Learning to Enjoy Living Again

I had a great Christmas.

                                
       It snowed (well at least we had snow flurries Christmas Eve). 

We had a great Christmas tree. 

                                              We dressed up Bart the bear.

It will be two years in February that Lori was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer.

In about three weeks it will be 14 months since it metastasized in her brain.

In one month, it will be six months since three teams of doctors told us she would be dead by now.

It is difficult to learn to live with cancer.

The fear and the anticipation of what might come next can over ride and suck out the joy of any daily happiness. 

But if you are lucky (and blessed) enough to have the person you care about begin to beat the odds, a certain strength begins to manifest itself in you. 

You start to realize that Churchill was right (as usual) and that as he said so eloquently:

"Success is not final; Failure is not fatal, 

it is the courage to continue that counts". 

A very close friend of mine told me over the holiday that "fear is the absence of faith". 

What he said resonated with me. 

There will be a lot of challenges ahead in 2013.

There will be doubts, concerns, and yes, even fears. My faith has always been an "ebb and flow" kind of process for me. 

But, and this is the very important "but", life will go on. We all will face the challenges and if we do not become paralyzed by the fear, life will continue to be wonderful and even joyful, and as it was meant to be at its very best, magical.

I saw "The Hobbit" over Christmas. 

See it, the messages in it make it timeless and the fun of it brings back the feelings and wonder you had as a kid.

We lost Elle, our yellow lab over Christmas and Molly, our 14 year old poodle as well. They are missed but the memories of them now bring smiles (instead of tears) every time they cross my thoughts. 

I find myself these past few days feeling more positive, (again) then negative. I am looking (again) at the wonder and fun in living and not focusing on the end game but on the game itself.

We all know how the game must end for us all, but it really is "how you live" that defines the quality of your life.

Stay tuned, I am ready to win a few more victories, vanquish a few more powerful foes, enjoy a few more sensations, and marvel a bit longer at this thing called life. 

In short, I am learning to enjoy living again. 

Isn't that a "kick in the head"?