E this one's for you!!

I must admit, all these pics are from last year, but I will be on the look out for some beautiful fall images I can capture for future posts. Love ya girl! Its a beautiful day for a run.

Lightin' up

Just had to add some cool images to lightin things up. Sorry too much intraspection and abstract thinking with Ally today. (I love you Ally and our deep disections of the world...I am very blessed by you. And someday, we will change the world, even if it is one little Mercy at a time.)

The Gift of Life

This week has surrounded me with reminders of the preciousness, yet delicateness of life. Yesterday I sat eating BBQ with my family at the Heart Transplant celebration picinic. Just last July '05 my father received a heart transplant that has restored him to health that he has not experienced in nearly 5 years.
I sat amidst nearly 100 others who also in the last 10 years have received the same life changing experience. The gratitude felt for life by many of the heart recepients was evident. Nevertheless, the celebration cannot go without the recognition and morning of the life lost inorder to make the others restoration possible. These thoughts are just a small portion of what has been added to a week long pondering of the constant enterchange of life and death.

This past week at work, at one point, I had to just sit back and take in all that was happening. The heaviness and realization of the nature of my work hit me all at once. As I sat to take it all in there was a family actively grieving the loss of their father. Not yet passed on, but actively dying after a decision was made to withdrawal lifesupport efforts. As this family grieved another was rejoicing the opportunity for new life. Another man had earlier heard that his long wait for a heart transplant was over because they had received a match (not from the previously mentioned man). Furthermore, the patient that I was taking care of was a 21 year old girl who just found out she has an incurable disease. After a week of tests hoping to find a cause to be treated we were at the end of the rope and must settle on the fact that she has primary pulmonary hypertension and probably 2 years to live. I just had to sit back and take in the reality that the cycle of life was presently spinning around me and I truly had no control over it.

I don't often think so deeply about the job that I do. It is easy to simply get clinical and so busy with the work that you are unable to really think about what is happening around you. This is probably good most of the time. But this complied with readings from The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis cause me to want to live a different kind of life. Lewis writes:
Consider too what undesirable deaths occur in wartime. Men are killed in places where they knew they might be killed and to which they go, if they are at all of the Enemy's [God] party, prepared. How much better for us if all humans died in costly nursing homes amid doctors who lid, nurses who lie, friends who lie, as we have trained them, promising life to teh dying, encouraging the belief that sickness excuses indulgence, and even, if our workers know their job, withholding all suggestion of a priest lest it should betray to the sick man his true condition.

Now you must understand that this segment is as though Screwtape (the devil or head demon) is instructing Wormwood (his nephew demon) on how to better distract or take captive a human in order to win him to "The Father Below".

OK... heavy stuff. Didn't mean to go so deep. But man does all this make me want to live a different kind of life. Please no shrivled up nursing home.

The Road Less Traveled

Who am I trying to prove myself to?

Do you ever wonder why you do the things you do? I have recently been reading much of the writings of Donald Miller (most recently in his book Searching for God Knows What) and loving his take on life and religion. He depicts an image of a Lifeboat, something he was challenged with early in life. The idea is this: Imagine there is a boat with 6 people in it, a lawyer, a doctor, a janitor, a teacher, a bank teller and a construction worker. Now add to the senario... the boat is sinking and only five can fit into the "Lifeboat" to be rescued. Who gets left behind? How is this type of decision made? How do we place value upon a person in deciding life or death?

Miller connects the thought process that might go on in ones head during this kind of decision to the thoughts and decisions we make daily as we try to live and survive the everyday. How often do you find yourself trying to prove yourself worthy to be heard? How often do you find yourself striving to prove you are right? Where does this come from? Why do we so inherently desire to find approval or validation from an external source? Miller explains that it is based upon our creation. We were created by a God who gives us purpose and validation through Him. We were created to be made complete by that connection with Him. However, there has been a separation, a divide placed that makes us feel so far from the eternal source of validation which we were created for. We long for that, but yet it feels far away. We yearn therefore we seek refuge in the approval of man. How do we regain the purity of our origin? How do we return to the source of our deepest needs? There is an answer and it lies within the redeeming power of God and His Son Jesus Christ. But, do we truly connect with Christ on a level that restores us to that original validation or do we still yearn for the approval of man to bring validation and satisfaction? I must admit in my visual, tactile, audible world it is hard to overcome the need to be validated by a source other than God. It is a struggle that will be continually faced this side of eternity. Maybe this is a result of the great divide or simply a consequence of my humanity, but, nevertheless I must admit that it is present.

Why do I share this with you today? I don't know. Maybe to share my heart, maybe to share my own struggles with life, or maybe to stir questions within your own heart. This is life and we were created by a source longing to love us and give us purpose through himself. Enjoy the ride.

Dignity

I often wonder if the dignity of man is based up that which we give or neglect to give to a person. When doing rotations for mental health as a nursing student a couple of years ago I remember sitting back, looking upon the clients we interacted with and wondering what if. What if these people had been loved from birth the way they were designed to be loved? What if abuse and neglect had never been a part of their lives? What if society could see people the way God sees them? What if we truly lived out the 2nd commandment "Love thy neighbor as thyself"? What if people lived with more dignity? Would this world be different?

I was reading an exerpt from Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller and was challenged to ponder the ability that we as humans have to create or project an image upon someone else. The exerpt reads:
I was on my way over Mount Hood to spend some time in the high desert with a few friends. I was driving alone and decided to stop in at Safeway to pick up some provisions for the weekend. While standing in line at the checkout counter, the lady in front of me pulled out food stamps to pay for her groceries. I had never seen food stamps before. They were more colorful than I imagined and looked more like money than stamps. It was obvious as she unfolded the currency that she, I, and the checkout girl were quite uncomfortable with the interaction. I wished there was something I could do. I wished I could pay for her groceries myself, but to do so would have been to cause a greater scene. The checkout girl quickly performed her job, signing and verifying a few documents, then filed the lady through the line. The woman never lifted her head as she organized her bags of groceries and set them into her cart. She walked away from the checkout stand in the sort of stiff movement a person uses when they know they are being watched.
On the drive over the mountain that afternoon, I realized that it was not the woman who should be pitied, it was me. Somehow I had come to believe that because a person is in need they are candidates for sympathy, not just charity. It was not that I wanted to buy her groceries, the goverment was already doing that. I wanted to buy her dignity. And yet, by judging her, I was the one taking her dignity away.