Year: 2024

Day five Early on as I was sitting on my porch I realized something had changed. Well lots of things changed, duh. Figuring out what had changed, and how to deal with it, it was something I would often think about. But I realized something else had changed. Something good happened. It is weird how recovering from trauma happened to me. It's sort of like the fog…

Day four One was the things I do in my “recovery” is a zoom support group for people with brain injuries. The speech therapist that heads the meeting always starts with something called “bitters and sweets''.  And we are encouraged to share something from our week, either good or bad. It is helpful for me to talk, aloud, to people. Sometimes heavy duty things are shared. Things…

Day three I celebrate life with God's words, those words that created life, that created the sky, that create light. Those words that give wisdom and correction, and give hope and comfort. The words of God, when I can hear them in my spirit, sustain me. They cause me to celebrate life, to celebrate truth, they give light in dark places and they open my eyes to…

Day two We live under a big sky. It is a canvas that stretches across the heavens, and it becomes the backdrop of my life when I look up. Focusing only on what is right in front of me, looking down, watching my feet on that road I'm traveling is important, but dwelling on the particulars of the journey is myopic.  Hmm, without the sky, life can…

A year had almost passed, and I was thinking about the anniversary of my stroke. I wanted to  celebrate it. That seemed so weird to me. To honor this bad thing that happened to me. But I decided to do it. Why? Because something amazing happened after the stroke, I woke up. I woke up to a new day. I realize now what I was celebrating was…

Have you heard the poem ”The wonderful one-hoss-shay"?  I can remember reading it in school, probably in high school. Sort of a fuzzy memory, I can't recall any of the particulars, but I can remember what the poem was about. It was about a carriage that lasted for one hundred years and then it broke to pieces all at once.  First some definitions, “hoss” might be referring…

Forty years ago the library at the college I was attending was getting rid of some old books. They were offering them for free.  So I picked one up, a little book called “The Way.'' I can still remember that book. There were a lot of textbooks that I read in college as well, I couldn't name any of them. But as I was working on my…

I can’t remember how I learned to read. Maybe it started with something like Hop on Pop?  I just can't remember. But, I can remember how I learned to read again. It started with the Bible. I knew I needed to start reading, trying to regain what was lost. It was and still is, a big part of my recovery.  So I practiced reading, one chapter every…

What we focus on really matters. If you can’t focus, you are doomed to live a blurry life, flitting about from place to place. Scatterbrained is a good way to describe it. Just as bad, by focusing on the wrong things you will end up at the wrong places. Focusing on the wrong things can overwhelm me. I’m starting to realize how important what I am focusing…