Living Proof

EDIT: I wrote this post for my mother almost 7 years ago. She had just lost my father. I wanted to give her a tribute and write something publicly for her. When she read it on her little laptop, she cried and hugged me. Now that she's in heaven, I wanted to finish this final post and let it be my tribute to her every Mother's Day.  "Love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark...to have been loved so deeply...will give us some protection forever." --J.K. Rowling There are many "best moms in the whole world", but let me tell you why my mother is the best mom. Mom didn't have it easy with me. First of all, I came along seven years after my three older siblings. She was free and clear from raising yet another baby. But I surprised her and thankfully, she accepted me. I was a breech baby -- my foot came out as my dad was driving toward the hospital while my mother was in labor. She kept quiet, not wanting to stress out my father m...

Sleep is important, no matter how you try to justify staying up an extra hour. While we’ve made some pretty awesome advancements in technology, and we’ve invented some killer energy drinks, it’s still no substitute for some restful sleep. It’s good for the young, for adults, and for the elderly.  However, too many people aren’t getting enough sleep! Now, “enough” is subjective. Some people are like cats and need over 10 hours of sleep. Others can be just fine with half of that. The average is around 7-8 hours, so if you’re not getting enough sleep, do that.  Sleep is important for your mental health. It can improve your depression, reduce your anxiety so you don’t have panic attacks so often, and it just gives you more energy.  If you’re not getting enough sleep, your sleep rituals may be poor. Here are some ways you can unwind before bed and get a better night’s sleep.  Don’t Be On Your Phone So Much  If you find yourself browsing Facebook on yo...

It's late at night and you're scrolling through your social media feeds hoping that something will either be funny, inspiring or thought provoking. You try not looking at the time, but each time you do, 12 midnight turns into 1am, 2am, 3am, and so on. And you think to yourself, "How did I manage to do a bunch of nothing in the course of three hours?" You set your phone back down on your nightstand, hoping the sandman has made his final entrance, to only find that your mind races through the 'what ifs' for the next day ahead, and the worries about how you will manage to get everything done in such few hours of sleep. Insomnia is so common, but it's not technically "panic disorder," unless the panic attacks are keeping you up at night. What I discovered is that random panic attacks, like rapid heartbeat, palpitations or hyperventilation out of nowhere, is panic disorder. The reason why they call it a "disorder" is that you start to avo...

Sometimes it can be frustrating to have unanswered prayers. Even the message behind praying for stuff is convoluted somewhat. Some Christians believe that you shouldn't pray for "stuff" and that if you do, that it's a form of idolization -- for instance, you'd rather "things" more than a relationship with God. But biblically speaking, that's just not true at all. A lot of pastors will try and say that you should ask for deeper things and to only use prayer to praise God. Well, yes---praising God and being grateful for what we have now is important. But God wants us to go to Him for everything else too. It's up to Him whether or not those 'orders' get fulfilled. If our own earthly loved ones can provide "stuff" for us, then what makes us think that God can't? In Luke 11:9-13, it clearly states: "And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will be given what you ask for. Keep on looking, and you will find. Keep on kn...

Even the Strongest People Cry Throughout my entire life, I was always told, "Don't cry, baby, don't cry," by both my parents. They wanted to see me happy---they wanted to see me OK and they certainly did not want to see me fall apart. Maybe in a way, they'd take the blame and say it was all their fault somehow. Or maybe, they didn't want to cry themselves. Most of me believes that they loved me so much, that it hurt them to see me in some kind of pain, whether emotional or physical. I remember many years ago, I had to go for lasik eye surgery. I was legally blind and the surgery was risky. They made me sign all of these forms saying that it was an 80/20 chance of me going completely blind, with the exception of a cornea replacement---not in my favor of course. I said, "I'm blind anyway, just do it." When I came out of surgery, it was more intense than most would go through, because my cornea was too thin, and needed much more time to heal. I ...

Years ago, I suffered from chronic pain. Some doctors called it "degenerative disc disease" while other physicians referred it to "fibromyalgia." They couldn't quite pinpoint what was wrong with me and why I was experiencing such excruciating pain. They admitted me to the hospital for a week to do some testing for autoimmune diseases and other possible diagnoses, to only come up with "myalgia." I guess it's another word for, "We don't know, but we're gonna slap a label on it." During that time, I also developed an ulcer due to all of the NSAIDS (ibuprofen) I was taking to relieve some of the pain. They also gave me Percocet, but it didn't work quite as well as the anti-inflammatories. I had no choice because my stomach would suffer. When I realized I was developing a dependency on the pills, I weaned off and tried smoking weed, which did nothing except make me high and hungry. I never understood why people used it for pain. ...

Some people believe that forgiveness is just a verbal confirmation of "we're okay"---"we're good," until later down the road, the offense has been brought up again by the person who was hurt. Most likely, the person who holds all the resentment and bitterness will usually regurgitate the offense over and over throughout the relationship. They truly believe they have forgiven that person, yet they keep reminding them about what they've done in the past. That's not forgiveness. Remember the saying, "forgive and forget?" The forgetting part is hard, I know---but the concept of "forgetting" is about never bringing up the one thing that hurt you to the person who begged for forgiveness. See, when we bring up the offense, that's bitterness coming out. Imagine eating something bitter. That's the face you'll make when you bring up a past offense. Think about it. Truth is, you'll probably never forget that 'offens...