Sharing with others daily words, thoughts and meditations that bring myself hope and renewal during my own daily battles and frustrations with COPD/Asthma.  Sharing, because as we all know – without that horizon of hope, our daily renewal of faith and fight can dim in a hurry.

Take, read, meditate and hopefully find some of the same hope in your daily battles with a chronic illness and/or disability as I have within mine….

The Word – “A discerning man keeps wisdom in view, but a fool’s eyes wander to the ends of the earth.”  (Proverbs 17:24, NIV)

The Thought – Have you ever started a project and had an interruption or distraction which kept you from getting the project done as or on plans?  I’m going to take a guess that a very large percentage of you can, without any doubt, say yes!

When our lives changed, many times drastically, due to a chronic illness and/or disability we realized that one thing consistent with survival was a game plan or program to keep us on the path of living.  A game plan or program we need to work day in and day out to not only keep our chronic illness and/or disability from progressing any faster than necessary, but also to help make our mental, physical and spiritual lives in a state of positive progress.

As a writer, I absolutely love the world of electronic information because I love information, but if I am not careful that same world of information that I have at my fingertips with either my smart phone, laptop, desktop or streaming television can supply me with sometimes an overwhelming amount of instant distractions which in turn can knock me off my daily path of to do’s and leave me at the end of the day feeling unfulfilled or irritated for not getting a project or two done.

The same is true in anything, whether it be the physical work we need to do for keeping our human machines standing upright and movable, or the mental items we all should be doing such as watching or reading something that might not just be entertaining, but also educating.

How many distractions do we have when it comes to feeding that human machine we walk around in each day?  So many of us have a requirement for survival to watch what we eat, whether it be less sugar, less salt, less meat, less pasta and bread, no dairy, no nuts – I could go on and on as we are each different and each need our own eating habits to keep the machine fine-tuned and running.  But those distractions – the menus at places like McDonalds, KFC, Burger King, Applebee’s, Olive Garden, Pizza Hut, White Castle, Arby’s, I-Hop, Red Lobster and the list goes on and on – all those places that have great mouthwatering, tasty meals of which are too high in salt, too high in preservatives or a much too big a plateful.

And what about the spiritual side of life, the meditations/prayers with the ‘Great Spirits’?   What happens when we don’t take the time to have at least one daily conversation with a friend beyond any other friend we will ever have.  A friend that we should be grateful for due to the awesomeness of the world that surrounds our path of life.  A friend that continually provides us with the insight to those four fundamentals of life and happiness – hope, faith, love and grace.

When we battle our sometimes-daily battle with our own chronic illness and/or disability, what distractions do we find that seem to knock us off the path, heading us temporarily (hopefully just temporarily) out of the tunnel we need to keep traveling for that direct line of keeping our chronic illness and/or disability in check.

How many distractions to we see in our lives that keep us from doing what we need to be doing to not only keep us on top of caring for that companion of chronic illness and/or disability, but to stay on top of leading our life using the four fundamentals of life and happiness – hope, faith, love and grace.

The Meditation/Prayer – As we take our moment to check in with you, ‘Great Spirits’, we continue to be in absolute awe of the world we are surrounded with to take this walk of human life.  We say “wow” when we think of the works that this human machine can do, even if we are fighting a chronic illness and/or disability.  Yet we look to you ‘Great Spirits’, as our closest friend, so that we can seek the guidance and wisdom we may need to counter the one flaw we have in driving these human machines – self-will!   The self-will that finds us distracted so many times a day from the path we need to be walking to continue moving forward in positive ways while keeping in check the flaws within our human machine.  We know, ‘Great Spirits’, that without some guidance and consistent reminders we will struggle without making use of the four fundamentals of life and happiness – those being hope, faith, love and grace. We thank you for those nudges and reminders.

And we all say Hallelujah, Amen.

(Copyright@2017, CrossDove Writer – This writing may not be reused in any manner without written permission.)

(More ‘Living 4 Today’ writings can be found at either wheezingaway.com or on Facebook at COPD Travels.)