Category: Detoured by Affliction

(I found no clue as to who wrote this, but it so resonated with me that I wanted to share it.)

(Found this online while looking for other things.)

In the last few days northern Illinois has had some impressive thunderstorms with tornadoes, flooding and power outages. I have not yet been affected, but they aren’t over yet. More are expected tonight and tomorrow, with heavy rain, damaging winds, quarter-sized hail and isolated tornadoes. Following that we will have oppressive heat and dangerous humidity….

I woke this morning to another hot, humid day. It is so hard to get up on that kind of day. Feeling a little sorry for myself, I got some coffee and opened my e-newspaper. And read about the fires around the globe, too numerous to list … the deadly, ongoing flooding and landslides in…

My stoic German grandfather once told my mother, “I’ve made so many mistakes.” I know. Me, too. Sometimes, when I am falling asleep, thoughts of past failures and mistakes crowd my mind: Misunderstandings blown out of proportion, destroying relationships. My own unhappiness leaking out and singeing everyone around me. Hurtful “jokes.” Promises not kept. Failing…

Untold suffering seldom is. Franklin P. Jones ********** I felt terrible. I woke that morning with a Chronic Fatigue crash and I felt terrible. I felt terrible and wanted everyone to know it. My daughter bore the brunt at breakfast; there was nothing she could say or do to change the fact that I felt…

(found on the internet) “Once upon a time a psychology professor walked around on a stage while teaching stress management principles to an auditorium filled with students. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they’d be asked the typical ‘glass half empty or glass half full’ question. Instead, with a smile on her…

(Excerpt from a Washington Post article about being “different.” For the whole article, click here.) Skylar has recently become the topic of after-dinner conversation at my house. I have a very hard time accepting what my wife, Kathleen, has to say, at least in part because it is so incongruous with my early life. Skylar,…

I’m terrified of expressway driving. It’s not that I’m incapable, it’s just that I know I make stupid mistakes. Multiply that by all the other cars on the road and the chance of trouble is overwhelming. So it was with trepidation that I set out to take Jenna to Weiss Memorial Hospital, on the north…

“Look, I am making you like a sharp threshing sledge, new and double-edged. You will thresh the mountains and crush them; you will make the hills like straw. Isaiah 41:15 NET A bar of steel worth five dollars, when wrought into horseshoes, is worth ten dollars. If made into needles, it is worth three hundred…