LEMONADE

Ever hear the quote " When life gives you lemons, make LEMONADE ". This sort of describes where I'm going with this blog.

Life has dealt me a bunch of lemons or so I feel. I'm 56 years old soon to be 57. I was always active in my life until I had open heart surgery at the age of 49. My surgery was needed because I had an aneurysm on my coronary artery the size of a cherry tomato. It was tied off and 2 bypasses around it has kept me alive and going. I have other heart issues through no fault of my own and has left me disabled since the age of 50. This is where the lemons come in. Like I stated before, I have always been active. Since the surgery, my life is a great deal less active. Any physical activity for more then ten to fifteen minutes leaves me gasping for air, nauseous, or almost passing out. This has been very depressing, and very frustrating for me. Nothing more can be done to improve my health and exercising is limited. As the doctors have said it is as good as it is going to get. I have had to learn to deal with it. One might ask, how do you make lemonade with that? First I had to decide what I wanted to do about it. Second how to implement it into my life.

Here are Two ways I have learned to deal with it and live too my fullest.

1. SPIRITUALITY
I learned that if my spirits are not up then I'm useless, not only to myself but to those around me. keeping my spirits up are done in various ways, through scripture study, reading and pondering upbeat material, praying, attending church as often as possible, and talking about my health issues with others so that they are aware of my limitations.
My spirituality effects my family, friends, and those around me.

2. RELATIONSHIPS
My relationships need to be in tune for me to deal with my life. My relationship with GOD, Myself, my Wife, my Family, my Friends, and to the community, needs to be in order, to be an effective person in anything I do. My relationship with GOD effects how I treat my wife, family, friends, and everyone else. Same Goes for all the others in order.
If my relationships are not good ,they effect how I act and respond to situations in my daily life.

Now comes the hard part and the Main lesson that I have had to learn.
I cannot have spirituality without good relationships, nor can I have good relationships without spirituality.

The mistake I have made in the past was to try and treat each individually. The newest revelation I have learned is that I must work at this, all at the same time. Because of my health issues I have had to slow down in my activities. In doing so I have had plenty of time and opportunities to reflect back on my past and where I am now.

When I was working I was so busy with the hustle and bustle of life, and making a living, that I could not take time to smell the roses let alone take time for my spirituality and relationships. This does not mean I was a bad person, it just means I was not effective or in other words " not all that I could be". I made feeble attempts at trying to be all that I could be, but fell short of the mark.

Wisdom, Experience, and Maturity comes with age. Knowing what I know now would have helped me in the past, that time has come and gone. I can only live for now and for my future. I can only try to help the newer generation learn at an earlier time in their life the lessons I've learned by trial and error. So with that said I'm tyring to make LEMONADE from the lemons life dealt me.