The Impossible

Proverbs 31 An excellent wife who can find?

She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life. She seeks wool and flax, and works with willing hands. She is like the ships of the merchant; she brings her food from afar. She rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household and portions for her maidens. She considers a field and buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard. She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong. She perceives that her merchandise is profitable. Her lamp does not go out a night. She puts her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the spindle. She opens her hand to the poor and reaches out her hands to the needy. She is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet. She makes bed coverings for herself; her clothing is fine linen and purple. Her husband is know in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land. She makes linen garments and sells them; she delivers sashes to the merchant. Strength and dignity are her clothing and she laughs at the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her. He says, "May women have done excellently, but you surpass them all."

Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates.

So this morning Ken and I mailed cards to our mothers for Mother's Day and I wrote a portion of this chapter of Provers to my mother because she is the best.

I remember the first time I ever heard these verses. I was just a little girl but already it was in the back of my mind that I would never achieve this kind of praise because I was not "good enough". I would never be the "virtuous woman". I would never be the "excellent wife" and my children would never "rise up and called me blessed".

And I spent a lot of years proving that to myself. I created the kind of life that I felt I deserved.

But when I came to know Him, my Lord, my Friend, my Helper.... He changed the way in which I viewed myself. He changed my perspective and my thought process. Basically, if HE could see me as something of value, why couldn't I? If He could love me so much, shouldn't I?

I thought that I was a very different kind of woman than the one in Proverbs but I found today that we have some things in common....

My husband does trust me and he brags on me, more than I deserve. I am a good nurse and I love my patients, most of them anyway, and I try to treat them like I would want someone to treat my Mama. I have an ongoing education and a reliable job that allows me to see the country. I take great pride in whatever place we live and make it my goal to make it feel like home. I have a wonderful hobby in photography and when we are at home I am an active gardener. I am a decent cook and somewhat funny :) If I didn't know me so well, I would like me.

I still have to draw the line at my children rising up and calling me blessed....we are just not there yet but I love them and I think they love me.

I do not always do the right thing. Some times I hide from God and lack trust and behave foolishly. Sometimes I have to tell Him that I am sorry for neglecting Him. But He loves me and I love Him. He is patient with me and I try to be patient with Him as well. We both agree that He is my God, that He is eternally good, that He is love personified and He is worthy to be adored. And we are trying to agree that I am of great value to Him and to the world and that my life should reflect how precious I am to Him.

It is hard for me to love me but it is easy for me to love Him and He is teaching me to love what He loves. Make sense?

And so for today it is enough. He is enough. My life is enough.

Father I cannot tell You adequately enough how much I love You. You have given me a new life, a new start, a new perspective. You have given me Yourself and that is the greatest gift of all. Thank You for Your patient pursuit of this willful child. You are my love. You are my everlasting King. You are my friend and I adore You.

The Aging

Life is like a short breath or a bird in it's flight.

Soon it passes away and is gone from our sight.

Like a vapor it is in the Bible we're told...

From the recesses of my mind this song comes.

On my recent trip home I found myself looking around at my family in surprise. Here I sit with my granddaughter in my arms, my children grown and married, my sisters with their grandchildren in their laps, nephew and nieces and my own mother and Aunt Jean beautiful in their latter years. Where does it go?

This is the sweetest time of my life. Everyone together and healthy. But what of the others? Are they longing for younger years or struggling to learn to walk? Are they looking toward their futures or remembering their pasts?

Life is quick. Fleeting.

Watching the news this year I have often wondered if our planet is aging quickly herself. Was it, like us, born with a time line? Was is young once and energetic, learning to walk and run and function beautifully?

She seems to suffer at the moment. Overpopulation. Flood. Earthquake. Tsunami. Extreme heat and cold. Deforestation. Disease. We hear almost daily of natural disasters in various countries, including our own, holes in the ozone and melting polar ice caps. She seems to be attacked from without and within.

Maybe it has always been this way. Maybe. Maybe not.

It makes sense to me that as we all are born, grow up and fade away that so does everything else. Including our planet.

If so, then what? What is next?

On Friday I talked with one of my patients for a while. He is a gruff old cuss who is slowly succumbing to his disease. I have know him for six months and we usually talk about the weather or his disease or my traveling or his memories of being in the service during war. But on Friday he leaned over to me and said in a whisper that he had died at Christmas. He said his heart stopped three different time before he could be stabilized. When I said I was sorry he said don't be.

He said it was beautiful. Green hills, warm sunshine. A feeling of freedom and peace and exploding joy. He saw his wife and his twin boys that were lost years before. He talked with his old vet buddies before coming back to what he calls hell. He says hell for him is this life and this old and cancerous body. Someday, he says, he will go to heaven and not ever come back.

Life is like a short breath....

Like a vapor it is....

Being an oncology nurse has taught me to live while I'm living.

Being a follower of Christ compels me to ask you the question, Where will go when it's over?

Father for those suffering in this world in the wake of this latest disaster, be near.

The Portion

Sometimes I find myself becoming negative in my thinking and in the words that I speak and I realize that these things flow from bitterness in my heart. So when I need a change of perspective I find myself here, in Psalm 73 and it brings me back to a proper perspective with just the first four words.

Truly God is good.

Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.

But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

For they have no pangs until death: their bodies are fat and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind. Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment. Their eyes swell out through fatness; their hearts overflow with follies. They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression. They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth. Therefore His people turn back to them, and find no fault in them. And they say, "How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?" Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches.

All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.

If I had said, "I will speak thus,".....I would have betrayed the generation of your children.

But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task....

until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end.

Like a dream when one awakens.

When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward You.

Nevertheless, I am continually with You; You hold my right hand. You guide me with Your counsel, and afterward You will receive me to glory!!!!!!!

Oh whom have I in heaven but You? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all Your works.

Sometimes nothing more needs to be said.

The Birthday

Psalm 69 I will praise the name of God with a song, I will magnify Him with thanksgiving. This will please the Lord more than an ox, or a bull with horns and hoofs.

I prefer to blog in a comfortable chair with a cup of hot tea in quiet space that I love. This blog is written in a coach class set. It is not really comfortable. It is noisy. It smells funny.

But today is a day of thanksgiving. It is my birthday of forty three years.

So today, to honor Him for all He has done for me, I will bless Him with the words of my mouth. Here a few of my thoughts toward Him....

I am thankful that I have a husband who adores me. Even when I don't deserve it. I am on my way home to see my family, my children. My son is home for two weeks from deployment to the Middle East and he is alive and well. My daughter is picking me up at the airport and coming home to spend the night with me. My other daughter is coming by to see me on the weekend. My family, my sisters, are coming to my mom's house where we will meet my new granddaughter, Katelyn Rae who is the loveliest and most wondrous baby ever. I will get to see my red headed, sassy Maddie girl and beautiful Amee. I found out last week that I do not have breast cancer. I am having dinner with two of my favorite people on the planet, my sisters in the Lord Kathy and Margo.

Everything in life is as it should be.

And I know where all good things come from. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

Everything and everyone has been given to me from my Father. I was not always this way. There was a time when I had nothing and no one.

Then He came and made all things new. He is my restorer of the breach. My deliverer. The lifter of my head.

So to You Lord....I give it all. My husband. Our children. Our families. Our grandchildren here and to come. Our home. Our lives. Our plans. All that we have. All that we are. It all came from You. It all belongs to You. May we honor You with it all.

Thank You. For everything. For all You have done. For me.

The Stages

Exodus 17 All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.

So He speaks to me today of sin, disobedience, hypocrisy and consequence.

I have known people, unbelievers, who say that they will remain in that state due to the hypocrisy in Christians. Sin, to be blunt. They claim that Christians should live a certain way and that they do not. They claim Christians to by hypocritical. Sometimes I agree.

I wish I could tell you that from the day I met the Lord and placed my trust in Him to save me from my sin, from myself, that I have never been the same again. That I gave it all up for Christ and that I have never looked back.

Some things are different. My final destination, for example.

But what is really different is that He dwells in me. That is the difference. What remains the same, is me. The only good thing in me, is Him.

And like the children of Israel I am moving from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord. (And yes, I realize that I am taking some liberty here with the Scriptures) So why stop there :) Right?

It took my many, many years to give up cigarettes. I knew that smoking caused cancer. I was ashamed to be a smoker. I feared the end result of smoking. My children hated it. It smells awful. But I remember when it became SIN to me. (And here comes the second part of the liberty)...

But there was no water for the people to drink.

My water, my life, the Holy Spirit began to dry up.

Every time I would pray for safety for my family, for deeper understanding of His Word, for a closer relationship with Him or for a place of usefulness in Israel, I would know that there was this elephant in the room that I was avoiding. And I remember the day He said, Stop.

I have required something of you, Connie. The smoking. And you know it. So until then, stop asking Me for anything. I will not hear.

Maybe you walked away from every form of sin in your life when you became a Christian and you have never looked back. Praise the Lord!

But I struggle.

I am coming out of sin by stages. By the commandment of the Lord. With the help of the Water and the Blood. Out of darkness and into His glorious light. It is where I want to be really. I am not sure why I fight it so much.

I don't want to be hypocrite. I don't want people to look at my life and see nothing of Christ in me. But I can tell you this, if you see anything of worth in me, it's Him. Hopefully, He is increasing in me and I am beginning to fade away.

Father, thank You for Your patience with me. Thank You for leading me through the wilderness and bringing me out the other side. Shine in me Father. May they see less of me and more of You.

The Balloon

Proverbs 21 The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He will.

As I am writing this entry I am enjoying the most beautiful view on this most beautiful morning. From the french doors of our living room in Albuquerque the sun is beginning to rise over the Sandia Mountains, their peaks still iced with snow. I am told that the name, Sandia, means watermelon which is appropriate because in the afternoon when the sunset lies on the face of the rocks they glow pink. But at sunrise they are blue-gray. Rising up over the banks of the Rio Grande are the famous hot air balloons of New Mexico. The float by my windows blocking out the sun momentarily. They are so peaceful, so colorful. They are like souls. Rising and falling. Carried by the wind. Led by the pilot. And at the end of their journey they are folded like a tent and put away.

The King's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord, He turns it wherever He will.

Yesterday (and for about the one millionth time) I was amazed at how much my Father has a active role in my life. How could I ever forget that I do not walk this life alone or in my own strength? I come again to the realization that the dreams in my heart were placed there for a purpose. The hope that I have for Israel, for travel nursing, for my job and my desires come from my Father. They are not of my own design.

For the last few months Ken and I have been working toward taking a travel assignment in New York city. I have never been there and it seems very far out of reach for a girl from Flat Rock Alabama. But since it has become a desire in both our hearts to try, we decided to pay for the very expensive nursing license and put my name in the pot with the thousands of travel nurses hoping to land a job in Manhattan.

It has been a long process but finally, on Thursday, I got confirmation. I have a New York license to practice as a registered nurse. My recruiter sent my profile over to an oupatient chemotherapy center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in Manhattan.

On Friday afternoon a lady that I like a lot came in for her chemotherapy so I stopped by to chat with her for a moment. She is a nurse as well and so we have some things in common and we are about the same age. During our conversation she asked where we planned on going for our next travel assignment and I told her how Ken and I have this feeling that we should try to go to New York. I will paraphrase somewhat the conversation that followed....

Oh really, what a coincidence, my sister lives in upstate New York. She is an oncology doctor.

Oh, wow, where?

She works in Manhattan?

Oh, WOW, where?

Memorial Sloan-Kettering.

REALLY?

So what are the odds that this could happen. She gets on the phone right then, calls her sister and asks if she can help make sure that I get an opportunity to travel to Manhattan.

Coincidence?

Maybe. Not.

Who knows what the next step is, right? My Father does.

All I need to do is to leave my mind and heart open to Him. To be flexible in His hands. To hold my life loosely before Him. To offer Him what I am and to believe that it is enough.

The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He will.

Father I do not know all that you have planned for me but I want to be open to whatever it is. Albuquerque, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Chattanooga, Flat Rock or Manhattan. I want my life and my work to count for Your kingdom. If I live at Shevet Achim in communal housing I am excited about that. If you send us to Bethlehem to live in Rafi's basement I am excited about that. If we live in our little cottage in Chattanooga I am excited about that. If we live in Trump Towers in Manhattan I am excited about that. My home is with my husband and in Your care. Help us to have the courage to walk through the doors that You open. Teach us to be fluid streams in Your hands, turning wherever You will.

The Bystander

Psalm 23 Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will not fear for THOU art with me.

Job 13 Though He slay me yet will I trust Him.

Two of the most beautiful verses of scripture. Hallmarks of my faith.

So last week I went to the doctor for some recurring GI problems (I won't bore you with the details) but I had an exam, some labs, an abdominal ultrasound, and just since I was going anyway, they threw in a mammogram.

Ahhh! the joys of the aging process.

On Monday I received a phone call from the breast imaging center . They would like for me to come in to the office on the following Monday because there was an "abnormality" found in my left breast. An area that was "suspicious".

The earth shifted just a little.

And when I could make my mouth work I said no thank you to next Monday, I can come tomorrow. (Who can wait for seven days?)

When I hung up the phone I took a good hard look around the room. I am sitting at my desk surrounded by my patients who are hooked up to their IV's getting their chemotherapy. Many of them are my age, and for the first time, I felt their fear. I could join them. I might be in the blue chair soon.

The rational side of my brain felt sure that this was nothing to worry about but because of my work I know how things can be. Part of me was racing ahead to lumpectomy, mastectomy, reconstruction, port placement, radiation and chemotherapy.

I was no longer just their nurse, a bystander. This could be the last day before the day that I am diagnosed with cancer.

I was a little surprised by myself. It took me a while to get centered and say, Lord, Father, You see me. You know me. You control my life. So have Your way.

My repeat mammo and ultrasound were okay. Just compressed breast tissue and not a tumor.

I have a really wonderful life and I really want to live it. But I feel some guilt in this because I take care of a lot of wonderful people who feel exactly the same way.

I can't help but think of Jesus in this circumstance. I imagine He had a pretty wonderful life in heaven. Yet He chose not be a bystander. He joined our ranks. He became intimately familiar with our weaknesses. Our pain. He suffered hunger, thirst, exposure, loss, rejection, betrayal, torture and death.

He sat in the blue chairs for us.

Hebrews 4 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who in EVERY respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin....In the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death and He was heard because of His reverence. Although He was a Son, He learned obedience through what He suffered. And being made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.

Father I do not understand all the reasons that these things happen. So much suffering in this life. I do know that there is coming a day when all things will be set right. All things will be made new. There is coming a day when there will be no more cancer. No more pain. No more suffering. No more death. No more separation. I know that when this life is over, however it ends, whenever it ends, I will be with You. Forever. And that is enough for me. I love you Lord. Thank You for my job and for my patients and for having just a small taste of the fear that they are facing. Be near Lord Jesus. I need You.