This Is The Best Way To Clean Your Lungs From Nicotine And Tar

Most smokers know that cigarettes contain nicotine and tar. They are also aware that these substances are extremely dangerous for their overall health.

This article will be extremely useful for any smoker that has decided to stop and eliminate this terrible habit in a natural and effective way.

If you are a smoker, stop smoking immediately.

You should forget about this nasty habit immediately because a long period is needed to cleanse the body from the awful substances contained in cigarettes. Some of the effects of the substances on the lungs cannot be reversed as well.

Luckily, there is a natural and effective remedy that can cleanse the lungs of nicotine and tar completely.

Many people have tried this remedy and they are satisfied with it. Besides its effectiveness, the preparation of this remedy is very simple.

Needed ingredients:

• 400 grams sugar or honey
• 400 grams onions
• 1 ginger root
• 2 tablespoons turmeric
• 1 liter water

Preparation:

• Boil the water and sugar. If you are using honey, add the honey when the water is already boiling.
• Chop the onions and grate the ginger root. Add these ingredients to the water and honey/sugar mixture.
• When it starts to boil, lower the temperature and add the turmeric powder.
• Simmer until the mixture reduces by half. Then, remove it from heat. Strain it and store it in a glass jar. Leave the remedy to cool down and then refrigerate it.
• Consume two tablespoons of the remedy two times a day – in the morning before eating breakfast and before going to bed.

The benefits of this remedy or its ingredients

Ginger

This healing spice has many health benefits. The most important one in this case is its ability to remove the accumulated mucus in the lungs.

Turmeric

The turmeric’s anti-septic, anti-bacterial and antiviral properties will cleanse you blood and protect your lungs and entire body from inflammation.

Onions

Onions, as well as garlic, have anti-cancer properties. This vegetable will also protect you from any respiratory problems.

Source: Healthy Definition

Dog Hair

Who We Have In Our Lives

ER Nurse Exposes Scandalous Vaccine Reaction Cover-Up

This is a factual narrative that details an E.R. nurse’s experiences with adverse vaccine reactions. This is not about being for or against vaccines, this is about education and informed consent. This is a must read for every parent!

By GuerillaRN

(Re-posted with his permission)

“As an E.R. nurse, I have seen the cover up. Where do you think kids go when they have a vaccine reaction?

They go to the E.R.

They come to me.

I cannot even begin to guess how many times over the years I have seen vaccine reactions come through my E.R. Without any exaggeration, it has to be counted in hundreds.

Sometimes it seemed like it was one or two cases in a single shift, every shift, for weeks. Then I would get a lull, and I wouldn’t catch one for a week or two, then I’d catch another case per night for a couple weeks. This was common.

Once, I was training a nursing student, about to graduate, on their E.R. experience rotation in nursing school. This student and I floated up to triage to cover the triage nurse for a break. I was quizzing them on what to ask and look for as a triage nurse on pediatric kids that came through. I made a point about asking about immunizations right out the gates. The student was puzzled, and asked why, and I told the student because we see vaccine reactions every day and it’s their job to catch it, alert the doctor and the parents, and report it toVAERS.

Some higher power apparently smiled on my attempt to open the eyes of another nurse I guess, because not even ten minutes later, a woman brought her child up to the counter. Sudden onset super high fever and lethargy. I asked if the child was up to date on vaccination.

The mother replied he had them just a few hours ago.

I glanced at the student, who looked shocked and looked back at me in disbelief. I nodded, told them to remember this, and then took the mom and her child to finish the triage in back. When I was done I came back and sat down with the student, and asked what he learned that night so far.

The first response: “What I was told about vaccines wasn’t true”.

I couldn’t have said it better. That student is going to go on to be like me, advocating for his patients with his eyes wide open.

The cases almost always presented similarly, and often no one else connected it. The child comes in with either a fever approaching 105, or seizures, or lethargy/can’t wake up, or sudden overwhelming sickness, screaming that won’t stop, spasms, GI inclusion, etc.

And one of the first questions I would ask as triage nurse, was, are they current on their vaccinations? It’s a safe question that nobody sees coming, and nobody understands the true impact of. Parents (and co-workers) usually just think I’m trying to rule out the vaccine preventable diseases, when in fact, I am looking to see how recently they were vaccinated to determine if this is a vaccine reaction.

Too often I heard a parent say something akin to “Yes they are current, the pediatrician caught up their vaccines this morning during their check up, and the pediatrician said they were in perfect health!”

If I had a dollar for every time I’d heard that, I could fly to Europe for free.

But here’s the more disturbing part.

For all the cases I’ve seen, I have NEVER seen any medical provider report them to VAERS. I have filed VAERS reports. But I am the ONLY nurse that I have EVER met that files VAERS reports.

Mind you, I have served in multiple hospitals across multiple states, alongside probably well over a hundred doctors and probably 300-400+ nurses.

I’ve worked in big hospitals (San Francisco Bay Area Metro 40 bed ER, Las Vegas NV Metro 44 bed ER) and small hospitals (Rural access 2 bed ER, remote community 4 bed ER) and everything in between.

When I say NEVER, I mean NEVER.

I have even made a point of sitting in the most prominent spot at the nurses station filling out a VAERS report to make sure as many people saw me doing it as possible to generate the expected “what are you doing” responses to get that dialog going with people.

And in every case, if a nurse approached me, their response was “I’ve never done that” or “I didn’t know we could do that” or, worse “What is VAERS?” which was actually the most common response.

The response from doctors? Silence. Absolute total refusal to engage in discussion or to even acknowledge what I was doing or what VAERS was.

The big take away from that?

VAERS is WOEFULLY under reported.

I am PROOF of that.

The number one place parents bring their kids in the event of a vaccine reaction is the E.R., and as an E.R. staffer, I have NEVER met anyone who filed one, in spite of seeing hundreds of cases of obvious vaccine associated harm come through.

What does that say about reported numbers?

The CDC/HHS admits that VAERS is under-reported, and probably only representative of 1/10th the actual number of injuries. I contest that, and from personal experience, I would say the numbers in VAERS are more like 1/1000th the actual numbers, not 1/10th.

And the final part of that, is that I have, first hand, seen blatant cover ups from doctors. I have seen falsification of medical records and documentation via intentional omission.

I have challenged doctors who refused to put in the chart that the child was vaccinated 4 hours ago and was in perfect health, and now suddenly they are non-responsive, seizing, febrile at 105, and that labs, LP, and imaging confirms cerebral edema/encephalitis.

I reminded the doctors as they are writing their report that the child was vaccinated mere hours before. And at the end, there is total omission of this fact, and the physician pass-off notes state encephalitis of unknown origin.

I ask the doctor if they will file a VAERS report, and they argue that this has nothing to do with it, its purely coincidental, and nothing should be filed, they are safe and effective.

I remind them that VAERS is a reporting body for ANY symptoms that are contemporaneous to vaccination, whether causation is believed to be associated or not, and I get the dismissal that they are not filing it because it has nothing to do with it.

No one brings it up to the parents.

It’s this giant rug-sweep that happens, and any mention of the vaccination is systematically removed or withheld from the record.

A perfect example of this was an ambulance crew that came in with a pass-off report that included the fact the child had been vaccinated only hours prior to onset of symptoms. The physician made sure this pass-off sheet disappeared mysteriously and could not get filed with the patient medical record.

So yes, I have seen the vaccine damage cover up first hand. I know that it is intentional and active in the medical community. I know that it is happening.

And on top of total denial of any association, and total cover up, they also refuse to report to VAERS which is supposed to be reported to for ANYTHING that is even in NO WAY SUSPECTED to be associated with the vaccine. This is a systemic suppression of information and statistics.

And yes, in the cases described above, I did approach the parents, and I did tell them about VAERS, and I did start a case for them and file a report. I did force the issue through my charting, although it will most likely be buried and overlooked.

I have experienced the corruption and suppression of the truth in the medical community about vaccines first hand from the provider perspective. It does happen. Every day.

I am neither pro-vax or anti-vax. I am an informed consent person.

I believe that you, as a parent, should know the risks involved, and they ARE real.

I believe that you should be aware that, for whatever reason, some seemingly random smaller subset of the population IS in fact susceptible to these horrific adverse reactions that can be life-long debilitating in nature.

Yes the numbers are low. Yes I saw A LOT of cases, but I worked in BUSY very LARGE POPULATION areas. The nasty reactions are, in my opinion, probably down around the 0.5% chance range on the average vaccinations. The exception being Gardasil, that thing is horrible in my opinion and seems to have serious adverse reactions rates, I would guess maybe as high as 5 to 7% across the series. But that’s another subject in itself.

I wish I could tell what would make a child likely to be that 0.5% so I could see that trait and tell that parent to really consider it heavily, but I can’t. No one can. It truly seems random. Sometimes its a fragile sickly weak kid, and that makes sense that they would have a significantly higher risk of a serious adverse event. But sometimes its a perfectly healthy full term strong infant with no morbidities.

Although the boys do tend to get the reactions more often. Probably 2/3 of the serious reactions I’ve seen were boys.

But the truth is, you can’t tell by looking. Either at the kid, or their health history, or their family history. It comes down to chance. For some reason, every now and then, a child is just more susceptible to those injections than everyone else is.

Do I believe in vaccinations? For the most part. I believe that often times, the concept is good. I take issue with the use of adjuvants in the way they are currently used, and with how the FDA is suppressing additional adjuvants that have been tested successfully with fewer adverse reactions and better immune responsiveness going back decades.

But I can’t change that.

I think that they do work, kind of.

I have read about the way it can shift how the immune system functions. Shifting humoral and intracellular responsiveness so one is over-reactive and the other underreactive so the vaccine literally can make you more susceptible to certain illnesses (again, other adjuvants have mostly fixed this, but they have still not been approved 15 years later).

I have seen where the vaccine actually gave the subject the illness it was designed to prevent. (I am talking controlled studies. For an example, look at the Canadian Institute of Health ferret swine flu study).

I have seen people come in to my E.R. with the mumps in spite of being fully vaccinated against the mumps.

Same with chickenpox.

And whooping cough.

And on and on.

I have also seen the manufacturers engaged in fraud (see the federal case U.S. and two virologists vs Merck, regarding blatant fraud in MMR and forced cover-up) or the pharmaceutical industry intentionally giving people illnesses that will knowingly kill them just to turn a profit (see New York Times uncovering internal Bayer pharmaceuticals memos on their HIV-tainted hemophiliac medication where they continued to sell it AFTER they discovered they were giving people HIV by selling it, and then, when ordered to stop sales by a court in the US, they continued to sell it overseas).

But, I do acknowledge that, for the lucky few, these things do work. Although the numbers are hardly stellar, they do tend to grant some kind of protection in the majority of individuals. So yay. Yes, I do believe there is something to them.

But the truth is somewhere in the middle of the road. Not as bad as they are made out to be, but far less effective and nowhere near as safe as they would have you believe either.

In an industry that is rocked on a monthly basis by horrible medication scandals, if you didn’t question everything they told you, I would look at you funny. And it’s my job to give these medications to people.

Just to note, on a recent scandal, I have been warning people about Zofran use in pregnancy for 5 years. The information was right there in the insert. It was right there on the manufacturing website. It was right there in the PDR. As well as on every downloadable app and printed IV drug book.

The information is there.

It is the medical professionals that are failing the general public.

Now suddenly it’s all over the news, there are commercials about it, and everyone is running around in hospitals acting like they had no clue. No, we knew. We all knew. We just didn’t hold the line.

This comes back to informed consent.

As I said, I’m for informed consent. Absolutely everything we do has risks. Absolutely every medication we use has risks.

You can take Advil and have your skin scarify and blister and peel away from third degree burns originating below the surface of your skin. Is it common? Heck no. It’s darn right rare as heck. But is it possible? You betcha. And we know it.

How many nurses and doctors have told you that one?

Same goes for Benadryl.

And Tylenol studies have been shown to do liver damage at any dose in children. Any.

How many nurses and doctors have told you that?

We lie. As a profession. (I don’t.) But as a profession, we lie, we rug sweep the risks, and we sugar coat it. We do it everyday with every interaction. That is the truth of it.

And if you have to be lucky enough to get one that isn’t lying to you, they are probably simply ignorant of the truth and never read the insert or the PDR or the warnings on the manufacturers website.

That covers about 99.9% of everyone in healthcare. Well, allopathic health care anyway.

Now talk with another E.R. nurse. Are we saying the same things? No. Why? Because I have read more on the subject, because I have a strong sense of ethical and moral obligation to my patients, and because I will not simply take an order and follow it, even if it costs me my job. That is unusual.

You have to remember, pushing drugs makes hospitals money. Challenging doctors is a good way to make your work life suck, and bring down wrath of the administrators on you.

While that CT scan may not be the best thing for you, or warranted, or necessary by any yardstick, it will make the hospital several thousand dollars, imagine what happens to the easily replaceable nurse that stands in the way of it.

Profit.

The truth is that this is what it boils down to. Call me jaded. I am. I’m fine with that. I am the salty old dog in the trenches. I have earned my battle scars in the E.R., and I have a reputation that precedes me.

I have taken every award from every hospital I have gone to, including awards, honors, and recognitions that were previously only ever given out to Social Workers and Doctors. It gives me a certain level of immunity from persecution, and that gives me the ability to speak the truth, even if it costs the hospital money. Because I’m too valuable as a P.R. piece.

So you want the truth from the inside? There you have it, from probably one of only a handful of people you are ever going to hear it from.

Know the risks. Acknowledge that IF you do it, you roll the dice. And YES, your child’s number CAN come up. You are NOT immune.

I can’t predict why some kids are susceptible and others aren’t. I don’t know why it is this why. I wish I did. No one does in this field.

It is actively covered up. It is known. This is real. Vaccines do help. They do have risks. As a parent, you have to make that choice on your own and live with it.

But think about this hypothetical situation. You come in and see me and ask me to vaccinate your child, I hand you a stack of papers an inch thick and tell you to start reading, and in in twenty minutes I’ll be back with 100 sided dice (yes, they make them, from the role playing game days of dungeons and dragons).

It’s a simplification, but it is a profound one that makes the situation real. I’ll hand that 100-sided dice to you and tell you to roll it.

If it comes up on number 1, your child is going to have a seizure and possibly suffer potential neurological harm, but if it comes up on any of the other 99 numbers, your child is fine.

If you can take the dice in hand and own that potential outcome, then I will inject your child. But you have to KNOW and ACCEPT the risks before I am going to do it.

I really just believe in standing up for my patients. I don’t know what happened to this industry, but, it is supposed to be the nurses job to stand between the patient and the system, to protect them from the system.

I guess I’m getting fed up with nurses and doctors just “going along” to get along. There is no big secret to any of this. I read the journals of infectious diseases, toxicology, pediatrics, emergency medicine, BMJ, Lancet, etc., and I research on PubMed through the NIH.

Everything I’m saying is public domain knowledge.

It’s stuff we SHOULD be telling you.

I am sorry we are not.

I try to take a stand where I can, but at the end of the day, I’m only one nurse.”

~GuerillaRN

RN, CEN, EMT

Highly commended and credentialed EMT and Nurse with 6 years emergency department experience across multiple hospitals and former police officer

Republished with permission from GuerillaRN

Educate before you vaccinate: Informed Consent

Source: March Against Monsanto

Top Scientist Resigns Admitting Global Warming Is A Big Scam

Top US scientist Hal Lewis resigned from his post at the University of California after admitting that global warming was a big scam, in a shocking resignation letter.

From the Telegraph

The following is a letter to the American Physical Society released to the public by Professor Emeritus of physics Hal Lewis of the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Professor Emiritus Hal Lewis Resigns from American Physical Society

Sent: Friday, 08 October 2010 17:19 Hal Lewis

From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society

6 October 2010

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).

Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.

Hal

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

Angels We Have Heard on High - The Piano Guys, Peter Hollens and David Archuleta

30 heart-warming little love stories to make you smile

Here are 30 real-life love stories. Each one of them, we think, encapsulates something about all of humanity. They’re filled with so much feeling that they have the power to inspire and touch each and every one of us.

We hope you read these and always remember that if you haven’t found them yet, your true love is out there waiting for you as well.

***

Today, my seventy-five-year-old grandpa who has been blind from cataracts for almost 15 years said to me, “Your grandma is just the most beautiful thing, isn’t she?“ I paused for a second and said, ”Yes she is. I bet you miss seeing that beauty on a daily basis.“ “Sweety,” my grandpa said, ”I still see her beauty every day. In fact, I see it more now than I used to when we were young.“

***

Today, I walked my daughter down the aisle. Ten years ago I pulled a fourteen-year-old boy out of his mom’s fire-engulfed SUV after a serious accident. Doctors initially said he would never walk again. My daughter came with me several times to visit him at the hospital. Then she started going on her own. Today, seeing him defy the odds and smile widely, standing on his own two feet at the altar as he placed a ring on my daughter’s finger.

***

Today, I walked up to the door of my office (I’m a florist) at 7AM to find a uniformed Army soldier standing out front waiting. He was on his way to the airport to go to Afghanistan for a year. He said, ”I usually bring home a bouquet of flowers for my wife every Friday and I don’t want to let her down when I’m away." He then placed an order for 52 Friday afternoon deliveries of flowers to his wife’s office and asked me to schedule one for each week until he returns. I gave him a 50% discount because it made my day to see something so sweet.

***

Today, I told my 18 year old grandson that nobody asked me to prom when I was in high school, so I didn’t attend. He showed up at my house this evening dressed in a tuxedo and took me as his date to his prom.

***

Today, when she woke up from an eleven month coma, she kissed me and said, “Thank you for being here, and telling me those beautiful stories, and never giving up on me... And yes, I will marry you.”

***

Today, I was sitting on a park bench eating a sandwich for lunch when an elderly couple pulled their car up under a nearby oak tree. They rolled down the windows and turned up some jazz music on the radio. Then the man got out of the car, walked around to the passenger side, opened the door for the woman, took her hand and helped her out of her seat, guided her about ten feet away from the car, and they slow danced for the next half hour under the oak tree.

***

Today, I operated on a little girl. She needed O- blood. We didn’t have any, but her twin brother has O- blood. I explained to him that it was a matter of life and death. He sat quietly for a moment, and then said goodbye to his parents. I didn’t think anything of it until after we took his blood and he asked, “So when will I die?“ He thought he was giving his life for hers. Thankfully, they’ll both be fine.

***

Today, my dad is the best dad I could ask for. He’s a loving husband to my mom (always making her laugh), he’s been to every one of my soccer games since I was five (I’m 17 now), and he provides for our family as a construction foreman. This morning when I was searching through my dad’s toolbox for a pliers, I found a dirty folded up paper at the bottom. It was an old journal entry in my dad’s handwriting dated exactly one month before the day I was born. It reads, ”I am eighteen years old, an alcoholic who is failing out of college, a past cutter, and a child abuse victim with a criminal record of auto theft. And next month, ‘teen father’ will be added to the list. But I swear I will make things right for my little girl. I will be the dad I never had.” And I don’t know how he did it, but he did it.

***

Today, my eight-year-old son hugged me and said, “You are the best mom in the whole entire world!” I smiled and sarcastically replied, “How do you know that? You haven’t met every mom in the whole entire world.“ My son squeezed me tighter and said, ”Yes I have. You are my world.“

***

Today, I have an elderly patient who is suffering from a severe case of Alzheimer’s. He can rarely remember his own name, and he often forgets where he is and what he said just a few minutes beforehand. But by the stretch of some miracle (perhaps the miracle of love), he remembers who is wife is every morning when she shows up to spend a few hours with him. He usually greets her by saying, “Hello my beautiful Kate.”

***

Today, my twenty-one-year-old Labrador can barely stand up, can’t see, can’t hear, and doesn’t have enough strength to bark. But it doesn’t stop her from wagging her tail a mile a minute every single time I walk into the room.

***

Today, I watched in horror through the kitchen window as my two-year-old slipped and fell head first into the pool. But before I could get to her, our Labrador Retriever, Rex, jumped in after her, grabbed her by her shirt collar and pulled her to the shallow steps where she could stand.

***

Today, my older brother has donated bone marrow 16 times to help treat my cancer. He communicates directly with my doctor and does it without me even asking or knowing when he has an appointment. And today my doctor informed me that the treatment appears to be working. ”Cancer cells have been drastically reduced in the last few months.“

***

Today, I was driving home with my grandfather when he suddenly made a u-turn and said, ”I forgot to get your grandmother a bouquet of flowers. I’ll pick up one from the florist at the corner down here. It’ll only take a second." “What’s so special about today that you have to buy her flowers?” I asked. “There’s nothing specifically special about today,“ my grandfather said. ”Every day is special. Your grandmother loves flowers. They put a smile on her face.”

***

Today, I re-read the suicide letter I wrote on the afternoon of September 2nd 1996 about two minutes before my girlfriend showed up at my door and told me, “I’m pregnant.” Suddenly I felt I had a reason to live. Today she’s my wife. We’ve been happily married for 14 years. And my daughter, who is almost 15 now, has two younger brothers. I re-read my suicide letter from time to time as a reminder to be thankful — I am thankful I got a second chance at life and love.

***

Today was the ten-year anniversary of my dad’s passing. When I was a kid he used to hum a short melody to me as I was going to sleep. When I was 18, as he rested in his hospital bed fighting cancer, the roles were reversed and I hummed the melody to him. I haven’t heard that melody since, until last night. My fiancé and I were turned on our sides looking at each other in bed when he started humming it to me. His mom used to hum it to him when he was a kid.

***

Today, my eleven-year-old son speaks fluent sign language because his best friend, Josh, who he grew up with from the time he was an infant, is deaf. Seeing their genuine friendship evolve and grow over the years.

***

Today, my dad passed away from natural causes at the age of 92. I found his body resting peacefully in the recliner in his bedroom. In his lap, facing upright, were three framed 8×10 photographs of my mom who passed away about ten years ago. She was the love of his life, and apparently the last thing he wanted to see before he passed.

***

Today, I am the proud mom of a blind seventeen-year-old boy. Although my son was born without his sense of sight, it hasn’t stopped him from being a straight A student, a guitarist (whose band just surpassed 25,000 downloads of their first album), and a loving boyfriend to his long-term girlfriend, Valerie. Just today, his younger sister asked him what he likes about Valerie, and he said, “Everything. She’s beautiful.“

***

Today, my twelve-year-old son, Sean, and I stopped by the nursing home together for the first time in several months. Usually I come alone see my mother who’s suffering from Alzheimer’s. When we walked into the lobby, the nurse said, ”Hi, Sean!“ and then buzzed us in. “How does she know your name?” I asked. ”Oh, I swing by here on my walk home from school all the time to say hi to Grandma,“ Sean said. I had no idea.

***

Today, my grandpa keeps an old, candid photo on his nightstand of my grandma and him laughing together at some party in the 1960’s. My grandma passed away from cancer in 1999 when I was seven. This evening when I was at his house, my grandpa caught me staring at the photo. He walked up, hugged me from behind and said, ”Remember, just because something doesn’t last forever, doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth your while.“

***

Today, I’m a mother of two and a grandmother of four. At 17 I got pregnant with twins. When my boyfriend and friends found out I wasn’t going to abort them, they turned a cold shoulder to me. But I pressed forward, worked full-time while attending school, graduated high school and college, and met a guy in one of my classes who has loved my children like his own for the last 50 years.

***

Today, I was sitting on a hotel balcony watching two lovers in the distance walk along the beach. From their body language, I could tell they were laughing and enjoying each other’s company. As they got closer, I realized they were my parents. My parents almost got divorced eight years ago.

***

Today, at the age of 72, nearly 15 years after my grandfather passed away, my grandmother remarried. And since I’m only 17, I’ve never seen her so happy in all my life. It’s inspiring to see two people so in love at their age. It’s never too late.

***

Today, after two years of separation, my ex-wife and I resolved our differences and met for dinner. We laughed and chatted for almost four hours. Then just before she left, she handed me a large envelope. In it were 20 love letters she wrote me over the last two years. There was a post-it note on the envelope that said, “Letters I was too stubborn to send.”

***

Today, I was in an accident that left me with a gash on my forehead. The doctors wrapped a bandage around my head and said I have to keep it on all week. I hate wearing it. Two minutes ago my little brother walked into my room wearing a bandage on his head. My mom said he insisted that he didn’t want me to feel alone.

***

Today, as my ninety-one-year-old grandfather (a military doctor, war hero, and successful business owner) rested in his hospital bed, I asked him what his greatest life accomplishment was. He turned around, grabbed my grandmother’s hand, looked her in the eyes, and said, “Growing old with you.“

***

Today, on our 50th wedding anniversary, she smiled at me and said, ”I only wish I had met you sooner."

Source: marcandange

Merry Christmas!

The Earth's Axis Has Shifted

Cardinal Burke corrects Jesuit dissenter's errors about Synod

ROME (ChurchMilitant.com) - Last week, Jesuit priest Fr. Antonio Spadaro wrote an essay for La Civilta Cattolica saying the 2015 Synod opened the door to Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics — and now Cdl. Raymond Burke is calling him out for it.

In an article written Tuesday for the National Catholic Register, his Eminence addresses Fr. Spadaro's claim that the 2015 Synod opened a new door, saying it requires an "immediate comment" to clarify what the Synod taught. Spadaro claims the Synod introduced a new teaching on the role of conscience and the "internal forum."

In response, Cdl. Burke wrote that "several Synod Fathers affirm the opposite, that is, they affirm that the Synod upheld the constant practice of the Church." His Eminence said that despite the "lack of clarity" in paragraphs 84 and 86 of the Final Relatio, Church teaching was not contradicted. The "public declarations of the Synod Fathers" are responsible for the widespread confusion about the Synod, says Cdl. Burke.

Creating the "expectation that the Roman pontiff can saction a practice which is in conflict with the truths of the Faith" does a "most serious harm" to the Church, His Eminence explained. "The Synod of Bishops ... cannot be the instrument of such an expectation."

The orthodox prelate emphasized that the question of admiting adulterers to Holy Communion is not something the Synod has the ability to address:

The fact is that the Synod could not open a door which does not exist and cannot exist, namely a discernment in conscience which contradicts the truth about the supreme sanctity of the Most Holy Eucharist and the indissolubility of the marriage bond.

His Eminence continued, saying the idea that "conscience can be in conflict with the truth of the faith" gives a false impression, because priests can't "open a door" for the divorced and remarried. Such a door, says Cdl. Burke, "does not and cannot exist." He clarified that honest conscience and true discernment work in harmony with the truths of the Faith, not in contradiction to them:

The way of discernment upon which the priest accompanies the penitent who is living in an irregular union assists the penitent to conform his conscience once again to the truth of the Holy Eucharist and to to the truth of marriage to which he is bound. As the Church has consistently taught and practiced, the penitent is led in the "internal forum" to live chastely in fidelity to the existing marriage bond ... to be able to have access to the sacraments in a way which does not give scandal.

True to academic form, Cdl. Burke noted that Fr. Spadaro's essay requires "critical comment in longer study" to fully address its theological problems. The faithful may perhaps expect a more in-depth response in the future from the orthodox canon law expert.

To learn more about the Church's teaching on marriage, watch ChurchMilitant.com's "Remaining in the Truth of Christ: The Church on Matrimony."