Update:
Yesterday I told you about my friend, Mel Jensen, who was informed on
Sunday afternoon that his oldest son had died.
I asked for your prayers concerning this family’s deep grief and
sorrow. Today I can report good and
miraculous news! His son is alive! This isn’t the case of someone jumping the
gun and calling prematurely or of mistaken identity. Allen was declared clinically dead. No pulse. No respiration. No response. Core temperature of 80 degrees. Pupils fixed and dilated. Declared dead on Sunday afternoon. The hospital kept his body on a ventilator
overnight because he was an organ donor.
On Monday they were going to begin harvesting his organs; before they
began—HE WOKE UP! Mel told me he is now sitting
up, joking with the nurses. They are
doing tests to see if he suffered any loss during his “time out” but he was
dead and now is alive. Mel said that
God certainly answers prayers. One day
his family is overwhelmed with grief and sorrow and now they are filled with
inexplicable joy! Thank you, Jesus!
I had laser surgery on my right eye on Monday afternoon. I was told that they zapped my eye about
1,000 times (normally people only have about 600-700 zaps). The doctor said that I did well and time will
tell what results we’ll get. They check
my eyesight every time I go in (3 times in the last 7 days) and have found some
improvement already in my right eye after the injection last Monday. I’ve got a long way to go—but it is a
start. Right now my eye sort of feels
like I got hit with a baseball in the eye.
After the surgery I came home and went to right to bed for a few hours. I was supposed to keep my eye closed for the
rest of the day. I did so well with
surgery that they awarded me an eye patch to wear for the next couple of
days! Woot. Woot. Check out the pictures! I am becoming a Pirate! Aargh!!!
The surgery wasn’t too painful—but I don’t relish having to do it on my
left eye next Tuesday and then again on both eyes in the coming weeks. Oh well!
I can do it! After getting up on
Tuesday, I opened my right eye and found that I have not suffered any
noticeable loss to my peripheral vision.
A field test might show that I have some loss—but just looking around—I don’t
have any that I can tell. WOW! I am so
thankful for that. For the rest of Tuesday,
I will minimize the use of my right eye to give it plenty of rest (use the eye
patch, sunglasses, etc.). 
This time I still have my “good eye” working so I can type and read
email now after about 5 hours after my surgery.
Next Tuesday, my good eye will have the surgery and I will rely upon my “bad
eye.” At that point, I won’t be able to
read until my good eye recovers. That
will be tough as tied as I am to my electronics: no email, no Facebook, no
surfing the web. It will be like
Robinson Caruso—except I can still listen to music on my MP3 player.
Thought for the Day:
In the 1973 movie “The Train Robbers”
the character played by John Wayne utters a great line, “You’re going to
spend the rest of your life getting up one more time than you’re knocked down,
so you’d better start getting used to it.”
Life is like that isn’t it? It
is often full of hard knocks, detours and dead ends. Not many of us go through life without a bit
of hardship and heartache. Most of us
end up getting a belly full of it. And
then there is failure. Most of us end encounter
failure such as getting a bad grade in school, have a ruined relationship that
we thought would last forever, lose a job, and make a big mistake that costs us
dearly. Everyone fails occasionally. The only time that failure is final is when
we give up and surrender. Until we give
up on ourselves, there is always a chance that we will succeed next time. Learn from your mistakes and try not to keep
making the same ones. But stand up,
brush yourself off and try again.
Baseball aficionados may recall a player for the Los Angeles Dodgers
named Maury Willis. He played for them
from 1960-1966. Willis was a record
making base stealer. In the 1962 season
alone he stole 104 bases. In 1965 he
stole more bases than any other player in the major leagues, but he also earned
the record for another distinction that year.
He was thrown out while attempting to steal a base more than any other
player that year--a record number 31 times.
One of his keys to success was to not let his failures define him or
keep him from trying.
Today you’ve got another opportunity to succeed. Don’t give up. Don’t give in. Don’t quit.
Stand up and give it another try.
Keep living your life, growing and improving along the way.
Philippians 3:13 “Brothers,
I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting
what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead” (ESV).
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