My Birthday - A Day of Promise

This is a day of promise; of hopefulness, and cheer

For this is my day to remember

The lives that touch my heart each year

Today is the day I reflect, on all I have to give

Because I am blessed with another year to live

So many special memories are woven into my life

None of them as powerful as God giving me a second chance at life

Overcoming cancer opened my soul

Now I understand it is love

That truly makes me whole

The love and wonder of my life, is what I celebrate today

I send you love and happiness

As I look forward to another day

The Strength of Forgiveness

Who is it that you cannot forgive? We each have a list of people who did us wrong or who were never able to quite live up to our expectations. If your name is on that list, you are not the only person on the earth with a dark secret.

Holding on to the past and failing to grasp the importance of forgiveness depletes your soul. Moving forward with life becomes impossible. Living in the past drains all the positive energy we need to create a joyous future. Close your eyes, can you feel your anger in the pit of your stomach and the power of those unrealized expectations eating away at your dreams?

Directing our negative emotion toward others will never penetrate their heart as deeply, or as completely as the grip it has on you. It is time to ask if giving them your power is worth repeatedly reliving how you’ve been wronged.


Forgiveness is the beginning to understanding our anxieties and feelings of unhappiness. I believe our failure to know joy is a direct reflection of our inability to forgive. So come clean, what are you holding onto?

No matter how deep your pain, believing your life is not worth the power of letting go keeps you shrouded in darkness. It is easy to believe our unwillingness to forgive centers around our false perception that it serves as our armour against the pain. Have you noticed how the pain grows as you relive it every day?

With a clear focus, the joy we all deserve lies just beyond our ability to start living life in the present.

How long are you willing to wait before you are ready to stop playing the same game? Experience tells me life is short and the days we focus on the past, take us away from the minutes, days, months and years we have left to experience the joy and wonder we are meant to live in the future.

The Power of Healing

What are you healing from? A life threatening illness, the end of a relationship, the death of a lover, a friend, or family member? Have you struggled to overcome addiction and gone to hell and back in search of finding your soul?

Healing comes to us in many forms and is a neverending process of life’s journey. With it comes the emotions of fear, sadness, loss, and ultimately, the need to adapt to change. I believe we have a responsibility to learn from the challenges’s put before us. My challenge was to embrace the fact that the universe was handing me a lesson I needed to learn.  I could either die or fight to overcome my fears, with the goal that this experience would make me a stronger human being.

My path to healing from cancer took many twists and turns. I found healing, in the support and comfort I received from friends and family. I found healing, by beginning to honor my body in ways that embraced the love they showed me, allowing me to love myself even in my darkest moments. I found healing, through the beauty and wonder in nature. The stars seemed brighter, the sunsets more colorful, the waves crashing on the beach louder, the unique beauty of the desert became more interesting, the peace of waking beside a lake more serene. God appeared to me in all these acts of love and places of beauty and I knew I was never alone in my struggle.

Today, my life has a new perspective. I am blessed for having gone through the pain of cancer.  Loosing my hair was only a minor inconvenience, although I admit looking in the mirror some days tested my views about my sense of self worth.  Not being able to digest food for the better part of a year and all that came with chemo and radiation, brought me to the depths of despair on many occassions.  There were days, I actually felt I was slowly dying inside.  My body and strength were being tested and I remember silently wondering if I might loose this battle.  Looking back, I came through my journey wiser, more compassionate, and more deeply connected to others. Moving through the process of healing opened up my creativity and need to communicate the profoundly powerful lessons we all can learn.  The key is to pay close attention to the individual lessons hidden within our pain.

I encourage you to seek to understand your journey of healing, be patient with yourself -- healing takes time, connect to a power greater than yourself and you too will find the power to be transformed.

Heaven

I have never really thought much about Heaven or the concept of its existence.

Last night while searching the sky, it occurred to me that perhaps stars are not cold masses of ice. Maybe all those millions of stars are just holes in the sky, sparkling brightly to provide us a glimpse into Heaven. I believe they serve as our window into the majesty and wonder of Heaven.

We have all heard that when we die there will be a bright light for us to walk into, leading the way to eternity. People who have had near-death experiences, often describe they experienced an intense light and an overwhelming sense of peace and serenity.

I will look at the stars differently from now on, choosing to believe that perhaps, they might be tiny little holes in the fabric of our universe. The purpose of every one of those tiny lights is there to give us a glimpse of the intensity and wonder of Heaven.

By Kevin S. Andersen

Obsessions

Writers often end up writing about their obsessions. The things that haunt them; the things they cannot forget; stories they carry in their bodies waiting to be released.

The list of my obsessions change but unlike most writers, I never take the time to write them down. I would rather not be reminded they exist. If I did make a list, at the very least I would always have things to write about. I am sure once they appear on paper I give them power to manifest becoming larger than they really are. Either way, I am committed not to give them control over my life.

One obsession uncovers its ugly head to taunt me just as life seems to stablize and return to normal. Overcoming cancer is a cruel ellusion that will never go away. Just as life becomes clearer than ever before, the month of June signifies the season for my annual PET scan.

The “what ifs” become my obsession as I hide them from the world. What if my cancer comes back? The fear is understandable, yet holds no place in my life. I crushed it when I won my battle against the Dragon two years ago.

The reality is, I have done all I can do to keep it at bay. If cancer were to return, I would just take up the battle again and keep doing so, until I could fight no more. Lifes journey serves to remind me how powerful I am. My soul is fearless against the unknown and for now, I give thanks for another day.