I believe that he will quit, because I believe that being able to quit this way - even though it was the hardest thing we've ever done, the greatest battle we've ever fought - coupled with the fact that I don’t have lung cancer or COPD and that it wasn’t "too late" for me, even though I thought it was, that my sister does not, that her husband - even though he does have emphysema - most likely does not have cancer and hasn't suffered any of the more serious health problems from his emphysema...well,I think this is a miracle that can only be explained by some sort of supernatural means.
Years before I decided to quit smoking, I had dreams, dreams which I knew were significant but could not quite decipher, dreams which I now clearly see were warnings, sent to me by Divine means. Warnings of my own death and my siblings', dreams of my mother (strange I never dreamed of my father except as a whole human being, the way he was before he had his surgery...guess the Divine and he thought that if his "cut throat" weren't "warning" enough, it was hopeless for him to try to tell me anything!) in which she was desperately trying to communicate something to me. That "something" I know now was a plea - the same plea I heard in my daughter's voice as she begged me and I promised, for the first and only time in my life, that I WOULD quit smoking. Even then it took me six more weeks after I made that promise, six more weeks after I had been told I most likely had either advanced lung cancer or advanced COPD, to actually quit.
The night I stopped smoking...which, not coincidentally, even though I hadn't consciously chosen it as my quit date, was my mother's birthday, I prayed to the One on High over and over again:
"Please, please, let this be REAL! Let me quit for good and STAY quit!"
I firmly believe that prayer was answered. There is no other explanation for the fact that my quit has been so successful, even in the face of illness and the fear that I had let it go on too long, that I was dying anyway, and there’s no other explanation for the fact that I wasn’t dying.
My quit (and my sister's) was essentially a "cold turkey" one. We only took herbal supplements and vitamins to help flush the poison from our bodies and give us a little relief from the physical symptoms of withdrawal. No hypnosis, no counseling, no NRT’s, no outside support system, except for each other...and this forum. And I know that my coming here was guided by Divine intervention as well, because I found this place by "chance", when, on my second horrendous day, full of despair and fear of not being able to maintain my resolve I prayed again "Help me...help me..." and sat down at my computer just for something to do and typed in "smoking cessation help" into my search engine and clicked on the first website listed, which was About.com. I then went unerringly immediately to this forum. I told my sister about the forum and she came here too.
A month later, after she saw me quit smoking, and knew that it was real, she and her husband quit too. She said that seeing ME quit had "inspired" her; that it was a miracle and that it was as if (and my daughter and I said the same thing) we had seen our mother quit years ago when she would still have been able to live a good long life. I was a constant smoker, exactly like our mother was and I am the same age - 57 - that my mother was when she first received her diagnosis of COPD and was told she ought to quit. She did not, and she only lived for thirteen more years.
It really IS a miracle. That is why I know that my brothers will succeed too, and that all of us will have been saved by that miracle, by our faith. It’s the kind of faith that can literally move mountains if it is strong enough, and is responsible for things like my healing, the kinds of things for which, if you don’t believe, no explanation is possible, and for which, if you do believe, no explanation is necessary.
And we’ll succeed because of our love for each other, a unique close bond forged in our childhood by my mother and which, unlike many siblings, has grown stronger, not weaker as we have grown up and grown older. The same relationship that bound us together in the addiction that blighted our childhood and our lives, has now bound us together within the miracle of our strength and our triumph over it.
The grief we feel that our parents were never able to triumph over it has now been cleansed and softened and balanced by the fact that our children have been rescued from that very grief and that our family has been healed and made whole now at last and at last, at last....we are free.
AMEN!!!
N.O.P.E.~Rosa~
