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God of All Comfort: Chemotherapy Reflections Part Two
This past week was the week of hair loss, hours of debilitating headaches, nausea, insomnia and the realization that I am on chemo. Yet this has also been the week of celebrating the joys of getting-to-do the mundane. Preparing a meal, creating an online shopping order, addressing Christmas cards, washing and folding a load of laundry, wrapping a Christmas gift, making annual cheese balls, dipping chocolate pretzels and making peppermint and almond bark. As the week continued to progress, the good began to outweigh the days of laying low. For this I have been grateful! Yet in the not so good days, I have found that during this holy season…
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Prayer for Chronic Pain Suffers
It’s two in the morning. A hot tumbler of peppermint tea sits to the side of my computer. In a sleepy stupor, I watch mesmerized, as the steam dissipates into the chilly morning air. I am hoping that my first sip will help to soothe “what-ails-me.” No answers to chronic pain keep me awake. I pray. I struggle. I sort out all I have done to find answers. I take another long, hard look at the answers I do have. Yet, in all this, the real answer alludes me and doctors alike. So, it is mornings like this that I find myself writing, praying, thinking of other chronic-pain-suffers, who also…
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FEAR. FRENZY OR FAITH
Walking through the grocery store yesterday I stopped to talk with a friend who was also shopping. As we chatted between the crossroads of chips and dairy, I became aware of my surrounding. “Stop and listen.” I told him. We both stopped and inquisitively looked around. The store was packed with afternoon shoppers; but no one was talking. They were quietly moving around the store loading up their carts. “Don’t you find this odd?” I asked. “That’s fear.” He observed. The day before in another larger store I came face to face with another kind of fear. It swept through the store with panic, rudeness, carts rushing the isles at…
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A Touch of Mercy for The Oppressed
Over the past seven years I have traveled to many local places throughout Manila, Philippines. Drawn to all things cultural and Filipino, I find delight in: a simple trike ride through local streets, a walk through the center of a neighboring Barangay, a trek along steep pathways where simple clapboard homes teeter precariously along cliff edges, a ride on a crowded unairconditioned train in which I am sandwiched shoulder to shoulder with the locals whom I have grown to love, a handkerchief covering my face from the polluted black belch of a jeep-nee I am riding in, the church that meets outside whose congregants greet me warmly with smiles that…
