Something I wish to share with you

I don’t normally make two blog posts in one day, but this is important, so I am.

I know that when you want to share a blog post which someone else has made on their own blog, you can do a little gizmo thing to share their post with your own followers.  So yes, I do know I can do that.  However, in this circumstance, I don’t want to do that, and the reason for this might become clear when you read this ‘story’.

A dear blogging friend, Michelle, has been going through a really heart aching time of recent.  In the last 6 months Michelle has had her youngest Son, just three years old, go through surgery;   Her young daughter (aged just 7) had to go through heart surgery;  and since August  1st  her eldest son has been very, very poorly indeed and is in hospital.

Yesterday Michelle posted this:

When Tears Become A Way Of Life

Sometimes, tears become normal because life can be hard. So very, very hard.

The photo above is the view from my son’s hospital room. His illness first started on August 1st and he is still desperately sick. He now has post surgical meningitis and his pain is immense. Tears are never far from my eyes as I watch, helpless to ease his suffering. But do you know what he does?

He sings praise.

His spinal column and brain are filled with bacteria and pain, but he sings praise.

His hope has never grown dim and yesterday, when he could barely speak and was going in and out of delirium, he said to me

“Mom, I love you. Never lose faith.”

 Can you imagine? In the midst of his suffering, he was encouraging me. Tears still come, but I wipe them away and carry on for him because if he can be that strong, so can I.

To all of my wonderful readers, customers and team, I have been pretty missing in action due to all of this. Thank you for sticking by me. I have so many Stampin’ Up! things I need to share with you, but they have to wait because my boy needs me. Thank you for your support, your business and your understanding, and thanks for stopping by today.

Many of you have shared your own stories of personal health struggles or watching loved ones suffer, and some of you have even recently lost those closest to you. My heart is with each of you who have shared. If you are in the middle of a season of tears, my message to you is the same as my son’s:

Friend, I love you.

Never lose faith.

Michelle

Michelle is the most incredible person.  She’s a very soft and gentle girl, – and if you’d have been at school with her, you know you’d have protected from any bully, and made sure she knew she was fantastic, whatever someone else might say, and quite possibly thumped anyone who hurt her.  (no matter how much a scaredy cat you actually are.  – or is that just me I’m talking about here? lol).  But she’s built of sturdier stuff than I, for I think I would have caved in under the weight of what she’s had to bear.  She amazes me with her positivity and ability to keep going long after others would have been on the floor.

So, why am I here sharing blog post with you?  Well, I have a favour to ask.  Would you please go to Michelle’s blog page and post a message for her?

If you pray, would you tell her that you’re praying for her son?

If you don’t pray –  that’s fine  …  tell her that you’re thinking positive thoughts and pushing your hopes and wishes out into the world.  That way those good wishes and hopes and thoughts can join up with all the other people who are doing the same thing, and make one great big positive, thought, prayer, love and … oh lots of other things.  And together,  all those things make something so powerful and so good and, who knows ….  maybe out of this could come something wonderful which we’re all hoping for.

The reason I didn’t want to do that gizmo ‘share’ of her post is because to do so seems wrong.  The blog post, on this occasion, should stand alone, out of a deep respect for her and her family and the situation they are in right now.  I didn’t want Michelle being notified that someone had shared her post on their own blog.  There’s something wrong in doing that.  Somehow it felt like a tacky thing to do.

But … If however you yourself have followers that you would like to encourage to visit Michelle’s blog and post something truly uplifting and which will give her an even greater hope that something good is happening,  then that would be brilliant – and yes, you can do the quote of this blog post.  I don’t mind.

You can visit   Michelle’s blog post HERE.

When the page loads (in another window) scroll all the way down to leave a comment for her.

I thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for posting words of encouragement on her blog;  showing her your support;  telling her that you’re praying;  or telling her that you’re thinking of her son and the family, and pushing good thoughts out into the ether, wishing and hoping that her sons health improves soon, and that he’s back home, fully recovered as soon as possible.

Thank you to all the wonderful people of blog land.  Praying or Wishing or Hoping may seem like only be a little thing for you to do  … but all those little things add up and eventually they become something BIG.   And sometimes, all those little things bundled up together contain miracles that can amaze you.  Those things really can make incredible things happen.  They can change the world.  Or a boy’s life.

As Arthur Conan Doyle said:  “the little things are infinitely the most important.“

Thank you from the bottom of my heart. 

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Things I learned this Week

Welcome to this weeks ~ Lessons in the art of Life ~ . . . as per Cobs.

Well, I’ve learnt an assortment of lessons this week.  Some of them welcome, one of them tiresome and others that are just snippets of “well I never knew that”!

I have learned that Virgin Media (who supply my cable, TV, broadband and telephone –  i.e. the whole kit and caboodle) can keep you ‘holding’ on the phone for an INORDINATELY long time (i.e. 1 hour 35 minutes) when you call them to tell them that you’re planning to disconnect from them and go to another supplier if they don’t get their act sorted out and change back the monthly charge to what I was paying before they hoiked the charge up by £39.49 per month.

Because I’m a clever, canny lass when it comes to negotiating new deals, I keep an almost blow-by-blow account of what was agreed, and get the FULL name of the person I was doing the deal with and even make a note of the time the call began and ended  ….  Virgin couldn’t do anything but remove the extra charges for the rest of the term of our contract.  However, in an effort to make things as difficult as possible, they (Virgin) passed me from pillar to post, one person after another,  possibly in the hope that I’d get either annoyed or tired and put down the phone.  I didn’t.  I don’t.  And, unlike Mr. Cobs, I don’t lose my temper either.  I, in fact, get calmer and c.a.l.m.e.r. until I’m ultra calm and laid back,  ….  but ever-so-much more determined that I am going to get the result I require.

I learned from this experience this week that Virgin might waste a bit of my time by keeping me listening to music(? that term is questionable for what I was listening to), but ultimately it is they who will be jumping through the hoops when it comes to keeping THIS customer happy.

I also learned this week that I actually can still work in my craft room – sort of – when there is no electricity to be found in there at all.  Although – it’s a much quieter sort of crafting and I don’t particularly like it very much.

The electrics in my craft room suddenly tripped on Wednesday and nothing would or could get the electrics to work again.  It’s apparently something to do with one of the sockets in there.  Fortunately my craft room is a completely separate building from the house (in our detached, converted garage) so the house electrics are fine.  Our Electrician called out on Wednesday to see if anything needed to be ordered, and he’s back again Friday (today) to [hopefully] fix the problem.  While he’s here I’m getting him to put some new spots in the ceiling as the ones that are there were fitted by Noah when he arrived in the harbour, sailing on his big boat, so they’re old and need changing. (The detail about Noah fitting the current lights might not actually be totally true).

I’ve also learned some random facts about life in general, which I’m not sure will ever impress anyone or even if I’ll ever need these intelligent bits of information, but I know them now so in the interests of sharing the knowledge and joy I’ll show you what I learned…

The Sun is (roughly) 400 times larger than the moon.  It looks, to us here on Earth, like the moon and sun are the same size, but that’s simply because the Sun is (approximately) 400 times further away from us, which creates the illusion that the Sun and Moon in the sky above, are the same size!

Your brain weighs about 3 pounds. Of that, the dry weight is 60% fat, making your brain the fattiest organ!   Twenty-five percent of the body’s cholesterol resides within the brain.  Cholesterol is an integral part of every brain cell. Without adequate cholesterol, brain cells die.  GASP!  Who knew?!

Ninety minutes of sweating can temporarily shrink your brain as much as one year of aging.  Your brain is 73% water. It takes only 2% dehydration to affect your attention, memory and other cognitive skills.

No one knows for sure, but the latest estimate is that our brains contain roughly 86 billion brain cells.  Each neuron connects with, on average, 40,000 synapses.  A piece of brain tissue the size of a grain of sand contains 100,000 neurons and 1 billion synapses all communicating with each other.  Babies have big heads to hold rapidly growing brains. A 2-year-old’s brain is 80% of adult size.  Teen brains are not fully formed. It isn’t until about the age of 25 that the human brain reaches full maturity.

Brain information moves anywhere between 1 mph and an impressive 268 miles per hour. This is faster than Formula 1 race cars which top out at 240 mph.  Your brain generates about 12-25 watts of electricity. This is enough to power a low-wattage LED light.  (NOW THERE’S AN IDEA FOR MY CRAFT ROOM! … aw, no, that’s a ‘normal’ brain, not just one brain cell – which is what I have).

The average brain is believed to generate around 50,000 thoughts per day. Disturbingly, it’s estimated that in most people 70% of these thoughts are negative.

Our attention spans are getting shorter. In 2000, the average attention span was 12 seconds. Now it’s 8 seconds. That’s shorter than the 9-second attention span of the average goldfish.  Yes, really!

Brain cells cannibalize themselves as a last-ditch source of energy to ward off starvation. So in very real ways dieting can force your brain to eat itself.

In spite of what you’ve been told, alcohol doesn’t kill brain cells. It “only” damages the connective tissue at the end of neurons.

Memories are shockingly unreliable. Emotions, motivation, cues, context and frequency of use can all affect how accurately you remember something.

Memory is more of an activity than a place.  Any given memory is deconstructed and distributed in different parts of the brain. Then, for the memory to be recalled, it gets reconstructed from the individual fragments.  Like a jigsaw in a box.  You have to reconstruct the photo on the front of the box.

Do you feel even more clever now?

Random Quote I read for the first time this week and HAVE to agree with:

• For disappearing acts, it’s hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work.
  – Doug Larson –

And finally …

Two words.  If you haven’t already met ‘her’ on the internet or on You Tube …   DR. PIMPLE POPPER!

OH.  MY.  DOG.!!!  

If you haven’t ‘met’ her name before, then please make sure that A) you aren’t squeamish about pimples being popped and watching when they ‘go’.  B) that you haven’t just eaten.  Then, after checking that you’re ok with these two things  ….  go to YouTube and put her name in the search bar:  Dr. Pimple Popper  or …  Dr. Sandra Lee (her real name).  She’s a real Doctor, not just some woman who pretends.  So she knows what she’s doing.

My Goodness Me!    When I watched a video I had to work out if I was feeling light-headed or sick.  But … once you’ve watched a little and realised that you’re OK and not about to pass out  …  then it becomes like a car crash.  You HAVE to look.

I was aware that my face was contorting and I was pulling a face that I’d perhaps describe as   EEEK!  and  ICK! combined into one new strange facial expression, but I continued to look.

Never knew about her before …  But I thought I’d share her with you so that you too can experience the EEEK with the ICK! which your face will no doubt do too!

Well … from spots and pimples to brain facts, Virgin Media and to that loss of Electricity, which, I hope, that by the time you’re reading this, our fabulous Electrician will have found the problem, sorted it out and everything will be back to working tickety boo!  All that will be left to do then is to put my beautiful craft room back together again.  (Everything had to be moved so that he (electrician) could get easy access to all the sockets – you would not believe it but half of my craft room is currently in my conservatory and what didn’t fit in the conservatory is in Little Cobs room!)  I’ll be so glad when it’s all put back and I’m then back in my rightful place.  Queen of the Craft Room.  (well… my craft room at any rate). lol

Thank you so much for coming and spending a coffee time with me.  I’m so blessed to have so many lovely blogging pals, and I cherish each and every one of you.

OH and  … a big, hearty  Hello to a couple of new followers who have joined our lovely blog here.  I won’t name names but .. please don’t stay a stranger.  Read and feel free to comment.  It’s via your comments that we get to know each other and we actually all really do end up as friends in blog-land.  It’s what makes blogging such a brilliant place to be.

Have a fabulous Friday my friends  … and …  pray for the very next person you see on the street.  If you don’t pray, then wish something wonderful to happen to or for that person.  Push the prayer or the good  wish out of your head and out into the universe.  Let’s all do something good.

We can’t help everyone . . .  but  everybody  can help  someone.

Sending you my love, and an extra special squidge ~

 

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A Craftaholic’s Prayer

Dear Lord,
I’m going to need some notice
Before my days are done.
You see,  I’m a craftaholic.
A fact not known to some.

My craft room, it is bulging
All corners, crannies and nooks
There’s loads of boxes under the bed,
(I hope no one ever looks!)

I tell myself when shopping,
“No more craft bits today,”
But craft shops are like magnets
Drawing me their way.

I’m totally at their mercy
Just “need” a dozen of each.
Then I hurry home to hide them
Before the family starts to preach.

So Lord, I’ll need a little time
To dispose of all this stuff.
And Lord,  can we just keep all of this,
between the two of us?

I couldn’t find any details about who wrote this poem so if you know please leave me a message to tell me who to credit.  I think I’ll be turning this into a sign for my craft room.  It’s so apt!

Happy Crafting all.