Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 645 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

The Fall, Life Lessons Learned The Hard Way – Wisdom Unplugged

Thank you for joining us for our 5 days per week wisdom and legacy building podcast. This is day 645 of our trek, and it is time for a 3-minute mini-trek called Wisdom Unplugged. Today we are taking a break from our normal wisdom nugget to update you and chronicle a major life event that will change life for me for several months to come. In fact, I would say that it will certainly impact me for the remainder of my life. It is my hope and prayer that as I share that it will also positively impact your life as well. I have often said, we must accept and live life as it truly is, not as we wished it to be. I guess I also must practice what I preach. So for the next several Tuesday and Thursday Wisdom Nuggets episodes, we will look at...

The Fall, Life Lessons Learned the Hard Way

First, for my faithful readers and regular listeners to my Wisdom-Trek Podcast and Journal, I want to apologize for the delay in episodes over the past couple of days.  I will get caught up on all the days and get back on schedule as soon as feasible.2017 is turning out to be a year of life-changing and very challenging moments for the Chamberlain family, as I have mentioned in several podcasts and weekly newsletters previously. On April 15th our granddaughter Hazel was diagnosed with leukemia.  This has been a life-altering event for the entire family, and her path to recovery is a long two-year process, with the potential for many twists and turns along the way. We are already realizing this as her immune system has been too low this past month for the normal treatment regime. I will keep you posted of her progress in the intro comments to our podcast as they become available.

This past weekend yet another life-altering event took place. Here is the beginning of my story that started this past Saturday. I enjoy working outside on the weekends, and this past Saturday was no different. The storms of last week brought down a sizeable limb near our house, and Saturday I was in the process of clearing it and cutting it up for firewood. I had previously asked my brother to also help me cut a limb from a tree in front of our house that was growing over our front porch.

When Jack and his grown son Rob returned from work, they came over to assist.  While I strive to be safe when using power tools, I did not fully grasp the dangers that are inherent when you mix a combination of a large chainsaw, an extension ladder, a fairly sizeable tree limb, and a cement sidewalk. As my mind has flashed back dozens of times to the events of Saturday, the foolishness of my task is now so evident.

I felt that two grown men steadily holding the ladder would provide the platform needed to remove the limb safely. It was not large in diameter, only about 4 inches, but it turned out to be longer than I realized.

I climbed the ladder with the chainsaw to a secure footing height of about 10 feet and began to cut it off.  We were nearly through the limb when it seized the chainsaw blade, which became wedged in place. Jack pulled the limb to the side while I freed the chainsaw and made the final small cut. None of us realized that when I finished the cut that the tension on the tree limb would kick the chainsaw backward propelling me, and the chainsaw, away from the ladder.

Although it is difficult to remember all the details as it happened pretty fast, I do remember that I kept the chainsaw away from my body as I rotated to my left. As I dropped the chainsaw safely away from myself, Jack, and Rob I had rotated to where the left side of my body was parallel to the ground, but there was also a cement walkway,