I owe a great deal of my newfound peace and meaning to two very disparate but important figures in my life – the late Rev. Billy Graham, who ministered to Presidents, and who died last year, and the ill-tempered baseball legend Ted Williams, who died in 2002.

He was baseball’s last .400 hitter.

I thought of both them in the past couple of weeks and even years, each time I encounter the various twists and turns and bumps of life, from open-heart surgery to more recent happenings: a $1,000 repair of our barn’s roof; a $5,000 dental bill (up from $4,000) and just yesterday, a crack in our stovetop requiring a new stove.

This at a time when I was priding myself on my money management and was free of any debt. That didn’t last as long as I hoped it would.

How to feel about these things: complaint, rage about sloppy workmanship, bad luck,  call customer service in heaven, write my congresswoman about rising health care costs?

Or can I accept these unbudgeted and unexpected things as a part of life’s ups and downs, victories, and successes? I used to panic all the time when things like this happened, and I don’t panic anymore. I just get to work paying off my debts.

Anger and self-pity are not only ungainly, but they are also a waste of time. They accomplish nothing. Think of the toll lament and anger and complaint take on one’s psyche and soul?

How does all of this come together? How did I get there?

Each of these very different people, in their own way, taught me two of the most important and long-lasting lessons of my life, I think of them often and silently thank them for what they taught me, their philosophies have guided and helped to transform my life.

I am not an easy learner, just ask anyone of my teachers, none of them could teach me a thing. How could an evangelical preacher and a mean baseball star do that?

When I was a journalist, traveling with Graham to write about him, I looked at the price for gas posted at a passing gas station in South Carolina and bitched about the rising cost of things.

Graham asked his driver to pull over and we took a walk in some nearby woods. I think the Rev. Graham didn’t want to scold me in front of the driver, he was a gracious and thoughtful man.

Graham did scold me, wagging his finger, grabbing my shoulders, turning his stark blue eyes on me, they were like drills. He was a tall and striking man with thick, swept-back golden hair and a firm and jutting jaw. I was like having God chew me out.

Graham knew how to get through. He was used to being listened to, often by millions of people on TV at once. There was no blowing him off or ignoring him.

I remember hearing him say this at one of his revivals that I attended, and I remembered it? “The Christian life is not a constant high. God proved His love on the Cross. Racism and injustice and violence sweep our world, bringing a tragic harvest of heartache and death.”

Remember when Christians preached against racism?

I am not a Christian, but I knew what he was saying to me. Life is not a constant high, troubles, and disappointments sweep my world. But acceptance is contagious, like courage. It will get me there.

That day, he took the trouble to warn me about the path I was on, a young reporter he barely knew. As different as we were from one another, I always loved him for caring about what might happen to me. He did not hate people who were different from him, unlike so many of his descendants.

The Rev. Graham cautioned me to not speak poorly of my life, not to complain about rising costs, sloppy business practices (like charging $500 for a glass stovetop), or taxes, the cost of food at the market, or young people today, the boobs in Washington,  the good old days and ways.

He said if I did all that complaining and lamenting, it would change nothing and turn me into a bitter old man. Life was all about things that broke, prices that rose, challenges that were not anticipated. Life is about how we deal with the unexpected, he said.

Life, like death, happens to all of us, he said, both are inevitable, and you have to take the good with the bad and expect both, every day.

Well, I am getting to be an old man.

But I am not a bitter one. And I do not speak poorly of my life, I know it is listening.

I can report that this advice was golden.  I took Billy Graham’s caution very much to heart, I internalized it, it became a part of who I am.

I am not always good at listening, but I listened to him. And I do not lament my life, or dental work, or change, or wallow in nostalgia for the good old days that really weren’t all that good for so many people, including me, or wring my hands about stoves or dental bills or leaky barn roofs.

Graham was a very different kind of person than Ted Williams, a grumpy baseball hero who hated the limelight and refused to acknowledge his adoring fans, including me, I was eight or nine at the time. He was the only superstar I knew of who snarled at children and pushed them aside.

I am not a big sports fan, but I did grow up loving Ted Williams and following him as closely as I could. He might not have been nice, but he could sure hit the baseball.

My father and I had little to do with one another in life. I hardly ever saw him, and that was too often.

I don’t recall we ever did a single thing together in all my life except go to Fenway Park three or four times when Ted Williams, the Red Sox hero outfielder and slugger was playing. My father loved baseball.

I even got to see William’s last appearance in Boston, he ignored the standing ovations at his last at-bat and refused to tip his hat or take a bow, but at least he didn’t spit at anybody which he was prone to do.

And I respected his consistency, if not his humanity.

I never met Williams, he ignored the kids pleading for autographs, but I forgave him and read an interview with him at the height of his career. What was it like, he was asked, to be the only .400  hitter in baseball, year after year?

William’s answer hit me like a lightning bolt.

You have to remember, he said, that being a .400 hitter means that four times out of ten, I hit the ball. But six times out of ten, I don’t. So some people see me as a great success, “but I always remember that I fail more than I succeed.”

How you deal with failure, he said, is much more important than how you deal with success. Anybody can deal with success, he added, very few can accept failure.

Wow, I never once thought of that.

And that, he said, is what life is about. You fail as much or more than you succeed, you strike out a lot more than you hit home runs, and you have to keep that in your head so that you can deal with life as it really is, not as people might like to think it is, or want it to be.

I got this. Why should I be shocked by trouble or challenge or disappointment? Or dental bills, broken stoves or a broken Ridge Cap on a barn? Weren’t they as much a part of life as happy days, victories, money?

I can’t tell you why this stuck in my consciousness, either, but it did. Through William’s words, I saw the reality of life itself, and how these two philosophies – both of them – have helped me to stay grounded in my life.

I took the messages of Graham and Williams to heart, and have never forgotten them, they have helped me get through the hard times that every single person reading this has experienced.

When our four-year-old glass stovetop cracked,  I didn’t get angry or panic about the cost. Life happens all the time, you strike out more than you hit a home run. It shouldn’t have happened, and it shouldn’t cost $500 to replace it (we’re buying a new one instead).

I don’t have to roll over and sing Puff The Magic Dragon to accept life. I just sigh and move on.

The idea is for me to understand that none of us scores 100 in life. Nobody has a batting average like that. And I have more than most people and more than I ever have had, for all these bumps.

When I look at my life – I do not ever speak poorly of it, I don’t get acid indigestion or ulcers – I am successful beyond my imagination.  By my own definition, I’m a superstar. I have a partner I adore, I love my work, I’ve written 26 books, I have millions of hits a year on my blog, I sell dozens of my photographs, live on a beautiful farm with animals I love and learn from, I cherish my work with the Mansion residents and the Bishop Maginn High School.

I am full of hope and promise.

In a sense, both the Rev. Graham and Ted Williams were preaching radical acceptance, although neither one would have put it in those words.

In not speaking poorly of my life, I believe I have found a way to feel strong and safe, and even to be healthy. I accepted my open heart surgery as a part of life, and I was home writing three days after the operation. I ordered a new stove for $500 and it’s coming Thursday.

I worked out a payment plan with the dentist. I don’t have to like these things or tap dance around them. But they don’t have to frighten me or eat me up either.

As I get older, these lessons will stay with me as old and trusted friends. I know they work, I know they are right. I am responsible for my action, but there are much larger things at play than me.