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I went for my spirometry test yesterday. The test measures lung function and my doctor wanted me to have it to see how much damage 36 years of smoking have done to my lungs.

My results were normal!

In my post titled Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease I mentioned I believed God healed me of the damage infections had done to my lungs over the years and, in my mind, these results support that belief.

My lungs have felt clearer since the night of the healing and now it seems they are as healthy as would be expected for a person of my age, height, weight and race who has never smoked.  Given that I have smoked for 36 years and have been a heavy smoker, more than 50 cigarettes per day, for many years I think this result is pretty miraculous.

The test was done three times to make sure the results were not just a fluke and then the lady administered three shots of ventolin.  We waited ten minutes then did the test again to see what effect the ventolin had on my performance.

It made me perform slightly worse which surprised her.

I still have to arrange to have my chest x-rayed to be sure there is no cancer so I have to pull my finger out and make an appointment.

It seems, to me, that God has healed me and I don’t understand why.

I don’t deserve to be healed!  I’m still smoking!

Don’t get me wrong.  I still have some damage but it seems to be in my airways rather than my lungs.  My air passages are irritated and inflamed as far as I can tell and that is what is causing the wheeze and cough.  The shortness of breath is, I strongly suspect now, being caused by a weakened heart.  If my lungs are fine something must be causing the breathlessness and the heart is the only other thing I know of that could cause that.  I have been getting chest pain occasionally lately which is what makes me suspect damage to my heart too.

I’m a little annoyed that God has healed my lungs to be honest.

Irritated airways would probably be fixed if I stop smoking and a weakened heart would probably respond pretty well to me giving up smoking too.

Damaged lungs stay damaged.  There is no going back from that and I have always justified my continued smoking on the grounds that the damage is done so why quit now.

If God has healed that damage and all that is left is treatable damage then that argument for continuing to smoke falls flat.

It can be most annoying having a God who knows me so well!  I am convinced he knew permanent lung damage would cause me to settle in and never quit smoking.  By taking that away I am left with no excuse.  Just a cough that grows more distressing every week and now it seems medication won’t help it!  I can’t believe the ventolin had no beneficial effect!

I can feel myself moving towards giving up smoking despite all my resistance to the idea.  When you pray “Thy will be done” and mean it God has a tendency to make it happen with, or without, your full co-operation.

I am thinking about giving up smoking for the first time in my life so that is a huge improvement!

It’s not the only improvement in me lately either.

I seem to have changed status from “addicted” to “reluctant” gambler recently.

I have, somehow, regained some of my former control over my gambling but remain unable to quit entirely so far.

I’m still playing the pokies but I have regained enough control to be able to stick to the limits I have imposed on myself.

I never play more than 5 lines, I never go to the ATM for money more than once, I don’t expect to win and I stop when I have lost the set amount of money.

I had my biggest win of all the other night when I walked away from a situation that would have cost me hundreds before!  There is no way I could have resisted the urge to keep playing previously but I did this time and winning the battle with my own addiction was more thrilling than winning all the money in the world!

It isn’t enough.  My goal is to stop gambling completely.  I am only losing small amounts now but any loss is too much as far as I am concerned so I will continue to wage war on my habit until it has been relegated to history.

I’ve also won a bit of a victory in the battle to get over the guy I have been pining for now for seven years.

Somehow my desire for him has been over-riding reality and I have imagined he has been waiting for me like I have been waiting for him but that belief shattered recently.

I’m not sure where my new beliefs came from.  Perhaps they were in my subconscious all along just waiting to break free.  They are things I have been trying to tell myself all these years but have never before been able to really believe.

It’s been seven years.  No man alive can stay celibate for seven years for a woman he never even kissed!  He is a desirable man and has women throwing themselves at him whenever he performs so it is not like he couldn’t get a woman.  He would have a struggle to avoid getting one!

From out of nowhere I am now convinced he is in a relationship with someone and I am a strange sort of person.  No matter how I feel about a man – I don’t want him if he belongs to someone else.  I don’t know how or why that happens but it happens.  I simply lose all interest in a man if I know for certain he is with someone else.

I know for certain my unrequited love is whispering words of love to another woman and I have simply lost interest in him.

Something else has reinforced that loss of interest too.  He is now 50 and, to my knowledge, he has no children.  All these years I have believed he has no children because he doesn’t want children.

Suddenly I am now convinced he DOES want children of his own some day.  A man can father children at any age so he has never had any time limit for when he has his children.  Having children has been something he can do whenever he is ready and I believe he plans to do that some day.

Having children with me, however, is not an option.  I have passed through menopause and can no longer bear children for any man.

There is no way I would ever get involved with a young man because I would not want to be responsible for depriving him of his chance at being a father.

We may be the same age, my unrequited love and I, but I am too old for him.  I couldn’t let him commit to me even if he wanted to.  Not if he wants to be a father some day!

So I am letting him go and I am moving on.  Suddenly my reluctance to commit to renting a place with my children has gone.  I realise now I have been dragging my feet a bit there.  In the back of my mind I was hoping my unrequited love would come back into my life.

I wanted to be free to move in with him or follow him around the world – whatever he wanted me to do.  If I moved in with my kids it would have required major upheaval to be with him if he wanted me.

The kids would not be able to afford the rent without me so they would have to move too if I left.  Now it doesn’t matter because I won’t be going anywhere.

So now I am house hunting with the kids in earnest.  I am seriously considering giving up smoking.  I am trying to lose weight to get rid of the pain in my thigh and I am almost ready to pick up where I left off in my career.

I’m feeling stronger and starting to get interested in going for a promotion at work.  There is a job available now but I am not quite ready yet.  Another chance will come along soon enough and I think I might be ready by then.

Life goes on and along with my losses I am picking up some gains.  Can’t ask for more than that now can you hehehe.

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