"Go East", they said...: Catching up

THANK YOU!!!

My husband and I wish to thank and acknowledge family, friends,blogging community, and even friendly strangers who have flooded our email box with lovely notes, warm wishes and promised or continued prayers.

All of the emails from each of you have really touched our hearts and we’ve definitely felt your personal tender messages wrap their content's love and care around our family. I/We hope to respond to everyone, but first we want to acknowledge how deeply grateful we are to all of you for taking time to send us notes, leave cheerful messages on our telephone, or call just to tell us how much you love us.

Thank you!

Of Suffering

What the road often looks like ahead....

Definition of Suffering ;

A state of prolonged anguish and privation (noun).

Having an ailment (adjective)

Let's all face the music and jump forward into a sincere reality - it is sometimes difficult to imagine life in another person’s shoes isn’t it, especially when it comes to hearing about another person’s suffering; either mentally, psychologically, emotionally or especially physically.

No one wants to hear about that. No one likes the discomfort they feel either, lost sleep, constant emotional surges surrounding the entire topic, neither for themselves or for anyone else.

I cried out to the Lord in my suffering,
and he heard me. He set me free from all my fears.

~ Psalm 34:6

When my husband first suggested it was time to type up a post about his health concerns and leave small bits of updates along the way, we knew we would become vulnerable to other people's opinions and even perhaps to their foot-in-mouth silliness along the way. Perhaps it can become a downer for a few who read and follow the odd blip of medical information posted here because it tends to spark this very same type of discomfort for them and though they mean well, we wonder sometimes if they think before they say something.

It's easy to flick off someone else's journey through suffering especially when our own lives may feel as though they are already brimming over, either from issues controlled or unexpected. We are sometimes completely consumed with precisely what we have before us in our families and homes. Fair enough.

When you arise in the morning,
think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive,
to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

~ Marcus Aurelius

A whole lot of trust and faith, the love of family, and as mentioned previously -and the addition of both positive thinking and joy-filled laughter, all clearly become wondrous refuges. The vignette of having an arm around our shoulder from behind, sitting and leaning under our Lord's mantle frequently does come to mind. Places of refuge. People of refuge. Thoughts of refuge.

As in all trials and sufferings, there is no better place to realign our minds and get ourselves refocused than to sit a while at the foot of the cross, gazing and observing at the suffering before us and remembering how our problems are only a blip compared to what Jesus went through for us. It is then when our hearts and minds become filled with gratitude for all that we have, all that we are, and all there is to come - eternal life with Him forever and ever.

His Majesty couldn't grant us a greater favor than to give us a life that would be an imitation of the life his beloved Son lived. Thus I hold for certain that these favors are meant to fortify our weakness, that we may be able to imitate him in his great sufferings

~ St. Teresa of Avila

As with any publicly accessible post online, one becomes a bit transparent of course when worldwide public audiences can read and observe their lives a bit. And within every topic in life, I suppose we are all subjected to criticism even from well meaning folks all or most of the time.

In our family's case, if reading our blog sparks something within the reader, certainly one might not be able to fathom the difficult medical journey noted about here in particular, mostly due to their *Cliff Note form* dictations, so I can only offer you this thought - Just try to imagine what it's like to live through it all! And, if you know us personally, you also know there have been so many more painful struggles the past few years aside from health issues, so technically, just so you know for future references, only a wee sliver of information is ever posted here.

May we request a preventative measure in the future to assist in keeping our journey forward only positive and uplifting?

If the temptation grabs one of our readers to feel the urge to belittle any information posted here by claiming the writing is merely "ultra dramatic in nature" and "surely not actually as bad as all that", then we have a problem with those thoughts. If one feels even the slightest bit of temptation to offer such tidbits of negativity by attempting to dumb down what is written as fact, simply put - please (!) don't even go there.

In contrast to the topic of suffering, and as an antidote to discouraging emotion often carried with it in our lives, life always requires plenty of laughter. I would personally love to assure you - we laugh - a lot. But the drama remains - because it so.

Take every opportunity to give others encouragement

~Lucy MacDonald