I Was Thinking of You ALL on October 11th!
The October Fire Event Baptism by Fire!
orders left me in such knee pain at night and so tired, I could hardly stand it! Your CLOUD PLEDGES were so encouraging... and paying the bills and getting the Shipping Room stocked was so thrilling... and getting The Victory Wagon licensed and insured so amazing... and receiving all your letters and phone calls of "Hang in There!" so inspiring, that I cortically overrode the immediate fatigue and knee pain and looked to October 1st, when I could get away to my "spot in The Wilderness" and work uninterrupted to finish Common Health Sense #3 & #4.
I succumbed to the knee pain a number of nights with 2 aspirin! What relief! The aspirin would, indeed, just as the advertisements promise, relieve the pain. But I knew what an oxymoron it was for an Hygienist to be taking pain killers. So I searched our Dr. Shelton's teachings against aspirin and stopped the sweet, palliating habit. Still, there were some nights in bed when the knee pain was so great and I was so tired that The Word would elude me. And I would sink down into the comfortable "nest" of my bed and think that death, itself, would not be that bad an alternative to my present moment. These faltering moments are what made it... "The Worst of Times."
It was during such nights that I would think about all of you, to comfort myself. After all, it was just "physical pain." The "emotional pain" of failing at my God-given calling and of letting GetWell go down from lack of my ability to muster up support would have been a thousand times more difficult to endure. Convinced I needed new knees, I comforted myself with the hope that, in time, funds would be forthcoming for that, too.
Then, I got smart. One day in July, with a huge amount of physical labor to do that included carrying many 50 pound boxes up 5 stairs and into the Shipping Room and then unboxing and stocking the shelves and then filling the orders, I got smart. I decided to spend some of your donation money on help! I got in my old convertible and drove out the driveway, determined to give my knees a break.
Not even 2 blocks down the street, a group of teenagers were hanging out. I can still communicate with teenagers naturally, after all those years teaching them. And I perched up on the top of the driver's seat to look over the crew and entreated: "Does anyone here want to make $50.oo?" I had my eye on
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I thoroughly understand, now, how Charles Dickens could present the oxymoron: "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." These 2 can occur simultaneously. Still, Scripture tells us we are not to go by feelings or by day-to-day assessments: we are to go by faith, by hope, and by The Word of God.
The year 2000 surely had presented "The Best of Times" for my 15 years of effort to carry on "Dr. Shelton's Natural Hygiene Revival to The People." ALL of you and your unselfish love had taken GetWell, back in April, from $1.57 in the bank and a Shipping Room so empty I did not even have scotch tape and mailing labels and envelopes, let alone stocked books and goods to sell, nor did I have money to print Common Health Sense #3 & #4 to a Shipping Room stocked for a year with shipping supplies and #3 & #4 completely financed! By October 1st, the shelves were well stocked, anticipating today's December "Final Photocopy Sale" to all of you and The Right Website for Natural Hygiene and an 80-page News Bulletin to go out to 5,000 GetWell Friends who have not heard from me in 3 years!
all thanks to the collective efforts of the 254 who, after my April appeal, had just, plain made donations of $1.oo to $11.oo or more for 6 months or more! And all thanks to the other 257 GetWell Friends who had been placing orders and/or subscribed at one point in the past to #3 & #4. GetWellHStayWell, America! had been lifted up above impossibilities into THE CLOUDS, above financial worries. And within a matter of months from that October 1st "Best of Times," it looked very promising that GetWell would become financially stable, and in time, would even prosper to the point of helping others struggling across The Nation to bring "The Message & Promise of Natural Hygiene " to The People, sick and suffering, or well and wanting more energy!
But it was also "The Worst of Times." I did not share with you, throughout this April til now, that my knees have been really hurting. From May until October, I put in so many hours a day on my feet. A knee injury I had sustained 6 years ago had been keeping me from normal movement. Although my walk looked normal, I could not do stairs or jump or run or dance about, without debilitating pain. The long hours I put in carrying boxes and stocking shelves and filling
