To every thing there is a season…

…and a time to every purpose under the heaven: (Ecclesiastes 3:1).

As Autumn approaches (and not a minute too soon for me, personally, North Carolina on those humid 100-degree days is not my favorite thing), I am reflecting back on all that has happened since this time last year. It will be a year ago in September that I got very sick with double pneumonia (just a year after my first bout with it), a urinary tract infection that went systemic into my bloodstream, and a diseased gall bladder. Last November, just as I was recovering from that, my soulmate and husband was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. Let’s just say it was the winter of my discontent, and my distress, and my depression, and that’s putting it mildly. Spring rolled around and my life was consumed with doctor visits, constant battles with the insurance company, physically taking care of Champ while trying to keep my business running smoothly. Add that to the mundane chores of everyday living, like keeping the housekeeping and the laundry and the grocery shopping all done and the bills paid. While he was recovering from the cancer and the sheer exhaustion from treatments he underwent, he suffered an abdominal aneurysm. I was overwhelmed emotionally and physically and financially and every other way, suffering from fear and anxiety attacks and paranoid if I got so much as a sniffle, because I just couldn’t be sick while Champ was in the condition he was in. I had to cancel several trips, including my annual trip to Ireland to teach, and let go of a lot of things that just paled in importance.

None of us know the day or the hour that catastrophe might strike, and that some life-altering illness or other tragic event will take place. And we don’t know the why. Some believe that everything happens for a reason; some believe things happen without any rhyme or reason. It’s easiest, and human nature, to think that things happen to other people for a reason, but there’s no reason for it to happen to us. Bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people all the time. We have lost several good friends to cancer this year. I see people on my FB pages fighting that battle every day. I feel for them, and their caregivers, too.

Some great things have happened this summer. First and foremost, Champ was pronounced cancer-free. He still has to see the oncologist every three months for the next five years, but he’s getting better every day at the present time. He just eased himself back into doing massage for the first time since last November when he was diagnosed, and he had seven appointments this past week. I accepted a new full-time job with Soothing Touch as their Massage Division Director. That necessitated my hiring someone to run THERA-SSAGE, our chiropractic and massage clinic in Rutherfordton NC, something it was hard for my control-freak self to turn over to someone else, but it seems to be going well. I’m loving my new job and the great people that own and work for this company. I’ll be meeting those I haven’t met yet this week when I make my first trip out to the factory in New Mexico.

My new book is finished and will be released in October. I finished another manuscript, this one for the 3rd edition of the Plain & Simple Guide to Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork Examinations, and the publisher accepted the first draft. It will be out at the beginning of the year. We enjoyed our trip up to Indiana for the World Massage Festival, and also visiting with AMTA folks during weekends I was teaching in Greensboro and down on the NC Coast. I’ll be attending the National Convention in Pittsburgh to represent Soothing Touch. I’m participating in a new CE distance learning project with some other great educators that will be rolling out any day. While I was at the World Massage Festival, I got invited to teach a class in Trinidad next year, so I’m looking forward to that. I also got invited to speak at the 2016 Society for Oncology Massage gathering. Even Champ’s cancer had a few silver linings. We have always appreciated each other, but now we appreciate each other even more. We also appreciate all the kindnesses of family and friends and total strangers who supported us along the way, whether in thought or in deed.

I don’t know what the purpose was in all the stuff that happened to us, but I do know the lesson. and that’s just to hold on with everything you have to the time with loved ones you have, because no amount of money will buy any more of it. And now, for the rest of the verse. Peace & Prosperity to you.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.