Spencer's Mom

Except a kernel of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

The Way to Wellness

 

             The pain awakened me. My feet were throbbing, and the ache reached up to the back of my knees. I lay still trying to figure this out, then realized as I readjusted my body that my back, neck and head hurt too. I remembered swimming in Nantucket Sound a few days earlier. God am I that old? I sighed and lifted my pounding head from the pillow, slid out of bed, and limped into the bathroom. I can find the Tylenol and open the child-proof cap without even being conscious.

            It wasn’t until that evening, when my clothes felt like they were on fire that I realized I was sick, not just sore. Then the shaking chills. I fumbled around for a thermometer. 101.7. I gulped some more Tylenol and went to bed. It was a restless night but I awoke free from fever, although not from the pain. I called my doctor.

            “Hold on,” the secretary said flatly after hearing my story, punctuated by, I have never had a fever that high! for dramatic effect. When she came back on the line she said, “The doctor said, ‘You’re a nurse. You know if you’re sick.'”

            I do? This was my first thought. Because historically I am pathetically unaware of my physical well-being, until my body just drops and quits. I’m a great nurse for you but like most nurses, detached from the signals and sirens going off inside my own body.

            Someone had to tell me when I was pregnant, when I was turning yellow from eating bad shellfish, when I should consider that I might have a concussion. I don’t like to spend time inside of myself. It just never seems beneficial.

            There’s a plus side to my ignorance. My husband marvels at my ability to deflect “vain imaginations,” my resilience under pressure and a forward drive that prevents a morbid preoccupation with inward scrutiny. I stunk at meditating in the 70’s. At a yoga class I took a few years ago, I started giggling then had to leave when the instructor told us to be “mindful.” It sounded like Dali Lama meets Miss Manners.

            But there’s also the flip side. A lack of self-awareness can lead to self-deception; perhaps nothing evil or even un-Godly, but I can easily slide into my old comfy self-reliant shoes – the ones with well-worn scriptures and broken-in prayers.

            Then he said to them, “You like to appear righteous in public, but God knows your hearts. What this world honors is detestable in the sight of God.” Luke 16:15

            Yikes! Detestable? Let me look at another translation… how about “abominable?”

            I recovered from my sickness of unknown origin after six days and felt like I was coming out of general anesthesia. I had lost time, so my natural course of action was to catch-up and get busy. Then one morning early in prayer, I heard God speak to me very clearly. He said this:

            “Don’t take Me lightly.”

            It startled me – it was a warning, just short of a rebuke, and I knew I had to spend some time looking inside, and at how the inside was manifesting outside. I had to take my spiritual temperature.

            Charles Finney wrote in the 1850’s about negative morality – how Christians are inclined to settle for just being good people. We don’t curse, don’t smoke, don’t hurt others. We are nice Christians, assimilating into the mainstream of life, but if we are just good, not sanctified, we stink like last week’s garbage. We become hollow trophies, relics of dead religion and social injustice programs – applauded by mankind and the devil. Detestable to God.

            What was my remedy? Repentance first. I had been “esteeming the things of God lightly” – foremost, my relationship with Him. I had been rushed, distracted, malnourished from “lite” prayer, lazy grazing in His word, genuflecting before His throne room of grace. I felt ashamed. My temperature was lukewarm at best, but in the public eye I spoke eloquently, laughed easily and even loved well. But was it His love, or mine? Could I have loved if they hated me or my Jesus? Or if I speak Truth, not just what someone wanted to hear? Can I rejoice in suffering, when what I think is rightly mine, is taken by a just and sovereign God? I knew all this, but I had begun to take it lightly. We are pulled from the flames of hell, redeemed and set free by a brutal death on a cross and clothed in heavenly righteousness. How can I ever take that lightly? A Love far greater than anything I could return? Yet I was treading softly down the well-worn path of neutral Christianity.

            My worship was indeed sick; not dying or dead but just sick enough to make me useless, just like the fever that haunted me for six days, wearing me out, weakening my reserve. I still functioned, but I was hollow and ineffective. Salt without saltiness, a flame without warmth.

“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,…” ― C.S. Lewis,  The Screwtape Letters           

            I thank God for His warning, that He loves us enough to say, “STOP!” Since that day, I’ve noticed all the places where I can worship Him “in spirit and in truth,” not just in lip-service and the “dont’s”. At work, when a patient’s call light is on again, at home, when my husband who never asks needs to know how much I love him, or looking at the night sky studded with every star my God has named. Funny – once I started looking for places to worship Him, my joy returned. Playing the piano, walking the dog, talking to Jesus before I close my eyes at night. I feel renewed, and so very loved. Thanks, Lord, for pulling me back in, close to You.

Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,
My lips shall praise You.
 Thus I will bless You while I live;
I will lift up my hands in Your name.
When I remember You on my bed,
I meditate on You in the night watches.
 Because You have been my help,
Therefore in the shadow of Your wings I will rejoice. Psalm 63:3-7

 

 

Skipping Back to Jesus (Lessons From an ADHD Nurse)

                     “Let me go Mom!”

“The school wants you to skip a grade,” my mother said, like you would say, The dentist wants to drill your teeth.

I checked her expression, my 7-year-old face turning slightly towards her voice. She was downcast. Tired. It had been a year of multiple trips to the principal’s office, a place I secretly liked, away from the classroom, the distraction of 30 other girls and boys. Then testing. Nice men in suits with briefcases filled with puzzles and pictures. They told my mother what she wanted to hear.

“Sure, she’s smart alright.” My dad, who was prone to practicalities, would say,

“She’s a pain in the keister.”

   I was both. I would get bored and restless and I would find myself doing gorilla imitations on top of the desks. I was a show-off too.

   I like to think that Jesus constrains me now. Plus 53 years later, you would hope I’d learned a few things, but lately I realize that the grace of God allows for times of foolishness. He sees me veering off, sometimes jumping off, and instead of shutting the door and saying Good Luck Charlie (another euphemism of my father’s), He waits. And with great compassion, he rejoices when I return, stumbling home again.

   In a hospital, a nurse can do a lot of things. It reminds me of one of those Richard Scarry books that you read to kids, like “The Busiest Day Ever”. You can work in the ER, or the ICU, or OR. Or you can climb the managerial ladder, gaining titles and a train of letters after your name. I’m a basic nurse but with ADHD tendencies. In other words, I get bored. And I admit that I have been lured and caught by the shiny worm. “ER nurse” sounds like Special Forces. You’re saving lives. You’re putting Spiderman band-aids on boo-boos. In the ICU you are surrounded by a forest of high tech pumps and flashing numbers and alarms. And you actually understand what is going on! It’s like a gorilla imitation – people are wowed. And that’s my problem. I get distracted and wander from unit to unit, asking God where I belong but not really waiting for an answer. Then I become aware that I am lost, I am unhappy. I’ve forgotten what matters most.

   Lately, right in the middle of my self-inflicted stress and trouble I keep hearing a still small voice within. Look up! And again… Look UP! And when I do, when I shift my gaze from the muddle of daily life, from the tired face in the mirror and remember eternity and my real home, I find my way. It’s clear, it’s direct.

   I think it’s so beautiful that God lets me wander, even when it makes Him sad. I’m not sticking needles in my arms or selling my soul but when we refuse to listen to or even ask God what HE wants us to do, it’s all the same. It’s self- promoting, self- first. No one will know but me. And Jesus. His love is astounding.

“Just take care of sick people,” He says. It’s the gift He gave me. It doesn’t matter if I’m a Green Beret or just another soldier. Do what you’re called to do.

   Last night I dreamt I was walking beside a river, but the water looked so good I decided to jump in. I was dressed in nice clothes but I just jumped in, all dressed. At first, the water felt good – brisk but refreshing. But then I realized the current was too strong and quick. My best hope was to swim with it, trying to make it over to the other side where I saw a boathouse. Suddenly I saw the water was ending, over a cliff, and I wasn’t sure I could make it to the boathouse. I started to yell, and I saw a man standing on the dock, watching me and laughing. I yelled louder, getting panicked and he just laughed some more, doubled over now and slapping his knee.

   “This is the worst!” I thought and just then my foot touched something. It was sand. I put both feet down and stood up, feeling foolish that I was screaming for help when the water was only three feet deep. The man just shook his head, watching me with a smile as I walked to shore, my clothes wet but drying quickly as I neared the boathouse. Then I woke up, smiling, wondering if the man was supposed to be Jesus. Maybe the boathouse was heaven. Or my job.

   I felt an unusual joy today at work. Nothing special happened. I walked an old man to the bathroom, the walker catching on the floor as he muttered and softly cursed the dang thing, talked to a young man painted in tattoos about his dreams, his kids, his drinking. He thanked me for being his nurse. And the old man smiled at me through his pain, after I gently lifted him all the way into bed. As I went through the door, I heard him call after me,

“You’re a good kid.”

   I think Jesus would say that’s better than being smart enough. Sometimes it’s just being still and listening to the music within the human soul. Skipping a grade, or skipping to the next job or town or church isn’t what matters most. It’s looking up, it’s eternity here, starting now, with Him. It’s wading into the current beside Him, watching, waiting, until He says, “There!”

   Skipping a grade didn’t work. Even though I felt humbled by so many 8 year olds, even though Mrs. Krumich threatened to send me back to second grade, eventually I was bored again and resumed my seat in the principal’s office. Smart enough all right. But still a pain in the keister.

 

Old Nurses Never Die; They Just Have Surgery

Left on the whiteboard by an elderly patient I cared for.

Left on the whiteboard by an elderly patient I cared for.

Robin. I had penned the letters over silk tape and stuck it to a locker 7 years ago. I caught the corner and pulled it off, closed the empty locker door and headed out, taking one last look at the small break room.

The room is tucked away, off a hallway used by everyone from Risk Management to Interpreters to Float Pool, but is seldom used at all. There’s no TV in it; just a small table and 3 chairs. But it’s a room I’ve used every work-morning to pray in, as I watch the steady flow of workers crossing the parking lot and the sun edging up over the bog. I slow myself down, making sure Jesus leads before I jump into the unknown world of the sick or injured. The room also provided a small respite at many lunch breaks, allowing me to reflect in silence, away from the din of alarms, phones, call bells and anxious families.

I entered the world of healthcare 30 years ago by answering an ad in the paper for a Personal Care Attendant, or PCA. If you had asked anyone who knew me then, I would be on your Least-likely-to-become-a-nurse list or just least-likely-to-care. I had little patience for sissies with sniffles, and my sons will tell you I had Zero Tolerance for whining.

“Go to you room if you need to whine,” I would tell them, and they quickly learned that whining to yourself is absurd.

So I answered the ad. The wife of a 40-year-old quadriplegic needed help. Jimmy had broken his neck drunk on a motorcycle and now depended on someone else to feed, wash, dress and move him. It was the first time I had to push past the awkwardness of a helpless human body, so vulnerable and frail, and learn to care for the soul within it as well. This was a huge learning curve and there were days where Jimmy and I both wanted to quit.

It was no coincidence that Jimmy’s wife, and reluctantly Jimmy, were born again Christians and I was not. This man, with just enough strength to push out the air to argue, caught me in the middle of his beef with a God that would lay him up in bed for the next 20 years, at the mercy of clueless people like me. Oddly, it positioned me in a place of wanting to know a few things too, and before I left Jimmy’s for nursing school, I too had surrendered to this beautiful and terrifying Father who could woo us with cords of boundless love and mercy yet love us enough to let us go, even if it meant crashing into a telephone pole drunk.

As I walk down the deserted hallway from the break room, the rooms behind the closed doors come alive in my memory. I first worked on this floor as a “student nurse” in the late 80’s, then hired as an RN when I graduated. I remember caring for a 90-year-old woman here, my young face startled by her pale gossamer skin and network of tiny blue veins threading up her arms. She was amused by my innocence.

Then in this room, my first young guy, a diabetic, handsome and flirtatious, and how I flushed when I had to give him an IM injection in his left buttock. And room 27, where I saw my first dead man, sitting up in bed like he was watching TV, but he was gone, just a body that I would help wrap and pull the zipper over his face. I have never grown used to that. And I remember an older nurse, like me now, telling me “No matter what, take a break. Get off the floor!” And I’ve held to that advice, 26 years later.

But I’ve always loved nursing, to be face to face with sickness, and the despair and fear it can bring. To be there, to join in, has been as natural for me as breathing and I recognize it as a particular gift from God, made more perfect after I lost my son 14 years ago. “Deep calls to deep,” the Bible says. When you have gone through some things, others will trust you with their pain.

I have an old nurses body now; the shoulder has been injected, the hip scoped, the back MRI’d and I think the knees are next on the chopping block. So I’ve taken a step back from the bedside into the IV team when I return from surgery. I will still see many patients, but I will not be washing them, hauling them out of bed or  whispering in their ear when they are trying to die. But I know my God, and I know He never takes back His gifts, He just changes the scenery from time to time.

I’m glad nursing has never defined me, and I always feel a little sorry for nurses who do try to get their sense of purpose from a career that doesn’t often give back in the ways we want – few kudos from the upper echelon, often yelled at by a patient long before you get a thanks (You want me to get up?!?!) and spending a lot of time in places with “output” that I won’t describe here, although if you see a group of nurses together laughing until they cry, it’s likely over the things we can’t tell anyone. “Fine,” is what I tell my husband at dinner when he asks how my day went. As all the faces and images flash before me, I know Fine is safe and enough.

Neither do I define myself by being a wife, mom and a grandma, roles I cherish way beyond nursing. I would drive them all crazy if I did. As it is, I have a husband who still adores me, two beautiful daughter-in-laws who apparently love me, but more importantly love Jesus, my sons and grandchildren. I simply can’t ask for more.

Delight your self in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4 ESV

Many of us just use Jesus as an add-on, like a rabbit’s foot charm.

If I do this, then I get that.

It’s in our Promise Book, conveniently alphabetized for a quick look; Children, Health, Wealth with a coordinating scripture we can chant over our own selfish wants. But delighting ourselves in Him means our lives are hid in Christ and He in us. It is a posture of submission that grants abiding and oneness, so that our desires will always align with His will. Obedience becomes a joy, not a hard task. And what I think I really need may be the precise thing He will remove or never give. Can we trust this Jesus, this God-man who says we must hand over all, including our plans and our identity?

Corrie Ten Boom said “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.” This was a truth I discovered after Spence died, and that pit seemed bottomless. As a nurse, I have had to stake my career on it; that in the despondent alcoholic, the cancer ridden mother and the cries of a parent who lost a child, whether that child is 6 or 60, I can share that place of overwhelming darkness because Jesus has gone before us.

My nursing career is not done yet, just transitioning once again. And my hope and prayer is this:

God, use whatever I have in every new place, in each new day. Give me manna for today that I may share it, giving glory back to you. Your crazy daughter — Robin

Hope For the Busiest Day Ever

On a clear winter morning, the sunrise over the bogs in Hyannis can be spectacular. The navy sky fades to cobalt then a prism of violet to orange and if there’s some scattered clouds around it can look other-worldly. This takes the edge off of getting up for work when it’s dark out, especially dark and freezing, like it’s been. I like to leave early with a mug of hot tea and sit in the parking lot in front of the bog where I can pray and talk to God and try to get my heart and head in a good place before I head into the hospital. In the spring, it’s lighter out, and it’s fun to watch all kinds of birds waking up. It doesn’t seem nerdy to me to be a bird-watcher anymore. Maybe that’s what happens with age.

The hospital at 6:45 a.m. reminds me of one of those Richard Scarry books I used to read to my boys when they were little, “The Busiest Day Ever” or something like that. Just from the parking lot to the door I see nurses, doctors, housekeepers, food servers, nurse’s aides, maintenance crew and administrators. Except unlike the book, they are people, not cats and beavers and worms. (Yes,worms wearing hard hats, I remember that part)And we are all busy, already, before the stress of another day can really weigh in. That’s how hospitals are.

There’s a window I pass on my way to the floor overlooking the bog and it catches me, at least this time of year. The sun is edging up in the black sky and I can see over to my right a huge glass med-surg wing and I know the day is just starting there for a lot of patients, many tired already. Behind me is a building filled with sad stories of sickness, trauma and pain. In the midst of all that there are many good reports and happy endings. But there is also sorrow and unspeakable loss.

Shortly after my son died, I made a corkboard called “The Board of Hope” and tacked anything to it that would help me to look up, to stay focused on who God was, not who I was or wasn’t. I’ve learned over the years of nursing that everyone wants to hope, from the expectant mom in maternity to the chemo patient in oncology. And when a person stops hoping, they quit. As I take in God’s magnificent display in the eastern sky, I ask Him to help me be a light in someone’s darkness, like the Board of Hope. Maybe it’s being able to laugh with them, or listen or just get a ginger ale or blanket. It seems so simple but there are days I walk back to my car at the end of the day and wish I could‘ve done so much more.

The good thing (I guess) is that tomorrow I get another chance. The Busiest Day Ever will start again and as the sun warms the eastern sky over the frozen cranberry bogs, God will help me do it again. It’s what He is, Hope and what He does. So when my amazingly loud and obnoxious alarm clock jolts me out of bed into the frozen blackness of a new day, help me remember Lord, to “be joyful in hope”, and to be your messenger of grace and light no matter how dark it is out there.

 

G.O.M. (Grumpy Old Men)

Not as grumpy as they look

I love Grumpy Old Men. Maybe it’s because if my dad was alive, he would be one. He died at my age, which was 30 years ago and he was a WWII Navy vet, submarines in particular. I was a little girl surrounded by brothers that had to spend part of every vacation touring smelly dark subs or visiting war memorials. That’s likely why I am a drawn to military history; a little odd for a woman.

This affinity for GOM plays out at work, where I frequently have to care for them. The WWII generation is quickly becoming extinct and they are filling hospital beds. I can always spot one because the nurse from the previous shift will be exasperated and worn-out. “Mr. Johnson (not real name) is stubborn and demanding.” Or the softer nurse-language; the patient is “non-compliant”, code word for difficult, or making my job miserable.

This weekend I cared for a GOM two days in a row. He was a challenge. We started our first day together with him demanding milk for his cereal NOW after keeping me in the room for several minutes while he fired questions at me about his doctor, the day’s schedule and when can he get out of here? Now I learned a long time ago that if you give these guys a sense of control, not to mention dignity, in the beginning of your shift, they’ll turn from lion to lamb by the end of the shift. He was no exception. After answering all of his questions the best I could and writing some of it on his board so he could remember it, I RAN to get his milk. When I returned promptly with it, I could tell we’d turned a page together. “You’re a good nurse,” he said. I thanked him and moved on.

The next day I again received an awful report from an exhausted night nurse. Mr. GOM had held the evening and night nurses hostage to his many demands and stubborn refusal to comply with treatment. He was old, in his eighties, and failing. His daughter told me her mother died five years ago and he wasn’t very good at managing alone but would not admit it. Typical of this generation, they don’t complain. They lived through the depression and a horrific war. They are not quitters, something foreign to following generations of protesters and entitled victims.

I stepped into his room and found a very tired AND grumpy old man that needed help getting to the bathroom. As I hooked my arm under his and took little steps alongside him and his walker he asked me, “And how are you on the Lord’s day?” I was impressed because he realized it was Sunday. “Well, I should probably be in church,” I answered. It’s part of the package of nursing, working every other weekend, and this Sunday was particularly tough to miss. Our church had moved to a new building and I longed to be a part of the celebration.

He stopped briefly and turned to me.

“Maybe He wants you right here.”

We smiled at each other and I tightened my grip on his arm as he started to move again. I forgot to mention this. Grumpy Old Men have a lot of wisdom too.