PERSONAL COURAGE GIVES SPECIAL SPIRIT TO HOLIDAY

This is the season of hope. While there are stories of courage and perseverance throughout the year, a special poignance can be attached to them during the Christmas holidays. Two recent stories of local interest point out how personal fortitude and optimism have turned adversity into achievement for individuals from this area.

One story involves a Bollinger County native, Mitchell Dane Goskie, whose life was almost ended at age 14 by a motorcycle accident. The accident left Goskie with a severed trachea and esophagus, and a prognosis he would never talk again. For five years, he could breathe only through a tube in his neck. Now, at age 23, Goskie is a professional singer; he has recorded an album of Christian music and will perform at a Cape Girardeau church Sunday and at Southeast Missouri State University in January. He credits his recovery to strong religious faith and the dedication of loved ones and doctors; he is returning that commitment with a ministry of music and a message of life.

Another uplifting story involves a Cape Girardeau woman, Carrie Smith, who was injured in an automobile accident early this fall. The wreck left her paralyzed from the waist down and hospitalized and in rehabilitation for several months. Always an active individual, Smith has not let her misfortune descend into despair. She has made plans to resume an education interrupted by her accident and expects to return in January to Murray State University, where she is studying to become an elementary school teacher. Rather than give in to her difficulties, she has decided to work around them.

Again, stories of this type are not exclusive to this time of year. Their uniqueness can not even be claimed, since others in our society demonstrate small, mostly unnoticed acts of courage every day. Still, the holiday season, based in the miracles that make up our spiritual beliefs, provides a proper framework; this season, above all others, allows us to believe that all things are possible. We admire the capacity of individuals to overcome enormous hardships and we take from them an optimism truly suitable for this time of year.