It will not be in vain.

Having had a rough day yesterday required some analysis on my part to figure it all out. It was an amazingly emotional time, and I cried almost all day long. Fortunately, Roger was working in Palatka and was not there to witness most of it. We cried together over a couple of things after he got home, but he has no idea what I had been through during the day.

In the morning I had wanted to watch some of the baseball 2008 draft while I enjoyed my morning watermelon. When the first young man was drafted, I began crying while thinking of his family and how much this might mean to all of them.

When I went back to work after that, I plugged my Zune in, and I have a playlist called "working" that has all my favorites in it. I don't have to stop and program music as I like all the songs in there. Early on, "Earth Angel" came on, and the waterworks began anew. This was getting ridiculous! (If you're guessing that I'm not a particularly sentimental person, you are correct.) This particular song was the one I used to use as my ringtone for Bonnie, and I can never hear it without thinking of her. (The lesson here is to never use one of your favorite songs as a ringtone for someone who may walk out of your life.)

I've heard this song several times since she left, and I have always felt a lot of emotion, but this time it was more extreme than before. I started thinking about why that was, and I realized it was because I was feeling the loss of her in my life for the first time. Prior to this, I had felt a lot of emotions including anger, frustration, and sadness, but never loss. This time I realized I had truly lost someone in my life that I loved. I guess I had not wanted to acknowledge this before. So there you go.

Then, once I realized this, I started thinking about other losses, including Jac. While she is not out of my life physically, certainly emotionally she is. Again, I felt the same sense of loss. This is heightened by the sense of loss I have for Orion and Brooklyn too as they cannot be as large a part of my life with her gone.

I had a lot of work to do, thank goodness, and I tried not to think about it too much, but it was very hard to do.

After I finished working, I decided to catch up on some DVR'd material (no more draft right now, thanks), and turned on the Oprah show. There was my old friend Kris Carr (of course, she doesn't know we are old friends) who I have read about quite a bit since Darius started his cancer ordeal. She is a former model / actress who found out after she'd made it big in a superbowl Bud commercial that she had terminal stage 4 liver cancer. She has written a book called Crazy, Sexy Cancer Tips that we read while we were at Hippocrates. I had never seen her on TV, so I was delighted to see that she was on. Dr. Oz visited her at home where she made him a green drink on air along with a great salad. She explained how these things were part of her recovery and acceptance of her illness and how she felt better than she had before she got sick. They showed a few other alternatives to medicine she had chosen including yoga and meditation. She insisted that instead of the cancer killing her, it had helped her live. (For example, she was previously afraid of heights, and they showed a clip of her learning to fly on the trapeze.)

It was a wonderful interview, but, you guessed it, I cried all the way through it. As if that was not enough, there was another man on the show, Randy Pausch, who has 3 children under the age of 5 who has terminal pancreatic cancer. He has been given less than 6 months to live. He was very inspirational. He has written a book called The Last Lecture. (He was a professor at Carnegie-Mellon.) He has not chosen any alternative health practices, so it was a pretty dramatic contrast. I think everyone in the audience was crying as he finished thinking of him leaving his beautiful young family behind.

When Roger came home, I thought he might want to see Kris, so I played it again for him. Of course, we cried together. One of the questions Dr. Oz asked her was how was she going to feel if she found out this was all not working and that she was going to die anyway. This was hard for me because I fear that all the time in relation to Darius' healing. Of course, I never acknowlege it, especially to him, but Kris gave a wonderful response I will try to remember. She said her life was far better now than it ever was before the cancer, so she had no regrets. She was doing what she wanted to do with her life, she happily married, and she loved her family and had a good relationship with all of them. She said that we would all die eventually anyway, so while it was harder to think of dying earlier than later, as long as one lives while he / she is alive, one need not have any regrets.

I hope that Darius' life is better now and that he feels that the cancer has given him an opportunity to live and to analyze his relationship to others in his life and to his God. I think that this is the case. If that is true AND he is also healed from that cancer, he has received a double blessing.

I ended the day with the realization that his disease has given all of us a second chance. Roger and I, and I think Alicia too, were struggling to overcome some health challenges when Darius got sick. With his recovery, we have all found new life. What a blessing it can prove to be to all of us. Of course, there are family members and friends who are opposed to what he is doing and do not think it will work. This is unfortunate because what he is doing will address their health and mental health concerns as well. Whether or not it heals Darius, he will have been the vehicle for everyone with whom he has contact to get a new lease on life (whether they appreciate it or take advantage of it or not). My closing thoughts for the day: As for me and my house, his struggle will not be in vain. I will use the knowledge and experiences he has given me to make a difference in my life. I hope that I can share this with others in my sphere of influence as well, so that his struggle will be even more long-reaching.

As I was thinking of this today, I was thinking of the Savior's Atonement and the donut story shared in a seminary class somewhere. The student could eat the donut if one member of the class did a certain number of push-ups. By the time he had done several hundred push-ups, the latter part of the class didn't want him to have to do any more push-ups for them, so they told the teacher they didn't want a donut. The teacher answered that was fine, but the push-ups had to be done anyway. They could accept the donut or not.

The Saviour has died for all of our sins whether we choose to partake or not. Darius has gone through this horrendous ordeal whether any of us choose to learn anything from it or not. What a horrible waste it is when we choose not to benefit from the suffering of others. It is one thing not to listen to well-intentioned advice, but it is quite another to not accept the offerings of a sacrifice. I don't think Darius intended to sacrifice so that so many could benefit, but since he did, who are we to not pay attention? And who knows what kinds of conversations were had before he came to earth? Perhaps he did agree to have a terminal illness so that people could see the deceptions that were being taught on the earth.

Colin Campbell wrote a book (China Study) trying to expose these deceptions, and many do not want to listen; many do. Then there is Kris Carr telling us there might be a better way. There are many more too numerous to name. How many have to go through this before we will listen?

I have heard these teachings for many years, but not until my son went through his experience was it a life-changing experience for me. It had to touch me in a personal way before I would make the necessary changes. I suppose the Atonement is that way too: until it is personal, no one will listen. You have my attention: I'm listening.