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When’s the last time you changed your mind — and heart — about something really important?

Were you eager to tell your friends that you had been wrong before and you’d seen the light? Or were you hesitant to let people know? Were you sheepish about telling people that you had abandoned what you had believed was true? Did you struggle to explain how you could have believed one thing and then abandoned that faith or belief or person for something entirely different?

If you’re anything like me, you experience some internal discomfort — a sense of cognitive dissonance — about having to make major internal changes. There’s something in us that wants to be consistent with what we’ve said and done in the past.

And that ego-driven desire to be consistent with our past errors frequently keeps us stuck with our mistakes. It turns out that any serious positive growth in our lives is blocked until we can cast aside our old errors and admit our past choices were wrong. That is incredibly difficult for some people.

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The cats pretend they’re not excited, but I know better. They’re just as happy as I am that Lucy came to live with us, so they’re celebrating — in their own dignified feline ways — the second anniversary of Lucy joining us.

When she came to live with us, Lucy was terrified of the world. The people who had rescued her and worked with her before she came to us declared that she would always be a “special-needs doggie” who wouldn’t do very well and would probably never warm up to people.

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Women who have had children have been the best source of perspective for me about the pain that comes from gallbladder problems. Every woman I’ve talked with who has had children and also had gallstones that led to a cholecystectomy tell me that their gallbladder problems were 10 times more painful than any childbirth.

I’ll never be able to make that comparison myself — thank goodness — but I can definitely say that the pain I experienced off and on last month was the most intense pain I’ve ever felt. I’m glad it’s behind me.

Since I’ve gotten several emails over the last week asking how I’m recovering, I’ll give a brief update about how things are going.

It’s been 17 days since surgery and I’m not far from declaring myself back to normal. There was a lot of pain for the first week, but I had pain medication to help me deal with the issues. Believe it or not, one of the worst aspects of the recovery was being unable to sleep on my stomach for about 10 or 12 days. Since that’s primarily how I sleep, it was difficult to get rest on my back.

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