Whoa! Hang on.
I don’t know what to make of this thing that just happened — this ‘God thing,’ as my Presbyterian pastor wife Catherine would say.
I’ll admit up front that I’m uncomfortable talking about God. I’m private about my beliefs, though, as mentioned above have been a pastor’s husband for many years. Mainly, I’m uncomfortable because God is, well, hard to explain, at least to my degenerating brain. But I do believe in Her.
As many know I have Lewy Body dementia and I’m using this blog to promote awareness of this disease which has no cure. The backbone of the blog, which I started several weeks ago, are reviews of my vinyl record collection. The number of records I’ve collected over the years is 678.
I have pledged to review them all, disease be damned.
Yesterday, Oct. 18, 2017, I wrote a blog post called “Broken legs, basketball, Lewy body and workarounds.”
I referenced a well-known study, called the Nun’s Study. The study found that positive thoughts or some other unknown brain stimuli may help avoid the ravages of Alzheimer’s and presumably, other dementias. Even when later autopsies found brains filled with the plaques and tangles that indicate Alzheimer’s disease, some of those nuns showed no symptoms during their lives.
I find this very positive and have mentioned the study before about how I hope my brain can develop ‘workarounds’ to stop or mitigate the damage by Lewy bodies, those unwanted proteins that are killing my brain cells.
Then, scanning the NYT article about the nuns, a number jumped out at me. From the New York Times (the circle is mine).
So got that? The total number of nuns in the study? 678.
Whoa. 678..
That’s the same number of albums I own and will review on myvinylcountdown.com
I got goosebumps.
Catherine got goosebumps.
Goosebumps from God.