Your Dying Spouse 463 - Andrew's Victory {FMF}

Andrew wrote this over the past few days...and hopes you find it of some value.

Victory does not lie in the healing of cancer.

It does not lie in staying well enough to accomplish everything on my 'bucket list'...or even a part of it.

It does not lie in reaching peace with my dying. or achieving an epiphany of Heaven.

It's a lot simpler than that.

Victory is continuing to do my best, every day and with every minute, even and especially (as now) when hope seems futile and the darkness of pain gathers me in.

Victory is living for others, because it was never about me.

Victory is facing a failed life, and knowing that it's redeemed by living for one minute...one minute...with a full and open heart.

Victory is being willing to let go of life without grasping, and being willing to fight death without hate.

The ultimate victory is that over despair, and it's one that can be experienced every day.

It doesn't require strength or stamina or learning or Scriptural knowledge, though these certainly help.

You just have to be willing to put aside everything you thought you knew, and embrace the glory and the pain, because they're inseparable. A Jewish carpenter taught me that.

It's kind of cool.

(I don't really have a bucket list...I figure that if you don't value the life you've got enough to prefer it to any 'mountaintop experiences', you're living wrong.)

Music from Chuck Mangione, with Feels So Good....hope it puts a smile on your face.

e pardon my slow response to comments. I do my best, and your comments are really precious to me.

I'm grateful for the energy to have written this. I'm so glad Barbara's stepped in. 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 in a few days!

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.

Your Dying Spouse 462 - Generosity {FMF}

Generosity, from Barbara.

I saw two pieces of information that grabbed my unconscious and has been floating around for days.

"A study found that poor people are more generous then wealthy people."

And from MothersQuotes.com:

Four Things You Can't Recover

The Stone after the Thrown

The Word after it's Said

The Occasion after it's Missed

The Time after it's Gone

I remember my Kentucky Mamaw and Papaw giving everything they had to keep family and extended family fed, and temporary shelter.   They weren't well off and struggled everyday of their life.

Their example was lived out by my Mom who was wealthy in comparison and her generosity lives on in me. Though generosity isn't always food or monetary.  

Each of us walks through life in lack of one sort or another.   Lack of kind uplifting words when none can be found.  Lack of encouragement when anger can only be found.  Lack of inclusion when isolation is overwhelming.  Lack of adventure when self-confidence escapes us.

Yet when we with lack reach out and give with a generous heart what we need to another,  it's amazing how the action pulls us from a inner place of poverty to a place of enrichment, peace, close proximity to God that no other action can.

Who among you will give your child a stone when he asks for bread? 

Define child!

Music from American Authors, with Best Day Of My Life.

If you're interested, you can find Andrew's books on Amazon.

Your Dying Spouse 461 - Better Days Ahead

Being unable to go to church any longer, I hear a lot of TV preachers...I almost exclusively watch Trinity Broadcasting (TBN) these days.

And a lot of them repeat the message that no matter what your situation, your best days are ahead.

As I write this, under the weight of pain I can only describe as evilly, unbelievably harsh, I agree...

...if...

...if I choose to make it so.

God isn't a genie...rub the magic lamp, say the right words, and your problems are solved. Not.

Our God died with blood-flecked foam on His Lips, His lacerated Back torn by the rough wood of the Cross.

By choice.

That wasn't one of His better days, except that it was, because it was the door that led to the Resurrection.

And His Resurrection saved us all.

A good day indeed.

As there's a pretty fair chance I won't be able to use this song next Christmas, I'll give you the Goo Goo Dolls and their lovely (and aptly named) Christmas song, Better Days.

Please pardon my slow response to comments. I do my best, and your comments are really precious to me.

I'm grateful for the energy to have written this. I'm so glad Barbara's stepped in. 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 in a few days!

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.

Your Dying Spouse 460 - Never Too Sick To Laugh

Too ill to write, but how about a smile? We have three heelers.

All girls.

Music from Herman's Hermits, with a classic from the 60s...

Please pardon my slow response to comments. I do my best, and your comments are really precious to me.

I'm grateful for the energy to have written this. I'm so glad Barbara's stepped in. 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 in a few days!

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.

Your Dying Spouse 459 - Blood And Taxes {Andrew - FMF}

Barb finished her brother's taxes - he's starting a business in Indiana - as she's exhausted, so she asked me to step back in.

She's also exhausted because I had a bit of a bleeding problem yesterday, and...well, if you remember Eddie Murphy in Daddy Day Care...the "I missed!" scene...

And before you ask, yes, I do think pretty much everything's a joke.

So this will be short; pain is like something out of a horror movie, and there's absolutely no way to relieve it. It's grotesque, and sometimes (this is new) I wish it would just end. But each time I fall I rise, and God apparently still has things for me to do. (For those dropping in for the first time, pancreatic cancer and, apparently, non-H lymphoma. Lymph nodes under the arms are awful, and I'm doing a Moses, supported by Sylvia and Ladron rather than Aaron and Hur.)

Barb suggested I talk about how I felt about her doing her brother's taxes...glad for her involvement and family, or in a way sad, seeing life sailing by while I wait on an island of pain for the rising tide to drown me?

Easy. Glad, not sad. Barb needs a life that reaches into her future, and it's a future I won't share. She needs family, and involvement. I love her, and want that for her, and it has to be ongoing. She can't just begin that kind of thing after I die; she has to be doing it now, so there is a support system, and a community of which she is already a part.

No reason for sadness; I am so far past being taken up in the tragedy of the thing. Each moment, painful as it may be, and bloody, is still a gift from God. When I walk outside, I know that I may collapse and die, so I savour the sunshine. I love my life more now than ever.

And I'm so impressed with the way Barb handled the taxes!

I'm trying to get her to find sponsorship to train for and then go on a guided expedition to Everest. It's expensive and physically challenging...but if she can do Indiana business taxes, that lady can do ANYTHING.

It'll take a couple of years; and when I am like a golden cloud upon the wind, I shall be waiting for her at the summit.

Music from The Dirges, with Better Days. If you want to know me, please listen to the song. I dare you not to dance!

Please pardon my slow response to comments. I do my best, and your comments are really precious to me.

I'm grateful for the energy to have written this. I'm so glad Barbara's stepped in. 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 in a few days!

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.

Your Dying Spouse 458 - Surely?

If you're interested, you can find Andrew's books on Amazon.

Your Dying Spouse 457 - I Shall Be Released, But Not Yet

Andrew here...yesterday Barb said that I am still alive because I'm too stubborn to die.

True, but not the whole truth. There's also love.

It's the love that I carry within me, for my wife and for our dogs. I don't want to leave them while I can still be useful.

And it's the love that I receive, from this community, and from the blog communities of Books and Such, the Steve Laube Agency, Messy Marriage, and many more.

I'm carried by love atop the waves of a blood-dimmed sea, under a darkening sky that will not see another dawn.

And I go on.

Held by the strength of others, because mine is gone.

And I am grateful.

So let's listen to The Band, and I Shall Be Released, eh? (The Five Minute riay keyword is release...but you probably knew that, eh?)

Please pardon my slow response to comments. I do my best, and your comments are really precious to me.

I'm not sure when or if I'll be back. I'm so glad Barbara's stepped in. 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 in a few days!

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.