There is great wisdom here. I've been carrying all of these thoughts and prayers around in my mind and heart, and much of what I could say has already been said beautifully. You and your wife are very wise, Raptor. There IS a time to every season. Thank God that you were able to make peace with your situation and are sharing these precious days with your Wife's Moth. My Mother is 94, and still in good health, and my wife and I treasure every time we are able to be with her. She lives a thousand miles away, so we can only see her a copuple of weeks out of the year. As for faith healing, I've been reading a book on prayer, and as it would turn out, I'm currently reading a section of healing prayer. It makes some good points that have been made in this thread, but need to be empahsized. People don't have the power to heal people(except for Doctors, and even there, their abilities are not unlimited.) If a healing occurs, it is God who does the healing. It's funny, you know. Folks can post F*** you without causing any discomfort, but G*d is the name that is not to be spoken. For us Harry Potter fans, we know that we can speak the unspeakable. I believe that it is God (no asterisks God) who does the healing. But, sometimes the healing is of the Spirit, as someone wisely noted. Sometimes the prayer is answered with peace. I had a friend of mine who died a few years ago,who had suffered most of his later life and had wasted away. He wouldn't let anyone take his picture, because he said that when he looked in the mirror every morning, he didn't recognize the man looking back at him. The day he died, his wife told me that a beautiful peace flowed through him, and his face was transformed into the face of his youth. His wife saw the man she stood next to at the altar, and then he "flew Away." Oh, Glory! Scientists would probably come up with some physiological explanation for the transformation. (People assume Scientists don't believe in God, which is a serious mistake to make.) I see it as a prayer answered.

Jerry