A Plan and a Prayer

I saw this Philosoraptor picture on Facebook the other day and smiled because he's is spot on, as usual.

"If God has a plan for everybody, then why do people pray for change?"

I hear this bandied about often among my heathen friends, usually with a perplexed expression. We struggle to understand how people can muddle through life with so much cognitive dissonance.

But if you're one of the True Believers of the Abrahamic faiths, you probably believe that God has a hand in your life to some degree, and you probably still pray for assistance of some sort. Do you see the irony?

This verse is quoted often:

Matthew 10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. (NIV)

But what is it saying? That God lets little sparrows die, and that he knows about it and still lets them get eaten, get sick, freeze to death, starve, get diseased, and does nothing? If he lets sparrows suffer and have hard lives, what do you think he does for his favored creation? (hint: read your bible and find out! It's not pretty!)

I told you of the little boy I babysat for, when I was in my teens. He was born with a terrible defect in his heart. Did God let that defect happen? Did God have that child be born into a life of years of pain and intense suffering? Why would he do that? (By the way, humans and modern medicine were what saved him and let him live at all.)

And religious people, stop right there. Save your apologetics for yourself. I am not interested in your twisting of reality, your logical fallacies, your cognitive dissonance. You worship a deity who lets innocent children be born and suffer their whole lives and you make excuses for that monster.

I've never ever heard an argument that can fully explain the god of the bible in terms that are completely loving and caring. If you do, then you are cherry-picking out only a tiny fraction of the content of your holy book. You are a cafeteria christian, and therefore I am not interested in arguing with you either.

So God has a plan for all of us, right? In fact, in Romans, it says we are predestined. Well, more specifically God predestines those who will follow him. This chapter also has a bit about prayer which is relevant to us today, so here is the whole section:

Saying Grace

The big holidays are fast approaching, especially here in the U.S. Thanksgiving is less than a week away, then Christmas. For many, it's a time for family and friends to get together and eat way too much delicious food.

As a Pastafarian, I celebrate Holiday which is the whole holiday season and requires nothing formal. But my husband and I also do the traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with his family.  

Since everyone knows I'm a happy godless heathen, no one ever asks me to say a prayer before our meal. But I also get together with my fellow heathens for dinner near these two holidays, and so I thought it might be nice to have something to say.

I looked up some definitions and found that prayer and invocations are both fairly religious terms, namely to beg to a god. 

But this morning I thought, oh, what about grace? What does grace actually mean? There are many definitions but here is one I particularly like:

Grace: favor or goodwill. Synonyms: kindness, kindliness, love, benignity (what an awkward word that is!)

On that same page I found the following Word Story:

¡Gracias! Grazie! When a Spanish or Italian speaker says thanks, they are invoking one of the meanings behind the word grace. That’s because grace, gracias, and grazie all descend from the same Latin word, gratia. For the ancient Romans, gratia had three distinct meanings: (1) a pleasing quality, (2) favor or goodwill, and (3) gratitude or thanks. We find all three of these meanings in modern-day English. The first when we describe someone as having (or not having) grace: “Dancing, she had all the grace of an elephant on skates.” The second when we talk about giving or getting grace: “by the grace of God.” And the third when we say grace (i.e., “thanks”) at a meal. So if you have something to be grateful for, you can say thank-you, gratia, gracias, or grazie.

While I can skip the god bit, I like the idea of being thankful. None of us is an island, so it's good to reflect on our interconnectedness and interdependence with our fellow humans, and all other life.

Around this time of year, I usually think of all the things I'm grateful for, and to whom I owe thanks.

It's good (and human) to have traditions with those you care about, it's good to be mindful of events and markers in your lives, to honor those who deserve it when appropriate.

Here are some things you can say if you are asked to say grace at a meal:

Preying on the Weak

Yesterday I was 'blessed' to receive the following letter. Lucky for me (and you!) I opened it.

Of note on the front of the envelope:

• Postage states this is a nonprophet organization (pun intended)


• A 'very old church' - ooh.. must be hundreds of years old, maybe even going all the way back to Jesus' time!


• Vague message. What does it mean to be blessed, anyway?


• My home first! I'm so blessed!


• Someone went super crazy with the red highlighter. Calm down and step away from the office supplies, Jesus Christ!

The back of the envelope is really trying to get my attention, if the front wasn't enough.

Of note on the back of the envelope:

• Very smart. They give me web addresses I can go to.


• More red underlining. Ok, Jesus. Calm the feck down.


• Oh! the letter is blessed! Awesome!


• Very vague

The two websites are similar. They have a lot of bible verses, text in bold, and text in red. They say if you send in your prayer to them, they will pray 5 times a day for you.

BiblicalPrayer.com offers a free gift, a Blessed Cross,  "one of the most beautiful crosses in the world" which looks cheap even in the pictures. It seems like you can get it for free. In the envelope they have for you to print out to send in your request, there's nothing in there about a donation. Even the postage is paid for you.

Apparently, this church started in 1951. That's not what I'd call "very old". They say on the one site that they used to have revivals where up to 20,000 church members would come. Now, for some reason instead of continuing with those, they are mainly by mail. The sentence sort of just ends at the bottom of the page so they don't explain.

Ok, on to the letter that came in the envelope!

The Results Are In

Hello! Remember 2 weeks ago I did Another Prayer Experiment?

If you recall:

• I prayed to the Abrahamic god for Butch to have his job situation improve (a promotion that was promised over a year ago to come through but didn't)¹


• I prayed to my computer, Einstein for my friend Jeff to sell an item for exactly $850 that he had purchased in a box lot for $5.  ²


• I also "prayed" (or had a talk with) myself to encourage myself to get off the weight loss plateau I had been on for about a week, to lose another pound.

The time frame was 13 days from when I prayed till May 1st. I didn't want it to be open ended because then there's no control in the experiment and it's too easy to post hoc rationalize some kind of false result, which I think is very common with prayers.

Drum roll, please!

• Butch didn't get his promotion. There was absolutely nothing that improved at his work, in fact his job satisfaction is still really low.


• Jeff didn't sell anything for $850. He didn't sell anything even marginally close to this amount.


• I lost a pound! In fact I lost 1.5 pounds!³

So, prayer to the Abrahamic god is just as effective as prayer to my computer at ZERO percent. Meaning completely INeffective. Although I would say in future studies both would be as good as chance.

But having a heart to heart with yourself and then taking action is, according to these results, quite effective! In fact, with this preliminary study, it was 100% effective. Of course, this was really a pilot study, so if you want to run the experiment yourself we can pool the data and come to better conclusions.

1. The chances of this promotion happening without something drastically changing were basically nil. I didn't tell Butch what I was doing in advance.


2. The chances of Jeff selling an item for exactly $850 that he had bought in a box lot were extremely slim, but not impossible. I didn't tell him the prayer in advance.


3. The chances of me increasing my exercise, reducing my caloric intake, and getting off the plateau I was on were fair, but not guaranteed by any means. I had a really hard time losing the pound! Full Disclosure: Unfortunately, I went to a potluck on Sunday, May 1st. I woke up Monday morning, after the experiment was over, 2 lbs heavier. Sigh!

Another Prayer Experiment!

I was thinking about a follow-up study to The Great Prayer Experiment. By the way, that prayer was April 7. It is now the 19th, 12 days later. Results: Null. Nothing. Nada. Nil. Nein.

So here's my new study.

1. Pray to God for something specific.


2. Pray to something else for something completely different and equally specific.


3. Ask myself for something specific.

See which, if any, produces results.

So what should I pray for? It needs to be tangible, not like the last prayer which was too open-ended (but it was a pilot study), and it needs to be within a set time frame. God should be able to handle this easily if he's omnipotent.

Here's my prayer to God (the Abrahamic God, to be specific):

The Great Prayer Experiment

I was told by a religious friend of mine recently that I had nothing to lose by reaching out to God and praying. If there's no God (which is my position, as you know), then saying a prayer does nothing but take up a minute or two of my time. But if God exists (and of course, she means her Abrahamic god), then I have everything to gain, because her god is a god of Love.

After thinking about it for awhile, I had to agree with her. There really is nothing to lose by praying. As a skeptic, sometimes you have to do research. So I thought I'd do an experiment with God.

Here is how I did it. First, she supplied me with a prayer by a former atheist who, once he said this, found God reaching out to him. So it (anecdotally) worked once already. Unfortunately his prayer would have been untrue for me.

Here it is as he said it originally:

Dear God,

I know (because I can prove it with the certainty that a geometer can prove opposite angles are equal) that you do not exist. Nevertheless, as a scholar I am forced to entertain the hypothetical possibility that I am mistaken. So just in case I am mistaken, please reveal yourself to me in some fashion that will prove your case.

If you do not answer, I can safely assume that either you do not care whether I believe in you or you have no power to produce evidence to persuade me. The former argues you are not beneficent, the latter not omnipotent - in either case, unworthy of worship. If you do not exist, this prayer is merely words in the air, and I lose nothing but a bit of my dignity. Thanking you in advance for your kind cooperation in this matter,

John Wright

First, in my view, John is wrong. As we just discussed in the comments of a previous article, there are atheists who feel we can "know" God doesn't exist. I'm not one of them. I come from the standpoint that you can't prove a negative (and the burden of proof lies on the person making the positive claim, so you don't have to)  Anyway, I can't say the first line. And I think he is weak in his request. He sets it up so that God can be any kind of confirmation bias (a pet peeve of mine). So I rewrote it a bit differently.

Some of his second paragraph is pretty good so I used it. Here is the prayer I came up with:

What's Your 'Favorite' Pseudoscience?

First, what is pseudoscience? Pseudoscience: a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific methodology, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status. Pseudoscience Hallmarks:

• Experimental results are not reproducible or able to be verified by others, sometimes through lack of openness of data


• Lack of effective controls (not properly randomized or double blinded, as the case may be)


• The scientific method has not been rigorously adhered to


• Not falsifiable (the result can not be disproved)


• Not testable


• Often overturns established science and proven laws of nature


• Vague scientific claims, often lack specific measurements


• Failure to define the operational terms so that others can independently measure or test them


• Failure to use Occam's Razor (the explanation that requires the fewest possible additional assumptions is usually the most accurate)


• Technical jargon or obscure language meant to confuse and sound like an authority in science


• Lack of boundary conditions (real science specifies limits where the predicted phenomena do and do not apply)


• Heavy reliance on testimonial and anecdotal evidence or personal experience


• Argument from ignorance (just because a claim hasn't been proven false, they say it must be true)


• Selection Bias (cherry picking the results to only use the hits and suppress the misses)


• Evades peer review before publicizing results

An Open Letter To Christians After The Arizona Shooting

We've all probably heard about the awful shooting in Arizona this past Saturday. My friend Edmund Metheny wrote an open letter to Christians and others in a note on Facebook. I liked it so much I asked him if I could share it with you and he agreed. So here it is, in its entirety:

To my Christian friends - and others

by Edmund Metheny

Since the shootings in Arizona, I have read numerous comments regarding the miraculous nature of the event. It was a "miracle" that Gabrielle Giffords survived, for example. I have read comments such as "God didn't do it, but he can turn a tragedy into a blessing if you just look, and take the time to see." I have even read comments to the effect that this evil only occurred because of a lack of faith in God.

I would like to provide you with an alternate viewpoint.

A miraculous event is not "a bunch of people got shot and some of them died and some of them lived." A miraculous event is "all the shooter's bullets turned into butterflies" or maybe "the shooter was struck dead by a bolt of lightning from a clear sky, just as he pulled the gun out" or "two she-bears appeared from nowhere and ripped the shooter to pieces." If the best that God can manage for a miracle in this case is six dead and fourteen injured, that is a weak-assed, pathetic loser miracle, and He should be ashamed.

What made this event less horrible than it might have been was not God - it was people. Heroic people who prevented the shooter from reloading. Heroic people who provided aid at the scene. Heroic people who worked tirelessly and quickly to give medical care to the injured. And it wasn't prayer that saved the injured. If prayer was going to do it, don't you think maybe someone could have done a bit more for Christina Taylor Green? Perhaps another verse of "Jesus loves the little children" might have done it?

God Is Either Evil Or Incompetent... Or Nonexistent

I was trying to explain to someone recently about the "Why Won't God Heal Amputees" argument. For privacy's sake, I won't talk about what she said, but I did end up with the following questions and arguments of my own.

This is one of those topics where atheists and believers are never going to be in the same book, never mind on the same page. Here is what I think about it.

God answers prayers every day for football players catching touchdown passes, for people finding their keys, for people being miraculously healed of cancer, for people spontaneously being cured of diseases who go to Lourdes. Mary and Jesus show themselves in toast, stains on walls, in bird poop, in window glass streaks. Every day, miracles happen.

But they are only ever events that could happen statistically. They never break the laws of physics, they never break the natural laws of the universe. Sure, it's very rare for someone to have a spontaneous remission in their cancer. But it does happen. It's improbable, not impossible. So it will happen in time.

But God never performs a miracle that is impossible. It's impossible for a limb to regrow on a human. But lizards do it all the time. Why would God let lizards regrow a tail and not some poor girl who had her leg cut off in a tribal war? Or because she was called a witch in Ghana? Or why can't a war hero, if he and his whole family pray hard enough, let him grow his arm back that he lost defending his country?

God is omnipotent, omniscient and all loving. But I've heard from christians many times that God follows his own rules. But why? He's God. Why doesn't he ever answer any really tough prayers? Why only the easy ones and the ones that are statistically improbable but not impossible? Why doesn't he ever cure someone who has prayed fervently to be cured of something like AIDs or cerebral palsy? Because that's impossible.

Videos to Show Your Christian Friends

Here are two videos that I found recently. They would be perfect to show your christian friends and family. They use the technique I've heard of for confronting someone's worldview. Basically you talk about something you agree on, or say something positive about the person, then appeal to that commonality or positive aspect to show the flaws in their thinking.

Why does every intelligent Christian disobey Jesus?



10 questions that every intelligent Christian must answer

I'm Now A True Believer of Intelligent Design!

I've recently purchased a very handy book that explains Intelligent Design so well that I must abandon my godless heathen ways and start believing. Praise be to my wonderful friend Dan who shared this deeply moving tome with me! May the Intelligent Designer bless you and actually answer your prayers!

I am sure you'll want to get this great book too. It's so easy to read, which is what I like. No big fancy words or concepts. It's called The Intelligent Design Coloring Book by Pastor Brett Pirkle. It's not just a coloring book, it also has other activities in at as well! What more could you ask for?

Be honest, wouldn't you rather read a fun book with pictures to color and "science glasses" to cut out and wear, than try to muddle through some dry old book like God Is Not Great by some guy who uses big words in a foreign language like British? I knew you'd agree.

Need more convincing? How about the picture of the front cover? This book is blissfully 100% Fact Free! What more can you ask for? Who needs boring old facts when you can just have Faith?

You're still not convinced? Boy, you sure are a Doubting Thomas. The Intelligent Designer is going to make you burn in Hell for all eternity if you don't start believing without evidence. You don't want that, do you? Do You?! No, I didn't think so!

Ok, here is an excerpt:

Faith and Science

Church and Mosque Collapses

A Facebook friend of mine wrote the following: "Google 'church collapse' and check out the number of results of people killed while in the act of praising their deity." So of course I did!

Church collapse: 10,400,000 results!

I am guessing that probably a third of those results are about how the church (as an institution) is collapsing. Which I think is great, if it's true. Also you have to figure that several stories all report on one collapse, so divide by 4 (as a really rough estimate). The number of recent church collapses (say the last couple of years) is about 1,730,000? Math is not my strong suit though, so let me know if I'm way off.

People dying is never something to praise, but it's amazing that so many churches collapse around the world and people still pray to those gods. If God can't even take care of his own buildings, what can he do for me?

And what about mosques?

Mosque collapse: 1,680,000 results!

With these results, I'd say divide by 4 to account for duplicate reports. I got 420,000 relatively recent mosque collapses. I guess Allah doesn't like the way people are bowing and scraping to him.

I'm Being Prayed For!

A pastor in Ohio has taken it upon himself to add me and a bunch of  "lost" godless heathens from Facebook to his prayer wall on his website. Why? Well, remember the rescue of the Chilean miners? My friend Mark made a poster and posted it on Facebook:



I commented on the picture and said I was going to share it with my friends, which I did on my HDC Facebook page. The pastor, Jeff Bobb, took it upon himself to have his congregation pray for us by name and asks that we be prayed for every day, to bring us before the throne.

I was added to the list the last week of October and I have to admit I've had my doubts lately about Christ. And I've had a terrible pain in my neck when I try to sleep. I think it's working! I think I'm cured of this horrible atheist affliction!

Dan Barker on Faux News Explains the National Day of Prayer

Dan Barker from the Freedom From Religion Foundation explains the unconstitutionality of the National Day of Prayer and how we are not a christian nation. And for once, Faux News has an intelligent conversation instead of trying to have a pissing match. (~ 5 minutes)



Obama still proclaimed the National Day of Prayer this year, even though the ruling said it was unconstitutional. The government is wasting good tax dollars appealing. Of course. Power hungry sycophants!

I guess we'll still keep holding the National Day of Reason until reason and the constitution prevail.

Cross-posted from Morgantown Atheists

Atheists Deserve A Community Too

The other day I received the following email:

Without criticizing or judging your page in any way, I just would like to ask you, why are you so vocal about your non-beliefs?
Can you see any correlation to the obnoxious holy-rollers that most people dislike?
Perhaps its just a need for self-expression, expressed. I guess it was the "Atheist/Humanist/Skeptical/Freethinker Group" poll that got me. Why do you need help to think freely? Or company? How is it not the antithesis of a prayer group?
I just think perhaps you need balance. I found mine, or the closest I've ever come to it, in the martial arts. Self-defense, but a wonderful integration of the physical and the spiritual, however one defines that, and although its frequently tied to a religion, that can be left to the individual.
I ran across the movie "The Secret" and found your website from a Google search entitled "the secret is bullshit".
Have a good one.
By the way, I am a political conservative and a Christian, although most would argue (if they were interested, which they are not) I am not a practicing one. Just a believer.

These days, when someone tries to subtly insult me, I usually just brush it off and move on. But this email reminded me that maybe I need to speak louder, slower and more clearly.

First, this blog is for atheists and skeptics, not christians and mindless believers. This blog is by a skeptical atheist for people who like to think and use their minds. If you don't like it, no one is making you read it. Go mind your own business elsewhere. I'm not coming into your backyard and whining. I'll thank you to give me the same courtesy.

How Far Does God Push The Faithful?

Apparently Abraham is the role model for how far god can push the faithful. Only in real cases, sometimes someone innocent actually dies. It seems that parents kill their children through denial of medical attention all too frequently these days. Often I don't blog about these sad stories because I am so enraged I don't feel I can do it without copious amounts of profanity and vitriol.

We have all heard about the Neumanns. They were both convicted of 2nd degree reckless homicide in the death of their 11 year old daughter Madeline. She had diabetes but it was undiagnosed. She died a horrible death at home, surrounded by praying sheeple who refused to call an ambulance until she stopped breathing. Doctors testified that Madeline could have been saved if she had received simple medical care like insulin and fluids before she stopped breathing.

The mother said that she and her husband believed their daughter's deteriorating condition may have been the result of a falling out with another couple, and called them once the girl was unconscious and persuaded them to come pray for the girl.

"I asked her if she loved Jesus," the mother testified. "She might have said yes. I know for sure she was acknowledging it. What sounds came out, I don't remember. She was making noises. ... My focus definitely was to pray."

Their lawyer told the jury that Neumann sincerely believed praying would heal his daughter and he did nothing criminally wrong.

"Dale Neumann was doing what he thought would work for his daughter. He was administering faith healing. He thought it was working."

What god would punish a young girl because her parents had a fight with another couple? Oh, right. The christian god. Of course. Dale Neumann had studied to be a pentecostal minister, but at the time of Madeline's death the family didn't belong to any organized religion. The mother said she didn't have anything against doctors either. Then why is her daughter dead? Oh, right, because it was a spiritual illness. Yeah, the prayer really was helping. I see why they decided to hold off on the tried and true medical care in favor of pleas to an invisible man in the sky. Go with what (doesn't) work, and keep doing it till your daughter is dead. Smart thinking.

"god can do everything if you pray a lot"

Supposedly the virgin mary has appeared on an air conditioner in Texas. Apparently America is getting bored with these sightings since they've become so common lately, because this is on the local news down there, but I haven't heard of it spreading yet.

Personally, I think it looks more like an alien coming out of somebody's stomach.

EDIT: Upon reflection, I am really thinking it looks like those things from Harry Potter, what the hell were they called? The soul eater things that guarded the prison? It totally looks like one of them.

Here's the whole writeup from the above link:

Valley resident finds what she believes is an image of the Virgin Mary on her air conditioning unit.
Antonia Ruiz Hernandez says the image has actually been on the unit for a couple of years.
Why the image appeared, Hernandez says, "I don't know probably a miracle in there. God can do everything if you pray a lot.”
Hernandez has built a makeshift shrine around the air conditioning unit.
She lives along Mile 10 in Mercedes and says people are welcomed to stop by her house and take a look for themselves.

So, god can do everything if you pray a lot. Is that so? I just had the weirdest idea. I'm sure it's not something I can do. Maybe I can enlist the help of a devout christian? Ash, maybe you can do it! :D What I am wondering is, if you prayed for one simple thing every day, how long would it take for that thing to come true, for god to make it happen?

If I prayed to god earnestly, as a test, I have a feeling he wouldn't listen to me, since I'm a rather vocal atheist (and god doesn't exist). But if someone really believed, and really prayed every day, are there rules that say that god would answer? Or are there so many excuses and loopholes that no matter how many years passed, no one would ever hold god to one simple prayer?

Are there any devout christians willing to pray for a miracle as an experiment? Let me know! Of course, there will be controls and such, and we can't just take your word for it. This would be a real, albeit unofficial, experiment.

Oh Lordy, Kill My Oppressors, Please!

Wiley Drake, a southern baptist preacher in California went on Fox News Radio's Alan Colmes show on June 2nd and said he's praying for god to kill President Obama. Drake used to be the 2nd vice president of the southern baptist convention.

Apparently there's a special kind of prayer from psalms where you ask god to kill people for you, to vindicate your innocence and relieve you of your oppressors. It's called imprecatory prayer.

Imprecate: To call down by prayer, as something hurtful or calamitous. To invoke evil upon; curse.

Drake prayed to his god for the death of Dr. George Tiller, who was murdered in his church on May 31st. Drake called his death an answer to prayer.

(emphasis of the following quotes are mine, with my comments interspersed)

"Imprecatory prayer is agreeing with God, and if people don't like that, they need to talk to God," Drake told syndicated talk-show host Alan Colmes. "God said it, I didn't. I was just agreeing with God."

Lame! Cop-out! 'Don't blame me, it's god's responsibility! I just pestered him till he did what i demanded!'

Asked if there are others for whom Drake is praying "imprecatory prayer," Drake hesitated before answering that there are several. "The usurper that is in the White House is one, B. Hussein Obama," he said.

Later in the interview, Colmes returned to Drake's answer to make sure he heard him right.

"Are you praying for his death?" Colmes asked.

"Yes," Drake replied.

"So you're praying for the death of the president of the United States?"

"Yes."

Colmes asked Drake if he was concerned that by saying that he might be placed on a Secret Service or FBI watch list, and if he believed it appropriate to talk or pray that way.

At least he's just praying, which we know to be completely ineffectual.

Betty Bowers and Edward Current Educate Us

It's time for some educational videos, my friends. Luckily these will hopefully make you crack up as well as teach you something.
Here's Edward Current in My Cat Is A christian, which of course, Miss Delilah is, otherwise her life would be meaningless! 1:56 minutes of hilarity.



I've heard of Betty Bowers but have never experienced her until just the other day. She's America's Best Christian, and she can teach us all quite a lot!
First, awhile ago she did this video explaining prayer to everyone else. Persistence counts, people! It's very informative and helpful. I'll have a bigger house with a real dishwasher, a maid, and a fireplace in no time! Woot! 4:07 minutes long.



Then a more recent, better edited video from just the other day, Betty takes the time to explain traditional marriage to everyone else. I thought I was happily married, but now I know the truth. Oh well. 4:14 minutes chock full of helpful information. Thanks, Betty!



Now we're all properly educated and blissfully informed! Yay! I had some silly old scientific studies to share, but when you are a good christian like Betty and Edward, you don't need stuffy old science at all!

Sometimes It Sucks To Be A Skeptic

I think I understand what it's like to be lost in a world of woo thinking. Maybe even an inkling of what it's like to believe in Jesus as your personal hero.

Butch, my awesome husband, came home Friday night and told me he felt awful. He and I both got a cold about 3 weeks ago and he shook if off in about 4 days while I suffered with a nasty chest cold, congestion and laryngitis until just the other day. I didn't want to hear that he was sick again. It was my birthday weekend, we were supposed to go out to dinner on Sunday (last night), and I was hoping we'd both be feeling well for a change.

Alas, it was not to be. He had a fever, the chills, and was completely miserable. And here's where I realized I felt totally helpless. I can't stand seeing someone I love sick. When Butch or my dogs or someone I care about has a problem or is in pain, I want to fix them. I want to make them at least feel better. But sometimes there's nothing you can do.