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Cancer Fight Becomes Inspiring Life Story in ‘Update 21’


In July 2007, at the same time that our 41-year old colleague Beth Bello learned that the baby she was carrying had died in the womb, she discovered that she had Stage 4 breast cancer. She told her circle of family & friends about this turn of fate in an email, “We are certainly facing challenges all of a sudden. But we are walking through them together, growing closer to each other and closer to the Lord.”

After this initial report, Beth continued to keep her circle of “Prayer Warriors” informed with periodic updates. The updates were sequentially numbered and spanned almost two years. Along the way, there were periods of hope that the cancer had been arrested. In less than a year, for example, after extensive chemo treatment, Beth’s scans were clear – “there was no evidence of the residual disease at this point” – and she was officially classified in remission.

Beth Bello

Unfortunately, this condition did not last, and the cancer returned even more aggressive than before. By the time it came for Beth to send “Update 21,” her decline had been precipitous, and her sad earthly conclusion was foreshadowed in the symptoms that Beth presented at that time: dizzy spells that expanded into severe headaches, then “my knees started buckling and I fell to the ground a couple of times … and I wasn’t able to keep anything down.” She developed a significant cavity in her lungs and deep lesions in her brain. With all of this, Beth slipped into a deep sleep on April 22, 2009, and passed away the next day, quietly and at peace.

Update 21 A Journal of Spiritual Victory
by Beth Bello

Update 21: A Journal of Spiritual Victory is the story of an amazing woman told her own words, as she literally walked through the shadow of death to the other side, confronting progressively challenging conditions with abiding love and unfailing faith and emerging with claim to an astonishing spiritual victory.

Wordsmith Associates compiled Update 21 in real time, but it was done secretly at first, without Beth’s knowledge. We were on Beth’s email distribution list, captured the messages, and independently created a professional format for presenting Beth’s unraveling personal saga. In the month-long period after Beth’s last update (Update 21) but before her final decline, we completed the compilation, created a simple cover, and informally bound Beth’s updates into a simple but beautiful publication. We then presented the completed work to Beth, who was surprised and thrilled by the book that she had written without even knowing it. Before her death, she had the comforting knowledge that her story of spiritual victory had been recorded for all time.

After Beth passed away, we worked with Beth’s “soul sister” – Angela Scaperlanda Buján – to build out the book (pictured here) with photographs, appropriate biblical passages, and comments from Beth’s host of Prayer Warriors who were so inspired by her example.

CLICK HERE to review excerpts of the netbook version of Update 21: A Journal of Spiritual Victory.

Availability

Paperback – ISBN 978‐0‐9908547‐8-4 – 5.25″ wide x 8″ tall – 144 pages – List Price $9.99

Individual copies of Update 21: A Journal of Spiritual Victory are available from Amazon and other online & independent booksellers.

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WRITINGS ON THE WALL

  • In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature. –Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous
  • So is a word better than a gift. –Apocrypha
  • Nature fits all her children with something to do, He who would write and can’t write, can surely review. –James Russell Lowell, A Fable for Critics
  • Watch your thoughts, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your action. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny. –Anonymous
  • The writer doesn’t want success ... The writer wants to leave a scratch on the wall of oblivion that someone a hundred or a thousand years later will see. Kilroy was here. –William Faulkner, Faulkner in the University
  • A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator. –John Steinbeck, “In Awe of Words”
  • Omit needless words. –William Strunk, Jr, The Elements of Style
  • “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.” –Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
  • Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled. –Horace, Epistles
  • Man’s word is God in man. –Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Idylls of the King,” The Coming of Arthur
  • Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact. It is silence which isolates. –Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
  • Word is a shadow of deed. –Democritus
  • The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it. –Ernest Hemingway, Paris Review
  • Prête-moi ta plume pour écrire un mot. Lend me your pen to write a word. –Au Clair de la Lune
  • The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work and that writing didn’t require any. –Russell Baker, Growing Up
  • How many verses have I thrown into the fire because the one peculiar word, the wanted most, was irrecoverably lost. –Walter Savage Landor, Verses Why Burnt
  • Words are like leaves and, where they most abound, much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. –Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
  • Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it. –Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
  • Honeyed words like bees, gilded and sticky, with a little sting. –Elinor Hoyt Wylie, Pretty Words
  • Choice word and measured phrase… above the reach of ordinary men. –William Wordsworth, Resolution and Independence
  • Light dies before thy uncreating word; Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall, and universal darkness buries all. –Alexander Pope, The Dunciad
  • Life's like a movie. Write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending. –Jim Henson, The Muppet Movie
  • Good words are worth much … and cost little. –George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum
  • In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. –The Common Gospel, “Eternal Word”
  • The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence. –Paul Simon, The Sound of Silence
  • How long a time lies in one little word! Such is the breath of kings. –Shakespeare, King Richard II
  • My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts –never to heaven go. –Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • To call forth a concept, a word is needed; to portray a phenomenon, a concept is needed. All three mirror one and the same reality. –Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Traité Elémentaire de Chimie
  • Sweet religion makes a rhapsody of words. –Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind. –Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam
  • And many a word, at random spoken, may soothe a wound or heart that’s broken. –Sir Walter Scott, Lord of the Isles
  • I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long Words Bother me. –Alan Alexander Milne, Willie-the-Pooh
  • It is not of so much consequence what you say, as how you say it. Memorable sentences are memorable on account of some irradiating word. –Alexander Smith, “Dreamthorp,” On the Writing of Essays

CLICK HERE to see these writings on the wall in a larger size.

Printing in Perspective

Printing in Perspective
Your life is made up of two dates and a dash. Make the most of the dash.

Make the most of your life - your dash! - and share what you learn with others.

The kingdom of God does not come with observation ... for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. -Jesus the Messiah. The Common Gospel ("Final Journey)

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