About a year and a half ago, I was very ill, and had been for most of a year. I weighed about 100 lbs, was taking a lot of headache meds, not eating very well--well, what I ate was healthy, because it was mostly cooked by my son-in-law, but I didn't eat much. I just could only eat so much before I felt slightly nauseous. After nearly crashing, as a result of a different doctor's take on a headache med, I hooked up with a wonderful naturopath in Portland who, through slow but effective means, got me healthy again. It took a long, long time. Months and months passed, while I gradually was able to sleep at night more than 1 in 4 nights, and could walk from one end of the house to the other without sitting down and breathing hard. Gradually Vic and I could take walks, carefully and slowly around the neighborhood. Natural healing takes way longer, but it sticks, and lasts.
Fast forward to here in Arizona. Health is recovered, and I find I can actually eat without feeling sick.
So I did.
Imagine my surprise when I go to a doctor's appointment and find I weigh 140 lbs!!! I had a flash of gratitude that I was healthy, and not mostly dead, as I had been not that long ago. Then it hit---140 lbs!! Trouble is, I can still eat! I'm all over thicker, so I look better, but I'm embarrassed to admit I have an upper-belly problem.
Anyway, I started having some abdominal discomfort, and realized that some of the organs in that area had shifted and were no longer where they oughta' be. Thousands of jumping jacks back in our Kentucky karate class had probably taken their toll.
So I talked to our new doc about it, and, long story short, the physical therapy people gave me some exercises to do. NOT Kegels, as I expected, and dreaded, because I know Kegels require hundreds upon hundreds for several months in order to have any effect. The new exercises seem simpler, but are supposed to be effective in only 2-3 weeks. I'm jazzed!
Plus, I picked up a tummy-trimming video on sale at the library, and those exercises are fairly simple as well, and somewhat challenging. Not depressing, frustrating challenging, just "Ouch, that feels like a good exercise" challenging.
So, I've had 4 days of exercises, missing one day cause I had a tooth extracted, and didn't want to get on the floor. I'm going to track myself here for getting healthier. I will eat better, eat less, and get more exercise. I downloaded a walk/run tracking sheet that I'm going to implement, besides tracking the tummy stuff. It's nearly a new year--at least, it is for me, so here we go!

STEPS THAT HELPED LIGHT THE WAY

I don't look forward to new issues of The Readers' Digest like I used to. Their articles used to be so much deeper--so much food for thought, that many of them became deeply ingrained in my own personal character and point of view; so much so that my sister Arlene chided me that my entire philosophy of life came straight out of Readers' Digest.
Well, she was probably right. Their articles were short, easy to read, well-written, and many of them stuck with me. Yes, I was very young and impressionable, but I promise, they were really good!
Anyway, the first article that I remember having a definite impact on me (somewhere in my early teens, I think) was a brief little blurb called "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff". The only example I can recall involved some friends, including the author, were dining in an elegant restaurant, when an accident caused a plate full of spaghetti to splat all over one diner's beautiful white linen suit. The author was amazed that the white suit guy didn't get angry, but actually seemed to fairly easily laugh it off! When questioned about it, the man said it just wasn't really important enough to get upset about.
I forget the other examples, but the upshot -- the moral of the story, offered 2 rules: 1) Don't sweat the small stuff, and 2) It's all small stuff.
I would like to invite ya'll to think back about moments/steps/impressions, etc., that were, I don't know, I hate to say "Paradigm shifts", but pieces of light that made a difference--immediate or gradual, but that you can look back and see that your attitude shifted, and you reacted differently to certain situations from that time on because of that happening/person/lesson.
Let's see how it goes. As Madmardigan said right before he fell on his can in the snow, "It'll be fun!"

Why Faith in Baby Steps?

We've come so far in life, and yet it feels like we are just beginning to understand. In another time, maybe I would have taken giant footsteps. In another time, maybe I did take giant footsteps. Now, though, striving more than ever to...to what? Get it right? Understand more deeply? Forgive more completely? Love more purely? My footsteps are much smaller, but more concentrated, moving more certainly, in tiny steps, in the right direction.
We speak of the early pioneers, moving ahead, sometimes shuffling with rags on their feet in the bitter cold, or slogging through sucking mud. They didn't KNOW exactly where and when their trail would end, but they KNEW they were going the right direction. With every single footstep, they bore witness to the Lord that they WOULD follow Him.
Alternately, and on a totally different level, in the movie "What About Bob", Bill Murray's character Bob was terrified of everything, until he was given the key of taking baby steps in every single tiny thing he wanted to do, and thus found victory in each endeavor, and eventually huge victory in his life.
For me, the combination gives me hope.

My first blog post ever!

Well, first off, not a great choice of fonts! Would have preferred something in a script, in order to look, you know, more elegant, eloquent and intelligent. Even alliteration would look sound better written in script.
I hope to include here things that we are learning. You'd think at my age, I'd know a lot, but it honestly seems that the most important things MAY be learned young, but then must also learned again and again, each time on a deeper level, and from a different angle in life.