Recently, I had not responded to Week Twelve's Throwdown. After reading all the good reports that were shared, I felt that what I had to say would be such a "bummer". Things have not been going well.
Since July, my 86 year old Dad has been struggling with some serious health issues. Which also impacts his congestive heart failure. It seems once one thing is resolved, something else pops up. So I have become consumed by the battle to improve my Dad's health at the expense of my own. I swore after my MI that stress would never, ever get a grip on me again. Over this past year, my prime directive was making myself as stress free and as healthy as possible. In the past few weeks, I have been failing miserably. It has had quite the ripple effect. I have fallen into emotional eating (gained weight). Allowed worry to keep me up at night (note the time of this post). My exercise has dwindled down to very little. I am exhausted and find my time poorly spent fretting over everything Dad, doctors, sons, work, all the balls I been dropping lately......
Recently someone sent me an E-maiI that resonated with me. It was a comment by Rick Warren who wrote the Purpose Driven Life.
He stated,
"This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife getting cancer. I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a
dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore. Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life. No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for. You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems."
In truth, I have become more and more consumed by my problems than focused on my purposes in this life. Keeping my eye only on the bad rail I miss seeing all the blessings and good that are still so apparent in my life. I miss seeing how each day I make a difference in the life of my Dad and others. The purpose of my life can be so easily side tracked by my human capacity to simply forget how far I have come and all the God-given blessings. I realize now how I must be fully cognizant of which rail consumes my thoughts and controls my body and soul.
So I put my thoughts into this journal with the intent of giving myself a good talking to....but I hope this moment of personal accountability may be helpful to someone else. I am feeling more like a swamp than a river these days.
Spuds