Out of the Blue

It is 3:21 am and I can't sleep. Well, that's nothing new. For the past week, I've been waking up at around 1:30 am and it doesn't seem to matter how much melatonin I take - sleep just isn't working right now. Fortunately, it's Saturday morning, so I don't have anywhere specific to be in a few hours. I can be as relaxed as I need to. It has been a long time since I've written here. Not because I've magically gotten well - I haven't. I received test results today that show the disease is continuing to progress, despite the increases in medication over the past few months. My right knee doesn't really look like a knee anymore - I'll spare you the description. The knuckles on my left hand seem to expand daily. There is always back pain and joint pain. But I have been feeling great anyway, and I can tell you why: Because I choose to. Things are hard. I work full time. I am in school full time. I just added another eight hour/week job wi...

It is September 11th, and the questions we inevitably hear today, as we remember the loss of nearly 3000 of our citizens in terrorist attacks thirteen years ago, are "Where were you?" and "What do you remember?" It got me thinking. I was at work, as most of us were, on the morning of September 11th, 2001. I was in the basement of the community center where I had just been working for a couple of weeks. Some church groups had put together donations of paper towels and cleaning supplies for us and I was busy inventorying and coding the items. I was at Jubilee Project, a United Methodist Mission, and when the associate director came downstairs and told me what had happened I felt numb; frightened, saddened, and just plain cold all over. When she left the room, I approached a wooden cross that sat on a table there and I knelt down to pray. Words didn't come, but I am sure God understood my heart. That's where I was. What I remember most from that day, and fr...