What's Happening

I’m not sure what has happened to me these last months. I can’t even begin to describe some of the feelings inside; however, being an aspiring writer, I’ll try. Most of what is coming is religious or otherwise serious in nature. If you don’t want to read things like that, you can stop now.
I seem to alternate among feelings of incredible blessedness, mild apprehension regarding the financial mess and whether I’ll retain a job, the also-incredible incomprehensibility of the God of heaven and earth, the joy and delight of family and friends, the goodness of life, the brevity of life, and the boundless truth that is revealed in holy writ and by the handiwork of God Himself.
Now, as you look at that list (which is kind of a mess in and of itself), can you begin to understand why I’m not able to give full descriptive service to what’s inside?
Something is opening up for me whole vistas of possibility, reality, and hope. I’m not sure what (or who) that something is, but I’m grateful. It seems like we all too often go through life with perpetual blinders, never seeing to the right or to the left. We never leave our ruts and consider life to be successful if, when we die, we’re able to have enough money for a proper burial and something worthy for the preacher to say at our service. How we miss the mark!
God calls us to an abundant life of service, joy, love, peace, and happiness. He has plans for us that would stagger our imaginations and cause us to immediately say something stupid such as, “I could never do that!” He desires the best for us (the very defining principle of love) and enables, encourages, and expects our best for His service. He is constantly prodding, poking, and stirring us into humility and service, ever aware that He created us as beings free to accept or reject Him at will.
Service. Servant. Eternal. Love. Servanthood. Peace. Delight. Servant-leader. Humbleness. Low estate. Undeserving. Blessed. Abundant. Secure. Hope. Life. Evermore unto the ages of the ages. What a life this is!

Where Are They?

On this night when the snow is blowing, the wind is howling, and a massive, major storm is upon us, as we are safe and secure in our homes, warm and fed, where are the homeless?

Today

So, today is cooler than it has been for awhile, and dry. The sun is out and things look good outside (except for the wind).
I'm in a sort of lull in work now (10:50am) and thought I'd "dash" off a note. I woke up with a headache, but after a couple tylenol and ibuprofen, it seems to be abating. I'm also feeling better and not quite so sluggish as I was this morning earlier.
Let's see. No potties unplugged today (but one yesterday). However, I have cleaned the stains off of two carpets in two resident rooms, installed Java on a PC (have to log in as administrator), had a meeting, fielded approximately 11 calls (phone ringing again), fixed a resident's rain gauge, took in the weekly nursing supply order, and am now getting ready to install an anti-rollback device on a wheelchair. Some day so far, huh.
On a more serious note, I know that we each have our own issues, problems, and "giants" in our lives. I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about those in my life and those that I know of that are in the lives of others that I love. I once wrote in a blog about how I think that God creates a unique "present tense" for each of us and unfurls it before us as time goes on. As I continue to ponder that, I am more convinced than ever that He spreads the here and now before us and waits to see what we do with it. The present tense is where we do battle with the "giants" in our lives. The here and now is where we deal with the issues that clog our existence. Today is when we face our foes and fears.
Whatever your situation, you have only the here and now. The past is gone. The future (even five minutes from now) is uncertain. Only you can decide how you will use what you've been given.

The Best

Coming home this evening from Central Kansas and some time with the in-laws, we were listening to an oldies station out of Wichita. Kind of in the middle of the drive home, an Elvis Presley tune came on (Can't Help Falling In Love With You). I told my wife, "He DID have a good voice."
Yes, he did. For all of his faults and insecurities, he had "the voice". Not many singers of today or yesterday have or had "the voice", but there were some. I started thinking back to those singers that I knew and decided that there were three that stood out.
Elvis Presley. I don't know what it is, but it's just an effortless, milk chocolate smooth delivery. I don't care if it's the falling in love song or the hound dog song. His baritone is up there with Bing, who also had it. Sinatra had it, but didn't always use it.
Karen Carpenter. Taken entirely too soon by an insidious illness, Ms. Carpenter's voice just slides out of the speakers and eases into every recess, every corner, every cubic foot of the room as well as into every cell of one's being. She just fills the environment with beauty.
Sandi Patty. It was said of her by a fellow performer who was introducing her once, "No one ever has heard a voice like this." Her three octive reach beyond high C and below middle C is under her perfect control. She plays her voice as a maestro plays a Stradivarius, and like the violin, her voice responds...in spades.
You may well know other singers that I do not know, and your list may look different than mine. That's fine. These are the ones that I gravitate toward, and turn up the volume whenever they appear on the radio. Elvis is a more recent entry into my list, but he's there.
Others worth mentioning: Diana Ross, The Mills Brothers, Barry Manilow, The McGuire Sisters, The Lettermen, The Martins, Dean Martin (when sober), and maybe Patsy Cline, Mariah Carey, and Art Garfunkel.
Who would be on your list?

Relationships

We attended a wedding yesterday. A member of our family was being married, and we were privileged to be able to witness the ceremony. They had a dinner and dance following the wedding, held in the same area as the ceremony. It was the first time we had been in that building, and I thought the staff of the facility did a good job with things.
We took a table at one corner of the room for the dinner and dance. I chose to sit where I could see the rest of the room without much effort. I like to watch people, and enjoyed doing that in this instance, because there were a lot of people there that I didn’t know along with several that I did know.
During the toast, the father of the groom told of a time when I had given him some “fatherly” advice about how to get along with a spouse (Something about choosing your battles). I don’t remember that time, but don’t doubt that I gave that advice. I’ve lived by what he said I told him ever since we have been married.
A while later, I was sitting in my spot thinking about what the Dad said in his toast and how I had positively influenced him in some small way. I then thought about others that I may have influenced in some way in times past and gone. I didn’t do that mental exercise very long until I figured out that I probably have influenced many hundreds of people in the past in some way, shape, or form. I then wondered if my influence was for the better or for the worse. I would hope that for the most part, my having had a relationship with someone would have been a positive experience for the both of us.
It’s not possible to go back and make those relationships any different than what they are. We can’t go back in time and take back the things we’ve said or done. That makes it doubly important that we do it right the first time. One never knows what parts of a relationship are fleeting and what parts are lasting. One never knows what kind of influence the relationship will have on life and living. And one never knows how the relationship will impact future action and thought.
In my case this day, something I said was handed down many years later to the next generation, and hopefully will in turn be handed down yet again in years to come. And I had the privilege of seeing it happen. I like that.

Anger Management

I was going down the hall at work the other day when I came up on a therapist walking a resident back to her room after a therapy session. They were visiting about something, and as I got closer, I overheard the resident say to the therapist, “...I thought you were going to be mad at me.”
Now, I know this therapist. She's probably one of the most even-keeled people here. Even at that, I have never, repeat NEVER, seen any staff here lash out in anger at a resident. Yes, we become somewhat frustrated at times, knowing that a resident has the ability to make positive and good decisions for his/her life, but instead chooses to continue a life of dependence. Yes, we become frustrated at times, as other staff for whatever reason chooses to not fulfill his/her work obligations. But anger at residents? No.
Residents sometimes make messes. Residents sometimes wander. Residents sometimes make extra work for staff. Residents sometimes make poor choices. We know that's part of the job here. We know that we will have to deal with these kinds of things. Anger or lashing out at residents should have no part in our work lives.
The sad part of all of this is that the resident I overheard thought, rightly or wrongly, that whatever it was she did was going to anger a therapist. This upsets me. This resident should feel that in a nursing home, of all places, she would be safe and well-cared for.
I don't know what her experiences have been insofar as long term care is concerned. I would hope that what I heard her say was said without having to have gone through some kind of anger tirade on the part of a staffer somewhere. But I suspect that somewhere, some time, someone whose job it was to care for her got angry and stupid and lashed out at her in some way.
We can do better than that.

Communication

It’s difficult, at times, to know what to write. It’s even more difficult to do it in a way that will communicate what I intended to say appropriately. This thing called communication is something that I have yet to be able to put my finger on, even though I’ve been trying it out for nigh on to sixty years or so.
As an example, today we stopped by a local Quick-Trip type place to get gas and pick up some hamburger buns for the sloppy joes we were having for lunch. I got the gas, then went into the store to pick up the buns. They were out. I came back out to the car with a loaf of bread and some chips.
As I got into the car, I said to my wife something to the effect that they were out of hamburger buns. We then had, over the next 10 minutes, a disjointed sort of conversation about hamburger buns, sloppy joes, and why didn’t I go on down to Dillons and get buns. Turns out that we were on two different wavelengths. I said that I told her as I got into the car that we were out of buns, and carried on my end of the conversation as if she had that information. She tells me that she never heard me say that, and only found out that we had no buns later on in the conversation; she was conversing from the idea that the buns were in the sack that I carried out of the store.
No wonder that the conversation didn’t seem to make much sense to me. No wonder we both got frustrated in trying to communicate with the other one. No wonder that the end result was less than satisfying.
I don’t know if I said what I thought I said as I got into the car or not. In my mind, I can hear myself clearly as I slid into the seat. I suspect that in her mind, that scene is playing out much differently. Which one of us is right? We’ll never know, and it really doesn’t matter.
What does matter is that we learn from the experience and continue in our efforts to better communicate with one another as we hurtle down the road of life at what seems to be an ever-increasing speed. What matters is that we don’t give up on each other or just shrug our shoulders and say “whatever” when things become difficult.
As an aside, this episode points out to me the incredible thought that has gone into the writing of Jewish and Christian scripture. And even at that, the Bible is interpreted in just about as many different ways as there are people who offer interpretation, simply because everyone sees things differently, and everyone has a slightly different world view from which they operate. Is it any wonder that there are literally hundreds of commentaries…thousands of books…tens of thousands of people who offer up vastly differing ideas on what was meant by this passage, why this saying is in the Bible, or what Paul (or John or David or Luke or…) meant when he wrote whatever it was he wrote.
Yet to bring out from that cacophony of voices a religion that has as its basic tenets things that on which by far most of the Christians can agree is nothing short of amazing. And to make those tenets understandable by most of the world’s population (when heard or read in one’s language of understanding) is even more amazing.
Communication is the elephant in the room that no one wants to recognize, sometimes. Yet unless we do, we are bound to wallow around in ignorance and misunderstanding at a minimum, and possibly hostility and outright anger or hatred as a not uncommon result.

Foundational

I've blogged about this before. I've seen it again today, just as I see it almost every day of the week that I go to work. It's something that has more power than almost anything else on the face of the earth, yet is gentle, forgiving, and kind. It is something that everyone longs for, many don't have, and even more who don't know how to get or give it. It's love.
I see it in the husband of the woman in our facility with dementia. They used to be dairy farmers not far from here, and he talks well of the business and how successful they were. There is a picture of the farmstead on the wall of her room and a couple of awards that were given to them for something having to do with dairy farming.
She doesn't say anything any more. She may well not know where she is or who is with her. She is incontinent much of the time, stares into space, needs to be fed, and can no longer do much of anything except sit, stand, or lay down.
Yet her hubby takes her for walks, encourages her to eat, talks with her, is with her much of the day, sees that she is clean and presentable, and otherwise cares for her in ways that truly demonstrate his comittment to her.
Other spouses also are much like this gentleman. They dote over their loved one, look after them, advocate for them, love them and serve them. The bond is unbreakable; the love is intense, mature, and resolute. These people truly understand that they made a comittment long ago in which they promised to love "in sickness and in health, for better or for worse."
These are the people who are the examples to those younger, mostly women who work there who are in and out of relationships, have children as a single parent, and don't seem to be able to figure out life and living. These are the people of whom others scratch their heads and just can't figure out why they are so devoted to someone who is dying and isn't even really there in a large sense. These are the people who uphold the sanctity of committment and the honor of marriage.
These people are the foundation of our civilization.

Your Opinion?

Christian musician and writer Danny Oertli tells the story of coming home one evening after doing a concert. His daughter was still up, and they did some quality time together by watching a retreating thunderstorm from a window of their home. The lightning flashed from time to time, but was somewhat faint due to the fact that the storm was many miles away.
They watched for a time; then Danny told his girl that it was time for bed. She was enjoying the time so much that she protested and said she’d like to see just one more lightning flash before bed. Not knowing when or if there would be another flash of light from the distant storm, Danny encouraged her to go on to bed.
Before she did, however, she stood up and raised her hands much as Moses might have done in parting the Red Sea and prayed, “God, let me see one more lightning bolt before I go to bed.”
Danny was somewhat taken by her child-like faith, but said nothing. His daughter then began counting backwards from five…"Five, four, three, two, one…CRACKERJACK!”
Just as she said the word “crackerjack,” Danny says the sky lit up from seemingly all directions as lightning lit up not only the sky, but everything outside the window. His daughter turned to Danny, gave him a look like “Right on!” and went to bed. Danny, for his part chalked it all up to coincidence and something that just happened to happen at the right time.
A few days later, Danny says he was reading in the Bible and a verse from Job just jumped out at him. God is talking to Job, explaining to Job that He, Jehovah, is God and Job isn't. God says, “Can you shout to the clouds and make it rain? Can you make lightning appear and cause it to strike as you direct it?”
Coincidence, or answered prayer? I’ll let you be the judge.