Tag: Oregon

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Too Many Veterans Are Committing Suicide.

Thanks to all of you who have been joining me here. We help bring change to lives. The response has been wonderful.  We just past 3,9792 new subscribers. That was a huge increase in 2016. We only had 1,000 two years ago. In 2017 help us to make it to 4,000.

We are only 8 away of reaching our goal.  We will be giving a prize to the person who is our 4,000th person to subscribe. Somebody will win in the next few days. 

Help us make it to 4,000 by subscribing today if you haven’t already. This shows you care for veterans. Just click on the icon right after the title of this post and click on FEEDBLITZ , and the posts will come straight to your inbox.                            ____________________________________________________________

Doug Bolton, the founder of the blog, Signs of Hope, which is at www.dailysignsofhope.com, has written a new book, “Signs of Hope for the Military: In and Out of the Trenches of Life.” It reaches out the many military and veterans who may be battling anxiety, fear, depression, addictions, rejections, and the many other usual suspects. There are 22 military connected suicides every day. That is almost one every hour. Doug wants to help stop those statistics.  

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This is a new social network just for veterans. I joined it and made instant friendships with veterans who want to talk about what I want to talk about. Please check it out. You will be glad you did. 

https://www.rallypoint.com/join/spc-douglas-bolton

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We have just added a fantastic product for people who are suffering from PTSD. I have looked at the video myself. It is a little long, but it is very valuable. Go to   https://sites.google.com/site/v4vweaponspackage/  to see for yourself. It will change your life if you suffer from PTSD. 

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It has been far too long since I last posted here. My apologizes, and I hope I will be posting on a regular basis from now on. Today I am speaking about suicide. A tough subject, but needs to be addressed.

I had a wonderful Veteran’s Day. I was asked to be a speaker that a Veterans Day event in Sherwood, Oregon.

There were two other speakers ahead of me. They were excellent, and I began to worry if my talk would be good enough. They asked me to share some of my military experiences, and share about a non profit I am a board member for called, Victory for Veterans Foundation.

I started out telling stories about my basic training, and deployment, plus my after deployment time. The audience was laughing at some of my stories and I felt much more comfortable. All of my military stories are actually also written in a book called, Signs of Hope for the Military: In an Out of the Trenches of Life. (Keep coming back to find when it will be published.)

I moved on to talking about the Victory for Veterans Foundation, and the audience was dead silent. I knew they would be, because I talked about suicide. They were also told a bunch of statistics and they were saddened. Here are some of the statistics I shared:

  • 22 Veterans commit suicide to end their own lives daily.
  • Many veterans are struggling with PTSD, TBI, depression, etc.
  • There are far too many homeless veterans in our nation.
  • Many are on assistance for food. (My brother-in-law is in charge of taking meals out to needy people, and he told me that out of 100 meals he delivers in a week, 75 of them are military families.)
  • A good number are unemployed, because their training doesn’t fit many jobs in the private sector.

There is more, but I am sure you get the picture.

Victory for Veterans Foundation, reaches out to these heroes and give them the help they need. We need to reach out and help these warriors to stop them from suicide.

Go to http://www.victoryforveterans.org to find how you can help out.

If you are a veteran stand strong and be proud of how you served your country. Stand strong against all the dark side fears.

Here is a helpline that runs 24/7

1-800-273-8255

Remember:

You are never alone.

You are never forsaken.

You are never unloved.

And above all…

Never, ever, give up!

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It Always Hurts When You Lose

There is been a steady surge in subscribers to our RSS feed lately. We now have 218 subscribers. That is wonderful. We have had 234 new ones in the last month. Keep up the great work by helping us climb up in the Google Search Rankings. Just click on the icon right after the title to do that.

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Another shocking announcement! ( That got your attention!) “Signs of Hope: Ways to Survive in an Unfriendly World, ” is now out in eBook form. You can acquire it at all the eBook outlets. It is only $4.99 compared to $19.99 in the bookstores. You can even order it right from this site by clicking on the Amazon icon on the right.

If you want a hard copy, with the autograph of the author on it, just click on the bookstore tab at the top of this page to order one. It is only $15.99 plus shipping compared to the $19.99 price in the retail stores.

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I have a podcast here that I did with John Kremer, the marketing guru. He invited me to share unusual places to sell books. Take a listen and hit those streets running: goo.gl/WGTF7.

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I will be doing a short post tonight. I am ill with some kind of crud.

I got the crude from a plane ride full of sick people. Talk about a trapped environment.

I was coming home from San Antonio, Texas, after my team, The Oregon State University Beavers football team lost to Texas, in a heart breaker. We were ahead the whole game except for the last two minutes. We lost 31-27.

It was a great trip except for that loss. Lots of great restaurants, and many fun times with friends.

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How do you handle a loss? In our lives we face many losses and victories. The victories are nice, but those losses seem to come around when you least want them to.

I was devastated for a while. Especially after the game when we had to hear the taunts from the Texas fans.

The hurt was hard to handle, but I regrouped and went on.

That is what we need to do with life in general. “Things,” will happen to us. We will feel devastated. That is the point we will have to get ourselves up off the ground and keep going.

By the way… God is always there for you. He won’t stop the trials and storms, but He will be there to calm them.

Remember:

 You are never alone.

You are never forsaken.

You are never unloved.

And above all…never, ever, give up!

 

 

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Life is Tough and Then You Die

It would be nice if you would take a minute and sign-up for the RSS feed to the site. Google ranks sites according to the amount of RSS feed subsribers they have. If you haven’t already signed up please do it now.

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I am happy to announce that we now have a bookstore over at our blog: www.dailysignsofhope.com. It was just added a few weeks ago.

The book, “Signs of Hope: Ways to Survive in an Unfriendly World,” is also there to be ordered.

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What follows is an actual excerpt from the book, “Signs of Hope: Ways to Survive in an Unfriendly World.” This book reaches out to those who suffer from anxiety, fear, depression, addictions, self-doubt, and hopelessness.

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LIFE IS TOUGH AND THEN YOU DIE

 

Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning. 

—Psalm 30:5

 

GOD DIDN’T PROMISE us a rose garden—besides, there are thorns in a rose garden. He allows us to go through the storms. He wants us to learn from them and grow.

We question if God is still there for us when we have a crisis. Things pile up and we wonder, 

Where are You, God? He allows things to happen that are very hard to understand. Why would He let bad things happen to us? 

The psalmist wondered the same thing. In the psalms, crying and wailing come out with a vengeance. Psalms can be also joyful and uplifting, but some of them are not joyful, and they teach us that it is OK to question God. It is OK to voice your true feelings to Him. He knows how to handle your feelings—even your anger. 

Despair and anger are combined in Psalm 89:46–47: 

How long, O LORD? Will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire? …For what futility you have created all men! 

In our world today there is much despair and anger. There are gang wars, school shootings, sex abuse, battered wives, seniors getting scammed, racists and terrorists. All of these could cause even the strongest Christian to act on that anger. You have choices. You could seek justice like a vigilante. You could forget it and let it build up inside you, or you could turn it over to God, who is the only Supreme Court Justice in heaven. 

He will judge those who have wronged others. 

We should never stop being angry or sad about what happens in the world, but we need to turn it over to God, and let Him bring peace in our life. 

Too many people have decided that acceptance of wrong is much easier than trying to fight it. Some live in their own little world and go on as if nothing were happening around them. 

I saw this in action when I was in the military. Uncle Sam had me stationed in Korea, and we were traveling through Seoul, Korea. I saw an old woman sitting and leaning against a wall. She was begging for help because she was ill and starving. No one stopped. They just kept on walking by. 

All military personnel had been instructed that under no circumstances were we to get out of our vehicles—just keep going. This was because if you tried to help someone they could claim you were the one that caused the problem and then get a big settlement from the government. There were rumors of Korean parents throwing their children in front of army trucks to collect a settlement. We retraced our route on the way back to camp. By then, the woman had fallen over and was dead. 

I was very angry. I felt helpless. I wasn’t allowed to help the woman, and she died because of that. 

I didn’t know if I could make any difference in life. Could one person out of the billions of people on this earth make a difference? 

My mother once remarked that she didn’t know why she should get out of bed anymore. She has macular degeneration (partial blindness) and has to use a walker. Her two main loves (besides my brother and me, of course!) were reading and working in the garden. Now she cannot do either of them. I could understand completely what she meant, but it hurt me deeply that she felt that way. I again felt that same helplessness because I wasn’t able to help her. 

Why keep going on? The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The weak fall by the wayside. You spend your whole life trying to have a good retirement, and the cost of living eats up all of your income. Evil seems to win—and good seems far away. 

The prisoners in the holocaust had all the reasons to be depressed and to commit suicide. They didn’t do that because they kept clinging to their faith in God. 

Is that the secret? By just turning our hurts, frustrations and failures over to God, we can have peace? Of course we can. God is the key. If there is no God, anything goes, but everything is meaningless. 

If you stay the course, and always let God hold your hand, everything will have meaning, things will come into focus, and everything will fall into place. 

As of this writing, my mother is still alive. She is 94 and lives in an assisted living home. She has trouble understanding why she has to be the way she is as far as her health. The world is coming to the stage where 100-year-old people are more common than ever. But many of them are clinging to life assisted by a machine, or they do not have a quality of life that they prefer. 

We have developed many new drugs to help people live longer, but we haven’t invented ways to make them happy. We spend millions to help the poor in our country and other countries, but the number of starving children in Oregon alone is growing at an alarming rate.

Its got to the point that there is an AIDS epidemic. School drop-out rates are at an all-time high. Pornography can be found for free on the internet. We thought that we sent racism away in the 70s, but it is still staining our society today. 

It is no wonder that we feel depression, despair and apathy. This world is not a rose garden anymore. The thorns are tearing at our skin, and leaving scars that won’t go away. 

Let me make something very clear: God will take the world as you see it today and make it into the world He wants. I’ve read the end of the book—and we win. The end is all set, and it is up to us to believe it. 

So—can you make an impact on the world? You are just one grain of sand on the beach. Can you make a difference? God thinks you can. He made you with a purpose in mind. Yes, I said you.

As you read this book, God has a plan for you. God just needs you to ask Him what it is. You can make a difference for others in this tough world. 

I used the Psalms as an example of despair and anger. Now let the psalmist soothe you and let you know God is there for you and will carry your burdens for you. 

Trouble and distress have come upon me, but your commands are my delight. 

—Psalm 119:143 

Give your burdens to the LORD, and he will take care of you. He will never let the righteous fall. 

—Psalm 55:22 

Look to my right and see; no one is concerned for me. I have no refuge; no one cares for my life. I cry to you, O LORD; I say, “You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living. Listen to my cry, for I am in desperate need: rescue me from those who pursue me, for they are too strong for me.” 

Psalm 142:4–6

(Think of the Korean woman dying on the street.) 

When I said, “My foot is slipping,” your love, O LORD, supported me. When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul. 

Psalm 94:18–19 

(This should be our prayer any time we are depressed or sad. We can read it to God and let Him comfort us.) 

Further Adventures 

There are times when you feel so low that you are not sure you can make it through the day. Use this time to pray. Sit quietly with God and share your deepest feelings. Do not hide anything. (God knows even your inner thoughts.) Let Him know that you need to lean on Him completely right now, and He will pick you up and carry you the rest of the way. 

Something to Ponder 

Isn’t it funny that God knows our every move, but we go on like He is not watching us?

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NEVER, EVER, GIVE UP!

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This was an actual excerpt from the book, “Signs of Hope: Ways to Survive in an Unfriendly World.” You can order the complete book, by clicking on the “Bookstore,” tab at the top of this page. There is a special sale going on right now. In the Retail stores the price is $19.99, but on this site it is only $15.99. The shipping has been cut in half as well. A total savings of over $6.00.