New Gas Pricing

Until the unrest in the Middle East settles and the economy corrects itself, gas stations will be posting newer, more appropriate gas pricing options...

Remember...

Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.  

~Henri Bergson

CELEBRATE EVERYTHING!

THE GIFT OF LIFE

Do you have any special anniversaries or occasions you celebrate that fall outside of the standard birthday/holiday categories?  

Perhaps it's an ethnic thing, but my extended family saw every occasion as a reason to gather and celebrate - usually with food  - then make it an annual event!  While I was growing up, there was always a barbecue, party or gathering at some one's house for something.  Perhaps no reason was needed at all, but for certain, we never went too long before finding a reason to gather, celebrate life and eat! Johnny lost his first tooth! First Holy Communion, as well as every other Catholic sacrament! Come meet our new dog! New furniture! Uncle so-and-so is in town! Cousin-so-and-so is leaving town!

It didn't matter! Any subtle change in the 'daily' was an event and a gathering or some sort of celebration was in order!

Mom's Special Anniversary

While we scaled back considerably over the years,  yesterday marked a very special anniversary for our immediate family.  March 22nd is the anniversary date of when we brought my mother home to recover in 2007, after she spent 6 weeks in a coma, nine months in five different hospitals, and one transitional care facility.  She is a Level 5 ruptured brain aneurysm survivor. There are not many of them.  (See video below sharing her recovery)

When she first came home, we would celebrate monthly on the 22nd with a special dinner  of her choice, and Dairy Queen banana splits which are her favorite. However, the months turned into a year, and we all rather quickly started looking like little round bananas ourselves, so we decided to make it an annual celebration.

Catastrophic events, whether personal or global (such as earthquakes, tsunami's) tend to change the landscape of life as we know it.  The event mercilessly launches the person experiencing it as well as those around them into the abyss of the unknown and, depending on the event, life is forever changed from that moment forward.  

As author Cathy Crimmons so brilliantly expressed in her book, Where Is The Mango Princess: A Journey Back from Brain Injury:

Here's how I see it:  One day, you and your family are hiking across a long, solid plain, when out of the sky comes a blazing meteor that just happens to hit one family member in the head. The meteor creates a huge rift in the landscape, dragging the unlucky one down to the bottom of the crevice it has made. You spend the next year on a  rescue mission helping her climb to the top, but when she gets up there, you realize she has been greatly changed by the hardship.  She doesn't know that a meteor has hit her. She will never know really.  She only knows she spent a lot of time in a dark, confusing place.  She left a lot of stuff behind, the stuff she was carrying with her, down in that big hole and it's impossible to get it all back.

How do you even get her out? Well, you and your family have to jump across the crevice first and pull her up on the other side of your life.  Or you have to stay on the side you were, drag her out, and then all leap together to the other edge of the crater.

It's not easy. The chasm between the old life and the new is wider than you think.  You could fall in the darkness yourself, trying to jump across... *

I have to say, in the four years since mom has been home, she has taught us so much through her brain injury experience.  I thought I would share a few lessons I have learned from the whole experience thus far.  I say 'thusfar' because I am certain we have so much more to learn.

• You do not need to be able to walk or talk in order to be a brilliant expression of God’s grace and love.

• A portion of the brain may be removed and other parts injured, and you can still be an intelligent, witty, brilliant person.

• Real heroes are those people who fight and live when their physical, mental, emotional life is permanently altered after a catastrophic event.

•  A brain may be injured, but the essence/spirit of a person remains fully unchanged.

•  You never have to lose your dignity even when the most undignified happens to you.

• Life is truly a gift given to us only one day at a time. Daily bread is the request and humble gratitude is the response.

• Strength, poise and power have little to do with the physical,  and everything to do with the spiritual and quality of character.

•  Trust - amplified!

•  Patience and perseverance - amplified!

If I can ever achieve even half the integrity, courage, beauty, grace and faith that my mother has achieved in her lifetime, especially in the face of her adversity, I will consider myself to be a blessed woman. 

Above all, I have learned that adversity can be either a stumbling block or a building block to  faith.  God will not choose for us - we must choose. 

Whatever your "meteor" may be right now, choose wisely.  That deep, dark crater has a slippery slope! If you do happen to slip a little, just hold on to Grace!

May God grant us all the faith to choose adversity to be a building block of faith rather than a stumbling block; 

and help us to remember that in both the good and the difficult times... 

we can always find a reason to celebrate the GIFT of life!

You Are My Stronghold by Watermark from the Album titled:  All Things New
~~~~~

*Author Cathy Crimmins' husband suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) when he was run over by a speed boat.  I changed the gender of the quoted text from "he" to "she" for purposes of this post.  I highly recommend the book for anyone dealing with TBI.  It helped my family and myself and some of our friends to understand the process of brain injury recovery.

Bloggers Unite to Help Japan!

PostNjoy (PNj) is a network that joins advertisers and bloggers.  This is an opportunity for bloggers to use their format to help Japan earthquake and tsunami victims.  PostNjoy donates $2 for each post registered at PostNjoy.  Just visit PNj, register, then post an article using their keywords and phrases, and PNj will make the donation! It's that easy!

$2 may not seem like much individually, but collectively it can make a difference! 

Sign up today and help make a difference!

I Feel The Earth Move...

I just cannot help but be amazed by this video I saw yesterday from  CNN's iReporter, Brent Kooi, showing the effect of the earthquake  in Chiba, Japan - over 300 km from the epicenter of the earthquake.  While it is not a video that shows the devastating tsunami disaster, the way the earth moves in this video gives another shockingly eerie view of the impact of the earthquake.

 

Without minimizing the recent disaster in New Zealand, I believe the impact of Japan's earthquake is a global game-changer. It will impact the world globally on so many levels; not just environmentally, but politically, socially and economically as well.  We will not know the full impact for quite some time.  

I would like to encourage all of us to remember the Middle East in thought and prayer as well, and to stay prayerfully aware of all of the international, national and local happenings. 

Take care of yourselves and one another! 

Praying for Japan...

Sending love, hope, thoughts and prayers to the people and country of Japan; to the United States Naval Forces stationed there; to the surrounding countries and all peoples affected by the subsequent tsunamis as a result of the devastating earthquake in Japan.  

May God grant mercy, relief, help, and comfort to the families who have lost homes and loved ones, and extraordinary strength and safety to those helping in the ensuing humanitarian relief efforts.

God be with you all!

TRUE COMPASSION

I saw this video today and thought is was so precious! 

It immediately put me in mind of someone who once explained the compassionate, sacrificial, incarnational love of Jesus using this  illustration:

Do you love your dog?

If you knew that the only way to save the entire race of dogs from becoming extinct was for you to give up all the comforts and privileges and benefits of being a human, and take on the form of a dog knowing you could never return to your original form and human glory, in order to enter in their lower canine "realm" and save them, would you do that?

Most of us dog lovers would be quick to shout, "Yes! Absolutely!" 

But if you thought about it... would you really be content to eat dog food, pee outside, perhaps live outside, possibly be abused and neglected with no way to control that, possibly homeless or left to wander the streets and eat out of trash cans, or in every way subject yourselves to suffer the indignities of being a "lower" canine creature for eternity?  Would you really still say yes?

Jesus did that for us.

I recently read an interview by Jazz Theologian, Robert Gelinas, in Urban Faith with Rev. Dr. Soong-Chan Rah titled, Sharpening Our Cultural Intuition.  While I have not read Rev. Soong-Chan Rah's book Many Colors yet (it's on my list), there was a quote from the interview that has resonated in my soul since I read it. The entire interview is excellent and I recommend you take a few moments, click on one of the links above, and read it.  The quote by Soong-Chan Rah that struck a chord in me was this:

The Bible teaches us that this is the example that Jesus gave to us. He came into the world in human flesh, and he can empathize with our suffering because he himself also suffered. Our inability to show compassion towards the suffering is a horrid witness to the incarnational love that Jesus has shown.

True compassion sees only the suffering.  It doesn't see social status, race, creed, color, age, income, or gender.  It doesn't ask how you got in your terrible condition, nor does it place conditions on whether it will help or not.  It simply understands the value of life, sees the suffering, comes alongside of the one suffering and says:

... I will weep with you (Romans 12:15) and I will help.

May we  learn.

 

STOP THE INSANITY!

In 1975, Muammar Gaddafi outlined his political tenets in  the Green Book. The Green Book is a three-part collection of political thoughts, social and economic theories and day-to-day how-to guides.  It has been required reading for Libyans for years.

The Green Book is essentially a collection of ramblings typical of a political megalomaniac. More entertaining than coherent, it is no wonder the protesting Libyans are pictured happily trampling and burning these books in the streets.

One such tenet from the Green Book by Colonel Gaddafi is:

“Freedom of expression, is the right of every natural person, even if a person chooses to behave irrationally to express his or her insanity.” 

Well, Colonel Gaddafi appears to have taken full advantage of that particular freedom.

Let's briefly define insanity.  Wikipedia states:

Insanity, craziness or madness is a spectrum of behaviors characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Insanity may manifest as violations of societal norms, including becoming a danger to themselves and others, though not all such acts are considered insanity.
...

In English, the word "sane" derives from the Latin adjective sanus meaning "healthy". The phrase "mens sana in corpore sano" is often translated to mean a "healthy mind in a healthy body". From this perspective, insanity can be considered as poor health of the mind, not necessarily of the brain as an organ (although that can affect mental health), but rather refers to defective function of mental processes such as reasoning.

Nothing is more insane than this world we live in nowadays.  Rational reasoning in every area of political, social and economic life is hard to come by.  The only thing more insane than Colonel Gaddafi claiming to be a proponent of freedom of speech, is the insane demonstration of freedom of speech which happened here in our own backyard this past week.  Namely – Charlie Sheen.

Seriously?  In less than four days, over 1.5 million people from all over the world clicked their “follow” button on Twitter to see what crazy things this delusional soul has to say next.  I admit, I even peeked in on his Twitter page (once) during one of my tweeting sessions. 

One such quote from Charlie Sheen:

"I am on a drug. It's called Charlie Sheen. It's not available because if you try it, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body."

Don’t get me wrong, I feel bad for both Colonel Gaddafi and Charlie Sheen.  I really do.  Both  men have serious megalomaniacal issues, in different arenas of course: one in the political field and the other in the entertainment field.  Both men have severely abused their position and blessing, and as a result, they are self-destructing. That is never a good thing for anyone in any arena of life. We can all certainly learn a lesson in humility from watching them both unravel.

Nevertheless, in light of last week’s events - both at home and abroad - I feel  an uncontrollable urge to express myself and would like to exercise my right of freedom of speech to simply say:

WHEW!  I feel better!

I sure do hope we have a better week ahead!