John Vanhook's Iris Farm

John Vanhooks Iris Farm

My Son and his Fatherhood

When I was my son’s age, I had been keeping a journal already for about a year. I can go back and read what I was doing when I was his age to the year, month and day. I too, was in college. I was not, however, trying to be a father nor was I living by myself, trying to keep up a home for myself. I was caving a lot and climbing. I had a great bunch of friends from Cumberland College (University of the Cumberland’s Now), and we ran around this part of Kentucky, caving and climbing all the time. Similar to my Son, I was experiencing the quickening of bipolar disease and there was times I was most unhappy for no apparent reason. I think about my Son very often; constantly really. He has already lead a life that I could not fathom at his age. He would not mind me telling this, but he has had in the past a problem with substances, and there as a time we thought we were going to lose him. In fact, we did lose him for almost two years, when he was either in jail or in court ordered rehab. I recently received a long letter and a book in the mail from an old friend who had similar problems with their son. I read with great interest how things worked out for the young man, and I know as I always have, there is much hope. Ready my friend’s words, it is apparent, there is nothing worse for a human being to find their beloved children in the perils of drug use or addiction. I can tell you, with absolute certainty, problems of this kind with our children are far worse than having a life threatening disease of your own. Comparatively, my life at age 22 years, 11 months, my life was far simpler. I had only grades to worry about, and in geology classes to boot; so I had nothing to worry about, comparatively. My son works full time at a national chair drug store full time. He is a full time student and he is fathering a wonderful baby boy. All of this, while trying to stay clean from drugs with an obsession about drugs that none of us who aren’t’ addicts would never understand. There are times my heart literally aches for him. There are times that I have been deeply deeply disappointed in my son. There are times I have been beyond angry. But I have never, ever stopped loving him, and caring about him deeper and infinitely more than I have ever cared for any other person on Earth. I am, and always have been reminded of my Son by the poem and now song, “I carry your heart with me” by e.e. Cummings. (poem: poem read, poem sang by Michael hedges). Truly there is nothing like the love of a father for his son, or a mother for her child… it is more powerful than anything in the Universe. When he started down that trail, his mother and I were heart broken. We worried about him smoking cigarettes, then we worried about him smoking pot. Things got bad enough, we thought those things were minor. We did everything we could think of to help him. We had him in rehab, sent him to the deserts of Utah to a wilderness camp, we even sent him to a high school in Indianapolis for addicted children. That didn’t work for him. He eventually came down to live with me in Somerset, and after six months of what I consider to be the “hell” of my life, when our son was 17, he landed in the custody of the state criminal justice system and was tried as an adult. I thought I was going to die of grief. Jonny spent his eighteenth birthday incarcerated. He spent his nineteenth birthday in a residential treatment facility. While he was away, he obtained his GED, and actually “graduated” from high school before his classmates did. By the time he was twenty, he was out and on probation. He moved himself to Lexington, got into college at Bluegrass Technical and Community College and is pursuing a degree in criminal justice. He loves the course work, and he wants to be an attorney. He will transferee to the University of Kentucky law school when he gets done with his undergrad work. There are many things about my son I am so proud of. Like his drive: to get his GED while in treatment, actually before his graduating class in high school. His study habits at school are remarkable, and he does very well on his own. He maintains a wonderful little home for himself, and has such a sense of dwelling space. At his job, he works very hard, and doesn’t mind long, grueling hours. His employers have always been happy with his performance. The other night, just a few nights ago, I was in his store picking up some items I needed. He didn’t know I was in the store, and I was close enough to the register, I could hear him interact with the customers (he didn’t know I was listening, or even that I was in the store). Jonny’s interpersonal communication skills are “top shelf” and his personal charm is absolutely amazing to me. He’s only been working at the store for a couple of months, but he is already leading all employees in signing up customers for the rewards system the store has. No, to say that I am proud of my Son is a vast understatement. To be doing as well as he is doing with the past and demons that he has, I can truly say, not many people would be doing as well as he is. But he struggles. He is young and is trying to be the father that I was to him. He sometimes calls me, crying about things – stresses, or why he can’t seem to feel very good about his parenting. I was 30 years old by the time Jonny came to me. He was only twenty, and had been in jail for a couple of years before that. Compared to my life at his age, he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, and I worry gravely about him. Last fall, while visiting him, I planted a handful of daffodils in the yard just off his patio at his apartment. I knew these would bloom before the complex started mowing. This past spring, I got a call from his, and he was crying so much, I couldn’t make out what he was saying. The daffodils had bloomed and as he admired them, he called me, crying, saying how lost he would be if I did not beat this cancer. All I could do is assure him that I will beat it. It just reminds me that, on top of everything else, he is dealing with me having cancer too. Jonny and I Have been close his entire life. When he was just a toddler, I would pack us up, and we go camping or come down to Somerset to visit my mom (we lived in Indianapolis). I read to him every night, told him stories, and he and I had conversations about the stars and space and science. He was intensely curious, and I loved that in him, so I fostered it. He doesn’t get to see his Son as often as I saw him. He and the mother of Carter are not yet married and they are not living together. Jonny wants them to live together, but the mother wants to wait until they are married (which I respect). But Jonny sees himself as a failure I think, and it just breaks my heart for him. He is a great father, and loves Carter as much as I loved or love Jonny. Carter is crazy about his daddy. But right now, Jonny is depressed and anxious. With is predisposition for self-medication, I worry about him. I can’t imagine how hard he must work to keep himself “clean”. Jonny calls me every day lately – for advice and help regarding the stresses in his life. I am little help, but I can listen, and I do. I just want to fix everything for him, but that is not how the world works. So if you have another moment, please lift my son up in prayer. James 5:16 says: The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

Iris's

I've been photographing all of the Iris's this year. https://plus.google.com/photos/115760263716431198504/albums/5876569124341987313

i walk

I walk. I am walking. I have walked who knows how far. By the time I finish this thought, these words you now read, I will have walked myself right into a tropical storm of emotions. I will fly over the warm, brewing stew of my thoughts and emotions. They connect and boil themselves into an ever increasing body of energy, combining with just the right amount of other elements and finally explode in to a hurricane of raw, emotional energy. All of it, from my own life, my own past, and my own loves and concerns. Wordsworth was a generous soul with his words; that in the thoughts that do rise out of human suffering, in the years that bring forth the philosophic mind. In that, whatever having been must ever be, nothing good ever dies. Life truly is eternal. So I walk. I put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes, because, honestly, what other choice do I have? Sometimes, there is nothing else to do BUT “walk”, move forward, even if I have no idea to where it is I am going. Maybe something else will come to me, if I just walk, but for now, I’ll just move from here to there and see what it gets me. God knows, I can’t stay here any longer. I am walking. There are things that I love to do, even though a great deal of what I have done my whole life is not available to me now. Deep wilderness fishing on streams that are imbedded in harsh, beautiful wilderness’s. Or bicycle racing – choosing to go to war every Saturday or Sunday with some of the best bicycle racers in the country. Never actually expecting to win, but fit enough, able enough, knowledgeable enough, to be there for the fight. It is a grueling, God-forsaken hobby; and one that I swear off every time I race; “Oh, I’ll never do this again”, or “can you believe I actually do this for a hobby?”, or thinking and believing myself truly insane for training for so long and so hard just to earn the right to be there, and all of the money I spend on equipment, travel, training, entry fees, clothing… Why? Tell me why do I do it? Because I love it. And even though I’m in the midst of the suffer-fest called a bicycle race, and I promise I’ll never, ever do it again, so long as this one ends soon, when It is all over, mere moments after I’ve crossed the finish line, I look forward to next Saturday, or the next time I get to do it again. So part of me is thankful I can no longer, at least for now, go to race bicycles, I approach my current hobby’s with equal enthusiasm. Photography, gardening, sewing, painting, writing, learning. Yes, I am walking; perhaps with less intensity, but not with less intension. There is no way to know how far I have walked in my nearly fifty point five years. Interestingly, I have walked an exact, knowable distance. I just don’t know, and never will know, how far that is. There is little, actually no doubt the most interesting, rewarding places I have been, I walked to gain those locations. Driving cars is basically only good for digesting large, typically uninteresting distances. It is at the end of the driving, we fine tune our locations to the truly worthwhile environments on foot. I might drive to the mall, but I will go to the store of my choice on foot. I might drive to Yosemite, but I will climb to the top of Half Dome on foot. I have walked a lot of places. I once walked from Pickett State Park, in Tennessee to S-Tree wilderness in Central Kentucky, all through the Daniel Boone National Forest; a distance of about 130 miles, all on foot with a pretty heavy load to boot. I choose to do this as an adventure, and an adventure it was. I even did it again a few years later with a good friend. Some days, I go for a walk… specifically – I go walking. Some days, I walk great distances, or at least significant distances without even thinking about the fact that I’m walking. I don’t remember it, and I doubt anybody else does either, but there was necessarily a “first step” in my history. Where that was, and how many steps ago is utterly unknown, but ironically, an exact number of steps. There will also be, necessarily, a last step. When and where that will be is also unknown, but unlike my first step, that one is not knowable, at least by any person alive. Not all of the steps I’ve taken in the past 20 months have been easy. I remember laying in intensive care in Pittsburgh last summer, utterly unable to walk. I felt then as if I’d never walk very far again. But I was wrong. I got better, and stronger, and I have walked many places since then. Sure, at first, I had to use a walker, but soon I laid that aside, and began comfortably walking on my own. I have walked up into the woods above my mother’s home, my childhood home and cut dead cedar poles with which to build a log cabin. I didn’t walk very far, not, say, miles, but I walked, chopped, and drug those logs out of the woods and I am ready to start building that lovely cabin of my mind’s eye. And this, well less than a year after wondering if I would ever walk very far again, laying in intensive care. I healed far quicker than I thought I would, and I have come much farther than I imagined I would. I used to walk twelve to fifteen miles over harsh woodland trails, no problem. But after the cancer, I’ve known I can’t walk that far, at least not right now. Fact of the matter is I didn’t know how far I could walk, because I never tested it. There was never a need for me to walk more than about a mile at a time, at the most. I think my recent emotional and physical crisis was a result of actually walking 3 miles in a cancer awareness function. It was the first time I had even thought about walking a certain distance. And while I completed the distance, I am now completely aware of how much weaker I am now that I was just 20 months ago. It gave me a real physical point of information. In every way, it was difficult. This, on the same day I watched a video of my grandson taking a few of his very first steps. Unsteady and unsure, he focused, visibly got his bearings and when he was ready, struck out across the four or five step void between himself and his mother. When he reached her, he was proud, she was proud and there were cheers. And those are the first of literally millions that person, my grandson will take. Some of the steps to come for my grandson will be glorious… unspeakably beautiful, triumphant, and worthy of praise to God. Other steps unfortunately, will be painful and difficult. It is his human life, filled with joys and sorrows, but ultimately good. If life weren’t good, overall, we would not celebrate anybody’s first steps. When I watched my grandson on that video, talking those steps, I believe it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw, and I wept with joy – I could not imagine anything more beautiful than seeing this little beautiful child take those first, unsteady steps of his life. A few hours later, still thinking about the video, I wondered if he was taking his first steps at about the same time I was taking some of my last. I think I was in a state of shock, physically and emotionally stunned by my own walk of 3 miles at the cancer awareness walk. It was so strange, that entire day seemed to have something to do with walking. Indeed it did. Satan and his hindering spirits like to keep me afraid, and in pain and fear and doubt. Anytime evil and evils spirits can occupy any part of my heart and mind, that is room unavailable for Christ and his healing Angles. Later that same day, I sat on the lake shore at one of my spots of meditation and prayer, and I thought about it. I believe that God can and will heal me of this cancer. I pray multiple times a day for God to do just that. Yet, there are days I am full of fear and doubt and terrible anxiety and apprehension. I am human, and flawed, sinful human being, so I know I can’t be in perfect harmony with God all the time, but who am I walking with every day? Am I walking and believing in the evil thoughts that lead me to wonder if my current steps are some of my last? Or am I walking with Christ who has promised to heal me if I ask for healing and believe? I suppose then, in a great many ways, every step that I take now, after millions of steps, fifty years of walking, each step I take is very important… important like my grandson Carters steps. Are most of my steps with God, Christ, the Holy Spirit and all of the healing angles? Or are most of them with the devil and his agents of doubt, sickness, weakness, pain and depression? I must be honest and say, I don’t know. All I can say is, I WANT TO WALK WITH CHRIST, but obviously I am not taking every step with Him, or else I’d have no doubt, no fear and I would believe more perfectly in God Grace and ability to not only heal my sick body, but cure me completely. As I walk, this is my prayer. I ask that you pray it with me. I am probably not going to die today. Therefore, it is another chance to walk with God, and be healed.

Walking

I walk. I am walking. I have walked who knows how far. By the time I finish this thought, these words you now read, I will have walked myself right into a tropical storm of emotions. I will fly over the warm, brewing stew of my thoughts and emotions. They connect and boil themselves into an ever increasing body of energy, combining with just the right amount of other elements and finally explode in to a hurricane of raw, emotional energy. All of it, from my own life, my own past, and my own loves and concerns. Wordsworth was a generous soul with his words; that in the thoughts that do rise out of human suffering, in the years that bring forth the philosophic mind. In that, whatever having been must ever be, nothing good ever dies. Life truly is eternal. So I walk. I put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes, because, honestly, what other choice do I have? Sometimes, there is nothing else to do BUT “walk”, move forward, even if I have no idea to where it is I am going. Maybe something else will come to me, if I just walk, but for now, I’ll just move from here to there and see what it gets me. God knows, I can’t stay here any longer. I am walking. There are things that I love to do, even though a great deal of what I have done my whole life is not available to me now. Deep wilderness fishing on streams that are imbedded in harsh, beautiful wilderness’s. Or bicycle racing – choosing to go to war every Saturday or Sunday with some of the best bicycle racers in the country. Never actually expecting to win, but fit enough, able enough, knowledgeable enough, to be there for the fight. It is a grueling, God-forsaken hobby; and one that I swear off every time I race; “Oh, I’ll never do this again”, or “can you believe I actually do this for a hobby?”, or thinking and believing myself truly insane for training for so long and so hard just to earn the right to be there, and all of the money I spend on equipment, travel, training, entry fees, clothing… Why? Tell me why do I do it? Because I love it. And even though I’m in the midst of the suffer-fest called a bicycle race, and I promise I’ll never, ever do it again, so long as this one ends soon, when It is all over, mere moments after I’ve crossed the finish line, I look forward to next Saturday, or the next time I get to do it again. So part of me is thankful I can no longer, at least for now, go to race bicycles, I approach my current hobby’s with equal enthusiasm. Photography, gardening, sewing, painting, writing, learning. Yes, I am walking; perhaps with less intensity, but not with less intension. There is no way to know how far I have walked in my nearly fifty point five years. Interestingly, I have walked an exact, knowable distance. I just don’t know, and never will know, how far that is. There is little, actually no doubt the most interesting, rewarding places I have been, I walked to gain those locations. Driving cars is basically only good for digesting large, typically uninteresting distances. It is at the end of the driving, we fine tune our locations to the truly worthwhile environments on foot. I might drive to the mall, but I will go to the store of my choice on foot. I might drive to Yosemite, but I will climb to the top of Half Dome on foot. I have walked a lot of places. I once walked from Pickett State Park, in Tennessee to S-Tree wilderness in Central Kentucky, all through the Daniel Boone National Forest; a distance of about 130 miles, all on foot with a pretty heavy load to boot. I choose to do this as an adventure, and an adventure it was. I even did it again a few years later with a good friend. Some days, I go for a walk… specifically – I go walking. Some days, I walk great distances, or at least significant distances without even thinking about the fact that I’m walking. I don’t remember it, and I doubt anybody else does either, but there was necessarily a “first step” in my history. Where that was, and how many steps ago is utterly unknown, but ironically, an exact number of steps. There will also be, necessarily, a last step. When and where that will be is also unknown, but unlike my first step, that one is not knowable, at least by any person alive. Not all of the steps I’ve taken in the past 20 months have been easy. I remember laying in intensive care in Pittsburgh last summer, utterly unable to walk. I felt then as if I’d never walk very far again. But I was wrong. I got better, and stronger, and I have walked many places since then. Sure, at first, I had to use a walker, but soon I laid that aside, and began comfortably walking on my own. I have walked up into the woods above my mother’s home, my childhood home and cut dead cedar poles with which to build a log cabin. I didn’t walk very far, not, say, miles, but I walked, chopped, and drug those logs out of the woods and I am ready to start building that lovely cabin of my mind’s eye. And this, well less than a year after wondering if I would ever walk very far again, laying in intensive care. I healed far quicker than I thought I would, and I have come much farther than I imagined I would. I used to walk twelve to fifteen miles over harsh woodland trails, no problem. But after the cancer, I’ve known I can’t walk that far, at least not right now. Fact of the matter is I didn’t know how far I could walk, because I never tested it. There was never a need for me to walk more than about a mile at a time, at the most. I think my recent emotional and physical crisis was a result of actually walking 3 miles in a cancer awareness function. It was the first time I had even thought about walking a certain distance. And while I completed the distance, I am now completely aware of how much weaker I am now that I was just 20 months ago. It gave me a real physical point of information. In every way, it was difficult. This, on the same day I watched a video of my grandson taking a few of his very first steps. Unsteady and unsure, he focused, visibly got his bearings and when he was ready, struck out across the four or five step void between himself and his mother. When he reached her, he was proud, she was proud and there were cheers. And those are the first of literally millions that person, my grandson will take. Some of the steps to come for my grandson will be glorious… unspeakably beautiful, triumphant, and worthy of praise to God. Other steps unfortunately, will be painful and difficult. It is his human life, filled with joys and sorrows, but ultimately good. If life weren’t good, overall, we would not celebrate anybody’s first steps. When I watched my grandson on that video, talking those steps, I believe it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw, and I wept with joy – I could not imagine anything more beautiful than seeing this little beautiful child take those first, unsteady steps of his life. A few hours later, still thinking about the video, I wondered if he was taking his first steps at about the same time I was taking some of my last. I think I was in a state of shock, physically and emotionally stunned by my own walk of 3 miles at the cancer awareness walk. It was so strange, that entire day seemed to have something to do with walking. Indeed it did. Satan and his hindering spirits like to keep me afraid, and in pain and fear and doubt. Anytime evil and evils spirits can occupy any part of my heart and mind, that is room unavailable for Christ and his healing Angles. Later that same day, I sat on the lake shore at one of my spots of meditation and prayer, and I thought about it. I believe that God can and will heal me of this cancer. I pray multiple times a day for God to do just that. Yet, there are days I am full of fear and doubt and terrible anxiety and apprehension. I am human, and flawed, sinful human being, so I know I can’t be in perfect harmony with God all the time, but who am I walking with every day? Am I walking and believing in the evil thoughts that lead me to wonder if my current steps are some of my last? Or am I walking with Christ who has promised to heal me if I ask for healing and believe? I suppose then, in a great many ways, every step that I take now, after millions of steps, fifty years of walking, each step I take is very important… important like my grandson Carters steps. Are most of my steps with God, Christ, the Holy Spirit and all of the healing angles? Or are most of them with the devil and his agents of doubt, sickness, weakness, pain and depression? I must be honest and say, I don’t know. All I can say is, I WANT TO WALK WITH CHRIST, but obviously I am not taking every step with Him, or else I’d have no doubt, no fear and I would believe more perfectly in God Grace and ability to not only heal my sick body, but cure me completely. As I walk, this is my prayer. I ask that you pray it with me. I am probably not going to die today. Therefore, it is another chance to walk with God, and be healed.

JT Cancer Fund Donations. Greeting Card Set of 10 ($20)

Hello everybody. I have created greeting cards with a cycling watercolor on the front. A set of ten cards is $20. These cards are now ready to order, and most of them can be picked up TODAY!! If you place an order via, Paypal.com, I will make sure that your cards will be available down at the shop by tomorrow, April 9. I am asking for a $20 donation to cover my costs,and a little extra for my bills, but you can contribute as much as you want. To, my non-cycling friends, you may also "purchase" a set of these greeting cards, but you may want to wait for me to create greeting cards with a non-cycling theme. The bicycling watercolor is a JT orginal but is based on a cycling painting by Miki de Goodaboom entitled "Le Tour De France 03" Thank you so much for your assistance. I hope you enjoy your greeting cards. If you would like to have a custom greeting card set created, please let me know!! If you have any questions, or if you place an order, please text me if you need special delivery consideration. 6062158307 JT -

This, until The Hepatica Bloom

I once wrote a journal entitled "This until the Hepatica Bloom". By "wrote", I mean that I kept a journal with that overlying theme. The Hepatica are the first wildflowers to bloom in our area and since the species love limestone derived soils, we have great colonies of hepatica. It is a wondrously beautiful bloom in it's own right and when you add that to the fact that it blooms in the barren winter woods, it is down right breathtaking when you happen up on a cluster of the medium-sized blue or white blooms protruding from the winter-dead forest debris. Each year, when I venture out into the woods - into known lairs of the hepatica, I know that when I spot the first bloom, that instant is my own personal "first moment of spring". My first day of spring was Tuesday past, March 12. I kept this journal from November 2001 until February 2002, and over that time, instead of looking for wildflowers and ginseng, I ventured far and wide to frozen, winter waterfalls and explored the winter landscapes of the Daniel Boone and Big South Fork National Forests. This was a time of wellness for me - I was building the cabin at Richards Bend, and I knew I'd soon move in (within a year or less). My Son was nine years old, and was such a joy to me (as he still is). Though life was not easy, and I thought I had things to worry about, at least I was healthy and there was no reason to believe I wouldn't live to be an old man. I went on to have a very nice and perhaps one of the best years of my life. My time with Jonny was simply a gift from God. I finished and moved into the cabin at Richards Bend. I backpacked 130 miles of the Sheltowee Trace, and there wasn't a cause in the world for alarm. Oddly though, I recall and I read throughout my personal journal from that year, I had anxieties and concerns that perplexed me and robbed me of the fullest, richest sense of well being I could have had otherwise. The Hepatica of 2013 bloom in the mists of a great struggle for me. I am engaged in a Great and Brutal War - a fight for my very life. My attitudes with regard to my long-term survival swing literally from hour to hour. Sometimes I believe I will beat this. Sadly, other times I doubt I will live to see the Hepatica bloom again. Fact of the matter is, we simply don't know and while I may have fairly good odds at seeing the next generation of Hepatica, my annual seeking of these lovely first blooms of the year will probably end sooner than they should, and within all that means, there is in me a sadness that defies any attempt to relate it in any meaningful fashion. But as my journal teaches me, this is not the first time I have felt this way. Contemplating the Hepatica past… contemplating the Hepatica present and future, I see that my life-maladies from year to year never really change in magnitude nor in the impact they have upon my sense of well being. They only change in physical nature. And that over my lifetime, the things that diminish a good life are constant and never changing. I simply wish I could trade my current troubles for those I had in earlier times. And it seems to me, it ought to be allowed since they seem equally troubling.

Chemotherapy Starts again.

Chemotherapy, at least mine, is something that defies explation or description. Why do I tell you all of this? It isn't because I want your sympathy. It isn't because I want you to know how big and bad I am because I am doing chemo. First of all, I always wondered what chemotherapy was like, and maybe this quenches a curiosity for you. I am also doing it because, since I was a kid, I've documented almost every thing. This documentation has been valuable to me in the past, and I am sure I will need to look back upon this in the future. I have already read what I wrote about last year's chemo, and it helpd me remember a lot of things I had forgotten. I went in to my oncologist yesterday, and I am extremely happy with his facility and his staff. They are so kind, warm professional, and know what they are doing. They took me to my room, accessed my old port, and started a drip of anti-nausea medicine, and some other stuff to prevent unneeded harm to healthy cells. A couple of hours latter, they started the chemo drugs. Two or three medicines to begin KILLING THE NEW CANCER CELLS!! As I watched the drip, I knew, or envisioned that every new drop was going into my artery and finding its way to the tumors on my lung, and choking them off and killing them. Even though I felt fine at the beginning, before it was over, I had to lie down on a bed so I did. After a couple of hours of that, the did a push of the last chemo drug, then put a pump on me to go home with. I was able to leave then, after six hours. I am to keep the pump for 46 hours, a period that ends Wednesday, at 12 noon. (Tomorrow). I felt okay, just woozy and feeling "funky" for whatever that description is worth. I felt disoriented and almost drunk. Mom took me home and I laid down for a while. When I woke up, my legs felt tight and very crampy. I noticed that my pump was dosing me every 30 seconds, and I wondered if that was too high or too frequent. I just felt horrible. So I called the oncologist's office and asked them what the rate should be, and they confirmed what I was seeing. It was normal. They said that if I was feeling really bad, I might be dehydrated and have low electrolytes. They asked that I go to the ER, to have my electrolytes checked which I desperately did not want to do. Peggy was on her way to pick me up and take me for a drive, so when she showed up, I told her about it. She recommended that we get some water, and Gatorade and drive around for a few minutes. We drove to Bradley Chapel, a beautiful, old church on the west bank of Pitman Creek near Grundy - not far east of Somerset. The old church is no longer used, but it is beautiful. The entire churchyard is a lovely cemetery. It is a great place to just walk around, so we did. I was beginning to feel a little better. In about an hour, once home, I went inside, and suddenly had a wave of severe anxiety come over me. I was feeling so desperately horrible; I just knew I couldn't go through with this. I took the pump from the case, and I looked at the stop button. In Pittsburgh, when I was lying in the hospital bed in ICU in indescribable pain, if I had located a stop button, I probably would have pushed it. This time, I had a choice. The stop button was right there, right on the console of the little pump. I cried, praying for the strength to NOT PUSH STOP. I didn't. Rather, I passed out somewhat, and Peggy gathered my things and took me to Mom's at my request. Once there, Mom had gone on a walk, so Peggy took me straight in, and put me in my bed, in the bedroom that I used all last summer. I must have blacked out then, because the next thing I know, I am laying in moms front yard with no idea how I got there. My legs were weak and shaky, but Peggy and Beany, my stepfather assisted me back inside the house and into the bed. Mom got home then. I was in and out of consciousness, but I kept drinking Gatorade. Within a period of time that I think was about an hour, Mom, Peggy and Beany decided that I needed to go to the ER. So we loaded me up. Along the way, and well into my second large Gatorade, I began to come too. When we got to the ER, I could walk under my own effort just fine, and other than just feeling horribly sick, at least I wasn't incoherent. The waiting room was full, and we were sure it would be several hours, or the middle of the night before I was seen. Instead of waiting, we decided to go back home, the Gatorade seemed to have helped. Once home, I feel asleep and slept throughout the night, and into the morning. Of course I was still sick, but at least I wasn't out of my mind. Normally, I feel well enough to at least sew, and do leather works, or write in my journal or paint. I didn't feel like doing anything like that, so I slept on for the entire day. My sister, Carrie came to visit and she ran some errands for me. Early evening, Mom ran some errands as well. It is late evening, nearly 11 pm. This first round of chemo will last another 13 hours. It started out at approximately 72 hours, so I am getting it done. I don't feel completely intolerable. I suppose the worst symptom of the chemo for me is that it takes away peace and ease and any sense of joy. When they remove the pump tomorrow around noon, the medicine will slowly decay in my body, having done its job. If my last round (last winter) is any indication, I will not feel good for a few more days. But there are somewhat different drugs, so I may start to feel better sooner.

Finding Faith

I suppose a confession is in order. Regarding my faith in God’s ability to heal, I’ve been only half in. The time I’ve spent praying (and asking for your prayers as well) has been, for all means and purposes, constant. For a year and a half now, I’ve been praying for God to remove all forms of cancer from my body. And I have believed it was possible, just not certain. A lifetime spent with logic and science (which I am not renouncing), has left little room for me to learn and grow in spiritual matters, especially when it comes to faith in Gods ability or likelihood of intervening directly in my life to make a change in the way things were proceeding, naturally. A creature of constant prayer and vigil, I have prayed my whole life. I’ve done this mainly because my issues were to great not too, and the act was worth the energy spend, if there was even a chance God would intervene. With faith of this kind, it seems likely that my vespers left my month – left my heart and vanished into the atmospheric chaos where they belonged. Surprisingly however, most of my prayers were answered in spite of my flimsy notion of faith, this, however, the probable result of a friend or family member who was also praying my prayer with the proper amount of faith. While I have always been a Christian, having been saved at the age of eleven, I have not grown in my relationship with God at any semblance of acceleration. At least, not until now. Through various channels in my life, mainly through bicycling, and the Christians that inhabit this sport in my area, God has placed in my life mentors who are now teaching me how to be a more devout Christian, what that means, and how to extract Gods Will and allow Him to work in my life. My life’s pursuits have been mainly scientific; physics, geology, mathematics and the natural world… what I have always viewed as Gods Creation. Science and Christianity are not exclusive, and because of some views held by the church condemning the body of scientific knowledge, I have felt unwelcome in the pews and possibly unworthy as well. However, my life study of the natural world has only strengthened my belief in God over the years and I will tell you why. Over the millennia of the collective human pursuit of scientific knowledge, modern science has arrived at some very bazaar mysteries which defy logical explanation, especially in the area of quantum physics and mathematics. Not only are we, as a global society of thinkers, pushing back what is known we are now convinced, there are limits on what is actually knowable, that buried deep in the very fabric of matter and energy there are things which ARE NOT KNOWABLE at all. In other words, what we are learning in the modern physical sciences is that nature, at the very deepest level is inherently unknowable. This is not a technology problem. It is not a problem with the size and power of the human brain; it is built into nature itself. Having been more comfortable pursing knowledge in scientific thought, just as I had become disillusioned by the occasional close mindedness of the church, I also became disillusioned by various leading scientists who were equally dogmatic in their philosophies only in reverse. Modern scientists who deny the existence of God, or even a higher power, are, in my opinion, vastly more in error than the religiously close minded. It has not always been easy. Socially, I wasn’t a very good fit in either camp. I was, however, more comfortable in the scientific camp. Fast forward: A year and a half of cancer treatments, and an equal term examining my position, history and hopes for the future, I believe that my notions of faith and spirituality have been underdeveloped and in a perpetual state of adolescence. Through the shared experiences of my fellow Christians, and what they have learned to be the truths of our world, spiritually, I am beginning to understand the true power of the most faithful Christians. This morning, this moment, I stand at a junction – a fork in the road. If I remain in the state of faith that I have had my whole life, believing that God could heal me, but may decide not too (thereby, providing an explanation as to why I did not get well), then I will continue to become more sick, and I will physically parish even while I am spiritually saved. But if I am able to make a transition in my thinking and beliefs – If I come to believe that not only could God heal me and save my life, He will in fact, do so. That is, if I believe He will and I ask Him to. My spiritual mentors state to me, God’s healing is certain provided I ask for it, then truly believe. The scientist in me has prevented me from achieving this perfect notion of faith. I have been diagnosed with terminal cancer. I have been “given” a certain amount of time to live. Radical treatments have saved me already, and provided the possibility for several more years of life – however, those treatments have fallen short of even the statistics of those very same treatments. Pure logic and non-religious thought would indicate, I am physically doomed. And while in recent weeks, I believed I could have a long as five to ten years left of my life (I was never willing to have complete faith in God, that he would safe my life altogether), I know believe that I can return to a normal lifespan, so long as I have faith in this outcome. Ironically, I believe this only now, just a few days after being told the cancer is back, and that, scientifically or medically, my outlook has worsened… through faith my outlook and condition have actually improved. Because the cancer condition has worsened, my faith must necessarily improved, resulting in a much favorable position and outlook. In fact, based on the amount of faith that I have in this outcome, my physical salvation is guaranteed. As I wait for the physical manifestation of this healing, I will feel sick. I will get poor medical results and outlooks and these things may dampen my faith. But I will choose to perceive these things as normal, not in any way proof that God is not going to heal me.