Oct 3, 2025 – Dictation

I have discovered that you can teach an old (or rather a middle-aged) right-handed dog new, left-handed tricks. I’m brushing my teeth much better now using my non-dominant hand. After the shoulder surgery, I felt like a little child skimming over the surface of my teeth and silently asking myself is that enough?  And I’m almost getting good at mascara left-handed, that is, when I remember to turn my hand over and then reach my lashes from under my eye with my arm across my chest rather than going across my nose which doesn’t work. (Are you trying to visualize what I’m describing?!)

I have even vacuumed left-handed; however, when I told my ortho doctor about it yesterday at my first follow up appointment, he said I should get someone else to do it. It really was almost too much for my un-trained left hand/arm, but I told him it feels good to do some things myself again and that there’s just too much dog hair to ignore, which led into a bit of a competition between how much hair his Lab produces compared to my Great Pyrenees. lol  Even stirring my coffee left-handed is a little awkward. Despite the many years of helping my father and being sensitized to the things he was no longer able to do, I’m learning a new level of empathy for those with disabilities; and, I’m finding that my left arm is getting stronger. It’s a good thing (for your brain and your body) to challenge yourself in different ways even if it’s just with opposite hands.

I am praying, though, that I don’t overstress my left arm and shoulder adapting to not using my right side because I really don’t want to do this surgery again.  I was at a yearly checkup the other day and the nurse told me that she’s a year out from this surgery and that she can already tell that something’s not quite right but that she would never do the surgery again! That’s very telling.

Ohh my gosh! I just typed those two paragraphs using dictation in Word. Who knew they had that? Probably everyone except me; but, now that I know, I feel like I sort of have my life back. I’ll have to be careful about not blabbing on too long, though, because the editing may take even longer than the typing would have. The search bar is a great thing. I just need to learn to use it more often, But actually I didn’t even have to do a search because apparently that dictate option is up in the menu bar on the home page in Word.

Just this morning I was feeling a little (or a little more than a little) frustrated that I couldn’t express myself in writing. I miss journaling. I miss writing in my journal. There’s no dictation in there. God knew what I needed though and Holy Spirit seemed to direct me to turn on TBN while I had breakfast (which I fixed for myself, albeit a freezer breakfast sandwich but still). Matt Hagee was preaching from his sermon “What a Way to Live” and he said the enemy starts to attack when you start doing what God has called you to do. That made me think of my retinal tears and this shoulder surgery that both came up after I started my blog a couple or so months ago. I don’t know if anyone’s reading this blog or if it will ever reach very far but I felt led to start writing in this way and not just in my journal and so I did. Because it exercises something in me and seems good for me (and I hope for at least one other person out there), I think the enemy doesn’t like it. The eyes and hands are pretty vital parts of writing. As I wrote that, Joni Eareckson Tada (and all that she has contributed to the world though paralyzed) came to mind. God makes a way where we think there is no way.

I didn’t attempt my blog during the early days of recovery because I needed the rest. However, as I have become more interested in things again, besides when the next pain pill would be, typing left-handed (sometimes with just one finger) was exercising my patience and endurance. Sometimes I sit way forward to get my sling closer to the computer in my lap (which is sitting on my study board from college) so I can offer a little assist from my right hand, but the bit of twisting required hurts my shoulder. Dictation to the rescue! I’m so excited!

Creflo dollar was the 1st TV preacher I listened to this morning. The title of his sermon was “The Danger of Maintaining Sin Consciousness.” He said you can’t serve God with the sin/guilt mindset always thinking you’re not worthy. I think I sort of do that with my writing. I wonder if I’m not doing it well or enough because nothing ever seems to grow from it…that I can see. I guess that’s one key for me. I should be doing this more for what He gets from it than from what I get from it. I heard one preacher say that about going to church as well. It’s a good point. We do need to grow on our own but serving God by serving others should be the harvest from those plantings.

Creflo said Jesus saves us and then we serve Him not the other way around. You don’t have to do this to get that from God. He gave the example of tithing and said it is dead works to think if we tithe, and even tithe “correctly”, then God will bless us. God blesses us out of love, grace, and generosity not because we give first. That was pretty interesting because I have felt that guilt feeling sometimes when I’m not giving what I think I should be giving. He said don’t turn the Bible into a textbook and that God says He’s bigger than the Bible and the sermons we hear.

He said God gave us Holy Spirit to navigate this world which made me think of the Lisa Harper study and some of the things we talked about in our small group yesterday about “the” Holy Spirit . Creflo said many church people want rules, but Holy Spirit gives us freedom.  We will do better to live daily with Him and not with religion. Sin consciousness weakens our faith and he pointed out in first John 3:20 that God is greater than our feelings of sadness, doubt, frustration, etc.  Because God knows everything, He also knows the solutions to the problems that are causing our feelings. He said verse 20 shows us deliverance from guilt and that we have the right to feel better. God gave us the greatest gift by giving us his Son so we should receive what He’s given us and live with a grace-based mindset. Romans 6:11

There’s a lot more that I wanted to share today (and earlier days last week) but I guess I’ll stop with that for now knowing that dictation is just a button away. Thanks for reading along with me