Your Dying Spouse 673 - Old Service Dogs

We all age, and as impossible as it may seem, our dogs age with us.

Even service dogs.

So there's a new generation-in-training, with the older ones showing the pups the ropes.

He’s a little bit incontinent,

and she gets lost in the backyard,

but when the puppies get impertinent,

they slap them back, quite hard.

They’ve earned idiosyncratic rights,

and places on the couch.

They’ve stood by through my hard nights

and none of them’s a slouch.

They’re passing on the caring torch

for their person, now so ill.

But you won’t find them on the porch;

they’re still working, with a will.

They train the young’uns for their duty,

and in their age, they shine in beauty.

Music from the Little River Band, with Reminiscing.

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, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

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 672 - I Thought I Could

I really thought that I could do it.

I thought that by strength of character, will, and physical endurance I could burn the cancer out of my body, and emerge triumphant (and with a book deal and national TV interviews for having won through a miracle).

Sure I'd give the nod to God, but in my heart of hearts...

...it was mostly me, baby.

But it's not true, and barring a miracle worked from Above, I'm not getting out of this.

I won't say my own qualities didn't help in getting me this far; they did, though it was more God and less me than I might have wanted to admit.

But now, there's no way forward without His help. I can stand in place.

For a while longer.

Lord, when I call to You,

will You hear, and come?

This long game is nearly through

and I am sore undone.

I place such hope and confidence

in my strength and pride,

and now that I have no defence

will appeal be thus denied?

Lord, I was trained to stand,

but I know I should have knelt,

for only by Your mighty hand

could I won that hand was dealt.

I looked within, and found no part

of me, but just Your beating heart.

Music from Queen, with the somehow fitting We Are The Champions.

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, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

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 671 - Iceberg Right Ahead! {FMF}

I finally got around to seeing Titanic. Good film, though the inevitability of disaster was perhaps the best choice to be a balm to the soul. Under the circumstances.

"In an hour, all this will be at the bottom of the Atlantic."

Oh-kaaaaaayyyyyyy.

It would be easy, and also something of a shibboleth, to say, well, we're all facing that iceberg, and we're all facing something we can't escape.

But most of my life, I didn't think like that. Heck, even now, sometimes I forget, and think that I'll still win through.

Until I'm reminded by a day like today, when the really painful swelling in my neck's got me in a vise, each breath hurts, and it feels like I'm being cut from navel to ribs.

And I still don't think that soon all this will be at the bottom of a metaphorical Atlantic.

I'm too busy creating and nurturing the intention to enjoy today. Sure, movement hurts, eating is hard (iced-cold light beer does relieve some of the neck pain and allows me to get some food down), and getting down to the workshop to weld...uh, no.

But I still can do a little bit of work on the aeroplane (Barb's allowed the woodworking tools into a spare room, bless her!), I can read, watch a DVD, hang out with the dogs, and most of all, enjoy my dear wife's company.

Life is good. Even with cancer, life is good.

And the band's playing ragtime.

Still and all, I thought Titanic rather a downer, so I took the liberty of rewriting it.

It was unsinkable, so they said,

but iceberg, he had another plan,

so many thought that's it, we're dead,

but deliverance came from far Graceland.

Lightning falling from the sky,

'twas Elvis in the Mother Ship!

Soon he had them high and dry;

"Hey folks...enjoyin' the trip?"

Singing closed the rifts that rent the hull,

he posed for selfies with the crew,

ate caviar 'till he was full,

and then set ship's course for shores anew.

He made Titanic really fly,

for he had a date in Blue Hawaii.

Music, of course, from Celine Dion, with My Heart Will Go On.

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, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

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 670 - When God Seems Absent

The hardest thing about being a Christian is that God can sometimes feel so far away.

We're enjoined to a personal relationship with Christ, and things go horribly wrong, and He's not there.

What do you do, when faith seems ephemeral?

I don't know what to tell you. I can only describe what I do.

1. I remind myelf the the factual basis of Christianity; the independently verified existence of Jesus, the willingness of the Apostles to face death in spreading the Gospel (they would not have done this for a known or strongly suspected lie), the complexity of Creation that defies a random start to existence, and the call within me to do things that are contrary to animal-nature.
2. I remind myself that the human heart is an inconstant thing, feelings are fleeting, and that feelings are a large part of faith.
3. I remind myself that it's OK to not be OK, and to hold on...that things will change.

And that, really, is enough.

I'm searching for You everywhere,

but I am fogbound, cast adrift;

can it be that You no longer care,

and that I shall forever be bereft?

Once upon a golden starlit time

I felt my safety in Your hands,

but I have come into a hellish clime,

alone in sulphurous fire-lands.

Comes a voice beside my ear,

a voice so still and small

that I must lean toward, in fear

that, fading, it can't be heard at all.

"Hold fast, although the night has come;

there will be morning, and the Son."

Music from Mr. Mister, with Kyrie.

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, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

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.