Hoping Against Reality - a little sad and a little funny

Sometimes in life, I hope against reality. I don't want something to be the way it is.  One of those things I don't want to believe is really real is the death of Amos Abplanalp. In order to write Hillary Albplanab's story I have been reading her blog. They are such a busy and involved family. Most of their days are filled with such good and service. Amos is particularly inspiring with all that he is doing for others while still struggling to deal with the pain of cancer and fight death off. As I am reading their story of the last few years they had together on earth, I find myself hoping that Amos will beat the cancer. He has so much good in him. We need people like him.

What I want and hope for isn't always what happens. I know that Amos eventually lost the battle against cancer. I am comforted to know that he may have lost his body to cancer for now, but he won his spirit in his daily walk with God here on earth. Surely, he is doing so much good as an angel now. His short life will continue to inspire so many others through his wife and children and all those he influenced while here. Now he is continuing to watch over them all with a lot less pain, but without them seeing him. I am grateful he is no longer in pain and the knowledge that he will see his family again.

It has made me so emotional to read their story.  If you would like to read it, go to http://www.familymann.org/amos.  Or if you want a brief story version, you can wait until my book comes out and read that.

So, I promised a little funny with the sad.

Sometimes I hope that I won't do something clumsy or that I will over come that specific trait. Unfortunately, that is another hope against reality.  The other day I drove our small 2 door bench seat Toyota Tacoma to the store for groceries. I have been trying not to drive our Toyota Camry very much because we still have a spare tire on that until we can get it fixed (less than one more month). While there I picked up some soda for my husband. They didn't have his favorite (Coke Zero Cherry) and so I got him Diet Coke. It was cheaper to get the big 24 pack than the 12 pack. So I got that and loaded it up behind the bench seat in the truck because that is where there is room for groceries.

I like to conserve time and energy so in an attempt to bring all the groceries inside in one trip I loaded up one hand with the bags and started to flip the box of Diet Coke with the other to expose the handle. Right about the time the handle was finally exposed was the same moment that I accidentally poked through the box with the metal arm seat release. Coke started to spew everywhere. The bags were dropped. The box carefully removed from the metal arm and ripped open to determine the damage. I don't know how I punctured two cans, but I did.

It was a lot of work to clean up the truck and those stinking cans are still waiting in the kitchen for me to clean.- I better go do that. Here is a picture of how I had to carefully carry the cans inside.  Maybe I should start calling the blog - occasional rants of a klutz.