It's getting just a bit easier to blog using the phone. Either I'm getting smarter or the phone's decided to stoop to my level.
Life, however, is not easier...these tumours hurt, and there's a new one of the chest-wall variety. So much for the summer beach bod.
And that doesn't include the tennis-ball sized lump in my navel. Loose shirts, now.
And yet...
Some, looking at me, say it's time
to lean into a morphine haze,
embrace a gentle and sublime
way to pass these pain-wracked days.
I might partake of smooth-jazz tunes,
doze through a DVD,
but suggesting this assumes
that I'm no longer me.
For good or ill, I'm bred to fight
and in my life stand taller
when on the other side of night,
for me, there lies Valhalla,
where, as holder of the secret knows,
the fight goes on, and strong mead flows.
In the absence of music (Blogger won't let me link a video on my phone), here are a couple of things pictures of Sylvia, my blog's public face, on an ice-cream run.
OK, how could God be lonely? He's got everything, right?
Except...us.
He doesn't have us...we have to give ourselves to Him freely. Otherwise we're puppets.
And it's not OK when we don't give ourselves. He's hurt.
Witness the Garden of Gethsemane...Jesus asked His three closest friends to watch with Him while He prayed...and they fell asleep.
They say that God has got it all,
but as Christ neared His mortal end,
He felt the desperate need to call
upon the love of His best friends.
He went with Peter, John and James,
that while He prayed, watch they might keep;
when he returned, He called their names,
and found they'd fallen fast asleep.
He woke them, and then asked again,
that they might help Him through His trial,
but they couldn't understand His pain,
His sweat of blood, and all the while
He took the cup that would not pass,
they dozed upon the dewy grass.
So there you go. You have a power God doesn't have...the choice to give yourself to Him...
...or not.
What will you do?
This became important to me lately, because while I received a healing from a lethal and sudden illness, the healing didn't apply to cancer...on that front, things are worse.
And God said, "Cancer is your Calvary. The healing...it was Me, being your Simon of Cyrene."
There was a wistfulness in His tone, a hesitancy.
As if He thought that I might respond in anger, and cast Him aside, in anger and disappointment.
I had the power, in that moment, to break His heart, and there was nothing He could do about it.
I didn't, but that's a story for another time.
Music from Joan Osborne, with One Of Us. (Please click here if your device doesn't display the video.)
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.
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.
Yes, since the sustained 107 fever thing, I talk with God. Didn't used to, but now He just walks in, makes Himself at home, and we have these conversations.
And they don't always go the way I think they'll go.
Recently, I was thinking how grateful I am for this second chance, to not be the 'old me'.
And God said, "I like the old you."
Huh?
The day before yesterday, the cancer pain's back, especially the metastasis in my right femur, and I'm saying - out loud - "Pain is just weakness being forced from the body."
God blew a Bronx cheer, and then said, "Pain can be a warning, and it's always a byproduct. it's just pain, and being proud of how much you can tolerate is infantile...something like being proud of the smelliest bowel movement."
Oh-kay.
I don't think God likes pain. Recently I was watching the Hillsong Channel, and a preacher said that "Great things are birthed in pain." Behind me I heard a Bronx cheer (God does seem to like those).
I guess maybe He's seen more than enough hurt, and so I don't use my old favourite expressions, like "Blood makes the grass grow green."
Offending the Almighty's a bad idea.
The point of this is that in the past, I really didn't believe people talked to God. I thought they were having conversations in their own heads, perhaps informed by the Almighty, but that's as far as it went.
To be honest, I didn't really pay attention to what they said, tuning them out after "God said to me..."
No more.
Aside from the reality of His Voice (He's got a distinct Chicago accent, in case you were wondering), the deciding 'reality check' for me is that He flat out contradicts things that I say, and for a long time held dear ("Pain is merely weakness being forced from the body.")
A God who backed up my prejudices would be fun, be would also be a little-'g' god.
This dude is willing to fight me (like it's a contest, right?)...He's my Big G God.
Some folks said they talk to
God,
and I thought, well, maybe
true,
but it sounds to me, like,
really odd;
hope I don't cross paths
with you.
And then I faced my quiet
death,
and I saw the Other Side;
my lungs were filled with
Holy Breath,
and I learned how to abide
with a God who talked a lot,
'bout life and death and
love and pain,
some things He said, well, I
forgot,
but it seems enough remain
that the God I knew and formally respected,
has become Lord of the
Unexpected.
The only song I could think of that was about talking is Toby Keith's I Wanna Talk About Me, so here goes. I rather doubt the video could be made in today's cultural climate, which makes it either more worth watching or a good reason to turn my metaphorical picture to the wall. (If your device doesn't play the video, please click here.)
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.
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.
You think that having experienced a healing miracle, you're golden.
But that's not, and can never be, the case. Even Lazarus had to die.
I survived a sustained fever of 107 with the pre-existing conditions of pancreatic cancer and non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and that is miracle enough in itself.
But I wondered...might the cancers have been burned out, too?
For a few days I felt so good, I thought maybe they had.
But now, some of the old symptoms are resurfacing. I'd say it's discouraging, but that seems a bit ungrateful for the miracle I received.
I did receive a miracle, and if its purpose was to return me, alive and in good spirits, to the dire straits of cancer, it's still a miracle, and good enough for me.
I managed to answer the comments from last week's post, and will try to do the same this week...and I was able to visit some of you. Not easy, but y'all are worth it, and I do get lonely.
I thought that past mirac'lous cure,
my trials would surely see their end,
and all that I must now endure
was a body on the mend,
but it does not work this way,
not here, not in mortality,
and malignancies of yesterday
may be yet bound up in me.
I know that Lazarus came forth,
but in the end, he had to die
as all must do who walk the earth,
eyes turned unto the arching sky
in faith of the Elysian plain
where no cancer dare remain.
having used the term 'dire straits' above, what can be more appropriate than to offer Dire Straits, with their iconic Walk Of Life? (Please click here if the video doesn't come up on your device.)
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.
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.
It's the cry of everyone besieged by circumstance or illness..."I want my life back!"
And now, having survived a sustained fever of 107 with cancer as a pre-existing condition, something that should have killed me...I have my life back.
What should I do with it?
God has an answer, for now. (Yes, I talk with God these days. He's a good conversationalist.)
Anyway, here's God's suggestion as to what I should do with my life:
"Right now, nothing. This is your time to heal. You're a skeleton, and you have to let Me grow purpose on your bones. I am not in any rush, so enjoy this time, and I will enjoy it with you."
So that's what I'll do. I will continue to write blog posts, though answering comments is still beyond me (I can only sit up for a little while each day, still); Barb reads them to me, and I truly appreciate your friendship and love.
I'll try to at least visit your posts through the week, and say Hi. Please bear with me?
I wrote this sonnet for fun, just before I got sick. I hope you like it. I made up the term 'frogularity', and Barb thought it too good to lose.
The Land of Frogularity where goats serve tiramisu, and there's no need for charity, for all know what to do to care for fellow critters, high-five or belly-rub, then have five pints of bitters quite nightly, in the pub. We race our ancient roadsters until the bonnet's hot, then use the steel as toasters and warm the cooking pot upon the steaming engine-head that we may have soup with our bread.
