People

Sorry I didn't write a journal entry yesterday. I had to work on my Bible study lesson, which I taught last night. I've never really taught anything but music and recording before, so helping to teach this class is a new experience for me. I'm not sure I'm doing all that well, but I enjoy Bible study, so it's a good experience. It's teaching a class that has me out of my comfort zone. I'd much rather write a song than an outline.

Each time I write in this journal I try to write something funny, or touching, or spiritual, or just informative. Some days there's not that much to tell, in terms of news. When you only get a shot every six months, that's not a lot of treatment to keep people updated on. And sometimes even I get tired of talking about myself. Hard to believe, I know.

A few housekeeping items before I get into what I wanted to talk about today. First, the car seat warmer that I ordered arrived yesterday, so I was able to try it out last night. It got nice and warm, but it doesn't heat up fast enough to prevent my chills. I had another shivering fit last night as we left the Bible study. If any of you know of a kind that heats up really fast, please let me know. That's my whole reason for getting one. The car actually heated up faster than the seat heater.

I bought some elastic support socks to hold my left ankle steady. They help, but they press against my Achilles tendon, and after wearing them all day, I have to take them off because they hurt my tendon too much. Hopefully they'll stretch out a little and that problem will go away on its own. Probably about the time I'm better and don't need them anymore.

Any time we have something on a weeknight, for whatever reason, my wife and I always have trouble sleeping that night. Last night was no exception. I didn't get to sleep until about 3:00 AM, and got up at 6:00 AM. Normally, on days when I'm this tired, I'm in a terrible mood. If I don't get enough sleep, I'm not myself. I find it hard to care about anything or get interested in anything, I can't concentrate, etc. No fun. But for some reason, I am in a great mood today. In the words of the old Bill Gaither song, I just feel like something good is about to happen. That doesn't mean I won't take a nap today. I probably will, just because I know my body needs rest to fight this cancer.

That brings me back to what I opened with.  You may wonder why I keep going out and doing these things if I'm so afraid of the cold. The reason is that I need contact with people. At the Veterans Day lunch I sang for on Wednesday, there were about 60 people who attended. Almost every one of them came up to me and said they were praying for me. What do you do with that? It's overwhelming.

What will it take to convince us that people are more important than work, more important than money, more important than just about anything? I always thought I believed that, but I guess I wasn't convinced. It took a life threatening diagnosis to bring it home to me. I hope it doesn't take that much for you to really understand the truth of that, deep down. You've heard the expression, "You can't take it with you." But if you believe in Heaven like I do, people are the one thing from this life that will continue into the next life. I believe that people are eternal, and that makes them far more valuable than anything that's temporary.

I am willing to admit that if it wasn't for the fact that our God, friends and family have blessed us so much financially in the last month or so that I know we won't have to worry about meeting our obligations, in spite of my lack of income, that maybe my priorities would still be out of whack. Did that long, compound sentence make sense? What I mean is, if we were worried about losing our house right now, I might not have such a good attitude. I admit that. But at least the alarm bell that finally got my attention woke me up to the truth. When you come to the end of everything you used to think was so important, what you're left with is the people in your life. Treasure them. Honor them. Tell them how you feel about them. Be there for them, the way you have been there for me, and I can't thank you enough for it. If we don't have each other, we ain't got nothing.