Ray of Sunshine

It might look a little like the moon but I am sitting on top of a mountain in Jasper. Where I am sitting is the Alpine region, not much vegetation but definitely there was some, you just had to look for it, there is a lot of rock. I am at the top point of the Sky Tram: 7,400 feet above sea level. Glorious! There are people standing right on the top of the mountain in the picture behind me. Not this girl!! Safely standing and walking around the plateau we were on was fine for

We all hide or wear our scars a little differently than the next person, don’t we? We all have scars. Old wounds healed over (not necessarily healed) but patched over, the body created a new covering or new skin over a wound. This new skin is usually different than the rest of our skin. Blotchy, lighter, raised, rough or bumpy, it is a visible reminder of our wound. We were created with this precious gift, our bodies attempt to heal ourselves. I can show you several actual sc

I love the science behind marketing, why people buy certain things, the way they move and flow through retail spaces. It is an actual science and art form all at once. The art comes as companies compete to vie for your attention and feelings to entice you to their product. Those tear jerker Christmas ads were the work of a team probably a year or more before you got to see them, working on how best to pull your heart strings. Family, pets and babies are all top money makers i

Last Wednesday literally 2 and a half hours after posting my blog about looking after each other when broken down on the highways, it happened … the test. I decided to make a fast trip into town for a fuel and water run. I had appointments, 3 of them back to back starting at 11. But I could do a quick trip into town before. It was not lost on me about the blog and helping. I cannot say it was a total surprise to see a car with their 4 ways flashing broken down on the other si

It was Sunday evening around 8:30 and I was heading to meet up with my son and daughter in law Gord and Jade, I was going to see their new holiday trailer they had just tried out for the weekend. It was mucky up my road so we agreed to meet at a better, drier spot. The heavens had just decided to start rumbling and rain threatened to start. On my way I received 3 calls from Gord but each time the call dropped or I could not hear him. I finally got him on call 4… “we broke dow

Did you ever ponder the chicken and egg question… you know, which came first? Well here is a ponder statement that we know due to physics and basic math. The shortest distance from ‘a to b’ is a straight line. A lie is a twisting or misrepresentation of the truth. It takes a straight line and begins to slither around with it causing confusion and disorientation. It slides from A to D and then back to B it might never touch C. We start to doubt and negate the truth as this ha

As I was experimenting with making my sons Turtle Cheesecake, for his birthday last week I had to do some tweaking. Now it cannot just be my family but cooking or baking for us all can be a little challenging! One is allergic to this and another to that…. Oh my goodness it can get tricky. Now the Turtle Cheesecake recipe has been around in our family for over 20 years, ever since my sister in law Janice made it up! We are grateful she did! But I have not tried it gluten free

As I write this, the area around my house is thick with smoke from a forest fire and I am sure many of you have this as well. The fire is no where near me, in fact it is from another province. Apparently a lot of smoke has drifted to a lot of places making visibility and breathing a challenge. Fire. The world inspires visions to each of us, some dream of campfires and to others erupting forest fires of danger. The Bible says a lot about fire, it is not a topic preached on so

This blog is #3 in a series about caterpillars and changing, it is about me and healing and it is about many people, please read the last 2 blogs if you have not. As I pushed past the forest on path 2 in my vision, I came out to the other side and at first I could not see anything. Then the landscape came into focus, it was glorious. Orangey rock formations some with holes against a deep blue sky. The sun setting caused the striking colors. As I looked around I asked if other

I have a metal water tank for horses or cattle and Brian had made it into a redneck hot tub for me. It was needing some tweaking to work better so I decided it could be a little mini pool for myself. I hauled in water and covered it with a tarp and waited for it to warm up. My 2 year old granddaughter came over and we wanted to try it. This was when we were still getting quite cold at night and I think the metal sucked any warmth in the water out. We put our hands in and it f

I think it is prudent for me for me to write a blog about caterpillars before I publish my next couple blogs, which happen to be about me and some changes happening. I never ever related me to a caterpillar, I find them fairly gross and as I began learning more about them, it got kind of creepy. For instance do you know that in the process to make a caterpillar from a “worm” to a butterfly the worm is reduced to a slimy, soupy mess. Is that not so gross! Like yuck. But so muc

British Columbia’s BC Hydro corporation has a logo of “power smart.” Good motto, working with power and not against it makes sense. I heard a story on David Jeremiah’s radio broadcast a week or so ago and it really got a couple points home. It went something like this: This older fellow went into a store where they sold chainsaws. He needed a new one, he had his old one for quite a while. Talking to the salesman they figured out his needs and off he went, new chain saw in han

This picture was posted because someone wanted to know if a store or bank would take this damaged $20.00 bill. The short answer is yes, as long as you have 50% of the bill and one complete serial number showing. It is still valuable as currency. The long answer is that retailers and cashiers are not legally obligated to take torn or damaged money. Some stores might if it has been taped or is in not too bad of shape. The option for redeeming damaged dollars is at the bank. As

My PET scan confirmed that no cancer cells lit up anywhere in my body. What a blessed feeling! I thank God for the healing. The doctors are proceeding cautiously because as one said, "we were here a year ago and one seed turned into a weed," when it returned. In order to make certain that every cell is removed the talk on the table is another surgery. Surgery is not fun, cancer is not fun, treatment is not fun. I am weighing options and asking of my ultimate healer for advice

I did not write most of this, that credit would go to Kathryn Esther Clement of The Kings Daughters. I have spent the most time of my teaching at Bible studys and with women about this very subject: Your Identity. Most of us get and keep our identity from the world: what mom and dad said, what our siblings said, what our teachers said or the school bullys. We take that into adult life with what does our boss say or how do they treat us. We get our self-worth from the most int

There is a beautiful song and one of the lines says, “He did not want heaven without us so Jesus, You brought heaven down….” The song is called “What A Beautiful Name” by Hillsong Worship (link to song at end). I have heard this song many, many times over the years and this line has always stuck out to me. Today this line jumped out and assaulted me! I have had cause the past while to find some interesting near death experiences of people who actually died and then came back.

You can never be more loved than you are right now. But you can experience more. What I am trying to identify is that God loves us completely, fully and unconditionally even if you do not feel it. Who of us feels loved completely 100% of the time? We always have room to experience more. The Bible is about love, it is a love story,. We have a hard time with the concept of love because our eyes were opened to the right/wrong’s and we tend to stay focused there, trying to mainta

I want to share this valuable piece of wisdom that was shared with me by a wonderful lady that I had an appointment with. She was helping me with what should a day look like right now while navigating life with limited energy. She said to me, “pretend your energy is converted to dollars. At the beginning of every day you have $100 to spend. Say getting up, having a shower, getting dressed, fed, hair done that it takes you $50 and it is only 9:00 in the morning. You have a lot

In being a writer of full disclosure and truth, this is a blog that must be shared, not for just me but for those countless others going through a similar health journey. Whether it is cancer, heart disease, kidney failure, depression, or another chronic, serious, debilitating health conditions, this applies. I want to try to explain the dark side, the side that does not get discussed, the side that all individuals think about, whether they verbalize them or not. These though

I think I will try to explain “immunotherapy”, the treatment I receive for cancer. It is a controversial treatment but most of them are, in that it could be described as experimental. Which in essence is the whole treatment of cancer - no one can really say that a treatment will give 100% results. Immunotherapy is touted as the newest and most promising treatment option in cancer treatment. Now I have many friends who have never been offered it….for them the chemo, radiation