Life sped by, heading towards demise.

Okay, okay.  So I started with a dangling participle, but that’s about it.  Just enough to grab your attention.

I’m nowhere near the end, although I know some people who would consider me knocking on death’s door.

I’ve written many pages about my life in my previous blog.  It is filled with one hundred twenty some pages up to my age 28.  I hope to get back to putting it back together in this blog, even if it’s in it’s rough form.  A few pages are already posted.

Of late, I’ve been bombarded by the demise of quite a few people of whom I had no idea would be gone.  I don’t want to be morbid.  I just want to note the fragility of life.  From the vantage point of youth there seems to be an eternity to enjoy and accomplish lofty goals.

During this phase of life we think of all the things we intend to do in life feeling we have so much time to accomplish it.  Then one day we inevitably come to grip with the fact that we are coming towards the twilight of life and the objectives we had set early in life are no longer available due to time constraints.  Some of those objectives are time consuming.  When we weigh the time to accomplish those goals and time left to enjoy the fruit of them we find it would be short.

As I traveled through my career in Civil Service I found that the longer you stay in one profession you will see many go before their time.  One was my closest of friends.  She died from cancer at the young age of 53.  An even younger lady in, of all places, the tumor board registry office passed away from kidney cancer.  Cancer seems to eclipse other diseases by leaps and bounds.  I only watched one Hospital Chief pass away from the results of AIDs.

Over the years I watched the passing of my dad and mom, my grand parents on both sides.  Then in 2002 my next to youngest brother took his life.  It is sad, but I understand the frailty of the mind when depressed.  That I’ve experienced, too.  Then the brother next to me died of heart failure in 2006.  After my divorce I found a relationship with my remaining two brothers and I felt secure in them and developed a new foundation of family, yet, again, cancer claimed the middle brother not long after.  This now leaves me with my youngest brother.  He lives so far away in Hawaii.  To think back, I was entering the Army when he was just beginning to pull himself up from crawling to walking as a toddler.

I’ve lost three cousins with whom I had spent time with growing up.  Two of them went by way of cancer.  One by a cyst of some sort around his cervical spine.

What makes it hit home is that I’m the oldest of all these brothers and cousins.

I told my dad, who told me I’d die by age sixty, that I was not buying his prophesy.  Why?  Because God told me I’d live well beyond that age simply by following what He told me.  I’m now 67 years old and in relatively good health for my age.  The only down side is I watch others disappear into the mist of the unknown, although we are assured as believers that there is something beyond.

God gave me another lease on life when Libby came along.  I was on the fast track to death early on, but she came along and has been that gift from God that allows me to have a fresh new outlook for the future yet to come here in this plane.  I am enjoying a fresh new awakening of my faith in God.  He has set Libby and I in a church body that is thriving.  Libby has experienced God’s salvation and understands the totality of forgiveness.  She has been filled with the Holy Ghost and He has energized her spirit to seek Him with all diligence.  She is only a short few weeks of having read the entire Bible for the first time.

Yes.  I am nearing the twilight of life, but I come running to it with renewed vigor and strength to still accomplish things in life.

My words to those of you who read this.  Never, ever speak negative about anything.  Always allow a wide berth for positive thought in your spirit that is inspired by God.  Don’t apply yourself even to the message of the power of positive thinking.  Even when negative circumstances approach you, don”t look at it’s possible damage.  Look at it as a challenge that is to be overcome.  Let God be your power and positive results will follow you.

So.  Great things are coming, you will do.