thought very little about my blessings. I probably didn’t think I had any. After getting out of the Army, I became a bouncer in a joint/bar. It was a regular stop for a large group of people, men and women, who would bar hop looking for trouble. I didn’t really add to my gratitude list during this time. During the brawls, the house would never call the police but other patrons might. I then saw cops having the same “fun” that I was having, only when they had a shirt ripped off of their back, the city would pay for its replacement. I had to buy my own. These little things added up so, when Grand Rapids Police was recruiting, I signed on. This is where I got my first taste of helping someone outside myself, really helping. After a couple of years, I applied for and was accepted by the Detroit Police Department and moved across the state to there. My drinking was still alcoholic but I discovered that I really liked the idea of helping so many people who were living just as I had and in many cases much worse circumstances. Where, as a kid, I would be extorted out of whatever I had in my pocket just to be allowed to come off my porch, many of these people were being shot if they could not come up with anything to give to even exist. I would have hallucinations upon occasion and sometimes think they were real. On one occasion during a late-night drug raid in Detroit, I was one of the officers pounding on the back door of a drug house in a darkened backyard with a battering ram. We had put a hole in the door and pulled the ram out. The barrel of a shotgun followed the ram out of the hole and I was shot in the chest/stomach area knocking me off the porch. This was one of the 1st times that I had ever worn a protective vest on a drug raid. I remember thinking “That SOB shot me” and then looking down on my body from above seeing it flying in the air thinking “That SOB shot me”. The yard was very dark but it was as if I were looking through a sniper scope because images were dark green and other spaces were a lighter green. I could see and hear everything that was going on around me including my own thoughts, the words of others, the gunfire, the shouting and cursing, and had no sense for time or feeling. I watched this from above and then seemed to come back into my body and heard and felt all going on around me including the pain but now from ground level. Although, when looking from above, I had no sense of time, the entire time lasted probably only seconds. I then got up and finished my job. I thought about this for a long time but was afraid to talk with anyone about it because I thought people would just think I was hallucinating again. I then read several articles about “life after death” experiences and came to believe that this was what happened to me. It wasn’t until a few years later when studying Spirituality that I discovered that mankind has talked about eternal life for seemingly forever. I now have a deeper feeling for what this means because I believe that I am a living, breathing example of it and I no longer fear death. I don’t wish my earth life to end soon because I have so many people who I now really love that I wish to let know that I do. I meet people on a regular basis and want them to know that I love them too. I don’t like everyone that I meet but I love them for the fact that in some way they make my life a little better, even if it is to show me what I don’t want to be myself. I learn from everybody, every event, every thought, everything that occurs to or around me and wish to keep on learning and letting others know that life is not hopeless. So, to answer the topic of Spirituality and counting my blessings, I have been counting mine since the minute I was shot and, with every day that passes I have even more to add to my list. For that, I am TOO BLESSED TO BE STRESSED!