Your Dying Spouse 294 - Famous Last Words - Jesus, The Cross, And You {FMF}

We're back again with Kate Motaung's Five Minute Friday, the timed and keyword-themed writing challenge. Please drop bu for some really great faith-filled essays!

Once again I have to write ahead of time, but I'm trying to stay in the spirit by estimating what would have taken me five minutes before. I can only manage a couple of sentences at a time these days. But I will try to work in the word when it's revealed. (It's ENOUGH, and it fits the coda perfectly.)

The past days have been really bad, both physically and in other ways. The blows to morale have been, if anything, worse than the pain, and I thought about giving up. Morphine or a bullet, and the latter seemed a reasonable course.

However...before making the fatal choice I decided to revisit Jesus' last words on the Cross, and to try to make sense of them, for me, and, I hope, for you.

So, here goes:

Luke 23:34: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do. - We all face betrayal in our lives. We've been betrayed, and we've betrayed those who trusted us. We have to find it in our hearts to forgive, if we expect to be forgiven.

We have to move on past betrayal, and center or hope in the One who will never let us down.

Luke 23:43: Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. He needed the hope for a future, and if you're facing death, the hope that you have is that there's something beyond this life, somewhere...a place where all the hurts are healed. Without it we're Darwinian automatons, looking to our temporal advantage while we're here. But with it, there is a purpose to our lives, and our trials.

And our trials have meaning, purpose, and value in God's Eternity. What we suffer here will be glorified there.

John 19:26–27: Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother. This is all abut legacy, and an affirmation that the only legacy that's worth leaving is love. We will all die; but as Celine Dion sang, "My Heart Will Go On." Our achievements will be eclipsed and forgotten; they will fade to nothing. Our wealth will be dissipated, as we try to pass it on. But our love, and only our love, will carry forward as an inspiration and a hope, and as the only possible reminder we can leave that, Yes, I was here. I lived, and I loved.

Love with all your heart, without reservation; live as though love is the only thing you have to offer, because it is.

Matthew 27:46 & Mark 15:34 My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? This is tough; this cuts to the heart. We want to live in perfect faith, but the fact is that we can't. Jesus couldn't, and His despairing cry rings down through these two millenia to sear our souls. And to comfort us, because He, in His human form, shared our weakness. We are not unworthy if our faith fails us; we are not disloyal if we question God's love. This is part of being human. And it's OK. Jesus walked this road first; we are in very good company.

Don't despair because you despair; despair is the shadow that provides the contrast for the Glorious Light.

John 19:28: I thirst. Jesus was thirsty, yes; severe pain creates an almost desperate thirst, and I can well attest to this. But there is a deeper meaning, and it's found in Psalm 63.

O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is...

"I thirst" is nothing less than an affirmation of faith, a statement that even though God may have turned His Face away, we are still calling out to Him, knowing that He' there, and hoping that He's listening. It's the admission that we can't do it without Him, and that He is the only answer to our despair.

The world provides much, but the test is pass/fail, and only God's love passes the test.

John 19:30: It is finished. Though this is sometimes translated as "It is accomplished" or "It is completed", I rather like "It is finished", because it more clearly connects to our experiences in this life. So often, we are just 'finished'; out of time or resources, and it's all we can do. Few of our lives have neat bows tied on our accomplishments; certainly my death will eve a host of uncompleted projects. Thins I wish I could have completed...but my death will have merely finished my work on them.

And we have to be OK with that. We live on a continuum of experience, and that includes the 'messy undone'.

So in the end we down tools in the twilight, and whatever we leave undone, we leave undone. We're finished here.

Do your best; but what you think of as unfinished may completely fulfill God's plan for your life.

Luke 23:46: Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. At the end of all of our ability and hope, the only thing left is to take that leap into God's Hands. It's the Hail mary pass, the acrobat letting go the trapeze in the faith that the catcher will do his stuff, the paratrooper stepping out the door and trusting that the chute will open.

And it's knowing that all we have and are comes down to one word - TRUST.

You've got to 'let go and let God' sometime; why not now?

What do you think? How do you apply Jesus' words on the Cross to your life?
Are they ENOUGH for you?

In the face of all the pain, all the fear, all the dread prognostications, I'm deciding, day by day, to choose fun as a metaphor for my life, so it seems appropriate to let Dire Straits' Walk Of Life be the musical theme...enjoy!

A bit of news..."Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart" has come home! Tate Publishing has gone south, and I regained the rights, so it'll soon be available in both Kindle hardcopy versions once again. In the meantime, if you absolutely can't wait (!), you can still get used copies from Amazon.

I have another blog, "Starting The Day With Grace". The focus is a grace quote from someone you might not expect (like, say Mick Jagger) and a short commentary. I hope you'll join me.

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 293 - God Didn't Make You Sick!

"God is allowing your husband to die slowly in front of your eyes for a reason."

The person who says that to a caregiving wife is liable to need some caregiving him-or-herself, caregiving of the post-oral-surgery kind. Well, at least if said caregiving wife is anything like mine.

(Yes, this is something I've talked about before. But please bear with me - this is written through the lens of vastly-increased pain and some other stuff I'll forbear to describe, except to say that it was unexpected, and really bad for morale.)

But the question does remain...what kind of God would allow this? And to what end?

There are those who would say that He allows it - or, worse, sends it - so that one will 'lean into him'.

In other words, they are having God say, "Here, see how awful life can be? And I am your only refuge!"

That's something abusers do to bind their victims to them, and I don't believe for a moment that we serve a God like that.

The supposition goes that the victim of the adversity - such a sterile word - will learn something of life and faith. However...

On March 19, 1945, the aircraft carrier USS FRANKLIN was struck by a single Japanese bomb. Its flight and hanger decks were crowded with fueled and armed aircraft, and it lit off in n inferno that cannot be imagined by anyone who wasn't there. Aeroplanes melted, and men were cooked.

In one anecdote, historian Joseph Springer (in his masterful book Inferno) describes an officer who was suddenly faced by a sailor he knew - and who was on fire from head to feet.

The sailor pleaded with the officer to shoot him; while the officer drew his sidearm, he couldn't shoot...and the sailor, in desperation, threw himself into the sea, and died.

How long did the man burn, and what possible lessons could he have learned before taking the only option he had?

What kind of God would do this?

NOT OURS.

I don't believe for a moment that God sends the pain, or that He 'allows' it, in the manner that He could divert it but chooses not to.

He allows it because it's a necessary part of a world in which free will is a necessity. We have been made in His image, and that includes the capacity for independent thinking - and we have to be free to choose Him.

And that, by inference, has to allow for randomness in the world we inhabit - free will in nature and circumstance.

By either opening us to specific misfortune or by protecting us from the same, God would be negating His own plan. He made us with free will because he didn't want to spend eternity with a bunch of wind-up toys - and that would be exactly what He would get if He showed us that our free will was essentially meaningless, because He suspended free will in nature.

So He can't spare us without wrecking His own paradigm - but He can do all He is able to help us through. He can show us small things, signs that will strengthen our faith.

A long time ago I prayed - this is gonna sound stupid - for something red to appear on the ground as a sign that God's looking out for me. You don't often see bright red in the New Mexico high desert.

And yet...every day, something's there. Something red.

He's in control. His idea of control may be different to my idea (HEAL ME!")

But He's in control nonetheless, and I'm OK with that.

We're linked with Messy Marriage's From Messes To Messages - please visit for some great marriage resources!

A bit of news..."Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart" has come home! Tate Publishing has gone south, and I regained the rights, so it'll soon be available in both Kindle hardcopy versions once again. In the meantime, if you absolutely can't wait (!), you can still get used copies from Amazon.

I have another blog, "Starting The Day With Grace". The focus is a grace quote from someone you might not expect (like, say Mick Jagger) and a short commentary. I hope you'll join me.

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 292 - The Caregiver And The Mustard Seed

"Your husband would be healed if you just had more faith!"

I think most caregivers have heard this variation - and misapplication - of Matthew 17:20:

He replied, "Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."

This was Jesus' reply to His apostles when they could not cure a boy possessed by a demon, so He had to wade in and do it.

In the correct context, Jesus is commenting on our condition...well, commenting on the fact that our faith is conditional. We're always second-guessing it, and in this life there's almost no way that it can have even a mustard-seed's-worth of purity.

We don't have the focus we need to have the faith, and in this life, we never will.

Well, almost never.

You've no doubt heard of instances in which a single person lifted a car or tractor off a trapped person, thereby saving a life...and after the fact could not budge the thing.

Wikipedia calls it hysterical strength, and quotes learned sources as saying that these incidents, while theoretically possible, are anecdotal. For a certain ind of scientist, if it can't be reproduced under laboratory condition, it didn't happen.

Well, yes, they're anecdotal because they can't be duplicated under controlled condition, in a lab. (Care to volunteer to be pinned under a car, all in the name of Science, while your instrumented-up-the-wazoo-grandmother tires to lift it?)

Case in point - on June 4, 1942, Floyd Adkins, the radioman/gunner in Ens. Bill Pittman's dive-bomber, had his 175-lb gun mount break loose. Adkins not only caught and steadied the guns, but he also shot down a Japanese fighter. After returning to the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, Adkins (who weighed less than the guns) couldn't lift the assembly.

Anecdotal? Sure. But I think the dead Japanese fighter pilot would have thought differently.

Hysterical strength? I think not. I think this is an example of focused faith, the kind we can only experience for very short times, and it's something we can't manufacture.

We have to accept what and who we are, flawed beings whose faith is diluted to a microscopic amount...but we can take heart that there lies the potential, the God-strength within us, to go far beyond what we thought we could do.

And that, dear caregiver, is, I hope, your comfort. You may not have the faith to save your husband or wife, but I believe that you do have the faith that will one day let you look back over your caregiving journey and marvel...

"Was it really me, doing all that?"

Now over to The Digital Age, for 'Captured'...

A bit of news..."Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart" has come home! Tate Publishing has gone south, and I regained the rights, so it'll soon be available in both Kindle hardcopy versions once again. In the meantime, if you absolutely can't wait (!), you can still get used copies from Amazon.

I have another blog, "Starting The Day With Grace". The focus is a grace quote from someone you might not expect (like, say Mick Jagger) and a short commentary. I hope you'll join me.

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 291 - Peter Pan Will Live Forever

Welcome back for my offering to Five Minute Friday, the timed writing challenge hosted by the wonderful Kate Motaung. Please drop by and sample some awesome writing!

Once again, this is written ahead of time. I will try to work in the keyword. I hope! (It's DEFINE.)

Recently (well, two days ago) I was told, "It's OK. You can let go. You'll be better off. You've lived a long life."

Very true...from a certain perspective.

But in watching Ken Burns' PBS film on baseball, I was struck by something that was said by the historian John Thorn:

""(Our love of baseball) says, I think, that we're children, or we'd like to be. The best of us keep keep as much of that childhood with us as we grow into adulthood as we can muster. The most creative, the most happy, the most fortunate of us are those who don't lose the sense of play. Even after we're past the point of being able to play the game with skill, if we love it, it's like Peter Pan. We remain boys forever. We don't die."

EXACTLY.

Taking stock, I'm in severe and unremitting pain, I'm incontinent, my career is in ruins, and I know now that I was a crap husband to a woman who deserved far more. I'm fated to a messy and humiliating death.

But I still love the game.

It's de finest game around. (See! I worked inde word...sort of.)

I love the nights, when the pain retreats a bit and I can use my service dogs as pillows, taking in their steady breaths to comfort me.

I love the humour of said service dogs running desperately to avoid being puked on - or worse - and then stoically enduring yet another bath.

I love the fun of going online to find DVDs at the local library (like Burns' Baseball!) and looking forward to seeing them.

I love remembering the times when I was strong enough to saw through steel, to make one more part for the Comper Swift replica that I will never finish, but will fly in my imagination. I still turn over the pieces in my hands, and enjoy their cold yet living grace and symmetry.

I love the evenings, when Barb and I can watch either The Voice or Star Trek reruns, even though I'm way too trashed by dry heaves to understand what's going on.

I love kissing my long-suffering wife goodnight, and attending to the nighty-night rituals of the dogs, so that they can have pleasant dreams.

I love the sound o the dogs dropping off to sleep, snoring and chasing dream-cats.

I love this life. I've done some things well, some would get a 'nice try'...and some, well as the cowboys say (please pardon this):

Some folks learn by readin'
Some folks learn by bein' told.
And some folks got to piss on the electric fence all by theyselves.

But by God, I love it all.

And like Peter Pan, I'll be a happy boy forever.

Jesus, after all, said that the only way to enter Heaven is with the heart of a child.

So I'll never die.

Just for fun, here's one of my favourite artists, Petula Clark, singing her signature song, Downtown.

A bit of news..."Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart" has come home! Tate Publishing has gone south, and I regained the rights, so it'll soon be available in both Kindle hardcopy versions once again. In the meantime, if you absolutely can't wait (!), you can still get used copies from Amazon.

I have another blog, "Starting The Day With Grace". The focus is a grace quote from someone you might not expect (like, say Mick Jagger) and a short commentary. I hope you'll join me.

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 290 - When Friends Fall Away

We're linked with Messy marriage's From Messes To Messages - please visit Beth's place for some great marriage resources!

One of the most distressing things about being a caregiver (or a patient) is the loss of friends, the falling-away of community.

I hope that you have a core of steadfast and stalwart people who stand by you, who are there in loving support, gently taking some of the burdens when you can't carry them. There to listen, and to speak love into your heart.

But there are inevitably others, some on whom you'd been sure you could count, who fade away.

You notice that gradually the phone rings less often, there are fewer Facebook or twitter chats, and Instagram goes quiet.

Your inbox is full of offers from Ebay and not much else, and everyone seems to be so busy.

Your friends are going from strength to strength o Facebook, and you feel like you're strugging through a swamp...and you sometimes feel so alone.

What's going on? Why are you suddenly forsaken?

Well, this -

• When you're a caregiver of patient, a lot of people just don't know what to say, so they don't say anything, thinking their words will be trivial or trite. After not saying anything for awhile, they feel it will be hard to come back. They're ashamed of their silence, and therefore perpetuate it.
• Some folks feel that associating with the sick is bad luck, that it'll invite illness into their life. It's a silly superstition, yes, but it's rooted in a primal dread of illnesses that really were fatally contagious. Cancer are heart disease and the like aren't catching, but somehow they feel like an evil miasma that may ensnare those in attendance.
• Some don't want to get in the way. Caregiving and illness are all-consuming, and they don't want to place demands on you for interaction. They think you're too busy.
• Illness is depressing, and there are those who can't bear to see it, because they're afraid of what they might one day face. The caregiver and patient become a symbol of something fearful.

None of these are hard to understand, and we've all felt these at some point in our lives. Friends who 'drop' you are very rarely subscribing to the Pirates' Code: "He who falls behind is left behind."

But it sure feels that way, doesn't it?

Is there anything you can do, short of metaphorically running after them and tugging on their shirtsleeves, saying, "Hey, please, come back!"?

Yes, there is. You can keep the road back open.

• Stay in touch; even if you get no response, send the occasional email, and keep them friended on Facebook, sharing posts and status.
• When you talk to them, don't but these people on the spot. Be gracious and welcoming, and show an interest in their lives, genuine interest in their problems (even when they seem so much less serious than your own).
• Pray for them, because at some level they know they've turned away in your hour of need, and it will eat at their hearts.
• Don't take it as a judgement on you; see their weakness for what it is, their handicap.

What do you think? How do you deal with fallen-away friends?

A bit of news..."Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart" has come home! Tate Publishing has gone south, and I regained the rights, so it'll soon be available in both Kindle hardcopy versions once again. In the meantime, if you absolutely can't wait (!), you can still get used copies from Amazon.

I have another blog, "Starting The Day With Grace". The focus is a grace quote from someone you might not expect (like, say Mick Jagger) and a short commentary. I hope you'll join me.

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 289 - False Doctrine and Faith

This is going to be short. It's been another horrible day, and I am not sure how long I can keep this up.

Being pretty immobile, I got to see a lot of church TV, and while the vast majority of it is really solid teaching, there's some that absolutely makes my blood boil.

For someone in bad shape (and I don't count myself in really bad shape), it can lead to a loss of faith. I've been down that road.

First is the idea that God never gives one more than one can endure. There's something a bit passive-aggressive about this, because it makes you feel that if you can't stand it - if you break, as many people do - you're somehow unworthy, that your faith is inferior to that shown by others who shine through their trials.

There are things out there that can break us, and no, I don't agree with Ernest Hemingway that we become stronger in the broken places. We're just broken.

And this is where God comes in. When we face the unendurable, He can offer the only lasting comfort there is, the comfort of Hope...th Hope that came to life three days after Calvary.

We may be crushed, and never become stronger, but if that tiny spark still flickers, we can at least go from one moment to the next.

The second is the idea that when God takes something from you, it's because He has something better waiting, and your hands have to be empty to receive it.

I would not have dared to try that out on a couple I knew, who lost their only child in Viet Nam.

If God took Paul (his real name) away, all He left the parents was a hole blasted through their lives, an empty place that could never be filled.

But God did not kill Paul. A Viet Cong sapper did, when he activated a command-detonated mine. God's hand was not on the firing circuit.

What God could do, and did do, was provide a context for loss, and the ability for two totally torn-up people to go on, living their best for the memory of their boy.

It wasn't something better.

It was something they felt they had to try to do, and that they knew they could only dowith divine help.

 bit of news..."Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart" has come home! Tate Publishing has gone south, and I regained the rights, so it'll soon be available in both Kindle hardcopy versions once again. In the meantime, if you absolutely can't wait (!), you can still get used copies from Amazon.

I have another blog, "Starting The Day With Grace". The focus is a grace quote from someone you might not expect (like, say Mick Jagger) and a short commentary. I hope you'll join me.

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 288 - Embracing God's Will {FMF}

Back again with Kate Motaung' Five Minute Friday, the timed and keyword-driven writing challenge that always yields a bumper crop of literary talent...please visit!

As things have been a bit ghastly (almost died again, two nights ago...this is getting to be a habit, and not a good one) I'm writing ahead of time in the hope that I can edit in The Word Of The Week.

We'll see.

(It's EMBRACE.)

And so...

Accepting this as God's will has been a hard process.

I mean, being at least nominally a writer, I see some folks talking about God's Blessings in their lives, in the form of getting agents and contracts and multi-book follow-on deals.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to evade incontinence's effects by never straying far from a lavatory.

What's the deal, here? Is God dumping this on me because I need to be made better or stronger? Am I that bad that I need the 'smash course' in character-building?

There are those who have suggested that this is saving me from a worse fate, like Alzheimer's. To be honest, I am kind of glad that I won't grow old, but the theological basis for that 'comfort' is pretty sketchy.

I mean, if He could deliver me from this, He could deliver me from Alzheimer's, too. Right?

The more rational view (to me!) is that illness is a byproduct of the requirement for free will, and for God to 'take it away' would be something of a negation of purpose. Having to choose to believe when you're lying on the floor, your bowels voided because you collapsed on the way to the lav, is something of a test.

(This doesn't proscribe miracles, but I think that a careful reading of Scripture shows that miracles were brought for a larger purpose than to benefit the individual or individuals involved, but I may be quite wrong.)

At any rate, somewhere in this mess of blood and puke and faeces (sorry) is God's Will, and what am I to make of it?

The answer's pretty simple. I have seen enough love and grace in this life that I am willing to take everything else on faith, and that includes a purpose in suffering.

I don't have to know the purpose, now or, really, ever. The only thing I know is that my job is to tell of God's Mercy to my dying breath.

Why?

The only thing I can do now is to reach out with my words, to you who are reading this, and to say that while gems of grace in life may be rare, their beauty is enough to fill a heart.

When I look back with honesty and not an egocentric prejudice, I can see that I have been blessed and loved, by God and His ministering angels (in canine and sometimes human form) far more than I would have had a right to expect.

And I've lived the grace of trying to return that love in full.

I can deal with another needed change of underwear, another sleepless night of pain.

And I don't need to know why. I can embrace His will, and that's enough.

Just for fun, here's a lovely song, Who I Am, sung by Jessica Andrews. I hope you enjoy it!

A bit of news..."Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart" has come home! Tate Publishing has gone south, and I regained the rights, so it'll soon be available in both Kindle hardcopy versions once again. In the meantime, if you absolutely can't wait (!), you can still get used copies from Amazon.

I have another blog, "Starting The Day With Grace". The focus is a grace quote from someone you might not expect (like, say Mick Jagger) and a short commentary. I hope you'll join me.

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.