Grateful – Continued 2

When we celebrated my 50th birthday, my brother Chris when saying a few words said that he feels that the day I die, there would be so many people at my funeral. People whose lives I had influenced. He added that I am a loved person. While I thought that this was a very complementing statement, I was not convinced that so many people’s affection would be directed at me. Fast forward five years and even though it felt like I dodged the bullet, I did not have to wait to be in a coffin. I once saw a statement, the first part saying “when you’re dead, you don’t know that you’re dead. It’s the people around you that suffer…”. This also means that you don’t hear all those tributes to you while you’re lying in a coffin. This past week I experienced love, concern, and support as I’d never thought I’d ever received. I did a post explaining what had happened, as an FYI and was overwhelmed by the love I received. I believe in showing affection while I’m still around and while the other person is around. I’m not saying that I go around hugging everyone. But when someone is special to you, they need to know that. I’m not referring to the romantic sense of the word. I was once told that my affection toward someone made them uncomfortable and that I should please stop hugging them. I immediately backed off, as that was the furthest from my intentions. Unfortunately, this affected my expressions of affection for a while after that. I’m grateful for those in my life. How that is expressed sometimes has to be altered.

When I was growing up I had a friend. I had many friends, but here I’m referring to one particular friend. We used to hang out together, make eyes at girls together and laughed together. Then a physical gap was created when we moved to another part of the country, and later another country. But that bond remained. He called me one day and told me that he longs for us to spend time together again. One day, while in town, I just had this longing to see my friend, and I called him up and we met up at a coffee shop. There we sat, two grown men, talking about how much our friendship mean to us. How often are we grateful for friends and friendship, but don’t express it? We all have our lives, and our busyness to deal with, especially when we are no longer kids and have our responsibility. Send that text, make that call, and the modern “means of communication”…. send a voice note. Not too long ago I received a text from a friend that I had not seen in years. He told me that while he was waiting for his wife to come home from work, he was listening to music by Spyro Gyra and it made him think of me. This meant the world to me. We would listen to this band in the 90s, and this was a memory.

Not everyone that you reach out to is going to be comfortable with you reaching out to them. We live in a crazy world, where people’s motives aren’t always good. A world where at times a guy will tell a lady that she’s special, and only has “one thing” on his mind. But don’t give the power to those individuals. Don’t be afraid to show care and friendship, and while you have to be cautious of people’s intentions at times don’t shut yourself off from being loved.

Making a decision to be grateful or living a life of thankfulness takes your mind off the negative happening around you. Being grateful for those who reciprocate your affection makes you forget about those who rejected your affection, and it made you feel like you had done something wrong. In a world filled with negativity, choose to look at the positive. If nothing else, it is good for your health.

In this last week, when doctors had all these prognoses I was faced with a decision to lie there and wallow in pity or be happy that this is an opportunity to get better. When I was lying in my hospital bed and my pulmonologist came to check on me he asked “how are you doing?” I replied, “I’m bored”. He said to me “that’s good, continue”. I could very easily have complained about my condition and how I’m afraid of what’s happening in my lungs. But no, that’s not going to make me feel better.  In fact, that would just make me feel worse. This is also where your faith plays a part. We’ve been taught to rest in God. So I choose to look at coming out the other side, victorious.

When I did my first post, I mentioned how when I was lying in the emergency room I was concerned about how I would pay for all of these tests, and subsequently admission into the hospital.  I’m sure that there were a few that thought “I hope he doesn’t ask me for help”. Many years ago when things were not going so well financially, with both my babes and myself being self-employed, one of the decisions that we made and stuck by was to keep our medical cover.  We canceled the day-to-day cover as we don’t really do as much doctors visits and have been blessed with good health for many years.  However, we were both determined to keep our hospital cover.  At times it felt like we were paying money into something we never use.  I’m talking 15 years.  We are grateful to God for that decision.  I’m not going to go into what the bill is sitting at now, and it is significant, but I am grateful that the vast majority is covered. One thing that I will say is that we lifted our needs up to God in prayer, and He answered. All glory to God.