Earlier this year, I hired a man who is an expert at optimizing websites for local Google search results. I agreed to pay him $900 per month to optimize my website at PeoriaInjuryLawCenter.com. For the purpose of this article, I’m going to call him “Jim.”
During the week, I do my best to attend Mass every day. Because Sacred Heart Church is only three blocks from my office, I usually end up walking there for the midday Mass, which starts at 12:05 p.m. Ordinarily there are 30 to 50 people who attend that particular Mass. About half of the people work downtown and the other half are people who are either retired or do not have a job that keeps them from driving downtown to attend the Mass.
A few weeks ago, my daughter Anna had a birthday party at her home. Anna has five children. They range in age from one-year-old to nine years old. After the party was over, I walked into Anna’s kitchen to say goodbye to her. When I entered the kitchen, I heard her two-year-old son Peter ask, “Mom, can I wear my vestment?” Anna replied, “Yes, I’ll get it for you in a few minutes.”
Last week I told you about the nice-guy prisoner who had a lot going for him but ended up in prison because he did “stupid stuff.” For the purpose of this article, I’m going to call him “Rick.” When Rick and I met in my office, he told me that after graduating from high school, he attended a trade school and became certified in a well-known trade. He was later hired by a company that paid him $24 per hour to work at his chosen trade.
It’s been a couple of years since my three youngest daughters — Mary, Christine, and Teresa — stopped describing boys to me in the way they had always described them. Before they stopped, whenever they talked about a new boy they had met and liked, they focused on how nice he was. They would say, “He’s such a nice guy. You can’t help but like him.”
Five years ago, in an Adoration Letter article titled “A Prayer for a Beating Heart,” I asked for prayers for my wife, Georgette. In the article, I wrote about a genetic condition that she had that caused the wall of one of the ventricles of her heart to become so thick that her heart was unable to supply her body with a sufficient amount of oxygenated blood. Her health was quickly deteriorating and the only way to correct the problem was through open-heart surgery, which was scheduled for June 16, 2010.
After I graduated from Saint Louis University law school in 1982, my wife and I moved back to Peoria. At that time, my wife was pregnant with our second child. Shortly after returning to Peoria, I began teaching CCD classes on Sunday mornings at St. Sharbel Catholic Church to seventh- and eighth-grade students.