Two reasons:
1. They are more like me than you are like me. That is the main reason I search out homeless people, bag ladies, cleaning ladies. They are honest, socially unacceptable, socially awkward and begging for attention as am I. I feel that they are “my people.” People I fit in with and that I can talk to without fearing a misstep in conversation or saying something laughable.
2. I secretly hope that someday some dashing young social worker will save me from a desperate situation.
Hey. So its been a while…I’ve begun nursing school now. Actually I’ve had two weeks of class, which I have really actually enjoyed. There is something very thrilling about feeling that you are actually learning something you might use in the future.
My favorite days are lab days when we get to do hands on learning…such as hand washing. Aseptic technique, ppe’s, vital signs, mobility and most recently bed baths.
One of the things to overcome with this job seems to be simple acceptance of the human body. There are many things that a nurse is required to do that would seem awkward to anyone else, but as the nurse you must simply accept the responsibility with as much stoic aplomb as you can muster. I suppose it is just a way of looking at the human body. Like the artist who sees scenes and movements as all lines and angles a nurse has to see the body as a machine.
Tomorrow we go to the nursing homes for the first time and I am anxious to meet my patient but a little nervous too.
About the living sit: I find that I really enjoy augusta, and it makes me think…no matter where you live there will be things to love about PLACE. Perhaps it is part of my deeprooted wanderlust philosophy that I believe there is something to see everywhere. That each place, each city, each home has unique secret haunts and thinking spots. In augusta I have found a few of these, mostly by the canals.
Running water just makes peace and thinking so much easier. Let me just tell you that at the park the other day the sun was setting and scarlet over the rippling canal and a family of ducks was venturing into the river. Add a light breeze and the easy banter of nearby fishermen and you get the complete beauty of the scene.
Still haven’t found an adequate soccer field but I’m working on that one. Also, I find that I love my road. That’s right the one that runs by my apartment complex. “Nothing special” you’d say, but I love it. It goes up and down and up and down and its just the right amount of mix between a public and private road.
Another reason that I love Augusta is that it is becoming MINE. As I slowly learn my way about the city I find that I love knowing little back roads and where places are. Odd as this is it provides me with a true sense of accomplishment.
Currently I fear: failing most of all, but also loneliness and not fitting in. This last mostly applies with my roommates. In any situation with three friends two are always closer than the third. Why is it that I always feel like the third? Here’s a truly silly fear for you but one I have held for many years: I fear being boring. Or that other people will think I’m boring. If you do…please don’t enlighten me! But of course these are not new fears but old ones rearing their heads. Fear is just the start of finding faith.
God has blessed me in this, as in every, endeavor and I pray that I would use it to His glory and not my own.
“Therefore get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.” James 1:21
“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” James 1:27
“These little sins burrow in the soul, and make it so full of that which is hateful to Christ, that He will hold no comfortable fellowship and communion with us. A great sin cannot destroy a Christian, but a little sin can make him miserable. Jesus will not walk with His people unless they drive out every known sin. He says, “If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love, even as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” Some Christians very seldom enjoy their Saviour’s presence. How is this? Surely it must be an affliction for a tender child to be separated from his father. Art thou a child of God, and yet satisfied to go on without seeing thy Father’s face? What! thou the spouse of Christ, and yet content without His company! Surely, thou hast fallen into a sad state, for the chaste spouse of Christ mourns like a dove without her mate, when he has left her. Ask, then, the question, what has driven Christ from thee? He hides His face behind the wall of thy sins. That wall may be built up of little pebbles, as easily as of great stones. The sea is made of drops; the rocks are made of grains: and the sea which divides thee from Christ may be filled with the drops of thy little sins; and the rock which has well nigh wrecked thy barque, may have been made by the daily working of the coral insects of thy little sins.” Charles Spurgeon
This has convicted me recently. After reading this Spurgeon excerpt on a friend’s blog and then reading these passages this morning it seems evident to me that it is necessary to attempt to cut all “moral filth” and small “pebbes” of sin out of one’s life. The question becomes, “what constitutes moral filth?” I feel that a lot of moral filth enters my life via media influence whether it be movies, songs, tv shows or even some books. (Yeah, can you say romance novel!)
I began to attempt a cleansing of my itunes songs this morning and hit more of a dilemma than I had anticipated. This is trivial, I know, but it represents a larger issue in my life that I was not aware of previously. Are my morals ambiguous?
I started my crusade by eliminating any songs with blatant and repeated cuss words. So far, easy. However as I began to probe deeper I ran into some problems. For instance is this moral filth: “and all the swedish girls/they hang out at the hotel/its sex for green cards/I think they know you very well.” (Butch Walker, The Weight of Her)?
Ok, how bout this? “Cause you’re the type that drive a man crazy and snatch him away from his lady.” (Colby O’Donis What You Got)
Then you have songs like Eric Hutchinson’s Rock & Roll which basically tells the story of a one night stand “and they fall in love as they fall in bed.”
Surely these are all questionable morals. Then you throw in all the songs that I have illegally burned. Are they morally questionable and to be expunged?
This is just a small cross section of the moral ambiguities that have subtly invaded my life. I also find that if I am to pursue this inquisition I will have to cut out all the TV shows I have been watching as well as most movies. Even completely clean books are hard to come by. So what does this mean? Am I being completely unreasonable? Perhaps. In fact there is a large probability that that is true.
I would love y’alls feedback on this. What is and isn’t moral filth? How is the world polluting our lives and what should we as Christians do in response to it? What is and isn’t reasonable? (I mean if I keep up with this program I’m not gonna have anything left in my itunes except hymns! Help a girl out here!)
Finals have rolled around again and here we all are, fighting our own personal battles waged with pen and paper. Battles that begin, long before the actual test, when we sit down at our laptops to “look up notes” and find our fingers automatically typing “F…ac…e…b…” in the url. We struggle to turn off the television…just ONE more episode, or a very SHORT break. We stay up late and cram til our heads feel about to implode and then realize that, perhaps, sleep would have been more helpful after all.
No, there is nothing like this time of year. Christmas is waiting so eagerly at our very fingertips…so enticing–and yet we have ONE more exam or paper or maybe just class. You finally discover which classes you actually learned something in…and which classes you have a notebook full of elaborate doodles for, in the place of notes. It is the ultimate test of self-discipline. One which I will freely admit to failing miserably. I can only hope, however, that that is the only test I will be failing anytime soon. And with that in mind I should get back to my studies.
“The world and its great history are full of darkness; society and our own little histories are full of darkness, and much of this Christianity has left unconquered and unexplained.
But at the heart and centre of all is not darkness, but light…and flowing from this is another principle…the light and not the darkness, are meant to conquer, in individuals, as in the whole.
Human character is not immutable, like the instincts of animals, but corrigible and perfectible; perfectible in the best to the end, corrigible in the worst to the end; capable of radical changes, capable of infinite growth.
Again, truth most obvious, if Christianity is true; yet one which in the apparent fixidness of character in all men after early youth, and the apparent invincibility of small faults in good men, in wrongs from others, in struggles with myself, which, I, at least have not found it easy to hold;indeed, I should have found it impossible to hold, but for constant recurrence to that first great truth which is its source. Faith in God, unbounded; and for that reason hope for men unbounded also.”
Elizabeth Rundle Charles, Against the Stream
“Earth will grow worse til men redeem it/ and wars more evil til all wars cease/But the old flags reel and the old drums rattle/as once in my life they throbbed and reeled/I have found my youth in the lost battle/ I have found my heart on the battlefield/ for we that fight til the world is free/we are not easy in victory/we have known each other too long my brother/And fought each other, the world and we.”
G.K. Chesterton, A Song of Defeat
I have been spending a lot of time on my knees recently–scrubbing bathroom floors, bathtubs, etc. or stuffing washers. These are just mundane things but they make me think. On my knees is definitely where I need to be spiritually as well as physically because it is a position of both of weakness and of service. I cannot in any way walk through this life on my own. Bob Foster tells us a lot that you can’t fake it. You can’t truly bring guests the service and love of Christ if you are not receiving it and this is so true. I cannot live for Christ by standing on my own. I am on my knees before him because without him I fail.
Kneeling is also quite the position of humility. Frequently guests re-enter their cabins while I am finishing up and it is always a little awkward because there I am, talking to them about whatever, whilst at the same time on my knees scrubbing their bathroom floor. I wander if they find it awkward—but that is just a stray thought. What I really wanted to say was this: it is impossible to talk down to someone while cleaning their bathroom.
I don’t have time (or energy!) to write a lot but i guess some news is better then no news at all so here goes. We made it through orientation week–thank goodness. It was really hard for me because i had just started settling into the way things were when all these new kids showed up and things changed again. Anyway, now we are settling back into a routine again and it is good. Let’s see, among interesting things I have done today–well, not much really–vaccuming, cleaning toilets, sinks, etc.
We did have a wrangler rodeo yesterday and that was lots of fun. My favorite event was bareback tag where the wranglers all ride around in the ring bareback and try to tag each other–mostly the new guys just fall off but they just get right back on. Other interesting events included some steer lasso-ing which always got more interesting when the wranglers had to attempt to get the rope off of whichever part of the calf had happened to be lasso-ed. Anyway it was lots and lots of fun to watch and added something new to the day. Last night we played flag football on the field using car headlights and duct tape flags (my proud invention).
I have been memorizing Phillipians 2–a good verse for the type of work I’m doing this summer. I especially like this part:
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit but in humility consider others better then yourselves. Each of you should look not only to his own interests but also to the interests of others… Do everything without grumbling or complaining that you may be blames and pure children of God in a crooked and depraved generation.”
The grumbling and complaining part is always good to hear and here at the ranch it is vital for everyone that we look to each other’s interests. It is definitely an expanding experience.
Also, on an almost totally separate topic, but still one very close to my heart, I have been reading Elisabeth Elliot’s Passion and Purity . It is a beautiful book dealing mainly with following God’s will as opposed to your own. Elisabeth talks about her relationship with Jim and how, although they knew they loved each other they decided not to get married in order to follow the will of God. Although nothing remotely in this nature has happened to me it has still been influential in bringing my thoughts into line in terms of putting God first in my life. I especially liked her discussion of staying “asleep” in Christ until He calls you to come “awake” to a boy.
That’s all for now, hopefully I will update you all sooner rather then later!
God has been good to me my first couple of days here at the ranch. It has been a “vertical learning curve” for sure but each new thing is a pleasure to conquer. I was sure after my first day that I wasn’t cut out for this. After my second I thought I could. The vista of the mountains is beautiful. I can’t think of a more gorgeous view to wake up to in the morning.
There is a mountain called Sawtooth across from our porch that lights up in the morning with the gentle rising of the sun. Then my day begins. The first thing I learned here is that everything has a different name. There are make-ups, turn-downs, thoros, etc. Even the vacuums have different names: Grog (the most reliable), or Hilda, for instance. Apparently a lot of people have nicknames as well—Moose, one of the kitchen workers, or Biff a cowboy. Back to the routine—the day starts out with A.M.’s (another term) wherein we simply clean and straighten the public areas.
There are four major jobs (if this is going too in depth for you too bad—just skim. I want to remember this later.) Baby-O (see what I mean about the terms) which is the spaceman like vacuum you wear on your back and with which you simply go around the edges of the room; LOC—our organic cleaner for everthing that isn’t wood and might collect dust. Then there is the Buff up for all the wood and finally bathroom which is exactly what it sounds like. After that breakfast—yum. And then we head back to the Comm which is basically the room where all the cabin girls hang out. Then begins the folding—the never ending folding—mountains and mountains of sheets and pink-ish towels seem to congregate there in poor pathetic lumps! Later in the day we might have thoros—which is the term for cleaning cabins between the guests visits—we load up a kit (with all the chemicals and rags and trash bags) and a vacuum and then we load up into Mona (a white van with no seats in the back, no door on one side and, most unfortunately, no power steering!) and drive the routes between cabins, unloading like a S.W.A.T team with all our equipment. Driving the routes sounds easier than it is because it is all dirt roads here and all one way so it involves a lot of backing up and turning and backing up again. Once you’re in a cabin for thoro’s I feel like it is a race against time. Each cabin is only supposed to last about 30-45 minutes which is easy depending on the number of people on your team.
The people here have been delightful and fun. I have especially enjoyed our morning devotion with our team of cabin girls. I will tell you more later but it is late now (10:20!!! Which doesn’t seem bad but our days start at 6:45). I will say I went to my first square dance tonight. I loved it! How’s that for a teaser? More later, I promise.
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