Some challenges are hidden blessings

One of our daughters has been dealing with a weight loss issue that took some effort to pin down. It turned out to be related to some lifelong health issues she has had. One could have easily made the argument that this was where they should have started looking in the first place. But it turns out that the tests to nail that down were more involved, and it made sense to check out some other things along the way to getting there.

One of those other things was a colonoscopy. During the procedure they found a pair of polyps which they removed. I've long heard that all colon polyps, if not addressed, will eventually develop into cancer. But the biopsy on the largest of these revealed that it was already in the precancerous stage. In a year, they've told her, she'd have had full-blown colon cancer.

Meanwhile they've also found and begun to address the underlying reason for her weight loss.

True self vs. false self

Even after sharing on this, just this morning, with a friend, I still manage find myself getting caught up in thoughts and wishes that lead me away from my true identity and my place in God.

Lenten journey

Nice day. Good men's group. Ok retreat on a subject I love. Glad i didn't go to Columbus, as tired as i was. Soup stock cooking. Decent nap. Nice games with wife and granddaughter.

Challenges nonetheless. It is hard being the only one in a relationship who recognizes when they should apologize.

Do the next right thing

In today's Best Lent Ever reflection, Matthew Kelly says this is the approach that truly maximizes our long-term happiness. 

I'm trying to decide whether he's full of bovine defecation. I've already been doing this for a really long time.

Nightmares

i was in the Georgia log house, in town for my stepfather's soon to be remarriage. He showed me how to silence the grandfather clock "in case you need to," as if expecting that there'd be a reason why i would, before taking off for his last night of freedom. During the night his first wife (who i never met irl; he was married once before my mom, i think) and her grown son (not the step-brother whom i know irl, though i was in my late twenties before they married and my thirties before mom or i knew he was my stepfather's son - which itself reveals a lot about my stepfather, right?) dropped by briefly to express their poor wishes for his future - something about rotting in misery; before they left they also shared in passing the news that he'd been arrested and was now in jail, but i didn't believe them. In the morning, his fiancée and her grown kids came by wondering where he was. i don't remember if i told them what i'd heard, but soon they were blasting YMCA from the sound system in the giant (non-existent irl) garage behind that house that i helped build (irl, and now wish i could bulldoze) and to which i fled in vain for refuge from the music. While it was playing, confirmation of his jailing somehow arrived, and as they were getting into cars and scoffing at me for my aversion to their party song, i interrupted their departure to explain why i hate it, but for some reason didn't tell them that it was their about-to-be family member who had started sexually abusing me there. i suppose it just seemed as if they deserved each other. (My interpretation of this dream: i guess i still have forgiveness work to do. i wonder where he is irl?)

There was a second dream that i don't remember now, but it was also disturbing when I woke from it during the night.

In the third nightmare we were hunting (for food, not for sport) with a guide. Somehow the etymology for "venison" in this dream came from using a "Venn diagram" of the preys' habitats. (Yes, i know that isn't what a Venn diagram is irl.) But there weren't deer in the area, just a bunch of giraffes. i hired a hunter to kill me, and he showed up at the house as i was cooking meat in the oven, but he didn't try to kill me. i burned my hand on the oven wall getting the food out, and observed that that wouldn't matter soon, with which he disagreed. i wondered when he would get on with what i'd payed him to do.

Today's word

You can read it for yourself here, if you want. That's all the effort I'm going to spend on it.

One of my favorite songs from The Way of the Cross (again) this year:

Mercy

Susan Bentall Boersma

Craig Courtney

I dare not lift my guilty eyes
I hide my lips in trembling shame
And in the darkness of my soul
I shrink from Your rekindling flame

Kyrie eleison.
Kyrie eleison.
Have mercy.

In mercy cover me with grace
and blot out my iniquity
Renew my heart, and wash me clean
Grant with Your pardon purity.

Kyrie eleison.
Kyrie eleison.
Have mercy.

In equal measure of Your love, You promise mercy

Tender compassion to the one who seeks Your face

A broken heart, a fainting soul, a contrite spirit

together cry for Your forgiveness

Against You only have I sinned

My deeds are evil in your sight

Of Your forgiveness let me sing

And in my singing take delight

Kyrie eleison.

Kyrie eleison.

Have mercy.

Have mercy.

Have mercy.

Thank you, Susan and Craig, for this incredible song.

And just that fast . . .

. . . I forgot all about Ash Wednesday and grabbed a piece of candy out of the dish in the lobby on the way past. 

It tastes awful.

In the desert

I know it's early yet, but I am finding it difficult to enter into Lent. 

I feel as if I've been living in the desert for so long already.

But it is where I belong, so . . . 

Today's words

adust /uh-DUST/ - scorched, burned

Describes my life. 

instauration /in-staw-RAY-shun/ - 1. restoration after decay, lapse, or dilapidation  2. an act of instituting or establishing something

I'm tired.

Sleep, I have a question:

Why are you avoiding me?

when the memories

are so heavy that you want to curl into a ball and hide under the covers until they never happened, and the weather seconds the motion, only you have to function anyway, and when i say heavy i mean that their gravity sucks you into its relentless pull and you don't have enough booster rockets to reach escape velocity and you run out of fuel and your orbit decays and you are falling, accelerating downward and rushing to meet the surface and you can't wait to get there because at least then it will be over but you just keep falling . . .

Trying, . . .

. . . for once, to not be a hypocrite.
. . . to not indulge my fantasy in my thoughts. 
. . . to want this part of me to be transformed rather than conforming to this world, which says, "well, of course, you can't resist your nature, and you shouldn't try."

Today's words

Three consecutive new words of the day:

tucket /TUCK-ut / - a fanfare on a trumpet

A nice word to celebrate my mom: happy birthday, Spitfire! (It was nice to see her old nickname featured on a Super Bowl commercial, too.)

blench /BLENCH/ -  to draw back or turn aside from lack of courage : flinch

It is good to know that, while I am determinedly turning away from a course of action in my life that part of me very much wants to pursue, I am not blenching from it. (I think I may have heard of the other form of blench.)

spavined /SPAV-ind / -  1. affected with swelling 2. old and decrepit : over-the-hill

If the second shoe fits, I suppose I should wear it. I also wonder if it's okay to use to describe the condition of my ankles and feet at the end of a sedentary day?

Imagined conversation fragment

"That doesn't matter. Only my fidelity matters."

When you feel . . .

. . . that everyone who doesn't explicitly affirm you in some area of your life is your enemy, you should reexamine your assumptions . . .

Today's word

irrupt /ih-RUPT / - 1. to rush in forcibly or violently 2. (of a natural population) to undergo a sudden upsurge in numbers especially when natural ecological balances and checks are disturbed 3. to become active or violent especially suddenly : erupt

This is a new one for me. Don't imagine I'll ever use the third sense of it.