Dying Man’s Daily Journal – Evolving

Spent yesterday afternoon at the dentist again. I think one more visit and I am done. Met a very nice young lady, Heather, the hygienist who got my teeth all cleaned up. I made her work as it has been longer than I want to admit since I last had them cleaned. Thank you Heather.

For the past couple of weeks I have been thinking of this and of how to write it in a way that will make any sort of sense. I realize I have been changing as a person, evolving maybe, I don’t know.

For reasons that are a mystery to me, the Good Lord has given me extra time on this earth. I am appreciative of that and have indeed been trying to use this precious time to prepare myself for what I know lies ahead. Have I been working at it as diligently as I could have been, maybe not, but I have been working at it. Nothing changes over night but I am at least making noticable progress, in my own mind anyway.

Having this journal has been a wonderful thing in so many ways. One of them is that it gives me a reference point to look back to. I can look back and remember my thoughts and feelings, remember what was in my heart at that time. At that time my heart did indeed have some anger, some bitterness towards others. It all related to hurts or what I saw as injustices done to me in the past.

I desperately wanted to rid myself of these feeling, to be able to leave this world with a clear heart. I am not sure when or how it happened. It all happened so slowly that I didn’t even realize it was happening. It took a cat coming along for me to realize I had changed at all.

A few post ago I wrote about the “stalker” cat. I never have been  a cat guy, while I have never encouraged it, they do seem to like me???? This was no ordinary cat, which ever room in the house I was in, it would soon appear at the window or door of that room. (It was outside). I realized I really cared about this cat and worried about it, huh, me worrying about a cat????

This got me thinking, “What is up with this, have I ever changed or something”. I thought about this more and more and realized, either I have changed or the whole rest of the world has changed.

I suddenly realize all those little grudges and hurts I carried in my heart are gone. How did that happen, I don’t know they are just all gone. This actually, I have realized for a while, as I have with a number of other things, I just never put the entire package together.

I have always appreciated the beauty of nature and all things around me, well I guess sort of as now I see it so much more vividly. It is like suddenly the beauty has been enhanced by 1000 times or more. I see the beauty and the wonders that surround me, surround us all.

This world of our is awesome. Yesterday, I spent time really seeing and appreciating  the wonders the beauty that has been there all the time, I just never saw it. I watched a bee flying from flower to flower both searching for food and pollinating the plants. Look around you there is so much to see.

Dying Man’s Daily Journal – Pray request Please

Our dear blogging friend Jo has left the following prayer request.

Jo Hart Says:
August 28, 2009 at 5:08 am | Reply edit

Asking for a prayer request please….
My cousin’s mother-in-law yesterday was helping her husband cut back a tree on there farm. Unfortunately it all went horribly wrong and she ended up being scalped by the tree and looks like becoming a quaderplegic. She is only 58. So for my cousin Tim and his beautiful wife Wendy could I please ask for many prayers be sent to Wendy’s mum Jenny. Thanks heaps all of you…. Much love xx

Please may we all offer our prayers in support.

Dying Man’s Daily Journal – God’s gift of Life

I recently received a message that contained an interesting and hard to answer question.

“Often you write about living life and not enduring it. On the surface that sounds pretty straight forward. When I sit down and really try to apply that to my life, am I living or enduring, I don’t know. I know my life is not perfect. So some parts of it at least I must be enduring. Everyday that I go through life am I not living it?”

Very good question and hard to answer because the answer is a very individual and personal thing and will vary from person to person. I can only give you, how I see it. Remember, I am not a doctor or anything else. I am just a guy sitting at his computer sharing my thoughts.

I believe life to be a gift from God. I go to bed every night knowing full well I may not wake up tomorrow morning. As I lie there I say a short prayer thanking God for the gift of the day He has just given me. I do not pray asking to be given a gift of tomorrow, I pray that His will be done. Obviously, His will is that I still be here as here I am typing away, inspite of all that has happened.

In that regard I am no different than anyone else. No One and I mean NO ONE isd guaranteed a tomorrow. We all just take it for granted that tomorrow will indeed come as will many more tomorrows. When you do realize you may indeed not have a tomorrow, it makes you more appreciative of every single day you do have. You come to appreciate every day for what it really is, a gift from God.

An attitude of gratitude, I have this day, I appreciate that and I am going to make the most of it. When we give gifts, we give them with the idea the person we give them to will enjoy it, benefit from it and/or both. I believe in a loving God, a God that is all knowing and all powerful. Could a gift from such a God be anything but full of wonderful potential. So often we are all caught up scrambling on the frantic paced tread mill of life, we think we don’t have time to see or apprciate the wonders around us. That is so WRONG. A change of mind set, a change of thinking is really all that is required.

It is like getting a gift on your birthday. You open it up. You think: “I don’t know what this is” and you throw it away. You never checked it out so you have no idea what potential that gift may have had. You have no idea how much it may have impacted on and improved your life, you just threw it away. How many days of your life are you just throwing away?

As I see it the largest part of living life is how you see it in your head. Have a grumpy coworker making your life miserable well obviously he/she has chosen not to appreciate their gift from God today, but does that mean because they aren’t, they can deprive you of your appreciation of your day.

Living life is not getting caught up in individual little circumstances. Allowing things of the moment spoil your day. Anything can only spoil your day or detract from God’s gift of today for you, if you let it. We live in our minds, our minds are us. Mind set is everything.

I image many will read this and just pass it off saying, “yeah, that is all fine to say but if you knew what was going on in my life, you would realize it isn’t that simple.” To try and put it in perspective, I could reply: “I am dying, want to trade places”?

Dying Man’s Daily Journal – Just my day

A while back I was a little agressive in biting into a peach. In a match of peach stone vs tooth, the tooth got the worst of it. Or, at least I chipped out a filling. Got it fixed and am getting the whole works, just cleaning etc.. Rhonda the dental hygenist was just excellent and the hour flew by in seemingly minutes. Have a couple of mort appointments to replace a couple of fillings from 20 or more years ago. They call it painless dentistry, well let me tell you about the painless dentistry, it actually is painless, huh.

I am kind of excited. I got may passport in the mail today. I have never had one before, I guess that is what makes it exciting. Not sure when or even if I will ever use it but I have it. Actually, Vi was getting hers. She and Lynda, my sister-in-law often travel to the US. She was getting hers, so what the heck.

Have more to say but I have a very loud ringing noise in my head making it hard to concentrate. Hey, to day I even have a reason for it that is not medical. Changing the alarm system in the house today. A very nice man, Wayne is installing it. Doing it though thern almost constant loud ringing as he goes from one door ot window to the next.

Go out side and relax

Dying Man’s Daily Journal – My Advice for living

I was recently asked a question. If I could give one bit of advise or get one message across to the world what would it be?

I have thought about that quite a bit. My thinking my attitude about life in general has changed so much in the past few years that I see so many things differently. I realize I am a completely different person than I was even a couple of years ago. By that I mean in my thinking and my attitude.

There are so many things I can look back over my life at and think, geesh, If I were facing that now, would I ever deal with it differently. Picking one thing is hard so I will likely be writing others, but for now:

I heard a song yesterday, sorry can’t remember the artist or even the name of the song or I would give due credit. But, one line stuck in my head and the wording to that I am sure I likely don’t have correct. It went something like:

“how far is Heaven. I am tired of being locked in this prison, I call my life.” It was a beautiful song, but if I have the words to that line correct, such a sad song. Think about it, considering yourself locked in the prison of life.

I look back and realize there were many times when that is how I felt. OK, maybe, I didn’t use those exact words but that is how I felt. I was locked in the prison of my life. I was not happy, I was enduring rather than living. There seemed to be no options open to me other than to just keep on plodding ahead, one foot infront of the next. Dragging myself from one elusive goal to the next. Reaching one goal only to realize there was an other further ahead. I spent so much time focusing on one goal after the next, always thinking when I get there my life will be so much better. I achieved the goals but not the elusive  part in which my life would suddenly be better.

I so often spent so much time looking to something in the future, I forgot about the present. I consider life to be like a journey and often refer to the highway of life. We travel down this highway, as we do when on any other highway, we have a destination in mind. We so often become so focused on reaching our destination/goal we forget to enjoy the journey. LIFE IS THE JOURNEY.

I would say, relax, slow down to enjoy the ride. Plan for tomorrow but live for today. Live and appreciate what you have today while striving for what you want for tomorrow.

Relax and enjoy this journey down the highway of life, see it for what it is, the ride of a life time.

Don’t take things to seriously or to personally. I heard another saying that went something like: “Relax and enjoy life, don’t take it so seriously. It is not like you are going to get out of it alive anyway.”

Every morning when you wake up you have a decision to make. Am I going to be happy and have a good day or am I going to have a bad day. The decision really is yours.

Now I see things: there maybe something happening in my life that I don’t like and legitimately can’t change. For me the heart failure and brain tumor definitely qualify as things I don’t like. I can’t change them and while it sucks having them, I can still accept that there is nothing I can do and carry on as I am able in a happy way. If it is something I can change but maybe not necessarily right now, I think, well this sucks but I might as well make the best of it until I can change it.

Live Life don’t endure it and see it as your prison of life.

PS.  A special thank you to my dear blogging friend Cat. In her comment below she identified the song I was refering to. I am copying her comment here to giv e credit where it is due:

“I believe the song you are referring to is “Heaven” by Los Lonely Boys:”

Huh, can’t seem to copy the site address to go to watch the song on U tube. It is a beautiful song and worth a listen. Go to Cat’s comment and click on the site from there.

Dying Man’s Daily Journal – Making the most of life

I got some news from my doctor that was not all that good, but I needed to hear it.

Firstly, I never want to bury my head in the sand and just pretend every thing is just fine. The no news is good news, just doesn’t work for me. I want, no I need to know what is going on.

So the old ticker isn’t ticking quite the way it has been. So what is new with that, I have known that for a long time now. This heart of mine has been through a lot, has endured a lot, but IT IS STILL TICKING AWAY. It has indeed served me well and is still doing so. OK, so it isn’t beating quite as efficiently as it has, but it is still beating, isn’t that what is the most important thing.

I needed to hear that news as I do realize I was in fact becoming much to complacent about this whole thing. Things had settled down and my world is fine.

Hearing that news doesn’t mean my world isn’t still just fine. Actually, my world is great, I am a very lucky man. Now it is just a given when I say I am a lucky my that I mean by having the wonderful family that I do. Here though when I say I am lucky, I suppose I mean I am blessed, my heart just seems to keep defying the odds and goes about it’s business, almost irregardless of what it goes through. It may be showing a little wear and tear but it is still carrying on with the business of keeping me alive. Now, I have to like that.

I attribute much of it to the countless prayers that have been said from me, from around the world. I thank everyone so very much. There is no doubt the power of prayer is an awesome thing. The Good Lord is obviously keeping me here for some reason for which I am grateful I still have a lot of living to do.

This has all served to give me a much need wake up call, sadly I didn’t even know I needed one. I can now easily see I did.  Don’t allow yourself to fall into that feeling or sense of complacency where you start to take life for granted, be it your own life or that of others. Live life, don’t let it somehow just manage to slip by and away on you. Every single moment that slips by is gone forever. How many think, ah, I have lots of moments left. Letting ong to by is no big deal. Trust me when I say, when you know your moments are limited, suddenly they all, each and everyone of them take on a whole new meaning and importance.

How many moments do I have left? I don’t know. What I do know is that I have this moment and I am going to make the most of it.

Dying Man’s Daily Journal – Heart Failure complacancy

Had an appointment at the heart failure clinic this morning. Memory guy here, can’t remember what exactly it was called by seems the heart has taken quite a drop in pumping efficiency or pumping strength. A while back, went for a test an am now getting the results.

Somehow it seems almost strange, I do feel I am ready for the end whenever the Good Lord should decide my time is up. Even feeling that way, as I do, it still seems to give me a little bit of a jolt when I learn of my condition worsening.

With the heart failure it is not like a stead decline. It is more like you face a series of plateaus, each though is lower than the previous. As you drop from one you seem to have a leveling off period fo who knows how long. Suddenly seemingly out of nowhere bang, you fall off your plateau landing on the one below and the cycle starts all over again. I seem to stay on each level long enough to get comfortable with it and I suppose often maybe a little complacent in my thinking and suddenly down you go again.

When ever I seem to go over one of these edges, it like a great sense of more urgency hits me. A need to get more things done.

Dying Man’s Daily Journal _ Throwing away Special Gems, People??

Well, you know I often get lazy and copy and post an email, if it really speaks to my heart.

Here is one I received today

Clay Balls
A man was exploring caves by the Seashore.  In one of the caves he found a canvas bag with a bunch of hardened clay balls.  It was like someone had rolled clay balls and left them out in the sun to bake. They didn’t look like much, but they intrigued the man, so he took the bag out of the cave with him.  As he strolled along the beach, he would throw the clay balls one at a time out into the ocean as far as he could.

He thought little about it, until he dropped one of the clay balls and it crack open on a rock. Inside was a beautiful precious stone.

Excited, the man started breaking open the remaining clay balls.  Each contained a similar treasure  He found thousands of dollars worth of jewels in the 20 or so clay balls he had left.

Then it struck him. He had been on the beach a long time. He had thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the clay balls with their hidden treasure into the ocean waves.  Instead of thousands of dollars in treasure, he could have taken home tens of thousands, but he had just thrown it away!

It’s like that with people.  We look at someone, maybe even ourselves, and we see the external clay vessel.  It doesn’t look like much from the outside.  It isn’t always beautiful or sparkling, so we discount it.

We see that person as less important than someone more beautiful or stylish or well known or wealthy.  But we have not taken the time to find the treasure hidden inside that person.

There is a treasure in each and every one of us.  If we take the time to get to know that person, and if we ask God to show us that person the way He sees them, then the clay begins to peel away and the brilliant gem begins to shine forth.

May we not come to the end of our lives and find out that we have thrown away a fortune in friendships because the gems were hidden in bits of clay. May we see the people in our world as God sees them.

I am so blessed by the gems of friendship I have with you..  Thank you for looking beyond my clay vessel.

APPRECIATE EVERY SINGLE

THING YOU HAVE, ESPECIALLY YOUR FRIENDS!

LIFE IS TOO SHORT AND FRIENDS ARE TOO FEW!

Do not ask the Lord to Guide your Footsteps if you are not willing to MOVE your Feet’

Dying Man’s Daily Journal – Prayer helping a cat

Finally accomplished a task we have been talking  about doing for it must be close to a year. Applied for our passports. Now I can’t acctually imagine when I might be using mine but Vi will need her’s. Her and my sister-in-law Lynda often go to the US on shopping trips. Very simple process if you have your paperwork all filled in and will have them in about 2 weeks.

Have been having something very strange happening here over the past few days. Well it is strange to me anyway. It all revolves around a cat. Now I have never been a great fancier of cats. It is not that I don’t like them,  I suppose it is I am more like indifferent to them and  really wouldn’t want one as a pet. For some reason cats and dogs  seem to like me.

It is now 5 days ago that I was sitting out on the front step. I see a cat trotting down the public sidewalk coming in my direction. I really thing nothing of it until it turns up the sidewalk to the house. With seemingly no hesitation it comes fight up to me, starts rubbing him self again my leg and purring. I scratch his ears and talk to him a little really not thinking to much of it. A few minutes later I go back into the house, thinking that is that. The cat apparently didn’t seem to think that was that. It didn’t go away. It is now day 5 and it is still here. It is like the cat has adopted us????

Now I know enough to know when a stray cat shows up, don’t feed it or it will never go away. Well I held out for 3 days. Now during that time I chased it away the neighbors chased it away. within mere minutes it was always back at the house. It is obviously a house cat and is very friendly. If either Vi or I go outside, it just appears from somewhere and follows us around. Rubbing against you leg, purring away and then will just lay down at your feet. After chasing him away a bunch of times you reach the point where you don’t even try any more. Which is hard as he is such a friendly loving cat.

Now comes what is to me the really strange part. The cat has become like a stalker even when we are in the house. I am at the computer which is in a room in the basement of the house. There is no window in this room but in the adjoining room to which the door is open, there is a window, which I can see from where I am sitting. The cat is looking in and meowing at me. If I am in the kitchen the cat jumps up on the outside window ledge and looks in from there. In the bedroom there is now outside ledge but can hear him meowing right out side. I know cats can jump but I didn’t realize how high. The kitchen window ledge has to be at least 7 if not 8 feet up and he seemingly gets up and down with ease.

Hey, I like to consider myself a big tough guy (lol) but at the end of day 3 I could see this cat trying to lick water from the end of the garden hose. Ah, geesh. It was hot and it was obviously thirsty. I gave it a bowl of milk, couldn’t just watch it anymore knowing it was thirsty and that i could so easily remedy that. OK, then I fed it as I did yesterday. As I said I am not a cat guy but if there ever was a cat that could change my mind on this this is the one. Can’t have a cat as Vi’s granddaughter is terribly allegic to them.

Oh, in this time I have phone all the animal shelters and everywhere I can think of looking for anyone that has reported a missing cat, no one. No tattoo, no collar, nothing.

Two more things happened. Early last evening I was in my place out on the step and sure enough within a minute or so here comes the cat. I scratch his ears of a minute or two and it then retreats to a corner where it is shaded and cooler. I suppose it must have been about 5 minutes that I sat there talking to the cat. I was saying things like: “you have to go home.” “You can’t stay here”, “will try to find you a home” things like that. Through it all the cat never moved from his spot in the shade. It occurred to me, I should pray about this. I said a very short prayer asking for help in either finding the owners of this cat or a good home for it. It was very short and when I was done I told the cat, I said a prayer for you. While it had ignored the rest of my conversation as soon as I said that, it immediately got up and  came over rubbing up against my legs. It almost seemed like he understood.

Back in the house I go and back to the kitchen window ledge goes the cat. A short while later I hear our good neighbor Elsie taking to the cat, up on the window ledge. I go out to say hello to Elsie, cat stays on the window ledge. Minutes later a young couple come walking down the sidewalk. As i have been doing with everyone. I ask them if they know of anyone missing a cat. No they don’t but they come over to look at the cat perched high up on the window ledage. Turns out they are cat lovers, already having 2. If he is still here tonight they are going to pick him up and give him a good home.

A prayer answered very quickly

Dying Man’s Daily Journal – Are you the person you want to be

While I was off line for a while there, I often wrote myself little notes. Thoughts or ideas that hit me about posts I would like to write. I have been flipping through those and realize in many cases I didn’t write enough detail in the note as now I just can’t remember what my point was. I also realize I should have written down where I got the idea from, to give credit where it is due. Now I can’t remember, I some how doubt if they are “Bill” originals but, huh, who knows, well at least not me.

This is one of those ideas that came to me or is at least written in my notes.

I would ask any that may read this to take a minute and just sit back and think about yourself. Think about the person you are both as you see yourself in your own life and in the lives of those you interact with. I am not talking about how you see yourself career wise, your financial or maritial position, nothing like that. I am talking about how do you see yourself as a person.

Let me expand on that. How do you see yourself as a person, when it comes to human emotions: patience, sympathy, empathy, the ability to show love or feel love…… That is almost an endless list. I think you get the idea of what I am trying to say. So again I ask how do you see youself as a person? If you honestly look at yourself, your feelings and emotions, did you come across anything that you found yourself saying well I wish I had more of this or I wish I could show more of that.

Let’s just take patience as but one example. How often have I heard comment like: “I wish I had more patience”. Now that could be applied your dealings with your kids, family, friends, coworkers really anyone.

Now chances are if you have done and honest complete assessment of yourself, you have likely be way to hard on yourself. Maybe, you are like me. The first time I did this, I actually wrote down every emotion I could think of. I then quickly and I suppse glibbly  ran down the list. When I had finished I realized I had given myself a check mark in every category. Hey, that means I am perfect, hum. So that means any and every time some thing comes up in my life, I react correctly and the rest of the world is wrong every time.  Hmm, have to do a little more thinking here.

I went back and did the list again. I did a little meditation on each and realized, hmm, maybe I am not perfect after all. Me, perfect, now that is a really loud, LOL.

Hopefully everyone may have done an honest self assessment. Not being too hard on yourself but also honestly recognizing any, shall we call them”short comings” by your honest and objective standards.

Now, I change the question. Are you the person you would like to be or want to be? If not, WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT IT?

I can already hear the reasons (excuses) pouring out. “I can’t help being the way I am, that is the way I was brought up”. Phooey, just because you have done things a certain way in the past doesn’t mean you have to continue doing them that way today. Or, “I can’t help the way I act, he/she did this and make me react as I did. Again, phooey. No one can make us react in any particular way. Things may be done that are not to my liking, but how I choose to react or how I choose to allow it to affect me, IS TOTALLY UP TO ME.

Can we “recreate” ourselves, YES. Is it easy, no, but the point is it can be done.

I ask a final time: Are you the person you want to be? If not, what are you going to do about it?