Lest they be so rare they're ignored

There's lots to think about lately. Conference was real good. Life is pretty good. Alex and Nicole have a new little one (relatively). We are mostly as healthy and as happy as we let ourselves be. A year and a few months ago when we first heard the C word, I thought that life would be changed forever, and things were quite different for many weeks and months. Of course events like surgery and a life of Dr's, Nurses and tests made life very different and sometimes difficult. Through all this I thought I would have real opportunities to grow in ways and directions that I knew I needed.

Yet as time moved us through these events I began to fear a thing that I was beginning to see, sometimes with great clarity. In the midst of so many different events and new experiences and unique opportunities, I wasn't changing or growing in ways that I thought I should. Now a year older and maybe only a little wiser, I realize that the times and things we live through can be looked at very simply. They are an opportunity to: 1. Keep learning or not. (learning requires hard work). 2. Time goes on minute by minute without exception. 3. Maybe most important of all, we don't change because of external events. Important personal changes come about slowly and only through great and consistent effort.

So what's new? A new grandchild, a realization that people are basically good and if we relate to them in a positive good way we will usually get that back from them, a realization that life is what we make it and that events are not the important things, It's what we do about those events that matters. I wonder what the world would be like if all people could learn to identify themselves not by or because of events in their lives (victims?) but by their desires, actions, and goals, (we are, if we look honestly a conglomerate of mostly good with a few little bad things mixed in).

One thought about personal identity, we need to take a close look at what we identify ourselves to be. What is our personal private PROFILE (a short definition of who we are)? I hope we know ourselves well. Do we like that profile? Is there anything we can do to change it for the better? I'm still trying to decide if I'm being a victim of cancer or a person just reacting the way people do to things like cancer and that in the end I'll come out of this OK. I wish everyone the best in their personal challenges and trials and hope you'll be patient with me in mine.

Yet another rare one

In reading what's going on in all of your (my family members) lives and especially this evening visiting with my wonderful daughter I have a few thoughts I'd like to share. I'm making these like the man's rules list because they are all important (they are all number 1 in importance).

1. Success in life is ultimately how we follow our Savior's plan.

1. The way to happiness is in how full your cup is, not in how empty.

1. Some time we just need to faithfully drive on into the night before we can see the sunrise.

1. Every trial even self inflicted ones are a blessing in an eternal sense.

1. We learn by listening and applying good stuff. hint(make sure you listen to good stuff)

1. If we look for good in bad times we can find it. We have to look with effort sometimes.

1. Everybody has doubts, weaknesses and shortcomings.

1. We have the final freedom about how we react to our trails and successes. (We can wreck both with a poor reaction or make both a success)

1. Sometimes we need to use that freedom to ask for help.

1. No one is a mind reader, we need to be clear, concise, loving, communicators.

1. We can't expect others to solve our problems.

1. Smiles are contagious-so are frowns, growls etc...

1. Our Father will always listen.

1. So will our Mother.

I'll work on another list for in a few days or weeks (maybe months) These aren't all my ideas they are just good ideas and thoughts.

A rare one

Since I post so rarely I guess its time I post about a rare event. In the past few years I've been studying the meanings of life and working on trying to find the most important things therein. Two weeks and a day ago I experienced the beginning of a real life-changing event (I've had a hernia fixed and back surgery but they were easy to get beyond). I had a G-I bleed as the doctors call it. It ended the next day so I didn't go to the doctor. On Monday I started having some pain in my stomach that kept getting worse until I had to go to the doctor. After some blood tests, a CT scan and some various pleasant drugs I felt better but was informed I needed to go to St. George for further poking and prodding. No reason was found for the bleeding and some Zantac and another antacid stopped the pain in my stomach, but the CT scan showed something amiss in my liver. In St George I was subjected to more tests and basically told I could go home, there was no real reason for my GI bleed and the stomach pain. I asked about the suspicious stuff in my liver only to discover it hadn't been looked at. Dr. Wu, whom I really liked because she's very thorough, said she would find the Kanab CT scan to look at. Eventually more tests were ordered and the final test was a Liver Biopsy. At that point I started thinking very seriously about what the rest of my life might be like. Last Tuesday, I went to look at results of the Liver Biopsy. Justin Brinkerhoff is my Doctor though he's really a PA. As I watched him look at the results and try to figure out how to tell me about them I felt a great empathy for him. He had to figure out how to tell me some really bad news that I already knew in some interesting way. A week before in the St George Hospital in the middle of a long night my Father in Heaven had let me know that everything was going to be all right. Not that I would be healed but just that everything would would be all right with some sort of a deadline that is now real.

I've now had a real Life Changing event. The Final Diagnosis was a Metastatic, low-grade neuroendocrine tumor (carcinoid tumor). When I got home I immediately started reading everything on the internet about these words and their meaning. My uneducated conclusion was that I've got somewhere between now and 6-10 years to enjoy life. I've pondered about how my thoughts and actions over the last few years have been guided, and how good people in doing their callings in the church and people that love me (friends and family) have guided my thoughts until I could accept this event with gratitude whatever the outcome. I think my Father in Heaven has been preparing me for this. I don't know what the next few years will bring, but I do know that each day will be very precious and that interactions with people I love will be very special and that interactions with unpleasant people will be sad because I don't know if I'll be able to help them discover that contention, anger, and all those other negative emotions aren't a solution to anything. I'm still Tim Esplin the human being, but my perspective has changed. I now need to bridle the natural man completely. I can't let anything evil, negative or even apathetic spoil my remaining time on this earth.

To those of you I know and don't know - There is meaning and purpose to life. It is positive and beautiful. We are here to be good and help others to discover that, we are here to learn to be faithful and obedient children of our Father in Heaven and in doing that be able to become like Him. There are two types opposition to that. One placed here by a loving Father in Heaven (this earth and its complexities placed into motion for us to gain experience and to learn and grow) and the second put here by Satan, the father of lies, (Pride , Selfishness, Arrogance, and the Idea of self-entitlement or that we deserve something better and we deserve it now). The choice seems simple to me now, the every day application is another matter. I ask for your help and patience.

There's much more to this but I haven't words in my simple mind to express it yet.

The Free Spirit

After several weeks of thinking about several important parts of my life and what I need to change to become the person I want to be, I had a moment of personal discovery. I was trying to answer a question for Jeanette and some things just seemed to fall together as the answer to all my pondering over the past few weeks. The answer came from the sixth verse of the song "A Poor Wayfaring Man" the line that says "but my free spirit cried I will". This line is in response to his friends query, "If I for him would die". WHAT IS MY FREE SPIRIT? A riot of thoughts and ideas followed in a few seconds. I'm still working them out, but the main idea is that the person that is able to free themselves of one main human frailty could actually give their life for a noble cause without doubting. It started as several ideas and I've narrowed this to just one thing that is the root all human problems. SELFISHNESS. Selfishness makes every problem we have worse. I've been trying to think of a problem I have that isn't caused or worsened greatly by selfishness. I'd like challenge any reader of this post to find a problem you have that could not be resolved by being totally unselfish. For this to work you have to believe in God and His Eternal Plan which includes the Atonement of Jesus Christ. If you don't there's no reason but fear to keep you from doing anything you'd like any time. The "Free Spirit" isn't someone that can do anything they want (Drugs, alcohol, no responsibility, no cares, that person will be in bondage to the natural man or woman). The Free Spirit is a person doesn't let selfish personal desire from preventing them from gaining all the good experience in life and personal relationships that is possible. Take a look at your life, looking in this direction showed me plenty of things to work on.

Interests of Late

I've been reading some of the family blogs lately and its been such fun. I sometimes wish I would take the time to post more often. I like to reading your comments, they seem sometimes more interesting that the blogs. It seems you're all very wise and very eloquent in expressing yourselves. So keep up the good work. You help me to have another interest in life and I think more interests are good. By the way I do have many interests in life.

My top 10 would be
1. Family (this actually has about a hundred sub-interests)
2. Church
3. This beautiful Southern Utah and outdoor activities (jeeping, shooting, photography, hiking etc)
4. Politics or the world situation
5. Good movies on a snowy day or evening
6. The sciences (I love to learn how things work)
7. Good books (a person could spent a lifetime and never read them all Fiction and Non
8. Motor sports
9. Reading blogs
10. Chillin

The order changes about as quick as my thoughts but these are a constant part of my life.
Let me know what some of yours are please.

And Rarly Again

When I did the first blog I though it would be a great way to keep a sort of a journal. Instead its been two other things. One a great opportunity to read and see what's happening with family and second a connection I can make at any time to people that I'm a distance away from. Nine months later I find not much of a journal but an opportunity to think about what has happened during the last nine month that maybe I should have written about. Its been a good time of my life for the most part. I've seen my children and grand children many times (always good). My business has taken off fairly well (I've made more with it than my daily job). The garden has been wonderful (see Jeanette's blog). The world situation hasn't seemed to bother me to much (I guess that's because I don't listen to talk radio any more and try to follow President Hinkley's advice to just try to do the best I can). Nathan got married in the temple (I now feel kinda like King Benjamin. My children have all been taught the real important things in life, if they screw up now it's their problem) though it would be to my sorrow. Some other good things. I've gotten to know the in-laws better, I hope they count me as a friend as I do them. I realize ever more that families can bring the only true lasting happiness. Its good to be able to now concentrate on some of my own thoughts and habits that seem to keep happiness at a distance at times. I passed 50 without breaking down too much. The Suburban is still running with a little help. I can now wire a house without asking for help. I can forget to do things and it's alright because I'm having a senior moment. I'm a middle aged man living with a wonderful younger woman. By the way these things aren't in order of importance. I'm taking a computer troubleshooting class over the internet, It's fun. There are to many to name so I'll stop now, I hope you all don't. Thanks, Tim

I'm at it only rarely

I've been neglecting this part of my life for long enough, and my children and children in law's are setting a very good example for me in how to document a life. Why this is almost as good as a "journal". I do however think things things that I don't want everyone to know about. This is sort of the subject of this blog. I've been thinking more lately about what is the real core of a person. Is it their dreams and aspirations? Is it what a person does or what they wish they could or would do? Maybe its because I'm getting older and can now see the end of my life approaching, I'm very curious about who and what I really am. I know that I'm a child of my Father in Heaven and that I have eternal potential. I have a fairly good understanding of the plan of salvation and have studied a lot about the Atonement and life after death. Something interesting passed through my mine the other day without sticking then it came back so I've given it more thought. I think God's mercy will make up for a lot of things that that we do in this life and don't think to repent of, and for lives (maybe ours) that due to circumstances beyond the individual's control, have no real chance to experience the best in life that most of us enjoy daily. And I further think that some of these people have been foreordained to be some of our "opposition in all things". I think that a loving Father in Heaven wouldn't exclude those that are like that from his greatest blessing. This being where mercy comes in, if these people will at some time recognize their Father for What He is, (they being a necessary part of our lives). I guess I believe somewhat that we will all (even those difficult people) be judged on (1) what we do with what we have been given by our Father in Heaven and (2) what we do to rise above what we were trained to be in our youth (some people have a much different life than most of us could even understand though we see evidence of these things daily in the news). You may say "I already know that" my point here is that some people that we chose not to like, because of their actions and lives, may gain as much or more from their starting point (yet never reaching an understanding of eternal life and developing a relationship with our Father in Heaven as we believe to be necessary for salvation). In more simple terms all of these people that we look at and wish we never had to see or be around are necessary for our growth and when we can love them and react well to all they do or say or represent and then reach out to them in love, friendship and compassion to help in any in any way we can that's what life is all about.