Why am I writing this blog?

Euclid (Cleveland), Ohio, United States
Here I share the amazing spiritual journey I began on July 19, 2007. I received the diagnosis of a golf-ball-sized tumor on top of the left parietal lobe (motor functions) of my brain. I had severe symptoms all up and down the right side of my body and had received an MRI scan of my brain. In August 2007, I learned that my diagnosis was a Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM). This is a common form of fast-growing brain cancer with a challenging prognosis. That's the external story about that moment in time. In the spiritual world I found (actually more like it found me) what I came to call the Fact-Based Spirit-Guided Path, and I began an amazing journey. After October of 2008, I lost the use of my right arm, and in early 2009, my cognitive abilities were struggling, and treatment options ended. My wife, Susanne, then began doing most of the blog postings, with my review and input whenever possible. I continued to apply the Fact-Based Spirit-Guided Path as the adventure continued. My soul then flew to the Kingdom of God on July 1, 2009. Thanks for your interest in my journey. Craig

Susanne's Perspective

During this entire journey, my wife, Susanne, had an entirely different kind of experience. Initially she added comments to some of my posts describing her experience of the moments I discussed and offerred perspectives on our relationship. In the latter stage of this journey, she is writing the blog, as I am no longer able to do so. I am truly delighted that she is doing so. Susanne and I work together as marriage educators/relationship coaches and she has written many books on preparing for and strengthening marriages so you can count on her comments to be insightful and poignant.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Sunday August 19

(0 steroids finally) We started the day by going to breakfast with some of the same wonderful folks that brought the breakfast party to our house last Sunday. Good fellowship and wide-ranging conversation. I was talking with Jef McDonough, who is quite an accomplished guitar player, about my having resumed efforts to learn more music theory, particularly around guitar chord structure. He offered to come by Tuesday afternoon so we could work together on that.

Our friends Rebecca Li and David Stickler had initially invited us to go out on their boat at dawn today but the weather was not favorable, so we took a raincheck on that. They invited us to come over anyway for a visit and lunch. We went to their place after breakfast and had a delightful time talking with them and seeing their new house in Rocky River, a Cleveland suburb. Rebecca is Chinese-American and David is American. The lunch prepared by their Chinese housekeeper/cook was incredible and was topped off with 2-course dessert

I pulled out several of the emails that had come in while I was in the hospital, located them on Susanne’s computer, forwarded them to mine, and sent messages to the senders. It was amazing that the prayer requests for me went to so many people. One of them was from a person I had not heard from at all for over 40 years. Another was from the first Bahá’í I met at Hiram College in 1970, Mary Jane (Barbee) Wolkman, now living in Florida and a wonderful artist . She had just come to Hiram as an upperclassman transfer and was, in fact, the first Bahá’í that we know of to attend Hiram. I was immediately drawn to the meetings she was holding, and she commented in her message to Susanne that I was the “first person I met who was truly interested in the Faith”. I declared my belief in Baha’u’llah just before Thanksgiving break. This communication from Mary Jane has motivated me to want to gather the stories of all the folks who became Baha’is at Hiram. Marj McCabe, who is still living locally near me, was very involved as an outside support person during those years at Hiram. We have agreed to work together on this story-collecting project.

We accomplished training Susanne on the rest of the Marriage Transformation Project reports, as noted in the Friday August 17 post.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)