July - Can it be over already?

Where could it possibly have gone?  There must be people out there searching for the time and hot, humid beach like weather they were expecting for vacations, staycations, weekends at the cottage or trailer time.  Here I am, home everyday and wondering the same things.  I can only imagine how fast the hamster wheel must be turning for those of you who are still putting in full time work, family time and community volunteering.

I remember when I first met my husband Mike and things were becoming a little more romantic than painting kitchens and bathrooms together which is how we came to be a couple.  He met me at work and we walked across to the waterfront park at the hospital and enjoyed a picnic.

 I can still sense the stoppage of time and the sense of a mini, less than one hour vacation which truly nurtured our souls.  Maybe that's something we all need to consider as often as possible, even me at home, a little 'time out' to simply absorb the infinite beauty of nature around us that is ours for the receiving.

As I write this my heart breaks for the millions of people who can only hope for some sense of peace in their lives. Only through the happenstance of their birthplace, they are caught in the middle of conflict that strips away every sense of normalcy and fills the void with senseless, chaotic, savage violence.

One minute children are playing in places they have been assured are safe and the next they become victims of yet another shell attack.  The images on tv are enough to sicken anyone watching from a distance the horror that is taking place around the world.  Oh we should be ever so grateful for the insulated lives we live in  one of the greatest countries of the world.

In 2004 our family started a new practice which has since become one of our traditions that I may have mentioned before.  During the tsunami that hit Japan, we felt so helpless that we decided there was one thing we could do for those in the path of the raging wall of water and horrific aftermath, and that was to pray.  Each day at dinner - yes we do share dinner together at the table when the kids are around - after saying grace, we say 3 Hail Marys - the first for our immediate family, the second for everyone we offered to pray for and - the third - for the world.  When friends are over we warn them they may have to warm up their plates by the time we've finished praying. We also invite the kids to explain what we are doing as a reminder of our good fortune.

 I can only imagine the desperation and the prayers many of those victims of violence and disaster are giving up with the sheer hope of being saved or spared further suffering.

Wow, I had no idea that this writing would come out as I sit in the screened in gazebo overlooking the creek listening to the breeze in the trees and the birds as they chirp, and caw and tweet signals to one another.  Do you ever wonder about your purpose in life?  Why you are planted where you are and what you're supposed to be doing?  I tend to get more caught up with the 'doing' side of things, endlessly questioning if I'm doing the right things and pondering if I should be trying to activate some new project or activity to fulfil my sense of purpose.

Then, sometimes, when I can quiet my mind and simply gaze outside I look a the almost majestic pines and other trees that have grown up and have now stood in the same spot in our backyard for decades.  They go nowhere and simply flourish where they were planted letting life, and their part in it, just happen.

Some days it's simply absorbing the warmth of the sun while getting their trunks and branches scratched by playful squirrels.  Other days it might include providing a nesting space for the birds and a coffee shop atmosphere as various species of birds stop in for a brief landing.  Then of course, there are those wildly windy days that can send their whole being to swaying and possibly the loss of limbs from time to time.  I guess sometimes our lives can be the same, and it's all about how open we can be to allow life to happen, flourish in the good times and be very, very flexible in the bad times.

It's at this time that I need to publicly apologize to my constant companion Maggie.  When I've mentioned her before, I had been quite critical of her having me carry her around while she didn't do anything at all.  Well, she's now up to 70 pounds - for those of you who may not know, Maggie is the imaginary friend who represents the weight gain I have experienced since increasing my meds to the current dose last October.  In an 'aha' moment caused by a close friend, I realized that while Maggie may not outwardly be doing anything, she is doing lots of work on the inside.  It seems as she grows, the cells in my liver reduce in size which is no small feat!

I need to be much more gracious and accepting of her in my life and to the prolonging of the quality of my life.  While I have strained or sprained a rib in the past few weeks and have been sidelined yet again from my exercising, I am learning that Maggie and I are still settling into a new sense of normal as it relates to physical function.  It seems to me that my body is much more fragile than it has been in the past and that my brain needs to process that fact.

One of the sad realities of my physical fragility is that I will not likely be in a position to hop on 'Oliver' - my little 250cc Yamaha Virago motorcycle and zip around town with Mike on his Ultra Classic Harley Davidson.  I will need to be content to be a well treated passenger who can enjoy the sights and sounds from a lazy boy like seat with surround sound.

 That being said, we did spend last weekend with our oldest stepdaughter, Krista, her husband Mike Jones (no relation to my Mike Jones) and her mom and husband Carol and John enjoying the activity of the 2014 national HOG rally held here in Kingston.  HOG being the Harley Owners Group.  With Ella being here for the weekend with Daddy Matt, again we were able to spend time together while enjoying the entertainment.

As I continue to ease into the reality of my retirement, I can almost feel the stress levels decrease like the slow leak in a tire simply becomes softer and less effective but can still often get to its destination without incident.  Compare that feeling to a blown up balloon without a knot being let go and flying around without direction, only to quickly fall to the floor, pretty much useless. When I was first diagnosed, the two greatest concerns included time with grandchildren and how much might I get, and the fervent hope to be able to enjoy at least some part of retirement after working responsibly for over 35 years to be self sufficient.

 These last two weeks of July have in fact been providing fulfilment of exactly those wishes, including watching a slippery pig competition with grandkids Ayden and Azlyn at the Lansdowne Fair.  Little kids with greased arms had to grab a piglet by its hind legs and drag it into a circle - only in Lansdowne!!

On that note I will leave you with that humorous image and wish you all the best for a great Civic Holiday here in Canada and a safe and happy start to the month of August.

Hugs,
Liz
'Prayers wrapped in faith and sent with love are the greatest gifts we can receive'.

Summer Musings .....

It's been a most interesting couple of weeks since my last post, lots of food for thought that can be served up like a special home cooked meal made of comfort food for the soul.  I am a couple of days late in sitting down to provide an update but I know you'll understand when I tell you my 'relentless friend' Carol Ann dragged me off to the family cottage from Monday to Thursday of this week.  It was a lovely spot shared by 7 siblings and their families and extended families.

While the weather changed like commercials on tv, we managed to take a pedal boat around the tiny lake before the next rain shower.

 It was surprisingly easy given my physical limitations that I was able to pedal most of the way around even without 'Maggie's' help!  (remember my imaginary 60 pound 6 year old?).

A quiet day during the week out on the water and you could almost hear the peals of laughter of children enjoying the water and jumping off docks without a care in the world.  A lonesome loon serenaded us with song for a time, its echoing sound finding its way into the depths of our souls.

We had a delightful visit last weekend from my stepson Ryan, his wife Niki and one year old daughter Lauren!  They together with my son Matt, his friend Jaclyn and his soon to be three year old daughter Ella had a wonderful time at our house, connecting and playing and watching the two cousins explore a new relationship with one another.  I would include a photo but have yet to figure out all the aspects of downloading and cross loading and uploading which is why I have been tending to use images from the internet - at least I've sort of mastered that one technique!!!!  Yet I watch these near infants press all sorts of buttons without a care in the world and actually access apps and programs that I have yet to discover!

Medically, I continue to feel well, realize that I will have days when I feel good and others when I feel like a beached whale waiting for someone to come along and push me back in the water so I can relax in the buoyancy of my surroundings.
 No follow up appointments until the fall, just continued physio to improve the core strength that was stripped out by 3 surgeries in less than a year, front to back!

A further development has been that I was required to apply for a disability pension through my employer and, if approved, decide if I would accept it and officially retire from my employment at the hospital.  Without going into great detail about the musts, maybes, choices and possibilities, I did sign off to retire and handed in my I.D., my parking pass having mentally passed that milestone.

When I went on medical leave on August 1, 2012, at that time I had been working 35 years full time plus so I guess God said 'that's enough'; I have a new challenge for you in life.  Oh, and I have agreed to have a retirement party.  The main reason for that is that there will be no wake or visitation when I finally depart this earth - I'd rather get to see everyone while I'm alive and this is an ideal excuse for a party!  Doesn't it make far more sense to have a chance to see everyone in person rather than have your family be inundated, possibly with people they don't know creating an awkward situation for everyone?  Everyone has many better things to do with their time than feeling forced into an event that is just fulfilling some sense of obligation.

One day recently while driving through town, listening to the Christian Radio Station (Mars Hill Network on 94.7), a discussion was taking place about the 'sandpaper people' that God allows in to our lives.  You know the ones - those who no matter what they say or do, just seems to rub us the wrong way.   The ones who, when you see them coming, you wish there was a hole that could open up and swallow either them or you - either would be a welcome relief from having to face another assault from someone you find totally abrasive.

The lesson of the session was how it's precisely these people who help to buff the edges off of US, and allow us to grow as individuals.  I've often heard that everyone we come into contact is a tiny reflection of ourselves and what we see includes qualities, traits, and yes even faults that we ourselves display to others.  You've heard the saying 'the faults we find in others are usually those we ourselves have'?  Depending on your mood or frame of mind of course, you can be open to a little polishing, or be totally averse and make every effort to push the individual as far away as possible.  Have you ever thought about who those 'sandpaper people' are in your life and how you react to them?  I know I have several of those people and have decided that during this time of healing, it's just as important to get the emotional side of me looked after as the physical so am bracing myself that when they show up, I just have to let them come through like a storm on an otherwise calm day and embrace the elements they bring into my life.  Once they leave again, hopefully I will be a little smoother and easier to deal with as well.

In Father Leo's homily a couple of weeks ago, he talked about a conversation he had with his sister about how she was coping generally in life as it was close to the anniversary of a loss.  In her early life she'd lost a 3 year old son and only a year or so ago, a 21 year old grandson in a tragic accident.  She remains a devout Catholic despite these losses and in response to her brother's question, she responded, "What we don't transform, we transmit".

I was struck by the power of that statement and have been pondering those experiences in my life that I may be hanging onto that might be causing me to 'transmit' long harboured feelings of loss, rejection or resentment.  Wow!
Each one of us has an opportunity to examine those areas of our lives and perhaps allow those sandpaper people to help us transform the negative feelings into something more positive and hopeful.  After all, we can only change ourselves and our reactions to what goes on around us.

Since these two poignant messages entered my mental air space, a third thought came to me in light of my own illness and that of the son of a very close friend.  I've written before about how we are encouraged to remember that when we are at our weakest and most vulnerable, that's when we are closest to God.  Please remember that I choose to refer to God because that is my belief system, and you may have some other reference point so feel free to refer to whatever works for you.

I can't help but think that as my life progressed, and I found less and less satisfaction in the material world, that I became willing to become an instrument of God and His work here on earth.  In fact, I know that more than once, in fact many times over the past few years, an effort has been made to more purposefully allow His will to be done in my life than my own.  After all, I went through a number of years in my younger days, when I thought I could do everything myself and often found life quite challenging.  The more I let go of what I want or think I need, the easier life becomes because whatever happens doesn't have to fit the black and white, rigid boxes that I had constructed for the plans for my life.

 I've become much more content to walk the flowing path of shades of grey that allow me to see many more perspectives and opportunities of life.

So where am I going with this?  Is it possible that my illness and the serious illness of my friend's son  (for example) has been allowed into our lives because we are willing to let God work through us to help others deal with their own life issues?  If this is the case, doesn't it change everything?  Doesn't it put us in a place of privilege we never thought possible?  Doesn't it give those around us a whole different perspective of what you are witnessing and experiencing and feeling?  If you can just open yourself up to the possibility of what God might be trying to do in your life through my experience, think of what might happen.  Who knows what might be transformed in your life to improve the transmissions that you send out every day to those around you.  When I embrace this line of thinking, I experience traces of that feeling of euphoria that have been entering my consciousness with greater frequency.  One day, I also realized that we cannot possibly be exposed to the rapture that comes after this life because our human selves don't have the capacity to absorb it.  What we can do though, is make an effort every day, through gratitude and good works, get just a taste or glimpse of that indescribable feeling of completeness.  Pretty deep stuff for what you may have hoped would be a light hearted update on a hot day in July!  As I've mentioned before, most often I have simply the kernel of an idea and let the Holy Spirit come and pop the magic out of it by way of these writings.

I hope that you are enjoying life accepting what is happening and being open to the grace that is available to each of us every day.  Remember, it can't be earned, it's simply ours for the asking.

Take care and travel safe if you're out on the roads or in the air .....

Hugs
Liz

'Prayers wrapped in faith and sent with love are the greatest gifts we can receive'.

Happy Canada Day!

I continue to ride high on the euphoria from the results of my last cat scan - NO new areas of concern and the cells in my liver have reduced in size.  Amazing.  It's funny to me though how I absolutely do not relate to my illness, maybe because other than the medication side effects, I'm pretty much asymptomatic.  I feel so blessed to have felt so relatively well throughout these adventures and thank everyone for their ongoing prayers.

The clinical side of things, I learned over the past month or so, is that I am deemed to be permanently and totally disabled given that the original source has spread to three organs putting me at overall stage 4 although the cells in my liver are considered stage 2.  My doctors continue to fill out reams of paperwork to satisfy the requests of various stakeholders including insurance companies, you'd think there might be some sort of system to make things easier.  No need to go on about this, I believe I've ranted on this subject in a previous post.

The month of June has brought many highs compared to this time last year when my back decided it wouldn't hold me up any longer.  We've celebrated 3 family birthdays - Happy Birthday Nathalie (20), Gabe (23) and Lauren (1).

 I also surpassed the bizarre anniversary of reading a note to my medical file last June 25th that I had less than a year to live.  But then whoever the author was, besides being totally wrong, had no idea of who they were dealing with!  We enjoyed the wedding of friends on the summer solstice and I found a labyrinth in Carleton Place that I walked - having wanted to do so for quite a long time now.  Not sure of the spiritual outcome - I may have been expecting more - but what else is new?

I'm not sure why I want to talk to you about this next subject matter but most of these posts start out as vague, general ideas and then the keyboard does the work.  Well, not really, we all know I get lots of help from the Holy Spirit.  Having said that, and just after watching some of the Canada Day celebrations on tv, I guess it makes perfect sense to ponder what makes up this great country that we live in.

Have you ever had the sensation of crying without realizing you were actually tearful?  It has only happened once in my life, several years ago when taking a morning walk to Pier 21 in Halifax while at a fundraising conference.  A colleague and I had planned to tour the museum be I decided to scout things out ahead of time only to learn it wasn't open yet.  No matter but as I approached the old rail cars outside the museum, I could almost sense the people getting on board with emotions of all sorts almost bursting at the seams of these newly minted residents of Canada.

The reason I bring this up is it was that experience that led me to believe I would have a further emotional epiphany once arriving in the land of my heritage - Hungary.  But it wasn't to be.  Being home now for almost a month, the sense I have is being more settled, having seen where my family comes from and experienced a sense of the culture and lifestyle of the people of this small country bordered by several nations.

For a moment though I'd like to go back to the Pier 21 experience.  You may or may not know that Halifax was the doorway to Canada for almost a million immigrants seeking a new home before the second world war and beyond.  When I met up with my colleague and toured the relatively new museum, I was overcome almost the entire morning we were there with tears off and on.  Why would that be?

My father arrived through Pier 21, literally got off a ship that had travelled several days to reach Canada, had papers processed, and walked through the building to board a train to his new life destination.  It happened to be in the Niagara Peninsula where a so called 'distantly related' relative would welcome him as his sponsors.  That was it.  It is not likely that anyone who arrived through Pier 21 had any lasting experience in that location although one can only imagine the faith, hope and anxiety many of these people, most with no command of the English language were experiencing.

I have developed my own little theory about this entire experience.  I'd rather call it a theory than an opinion so that I don't have to go to any great lengths to defend it.  It's always open to refinement and evolution based on discussions with interested parties.  Having grown up as first generation Canadian, my brother and I were both born in Canada, we did hear about and in many ways experienced the challenges of being new to a country, isolated by culture, language and the sometimes not so welcoming residents of town.  One may not fully appreciate or realize the challenges people went through having left everything behind with no knowledge of what the future might hold.

What struck me as totally profound during the visit to Pier 21, was the sincere depth of appreciation and celebration of the nearly one million people who arrived in Canada and how they have positively impacted the growth and fabric of our nation.  It has been created to give us a glimpse into the past and in some small way expose us to the more recent building of our nation.  In the past number of years of course, we have welcomed more diverse newcomers, including different races, religions, cultures and, again, languages.  The tolerance of Canadians is truly remarkable and an asset we must all treasure and develop even further.

In looking ahead to the rest of the summer, what plans do you have?  Will you find time for some relaxed, quiet reflection or will you be racing from one activity to the next trying to cram in all the 'to do' things you need to get done?  I must admit, even our calendar can fill up quickly but we are trying our best to carve out down time.  Today, part of the day was spent weeding out a garden bed and repairing a retaining wall.  Sound like fun on Canada Day?  Maybe not to many but I can't think of  too many things more satisfying than working away on your little piece of earth that you've been lucky enough to be the current owner and improve it just a little bit.

After that and a good shower, a long bike (motorcycle) ride was in order to ride through small town Ontario around the greater Kingston area and see how people were celebrating.

It seems like this is also a quiet period in terms of blogging.  I've shared what I believe to be important at this time and will be back in contact in mid July.  Enjoy your time with family and friends.  Until next time......

God Bless and Hugs,
Liz
"Prayers wrapped in faith and sent with love are the greatest gifts we can receive."