The Simple Life...

This blog has gone on for long enough now that I fear I may be RE-typing posts and beginning to just sound like a skipping record these days. Of course, the chemo-brain being taken to a whole new level in this round doesn't help my uncertainty in the matter either. So whatever the case, bare with me.

I suppose like all things in this life, what prevails over and over again is our lack of humility and human tendency to turn right back around and self-thrive not two seconds after we preached with lip-service that we 'learned such a good lesson!' Yes. I'm talking about the impossibility to ABIDE in humility and be grateful IN THE MOMENT...for whatever that moment is... just because you happened to RECEIVE it.

Most of you know that I'm on facebook and in fact, many of you even followed me here from there, so it's you who would be especially privy to what I'm talking about. *and don't think for a SECOND that I'm about to claim myself as an exception to this! I have in fact, been one of the greatest offenders!*

So it's posts like 'ugh, I got a flat tire today on my commute today, then I had to stay an hour late at work, and then by the time I got home, it was too late to order take out so I had to cook and now I'm just beat.'
Then, the best part: 'One of the most awful days of my life.'

A hundred 'you know it's!' to the first person who can name every single thing wrong with this... aside from the fact that it's an obvious complaint.


Want my take??

You have a car. <--BLESSING.
You have tires on said car. <--BLESSING.
You were able to afford to get said tire fixed on said car. <--BLESSING.
You have a job. <--BLESSING.
Your job provides steady hours for the time being. <--BLESSING.
You have a house to come home to. <--BLESSING.
You have enough money to choose to pay someone to cook your meal, if you choose. <--BLESSING.
You you have enough money to stock your cupboards with food to cook. <--BLESSING.
You have electricity in your house that runs a convenient appliance called a stove that will cook said food from your cupboards. <--BLESSING.

..and sorry if I insult you, though i believe you need one for saying this--I HIGHLY DOUBT this qualifies as a top most awful day. AND if it DOES, the fallen-nature inside me has wished some not so nice things on you, now, ha! :-P
No, I don't mean that.
Well.
A little.

My point is...with a nation quickly approaching some times many of us *as in younger than my grand-parents age would be* have never seen, I think it's high time we got some things about ourselves and our thought-lives sorted through!

As one of my sweet *albeit mouthy with great intentions* sister-in-loves said to someone just days after we heard my diagnosis--as well as another of her friends husbands, facing a similar battle--
PERSPECTIVE IS A *-I-T-C-H. *Sorry, can't even type say-it, haha, but it's so true!!

Perspective, perspective, perspective.

I learn it and learn it again and then yet again... and it seems in this journey there are few limitations to the new perspectives God's allowing me to experience, like *as of this last week* suddenly being nearly incapable of feeding/walking/bathing myself--bed-ridden with fatigue, nausea and body-pain.
Well...
that's just the Lord's TINIEST DOSE of what a paraplegic is faced with living with and getting around!
Really.
Isn't THAT a humbling thought.

The idea of never being able to kneel on the floor in front of our bathtub, leaned over my little mens sweet little bodies, picking up, squeezing the soap onto their big, round heads... making up silly rhymes or songs as we scrub... scooping the water up into the rinse cup and pouring it over their heads as we sing new rhymes about water over our faces, so as to avoid all the unnecessary drama of such. STANDING UP, grabbing their color-assigned sharkey-towels and lifting them out of the tub--not cause they still need that, but BECAUSE I CAN. Making up even more silly tunes about drying off, all in good bonding-purpose--because it's the best part of this!

Yes.
I DID just describe, in ridiculous detail, giving my children a bath.
And yes.
IT IS A BIG DEAL.

But here's the problem I'm having with all this.
I don't want to 'inspire' you temporarily with this post... this is not my intention AT ALL, in fact.
I want to CHALLENGE you. I want YOU to challenge YOURSELF...

ABIDE in the blessings. Don't just count them. ABIDE in the 'what-if's.'
I'm finding that 'counting my blessings' does not hit my core strings nearly so much as when I say to myself.. 'WHAT IF I couldn't *insert current activity* I'm tempting to complain about.

I have this laundry recipe in my laundry room that I printed out a while back and it is a GREAT example of this very thing. The recipe is a real recipe from at least the 1800's I'm sure that outlines, in grave detail how to do laundry. It starts: 'Cart large wash tub and washboard outside. Fill with water from the well. Stoke the fire and boil the water.'

HAHAHA.
If that much right there doesn't humble a person to silence, they need a sick-in-the-heart evaluation, stat!

Anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely LOATHE laundry. If there's one thing I'll happily put off for days and days and days, it's laundry. But let me tell you again *and myself also*...

PERSPECTIVE. She really is a *-I-T-C-H.

We have it sooooo good. I'm not just talking our society or our modern conveniences...
I'm talking even the simple things that frankly, when it comes down to it AREN'T SIMPLE AT ALL.
It takes a LOT--aside from poisonous drugs surging through my body--for things to go right in my physical functions to be able to bathe my children. That movement is a BLESSING... we are threatened, daily, that it won't always be an option for us...whether it be from old-age, orthopedic issues, a horrible unexpected accident, etc.

I really HATE how we are so flesh-made this way. We 'appreciate' it when lose it?
WHAT'S UP WITH THAT?!!

So, before my chemo-brain takes us on the ultimate ride into rant-land *again* let me just conclude with this...

This week... and then this month... and then year... and then the next five years... and the remainder of your life *however long or short that may be cause YOU DON'T KNOW* every time you begin to open your mouth to complain--before you allow the nasty words off your lips--force your brain to ask 'What If'.......
and then after you realize the blessing, thank God for the 'simple life' you are leading---that even in it's greatest simplicity, is the most complicated and complex structures that will ever exist.

Oh.
And you're still not deserving of any of it, either~