Why Can't I Die?

People ask, with a dreadful diagnosis, and awful symptoms (I can see tumours in the mirror, for Pete's sake!)...why are you still here?

And I don't know. I'd ask my doctor, but I outlived him.

Maybe it's to help Barb with her life and with the dogs, maybe it's to write a few more sonnets... I just don't know, and sometimes I do wonder as to the point of it all.

It's gone on for far too long,

and I feel so alone,

and so far from being strong,

Lord, why can't I come home?

I have done that which You ask,

have tried to write and live in hope,

but I cannot fulfill this task,

and can no longer cope

with the blood and with the pain,

with what makes me weep at night;

why, oh, why must I remain

in this hopeless fight?

And God's answer never fails,

"Accept your Cross, and take the nails."

The real reason I'm staying, of course, is that I never went to a trade school that had surrender in the curriculum, and I see no point in learning it now.

Maybe you can decide to die, but I know that you can decide to live.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is TRUST.

Trust the Lord with all your might,

trust when it's all you can do.

Trust Him in the final fight,

and trust that He will carry you

across the blazing coals of hell,

across the raging storm-tossed seas,

'cross ruined lands you knew so well

where golden years were spent at ease.

Trust that there's a better place

that soon you'll see from His strong arms,

trust that there's a solid grace,

a wall between yourself and harms

that would leave you sore bereft;

trust with all the strength that's left!

Four minutes thirty. OK.

Music from Parsons Ghost, with Go Down Swinging.

Parsons Ghost's debut album is self-produced, and has real country roots; if you like them, support them through iTunes.

Sylvia suggests a simple reason for staying alive...ice cream!