Just Resting.

I haven't disappeared off the face of the earth; just into the bowels of an ICU unit. Actually it's coming together pretty well. I am getting used to the routine and the business of the unit. The hardest adjustment for me is in looking at the patients in terms of their monitors. I would do more with people that the other nurses veto. For example an old demented lady who really wanted to get up to go to the bathroom. I would've put her on a commode chair. the other nurses thought she might code. I thought the stress and confusion was more detrimental than getting up, but I was outnumbered and stood down. I'm not always right, even if I think so. After 3 shifts in a row my week is done but so am I! My ankles were so swollen I was walking slowly to my car and it took a day and half for it to go away. Shoot fire I AM getting old. My ankles swell in the heat like in Colombia but they haven't swollen that bad before just from working. It's ridiculous to get up at 4:30 in the morning and get home between 7:30 and 8pm at night. Those are farmers hours aren't they? What we do to put the bacon on the table.

Speaking of bacon is it my imagination or are food prices jumping up AGAIN? I was browsing canned goods looking for sales and everything was so high. $1.00 is a sale price for a 16oz can of chili? i don't even buy that but didn't that used to be something cheap? It seemed to me that nothing was a good price. I had a small cart load and it was still $100. I'm going back to my roots and cooking more and more like my mother. We are eating more beans and they are good. I'm teaching the girls more about scratch cooking. I never have bought many processed food but the way things are going I'm taking more and more items off of my list each week. I am sorry for the companies and the job losses but the government that we have elected (as a people) is making hasty decisions that are dangerous.

I am currently in a study of Daniel with David Jeremiah. He has been drawing some very clear parallels between Daniels experience with the two kingdoms he served under and our nation. We are apparently part of nation in decline. An immoral nation that has lost it's way. We are more concerned about WHO we know to accomplish our purposes, rather than WHAT we are; a people ruled by integrity and Godly principles. Daniel had an excellent spirit. He was not shaken by the circumstances around him. He is one of the few characters in the Bible in whom no fault is found.
I am grateful for impetuous Peter and David who sinned, but even so was a man after God's own heart. I can relate to the fallen, imperfect and flawed. But I can ASPIRE to have heart like Daniels. No matter what happened to him, he continued to abide with God in the same manner and in the same way each day. He was unfazed by his current events. He showed no fear to be thrown to lions.

What would I do? Truthfully if I was being thrown to hungry man eating lions I would crap my pants and scream in terror. I don't have that kind of faith. I am not even close to being a person of God that Daniel was. I want to be though. Times are going to get worse. I don't want my heart to be blown about by the fears of these times. I can trust in my God. There are many gods, and men give their hearts to them. Some of these gods are power, money, wealth, the Earth and nature, philosophies and man's intellect to name a few; but these are not the gods I serve.
In Rome there was a monument made to honor the unknown God. Paul used that as an opportunity to tell the people of his God the living God. Jesus Christ. Many religions are created because of man reaching out to gods, but only Jesus reached his hand out for man. He lives and breathes and conquered death. His words are living and true. He changes lives and He changed me. There is no formal prayer, no fancy speech to find him. It's simple and because of that many loose their way. It seems to simple.

So how did I find God?

Better phrased, how did God find me?

I was raised in a Lutheran church and went to a parochial school until high school so I learned about the Bible. In high school my parents went through a nasty divorce and my mom lost her mind. My brothers and I all got into trouble in our own way. I ended up pregnant at 16 and after I had my baby I became a hippie and drifted into the culture of drugs, sex, and rock and roll. I'm not proud of that. I wish I had a story of loving God all my life and having parents that loved God and kept me safe till I was grown, but that is not my story.

By the time I was 30 I had married a psycho, my child was victimized, another young teen that lived with us was also under his insane clutches. I was desperate and scared. My mind was beaten down into a non functional state, my nerves gone, decision making almost lost, and defeat was close, my guilt enormous. I was barely hanging on to my sanity.

I worked two jobs then. I had an old folks home in a house next door , and also traveled around doing hair. I started the hair business on a bicycle. I did hair for shut-ins. I worked about 6hours doing that and then came home to cook dinner for the folks next door, and help them to bed.

One day at one of my hair customers home's I met Susie. She was a newly hired nurse aide for Vee a sweet little old lady. While Vee was under the hair dryer, I kept looking at Susie. I swear to you she was lit with a different light than anything I had ever seen before. We had just met and I had an overwhelming compulsion to tell her about my life. I hadn't told anyone how truly awful my life had become. The story spilled like a torrential flood, bathed in foul expressions and tears. She just looked at me and said one thing,"You need God." I wondered, really? Is that it?
She invited me to her church and I decided to go. Later she told me how surprised she was that I came. Most people don't. I couldn't imagine why, unless they were not as desperate as I was.

I didn't have the vocabulary to know what happened there. All I knew was, that man who was speaking, talked like he had been peaking into the windows of my home. I was exposed. Somehow he knew everything. I would come to understand later that he knew nothing at all, the Holy Spirit of God was revealing that HE was the one who knew me. Just as He knows everything about everyone in the whole world. Incomprehensible isn't it, omniscience? But true, as it was proven that day, the beginning of many proofs. I did nothing that day but listen. they gave me a packet of materials and inside were many items of information. There was also a little booklet. As I read it I began weeping, my heart was breaking, totally, completely as the truth directed it's revealing light all over the darkness in my soul. There were 2 diagrams in the booklet. Each was a circle. One circle showed the center with self on a throne, and radiating from that throne in all directions was chaos. The other circle had Jesus in the center on a throne of a mans heart, and that life was ordered. The pictures spoke to me. The words had pierced me and I went to my living room floor and knelt down. Somehow I fumbled my way, because no sooner had I called His name when he came and met me there. I am so grateful that I found Jesus that way, just me and him. I didn't have to worry about how I looked, or the sobs, I didn't have to worry about how much time I was using up. In fact I lost track of time altogether. I had a Judy Collins record and she had sung Amazing Grace on it. I pulled it out and played it about 50 times, still weeping but tears full of peace. Jesus met me, and I gave him my heart and my life. He has proved himself more times than I can count. Even though I fail him continually. When I fail, I know he will forgive and still love.

I so desire to become a rock of faith like Daniel. I so desire to have integrity that no one can find fault with. But I also desire to know many people, to share with them this gift. Jesus said that narrow is the way and straight the path, and few find it. Not that it is exclusive far from it, Jesus would have ALL if they would have him. But few want him. We chose ourselves. We worry we will be weirdos, we worry we won't have fun, we worry we're being duped, and a whole host of other stupid traps. It takes coming to the end of oneself. It takes a crisis or some life shaking event to get us to even think differently, we are such creatures of habit.

Do you even have a Bible? If you do is it written in a language easy to understand?
Are your opinions formed by studying this man Jesus yourself or from what others have said?
The hardest person for the Lord to reach is one who says he has no need. The good person, the one whose life is not a mess, who feels they are on course and are fine. The problem is that no man is perfect and that is the standard. The word sin simply means to miss the mark, to not hit a bulls eye. The bulls eye is holiness, perfection. At times I have eaten something that seemed close to perfect, but my behavior has never come close. God knows our thoughts, every action, every secret thing, from our entire lives. No one can make the mark. Many will chose to be judged on their merits. I know who I am and only ask for mercy, and bless the day I found it.

If you would like a Bible in an easy to understand translation to make up your own mind for yourself, just say so in a comment. It would be my joy to give you one.