One Pastor's Perspective

Jay Bilas said it well on SportsCenter this morning . . . “If the Tarheels want to be in Atlanta in a few weeks playing in the Final Four, they will have to rediscover the toughness they have lost in the last three weeks.” You are correct, Jay! Georgia Tech played a great game last night, but there was plenty of room for UNC to win that game. And, they lost. Again.

I think they need to go a read the legends of the Tar Heel. Interesting to read the legends (there are five or six) of how that nickname came to pass. Somehow it is related to the fact that North Carolina used to be a huge supplier of tar and terpentine. It is said to have been an insult, OR a compliment of how NCers don’t run in battle. My suggestion is that Roy Williams gets some tar and really sticks it on their heels . . . It couldn’t make things any worse!

Do you have a living will? That was a question asked of me before I had my gall bladder surgery two years ago. It really freaked me out. So, when I pre-registered for my surgery, I produced one.

As we talked about it, I wanted to say “Dr Bollick said this was A SNAP! Why do you keep asking me this and what more is there to this that I am not getting??” Then, when I got there the day of the surgery, they could not find it and made a HUGE deal out of it. That really did not do much to instill confidence, but we all got through it. (And, as Dr Bollick said, it WAS a snap)

Truth is, I have been in those hospital halls long enough to know that anything can happen, and those nurses were only doing their jobs when they made the big deal about the living will. And I appreciate them for it. We are fortunate here in Florence to have the level of medical care available to us. I have been in the new part of the Pavilion Tower at McLeod several times lately, and it is really nice and MODERN.

Back to the topic: Do YOU have a living will? Have you ever thought about the extent to which you would want your families and doctors to go in preserving life? Now, ALL of us want them to do EVERYTHING POSSIBLE to save us in an emergency, but what about life support when there is zero quality of life? At what point would you want your family to stop and allow nature to take over?

A hard thought for younger adults today, but something I see all of the time. You might want to think about it and write something down. You could be saving your family from a horrible decision by having a living will . . . Do it for THEM!