Oprah Snapped me out of It

It never fails. It never ceases to amaze me. It happens every time and has happened consistently since 2001. Every time I feel myself going down, every time I want to stop with the positive energy, every time I want to crawl under a rock or run away, every time I want to drown myself in that good-old pity-pool, God puts someone in front of me that makes me say,
"Wow. I am so much better off than they are. I am so blessed to be where I am instead of where that person is."

It happened yesterday. You would think that in my volunteering on the Cancer floor at the local hospital, I wouldn't need to see anything more than what I see every time I am there to snap me out of my misery. But apparently, I do. You only need to read the last month's posts on this journal to know that I was coming from a dark place....that I had lost sight of the light...that the curtains were, once again, getting heavy for me to pull aside. I have been smothered by pain and doubt and bone-weariness. I have been feeling overrun by physical and psychological demons. And, I have been feeling like God has been silent....just watching me...waiting to see how my faith was going to hold up.......knowing that I was so close to saying I'm too tired to do this anymore.

And then came the Oprah show. And there she was. The latest in the line of people put before me to make me ashamed of my self-centeredness. Another person worse off to make me thank God for his mercy and goodness. A woman who had battled stage IV breast cancer since 2003.
Another person past her 5 year mark. A woman who had heard "It's progressing again" four times. A woman in congestive heart failure because of all the treatments....who had been sent home to be with her family.....who had been told her time was short. Oprah was giving her a basement make-over for her husband and two boys. Two boys who may very well lose their mom well before they should, at 10 and 13 years old.

I couldn't take my eyes off the woman. All made-up and smiling. Painfully thin. Oprah also gave her a new bedroom since she spent so much time in there. I thought about my sofa and all the time I spend there. It made me question...did I really need to be laying around by 6:00pm
every night? I don't think I do. I think I need to remember that I can still get out, walk, shop,
and take care of my dogs, even though the pain has kept me from that lately. Pain is relative, and they make pills for it. Pills I can learn to take, if I have to, during the day so I can get out and do the things I can still do and the woman on Oprah cannot. Life is still waiting to be lived
and after watching Oprah yesterday, I knew I could not waste any more days because of the pain. It does not honor God. It does not honor the battle of the woman I saw yesterday on TV.
I bet she would take my wasted days in a skinny minute....to tack on to her own...to have one more day with her family. Of that I have no doubt.

So thanks, God, for that good slap on the face, the bucket of ice-water You poured on my head;
that good swift kick in the pants. I needed it. This afternoon, the sofa will be empty.

"The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God..." Galation 2:20