The man who does not read is no better than the man who can't. - Mark Twain

Thanks to my parents’ influence I grew up with a love of reading, wet Sunday afternoons (of which there are many in England) were spent either reading or playing Monopoly and even now part of my bedtime routine is reading. N°4 on my list is to read 40 books over the next 18 months. To some people it may seem a lot but as I’m already halfway through my second book, this will probably be the easiest goal to complete. For me reading is almost as essential as breathing and I like to alternate between reading fiction and non-fiction, one for one. In the same way as I am with music, I don’t get bound up by genre. So Austin and Dickens stand along-side Val McDermid, le Carré and Salman Rushdie on my fiction bookcase (there are even a couple of trashy romances by Rosamunde Pilcher) and my other bookcase is even more varied!

My list starts off with books I’m currently reading (or have read)

1.            Pathway to Purpose - Katie Brazelton

2.            Captivating – Stacy Eldredge

3.            The Mark of the Assassin – Daniel Silva

Part 2 are books I already own but haven’t read yet:

4.            The Grace Awakening – Charles Swindoll

5.            Hope Again – Charles Swindoll

6.            Simple Faith – Charles Swindoll

7.            Living your strengths – Winseman/Clifton/ Liesveld

8.            Love and War – John & Stasi Eldredge

9.            Twelve Extraodinary Women –John MacArthur

10.         O2 – Richard Dahlstrom

11.         My Donkey Body – Michael Wenham

12.         God’s Call – Brother Andrew

13.         Wilberforce, God’s Statesman – Biography by John Pollock

14.         Crazy Love – Francis Chan

15.         Having a Mary heart in a Martha World – Joanna Weaver

Part 3 of my list is books I want to read, some taken from other “books to read before you die” lists and are all on my Amazon wish list (hint hint).

16.         A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul

17.         A Long Walk to Freedom – Nelson Mandela

18.         Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez

19.         I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou

20.         Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McInerney

21.         The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle - Tobias Smollett

22.         The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

23.         The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

24.         Running with Giants – John Maxwell

And that leaves 16 empty spaces, so I’m looking for your recommendations, plus, if you can loan me the book, even better J  

Fibromyalgia really sucks at times!

I woke up this morning with ½ an ounce of energy, not feeling like I need to sleep another 12 hours and not wanting to scream at everyone and everything “Don’t touch me!” 

This is the first time all week I’ve felt this good!

Fibromyalgia is a real pain (excuse the pun); it’s an invisible illness with a multitude of symptoms, many different triggers, limited treatments and no cure. Unlike a broken leg or wound, people can’t see it and have no idea that, at times, their hug or pat on the back will cause me pain for hours afterwards. Lack of energy means I can appear lazy, life limitations and the frustration that brings often causes depression or at the very least a case of being "down in the dumps". It’s also hard to describe in a short sentence and most people tune out when an explanation lasts longer.

Getting diagnosed was a major plus for me. OK so it’s incurable but it now has a name and I can learn about it and work with it. A couple of doctors had told me “it’s all in your head” and of course there was always that niggling worry that something dreadful was wrong and going undiagnosed. For me one of the biggest benefits of moving to Germany is the health care. Don’t get me wrong, Britain has a good health care system, with some of the best trained doctors in the world, there’s just not enough money in the system to cover non-essentials, as one British doctor told me “Pain is not an emergency”!!!!!! 

I am blessed to have private health cover here and so have access to virtually any specialist and treatment option available. Having a GP who understands is enormously beneficial, medication helps a lot but until they find a cure, the greatest impact I can have is dealing with the psychosomatic element which is a component of every chronic illness. My attitude has a huge impact on how I cope; ok, so it limits my life choices and is incurable but it won’t kill me. It is NOT cancer, MS, motor-neuron disease or the like. I live in the developed world with good medical-care, I have a very understanding and supportive husband who earns enough to support us both. I’m able to work part-time, have an understanding boss and God is my sustainer and provider of all these things.  Do I focus on the good things in my life or the bad things? It’s my choice.

Identifying stress as one of my triggers and what causes me stress helped a lot. Deal with the past – dragging all that baggage, hurt and pain around really inhibits anybody’s ability to live in freedom and to the full, so screw up your courage and start dealing with it. Seriously, it’s not as bad as your worst imaginings!

Pacing is another thing (and one I struggle with). Like this week, I’ve spend the vast majority of it in bed. After 2 lots of visitors and travels in 3 weeks I was exhausted, I could either fight it or take the time I needed to recoup. They say life is like running a marathon not a hundred metre sprint. In the same way I think that learning to live with Fibro is like training for a marathon, training plans start out with short walks and daily/gently progress to slow jogging, adding distance and speed over the weeks and months until 26.2 miles becomes an attainable goal, plus accepting that there will be set backs and adjusting things accordingly. Will I ever run a marathon? Errrrrr, NO! A half-marathon? Also doubtful. But am I content to only ever be a spectator? Most definitely not!  That’s why a 5K is on my list of goals.

Balancing the necessary and the nice, 4 days in bed does not a tidy house make. Today, laundry is fluttering on the balcony and the bathroom is clean but as for the rest, well the dust bunnies can wait! I’m going for a walk along the river with Mr H :o)

“Summing it all up, friends, I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.” – Phil 4:8 The Message

Lose 30 kg & run a 5k

No-one could say I’m malnourished but just dieting without doing a little sport will only get me so far. In any case I need to work on my overall health so these 2 goals will work well together.

I do have a couple of health issues that are going to make this more difficult but I’m not going to use them as an excuse for laziness any more. A lingering (grumbling) back injury from a car accident as well as fibromyalgia (a chronic pain illness) are rather limiting and frustrating. Progress is often 2 steps forward, 1 step back. In addition - perhaps because of - depression snaps at my heels and then life can be like walking through mud for days.

My pain doctor recommended power walking, which I do occasionally. Now I need to turn that occasionally into regularly and I’ll be on my way to running that 5k. 

The joy of giving!

Number 1 on my list of goals is to raise as much money as possible and give it all away. Setting the target of 40,000€ ties in with the ‘40’ theme and is quite a huge project, if fact I’m even wondering if it’s too much. Anyway even if I only manage 39,500€ it’d better than nothing right?. LOL! Whatever sum is raised will be split 50/50 with half going to a local charity and half going to children’s’ charities in the developing world.

It’s not an original idea by any means (in fact none of them are). For their millennium project, the village where we lived in Scotland, Dunscore, raised over £15000. £11000 was given to Water Aid in Ethiopia and the rest used for local projects and I recently read about a lady who decided to use her 40^th year to do 40 charitable acts and raised over $60,000!!!!!  http://immd.icanhascheezburger.com/2011/05/24/funny-win-story-immd-news-of-the-day-59/ 

So, now just I need to find creative a fun ways to reach that target. One thing I am a little concerned about is not getting in a muddle with the German tax office etc etc. I’m not looking forward to having to get my head around the joys of charity bureaucracy :/ Neija , it can’t all be fun and games!

Today is 7th June 2011. In exactly 18 months’ time (82 weeks or 580 days) I will hit that landmark 40th birthday. Many things come to mind when I think of this; the big 4 0, life begins at 40, over the hill etc etc.  This looming date has caused me to stop and take stock of my life so far and what I’ve achieved.

My life has taken a VERY different route than the one I had planned out in my 20’s: married, living in a rambling farmhouse in south-west Scotland with a bunch of kids (min 3) and a couple of fields for a hodge-podge of animals including goats and ponies. Yet here I am in central Germany, happily married, living in a small flat with no garden, no kids and just 1 cat. However, I am very happy as this is exactly where God wants me (us) to be right now.

Do you remember the film “The Bucket List”? 2 old geezers (played by Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson) both receive the news that they have terminal cancer with only months to live, so they set out on a whirlwind adventure to work through their “Bucket List”.

I guess we all have a bucket list but most of us put off fulfilling our dreams for another day. A couple of friends have just celebrate their 40^th birthdays and it got me thinking. Life begins at 40 so they say but why wait til then? So I’ve put together a list (in no particular order) of 10 goals that I’d like to achieve over the course of the next 18 months.  Some are “just for fun” and purely personal, others are focused outwards for the benefit of others, and that’s where you come in. To achieve some of these goals I will need the help and support of my friends. Over the coming days I’ll write about each goal in more detail.

1. Raise as much money as possible (ideally 40,000€) and give it all away.
2. Lose 30kg
3. Run a  5k (maybe even a 10k Race)
4. Read 40 books
5. Learn how to sail (somewhere in warm seas)
6. Read through the whole Bible
7. Make a significant (positive) difference in 40 people’s lives
8. Spend one month @ the door of hope, children’s mission, South Africa http://www.doorofhope.co.za/
9. Learn to play the piano
10. Go paragliding  

Thanks for joining me on this journey.

Kathy