All posts by Vic

It's Never Too Late

It’s Never Too Late Part 3

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Dorothy G. Hensley, age 89, is in the final months of her battle with congestive heart disease.

Dorothy did not complete high school and never believed she had the talent to be a writer but she has had a lifelong dream to be a published writer. Andshe has written all her life. Her daughter remembers her mother getting up very early in the morning so she could write at the kitchen table while the house was quiet.

When Dorothy was in her 40’s, she went to a junior college to learn to be a better writer, despite lack of support from her husband and ridicule from classmates 25 years her junior. Three years ago, at the urging of her daughter, Dorothy began taking a memoir-writing class. It was in those classes that her instructors and classmates acknowledged her as a talented writer, and she began to believe it. Dorothy has said of writing that she felt “almost overpowered with a passion as strong as hunger, as demanding as birth.”

Dorothy has written many stories about her family and experiences while growing up. Itwas her dream to see her passion of writing in print — to be recognized as a writer of promise before she dies.

She is currently in hospice care and recently realized her dream when her story below was published at beliefnet.com, the largest website of it’s kind on the entire world wide web. Congratulations Dorothy! You have truly taught us that it’s never too late!

Six Months to Live–and Laugh
On the day a woman learns she has only a short time to live, she meets someone who shows her the humorous side.
By Dorothy G. Hensley

This is the day I learned that my life is coming to an end, and that’s all right. Eighty-eight years is more than most people get.

My daughter and I sat in Dr. Barbara’s office. “I have done everything I can for you,” she said, kindness in her voice. “Would you like me to contact hospice?” Surprised, I didn’t know how to react. The doctor was looking into my eyes, waiting for a sign of understanding. “They can take care of your needs, enabling you to stay home.” She paused, and then said, “Do you know about hospice?”

I said, “Yes. I had hospice when Mia’s dad died.” I was remembering the flurry of activity, almost eight years ago, when a registered nurse and two aides arrived at our home, along with a delivery of a hospital bed, bedside potty, a wheelchair, and a walker. In no time at all the bed was standing and made up in the living room, the potty was hidden behind a screen, the wheelchair was out of the line of traffic, and the walker was folded and leaned against a wall. Yes, I was acquainted with hospice.

Mia spoke, “Are you telling me my mother has six months to live?”

The doctor transferred her attention to Mia. “No. We don’t say that now.” She looked back at me, “You may live months or a year…” I sensed hesitation in her demeanor. I stood, ready to leave; I needed to go home and talk this over with God.

However, before I could go home, I had to keep an appointment made last week with a beautician, a stranger, since retirement had claimed the operator I was in the habit of using. Maybe the hair-do would give me a lift. Yet I felt a strong need to talk about what I thought of as my new status. Until I was better acquainted with it myself, I didn’t want to discuss the obvious change in our relationship with Mia; she needed time, too.

Back in the car an unfamiliar silence lay between us. By the time Mia stopped the car to let me out at the beauty shop, I knew what I was going to do. Suddenly I was glad I didn’t know the hairdresser.

Her name was Melody. After introductions, I was seated in an adjustable chair, leaned back against a sink, and felt water and shampoo fingered onto my scalp. Then, before I could change my mind, I said, “I’ve just been told that I’m going to die.” Her fingers stilled immediately. She said nothing for a moment, so I added, “I’ll have to call in hospice.” Then I sat quietly, waiting. When her fingers started working again, I felt the muscles in my neck become tense. What was she going to say?

“Hospice, huh? You’re telling me you’ve got six months to live?” I opened my mouth to speak but didn’t have time before she continued. “You can’t have six months. That’s mine. You can have three months or five or nine, but you can’t have six.”

For the second time that day, I was too surprised to speak. She finished rinsing my hair and pushed a knob on the chair that allowed me to sit up-and just kept talking. I began to laugh.

“I get lots of free lunches out of that six-month prognosis. My kids treat me great too. The other day my granddaughter said, ‘Don’t say that, Grandma. It might be bad luck.’ I said, ‘Well, someday it’s going to be true. Then won’t you be glad you were nice to me all those years?” I was laughing out loud now, and it felt wonderful

“I tell anybody who needs to know,” she added. “One day I parked in a hard-to-find-space, and a woman in a Mercedes stopped behind my car as I got out. She yelled at me, ‘I’ve been waiting to park there. I had to turn around first.’ The teenage boy sitting in the passenger seat looked embarrassed-as well he should. I told her, ‘You want this parking place? Okay. You can have it. I’ve got six months to live, so a parking place is the least of my worries. I’ll just get in my car and pull out. You can have it.’ The teenager said, ‘M-o-m-m-m?’ and the lady left without further chatter. It comes in handy, you know?” I continued to laugh.

Only God has the wisdom and the knowledge to choreograph that particular afternoon in my life, with all the right people in all the right places at the right time. As I got ready to go home, I faced the back of the shop where Melody was shampooing her next client and talking a mile a minute. Smiling, I said in my heart, “Thank you, God.”

On occasion, when I sense a dark mood hovering around, waiting to pounce, I think of Melody and laugh. Oh, I’m still going to die, but I won’t die in six months. I wouldn’t dare!

Helping Dorothy realize her dream to be published before she died is The Dream Foundation, the first national organization founded to bestow a final wish on adults. Dream spokesperson Eve Lechner wrote, “Our dreams focus on providing resolution, a sense of completion and fulfillment. We cannot provide a cure for our dreamers, but we can dramatically impact the quality of their fragile lives with the joy experienced from a dream come true.”

If you would like to contact Dorothy and let her know how her story touched you, please email Eve2@aol.com .

We received this submission from the Dream Foundation, whose mission is to grant terminally ill adults one final wish.

James Allen eMeditations

Lose the whine

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“A person only begins to become the person he wants to be when he ceases to whine and revile, and commences to search for the hidden justice which regulates his life.” — As A Man Thinketh

I had to look up the meaning of the word revile because I’ve never seen it used. It means to condemn, despise, berate. I didn’t have to look up the meaning of the word whine – in fact I’m sure some of my friends have sometimes wanted to ask me if I “wanted some cheese with that whine?”

When we whine and revile we give power to that which we revile and whine about. We cease to be in charge of our life. I love the way that Wayne Dyer describes it in You’ll See It When You Believe It. He says, “I no longer view the world in terms of unfortunate accidents or misfortunes. I know in my being that I influence it all, and now find myself considering why I created a situation, rather than saying, “why me?” This heightened awareness directs me to look inside of myself for answers. I take responsibility for all of it, and the interesting puzzle becomes a fascinating challenge when I decide to influence areas of my life in which I previously believed I was not in control. I now feel that I control it all.”

One of my favorite quotes on this subject is from George Bernard Shaw. “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in the world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”

So how do we develop the necessary character to make our circumstances instead of allowing our circumstances to make us. Emmet Fox tells us that “you can build any quality into your mentality by meditating upon that quality every day. If you seem to yourself to be lacking in certain necessary qualities, if your character seems to lack strength, ask God to give you what you need – and He will.”

And that’s worth thinking about.

James Allen eMeditations

Doubt and fear are the enemies of knowledge

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“Doubt and fear are the great enemies of knowledge, and she who encourages them, who does not slay them, thwarts herself at every step.” — As A Man Thinketh

I’ve heard it said that we’re born with only a few fears — like the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. All other fears we learn along the way. Like the fear of failure, the fear of rejection – even a fear of success. I believe our greatest enemy in life is fear, because fear keeps us from doing many of those things we would like to do that would make our life more complete and more enjoyable.

Doubt is the first cousin of fear and precedes it. We weren’t born with doubt. Our habit of doubt has grown throughout our life. If we dwell on a doubt and give in to it, it then grows into fear. In his epistle, the ancient writer James reminds us that doubt makes us ineffective, “a doubtful mind will be as unsettled as the wave of the sea that is tossed and driven by the wind; and every decision you then make will be uncertain, as you turn first this way, and then that.”

If most of our fears and all of our doubts are learned along the way, then we can “unlearn” them by becoming masters of our thoughts. I once heard Zig Ziglar quote Mark Twain when he said, “True courage is not the absence of fear, it’s the mastery of fear.” The people who live the life of their dreams have just as many fears as those who live miserable, unfulfilled lives – they have just learned to master their fears instead of allowing their fears to master them.

Norman Vincent Peale, writing in You Can If You Think You Can, provides us with a prescription for mastering fear and doubt. “You can cancel out fear with faith. For there is no force in this world more powerful than faith. The most amazing things can happen as a result of it…There are two massive thought forces competing for control of the mind: fear and faith, and faith is stronger, much stronger. Hold that thought of faith’s greater power until you believe it, for it can be the difference between success and failure.”

And that’s worth thinking about.

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James Allen eMeditations

The Magic is in YOU!

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“When he realizes that he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow; he then becomes the rightful master of himself.” — As A Man Thinketh

Recently I was reading an old classic, The Message of a Master by John McDonald, and I was rocked by an incredibly insightful passage: “The cause of the confusion prevailing in your mind that weakens your thoughts is the false belief that there is a power or powers outside you greater than the power within you.”

Stop and think about that. What keeps us from attempting greater things — from reaching for the brass ring in our life? What makes us take that great idea that could make our family financially secure and bury it underneath a lot of reasons why it’d never work? What stops us from that career change that would result in working in a profession we could really enjoy, could get passionate about?

There’s only one thing that EVER stops us from forward momentum and McDonald nailed it: “the false belief that there is a power or powers outside you greater than the power within you.”

As I once heard a speaker say, “The magic is in YOU!” As James Allen tells us, once we realize that we can create our circumstances, then, and only then, are we truly the master of our life and our destiny.

Regardless of your particular spiritual beliefs, you may find these words from the Gospel of John very enlightening, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do, shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do.” That would indicate to me that we are already “endowed” with the power to do amazing things — far more amazing than most of us will ever attempt — if we’d only understand and BELIEVE that the power is within, not without.

And that’s worth thinking about

James Allen eMeditations

Good health begins in the mind

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“Disease and health, like circumstances, are rooted in thought. Sickly thoughts will express themselves through a sickly body.” — Path to Prosperity

Almost 100 years ago James Allen wrote these words in his book, Path to Prosperity: “in the near future, the fact that all disease has its origin in the mind will become common knowledge.”

He would be honored to know that a June, 1997 story in the Wall Street Journal said that HMOs were reporting that as much as 70 percent of all visits to a primary care physician were for a psychosomatic illness — a disorder that involves both mind and body.

According to Dr. David Sobel, a primary care physician and author of the highly respected Mind-Body Health Newsletter, only 16 percent of people who visit their physician for common maladies like nausea, headache and stomach upset are diagnosed with a physical, organic cause. That means that a whopping 84% are suffering from an illness that originated in THOUGHT!

The evidence suggests that in most cases today we are thinking and talking our way to sickness and disease, or as Bob Proctor puts it: “dis–ease.”

Jeff Keller, writing in Attitude is Everything, says, “it makes absolutely no sense to keep repeating that you have “chronic back pain that will never go away” or that you get “three or four bad colds every year.” By uttering these statements, you are actually instructing your body to manifest pain and disease.”

In his book A Clear Path to Healing, Dr. Barry Weinberg writes, “The creation of health, as in all creations, must first start in the mind. Once the mind is made up and the commitment and unwavering determination to heal has been made, healing is inevitable.”

And that’s worth thinking about.