Seattle, Week Four. Alternately, The Boy's Gone Preachy

Good morning my family and my friends. I certainly hope that this finds you well, safe and dry. What a week it has been what with all the flooding along the Mississippi River then tornadoes galore just a little west, not to mention that crazy cousin of mine on the west coast ranting on about his cancer... Oh wait, that's me!

So week four was rather eventful here in Seattle. Last Thursday I started a rather aggressive chemo regimen, six days straight! Boy am I glad THAT'S over! Today is a day off with another medication to be infused over the course of the day to make final preparations for... The new marrow! As I lay here sleeping I awoke with a start, call it the "voice of God" if you like but I'm not saying that I hear voices... Anywho, I've been telling people all along how inconsequential my thanks sound to me. For things like your prayers, the little postcards and the CrAzY hats, right on up to the really big things (that we won't get into here)... I simply cannot thank each of you enough. I'm not working and barely get by as it is, so money is out. Sure I could come up with a creative way to send a postcard back, maybe gift-recycle the hats, and praying for others doesn't cost a man naught but his time and a little effort, I can do that too. But it just seems to me that a man ought to leave something BETTER than he found it, to give back more than what he has received and that maybe in doing so this world, crazy as it may seem, might just become a better place than I found it...

And then there's that "voice"... Telling me in the middle of the night that you didn't do ALL those things for me so that you'd get any "credit" or recognition for your deeds. That my debts, like those of my debtors are forgiven. Sound familiar? Yeah, it sounded familiar to me too. I think in a world where we are taught from a very early age to keep score against one another, against the world, it's easy to forget. I worked hard all my life - ALL of it, and I lost a good many job because of greedy men who had forgotten how and why they got to where they were, only that laying off some guy was a means to balance the checkbook this week, month, or quarter. I worked hard, yet I still had to file bankruptcy twice, losing a house and a truck along the way. And yet I was forgiven... I'm STILL loved... even though the "rapture" came and Tracy is STILL writing this crap... It's going to be alright.

As my second birthday fast approaches I am mindful of just what that means. I firmly believe in second chances, Lord knows I've had a few. So I'm going to do something just a little different to celebrate my second birthday, I'm going to donate it. Going to make more of it than just another day. Maybe serve soup in a homeless shelter or care for animals at the pound, maybe pick up trash at local parks or raise money for those in need... Something larger than myself.

I'm told, and I believe that all things happen for a reason, even the things we can't explain. So all of this, the bankruptcies, the hard work, even something as terrible as this cancer has happened for a reason. I don't yet fully understand what that may be, but I swear to you all now that from the MOMENT I leave this place, I intend to make the MOST of whatever life throws at me! To be THE best Tracy that I CAN be! And to forgive my debtors, eat my vegetables, putout the trash, walk the dog... And to tell Sarah every day what an INCREDIBLE woman she is.
Take care of yourselves, and take care of one another. It's what Jesus would do...