After a truly brutal weekend, we have no words, so we leave you with Judy Collins, and Both Sides Now.
And may we ask your prayers? This isn't survivable, but we can only ask for courage in the hard days.
Please pardon my slow response to comments. I do my best, and your comments are really precious to me. Barb is answering many of them now. I'm running on fumes, if you don't mind a macho metaphor.
I'm grateful for the energy to have written this. I'm so glad Barbara's stepped in for many of my posts. I'm really not doing well at all.
Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.
Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.
Marley update... been moved to a sanctuary, and Bay County will revise their 'dangerous dog' codes.
WE MADE A DIFFERENCE!
And marley has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.
If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.
Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.
So the fight gets harder. The week since a near-death event has seen new pain, new symptoms, and fatigue that makes every step seem uphill, like I'm forced to walk some hellish Moebius Strip.
And I love life more than ever. I'm happier than I've ever been.
And I'm at peace.
Cancer is only a part of life. Granted, it can seem a pretty huge part when you're doubled over in a pool of blood you've just spit up,and there's no one around and if you're going to get up you have to do it yourself.
But as I was doing just this, recently (fortunately outside, on the dirt!) I noticed a green stone filled with shiny flecks. Don't now what it was, but it made me feel better.
Grace does abound, but I hadn't been looking at God's freely-given gifts. I was only interested in the grace I could make myself.
And that, dear friends, is the flight-path of the famed Equatorial Concentric Bird, which flies in ever-tightening circles until it disappears up its own...uh, tailpipe.
I was so busy washing the window that I never bothered to look through it.
And now at the apparent end of so many things, comes the payoff.
I looked around, and saw so many gentle blessings, none of which I could ever have earned.
I looked within, and saw something I had never expected to see.
A heart that's at peace.
And so, I'm still in the fight. But my heart has finally healed, and when the end does come - and I am working hard to make sure that day is a long way off, yet - that healed and whole heart is what I will carry to Christ, and I will thank Him for keeping it safe.
Music from Switchfoot, with Love Alone Is Worth The Fight.
Please pardon my slow response to comments. I do my best, and your comments are really precious to me. Barb is answering many of them now. I'm running on fumes, if you don't mind a macho metaphor.
I'm grateful for the energy to have written this. I'm so glad Barbara's stepped in for many of my posts. I'm really not doing well at all.
Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.
Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.
Marley update... been moved to a sanctuary, and Bay County will revise their 'dangerous dog' codes.
WE MADE A DIFFERENCE!
And marley has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.
If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.
Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.
So these are dreadful and scary days; a part of me wants to hide from the pain, and especially from the new and ominous symptoms.
My body is telling me that death could come this afternoon, or next week, or months from now, after accelerating pain and humiliation.
But while death can come, life is, right here, right now.
It's my choice to live it.
Over to Jesus Jones, with Right Here Right Now.
Please pardon my slow response to comments. I do my best, and your comments are really precious to me. Barb is answering many of them now. I'm running on fumes, if you don't mind a macho metaphor.
I'm grateful for the energy to have written this. I'm so glad Barbara's stepped in for many of my posts. I'm really not doing well at all.
Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.
Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.
Marley update... been moved to a sanctuary, and Bay County will revise their 'dangerous dog' codes.
WE MADE A DIFFERENCE!
And marley has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.
If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.
Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.
This will be short - my latest near-death thing last week has left me pretty trashed, with sharper pain in more places, and it's getting worse.
I'm not giving up, by any means, but you've got to face it to fight it, yeah?
And in fighting it, I'm not angry. Pancreatic cancer is nasty and humiliating, and non-Hodgkins lymphoma (for which I'm highly symptomatic) is painful and exhausting (and itchy!)...but that's just their nature.
Being angry at them is like being angry at a boulder. And then kicking it.
I could be angry at a health-care system that spit me out when I could no longer work, and leaves me with no affordable options (the premiums on the cheapest plans are unaffordable, let alone the high deductibles they carry...and I'm not about to leave Barb burdened with debt when I die). So I could be angry at the heal-care system, and angry at the government for completely screwing it up under the previous administration.
But again, what's the point? The high-priced system we have grew organically from prevailing economic and societal conditions, and the government meant well. They tried to fix a problem that is probably fundamentally insoluble in the short run.
So that leaves...God! I can shake my fist at God, and scream at Him...and He promises to listen! At least I can make Him feel really bad, yeah?
Trouble is, I'm not mad at God. I don't think that He capriciously tossed me into the fire, just to make me 'draw closer to Him'. That's like beating a horse to get it to love you; you may break it, but you'll never have a steed. God's not like that.
So maybe this was all random, just a product of free will in Creation that was made necessary by original Sin...
Or maybe it's all part of a purpose that I can't begin to comprehend, and maybe this blog is part of that purpose.
Maybe I was just the right individual to pass along this message, or maybe I was in the wrong place at the right time, and my head was reshaped to fit this metaphorical hat.
Maybe it's all these, or none of these.
It doesn't matter.
Anger won't solve anything, and it won't make me feel better.
The only thing that will make me feel better is knowing that, at the end of the day, I was the best and kindest I could be.
How about some Cat Stevens, with Another Saturday Night?
Please pardon my slow response to comments. I do my best, and your comments are really precious to me. Barb is answering many of them now. I'm running on fumes, if you don't mind a macho metaphor.
I'm grateful for the energy to have written this. I'm so glad Barbara's stepped in for many of my posts. I'm really not doing well at all.
Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.
Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.
Marley update... been moved to a sanctuary, and Bay County will revise their 'dangerous dog' codes.
WE MADE A DIFFERENCE!
And marley has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.
If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.
Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.
Well, it happened again, another near-death event. Yesterday (Wednesday, June 6, 2018).
It was just so awful; I could feel - and hear - heart and breath come to a stop. (Want to know how it sounds? A groan, like a rusty gate slamming shut for the last time. I don't want to hear that ever again.)
And it hurt, worse than anything I have ever known. IT HURT.
I was standing in the living room, and pitched backwards onto a settee. Completely paralyzed, and just a passenger, waiting.
The service dogs - Sylvia, Ladron, and Strawberry, all girls - leapt into action. Syl jumped up and down on my chest, and as light and hearing faded she was roaring into my face.
And Lardon and Strawberry...well.
How do I describe this? The front door opened, and Jesus - not looking anything like He's even been painted - walked in, utterly recognizable, surrounded by bright-glowing coloured fog and sparkly sparkle-things. He extended His Hand to me.
I couldn't reach back, or, for that matter, resist.
And then Ladron and Strawberry stopped Him. Jumping and snapping - I suspect He was bitten - they held Him back.
Not our Dad. Not today. NO!
He tried to reach around, and past, and then just kind of waved (Later!), turned, and went out. The door closed behind Him without His touching it. A few sparklies hung in the air, bright as the sun.
And I took a ragged, painful breath. It hurt worse than anything so far.
It was hours before I could move, and I was shaky and vague through the evening. When Barb got home she was surprised I was on my feet at all. Nearly wasn't, but each step I could take was a needed step beck into life.
Today was a day to take it easy...but that's really not my style. I didn't do the normal workout of pushups and chinups and weights and other stuff. I did more.
When you're hit, you have to take the punch, and then come off the mat and deliver a left straight hard enough to flatten Cleveland.
It hurt, doing that...my God, did it hurt, and it still does.
I'll cry tomorrow.
BecauseI will be here tomorrow.
And the sparklies still hang in the air.
Please pardon my slow response to comments. I do my best, and your comments are really precious to me. Barb is answering many of them now. I'm running on fumes, if you don't mind a macho metaphor.
I'm grateful for the energy to have written this. I'm so glad Barbara's stepped in for many of my posts. I'm really not doing well at all.
Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.
Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.
Marley update... been moved to a sanctuary, and Bay County will revise their 'dangerous dog' codes.
WE MADE A DIFFERENCE!
And marley has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.
If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.
Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.
