Dante Optimism

Dante’s Opinion: How can I stop my mum from killing herself?

It’s baaaaaack!

Dante’s Opinion (the original name and theme of this blog and a past weekly feature) is now on Dante’s Optimism.

Today, we’re looking at a woman who is struggling with her mom.

My mum is killing herself, she’s neglecting & harming herself & I don’t know if I should leave her be & respect her wishes or step in, but if so, how?

She has what is called the worst stage of Emphysema from smoking, and she’s supposed to be on 15hrs oxygen a day. But she’s stopped using it & says it’s because it needs to be serviced, but she also says the house is too messy to let the repair men in ( the house is clean & it doesn’t need to be serviced, it’s just a check).

She had aggressive throat cancer last year, & is recovering from radiation therapy, but is smoking again. When she had the cancer she lost weight, & is now down to 65lbs; when I ask her “what did you eat today” she’ll say something like “I had a coffee earlier”. She doesn’t eat all day, and then has dinner at 1am. Every day she stays up till 5am, even though she’s tired.

She looks after herself as in, she washes & cleans her clothes etc. But with the smoking, the lack of good eating, staying up late & the not using the oxygen, it’s like she’s just decided that she’s going to have things the way she has always had it, even if it kills her.

My sister and I help with shopping, and we go over and have meals or days out with her regularly, but we also have families and businesses to run. Our mum has no interest in looking after herself. Not even on a basic level of cooking breakfast or going to bed on time. She’s not the kind of woman you tell what to do. Have you ever experienced something like this?

Well, you would want to pray, but I mean…you can’t stop there.

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Christians: Have We Created Our Own God?

Oh Lord.

Let me share a fairly funny story. I’m a single guy in his 20s. I think I’m still young enough where I’m not looked at as “he’s gay” or “there must be a serious problem”. You get that a lot about singles in their 30s.

Anyway, as you have probably heard, I run a lighting ministry at my church. My crew mainly consists of teenagers. They are adorable. So young. So innocent (most of the time!). But, really, just a great group of kid-uh I mean…young people…no wait…teens. F it. Great group of teens.

Sometimes though, they go a little too far.

Early 2014, as we were working on our church’s Good Friday play (and y’all know that was a traumatic experience for me), one of my girls did something that I couldn’t believe: She signed me up for Christian Mingle, the dating website.

My teens are…they can be bold sometimes. I have my hands full as this was one of the tamer things they’ve done. But yeah, she signed me up for this service. She managed to do this while I was only feet away from her! Noooo, she didn’t wait until she was home or whatever. Her sister and another girl on the crew begin filling out parts of the profile and stuff.

You know how I eventually found out? I got an email from the site thanking me for signing up. I’m looking on my phone’s screen trying to recall when I even bothered with it. I look at the girls, who had just been asking me what type of woman I want and what my hobbies are and I didn’t think much of it. But that email pretty much put me on notice.

I tell her to delete the darn thing. “I forgot the password”. Oh, yeah right. I’m really in a fit right now, looking at her. Curse her disarming smile though.

I go home, intent on deleting the darn account. So, I go and there’s this long process before I can delete the account. After resetting the password and getting back in, they force you to complete parts of the profile before you can access the thing and delete it. I’m like…what?

Don’t worry, this is the part where I lead into my story for this post. One of the things they ask you is what denomination you are part of. It just so happens the church I am a part of is non-denominational. But, that drop down list exposed me to a LOT more denominations than I thought there were.

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Is Death Really Bad? What Is Life?

You can tell this post is gonna be deep…right?

I’ve always looked forward to death. If you’ve read this blog enough, you know this. I really look forward to it.

I get to go to heaven. I mean…that’s it. Heaven is where the action is, baby.

Countless times, you hear that death is something we must avoid at all costs. I mean, don’t kill yourself, but I don’t think you should look at death as something disastrous. I mean, if you don’t quite believe in the life after death concept, then yeah, death can be scary.

But, for me, death is the start of something. Something great. Something eternal. That’s why I don’t mind death. I don’t care. Sometimes, when I’m at funerals, I can hear myself think “you lucky dog”. He’s finally done. He’s free. He’s celebrating in heaven (well, I would think he is, but nobody knows for sure).

Anyway, I’m here. Now, in the past, when I first realized that heaven was waiting for me, my first instinct was to die. I wanted to die and get to heaven as soon as possible. Let’s wrap this up. Call it a day. What was the point of life?

I’ve gotten over my desire to die, but I will always look forward to it. I’m not a fighter. If I got cancer, I’d probably do whatever the doctor says but, ultimately, in the back of my mind, I’ll always have that “it’s okay to die, though”.

I can admit I have a fear of suffering. I’m not at a mental capacity to fight an illness or physical disability. Fear of aging? Probably. I look at my over 90 year old great grandmother. She is capable of living on her own, so that tells you right there she’s still doing her thing. That’s how I want to be.

To be less than 100% doesn’t appear to be worth it on the surface because heaven becomes an even better looking object. It comes with a new body. A better body. An eternal body. Sitting here in a wheelchair not able to feel my legs isn’t fun compared to that.

So, is death really bad? What is life?

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