When you’re diagnosed with a fatal disease and told you probably have only about two years to live, you suddenly have a lot of things to do in a short amount of time.  Adding to my " to do" list, several of my friends and family persistently encouraged (nagged) me to put into words my “journey” with ALS. Until now I’ve done a really good job of resisting them.  This isn’t a journey, ALS isn’t my sidekick in the passenger’s seat, and it's not like touring West Texas to see all the cousins.  It's more like the Griswolds’ family vacation nightmare – but on steroids. Why expose myself at all?  And why presume that this would matter all that much to anyone else?

Shortly after I announced that I had ALS, a dear friend gave me Tuesdays with Morrie.  This little book tells the story of the relationship between Morrie, the old teacher dying from ALS, and Mitch, his former student and the book’s author.  One of Morrie’s pearls of wisdom really hit home, and it goes like this, “The truth is, Mitch, once you learn how to die, you learn how to live… Most of us walk around as if we're sleepwalking. We really don't experience the world fully because we're half asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do... Learn how to die, and you learn how to live."

One thing that’s become crystal clear as I learn how to live with ALS is that I want to make a difference in the lives of other people with the time I have left.  And the idea of a blog made the most sense. After all, I can no longer speak and be understood, but I can still write, and the written word, sometimes converted into a computer-generated synthetic voice, is how I communicate.

This blog will be about how I live life now that I have ALS, how I deal with the obstacles, how I sometimes fail, and how I sometimes succeed.  Mostly, though, it will be about how this experience is changing my perspectives and about how I hang on to my faith.   Although I may not always pull it off, I’ll try to be personal, open, and real.  And I'll not be straying into the TMI zone. If you’re struggling too, which most of us are for one reason or another, I hope my posts encourage you.  That’s really why I’m doing this. 

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Peace

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