I wrote this story a few years ago as my New Year's column for a Houston area newspaper.  Dodie Osteen, wife of John and mother of Joel, read it a few weeks later at the Lakewood Church service that is televised around the world.  The congregation rose to its feet in a standing ovation, and I got letters and emails from around the world.

It is a wonderful story -- and that has absolutely nothing to do with my authorship of it.  I hope you enjoy reading it.  And I hope that the lady who the story is about will see it and contact me so I can find out how things turned out for her.

Rev. John Osteen, Deceased==> 

Chance Viewing of Television Program at Gallery Furniture Changed Her Life

  By Bill Cherry, Dallas Broker-Realtor

It was New Year's Eve morning.  Manhattan was all but snowed in, and had been for the three days that I had been there.  Both airports were still open, but even I knew it was just a matter of time before they would be closed due to the weather.  Airlines were already cancelling some of their outgoing flights.  I prayed I wouldn't have to spend another day in the city.

While my plane had been delayed for two hours, packed with luggage in the overhead bins and people in every seat, we finally began the trip through the bad weather on our way to Houston.  I was in the middle seat.  The lady next to the window was as an elderly woman making her first plane trip, on her way to see her son and his family.  She had never seen two of his children.

On my right was a well-dressed woman who looked to be in her early thirties.  Instinctively I knew that her clothes were new and her hair and nails had been done the day before.  This trip is a special one for her, I reasoned.

No matter at what altitude the pilot flew or what weather pattern he tried to avoid, the trip from the very beginning was one bump after another.  Snow then sleet then rain slammed against the windows as we moved toward the south.

Without saying a word, the elderly lady took my hand and held it tightly.  The young woman took my other one and then began whispering the "Lord's Prayer."  I was scared, too.  "I wonder if they know that," I thought.  Not to disappoint them, I tried to act reassuringly macho.

About an hour outside of Houston the plane -- then going through rain and lightning --for whatever reason abruptly and without forewarning began free falling straight down.  When the plane caught for a moment before resuming the free fall, luggage bins flew open and things cascaded out and crashed into the aisle.  Some passengers squealed.  And while others said nothing, the odor of fright within the cabin was butter-thick.  No reassurances, explanations or apologies came from the cockpit.   We continued to fall.

Finally the plane caught the right air current and it leveled off.  Would it happen again, we wondered?

"I can't die now," the young lady said to me.  Before I could say anything back to her, she continued, "I'm going back to Houston to see my boyfriend, the most wonderful man I've ever known, and I'm hoping he is going to ask me to marry him."  It would be the first time she would be engaged much less had any promise for marriage, she told me, even though she said she had lived with six different men since she had graduated from high school.

"I was very rebellious.  I drank, did drugs and partied hard.  And I became so addicted that I couldn't hold a job.  All that was left for me was to live on the streets of Houston, begging and turning tricks," she confessed.  Her confession was making me uncomfortable.  I'm like my daddy was.  I prefer going through life as naive as I can possibly remain about some things, and this was one of them.

She went on.  One winter she was living with a man in a barrio near Houston Jim (Mattress Mac) McInvale's Gallery Furniture.  The gas had been turned off in the small apartment because the bill was delinquent.  It was Sunday, and the man she was living with hadn't come home from the night before.  She decided to walk to Gallery Furniture where she could disappear among the customers and browsers and get warm.

She went into the Gallery Furniture's media room, and on one of the televisions that was playing, John Osteen from Lakewood Church was preaching.  She began watching and soon interpreted the message as one that God was sending specially to her. 

The points of the sermon were that she could be forgiven for her past and that Lakewood would help her find redemption and a new life.  All she had to do was come there.

And that's exactly what had happened.  She dried out, a church member got her started at the bottom rung of a women's specialty store business, and after several years of hard work, she had been sent to New York to train to be the manager of her own store.

"My boyfriend's a cross-country truck driver.  I met him at Lakewood.  He's not very well-educated, and he's somewhat rough around the edges," she went on to say, "but he's the most wonderful and thoughtful and loving person I've ever known.  I haven't seen him in four months.  God just can't take me now."

The captain came on the speakers and explained that the free-fall drop was unanticipated and unavoidable, that the remainder of the trip would be rough, and that planes trying to land in Houston were backed up, so we'd be over Dallas for at least another hour.

Finally the captain said that he'd been given permission to land in Houston.  The plane's passengers went up in a roar of cheers.

When we landed, the flight attendant came over and asked the young woman if she would mind staying in her seat for a moment.  They thought she had been overcharged, and they wanted to get the refund to her before she left, the attendant explained.

As the rest of us walked off of the plane, a large smiling man in a cowboy shirt, blue jeans with a huge belt buckle and boots handed each of us a red rose.  And he asked us if we would line up on either side of the door, making a passageway for his girlfriend.  Everyone did.

The last passenger out was the young lady who had been sitting next to me. She ran out of the passageway and through the impromptu rose-holding welcoming committee with the big cowboy standing at the end.  She flew into his arms.  And while he was holding her and turning her around and around as they kissed, the gate attendant motioned for us to form a circle around the couple.

Then he lowered her back to her feet, and without missing a beat, went to his knees, pulled an engagement ring out of his shirt pocket, and began proposing. 

"Oh, my God!" most of the ladies holding roses said in unison.  "He's asking her to marry him!"  The crowd went crazy.

"No, it's by the grace of God," I heard myself saying loud enough to correct them.  Then I reached in my pocket and took out the small silver Jeep Collins cross I always carry.  I walked over to her and put it in her hand and kissed her on the forehead.  I turned to him and said, "Happy New Year, Cowboy.  You're the best, the very best!"

We all laid our roses on the floor around them and went on our way.

Copyright 2003 - William S. Cherry