DNGILB: Trust me, I'm a doctor.

My blog has been too heavy lately. I do admit that LIFE has been too heavy lately. I don't have to bring the rest of the world down with me... yes, that's right the entire world reads my blog! I have AT LEAST 5 loyal readers. Readers who care about what is going on in my life. (hear the sarcasm) Hmm.... now that I type that out, it sounds kind of pathetic... I don't think most of my closest friends read my blog. They're just not blog reading people I suppose. Or maybe they read and just don't tell. Either way, I'd type this blog even if nobody read it. This is for my future children and children's children to know what was going through the brain of their dad and granddad. Man, I would love to discover some lost journal kept by my grandfather during World War II. That would be amazing. This evidentally is a rambling blog. Little purpose, but wanted to avoid talking about death and suffering for once. I tried shooting some footage for my "docu

Does God heal people divinely? yes. Is it his will for every sick believer to be healed? I don't think so. A pastor at one of Tulsa's large churches who strongly advocates for believing in divine healing passed away recently. He was not healed, and it got me thinking more about God's plan in our lives. There are those who believe that it is God's will for every believer to be healed of disease. I don't see how you can believe in this line of thinking when there are scriptures that say such things as "In this world you will have trials, many and bitter" and the overwhelming theme is that in this life we are resident aliens and that our true home is in the eternal... God wants us to mature and to love him for more than for the good things that we get from him. How are we ever to advance to this level in our Christian walk if we are not faced with unanswered calls for relief from suffering, whether from disease or other? If God answers every cry for rel

I was recently in Eureka Springs and on one of the one hundred year old bath houses was written in stone, "Over 90 percent of Eureka's cures". People 100 years ago and still today believe in curative powers of natural spring waters, dead sea waters, etc. I have ZERO scientific evidence to support any of these types of claims. None exists. When I was in high school I had plantar's warts on my feet. A seriously annoying problem. I had roughly 6-10 of them, mostly small. Some were big enough to cause pain and I had to walk on the outside edge of my feet. There are plenty of over the counter treatments, mainly types of acid preparations to melt them away. But they keep coming back, so you never really go back to normal. In extreme cases you go to a podiatrist and they cut them out. This is quite painful and you have a really difficult time walking for many days afterwards. I had treated them with over the counter acid for more than a year and never made any hea

Happiness... easy to define. "A state of well-being or contentment based on life's circumstances being favorable to one's desires." Joy... as a Christian, I think we all know what it is, but to put it into words that clearly communicate its meaning is tougher to do, as it is a little tougher to experience. This is my attempt to define Joy: "A state of well-being, peace, and contentment that transcends life's circumstances as is attributed to one's sense that God is in control of life, that He is good and is working to bring good in all situations." To have an opportunity to examine whether you have Joy or not, you must be subjected to "long suffering". Temporary suffering, where one can see the light at the end of the tunnel just won't do... you need to be lead into a darkness so deep that in no direction is one able to see the light. It is from that place that God wants you to look to him to experience Joy. From there, you know any

Yesterday, I experienced an unwanted thought... it was a mental image of me shooting myself. It was fleeting, and I do not want to shoot myself. I do want the heaviness, pain and craziness of life to stop though. I guess that was my subconscious screaming for help. I took a depression self-test. I didn't score very high, so it suggests I am not depressed. Though I continue to wonder at times if I should try an antidepressant. I wonder if it would help me emotionally deal with the constant pressure I am under, and the constant pain I suffer as a result of watching my sweet wife suffer from her medical condition. It isn't easy to watch the love of your life experience terrible pain on a near daily basis, especially when her subspecialist doctor isn't exactly sure what is causing it, yet. At times I wonder if it is in her head. But between the severity and her daily temperature spikes of 100-100.5 lead me to an easy conclusion of, "no". We just haven't fi

I recently had the great honor of taking care of an elderly gentleman who was actually a survivor from a Nazi concentration camp in Germany. Not only that, he went on to excel in life. He was an accomplished opera singer and performed several times at the New York Metropolitan. He later suffered a very rare disease that left him paralyzed from the waste down. His family had a real twinkle in their eye as they described his zest for life and that his disability did not slow him down. One of his daughters described how, when she was a teenager, his perspective on life drove her crazy. To her, things were a "big deal"... but to him, every day was a blessing, having survived the Nazi camps. Later in life they learned to appreciate his unique perspective. The entire time that I took care of this gentleman, he was unable to speak as he was on his death bed. But just seeing that look on the faces of his daughters I could easily tell this was a truly remarkable man. He pass