Part of the Journey into my Light

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

I guess almost dying is a problem for some people… but death has never really bothered me… Death is what makes life so vital, so valuable. Knowing you don’t have forever to do something or to become the person you want to be, makes NOW the most precious treasure on earth. If you have now, if you are breathing and have a body that functions then you have everything you need to make some thing worth living for worth.

These are some test results I just got back yesterday

These are tests I have to take fairly often in my life because I don’t exactly have the best kidneys on the planet. I already know I have to go back for more tests, I know what the advice from the doctors will be and what comes next…. its just another rodeo for me. Just another reminder of how lucky I am to have each and every day that is given to me. These tests results are actually pretty good for me… I’ve had some with levels of over three hundred… with a kidney swollen to four times its normal size… If this were my first rodeo I might be freaking out I might be devastated, I might be cursing the new diet I would be on, the new measures I would have to be taking in order to keep breathing… but I’m just grateful this means I won’t be in a hospital attached to IV’s or going through dialysis and that I still have my freedom. Freedom to do my own research, figure out my own plan, and freedom to live another day doing whatever I decide. Sometimes doing anything might be hard, the dizziness, the nausea, the lack of energy… but it makes it when I do anything at all, a greater triumph. There are days when getting out of bed is all I feel I can do, I haven’t had one of those days in a few years so I feel I am getting better. I feel I will someday live with out these beautiful reminders of how precious each day is, and I know some day I will leave from this life into something even greater… but while I am here I want to live each moment with a wild burning passion filled with gratitude that I am here, that I was born, and that I am! It may not be a terribly big goal but it is mine and it cannot be taken away from me by anyone or any circumstance. If you have a dream then LIVE it! Be who you want to be NOW!

Give yourself the most wonderful gift of being fully and completely alive! 

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

-Dylan Thomas