This is a true story about a self-employed carpenter who was struggling with his life. He had many of the common problems carpenters have. He had been in trouble for drinking and using drugs and had been forced to go to a treatment center many years before for his problems. He had been able to get help for those problems, but he still struggled a lot to make ends meet, especially in his financial life. He was also having a lot of trouble finding the right girlfriend to stay with. No one seemed good enough for him, so he jumped from girlfriend to girlfriend, never really finding true love. In fact, true love, he thought, was really just a “lie” and the world was generally a selfish place where he hoped he could find his way through some vague miracle.
One day, the carpenter met a strange little man named “Walking Bob”. Walking Bob was a very interesting person because he had fought in the Korean War as a colonel and had come back to the United States as a celebrated soldier. The carpenter really admired Walking Bob because he heard that he had been a golden glove boxer for many years. He was a little gray haired man with many great stories to tell.
Probably the most interesting story Walking Bob had to tell was an extreme tragedy that had befallen him many years after the war. He had returned to the United States and married his sweetheart from college. He had also raised two children who eventually grew up and went off to college. One day, when Walking Bob’s wife had gone to the airport to pick up the two children, they were involved in a terrible car accident. Walking Bob’s wife and her two children were killed and Walking Bob was left alone. Due to this terrible tragedy, Walking Bob became very depressed and suffered a heart attack. He was hospitalized and the doctors did not know if he would live. He woke up from his hospital bed and told the doctors and nurses that he was leaving the hospital and going for a cross-country ride.
The doctors and nurses tried hard to change Walking Bob’s mind. They told him that he was “mentally unstable”, but Walking Bob insisted on his plan to leave the hospital. He started walking for days and days and told the story of him to the people he met along the way. He also read a book called A Course in Miracles as he walked. He practiced the lessons that were written in the book and talked to the people he met as he walked.
One day, while walking down his path, he visited a charity. Inside, there were some children who were terminally ill and Walking Bob began to cry. People had been giving him money as he told his story, but now, hearing the stories of these children, he knew that the money he had been raising should go to these children instead of him. He gave everything he had and kept walking. He began to collect more and more money as he walked and told his story, as well as the story of these children. As he raised money, he continued to donate it all to the charity known as the Make a Wish Foundation.
The self-employed carpenter struggling with his life was lucky enough to meet Walking Bob. He listened to the story Walking Bob was telling and asked if he could meet him again and talk some more. Walking Bob decided to take a break and stay in the town where the carpenter worked so the two of them could talk every day. Walking Bob told him about “A Course in Miracles” and told him that he should read the book and practice the lessons. The carpenter thought the book was a bit strange, but he agreed to read it just to please Walking Bob. Every day Walking Bob talked to the carpenter about his war stories and his Golden Gloves Boxing days and also about A Course in Miracles.
Eventually, the carpenter began to practice the Course’s lessons more seriously and noticed that his life was actually improving. He met a girl whom he really loved and she asked him to move with him to a foreign country. The girl’s family was very poor and she hoped that the carpenter could help her and her family out of the trouble they were in. The carpenter was very scared at first, but he remembered a line from the book Walking Bob had given him. He said: “The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing cannot have an opposite.”
After many months, the carpenter packed his bags and boarded a plane. He found a job in this faraway country and eventually started his own business. He practiced the lessons in the book and followed his heart. His life got better and better. His venture was ultimately very successful and he married the girl he had fallen in love with years before. He helped his family out of the state of poverty in which they found themselves and also began to help other people in the impoverished country. After fighting for so many years like the salt of the Earth, he had become like Walking Bob and no longer fought, but he was happier than ever.