Puddles and Stroopwaffle

Recently I joined BlogFrog (have yet to put the button for that 0n this blog...NOTE to self: DO It!) and wow, has that kept me busy! For me, up til now, blogging has been a leisure activity...Something I just do because it gives me a sense (and if this isn't true: keep it to yourself) that my limited life has some meaning. And it still gives me that sense except that suddenly I'm a very small frog in a BIG puddle! (Ok: pond. Or maybe: lake....Ummm frogs don't swim in the ocean, do they??)

I mean these are HUGE blogs (some of them) where it's become a JOB and lifestyle for the owner/writers of them. They travel, sign autographs, write books, have their pictures taken everywhere....(Ok, maybe I'm confusing them with Reese Witherspoon, but you get my point!) And here I am, sitting in this 8'x10' bedroom where I spend 98.9% of my time, Sleepless in M'ford yet once again. (Actually I got 5 hours of sleep tonight: a stellar night!), tapping on my laptop, yet another rather pointless blog post....but feeling kind of like I'm talking to YOU tonight...and if there are more than one of you reading this post, sorry , you'll have to wait in the hall ...because my room has exactly room for me and ONE OTHER PERSON.....

Anyway...what is the point of all this??? (You're looking at your watch tapping your toes and saying 'Get on with it, I have an important cup of latte with my name on it, waiting)...
The Point.
Well, excuse me while I take a moment to consider how I'm going to neatly tie this up and how I can make some kind of sensible moral or erudite thought to leave with you....(while you all scramble for the dictionary to look up "erudite", I'll just think.............thinking....................still thinking.......)

I was thinking that I could say something trite and a bit foolish like, "Life is what you make of it"....which in all cases, is true. However when your life is limited by illness or pain, this takes on a particular significance. There is a young lady I follow on Twitter who has a rare disease called: Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (or M.E.)...Her Twitter profile says this about her:
25. Poet. Bedbound, unable 2 sit up/talk. Love athletics+swimming+BrentfordFC, TV+films, SciFi+Fantasy, Uni Challenge, Medicine, acting, Greek+Latin, wildlife

Sounds like a fairly full life right? NOT an active life: just a full one. Here are her own words describing herself:

"What I can say is that I’m very very glad that I exist! However, I have a worse quality of life and suffer far more significantly than most people who commit suicide or who go to Dignitas.* My condition is constantly deteriorating and every day there is the threat that I might die. Every day I don’t know if this will be the day that one of my organs might finally completely fail. Would others consider that my life is not worth living? I’m bed-bound, unable to sit up, unable to speak; a nurse bedbaths me, someone has to hold a straw to my mouth for me to drink my liquid food. My current condition is unbearable. The severe symptoms, 24/7 physical distress and agony is intolerable. And yet, I’m still alive. I see the minutes moving by on my clock and I’m still here. My will to live, to survive, has never been stronger."

[This was written over a long period of time, sentence by sentence, on Jenny's iPod]
*"Dignitas" is an organization which promotes and participates in "Assisted Dying" or Euthenasia.


Jenny's life by anyone's standard is a life of hell...yet she has managed to infuse meaning into it by her writing...of her thoughts on her mom's blog...by her lively, albeit rare, comments on Twitter which reveal an active, life-loving spirit; by her poetry (of which she has published a book available for purchase - see the end of this blog). I have been touched by her life...me, lying on my own bed, thousands of miles away from this young lady who never leaves her room...

And I so much wish I could tell her that there is a God; I know Him, hear him regularly speak to me...have seen him do wondrous things...and he loves her deeply and so passionately, that in fact, he died for her....and now lives, having conquered the death that she so deeply fears...and that if she can believe in this and accept it, then even if she walks through the door of physical death, her spirit will live in a new, glorified body...One untouched by sickness...And that I'll be there either before or after her arrival and will be glad to roller blade with her or to go running down some "golden"streets.

So LIVE your life, no matter what your circumstance, how limited a span of contact you have; Now with the internet, NO ONE need live and die in isolation. I praise God for this gift which has enabled me to chat with you tonight...here in this small puddle we are sharing!
Love you Jenny! Thanks for showing me that any life, anywhere, anytime has meaning if you grant it that chance. When I was sick and suicidal in those dark years following college...I thought my life was meaningless and awful. Then I was thin, beautiful, and healthy. And I was completely hopeless and hated life. Now I'm a "few" pounds heavier, not healthy by any stretch of the imagination, and I'm so so grateful to God for rescuing me from death, not once but NUMEROUS times both despite sickness and my own hand.

LIVE and Learn. and I would add: LOVE.

{To buy Jenny's book, go to : http://www.jkrowbory.co.uk/}