My spirits are much better today. I woke up without the same degree of pain I’ve had for the past few days, plus, IT’S JOSHY’S BIRTHDAY!!!!! He’s 10 years old today!!! CC, Missy and I woke him up at 6:30 this morning by singing “happy Birthday” to him. and, with his eyes closed, he showed a big smile. What a great way to begin your birthday; with a big smile! He, his sister and his mommy are the true loves of my life, deeply and forever. I plan to have some pics of him from today’s party, to post before the week’s end. Also, Kirsten s coming up today to celebrate Joshy’s birthday as well and my mom, his grandma, is also coming up today to help be another set of hands in working with my care and household *stuff* since CC’s “plate” is the size of a dinner table! (analogy from “my cup runneth over” and I have too much on my plate to get accomplished”, etc.) It will be a real blessing to have the help at this point. We could not have known that Sunday's attack would be a nasty as it was.
Now, for the part of this post that pertains to being “Long Overdue”;
It’s long over due that I note on here that I am able to keep blogging and continue working via computer, thanks to a friend and brother. History: I’ve been a laptop user for quite some time and when working, it was especially important to be able to work via a laptop for a variety of reasons, all of which are *sound* reasons…get it? ha.
Okay, anyway, my laptop has served me well and the back up, stand alone hard drive has been a saving grace when the laptop hard drive crashed this past December. Praise God I had all of my music files (MP3, WAV, MPEG, AVI) on the back up drive at the time. I lost most of my Outlook emails and history, but I was able to piece that back together via our downstairs computer which also shares from the same Surewest servers, so I copied from that computer back to my laptop.
Anyway, my cousin Chris saved the day for me just after the crash by replacing the dead hard drive with a new hard drive and salvaging as much data as he could from the dying drive, which allowed me to continue working on it for the time being. that was huge for me. The good thing was that I had my back up drive to draw from where all of my files were safely stored…the bad thing was that I had just the one drive where all my *stuff* was stored and that drive was showing signs of old age, so my “safe” documents weren’t actually so safe anymore and I was very concerned. I’d been wanting to pick up another portable drive as a back up to the back up, but the $$ simply wasn’t there and so, my stress levels had been creeping up on me, fearing that a crash on the back up drive was eminent and there would be nothing I could do about it. Enter my bro and friend who called me one day, a couple weeks ago, and shared that he wanted to send me a computer. Just out of the blue. After picking myself up off the ground, I said alright and was humbled to the core. It’s never easy for me to receive, regardless of circumstances and this was no exception, but I knew that this was clearly a *God thing* and that He knew of my needs and was meeting them, right before my eyes.
A few days later, a couple monitors showed up via courier and then a custom built computer with amazing features and lots of hard drive space!!! That night, after transferring the very last file from my stand alone back up drive to one of the new computer’s hard drives, the stand alone crashed and has since been inoperable. It was God’s timing, down to the last file and moment. Had this computer not arrived when it did and had it not been equipped with the hard drives capable of holding all of the stand alone’s data, I would have lost everything and, when I say everything, I mean all of my MP3’s, all of my MPEGS (movie clips and files I’ve collected over several years), and most importantly and irreplaceable, all of my music files and recordings I have made and created over my musical career. They all would have been gone that very night had that computer not arrived when it did. This gift of a computer (with dual monitors!!) was and is far more than the giver even imagined it could be. If he is comfortable with my sharing his name then I’ll do so, but I don’t want to share it at this point because I don’t know how he would feel about it. He’s not one for the spot light and is much more comfortable being an integral part of the background “machine”, if you will. I know he reads my blog from time to time and I have already shared with him via voice how much this gift means to me and to my family, so reiterating those sentiments here is fine and appropriate since he heard them from me before he read them from me.
To each of you reading this, never, ever, ever underestimate the potential of your effort to the behalf of someone who receives your *gift* whether it be something verbal, physical, prayerful or even thoughtful. God takes our intentional “good thing”, our imperfect effort or simple gift and produces something awesome and incredible with it, and, more often than not, allows the giver to feel or sense the impact their *gift* has had on the recipient. I’m including a piece from Paul Stanley's (of KISS) website which hopefully correlates to you as it did for me, the latter point I was wanting to convey:
'CRITTER' GETS KISS ON THE PHONE
13th March, 2009 | CINCINNATI ENQUIRER
LEGENDARY ROCKERS LIFT AILING FAN'S SPIRITS
By William Croyle
NEWPORT, KY - The phone rang Wednesday afternoon in Christopher "Critter" Smith's room at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.
His mom had just stepped out for a moment, so he answered it.
"Critter, it's Paul Stanley," the caller said. Stanley is the lead singer for KISS, Critter's favorite rock band.
"At first, I thought it was just my dad messing with me," Critter said.
It really was Stanley.
The band had been alerted about Critter by a fan after an article was published March 2 in The Enquirer. The article talked about the 11-year-old's battle with leukemia, and mentioned his love for KISS.
"When I realized it was really him, I was like, 'Oh my God!'" Critter said.
Stanley told Critter to stay strong and that he was praying for him. "And he told me he was going to send me some KISS stuff," Critter said.
All of that happened about 1:30 p.m. The call lasted just a few minutes, but was enough to raise Critter's spirits.
"I was lying down all day," Critter said. "Then, after he called me, I was up playing basketball in my room."
"He was on top of the world," said his mother, Carol Smith.
About 10 p.m. that same day, the phone rang again. Still bouncing off the walls from Stanley's call, Critter got another surprise: It was the band's drummer, Eric Singer.
"I was just like 'Woooow!'" Critter exclaimed.
Singer talked with Critter for a few minutes and invited him to one of their concerts this summer to see the show and meet the band.
"I've never even been to a concert at all," Critter said. "This is just so cool!"
This is Critter's second bout with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a cancer of the white blood cells.
During five months in 2007 he underwent five rounds of chemotherapy, a round of radiation and a bone marrow transplant. Critter returned to school at Fourth Street Elementary and was in remission for 15 months until January.
He's started chemotherapy. He'll undergo another bone marrow aspiration this weekend.
The good news, his mom said, is that doctors are going to hold off for now on another bone marrow transplant until they see how he does.
"To have to go through this twice isn't fair, but I'm ecstatic he's responding to the chemo," his mother said. "I'm still nervous, but hopeful."
The Gift is better than the reception.
No comments:
Post a Comment