stuff happens - from nowhere

I have a story to share that was sent to me by my friend Dave Longeuay. I don't think this needs an intro. Here you go.

Dave Longeuay: Three years ago I went totally blind in one eye. It came out of nowhere, and developed in just a few days. After seeing three doctors, the Retinologist gave me an injection right in the eyeball. Yeah! It was as brutal as it sounds, especially since it was massively inflamed inside. I was finally diagnosed with UV eitis, which is chronic inflammation of the Uvea, the core of the eye.

For the next two years I was mostly blinded in the left eye by the rare disease. I was averaging 25 drops a day of prednisolone (steroids) to try and battle it. Finally the doctor at UCLA medical center, (World renowned for eye care.) told me to start taking Methotrexate, a chemo drug to prevent the eye from flaring up. It worked, but who wants to take a nasty drug like that for life with the life threatening side effects it has on its list?

When I confronted God about this (quite unhappily at that) He quoted scripture to me. Imagine that! God quoting scripture to me. A verse many of us have read and dreaded. (Hey, I'm just being honest. There are a few scriptures I wish I could delete. But the logical side of me knows that every single verse is there for a reason.)

God quoted, "My grace is sufficient for you." That's all He had to say on the matter and that's all I needed to hear from Him. "Okay," I said.

My take away from this ongoing life-long disease after having eye surgery last summer? It's not that I was going in any major bad direction before, but God has clearly rerouted my whole direction in life. I was heading one way and he has rerouted me elsewhere. While I'm not happy to revolve my life around my eye these days, I am happy He has allowed (Not caused) this disease to strike me for His purpose. Sorry to sound cliche on this but, I'm happy to "go with His flow". I'm also grateful that I have most of my vision back after years of treatments and surgery, but the residue damage is permanent until I get my new body, or until He decides to heal me in His timetable.

The irony: My career is videography. It takes a sharp eye to focus a camera in all types of corporate situations all day, and later edit with split frame precision, and have to color correct every shot for maximum quality. Many of these videos are viewed by military Generals, Homeland security and top government officials, so they have to look great. The miracle: My good eye does all the work! It completely takes over what the damaged eye lacks. Praise God!

I don't think I have anything I can add to that.

Have you ever had anything bad happen to you? What did you do to overcome it?

those oh-no moments, and what we think about after

Sorry I've missed a few days, we've had an unfortunate turn of events in our family - my son went on a trip to visit a friend, and on the drive there, he hit an elk. He's surprisingly fine, the car is injured, the elk is dead. During the weekend I drove up to get him and he's home now, and he'll go back to get his car when it's out of the shop. There's a lot of damage to the car, but it's fixable.
And this brings me to my topic of the month. It's those split-second oh-no moments - many times they are life altering. I don't know if anyone reading this has ever hit a large animal before, but I talked at length to my son about it, and it was terrifying. After the impact he managed to stay on the road, and the angle he hit it had it hit the windshield, breaking it, but not going completely through the windshield - if it had, the weight of it would have crushed him. He also managed to keep control of the car and get to a stop without going off the road and into the deep, steep ditch. This was at night, in the middle of nowhere. He said he stopped the car and his first thought was that he wasn't dead.
I've had one of those "I could have died" experiences, and I think I can say that most people who have something happen like that have a different perspective on their life after that.
I can't speak for my son - but I can speak for myself. For me it was a surgery that was supposed to be simple, but the surgeon made a "mistake" and I had to have an immediate corrective surgery or I would have died. That is, if having 2 complete anasthetics so soon didn't kill me, which I found out at the time, there is a significant risk.
My thoughts at the time were that if I died, I had no regrets, and I was okay to go on to heaven and leave all this behind. Well, I'm still here (waving). But I can say that I do have a changed perspective on what really is important in life.
Here is my thought of the day - I'd like to hear from you if you've had an incident that when it was over, you had a change of perspective, and how it changed.
I like to think that when something like that happens, we come out having learned something. Please, I'd love you to share how you felt, and what you learned.

wasting time - in proper order

My best time wasters are distractions, things that distract from what I should be doing in the first place. But my friend Shirley Connolly has this mastered.
Shirley Connolly: So much goes through my mind that helps me waste my time. Usually this comes about when I’m trying to think about that missing phrase in my manuscript.
Suddenly, I notice my treasured antique-teacup collection must be rearranged. The living room is out of order, too. How can anyone’s creative juices flow when that’s the case? I need to move the couch at this angle… no that one. There, that’s it. Am I ready now? Well, I was until it donned on me that I’ve not had my second cup of coffee. It’s no wonder I couldn’t think before. That’s better. It was, anyway, until I noticed those bookcases in my office somehow got out of order too. That’s no good. It’s no wonder I haven’t been able to find what I needed the other day. But when that is taken care of, I suddenly realize I should take a few minutes to search out those Scriptures I’ll need for this Friday Ladies Koinonia Bible Study I’m teaching. I won’t have time later, will I? But wait! What about the wall comments I forgot to respond to on Facebook yesterday? Isn’t now the best time to do that? I don’t want anyone to think I’ve forgotten them. Oh my! And while I’m at it, shouldn’t I also get to those emails and get rid of some of that stuff built up in my junk box, and read my user manual on my new Kindle? Otherwise, how could anyone have the time to really think?
I’ll get to that missing phrase in my manuscript maybe tomorrow. Yes, I’ll do that then. By now, I’m too tired with my mind full of all the other things that have required dire need of my attention.

I thought I had distractions mastered, except what distracts me isn't so constructive. I am awed that Shirley does something relatively constructive when getting lost from the things she should be doing in the first place. Shirley, my hat is off you you!
So here is my thought/question of the day. If you could get distracted from what you should be doing, if you were stil wasting time, what would the most constructive waste of time be for you?
You're invited to visit Shirely Connolly's website at www.apenforyourthoughts.blogspot.com

wasting time - a good day off is a good day wasted

For those of you reading on the north side of the Canadian/USA border, thank you for joining me on this holiday in most of Canada, Victoria Day! For those of you who are visiting from south of the border, I am waving at you because you have to work today, I do not.
As a FYI, Victoria Day is a public holiday observed across Canada except for the Maritime provinces on the Monday before May 25th, which is Queen Victoria's birthday.
Since the topic of this post is wasting time, I invite you to check out the history of Victoria Day on Wikkopedia.
In the days of my childhood, Victoria Day was more commonly known as "Firecracker Day" which of course meant a lot of fun after sundown, with most families buying fireworks and setting them off. In the interests of safety, we can no longer buy fireworks from unregulated vendors, and we can no longer set off fireworks any old place we want, without a license, so Firecracker Day has more or less fizzled. Fizzled. Get it?
Victoria Day has now become the kickoff for the summer - the official first long weekend of the summer season. When my kids were little we always went on a family camping vacation in our tent trailer on the Victoria Day weekend, where wasting time is an art form.
When my husband took the boys fishing, I would stay at the campsite with my pot of coffee and a good book. When my husband took the boys biking down the trails, I would stay at the campsite with my pot of coffee and a good book. When my husband and the boys would go to collect firewood for the evening campfire, I would stay at the campsite with my pot of coffee and a good book. Does anyone see a pattern here?
Unfortunately our camping days are over. So I will probably spend most of the weekend in the living room with my pot of coffee and a good book. Only now, instead of an uncomfortable webbed lawnchair with a strip missing, I'll have a nice soft couch cushion underneath me.
Which leaves me with my thought/question of the day. As time goes by, do you find you have the same patterns when you waste time now, versus what you did ten years ago?
I always end off my posts with a link, but it's silly of me to have a link to my own website. So instead here's a link to Barnes and Noble, where they will be featuring my new book, The Narrow Path, on a front table display next week. If you're at B&N and see my book, I'd love it if you could take a photo of the display and send it to me, since there are no B&N's in Canada.
For all you Canadians, enjoy the holiday. For all you Non-Canadians, I hope you had a great day anyway.

wasting time - with a good snack

There are big ways and little ways to waste time, and my friend Martha Rogers (Martha is a real person, not the fictional mother on the TV show Castle)(and no, watching Castle is NOT a waste of time!) wastes time with a few of my favorite things. Do we hear a song coming? No, but maybe another poem.
Martha Rogers: How do I waste time? Let me count the ways.
To the heights and depths my creativity can soar.
When the manuscript calls, I’ll find a way
To put it off until another day.
When edits are due, and deadlines crunch,
I take the time to find something to munch.

I’d go on, but I’ll spare you the torment. Instead let me tell you about a few of my favorite time wasters, which is a lot more fun than what I'm supposed to be doing. I can always find something to do to waste time. I most often do it by playing Spider or Eight Off Solitaire Games on the computer, or working crossword puzzles. I have books of them to use when I’m finding excuses not to do certain chores. I do the one in the paper every day at lunch to extend my lunch time.
Then there’s snacking. Some snacks can be eaten at the computer, but others call for two hands and concentration like chips and Queso dip or picante sauce or eating ice cream sundaes. Did I mention reading emails, checking up on Facebook, or checking on my friends?
The problem is that I have such guilty feelings that I will overcompensate and spend so much time on a manuscript that my seat hurts and my feet swell. Gotta be a happy medium somewhere.

Side note - One of my favorite snacks, that requires two hands is popcorn with grated cheese and Ranch seasoning mixed in, microwave for 30 seconds to melt the cheese.
I digress. Or do I waste time?
Of course I zeroed in on Martha's comment about extending her lunch time with a time waster. Do you ever do things like that?
Here's my thought/question of the day. If you have a little time waster like that, if you went ahead and did something you were supposed to be doing, just for those few minutes, what could that be?
You're invited to check out Martha Rogers' website at www.marthawrogers.com

wasting time - constructively

So many ways to waste time, so little time to do it.
My friend Janet Bly has one way to make wasting more constructively than I do.
Janet Chester Bly: How do I waste time and how do I make it constructive? Let me count the ways...everything from backtracking to find a lost object that I left in another room/store/friend's house to getting distracted by a TV news show. As soon as I get alert, I proclaim this as a productive detour. I use the time for exercise or prayer...running up and down the stairs or in place as I wait...praying for what's going on in the world at large or in my own personal world.

I know I should take that lost time sitting on the couch and do something with my brain that would serve more purpose than playing games on my Palm Pilot. But I've gotten some pretty good scores on Sonic The Hedgehog. Except, no one cares but me and Sonic.
I have lots of things I could think about while walking around doing nothing, although it seems that the only time I think constructively when I'm walking is when I take the dogs out for a walk, without my husband, for that very purpose.
I should try it. Sometimes. Not always. Just sometimes, and work up from there.
Here's my thought/question of the day. If you're like me and sometimes enjoy wasting time, do you have a portion of that wasted time that you could be wasting time, and thinking of something constructive at the same time? It's possible. I suppose.
You're invited to check out Janet Chester Bly's website at http://www.BlyBooks.com

Wasting time - walking slowly, and getting distracted

Sometimes we can completely loose track of time getting distracted. But somethings are better to get distracted with than others, and here is my friend Angie Breidenbach to tel us all about it.
Angie Breidenbach: My favorite way to waste time is with my grandson. It seems like every moment watching him grow up is poignant and beautiful. I get lost in those moments. Recently we went for a walk. With a toddler, that takes a while :-) We made it about 3 houses down and found newspaper mail boxes. Fascinated with cause and effect, he had to toss little pebbles into the open ends. (Sorry, neighbors) and then we toddled on to the puddle in the road. This was extremely fascinating. Pebbles caused water to splash. That caused Jude to giggle. Bees buzzed and landed for a sip. Jude watched it all. When a tiny purple moth flickered around him, he had to chase it from spot to spot. We wasted time in the most precious way possible by being fascinated with nature through the eyes of a child.

I often get distracted with things and lose track of what I was supposed to be doing as well. But then there are so many things that I would miss if I didn't stop and smell the roses. Or stop and toss the pebbles. Or whatevever.
Which brings me to my thought/question of the day. What small thing have you been distracted with that on the surface just seemed to waste time, but ended up being a breathtaking moment?
You're invited to visit Angela Breidenbach's website at http://www.MyGemOfWisdom.com