Thursday, 13 March 2008 Prayer: Spiritual Intention In Action

Okay dear, patient readers, I know I said this post would be about the symptoms of early bowel cancer but I just have to share this with you all first as it is begging to be put down on this blog. It will show you how powerful and truly helpful what you are all doing for me, truly is. So forgive me for sneaking another post in but I will definitely get to the warning signs section very soon (probably next post but I don't want to promise just in case...). Anyway this is a piece from a book that I adore called 'Women of Silence' which I have written about before in this blog, about how this woman, Grace Adamson, actually gave my Mum this book to give to me etc, etc, I will post a link to it a bit further down but for now here goes:

"Prayer involves conscious intent. It is concentrating your thoughts or questions using fine-tuning, powered by intention. Prayer is asking the question and meditation is waiting for the answer. Sometimes it helps if you have a belief system; but I have known many people to be affected by prayer at a distance, without a belief and without them knowing that they were being prayed for! There is a lot of mystery in healing too! Sometimes prayer can be used as a one-to-one local healing session such as in the practice of laying on of hands. Prayer or touch with intention is very powerful indeed. At other times prayer can be used for distant or non-local healing when the person who is thought about, does not have to be present. The following abstract on the results of prayer was published in the respected and conventional Southern Medical Journal in 1988 (USA). The study demonstrates that there can be a marked effect on recovery through prayer power. The following is just one of many such studies that highlight a closing of the gap between science and healing!

Randolph Byrd MD, arranged for prayer healing to be sent to 192 patients on a coronary care unit, while another 201 patients served as control. This was done with a double blind design, where neither the patients nor the treating nor the evaluating physicians knew which patients were sent the healing and which were not. The patients were randomly assigned to either of these groups and no significant differences were noted between the groups on many variables. Highly significant effects were found in the treated group (the ones receiving the prayer healing),in which there were lower incidences of intubation/ventilation, use of antibiotics, cardiopulmonary arrest, congestive heart failure, pneumonia, and the use of diuretics.''
Written by Grace Adamson, Women of Silence.

There you have it, isn't that wonderful, so please continue to pray for me and my little family here, it is really so powerful and it may just make the difference to this chemo working or not, I am definitely going to have faith that all the love and asking with intention (prayer) is going to help me. Indeed I believe it already has in so very many ways. I will perhaps do a post on all the wonderful, magical little moments and people that have crossed my path to make life so very much nicer and happier during this awful illness. So I know you pray for me as you tell me in your comments and emails, so just please keep it up, I appreciate it so very much and I will pray for all of you too and give thanks for you and your support. Thank you my dear friends, words seem so trite, my heart is full and swells with the love and gratitude I feel when I read your comments and emails and I tell you what, that has to be very healing and very powerful. Take care and more soon. xxx

Posted by Jen Ballantyne at 7:01 AM 19 comments

Labels: Cancer Hope, inspiration, life spirit courage, love, support, uplifting

Such Inspiration....

Such Inspiration....

Hi dear friends, today is just a quick post to ask you to do yourselves a favor and take a look at this video. It is from a show that was on Oprah a couple weeks ago which I thanks to a friend of mine, I caught and managed to watch. This guy just blew me away, he is awesome, well the video will speak for me - truly inspirational. I only wish the part that followed the speech that is shown on this video was also recorded as it was just as inspirational, it followed Dr Oz interviewing this amazing man, still just the speech he does is wonderful so please take a look. Here is the link:

http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=ithct48cqw

Enjoy and I will post more soon. The next post is going to be on early signs of bowel cancer. For now, take care. xx

Posted by Jen Ballantyne at 5:49 AM 5 comments

Labels: cancer, courage, inspiration, inspire, life spirit courage, uplifting

Saturday, 8 March 2008 I Am So Very Lucky...

I know that probably sounds odd to you when you all know I have cancer, I am very ill and not expected to see past the age of 42 at most, however, I am lucky for having the best sons it is possible to have. I don't often write about my older son Jamie. He usually does his own thing, he mostly lives at his Dad's place these days as there are others his own age there and they live on a lovely big property with deer and horses, Jamie has a beautiful big room with everything that opens and shuts, he gets so very well looked after there as his Dad's partner ( they've been together for many years but have never married) looks after the lot of them, there is Jamie the youngest at 20, then her two daughters at 23 and 24 and their boyfriends and they all live together on this huge property. Lisa (the partner) makes dinner for all of them every night and big breakfasts and even makes their lunches each day! She likes to do it apparently!!! So he is very well looked after. His Dad has hotrods which are his 'babies', he lovingly built them up from scratch and now they are worth a fortune and over the years he and Jamie have taken care of them and worked on them together, etc. Anyway, just wanting to set the scene so it will make more sense when I tell you that Jamie has given all that up to come home and be with me 24/7. Yes he has. He phoned me the other night (after I had been in hospice) and said he had something he wanted to tell me and that he would be home the next night. So he got here late afternoon and proceeded to tell me that he has been doing a lot of thinking lately, for a few weeks and he has decided that he wants to be here for me. He said to me "Mum, give me a month and a half and I will have learned to run the house the way you do", bless his heart. He said, "It's time I grew up, I am going to take good care of Jack, take him to the park and out for walks, etc, help him with his reader and homework, his bath, everything. I want it so you don't have to do anything when you are too sick." Well of course I cried, just a little mind, I didn't want to frighten him off but I was so touched. Of course I did the usual mother things that went something like this "oh Jamie, I so appreciate you wanting to do this for me I really do but you need your own life, I can only be happy if you are happy, that is all every mother wants for her sons is for them to be happy, I would honestly rather you be up there at your Father's home, popping in here every few days as you usually do because you are happy there and then I am happy because you are!" I was met with complete resistance as he has obviously really thought this through and made up his mind. I must admit I am impressed with his maturity in this, in understanding that it's something he needs to do, that I am not going to get better in a hurry, if at all and he recognizes that if he doesn't do this he may well regret it for the rest of his life. We had a very open (and emotional I might add) talk and he told me how he felt for me. He said to me "I love you Mum, I love you more than anyone, I love your more than Dad, I just do. I have been worrying about you for weeks, having trouble sleeping and just knowing I need to be there with you, helping you in every way I possibly can. I get down on my hands and knees every night and pray to God to let you be okay. I think about you almost every minute of the day lately and I just need to do this for you and for me." Well, talk about how to make a mum cry and feel ridiculously proud, blessed, sad, happy, adored, concerned, oh a million different emotions all at once. Gosh he has grown up I thought to myself and he has turned into a young man of heart and soul and compassion, I couldn't have wished for more when I held him in my arms 20 years ago and wished ahead to the type of man he would one day become. See, I truly am so lucky, it is the ultimate gift to have your child grow into an adult to be proud of.

Still, having said that, I am terribly concerned about his well being. I do not want him worrying about me incessantly. I told him that there are counselors and support groups available to him to help him go through this as it affects him just as much as it affects me, perhaps even more so as he has to be left here with the pain when I am gone (which I hate more than anything in this whole business for both my boys). So he thought that might be worth looking into, which was a healthy reaction I thought. I will contact Hospice and ask them to organize a counselor to work with Jamie and help him to deal with this as much as is possible.

Anyway, it has been a very emotional few days, in short I am exhausted but, having said that, I am so very glad we went through this as it has also been such a loving and sharing time. We had lots of long talks and it was something we both needed at this point in time I believe. I am glad he was so very honest with me too as I need to know where he is at so I can deal with any problems he has handling all of this. So that's all for now, take care and more soon.

Edited to add: Next post will be symptoms of early bowel cancer as I was asked to write about this quite sometime ago now.

Posted by Jen Ballantyne at 7:27 AM 38 comments

Labels: affirmations, cancer, emotions, health, home

Sunday, 2 March 2008 Beautiful Things...

Well I do have some happy things to share today. To start with the photos of lots of trees... if you peer through the trees you can see a little boy playing deep in there...well they make me incredibly happy and I'll explain why. Yesterday it was a gorgeous sunny day here, the kind of bright, golden sun that makes the green of the trees even more delicious than usual. My son Jack was playing outside, I was inside in my kitchen and just looked up from what I was doing every now and then only to see him running and darting around the yard, under the trees, between the trees, onto the swing, then jumping off and running somewhere else. It was so beautiful to watch from the kitchen windows that I was inspired to grab my camera and try to capture what I was seeing. I caught a couple of moments, not nearly the colors that were really present at the time but still enough to give an idea of what he was doing I think. He was just so happy and it was such innocent play.

Secondly, I received a parcel about a week ago in my letter box. It was from one Meg Casey, it contained a gorgeous card, a CD with a very neatly written list of title and artist of every song and included was the most beautifully colored and hand knitted scarf I have ever had the good fortune to own. There is a story attached to the scarf which Meg wrote in the lovely card she included in my parcel. It goes like this..."this yarn comes from Tibet - it is silk and made by a women's collective that recycles silk and saris. The parts that can't be saved are shredded and spun into yarn." She then goes on to say that she "loves the idea of 1000's of women who wore those beautiful silk clothes, those who spun them into yarn - surrounding me and helping me to heal." And this "I love the symbolism of renewal intrinsic in this yarn. I hope it reminds you of what an inspiration you are and how you are loved." So beautiful huh? I know, words fail me, this gorgeous scarf arrived in time for me to be able to wear it to chemo, so it came with me the first chemo session and will be coming with me for everyone after that. It offers me comfort and it does
feel healing. Anyway I wanted to capture the colors in the scarf which is why I hung it up outside in the bright sunlight, draped over my cherub as I thought this appropriate. Thank you so very much Meg, you are a true friend and soul sister and I am thankful every single day that I have you in my life. I love you and I feel so much love in return when I wear this scarf - which will be so very often.

Next happy thing is that I have found my inspiration to continue scrapbooking. I have started and almost finished a layout about Jack and Christmas. Next will be one about Jamie and our traditions and thoughts on Christmas. The only thing left to do on Jack's is a whole heap of journaling which is why you can see a large white space-it will eventually be filled with handwriting. Also on the page opposite you can see little tags, some are inside the paper and you can only see the tops sticking out and one is sitting on top of the paper, you can just see a white area, this is also for journaling. Each tag will have a memory of Christmas written on it and hidden behind the patterned paper. You can see a little tag with the word 'pull' on it and this is where you pull it out and it will have a special memory written on it! Sweet huh?

Also, my dear friend Lee, came over Saturday morning and spent the day with me, we sat outside on the lounges and just talked and lazed in the sunshine. It was a little piece of Heaven.

Then late in the afternoon my sister popped in with a whole basket of freshly purchased fruit for me. Also a big bunch of gorgeous flowers. The fruit contained all the things I love to eat and some special things that are so good for the body whilst trying to heal from cancer, such as blueberries. I also got strawberries, nectarines, peaches, grapes, canteloupe/rockmelon, watermelon and more, some cucumbers, avocados's and that sort of thing also. Just beautiful. So we sat outside for the late afternoon and ate gorgeous, sweet fruit. It was just wonderful. So all in all a wonderful day. Also my son Jamie had come home the night before and was staying again tonight so that was another reason I was feeling so happy. The night before we had gone on a night walk and searched for possums, Jack just loved it. Anyway, I couldn't have asked for a nicer couple of days and I feel so blessed and well loved at this moment, so I wanted to share with all of you my dear new friends and supporters. It is nice for you to hear when some good things happen for me as I know it makes you happy too because that is how kind and beautiful you are, you will rejoice in me having some happiness and being shown some love.

Posted by Jen Ballantyne at 5:43 AM 43 comments

Labels: beautiful things, friends, garden, home, love, scrapbooking, support