Unhooking from the bumper (On forgiving) part one

(Another small random piece of the Memoir…)

We cannot go back and undo the damage of yesterday, but we can undo the damage it is causing today. We do that with the act of forgiveness. Steve Arterburn

We must develop the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.  Martin Luther King Jr.

[Disclaimer:  I hope that the following doesn’t sound as if I’m implying that I am the one who had all the forgiving to do for our marriage breakup. In many ways I was as much at fault as she was for our failure to stay together and I hope she forgives me as much as I forgive her.]

My Darth Vader mask… (part two)

Back to the transplant… It takes three months to go through it and another three months to recuperate from it. It’s really rather grueling. They overdose you with chemo, collect your stem cells and freeze them. Then they chemo you up some more and eventually put the cells back in your bloodstream, hoping they’ll start a whole new colony of healthy cells. It’s not the stem cell part that’s so difficult, but the different cocktails of chemo that really kick your butt. Since you’ve probably seen a friend or family member afflicted in such a way and have no desire to be reminded of it, I won’t go into detail. But I would like to tell you this one part of the process. Don’t worry; it’s not gross.

My Darth Vader mask… (part one)

It is not true that God wants to teach us something in our trials:  through every cloud he brings, he wants us to unlearn something. His purpose in the cold is to simplify our belief until our relationship to him is exactly that of a child. Oswald Chambers

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Acts 16:25

Both oncologists consulting on my case agreed, and convinced me that the transplant at Stanford Hospital would be the best next step going forward. They’d already shot me up with a variety of toxic chemicals and prescribed a daily pocketful of pills to take, none of which dented the virulent disease in my bones. One of those drugs had an interesting side effect if you want to hear it. Nausea is not involved; so don’t skip this part if you’re beginning to feel a little queasy.

“Jobian”…

[Another random selection from the memoir I'm finishing up...]

We ignore the ambiguity that accompanies our finitude, and thus we claim to know what we can’t know. We reduce the unfathomable complexity of the cosmos to the capacity of our finite minds. When we do this, we invariably end up blaming God or indicting victims. Gregory A. Boyd

Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horses**t.  Anne Lamott

If you know me, you know that I like words. I like ones that you can find in the dictionary; but when I can’t find a real word that says what I’ve got on my mind, I like to make up some of my own. I call them, “Wigetisms.”

Fall risk…

I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile, I keep dancing. Hillel

I was pushed back and about to fall but the Lord helped me. Psalm 118:13

“To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy.” Jude 24  Every morning before stepping into the shower I recite this verse out loud and then ask the Lord to do just that, “keep me from falling” – physically, spiritually, and in any other way I might fall during the day.

Hell and hilarity in the hospital (part two)

[Here's another piece from the memoir I'm preparing to publish soonish... Hope you'll read the whole thing when it's ready.]

Another time, during the transplant I got pretty sick and was sentenced to a week in an isolation room in the hospital. It wasn’t that I’d been bad, and had to be separated from the rest of the patient population. But with virtually no white blood cells left, like a frail preemie in an incubator, they had to keep watch on me and protect me from the big bad germy world. My essentially germless room was complete with a decontaminate room between it and the hallway. Whoever visited, hospital staff included, had to suit up like the HAZMAT team people in the movies. At least, unless they took me downstairs for tests, it wasn’t me who had to sport all of that annoying garb. There wasn’t even a window in the room for fresh air or a view of the hospital flower garden. I quickly developed a bad case of cabin fever without the comfort or hominess of a cabin. Tough week.

Hell and hilarity in the hospital (part one)

A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. Proverbs 17:22

I have a newfound respect for anyone who works with the sick and infirmed. I can think of about three hundred careers that I would choose before going into the medical field. First of all, sick people are no fun. They bleed and stink and moan and exhibit other objectionable behaviors.