daily java: gripe

Daily Java: 

My heart is in anguish within me;
    the terrors of death have fallen on me.
Fear and trembling have beset me;
    horror has overwhelmed me.
I said, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!
    I would fly away and be at rest.
I would flee far away
    and stay in the desert;
I would hurry to my place of shelter,
    far from the tempest and storm.” (Psalm 55:5-8)

This post is a gripe and has no answer. Yet I feel I have to write something. And this blog is my release.

Yesterday marks the fifth or sixth time to fall. I am now in the situation that my right arm is seriously hurt and I find I have a broken collarbone. I have hit my head three times seriously, twice on the back and once of the front (yesterday). I have fallen in public three times making it rather humiliating. and I am at the point that I can barely move. I am faced with Easter services as the only musician in our church and the peripheral neuropathy in my hands is so bad I do not know if I am going to be able to play. My church is scared for me and have gotten to harping on me to carry around a walker and all kinds of other stuff.

I am in constant pain from all this and the side-effects of the chemo. I fear they will get tired of all this and begin to move away from me. I am totally discouraged. I am in a good work that I could do something with but can do nothing. I have approached this whole thing with as positive an attitude as I can but am coming to a point of being tired and wanting nothing but to sleep.

Today I would welcome death. I know where I am going and there is no pain. But of course Ella needs me. However, today, she almost fell at her doctor's office and I could do nothing but watch while everybody else helped her. i walk slowly and carefully and have found myself, for the first time in my life, afraid. I am afraid of falling. At my height, it is a long way to the ground and I just do not know how to fall. So I walk carefully and slowly and Ella says I have added 15 years to my apparent age just looking at me walking.

God does not send bad things, but he does allow them. And is the strong man watching the bully beat up a smaller man without interfering any different that the bully himself? I know You and I have discussed this in the past, but it is a very real thing in my life right now. There is no week that goes by without at least four or five things bad happening to me. And these are not small things. I have hit both shoulders numerous times with painful results. I have hit my head causing painful contusions three times. I have damaged my right knee and my right hip pretty badly.

Add to this the cancer and the drastic weight loss and inability to eat and the chemo-therapy, the peripheral neuropathy - all the other junk.

I don't know, but I feel I am at the end. I know that God is not always fair. But he is supposed to be always good. I saw good things coming from this when I came and was full of buoyant hope in the knowledge that I was supposed to do something great here so the devil was going to do his best to stop me. But now? I cannot stop, but I feel I have trouble going on. My life is a shambles.

I know there is no answer. But something has to give. It hurts my fingers even to type this letter.

I will have to admit, if it were not for the relationship I have with my wife, I do not know what I would do. However, even tat is showing strain. She is afraid and was from the beginning. She doesn't know what to do and many of her encouragements turn out to be the wrong direction or the like. She does what she can yet she is so limited too. So we are stuck. Every trip to the VA is 100 miles round trip. I just hope my resources hold up. and that Ella and I hold up.

daily java

Daily Java:

The Lord helps the fallen and lifts those bent beneath their loads. (Psalm 145:14)

Today was a bummer of a day. I fell a total of three times. Each time I fell, I hurt myself further. One of the falls, I came to on the floor and didn’t remember being there and I think I hurt my ribs, maybe even breaking one.

Each of the falls was strange. It was as if I had no legs or coordination. The third fall I broke open the scab at the back of my head where I fell at Target in Wichita last Friday.

And I hurt from them.

The day started off badly, too. I slept entirely too late, and after I got up, I slept in my chair until around four o’clock. I could not wake up. Then the falling began. I alternated between the falling and the sleeping the rest of the day.

I don’t know what caused it. I hope that it wasn’t the extra oxycodone I took last night and this morning. Ella thinks it was the added Morphine the doctor gave me the other day. I plan to cut down the morning Morphine and just take the smaller ones he gave me before.

Whatever the case is, I am tired of this. I have never really fallen before in my life and I do not like it. I am tall enough that falling takes me a long ways down and I always hurt myself.

Tomorrow I have to take Ella to the dentist and I cannot imagine driving. I hope I am better then.

Lord, take this plague of falling away from me. It hurts too much. I praise you. Amen

daily java - falling down

Daily Java:

If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall. (1 Corinthians 10:13).

I fell this past week. It wasn’t just a minor fall: a bang! Ouch! I’m sorry, let me give it a kiss kind of fall. It was a mega fall, a majestic fall

And anybody that is tall will tell you that falling is one of the worst things you can do. When are tall and you fall (Huh! Rhymes) you go down a long ways. Two people fall and one is shirt, that is not to say that he won’t fall. He or she doesn’t just do it easily.

I was walking through the chemo room at Mercy Hospital in Independence, KS, Friday. Ella gets her ITP treatments there because it is. There are recliners to sit in for the patients, pictures on the wall, etc. I had on  pair of Crocs, which have just about become my favorite shoes, their problem, though, is that they grab the floor, causing me to stumble.

Usually, it is not so bad. I just look back at the floor to see if there is something that needs to be picked up. Everybody does that, like it is the floor’s fault,

But this time was different. With all this cancer and the heart attack and all. It is difficult to keep my balance. I have never before outright fallen, but I have come close.

This time, I fell. I hurt my ankle, my right knee, landed on the tip of my shoulder and whacked me on the back of my right shoulder, wrenching my left shoulder and finally, whacking myself on the back of the head. It both hurt me physically hurt and embarrassed. It made feel like a fool at a time in life when I need to feel capable.

And of course, there were 75,000 people standing around in the infusion room at the t1me . None of this quietly messing up. Everybody was there and they all watched me fall. And today, I feel horrible.

But it does go to show you: everybody falls. 63 year old men, year old toddlers, young children, teen aged jocks. Some do it for fun, some for a living, some because they are big and clumsy. I do it because my balance is not that great. But I also hate it.

In 1 John 1:7-9, the apostle Paul wrote about walking in the light:

If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth.

He said that as long as we are in Jesus and trying our best, we have a place in the grace of God. The immature Christian who can barely do anything right and the mature Christian who seems to have the godly life down pat are both in his grace and both have his righteousness

Nobody is perfect. Nobody lives a sinless life. Nobody. In others words, nobody does everything right. We all fall, we all sin,  Some do it big, in front of missions of people., some do it little and you barely noticed.

But they did. And they had done it before and would do it again. Remember that next time you do something stupid. It doesn’t excuse your mistake, but it sure tends to make you feel better.

it is ten o’clock at night and i have just fallen down

It is ten o’clock at night and I have just fallen down.

It was a rather shocking fall that scared the daylights (except that it was night time) out of my daughter.

Her husband has an antique dog (16 years old) that is somewhat incontinent so she has begun putting her in the kitchen at night. Tonight she had the idea of putting the table leaf (a plain piece of plywood I fixed to extend her dining table) over the door.

The dog is old and infirm enough that she would not be able to jump over it, even though it is only 12 inches high.

For that matter the dog is less than 12 inches high so it works well.

The problem is, although I watched her put it there and we talked about it, it is the same color as the floor.

I walked into the kitchen with a couple of foam plates and tripped over it. I landed smack on my bad knee (the right one which is swollen most of the time anyway) and scraped the fire out of my left shin. Not only that but I hit the floor whack on my chest (alright, my stomach hit first. Are you happy?) and on my right palm, the same way I used to land the few times I fell off the motorcycle.

It was so quick. One moment I was standing and walking, a relatively normal and handsome, talented, erudite person, the next instant I was on my chest and in pain. It happened so fast I didn’t even know it had until after it did.

My daughter was shocked. She kept apologizing. She said, You saw me put it there, Dad. I am so sorry.

I levered myself up off the floor and told her it was not her fault, I had helped her put the stupid thing there myself.

But it was so fast. And since I am well over six feet tall and weigh 280 pounds, I fall far and land hard. It is one reason I never got into skating. Little people have no problem falling. They just kind of go down. I fall like a pine tree. Boom!

It made me think about the old people I have known who were living perfectly good and normal lives and then fell. In the two or three seconds it took them to fall, their lives were through. They broke a hip or shoulder or something and, due to their advanced age, never recovered.

It was not long before they were in nursing homes, and died soon after that.

It is becoming noticeable to me that I am getting older. That is the second time in less than a month that I have fallen. And there were two other times when I thought I was going to fall but didn’t.

That does not please me, since I do not like falling. It hurts. I have been fortunate in my life in that my bones and teeth are made of iron. I have never broken anything even though I have had some major whacks. My teeth have chipped a couple of places from using them as pliers as a young man but in general I do not even have any cavities.

But I suppose that could stop. Ella falls a lot and I worry for her. She has developed a grace in falling that comes from a lot of practice. When she feels herself falling, she goes limp and lands in a loose flop. Then if necessary, she will pull her skirt down.

I do not think I have ever seen anyone fall more gracefully than she does.

But she has had to. I have not. I have bulled my way through life on sheer strength and personal presence. Nobody much argues with a guy my size. I just move forward and life moves out of the way.

But a guy my size hits the floor hard. It is absolutely true the old saying: the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

And I hate it.

Well, a few extra Hydrocodones tonight. I am going to wake up so sore tomorrow. What a clumsy guy I am becoming.

Someone once said (actually my mother) that getting old is not for sissies. And they were right.