My Tribute–The Death of a Blog

My wife has decided that she needs to stop the Blogging life because it was taking up too much of her time. She was a good blogger and dedicated to reading the blogs of others. The draw of reading and posting was taking away from her time with the kids and things she wanted to do around the house. Her Blog is going to, at least for the time being be suspended from any new entries. It was a blog that was very alive and the posts a very practical and from the heart. I, personally am sorry to see her stop, but I have scraped around the internet trying to find and appropriate tribute for the death of a blog. I wound up having to do some editing to get exactly what I wanted, and then uploading the video again so that I could use it (What a chore!), but here it is… And we hope you’ll be back soon!

Where is the benefit?

I had a conversation with my wife when we were on our way home from the Dr.’s office today. I have a chronic back condition that flares up wihen it feels like it (or when I do something to aggravate it) and will, more ofen than not, put me out of commission.

About little background: 15 years ago, while I was working for the government, I was also eligible to participate in a clinical trial and get paid my normal salary for doing it (which was not much) for felbamate (a broad spectrum atni-convulsant) which could be used to control my epilepsy. This was what they called a double blind study which meant neither the Dr. or the Pharmacy knew if I was actually getting the real medicine, or if I was getting a placebo–and actually no medicine at all. Well, I hurt my shoulder (can’t remember how) while I was there and had to go and get an x-ray. They took me to the x-ray lab and I was left in the room by the technician unattended. Unfortunate for me, I was not getting any medicine (but didn’t know it at the time) and my body decided to let me know that. I had a seizure and fell off the x-ray table, right onto my back. From that day forward I have suffered from on again/off again back pain. I’ve been through all sorts of treatments (the only which really worked was acupuncture) and x-rays and scans for my back since then. Same result—the back still hurts.

The government (I think because they were I was going to sue them) provided me with all sorts of stop gap measures to aid the pain I have. I have a TENS unit, Lidocaine patches for pain, all sorts of Physical Therapy paraphernalia. All fine and well, but my back still hurts. So….thats part of the reason I am writing this post.

After 15 years, I am still trying to think figure out what the benefit of all of this is. I don’t see the benefit in having the Epilepsy or the back pain. Granted I’m looking at all of this from every thing but the spritual side. So God could be (and probably is working but I’m just not seeing it. Most days my back is killing me. I take meidcine around the clock for my epilepsy so that I can be a semi-abnormal person around everyone else. It seems to work.

God is doing things with this that I may never see, but I got to get a glimpse of one of the things that he is doing. While at the doctor today (to talk about my back, of course,) my wife had the kids and frineds of ours from church came. There are three (and soon to be FOUR) people in their family. With the wife being VERY pregnant she was not up to chasing her 1 year old child around the Dr.s office. My wife had gone outside an that is where she saw this family coming in. Mom and toddler did not have to go in. She and my wife got to talk and my three little ones occupied her child. For her, this was indeed a blessing. I got to miss it all because I was inside getting x-rays taken. But they made it very clear that our being there today was a great benefit and blessing to them. I just wonder how god has used the many times I have had to go to the Dr. for my Epilepsy or back to help others. I can’t even begin to recall any of my visits to be able to answer that question. While I may not have benefited all that much, I can only imagine how others may have because God placed me where he did.

So, while I’m sitting here looking for the benefit and trying to figure out how this makes me any better: I need to remember that God has a plan that is much more important than mine, and although I don’t deserve it, he has chosen to use me to help carry it out. I just hope that I can be a good vessel for him in that puposes….and although he doesn’t have to, I just hope he allows me to see the benefit more often in hopes that it will make me feel better as I feel the pain!

Hello God? Its me again!

I’ve had this in draft since March 3. Guess its time to develop it and get it out of the hopper! Good friends of ours came to visit the other day and one of them was wearing a shirt with the picture of someone on the phone and the title of this post (Hello God? Its me again) as the caption in the conversation bubble. I often feel exactly like that. Even though we are supposed to call on God regularly, and he does not discourage it, sometimes we feel like we’re bothering him with my piddly little problems. In the grand scheme of things, that is exactly what they are too. Imagine all of the problems of the all of the Christians in the world. Many much more important than mine…at least in my eyes. But, Praise the Lord that God does not see it that way.

That doesn’t make it any easier though to get past the problem of feeling like we’re burdening God. Then you look a the Bible and you find out that God wants us to give our burdens to Him! We, as people, with our iittle finite minds, choose to carry the burdens ourselves. If we bother to check our “knee mail” regularly we’ll find a message from God every day that says: “Hello so-in-so (that would be us), Thanks for offering your assistance, but I don’t need your help today.” But it seems that when that message does try to come through to us we put it in some type of spam queue and never even pay any attention to it. Its a wonder that God doesn’t get frustrated with us like we do with each other. He is so patient—we are not. He is so willing–we like to think we are, but we are not. That list can go on and on, but I really don’t want to turn this post into a book. I think that you get the idea.

If you consider nothing else and if this post does not provoke any other thought, dwell on this: God has been waiting patiently for our call and has been expecting it for a long time. Don’t feel bad about having to call on him to help you, because, if you know him as your savior, you have the promise that he will. He wants to! We simply have to let him. When you pray to God, no matter how many connections are already in progress, you will never get a busy signal! So when you feel bad about having to say “Hello, God? It’s me again!” listen very carefully so that you can hear when he says, “Good, I’ve been expecting your call!”

Google is NOT a verb

I don’t care what Merriam Webster says, Google is not a verb! I realize that there are some who will not share my views on this and I look forward to reading about it on THEIR blogs. Before Google hit the search engine scene, I don’t recall hearing about anybody who had to Yahoo! or Webcrawler or Excite something when they were looking for it on the internet. For those who do not recognize it, those three things that I just mentioned are all internet search engines. They used go be very commonly used and had their own chance at “fame,” if you will. but Then along came Google. Apparently they either did it better than everybody esle did or their interface was just better than everyone else’s. Whatever the deciding factor was, Google prevailed over the others.

But I still maintain that you do NOT Google things and you do NOT Google for them. You SEARCH for them. Once again, Merriam Webster, in her infinite wisdom has decided to redefine a word….NOT based on its actual meaning, but based on the way the WORLD decides that it is going use it. How much does the person (or group of people) get paid that makes these decisions that change our vocabulary. Too much if you ask me. If I really wnated to find out I guess I could do a search. Meanwhile, some people I know might try to Google it. On that particular score, none of us would come up with the hits that we want, but it sure did make for a good example! I remember when I used to cycle through the search engines….Netscape, Webcrawler, Excite, Momma, Ask Jeeves (Jeeves has retired, now its just ask.com), Alta Vista, Lycos, Yahoo, infoseek, hotbot; and I’m sure there are some that didn’t make my list. Then came Google. Google does it all and then some. It has many other offerings, resources and utilities. They have expanded quite well. But even with everything that they have to offer, I still maintain, that Google is not, and never will be a vervb. Oh, and while I’m at it…..neither is Mapquest!