Nature's Lament or Bitchin' 'Bout The Weather!

Typically, I am one of those people that just kind of rolls with the weather...I don't get too caught up in it and never really complain about it. Until today!

I have really had my fill of cold, wet weather...I need some warmth...the kind only provided by our Planet's good friend, Mr SUN. Even for just a couple of days...But NOOOOOOO, we have to endure more rain and temps in the 50's....or 40's or 30's!

In southern lower Michigan this Spring (Spring, HA!! And I use that term LOOSELY!!) we have had cold, wet weather literally every day and frankly it seems like Winter is still with us. Last week it snowed enough to cover the ground...in the third week of APRIL!!

My broken leg is healed up enough that I could get outside and get some exercise BUT NO....it's freaking raining out with 35 mph winds and bouts of FREEZING F-ing RAIN! ACH!! 

OK enough complaining...in the time it has taken me to put my melancholy mood in print...the weather has passed and the Sun has begun to show it's (now) unfamiliar FACE!!

I'm heading outside, LATER!

First THINGS First!

One of the important and fascinating aspects of my recent illness & accident that I haven't yet addressed or written about is how I am doing in my ongoing daily recovery in the face of some real difficulty challenges...including terrible, intense pain and the potential availability of some serious pain medication. In the end....I had no temptation at all to abuse pain medication or ask for it repeatedly in hospital or request it from the Doc...who I just recently met and he did not know my story until I shared it  with him.

And frankly that is the key...I tell every physician I see and work with  these days the story of my addiction, what that means for my medication use and how we can proceed with treatment without violating my sobriety. 

So far it has not only worked but my quality of life is very good as a result. 

Sowing The SEED

Here we are two full days after the Bombing in Boston and the wound feels as RAW as ever and it has once again sunk in that regardless of who initiated and carried out this attack it was an act of war. It happens in the world's War Zones every single day. Now it is happening here. And I imagine it's not going to go away anytime soon.

Of course we have very little information (public info anyway) at this time so we do not know who did this or why. In a way it doesn't matter if it is a domestic or international attack....it 'tis terrorism either way.

I really am struggling tonight to get my head (and HEART) around the fact that this is happening and suddenly I don't really want to be outside OR anywhere near a sporting event.

That folks is how you begin to sow TERROR.

Carlos

Carlos Arredondo was one of the many people who responded to help the wounded at the Boston marathon Bombing yesterday in Boston, Mass.

I urge anyone reading this post, follow up with the video, Google this guy, Carlos Arredondo because his story needs to be known ....and remembered.

I'm not really sure what to write about here tonight. I ended up starting with the story of Carlos because I didn't have to risk putting my own emotions into words. I somehow feel like it would be too risky to open the door on that side of me because I am so unsettled...what I feel is RAW and undefined so I am uncertain what would happen if I "Go There".

I just do not trust myself after the emotional damage I sustained through my illness and subsequent fall and broken leg. I am so angry inside...whatever feeling of grace, charity and love I typically feel toward life and my fellow man has been replaced (let us hope and pray temporarily) by anger, fear and mistrust.

It feels too similar to War and being at War. Time will show us who is responsible and why they did this. Perhaps then with the benefit of time and a clearer understanding of facts I will be more rational about what I am feeling and how to express it. If I go there NOW it would not be pretty, constructive or helpful to anyone...

Up Around The Bend...A Raging River Flows

It has been quite a weird experience not writing every day but just perhaps, it may be a positive thing after all. The jury is still out on that one by the way but I think I needed to step away from posting 2, 3, 4 or more times a day. I think I'd gotten in a rut and the posts had gotten a tad stale & predictable.

But on the other hand, there were many long periods of time where writing posts came quite easily to me and there did seem to be a similarity or common thread that connected the posts no matter what the subject matter of each one happened to be. They just fit together because they tended to be events or feelings or opinions or experiences, etc. from the life of this one very blessed, yet troubled but again very fortunate individual human being....ME.

So I suppose the answer to my current dilemma is to just definitely write whenever I can...just do my best and believe that eventually better things will happen.

The Day I Met LUKE

I have never hidden the fact that I am no stranger to hopelessness, struggle and self-inflicted trial/tribulation. There have been periods in my life where I very closely resembled the fellow in the All-State commercial who portrays the human personification of MAYHEM.

Hey Dude, I did it first!

Seriously, I spent years feeling snake-bit because no matter how hard I tried to do the right thing, to be an honest, good-hearted human being...my true selfish nature always intervened and Chaos/Mayhem eventually took over and ruled the day.

A perfect example of that is how I feel today. I am by all acceptable standards doing well. Sure, I have a badly broken leg but that situation most definitely could have ended with my death. I was fortunate to have only broken my leg and not my neck or worse, suffered a closed head injury that would have turned me into a vegetable for the rest of my days.

I really should be grateful for the blessing I have...but instead I feel trapped in an ever approaching darkness...forbidding, inevitable....frightening.  I call this state of being: MBD which means My Black Dog. Most refer to this as Chronic Depression. 

I can hardly breath at moments like these without the risk of tears...physical or psychological. I feel paralyzed by indecision and fear...fear that I will be exposed as the FRAUD that I have always thought I was.

Often these come on me without warning and before I know it I am  engulfed in gloom and am clueless as to how I arrived at this place. At other times...I am aware that something has happened that has caused or initiated the Mood though I have never been able to prevent it coming on even when I recognize that it is on it's way. 

Today I know why I feel as I do. It is solely related to PAIN...extreme unrelenting pain, physical disability, lack of mobility and the immediate prognosis that it will continue to be this way probably until the day I die.

For the first time in years....thoughts of not wanting to live anymore have found there way back into my heart and my mind. It is discouraging though I know the truth is I am in reality doing very well.

The Depression is the VOICE of evil and it LIES. I have spoken ...er, written in the past about the notion that I have had a "Hell-Hound On My Trail". It is a poetic, creative and visual description of a very real feeling that i have. but the reality is that it is literally TRUE...Hell and it's Care-Taker have spent my entire life time chasing me down. 

For years I was a faithful soldier for Evil...I mocked GOD and fought HIM every minute of every day. I led life for one reason and one reason only....My personal GRATIFICATION. You only counted to me if you had something I wanted or needed. 

That life feels full and glamorous but the reality of it was it leaves one only wanting MORE, MORE and MORE. I was never satisfied...I craved more attention, more money, more drugs and drink and YET...I still was never satisfied.

I spent a life-time feeling LOST, Alone and never content nor satisfied...Until I ran into LUKE. Luke? Yea...as in the writer of the Gospel of LUKE. There is a passage in the Gospel of Luke that changed everything for me. You will find it in Luke 9:23 and some of the other passages that go along with it.

Luke 9:23 reads - And he said to all, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.  

Followed by Luke 24/25 which read: For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? 

There was something incredibly profound about those words...they shot straight to my heart and I have never been the same since. I could personally and vividly relate to the last sentence about gaining the world yet losing one's self. That was the story of my life...that is who I was and deep down I knew for years that this was a phony existence ..a house of cards...smoke & mirrors.

There was something REAL and Profound about denying self, picking up my Cross DAILY and following JESUS. When I do that...no matter what happens I feel OK. When I revert and live for me...focus on me, myself and I...well I instantly seem to suffer. Coincidence you say? I think NOT!!

Don't Call Me LUCIFER

I suppose that at the age of 50 I have a drastically different perspective on life and living life then I did as a young man in my early to mid 20's. It is inevitable that one would change with the times, the experience and relationships that one has had.

But I cannot rightly say at this point in time WHAT I might have learned  as a "life lesson" from this most recent bout of illness, injury and sudden fall socially and financially. I do know that I react somewhat differently in the long run though at first glance my reaction may seem similar. 

I felt sorry for myself, abused and picked on by fate or God...whatever. Bu very quickly I realized that all of that was a misguided distraction and attempt to deflect responsibility from the on person directly responsible....ME.

I made the decisions, the hard (or perhaps the way too easy choices that had the unforeseeable consequences leading down this particular moment of doubt and pain. And then I felt dirty, EVIL and out of control when the reality of my situation is no different then any one else's...I am HUMAN...therefore I am FLAWED...therefore I SIN....PERIOD.

I think that what I do to myself that hurts me the most is I let myself ride the emotion I feel in real time. I now realize that in reality, I have no active FAITH during crisis like these so I fight back manually. The end result is I suffer 10 times over and the problem is never diminished or solved. it is a perpetual purgatory called human life and I am my own Jailer and ultimately executioner.

Well my friends....the time has now come for a CHANGE!!!

Stick around Shell Shock Serenade here in the near future as we figure out exactly how that change is going to to occur and implement itself...