--MYSTERIOUS WAYS~~

--MORE THAN COINCIDENCE~

-- I wasn't sure why I signed up for that exercise class back in 1973. I was 50 years old, and I'd never taken one before. But the ad in the paper jumped out at me. The class would meet in a local church for eight weeks. It would easily fit into my schedule playing the organ at my church I got an odd feeling that I needed to be there.

"Always stretch first," the instructor began. Stand straight. Bend at the waist and touch the floor. Try to touch with your palms." I groaned and strained to my breaking point, but I did it. The rest of the exercises were a lot more fun. More like dancing than working out. I even asked the instructor for a copy of the music, and for about a year I did the routine religiously at home every day. Until life got a little busy and I tapered off. The music got lost. I forgot most of the steps.

In 1998 I was 75, but not feeling my age. I was still keeping up with the rhythym of life. One morning, I was home alone in the TV room when an idea struck me from out of the blue. 'I wonder if I can still touch the floor with my palms.'

Ridiculous, I thought, but the question persisted. Finally I stood up straight, then bent at the waist. Every muscle screamed, every joint crackled. I pressed on, stretching my palms to the floor. 'Why am I doing this?'I kept thinking.

POP! something bulged out of my thigh. A round mass, hard as a rock. Not painful, but scary. Had I pulled a muscle? Burst a blood vessel?

A specialist diagnosed it: "Soft tissue sarcoma." A cancerous tumor. Apparently, it had been growing behind a muscle. "If you'd found it much later," the doctor said, "You could have lost your leg--or worse."

Today I'm 92 years old, and still on my feet. If you ever visit McCoole's at the Historic Red Lion Inn in downtown Quakertown, Pennsylvania, on a Saturday night, you'll find me at the piano from seven to nine, playing the standards, taking requests. The music keeps me feeling young, but it's that exercise I learned in a church that saved my life.~~
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Guidepost/RB