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Last day of radiation! Yesterday however we got the skinny. Namely what I am faced with from here on out. Lots of self care that’s what things boil down too. What use to be taken for granted, no longer can be. I knew It was coming, I just didn’t want to hear it. It’s all the fine print stuff.

What a haul this was. I pray I never have to go through something like it again. By the choices put in front of us concerning our health, we all are become more and more compromised over time. I know life can’t last forever but, these seven weeks have defiantly taken a chunk out of me. 

Given our circumstances and age we made the decision to go forward with this therapy. I still feel we made the right choice. I just need to rebuild myself as best I can over the next few months. Easier said than done for I am certainly not the man who I was before all this. By God’s Grace and your support I have managed to survive this ordeal, hopefully for a longer life.

Thank you so much for praying for me and supporting me through this effort. Your prayers, postings and support have been invaluable to me. I will be forever grateful. I hope to see you soon, face to face, to thank you once again in person.

Today I realized something else this experience has done for me. 

I know there is still so much I can do and to do it, is the only way I can continue to achieve fulfillment on this earth. THAT is something I certainly want to do but, much more, need to do. Purpose, Divine purpose is my game I need to STAY in, because days are running out. Running out because I am older and hopefully wiser. Wiser knowing I want to stay fulfilled and the only way I can, IS BY DOING.

The many gifts that God has given me have not all gone away. I may need to recalibrate a few to move forward but, by combining these gifts and all the past work I have done with them, it presents a mighty new challenge. I feel I have what it takes, it’s the energy required to get it off the ground that may be difficult. 

Here’s a novel idea for a garden-variety alcoholic”…Ask for help

I’ve also been a gear guy all my life, that is, “if I just have the right gear I can get it done”. …but Jesus said “ Take nothing for your journey,” he instructed them. “Don’t take a walking stick, a traveler’s bag, food, money, or even a change of clothes”. 

So I guess the gear Idea doesn’t really hold up but, regardless I’m still taking a little. CMON MAN you gotta cut me some slack, it’s the digital age. Don’t worry, I won’t let that hold me up. As soon as I think I can start again, gear or no gear I’m starting!

So go figure…Seven week of intensive  chemo and radiation that should have laid me out

HAS “LIT” ME UP with His super high frequency radiation Lght.

God has a crazy sense of humor.

My daughter came to see me yesterday. It was great seeing her! She looked well and seemed to be focused on the things that she needed to be focused on. I pray success for her in every way as I do for all my daughters.

I have had a life before where I have success here but no success there and it did not go well. Today at least I have things in the right order. 

God, Family and everything else. 

I’m good with God for I have repented and asked for the forgiveness that I needed to be set free. Because I was sincere, it was offered to me and I accepted it.

Family over the years has been more difficult, for my old nemesis addiction played a role there. But by God’s Grace that problem was removed from me many years ago. The difficulties now that I encounter in my later years, are simply in playing the cards that God has given me the very best I that I can. I make mistakes… regularly but, I’m not perfect. I pray that over the years others will understand and forgive, so that they can be set free. 

My Family of three marriages, seven children and eighteen grand children. I fit in there somewhere betwixt and between. A miracle today that I am doing as well as I am and so happy with a loving wife by my side.

I am grateful.

Lord be with me for today, 

Guide me and direct me in every way. 

Thy will not mine be done. 

Making life good for everyone.

This is a question I see on many forms that I am instructed to fill out these days. “Am I losing interest in life?” or the things that use to interest me. I don’t really feel this is a fair ask right now…

 “Why do I think I am losing interest?” might be a better way to put it. 

Lets think about this. Am I losing interest because:

1. I have been tied down and bombarded with radiation from a linear accelerator five days a week for the past five weeks, taking the energy from my life and destroying my ability to speak.

     2. Nurses have been regularly been injecting the chemo agent Cisplatin into me dressed in hazmat suits               that among other downfalls has destroyed my ability to taste.

     3.  Taking a daily regimen of drugs that literally knock the crap out of me and add other unwanted side effects.

      4. Or could it be the narcotic pain relievers.

          Gee. I wonder.. 

Yes I am losing interest, but not because I am. I am losing interest only because of what I have had to and will continue to endure. 

I want you to know I am not complaining, for I am blessed to be able to receive this treatment. I elected this treatment. It’s just that I felt the question unfair, as if I need some kind of head drug to fix me because I have lost interest in living. What a bunch of baloney. I pray that I will be able to get my interest back as I …

1. Quit getting tied down and bombarded from a linear accelerator and get back to the gym.

     2. Quit being injecting with the chemo agent Cisplatin regain my taste and start enjoying healthy foods again.

      3.  Quit taking drugs everyday that literally knock the crap out of me with other unwanted side effects.

       4. Quit narcotic pain relievers.

Coming back to square one will be a process for me  as it is for all of us here and not an easy one I might add. I hope my old body has not forgotten, that I still want it to do the things it was doing for me before I got here. 

I will need to go slow and be patient with myself building back. For this process of building back will take time just as the tearing down process did. Anyway… thanks for reading! I just felt that question needed a bit of clarification at this stage of the game.

Onward

Amazing new discovery! I can’t believe I never knew about this! 

It’s probably because no one every thought of it until now. My patented new titanic invention, ladies and gentleman I give you “Uneeded Sleep”

“Yes with “Unneeded Sleep” you can do just about anything. You can become the nicest person in the room, You can experience people warming up to you in many new and wonderful ways. With “Unneeded Sleep”you can even find your self healthier and happier. Why.. you can even become better looking!”

So you say OK, I’ll bite, how’s it work?

You wait until the day you believe you do not need sleep. Then you go to bed and stay in bed until your not awakened by anyone other than yourself. 

That is.. when you go to bed for a full cycle of “Unneeded Sleep', if you are awaken by anyone other than yourself say 55 minutes into your ”Unneeded Sleep" cycle you roll over and go back to bed. If someone wakes you up inadvertently say an hour and forty minutes later, you close your little peepers and go back to dreamland until no one awakens you but you wake up all on your own, naturally, no alarms allowed. You may be in bed two hours or two days.

IT DOES’NT MATTER 

The natural way of “Unneeded Sleep” takes what it takes and only that can represents the full cycle of the “Unneeded Sleep"  that your body probably desperately needs!

Just remember.. 

If you don’t allow the full cycle, you won’t receive the full benefit. You may think I’m crazy, but don’t knock it, till ya try it. After a full cycle, its wacky how good your gonna feel and its all absolutely free. Now you can’t say, I never gave you anything.

Slept a few hours.. now awake. Hope your doing well tonight. 

Thinking about youth. Wow what a thing and ya don’t know what you got until its gone. I have known some remarkable young people in my day. I don’t consider myself one of them. I did not maximize my education as I should have. I guess it was the ole I’ll do it my way thing. At even a young age I was still always afraid to take that last big step. I was also blessed by God that I did not get so lost in myself that I couldn’t find my way back out. Although I never ever really feel maximized in my youth, with my opportunities I did OK. 

Now late in life OK sounds a little lame. For myself as with all off us eventually time runs out for substantial restarts and new careers. 

What could I have been? 

Nothing in life is easy, there is work and then there is more work. That just the way it is, but you can get there if you want it bad enough. I suppose it’s just about getting where you think your trying to get that’s the tricky wicket. Need to be very careful with that choice. You can spend your only lifetime and at at the end find out you were under a terrible disillusion. I have a vey good friend that travels around Africa mentoring a whole lot of little children about the ways of the Lord. Now there’s a job for you that’s gonna have an amazing everlasting retirement program! 

Our lives and the Lords ways are intertwined in inexplicable ways if you have or even if you have not given yourself up to Him. The really cool thing is you don’t really know what you did or did not do for Him. Let’s just call that His blessed humility gift to us. I guess all I really feel about all that, is that I could never do enough no matter what I did because of all He did for me. We are all so blessed for His ways are so much higher we cannot even pretend to know. We just need Love and be Loved. 

Our simple guarantee. 

ROMANS 8:28 

All things work for good for those who love the Lord and are called to His purpose

This morning I felt I had another important dream. I woke from a sound sleep and there it was, short but clear as a bell… 

In the dream, I received a gift, wrapped in translucent paper.  I unwrapped a small mysterious  three draw lock box with three keys. 

I believe a primary goal of every human being in life is to know themselves. I lived a large portion of my life in denial over that. Oh, I thought I knew, but the proof was in the pudding. How were things going? Lots of fruit? 

Today, I understand that true knowledge is about knowing your heart, and further, that finding your heart is a gift from God. To break it down a bit further, the Trinity of God. So in matters of the heart we must start with Christ. He was the first, the one that came down to instruct us. He was the one they all wrote about. The author of truth, the one who fulfilled scripture and laid down His Life for us. 

As recovery folks had told me many times, “Acceptance is the answer to all your problems.”Acceptance of Christ’s blessed Gift of Grace. Paid for by His Precious Blood. Yes, we must start with that, then, because we surrender he provides us with our new life conscience, the Holy Spirit. That’s how we now discern the next truly right thing to do. 

Through continued seeking of His way and truth, spiritual understanding becomes clearer with an  everyday, humble realization of Christ’s undeserved love. Only the incredible love of Jesus has the power to overcome our self directed lives of sin. 

It is Jesus who said “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except by me” 

IF we continue to seek truth, we come to believe through an amazing divinely-directed destiny that is revealed only for us here on Earth. We begin to “WANT” to conform with Christ in spirit and in truth. 

Finally IF we persevere, in death we are blissfully joined with billions of other believers in our everlasting home in Heaven as Our Father invites us with those wonderful words “Well Done My Good and Faithful Servant.” 

So a dream… Three keys divinely simply or three keys humanly impossible to find your heart 

Key #1 Surrender to Christ Honestly and sincerly 

Key #2 Receive the Holy Spirit and stay open. Listen for that still small voice throughout your life and learn from it. 

Key #3 Keep seeking, reading scripture and connecting with other believers. Staying close so when that all important moment comes like a thief in the night, Your Father in heaven will look into your eyes and say “Welcome home my good and faithful servant.” 

One last thing.. 

The wrapping paper represents the veil…A visual statement, that He IS the Lord, sees all things, knows all things. Because he is, we love Him, and need to stay ready to obey him “For His rod and his staff will comfort us”. It's a totally counter-cultural statement proclaiming obedience in the midst of a society that is today, totally permeated with the defiant attitude of  "I will not serve,” 

…but service is what we do, Right? 

Why is that? 

The answer to that question, is the proof of the solution supplied by Him that we had sought for so long. 

Namely that.. 

We have hearts today that know how to Love.

A few years back, when I was traveling the country as a musical recovery speaker, my sponsor at the time Mr. Wally K, an awesome man of God, wanted me to write a book about it. I thought if I ever did I would entitle it “PERFORMANCE”, because It didn’t have a thing to do with it. 

I always kind of felt in those days that people thought I was trying to be someone. I’m sure that was only my crazy brain. I mean think about it, I was showing up at places no one wanted to go, speaking to people no one wanted to see about something no one wanted to hear… for  FREE! 

Sheer lunacy in the eyes of the world. Eventually I learned that if I could remove myself mentally from those play dates that God would move in with His positive healing presence and change things. 

I can tell you this, it was a strange but wonder-filled life I led for 20 years. I keep telling myself if I can get back to reasonable health from here, it is my intention to work the road again in some limited capacity. I say that from my standpoint, not God’s. 

To begin the facilitation process I recently added a zoom sponsorship recovery program onto our sight. I am sure people look at it and think.. “ What the heck kinda program is that? “ That, my friends, is a simple free program that I believe, after nearly forty years of sobriety I can manage worldwide, to deliver my best effort of experience, strength, hope, inspiration, and creativity. This program is exclusively for men who are willing to do the work to achieve successful sobriety and true joy in living. If you don’t like the way it looks, please be sure to try a different one for there are many, but they all kinda boil down to the same thing… 

God could and would IF He were sought. 

I urge you to try it if you need a sponsor. I’ll be online tomorrow at 11:30 Hope to see you then!

Crossing seventy years, I understand that when my health goes down for whatever reason, I want and need ft to come back. As age progresses, it’s reality presents a prognosis of diminishing returns, bleak but true. 

When I was a “healthy kid" I would get sick then I would get well and be as good as I was before I got sick, a perfect rebound! Now, with seventy years behind me, my health problems are more serious like Leukemia and neck cancer. To combat these mortal enemies, my wife and I made the decision to enter a long term, very expensive, thank you SSI, sophisticated, cancer treatment program. It includes virtually digi-contoured radiation as well as chemotherapy. and today, at five weeks, we are moving into pain management. 

Here’s how THAT works. 

I can’t swallow very well because there’s too much pain resulting from ongoing radiation treatments. So I use narcotic pain medication to mask the pain to enable me to swallow. I need to swallow! It’s imperative for me to swallow in order for the cancer wounds from the radiation damage to heal. The pain medication over time will have to be increased because I still have to endure two more weeks of intensive daily radiation. During those two weeks they will further destroy the cancer cells in my throat which will increase my pain and difficulty in swallowing and speaking. 

Then… maybe in about ten weeks, the things I have lost, saliva, taste, probably voice may or may not come back, but regardless of whether it will, there is much work I need to do to rebuild myself in an attempt to bring these crucial things back into my life. I’m not even talking here about the continued check-ups, doctor visits, speech therapy and pet scans. 

It’s like coming back to health before all this used to be just kind of living life. 

Now..  Coming back will be lots and lots of work. So much work, that life as I knew it, is gone and still all this perplexity isn’t even here yet.

Ah.. NOT! I kept thinking, hoping, but no, ain’t gonna happen. The storm is coming! 

Yesterday the doc prescribed opiate narcotics, something I am not too happy about, but like the wife says we just gotta do what we gotta do. I mean thank God for pain meds, but I have certainly seen my share of folks go back out on these things. Narcotics were never my thing, but lets get real, they have addicted millions. My wife and I need to be very careful when it comes to this stuff. I have never used Oxy before. 

We have three fold plan: 

1st  We wait until the pain actually requires the medication 

2nd  We cut the pills in half so we can apply in smaller quantities of 2.5 mg. 

3rd   As soon as the pain subsides we stop adding medication. 

I will wait until I get back home today before we try this, if we do then. It’s still gonna be tricky because I can’t really eat food now, I’m down to protein shakes and fruit smoothies. Also, when you start to use these things, they say you get clogged up instantly, so that has to be dealt with. So when we start, we will need to start taking something for that…  Oh Joy. 

Unfortunately I think things around here are going to become a bigger pain in the butt than they already are.