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Image by Orbital Joe via Flickr

At long last I've found a name for my blog that will be unique, truly something of mine! So, reset your bookmarks, dear readers. "Never a dull moment..." is about to become "In Truer Ink."
Now for the humorous part. Where did this unusual name come from? A Facebook quiz, of all things. My name, scrambled, becomes the phrase "In Truer Ink." I love it. It exemplifies what I want in all my writing -- truth, honesty, and humility.
Not disappearing ink, ink that lasts, and lasts.

The picture at left is of my oldest son. Two years ago he managed two major accidents (boys will be boys) that required immediate orthopedic surgery and lots of titanium within a three-month span of time. We'd just refinanced our home to make some needed repairs, and were able to use that money to pay his $50,000 in bills. If we hadn't had that money, the hospital said they would be happy to put us on a $1200 a month payment plan. Yeah, right. Because everyone has $1200 a month in disposable income lying around, don't they?

As a mother of boys (one of whom has a cast on his arm right now), the wife of a man who likes "extreme sports" and works in the construction business, and an only child of two parents who also have no health insurance because they were self-employed, health care concerns me. Everytime my boys go to play football with their friends, or ride a skateboard, I have to squelch that panicky feeling that this could mean another visit to the ER, and another giant bill!

The recent discussion (or should I say arguments?) about health care leave me feeling battered and bruised. Everyone has an opinion, and everyone is willing to voice it, or tweet it, or FB it, or e-mail it.

Two things concern me with this debate. First is the spread of misinformation. More than half of what I've received are based on half-truths, misquotes, assumptions, or trumped up ideas spouted by talking heads on our multiple news programs. And we are incredibly swift to espouse these statements as truth, because they come from people we trust, people we have things in common with, like our faith, or our labels as conservative or liberal.

Yet, as quick as we are to pass on an e-mail touting an insidious conspiracy to take grandma's meds away and let her die a slow, painful death, we are unbearably slow and unwilling to take the time to read the original document referenced, to listen to a complete speech instead of a soundbite, or even to visit snopes.com and make sure the e-mail isn't a hoax created 10 years ago with the names changed to fit the times.

My second concern is the animosity and ill-will this topic generates. I'll be the first to say I don't know exactly what I want to do about health care. I don't like taxes any more than the next person. I don't like the idea of government control, either, whether it's Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative (but that's a whole other topic.)

What I do know firsthand is the system we currently have -- not of health care, but of PAYING for our health care -- is screwed up. When a prescription in the U.S. is $5 per pill and 93 cents from Canada, something's not right. And don't give me the "Well, that pill might not even be from Canada, it might be from India!" Yada yada yada. Don't you think we'd know about it if people were dropping dead from taking their prescriptions in Canada? We know about every sick cow they've got!

On one of our hospital bills, and thank God there haven't been many, I found a line-item charge for a two ounce bottle of baby shampoo. We were charged $8. That's greed, plain and simple. I don't know who's getting all the money, but somebody is!

When health care becomes a profit-making venture for administrators and insurance companies and pharmaceutical networks -- people who, unlike our doctors and nurses, are well-removed from actually caring for people's health -- the public loses.

Folks who are blessed enough to have good insurance policies -- especially the people in government agencies or government funded organizations and people in huge corporations -- are up in arms about the possibility of losing the security they have. I don't blame 'em. But, if you were on the other side of the argument -- one of the people without health insurance, either due to preexisting conditions or because it simply costs more than you can afford (private insurance is much, much more costly than group policies) -- what would you want your fellow Americans to do for you?

No one in the world's wealthiest nation should go into bankruptcy, lose their home, or be left with hundreds of thousands of dollars of interest-accruing medical debt because of an illness or injury in their family. And yet it is happening every single day, all across our country.

Is there a solution that will be congruent with the Golden Rule -- doing unto others as we would have them do unto us -- when it comes to the health and well-being of our nation's citizens? Can we craft a health care plan that takes that kind of thinking into consideration, or are we doomed to follow the gold in our pocket instead of the golden rule? We are the greatest nation in the world, right? You'd think we could come up with something more than a big political battle.

Image via Wikipedia

Seriously, there are filters all around us but we rarely think about them until they malfunction. Coffee makers need a filter. Vacuums now have filters. Furnaces require filters, as do air conditioners and water purifiers. A clogged filter will shut down your automobile right in the middle of the street. Last week a friend found out her car was gasping for air because of a dirty air filter. Filtering face masks let air through but keep out chemicals, pollutants, even germs.
But the one place we really NEED a filter and rarely make use of one is on our souls. The human soul is made of of the mind, will, and emotions. Together with your spirit and body, we use the soul to express ourselves.
Proverbs chapter 4 says we are to guard our hearts, for from the heart (soul) spring the issues of life. Do you have "issues" you'd rather not have? Maybe you've got a filter problem.
You might call your filters a paradigm, a worldview, or just the way you perceive life on this big blue marble. Filters are a compilation of experience and information, and they affect our present circumstances and our future. Bad information, or experiences, leave us with fouled filters.
Let's say as a child you were frequently condemned as "stupid" and and that negative input was reinforced by say, difficulty in school. Now, as an adult, barring some experience plus information that changed your paradigm, you probably have a "stupid" filter. You might be the next Einstein, but you refuse to crack open a textbook because your "stupid" filter blocks all possibilities that you might be smart enough to understand it. Conversely, any information that verifies your "stupid" belief will pass right through your "stupid" filter, into your life, and affect your future behavior and choices.
The soul's motto could be put like this: "I think, I want, I feel." You need a filter on your thinker, which comes from receiving accurate information. In today's world, we have to dig for accurate information. Don't just mentally download everything that comes along as truth! Some truth is obvious. Other truth is hidden under piles of misinformation and human opinion.
Your willpower filter can be difficult to change if you don't change the thinking filter first. Why? Because what you think about has a direct effect on what you want. If you think about something long enough, you're probably going to end up wanting and pursuing that thing. Don't believe me? Start thinking about donuts. Keep thinking about them. Think about how they smell, how they feel in your fingers, the taste of them melting in your mouth. Close your eyes and imagine the best donut you ever ate... It was probably a Krispy Kreme, huh? OK, so now you probably want a donut. At the very least, your mouth is probably watering! (Your body follows your thoughts, too!) Sometimes I'm glad I live many miles and several hours from the nearest Krispy Kreme or Dunkin' Donuts!
The "feelings" filter is also directly affected by the thinking filter. It irritates me when people say, "I just can't change how I feel." That's a lie. They change how they feel all the time! What they MEAN to say is, "I don't WANT to change how I feel." But in most cases, it would sound incredibly rude and selfish to say such a thing, so we say, "I can't" instead. Here's a classic: Watch soap operas about lying, cheating, fickle husbands all day. Think about how wretched and horrid they are. Play it over in your mind how you would react in your favorite character's shoes. Keep this up until your poor, unsuspecting spouse wanders through the door after work, five minutes late and without the milk you asked him to pick up at the store. Guess where your feelings are? Not where they are supposed to be! They followed your thoughts!
Right now I'm struggling with other people's filters. It seems someone is always wanting to stick their filter on my life. And then they wonder why it doesn't fit, and I wonder why I have weird "issues" (see above note on Prov. 4).
Instead of running around testing out other people's filters, I need to go directly to my Manufacturer - God - when I start to feel sluggish and clogged up, or confused and distressed, or angry and discouraged. And when I get those thinking, wanting, and feeling filters switched out for new ones that aren't tainted by offense, fear, or self-pity, it's like a breath of fresh air. A new way of thinking, whether on the job, with my family, or personally, will give me a new lease on life and improve my performance in every area!
Here's to fresh filters today!

I keep seeing a huge, empty landscape filled with floating windows of all shapes and sizes. Some windows are moving. Some are stationary. The stationary windows are those stages and phases of life every human passes through. Physiological development, for example, is a series of static windows - birth, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age, and death.
As time carries us along, we can choose to step through the moving windows or not. Each time we do, our "landscape" changes. On the other side we might find new relationships or the end of old ones, financial gain or loss, health or illness, based on the decision you made.
Some of the windows are dark or foggy, and it's difficult to see what's on the other side. Other windows look pleasant, but they aren't real - the image you see is a mirage.
Like a game of Life, once you've passed through a window, you can't go back. You can only wait for the next window to come along.
We have a nasty tendency to get so caught up in the passage of time we miss a lot of windows of opportunity. We're too busy sprinting toward - or dreading and trying to avoid - the next stationary window out in the distance, to notice those individual windows filled with potential passing us by every day.
Instead, we float through life like helpless passengers on an ocean liner. For the optimists out there, life is a Love Boat cruise, while pessimists are convinced they've boarded the Titanic. Milestone birthdays and events (those unavoidable stationary windows) serve as reminders of the movement of time, and can trigger a flood of regret.

"If only I had/hadn't ______________."
"This isn't what I expected to be doing with my life at ____."
"I thought I'd feel more mature by now."

Have you ever walked face first into a closed glass door? Those stationary windows hit us that way sometimes. Like the morning I glanced in the rear view mirror and noticed a dark streak right between my eyebrows. I reached up to rub it off, wondering how I'd managed to draw a line on my forehead, only to realize THE LINE DID NOT COME OFF. I'd just passed through the permanent forehead wrinkle window, and not very gracefully.
Myriad windows pass by me every day. If I'm even aware of them, am I too fearful to step through? Am I afraid to divert my current course for fear of what awaits me on the other side? I know people who are afraid to get out of college and get a job, people who are afraid to get married, or afraid to have children, or afraid to retire. And I know people who spend all their time looking backward at the windows they think they missed, and they miss the opportunities life is offering them right now!
That's like taking a cruise and spending the whole trip in your cabin, peeking through the porthole at the water below, and waiting for the iceberg. Or spending the entire cruise going through the brochures from the other cruise lines wishing you'd made a different choice. All the while, there's a big ole' party up on the lido deck with a live band, all-you-can eat buffet, and fancy drinks in coconuts with little paper parasols, and you're missing the whole thing!
Life was meant to be lived, not feared or regretted, no matter what choices you've made up to now, and no matter what lies ahead.
What's your dream? What's your vision for your future? If you can see it, the window is available to you. It may take a few steps to get there, but unless you take the first one, you'll never get to the one you're dreaming of.
Seriously, if you have to, get up and physically draw a pretend window in the air with your finger. (Remember Kermit the frog doing that on Sesame Street?) Now, step through it. Once you do, everything is different on the other side. You just took that one small step, made one small choice, and changed your life.
Want a better marriage? Picture what a better marriage would look like for you, and then take a step from where you are now toward where you want to be. It's not that hard, really. Your first window might be as simple as not bundling yourself into those nasty flannel pj's tonight before you get in bed!
Want a more prosperous future? How could you get there? What's the first window on the way to financial security? Is it cutting up your credit card? Or building a budget and sticking to it? Go ahead, pass through it.
Do you want to lose weight, or get in shape? See that window with the big piece of red velvet cake promising you untold delight? It's a mirage. All that's on the other side is a tummy ache and jiggly thighs.
Do you want to be a (fill in the blank)? What's the first step? I mean, I want to be a writer, a novelist, actually. I want to see my name on paperback books in airport bookstores and Walmarts. I want an agent to call and offer me a three-book deal with an advance. I want to stay up late sobbing with joy over my characters as they come to the happily-ever-after of their tale. Well, obviously, the first step toward becoming a writer is to write, right? But I can "wanna be a writer" all day long and never write a word, never plot or plan or research or outline or even scribble purple prose on a pad of paper. And the writing window goes by again... Will I catch it next time and cross that line from "wanna-be" to "AM"? I hope so.
And for you, I hope you will think of windows today, and be brave enough to look through the ones before you and take advantage of them!