Why Did God Seat Me Next to the Toilet?

By Dr. Frank J. Nice

Our God is a God who is in total control of all that happens to the whole world and to each of us individually. God can allow or prevent bad things from happening. Of course, most of us desire that God would prevent bad things from happening. When we are seated next to the

• Language: English
• Publisher: Authors Press
• Release date: Feb 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9781643149257

Dr. Frank J. Nice

Dr. Frank J. Nice has practiced as a consultant, lecturer, and author on medications and breastfeeding for 46 years. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Pharmacy, a Masters Degree in Pharmacy Administration, Masters and Doctorate Degrees in Public Administration, and Certification in Public Health Pharmacy. He retired after 43 years of government service, including 30 years of distinguished service with the US Public Health Service, 29 years at the National Institutes of Health, and five years at the Food and Drug Administration.Dr. Nice currently is self-employed as a consultant and President, Nice Breastfeeding LLC and Dr. Nice Natural Products, LLC. He has authored many books, including Haiti: Beyond Belief; Cuddled and Carried Karese' m epi Pote'm, Why Did God Seat Me Next To The Toilet?, SOS: Need Pierogi Desperately!: The Coronavirus Snackdown Smackdown Lockdown, The Galactagogue Recipe Book; The Breastfeeding Family's Guide to Nonprescription Drugs and Everyday Products (formerly, Nonprescription Drugs for the Breastfeeding Mother) and Recreational Drugs and Drugs Used To Treat Addicted Mothers: Impact On Pregnancy And Breastfeeding. He also has authored over four dozen peer-reviewed articles on the use of prescription medications, recreational drugs, Over-the-Counter (OTC) products, and herbals during breastfeeding, in addition to articles and book chapters on medical missions, the use of power, epilepsy, and work characteristics of health care professionals.Dr. Nice has organized over 70 medical missions to the country of Haiti and has been on the ground 24 times. He founded and continues to support a 13-grade school and orphanage for 550 students, including over 50 orphans. Twenty-four of the students and orphans now have the opportunity to go to universities in Haiti to pursue careers in pharmacy, medicine, nursing, agronomy, and public administration after graduating from the school/orphanage. These students are the hope of Haiti.

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Copyright © 2024 by Dr. Frank J. Nice

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 978-1-64314-924-0 (Paperback)

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FOREWORD

When the Servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning an army of horse and chariots had surrounded the city. Oh, my Lord! What shall we do? the servant asked.

Don’t be afraid the prophet answered. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.

And Elisha prayed, Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see. Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

—2 Kings 6:15–17 (

niv

)

When I met Dr.

Nice next to the toilet on the plane, it was unclear why we met and how much of an impact that meeting would have on our lives. That conversation was the catalyst of this very book. Like the servant who was with Elisha, it was an answer to prayer that God opened our eyes.

Over my lifetime, God has put me in situations that can only be classified as Miracles Divine Providence. Early in my life I wrestled with God like Jacob in the book of Genesis and did not see some of these events as anything special or unique. In some cases, I blatantly refused to see. I would instead look the other way and ignore the wonderful light God was shining down on me. I wrestled with God and ran from God. However, as time has passed and God has revealed to me His miracles, it becomes more and more clear that God was shining His light on me all along.

Here are two good examples.

An example of not seeing.

I walked onto an elevator in the spring of 1986 where a well-dressed man asked me if I had ever considered a career in insurance with New York Life. I was just finishing up my undergraduate degree at Oregon State University, and I had accepted an internship for my last quarter of my senior year at an ad agency named Kobasic, Harris & Savage in Portland, Oregon. I shared with him with sarcastic humor that I wanted to be in advertising and had my goals all set. He encouraged me to come by the New York Life office in the same building and find out more about a career in the insurance and planning business. After meeting him a few more times on the elevator, I half-heartedly went to his office and listened to what he had to say about New York Life. I distinctly remember telling someone in an interview in 1986 that there were two jobs I would never do: sell copiers or sell insurance. Thirty-four years later, I am sitting in my office writing this foreword as the principal of Wild Olive Insurance and Financial Services and have been a financial professional for over sixteen years. Yes, you guessed it: I did go to work for New York Life but not in 1986 but in 2004. Interesting enough, I also worked in the copier industry selling copiers for a decade before going to work with New York Life. Was God calling me into a career in copiers and insurance back in 1986? Was I like Elijah’s servant blind at that time to God’s plans?

An example of seeing.

Last December my daughter Kelsey was at her grandmother’s home in the Midwest. We connected on the iPhone one afternoon to catch up on the holiday activities. During our conversation, she shared with me that she was in her grandfather’s huge library. She put me on FaceTime and showed me the wonderful collection of Bibles that were neatly placed on one of the shelves. As she moved her phone down the row of Bibles FaceTiming me so we could admire the various versions, bindings, and ages of our favorite book, I was inspired to ask her to take a specific Bible off the shelf. While she was taking it off the shelf, I suggested that we look inside the Bible to see what her grandpa had underlined or written in the margins that would be a message to us today. As she quickly dropped to the floor and laid the iPhone next to her, all I could see were the tiles in the ceiling and all I could hear was the pages of the Bible flipping and my daughter’s voice as she went from the beginning of the Bible toward the end. Kelsey said, Dad, I don’t think he underlined anything in this one as she kept turning page after page. Suddenly the mood changed from disappointment to excitement as she exclaimed Oh, Dad.

What? I asked.

She quickly picked up the iPhone and showed me that stuck inside the book of Isaiah was my business card that I had given my father in law in 1989 thirty years earlier. She quickly took a picture of this and sent it to me. I asked her to search through the rest of the Bible to see if anything else was in the Bible or underlined as a message to us. As she searched through the New Testament, she found an article stuck between two pages in Romans 8. The article was all about the meaning of apocalyptic, and inside the first paragraph, it made mention of the word apocrypha, i.e., things hidden. Things hidden, like my business card, so well hidden in that Bible placed there thirty years ago on a shelf with an entire stack of other Bibles. Was this a coincidence? I think not. Miracles happen. Are your eyes open?

During our lives we may think, feel, or believe that we are put by the toilet on the plane in life, only to find that God put us there for a reason. Once we ask God to reveal the truth around every encounter and every incident, we will stop phrases like, is not that weird how this or that happened or was not that a coincidence that this happened or that happened.

What if there was no serendipity, no by chance, no accidents?

Instead, what if you and I believed that everything happened for a reason and that with the revelation, it would be shown to us?

In Matthew 10, the blind man begs for Jesus to give him his sight. Jesus says, What do you want me to do for you? The blind man says, I want to see.

GO, said Jesus, your faith has healed you. Immediately, he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.

As Dr. Nice, my friend Frank, tells the story of his life in this book, you will see that the power of God’s will is in every detail and the purpose of life’s excitement, tragedy, and successes is all for His glory.

So next time you get placed by the Toilet in Life, stop and ask God to reveal to you the truth behind this smelly, stinky situation and look for the pure, the powerful, and the positive that is coming out of the stench.

Look to Jesus Christ for the truth, the miracles, the Divine Providence, and the revelation in your own life.

Ask JESUS.

Rabbi, I want to see.

Enthusiastically,

J. Darren Wallace

PREFACE

WHY DID GOD SEAT ME NEXT

TO THE AIRPLANE TOILET?

TSA

Need I Say More?

At the end of

a several days trip to the United States Southwest to give several breastfeeding (yes, breastfeeding) lectures, I printed out my boarding passes. I have TSA PreCheck, but my boarding passes traveling to the breastfeeding conference did not state TSA PreCheck. It was not a big deal as my wife and I left very early in the morning, and the security lines at the departing airport were short. God was good this time as my departing boarding passes for the return trip now had TSA PreCheck printed on them.

The next day, we made it to the airport better than we usually do when I use a rental car. Having been born over seventy-four years ago, the only GPS I use in a car is my wife. There are times when I panic and tend not to follow her directions. But this time, we made good time with no mistakes to the car rental area. My reward was a good job! from my wife. Happy wife, happy life! We got right on the shuttle bus and to the airport well in time. An airline attendant helped me navigate the kiosk after seeing me feint total ignorance (I despise impersonal kiosks) of the process, tagged my check-in luggage, and checked us in. Next up was TSA PreCheck. Life was so good, especially being inside an airport.

The lines at TSA PreCheck were not bad despite the airport being swamped with students on spring break. What a break to have TSA PreCheck during spring break. The PreCheck meant not having to remove shoes, remove belts, and jackets, in addition to not having to go through the naked body scanner. After we got all of our belongings, including my fanny pack (sorry, at my age, I did not know it was no longer acceptable to wear one) on the conveyor belt, my wife and I were told to take off our jackets. As soon as we removed our jackets, the TSA guard grabbed my wife’s jacket and threw it on the other conveyor belt, and now we had two conveyor belts to monitor to ensure all of our belongings came out the other side. My wife made it through the X-ray machine, but I did not. I was now told to take off my belt. After doing so, I just managed in time to get it on the original conveyor belt that had most of our possessions.

Making it through the X-ray machine the second time, the guard once again stopped me, informing me that my hands had to be patted down. I thought, My hands! While all of this was going on, my wife waited and watched until her jacket came out of the second conveyor belt. After affirming that I had nothing in my hands, I started to the conveyor belt with the rest of our belongings. Before I could get there, a young woman passenger looked at me and said, Frank! Looking right at her, I knew her from somewhere. When she said, Amy, I realized it was a former pharmacy student and her husband whom I last had seen three years ago. Amy stays in contact by e-mail, as we coauthored both an article and book on medications and breastfeeding. After some quick hugs among the four of us, Amy said she had to hurry to make her flight, and she and her husband ran off. Wow! Who would have ever believed this as there are no coincidences with God?

Hearing the security guard at my conveyor belt yelling that someone forgot their keys brought me back to the reality that I had to get all my stuff. I glanced quickly at the keys she was holding and felt sorry for whomever left them behind. I went over to my possessions still sitting at the end of the belt after having come through the scanner. I collected everything in sight and then realized my fanny pack was gone. My first thought was that in all the confusion someone stole it. The fanny pack contained my wallet, keys, coins, IDs, credit cards, boarding passes, and a pack of Tic Tacs. I ran over to the TSA guard who had delayed me getting through security and told him my fanny pack and all of its contents were missing. He checked the belt everywhere but could not find them. He assured me it was somewhere; he just did not know where. The female guard told me that only once was a wallet ever stolen, and that there were cameras everywhere. The guy who stole the wallet in the past was apprehended quickly. The other guard kept insisting that the fanny pack was somewhere, but he did not know just where. If it was somewhere, it had to be stuck in the scanner, but the scanner guard kept looking at the scanner screen and could see nothing. So the scanner was shut down, shutting down the passenger line (so much for TSA PreCheck right now) as I ran around announcing all the stuff that I was about to lose and have to replace, let alone not being able to board the plane and even get back home without any identification.

I could not believe that TSA could not just open the scanner and physically see what might still be inside. The guard stuck his hand inside and started pulling out all the individual objects that had been in my fanny pack. I stuck my hand inside and located the fanny pack but