Happy Heather's Hullaballoo

27 interesting things

2011-02-28T20:44:00.000-08:00

Interesting things I did in the last two weeks:
1. Commenced Italian lessons with an elderly Italian lady who lives close to me
2. Found a set of dining chairs in the dumpster and sold them for $100.00
3. Found an exercise bike in the dumpster and brought it into my living room so I can watch traffic and cycle while studying Italian.
4. Made ribs, trifle, baked Salmon, wild rice and various other delicacies.
5. Swam a kilometer in 33 minutes
6. Brought coffee to a man sleeping behind my dumpster.
7. Cut my hair
8. Received flowers for valentine's day from my husband
9. Got kicked by a patient at work.
10. Kicked out a patient at work.
11. Broke my favorite teacup.
12. Turned 27
13. Mailed in paperwork so I can go back to school
14. Ordered a new computer
15. Watched the Oscars
16. Bought combs for a patient who didn't have anything to untangle her rat's nest hair with.
17. Locked myself out of my apartment building.
18. Prayed
19. Met up with an old friend from out of town and went for coffee
20. Saved a patient who was about to have a heart attack with nitrospray
21. Fell asleep watching a movie with my husband
22. Got a seven letter word in scrabble spanning two triple-word-scores
23. Dreamed that a baby pooped on my couch.
24. Bribed my guitar student with gummy bears
25. Received mancala, rummikub and cathedral games from Robin for my birthday, and beat him 12/15 times at all of them.
26. Lost 12/15 wrestling matches against Robin, although 3 of those matches are contested.
27. Realized I am 27 and can only speak 2 languages. Time is running out.

Tom yum soup and other yummy things

2011-02-10T13:30:00.000-08:00

As a follow-up from last months blog on resolutions, I feel I should update everyone on how things are going. Some of the resolutions are going very well and some are sucking.
I managed to make it through a month of fruit and veggie smoothies, minus one day when I just couldn't stomach it. It was harder than I thought..... The no desserts for a month was not as hard, but sad to say I only made it 3 weeks. I was at work and a coworker gave me a chocolate danish and told me how much he appreciated my work and was obliged to eat it. The next night at Bob and Marlene's when I was offered chocolate raspberry cream cake, I couldn't say no. I mean, I didn't say no.
As for the other resolutions.... better late than never, I say. I'm five weeks behind on my 52-books-in-one-year resolution, but I have four books on the go and I expect to finish some soon. As for exercising every day.... sigh. I manage about half the time. This morning I finally started my swimming program with Caleb and Mimi. when it was still dark I walked over to the rec center (6:30, people!) and swam for an hour with them.
However, I am making headway with one of my resolutions: learn to cook 10 new things. This is no 'Julie and Julia' blog, folks, but from someone who used to hate cooking I think I'm making progress, and in the process, having fun.
I started with a creamy white bean and broccoli soup (A healthy version of cream-of-broccoli). Creamy, smooth, delicious! Robin and I loved it and I made it twice. the only bad part was when I blended the soup as per the recipe: I poured it into the blender in batches, put the lid on and pressed 'high'. I guess the steam from the hot soup expanded to fill the blender and the pressure caused the lid to pop off and spray green soup all over me and the kitchen. It even sprayed down my spice rack before I could push 'stop'.
Then I made Spanish rice for the first time- rice cooked with chorizo sausage and peppers- what a novel idea! I followed that up with smoky corn chowder with bacon. I don't think I've ever had corn chowder before, and my stomach did a little turn when I saw the creamed corn (thanks, Len); but it turned out delicious, and, well, smoky. That was my first time cooking with leeks and I discovered they are sort of like onions but don't make your eyes sting.
Last Sunday I cooked root vegetables and chicken with braised fennel. I'm still not sure what fennel is, but Sam and I agreed that it's better than celery but still probably best cooked with something else, not by itself. Fennel has a delicate licorice taste but it's not stringy and not quite as boring as celery. If you cook it with enough butter and sugar, I discovered, it's palatable. Maybe next time I'll add it to a soup or a salad.
Then this week I made tiramisu for the first time. I don't really know what tiramisu is, either, but I've figured out that it's extremely fattening. The recipe I made called for 35% cream and mascarpone cheese (very expensive, by the way- about $12 for 454g) but it slides down like silk and leaves you feeling warm inside. I skipped the coffee liqueur in the recipe and added coffee instead so it wouldn't completely put us to sleep.
My seventh new recipe was pink deviled eggs. I've had deviled eggs before, but these ones called for a bit of tomato paste in the egg filling, and I added some relish instead of chopped pickles. The net result tasted like eggs filled with thousand island dressing. Robin and I scooped out the filling and just ate the eggs.
Today's recipe was Tom-Yum soup, whatever that is. It's a delicious looking soup with chicken, shrimp, lime, coconut, fish sauce, tomatoes, mushrooms and chili. I have no idea where Tom yum soup comes from but it has a slightly Asian look to it and I'm anticipating eating it for dinner tonight.
Robin's getting a little bored with soup, I think, so maybe next week I'll try something a little more solid.
I still have made zero progress on improving my Spanish or Italian, and I haven't finished my deadly infection board game, but there are still 10 and a half months to go and I am optimistic that much will be accomplished.
In another week I'm turning 27 and the fact that I will be in my late twenties might compel me to write another set of resolutions for the next three years. Who can tell.

13 resolutions

2011-01-12T10:40:00.001-08:00

I am blogging.... it has been far too long. A year ago I was bored out of my mind, but I think now I've settled into the business of life here in Kelowna; made it my home. I work between 15 and 50 hours a week (someday maybe I'll have a regular job), and I'm a full-time wife with many hobbies and friends to keep things just a little bit crazy.
Those of you who have been following my hullaballoo for years know how much I love lists and resolutions. What better time than the beginning of a brand new year to make goals! This year there are 13 of them, and I wrote them down in order of the ones that will most likely happen to the ones that most likely won't happen, but it sure would be nice if they did.
Last year's resolutions were curtailed by a combination of finances, providence, and laziness. I didn't learn Spanish because I was lazy. I didn't travel to another foreign country because I was broke. I didn't go see the Northern lights because fate (or God) prevented it from happening. But oh, the joy of a fresh start!
1.No sweets for the month of January (candies, desserts, etc. This does not include fruit or hot chocolate) So far I've kept this one.
2.Exercise every day (either walk, run, swim, dance, or something!) So far I've missed 2 days, but I'm not giving up. It's hard to exercise when I'm working a night shift, come home and sleep, and then get up to it being dark already. That's my main excuse.
3.Drink a fruit and veggie smoothie every day for a month. This one is killing me. This morning I am sitting watching the snow come down while I choke down a smoothie made of banana, beet, celery, pineapple, coconut milk and pure disgustingness. It's getting harder every day but I'm giving it my best shot.
4.Learn Spanish. I have a plan: study 10 minutes a day by myself, and take a class.
5.Learn Italian. I have a plan for this one too: there is an old Italian lady who lives near me and I'm going to ask her for lessons.
6.Read 52 books. Books in another language count as 2. I've done this before and really enjoyed it. So many books, so little time!
7.Learn to cook 10 new things. I'm taking suggestions... so far I'm going to try to make baby back ribs and baked alaska. Ambition, the mother of success!
8.Take a dance class. There is a dance studio that opened right across the street from my house. They offer break dancing, tap, and some other boring classes.
9.Finish my board game 'Deadly Infection'.This deserves a whole blog by itself. The game is awesome and is going to revolutionize the world of health care education.
10.Memorize 3 chapters of the bible. I'm going to try to find the bible on podcasts so I can listen while I exercise. That would be sweet: combining two goals in one.
11.Get rid of stuff. Lots of it.
12.Finish the book on chemistry I started 5 years ago. Enough said.
13.Pay off ¼ of our debts. Honestly I don't this one's going to happen, with Robin back in school, but miracles do happen. I resolve to receive miracles this year.
So there you have it. There are many people who mock new year's resolutions but for all of them, I'd like to point out that even though I don't usually fulfill ALL of my goals, at least I fulfill some of them. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. And the truth is, if I really want to do these things, I'll make them happen! Now if you'll excuse me, I have a smoothie to finish.

Shine

2010-10-23T16:41:00.001-07:00

I read a book awhile ago that disturbed me quite a bit. It was called 'eat, pray, love'. It was a well-written and engaging story, but it was basically about a woman who went on a narcissistic quest to find pleasure; in the process leaving her husband to find herself. I thought about the book for months because in my mind, it was a very accurate portrayal of our world's concept of finding happiness. You selfishly seek it at the expense of others.
I am no Mother Teresa. At this moment I am lying on the couch typing and snacking while I could be cleaning the house or visiting a lonely friend or praying or doing something focused on someone else besides myself.
However, I am not doing any of those things; (for my own various reasons), instead I'm attempting to explain to myself and you how true happiness finds us.
A verse in Matthew says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Another verse in Psalms says “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart”.
The point is, that as we focus outside of ourselves and run after God and make him our number one passion, true happiness and joy will find us. I think part of it has to do with a subtle changing of our hearts. I was recently discussing yoga with a colleague at work. I told him that I like the yoga postures and stretches, but I wasn't really interested in getting into the religion of yoga. Well, what is that? He asked. I explained that among other things, yoga was supposed to give the practitioner inner calm, peace and happiness. True peace, I explained to him, is found through a right relationship with Jesus. Anything that claims to be able to give you true peace apart from him, is deceptive. You could do yoga for 6 hours a day or sit on a lamppost for 3 years or only eat raw foods or sleep for 12 hours a night or have a live-in massage therapist or get rid of all your teenagers, but none of that would bring you true inner peace.
Inner peace comes from being right with God, knowing that we're forgiven of the things we've done wrong, and being satisfied in him. God wants us to have true peace, which is why he tells us to seek after him.
I wish I could say that I experience true peace and happiness all the time. I simply don't. I tend to worry a lot about finances and how long our truck is going to keep running, and work, and my weight, and I'm very worried right now about the elk roast I have cooking in the oven.
I injured my tailbone riding 8 kilometers on a crappy bike seat, so it hurts to sit, and I'm taking a bit of time off running until I'm better. I don't have a lot of work so I have quite a bit of free time, and last night I walked to the nearest Starbucks and got a pumpkin spice latte and sat and read a book of italian recipes that I'll never make, and a medical journal of surgical procedures I'll never perform. I sat on one side of my hip and then the other, and looked out the window at the full moon and felt content. On my way home Robin came to meet me and he was excited because we have a fridge full of elk meat. We walked back home together and then Brock came over to play video games with him and I sat at the table with headphones in listening to the soundtrack from 'Shine' and putting together my thrift-store jigsaw puzzle. I drank laxative tea just to keep things moving and ate a mandarin and stayed up til midnight only to discover I was missing two pieces.
My favorite song on the cd is Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, and it is so moving that I wanted to jump up and down and shout 'Hallelujah'! I listened to it on repeat for an hour and felt chills down my spine.
Simple beautiful strains of happiness have been pursuing me; in a delicious soft-boiled egg this morning, in a good book, in laughing so hard with Robin I almost cried, in a night-time walk in the brisk fall air; in watching the sun rise while talking to God about how much I love him. I am not grasping after them. They are finding me as I am seeking the kingdom of God.

Anniversary musings

2010-08-04T02:52:00.000-07:00

I've now been married just over a year. Robin and I had our anniversary this weekend and it put me in a strangely contemplative mood. (That and the fact that I just read an excellent and deeply thought provoking book called 'Still Alice').
Before I was married it seemed like this elite club, a sort of social nirvana, and I was eager to join their ranks and find my soulmate; the person who completed me and was the half I'd always been missing. But it isn't quite like that, I've discovered. I don't know quite how to explain it, I tried to tell Robin that I didn't feel married, but that's not quite right- I think a better way to explain it is that I still feel like the same Heather I always have been. I suppose as a child I had this illusion in my mind of what I would be like as an adult- a sort of abstract concept of my future self as an object separate from myself. Then, I was surprised to discover the adult me is the exact same person as the child me. I am and always have been and always will be the same girl.
That being said, I do like being married. But I haven't really changed into a different person now that I have another half- in fact, if anything, I understand Robin less that I thought I did when we were first together.
We went out for dinner on sunday night, to the Keg, which was a vast improvement over my cooking. We had an appetizer of sizzling scallops wrapped in bacon and dipped in red sauce. Then Robin had a huge pink slab of prime rib (I do not understand the attraction of rare meat in the slightest) and I had an entire Atlantic lobster. It came on the plate like it had been plucked out of the ocean and it seemed a shame to break it apart and destroy it's beautiful red shell. I've always wanted to have lobster and I finally did. It was messy, and a lot of work, cracking the shell and dipping the juicy meat in melted butter and lemon juice, but oh, so worth it.
For dessert I had warm creme brulee with the smooth creamy inside and crackly sugar top. Divine.
The lobster was kind of like my visions of me as an adult, or what marriage would be like. It was wonderful, but not at all what I expected. We went home from the Keg and played board games and then lay in bed listening to the sound of a bullfrog outside. It reminded me of being in Antigua, lying in the stifling heat and unable to sleep because of the symphony of frogs and crickets and birds outside my window. It brought back nostalgic memories, which are always either good or neutral because of the healing effect of time.
I was pretty impatient to grow up as a kid. I didn't like being a skinny little girl in a world of tall people that didn't have to follow all the rules and who could say and do whatever they wanted. I wanted to be beautiful and have long dark hair and wear mini skirts and have a tall boyfriend. I wanted to have an exciting career, like Florence Nightengale or Maria von Trapp. I remember asking my mom to come take a picture of me as a six year old, and when she came outside with the camera, I was leaning against the tree in my swimsuit and wide-brimmed straw hat, with a coy smile on my face and one hand on my hip. I was ready to be an adult. I wanted to travel and work and get married and fly in airplanes and eat lobster.
Some things in life have been deep disappointments, like never actually growing tall and my first kiss and tasting champagne and realizing I didn't like it at all even though it sounded so glamorous. Other things have been more delightful than I possibly could've imagined, like having nieces and nephews, and studying chemistry, and having a garden on my porch, and getting married to someone who is extremely intelligent and insightful.
I think Robin probably feels the same as me, that we've lived so long being ourselves that marrying another person doesn't automatically erase who we are. I am trying to learn about him but he is like a book written in another language and some of the chapters don't make sense yet. When it comes to lobster, I may or may not have it again, but I'm glad I had that experience once and now I can cross it off my list of things to do before I die. With marriage, I've only just begun.

Frustrations

2010-07-14T02:48:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking lately about what God does to get our attention. To be honest, I think I'm fairly good at turning to him when I'm in the midst of a major crisis. However, I have a lot to learn about turning to him with the small daily annoyances of life.
Last week Robin dropped me off at work in Westbank with my bike. I was only working for a couple of hours and the plan was to ride back home on my bike. It was a hot, sunny day, and after trying to teach 1-10 in French to a kid who didn't want to be in summer school, I hopped on my bike to ride home. I had some things to do at home and should have gone straight there, but as I crossed the bridge to come into Kelowna the beach looked just so darn inviting. I biked to the library and looked for something good to read. I bought some ice cream and found a place to sit on a corner of a boat launch. the waves were lapping at the shore and I spread my books out, my bike parked beside me.
A parasailer flew by, towed by a boat, and I looked up at him with interest. It was less than 10 seconds later when suddenly disaster struck. A huge wave from the tow boat crashed against the boat launch and sprayed up at me. I started to get to my feet when suddenly another bigger wave hit. It completely drenched me, all my books, and started to wash my sandals and my bike away. I grabbed at them frantically and tried to stumble away from the edge before a third wave hit. Everything was soaked- from my purse to my new magazine to my Spanish textbook and bible and my clothes. A few people saw my plight and laughed. I began to spread everything to dry on the grass and as I took a step away suddenly I stepped on a bee and it stung me on the bottom of my foot. My immediate response was less than polite.
A young shirtless man was seated nearby and he said, "Hey, how are you? Do you mind if I come over and talk to you?"
I gave him a look to sum up my mood and he said, rather helpfully, "Maybe I can just come over later and talk to you."
There was nothing to do but pack everything up and go home. I rode home in disgust, muttering under my breath. When Robin came home from school I was still grumpy.
Unfortunately my little tsunami disaster wasn't the only frustration of the week. I borrowed a movie only to find there was nothing in the case. I ran to Marlene's to borrow her car only to discover I left the keys at home. I got a stomachache from too many cherries and a neckache from sleeping funny and a brainache from talking to some jerk at work who told me my marriage was doomed to failure.
I have my only little theory about why these particular trials came my way this week. In a general sense, though, I think God is quite good at specificially designing trials that will draw us into relationship with him. He lets us struggle with futility so we will look to him for meaning. He lets us encounter scary situations or not enough money or food so that we will learn to trust him. He lets us experience discouragement in relationships so that we will come to him as the only true and faithful friend and lover. He hurts us because he loves us, and wants us to love him.
So I know I've got a long way to go, but at least after the fact I recognized that God was trying to say something to me that day last week. Not only that, but everytime I took a step the beesting reminded me of what God was trying to say. Now, that's clever!

City, City

2010-07-05T14:49:00.001-07:00

I've lived in Kelowna now for just over a year. It's smaller than Vancouver, more laid-back, more relaxed, more low-key. Hardly anyone dresses up and it's not unusual to bump into someone I know at the grocery store or walking down the street.
I like it so much that I didn't realize how much I missed Vancouver, until Canada day last week.
Robin and I drove downtown (about 10 minutes away) to check out the Canada day festivities. There were people everywhere! Booths with things for sale, food, music, a group of break dancers, face-painting, but most of all: people, in large quantities. In the evening we went downtown again with Bob and Marlene and two of their grandsons and their niece, to watch the fireworks. I remember being in English Bay as a teenager and hanging off a lamppost, and as far as the eye could see, people- a churning, milling mass of humanity that was all caught up in the same excited frenzy.
This was reminiscent of other Canada days: although on a slightly smaller scale. I was beside myself with excitement. Kids were waving glowing light sabers around and I could smell mini donuts and hotdogs and teenagers were painted red and white and everyone was waiting for the show. I breathed deeply of the scent of all the people. It was a familiar mixture of bodies, cigarette smoke, food, dirt, just people.
There were two little boys having a sword fight with their glowsticks and there was a young couple that looked about sixteen pushing their baby in a huge stroller. There was a woman who was much too large to be wearing her tight red and white outfit. There were hippies with their hair in dreadlocks and henna tattoos snaking up their arms. There was an old man with a hat almost covering his face, playing guitar with the case open in front of him for some change. There were families of all types and sizes sitting on the grass and the sand and the sidewalks .
We bought light sabers (I couldn't resist!) and sat on the edge of the waterfront, our feet dangling over the water. Off the shore was the barge for the fireworks and the excitement was palpable. We waited for what seemed ages, looking at people. There was a bit of misty rain and the speaker above us kept cutting out, and a beaver and a huge fish and someone's lost shoe all drifted past us in the water. Finally the music started with a rousing rendition of Oh Canada, and the lights shot off the barge like colorful stars lighting up the sky. The crack of the explosions made my chest hum and I joined in the oohs and aahs of the crowds.
When it was all over we walked back through the pressing crowds, stepping over broken beer bottles, and trying to keep track of each other so we wouldn't get lost in the gathering . We got in our vehicles and joined the throng trying to get out of the downtown core. Same old stop, go, stop, go. (Except in Vancouver I would've taken the Skytrain, and packed in with all the other passengers, sweating and laughing and talking.)
I remember being at University, buried in the chemistry lab and the library, feeling disconnected from the world. I would get on a city bus once a week just so I could smell smoke and bodies and look at interesting people and feel connected to the web of life I was part of. Something in me would miss the people, the humanity of it, after spending so much time with books and beakers as my primary company.
There is nothing like a city. Perhaps if I'd been raised in a peaceful, tiny farming community with cows as my neighbors I would be overwhelmed and bothered by the masses of people. But I wasn't. And being part of the crowd and assaulting my senses with the smells and sights and sounds of a whole pile of people all excited about something- somehow it grounds me, and makes me feel content within myself.

My biannual rant

2010-06-15T21:40:00.000-07:00

Over the years as I've blogged, I've often been far from home, so I've felt freer to talk about things that happen in my life without worrying that my readers will encounter people from my stories. Living in Kelowna, a much smaller city, poses a distinct disadvantage when it comes to confidentiality. I am constrained by the fact that you may indeed bump into one of my characters if you are in town here. I am limited in my writing by the fact that Kelowna has one hospital, one Save-on-Foods, only 3 Starbucks, and one Costco. If I talk about the mean blond who works behind the counter of some restaurant, you'll probably know who I mean.
I had intended to write in my blog today about funny things that happened over the weekend. But life is not all fun and games. I am generally a happy person and I am not often angry, but today I feel a rage burning in my heart that demands to be spoken. I must put words to my frustration and let someone, somewhere, hear them and take notice. Writing in my blog is a way to give voice to my thoughts without attacking anyone personally. You can take it or leave it; you can read it and walk away or you can block my website on your computer. It's your choice. This is nothing personal against you.
But first, as a slight aside from the sad story I am going to tell you, the first story of my day was slightly comical. A patient came into my office to tell me there was an injured bird outside in the garden and could I come and help. Dealing with birds isn't a typical nursing duty, but I obliged. It was a pigeon, and I picked it up and examined it. It had flown into the window and it's wings were fine, but both legs were broken. I contemplated leaving it and seeing if it would summon the strength to fly away, but then another patient told me it had flown into the window the night before and had been lying on the ground ever since. They had been making him a shelter from the rain out of saranwrap and leaves, and feeding him popcorn.
I did the right thing and took him around the corner where we were alone, and I broke his neck. I told him I was sorry and I snapped it quickly and then I looked down at him, warm in my hands, and he winked at me. Things like that summon superhuman strength and I wrenched at that neck and was a little horrified to see his whole head pop off in my hands. I quickly stuffed him into a plastic bag and I raked gravel over all the blood and I discreetly disposed the bag and went to wash my hands.
“Where's the pigeon?” One lady asked me.
“He's gone to bird heaven”. I told her. “He's better off now.”
Later on I had an older man come to me and he was crying. Alcohol withdrawal and some anxiety issues were at the root of it, but I asked him the problem and he said between tears, “My bird is gone!” I told him kindly it was quick and painless and the bird wouldn't have recovered anyway.
So that was that. And then I was busy with more nursing things. One young lady was very sick and projectile vomited all over her bed, her neighbor's bed, the walls, the bathroom, her shoes and clothes, the lamp, her stuffed animals, the floor, and me. I spent a good deal of time with her, and cleaning up puke on my hands and knees. She had it coming out of just about every port on her body. I never knew one person could have so much output from so many places at the same time.
And the sad part of my story comes here. In the interests of confidentiality I can't tell you what actually happened, beyond the fact that this poor young lady and I had an interaction with a community service (Not the detox where I work, to clarify) that treated her in a terrible way, simply because she was a drug addict.
I am coming to dislike the term drug addict. I've only worked in the area of addictions for a little over a year but I feel it is changing me. I am seeing myself in my patients. They are not drug addicts and alcoholics. They are hurting people that are filling the empty hole inside them with something that is ultimately very harmful. And we all do it, in some way or another.
Statistically, 10% of the general population have a substance abuse problem, straight across the board. That includes doctors and nurses, who also have a 10% rate of drug and alcohol abuse. Yet so many people who work in the industry of caring for others see it as just that- an industry. They fail to realize that it is a calling, not a job, and that when it comes to loving and caring for people, the bottom line is not money, it's the dignity and worth of that person. Jesus did not shy away from touching people because they were lepers or beggars or whatever the social equivalent of that day was. He loved them, he ministered to them, and he let them bless him. My young lady today was denied the medical care she needed and was relegated to a second-class, inferior citizen. She was treated rudely and callously. And while I was on the phone fighting for some help for her, I was rebuked for being too 'aggressive'. I am not aggressive when I am advocating for my patients. Aggression, in my mind, is when someone in a position of authority, like a doctor or nurse, uses their authority to make another person feel inferior. It is when they invade a person's dignity by writing them off and not treating them in a way that reflects their inherent worth. It is when they simply don't care, and just bulldoze on ahead to get the job done without taking into account the needs and rights of another person. It is when they violate a person's worth in some way or another.

Excuse me for being passionate about this issue. We all have pain in our lives and we all deal with it in different ways. I know that loving people is not all about being a push-over and letting them have whatever they want. Sometimes it means being tough, and saying no. Sometimes it means putting a little pigeon out of it's misery, so to speak. But always, it means to do it with respect, and to recognize that we could be in the same position.
As my patients in detox I have homeless people, I have wealthy businessmen, I have successful nurses and massage therapists, I have writers, and musicians, and mothers, and fathers, and store and restaurant owners, and teachers, and farmers. I have Christians and atheists and Sikhs and Catholics and Buddhists. I have had patients as young as 19 and as old as 77. All of them have come to a point in their life where their addiction is unmanageable and they need help with their pain. They deserve compassion, respect, and good medical care. If I can't provide that to them, I shouldn't be doing my job.
I know this blog entry sounds like a rant but I feel it is something that needs to be said. We need to have grace for each other. When I grew up I heard the message from society that drug addicts were dirty people who lived on the streets and were dangerous. They're not the type of people you let into your house or befriend. I'm ashamed to say that I unconsciously succumbed to that thinking for so long. And now I have looked in the mirror of my patient's faces and I have seen myself, and more importantly, I have seen Jesus. When we treat someone as if they are undeserving of our respect and love, it is as if we are treating God's son in the same way. But when we treat them with compassion and love and dignity, and when we fight to honor them and care for them, it is as if we are doing it for God.

Normal people

2010-05-28T09:11:00.000-07:00

It's been many long months (okay, maybe just weeks) since I blogged, so I thought that instead of giving you a recap of my life, I'll give you a recap of some of the most interesting people I've met at work over the last while. Between tutoring and nursing, I've met people of all ages who have blessed and inspired me, challenged and grieved me, and given me a window into my own heart and into the heart of God. (Of course, as usual, all the names are changed in case someone reads this and fires me.)

At tutoring I struggled for a long time with a little boy named Mark. He's about 11 years old and he is totally unmanageable. He's behind in math and English so I'm trying to help him catch up so he can get into a regular class. When I ask him to do something (usually math) that he doesn't want to do, he pulls out all the stops. Whines, swears, kicks the wall, flat out refuses, etc. I've tried bribing him with games and jellybeans, threatening him with telling his dad and making him do more math, manipulating and coercing and cajoling but nothing works. I suspected that his home life might not be that great because he always came to tutoring covered in scrapes and bruises and as dirty as a little boy could possibly get.
Finally in despair I talked to my boss for some ideas and she gave me some background about him.
Mark's parents are alcoholics and drug users and he spent from the age of 6 until recently living on the streets. Finally his grandma was able to get him and he's been living with her and going back to school. At first no school wanted him because he was so wild, but he's made a lot of progress and almost caught up with his grade. He has ADD and fetal alcohol syndrome, you name it. His dad has been sober for awhile and takes him to tutoring on the bus and really does love him, but it's Mark who looks after his dad, not the other way around. The kid has been used to fending for himself and looking after others and doing whatever it took to survive.
When I heard Mark's story I knew my approach had been totally wrong. I'd been very task oriented in trying to get his math done. In reality, if we got ten minutes of good work done in our hour together, we were making progress. Mark needed to have fun at school so that he would want to stay in school and graduate. (Education isn't the answer for everything, but it certainly can help break a cycle of poverty and addiction.) I realized also that consistency and discipline were majorly lacking in Mark's life and even though I wasn't a parent, I could help him a lot more by being consistent and not giving in to his whining and manipulating.
He's extremely gifted with writing, despite his terrible punctuation, but we've finally worked out a system of rewards involving purple play-do and board games. We're making progress. Slowly but surely.
While nursing I met an intriguing fellow named Stan. Stan has bipolar disorder and he was brought into the hospital and then detox because God spoke to him (so he said) and told him not to take his medication or wear any clothes. He'd been wandering around town and got taken in. Even after we got him stabilized with some meds he would still appear periodically at the nursing station in his skivvies (or his birthday suit) asking for a chocolate milkshake. He's a gentle-spirited and very polite man and when he's in his right mind he has a little twinkle in his eye and makes wisecracks under his breath to the nurses.
Carl is only 19, which is the youngest age detox will take (there is a detox for youths in BC where they help kids as young as 8 detox off of drugs or alcohol). He looked like 16 and he had a scared, timid look about him. At first he wouldn't look me in the eye, for about two days. Every time I tried to talk to him he avoided my gaze and gave me mumbled answers. Finally one of the social workers was cleaning his room and found a stash of used needles and a spoon with heroin on it. She also found that he'd been wetting his bed and stuffing the sheets into the closets and under the mattresses. I felt myself recoiling from the awkward conversation I knew we had to have.
I told him we'd noticed the sheets and I asked him if he was sleeping too soundly because of the meds we were giving him, and not able to make it to the bathroom at night. He was embarrassed but I told him that we were happy to wash the sheets, he could just bring them discreetly to the laundry room and get new ones, but not leave them in the closets because he had a roommate coming. I asked him about the needles. “Carl, we found some needles in your room. Are they yours?”
He said he thought they belonged to the guy who'd been in the room before him. I did a dipstick urine test but it was negative for drugs. I told him, “Carl, we take very seriously using drugs in detox here. If you are using while here we'll have to discharge you. However, I always give people the benefit of the doubt and if you tell me that you haven't used, I am going to trust that you are telling me the truth.”
For the first time he looked me in the eye.
Sometimes when I'm working I believe that the Holy Spirit gives me insight into people's lives. I've found that with very young people heavily involved with drugs, there is often a history of sexual abuse, and I felt very strongly then that Carl had a history of massive sexual abuse. Sexual abuse destroys trust and respect and is devastating for anyone, but especially a young man who can't easily talk about it. So I looked Carl in the eye. I told him that I trusted him and that I wanted to see him do well here. He actually cracked a grateful smile and later, came and talked to me and the social worker about something else. He held his head up.
He finished detox two days later and went on to treatment and I pray for him that someday he finds freedom from the things that try to chain him down.
At tutoring I appreciate the normalcy in most of the kid's lives. Some of them are so innocent and untainted by life that it's truly a joy to see them discover and have fun learning. I commented on this to my boss and she laughed and said, “well, you like to think they're normal!”
The next day one of my most 'normal' students was missing. Stacy is a pretty blond 15-year-old; a little overweight and shy but we've shared a lot of laughs over French. I asked my boss if she'd heard from her. Apparently Stacy's parents had just gone through an ugly divorce and her dad refused to pay child support and her mom had run up a big debt with tutoring and other activities and finally it had all come to an end. My boss felt like Stacy and I had made a lot of progress in French, mostly in the area of building confidence, so she encouraged Stacy's mom to save the money and pull her daughter out. Suddenly normal didn't seem quite so simple.
Janine at detox seemed pretty normal too. She's the mother of two lovely teenagers who dropped her off at detox and cried when they said goodbye. She has a lilting Newfie accent and while struggling with depression she started drinking, and eventually it got out of control. She talked to her husband every day on the phone and when she was feeling a little better she bleached the whole kitchen and washed all the windows for me.
It seems to me that suffering pain is normal. Doing whatever it takes to survive is normal. Laughing and making jokes even though everything is wrong all around you, that's normal too.

What??!!!!!

2010-03-20T19:26:00.000-07:00

Can you believe I haven't blogged in over a month? This isn't really a blog entry per se, I just feel guilty so I wanted to let my readers know I haven't forgotten totally about it. I have had time off work and have been bombing around town on my bike, gardening, reading cook books (I got very inspired by 'Julie and Julia'), playing board games with Robin and enjoying the nice weather. I've met some interesting people and spent time with family and friends and had fun looking after my delightful little nieces and nephew.
I will blog again soon, I promise. In the meantime, stay happy.

Knowledge puffs up

2010-02-19T15:55:00.000-08:00

I learned an important lesson at work yesterday.
I was working at the detox center and I had a few sick patients. The doctor was scheduled to come at around 8 but she called me at 9 to say she would be in after lunch. I don't normally give the doctors too much trouble- I get everything organized for them and try not to call them on their cells, especially at night, unless it's an emergency. If I need a lot of orders, I try to group them all together in one phone call so I don't bother them too much. Suffice to say that by the time Dr. Michaels* showed up at 2:30, I had a lot of stuff to talk to her about. (*Names changed, of course, since I'm about to criticize her).
One of my patients, a young man withdrawing from morphine, had been in a car accident and sustained serious nerve damage to his left leg. He was barely handling the excrutiating pain when a buddy gave him a couple of dilaudid pills (similar to morphine) and he quickly became addicted. Now his life was falling apart and he was willing to do anything to get off the drugs. We talked about the pain together and I gave him regular tylenol and ibuprofen but none of it was really cutting it. There is a drug called Gabapentin that I told him about- it is very good for nerve-type pain and it is especially good in the withdrawal pain associated with opiate use. I told him about it and he said he'd be willing to try it. In detox it is one of the more commonly prescribed drugs by the doctors- it is non-addictive and fairly safe and I've had patients tell me that nothing helped their pain until they tried the wonder-drug Gabapentin.
Dr. Michaels came in and I was down the hall and I heard someone calling for me.
"Where's the nurse?" She demanded as I came into the office.
"I'm here." I said, and quickly pulled out all the charts for her to sign. I asked my nursing student (who was shadowing me) to go and get the first patient to see the doctor. Dr. Michael's scanned the orders sheet.
Stephanie had been on a regular dose of dilantin (a seizure-controlling medication) but the doctor the day before had forgotten to order it and I needed her to write it out for me. Kyle needed a physician's signature on his admissions form for a treatment program. James had a bad cough and was asking for his puffers and I needed an order to get new ones from the pharmacy. One of my patients came into the office just then, doubled over in pain and looking like he was about to throw up. While Dr. Michaels was signing charts I whisked him into the examining room and quickly gave him some gravol.
He kept the gravol down without vomiting so I took his blood pressure and opened the med drawer to get him some clonidine (a medication used for opiate withdrawal that takes away a lot of the pain and nausea). The poor guy hadn't had his dose yet that day, as he had been sleeping, and he was in rough shape.
Suddenly Dr. Michaels stalked into the room and stood there, in my way.
"I'm just giving him some clonidine." I explained, checking the dose of the drug.
"Can't you do this later?" She demanded, waving me out of the room.
"Okay?..." I shrugged at my patient and went out of the room. She closed the door after me.
I busied myself copying orders and then went to get another patient lined up to see her. As I was coming back into the room she was sitting with her back to me, and she called out, "Nurse!"
Now, I don't mind being called nurse by my patients, because most of them are sick and there are so many nurses they can't keep it straight anyway, and we're all wearing uniforms.... But when a doctor calls me 'nurse!', especially a female doctor, there is something very disrespectful about it. I felt my blood begin to rise, but I held my tongue and came over to help her.
"What else do you need me to sign?" She asked.
I sat down next to her and went over some of the orders, finishing with asking about the Gabapentin.
"Paul has had nerve damage in his left leg from a car accident and it's excrutiating. I was wondering about getting him some gabapentin for it."
She shrugged, ignored me, wrote something else on Paul's chart about sleep medication and shuffled the papers together.
"I'll leave this form for today, I don't have time to fill it out." I held out the clipboard with her msp forms that required her signature to be paid, and she signed it and went out of the office, putting on her coat.
She had been there for an hour but it took me two to process her orders and clean up the mess. I explained to Paul that the doctor hadn't ordered Gabapentin for him, so we'd try to manage with tylenol and hot water bottles, and the poor guy looked like he was going to cry.
Later that night, after a busy day, I was doing shift report with the night staff. The nurse coming on shift was a veteran- she is a kind older lady with an ever-present smile and a sense of humor. She took one look at Paul's chart and said,
"Why isn't he on gabapentin?
"I asked Dr. Michaels for it today" I said, "but she wouldn't order it."
"What?! We use it all the time for this type of thing! Why on earth wouldn't she order it?"
Suddenly the old nurse smiled knowingly.
"Heather, you have to learn how to talk to doctors." she said to me. "I've learned over the years, you have to treat them like a husband."
I wondered what the heck she meant.
"I know Dr. Michaels," she continued; "she's a type A personality, and from what I know of you, you are too. What happened today had nothing to do with the Gabapentin. It was a power struggle, pure and simple."
Suddenly everything began to clear.
"The way you treat a doctor and a husband," she said, "Is you never tell them what they should do or ask them for something directly. You always make it seem as if it was their idea first. I'll bet anything you said to Dr. Michaels, 'Would you please order gabapentin for Paul?'"
I laughed. "Of course."
"Well, what you should've said was 'I don't quite remember, but is gabapentin the drug you normally order for this type of thing?', or something like that, to make it seem like it was her idea first. If she thinks that you know more than her, or know what she should do, she'll do the opposite."
We all laughed together.
I thought about it all night, though. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. Dr. Michaels (and some other very talented doctors I've met) treat me like a dumb LPN. Part of me wants to look her in the eye and say, "I know what I'm talking about, I've been in college for 8 years and I was in medical school." But part of me also believes that you shouldn't have to get respect by showing off how much you know. If Dr. Michaels can only respect me for my societal rank in the healthcare field (or lack thereof as an LPN!), then it's not true respect. True respect has to do with listening to a person and considering their opinions simply because you believe they matter as a person, not because they have the initials LPN or RN or MD or PhD behind their name.
I remember in nursing school, a very wise teacher told me, "If you want to know something about a patient, whether or not their behavior is normal or how long the strange rash has been there, then ask the care aides. If you want to know where things are or you need somewhere quiet to nap during your break or you have a machine break down or the cafeteria is out of food, ask the janitor. Never underestimate what the people 'lower' than you know and are capable of. They will make or break your career.
I have the same issue going on with my nursing student. She's annoying and not super smart, but I learned something from Dr. Michaels that I can pass on to her in the way I treat her.
"We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know." I Cor. 8:1-2
There is no substitute for loving and respecting people. And if I truly care about my patients I'll have nothing to do with the hierarchy that demands I treat the people 'lower' than me as if they don't know as much as me. Instead, I'll seek to build them up however I can.... In doing that, people like Paul won't have to suffer needless pain.

Hullaballoooooo!!!!

2010-02-03T19:37:00.001-08:00

The other day at work I had a crazy day. It started out kind of bad because I didn't sleep well the night before and I woke up early and it was cold and dark and I didn't feel very upbeat. I drove to work and sat through report with a coffee in my hand. I didn't finish my coffee until 3 in the afternoon, which is probably why things went the way they did. We were short staffed: the social worker was sick and I had a student to help me with things, but otherwise I was on my own.
There are many different types of people who come through detox, but if I was to divide them into the two most general categories, it would be alcoholics and opiate users. Alcoholics of course can be anyone from any walk of life and there is no real typical example. Opiate users, however, are usually working through quite a bit of pain. Physical pain issues underlying their addiction are often things like car accidents or work accidents that left them with excrutiating back pain or chronic migraines, so they started with prescription painkillers and things spiralled down from there. Emotional pain issues are often childhood sexual or physical abuse, loss of close loved ones, bad marriages, etc.
Whatever the cause, when you remove a painkiller from someone, their pain surfaces at an even greater level than before. As a very general rule, people withdrawing from opiates (heroin, morphine, etc.) are in a LOT of pain; thus they complain a lot and are very needy. Coupled with the fact that many of them have subsequently ended up in pretty crummy life situations, many of them have very poor coping skills and very difficult behaviors. Not to mention a high rate of mental illness (depression, bipolar, multiple suicide attempts, OCD, etc.)
A busy day in detox would be 5-6 alcoholics and 2-3 opiate users. I say this all to explain why my day was so busy: when I got to work I had 9 patients; 8 of whom were opiate users.
Some of them were very sick. One young woman named Karen (not her real name) was scheduled to leave that morning. She had made plans with a young guy named Mark to go to his home for a couple of days before heading to a treatment center. Staff tried in vain to dissuade them. She had complex issues that we weren't really able to tell Mark about because of confidentiality. She had multiple suicide attempts and was drinking everything from listerine to glue to methadone and anything in between. Mark was a gentle-hearteded guy and the alternative of her going to a women's shelter for two days roused his protective instincts. The morning was spent on the phone with her parents and his mom and trying to convince him to leave without her. Mark finally confessed that he felt trapped; although he wanted to help her, he didn't really want to take her home with him, but when he tried to tell her she couldn't, she sobbed and cried that she had nowhere to go and wanted to kill herself.
Meanwhile an older man, Jason, had taken his medication for hepatitis and was growing weaker by the minute. I wondered if he had a drug reaction going on. Another lady, Beatrice, was sitting on the floor in the hallway crying and swearing.
The fire alarm went off. My manager came bursting out of the office yelling for me to get everybody out and evacuate. She called 911. I grabbed the census sheet and rounded up all my patients out the door and into the parking lot. It was freezing. We huddled together in the cold waiting for the firetruck to arrive. Jason had a blanket wrapped around himself and he curled up in the dirt, covering his head. Some of the girls were crying. I didn't have a coat and I stamped my feet to keep warm and told them it wouldn't take too long, everything was going to be okay.
The main boiler had exploded and it didn't take the firefighters long to check it out and let us back in the building. But there was no heat now, and no hot water. Me and the student helped Jason up from the dirt and I began filling hot water bottles and getting extra blankets for everyone.
Mark's mom arrived to pick him up and we quickly pulled her into the nursing station and explained what was going on. Karen was such a basketcase that we felt the easiest solution for Mark was to sneak out quietly and we'd deal with Karen after he left. The student distracted Karen; my manager got Mark ready to leave.
Beatrice was still crying. Her room was near the nursing station and she was huddled on the floor under a blanket with an electric heater under it. Her roomate was distressed. "She's going to light the place on fire!"
"Beatrice?" I tried to coax her out from her tent. She jumped out, knocking a glass of orange juice to the floor. She began to cry, sitting down in the juice with her blanket.
"I feel so awful! I'm spilling everything!"
"It's okay." I reassured her. "I'll clean it up. Why don't you go have a cigarette, and then I'll give you something for the pain?"
I hate to recommend smoking, but for people in that much distress it went a long way to calm jangled nerves.
She got up and went out the room. Her roomate, lying on the bed, told me:
"Beatrice asked me for some money because she wanted to get a friend to smuggle some dilaudid in here for her. I don't even know what dilaudid is."
And so my day went. Karen yelled and cried for 3 hours before leaving. We phoned ahead to the women's shelter and asked them to put her on suicide alert. The crowing glory was just after dinner, I heard someone shout my name, and I raced out of the nursing station to find the night attendent holding Jason against the wall. He was white as a sheet and tried to throw an arm around my neck as he slipped to the floor. He was a big guy, about 250 lbs, and I ducked out of his grasp and instead pushed him against the wall as I helped him collapse slowly. Then I got my stethoscope and listen to his falling blood pressure, managed to get him into a wheelchair and then into bed, and then called 911.
The detox center is not an acute medical facility, so anyone that turns critical we have to send to emergency. The paramedics came and put him in a stretcher and whisked him away. As I was trying to finish my charting, Beatrice came in crying and saying that the night attendant had been rude to her in front of the otehr patients and she wanted to make a complaint.
I went home feeling a little stressed. Sometimes people say, "Oh, I could never do a job like that!" My answer is that I couldn't either, if I had to do it full-time. I'm sure I would burn out. Some days are laid-back and easy-going, others are just one giant hullaballoo.

A little coordination goes a long way

2010-01-13T13:26:00.001-08:00

It seems these days that anything requiring coordination is giving me grief.
The first thing is the ‘Indiana Jones’ LEGO X-box game. Robin and I have been playing it together the last few days. I’m not sure if it is a relationship-building exercise or a relationship-destroying one, because it is very frustrating for my talented husband to play with me, as it turns out. He gets to be Indiana Jones and I am one of the other characters from the movie (his sidekick). We run around, blow things up, fight bad guys, build things, solve treasure maps and little puzzles, and jump and swing on rocks and buildings. All this with 4 little buttons and 2 toggle switches that you play with your thumbs.
Compared to this, the heart surgery I helped with last summer was child’s play. Inevitably it comes to a difficult move where my little lego man was to swing from a hanging vine, onto a building and then leap in sequence across obstacles and I end up killing myself repeatedly and killing Indiana Jones, too. I asked Robin last night if he thought I’d improved, and he said it was hard to tell.
The second coordination problem is our truck. Now, I personally don’t believe I have a very significant coordination problem, but since we got our pickup this summer it has been a steep learning curve for me in driving standard. The curve has plateaued recently which means that I’m still driving as badly as I ever did. Depending on your point of view, one could say that our recent truck issues are related to my skill in driving.
Last night I was on my way to work when suddenly the truck made a horrible grating noise and then the stick shift moved all by itself and the truck stalled. I managed to pull off the highway and coast to a stop on a side street. It wouldn’t even turn over. I popped the hood and there was a funny smell and everything looked okay, but I knew that was it. I called my boss on my emergency-only cell phone and since I was so close to work, she sent the secretary to come and pick me up. After work I called my brother Sam and asked him for advice. Get it towed home, he said. I called BCAA (let me advise getting a membership- it is one of the best investments I’ve ever made) and the secretary drove me back to my truck to meet the tow truck.
He hooked it up and on the way back to Kelowna we chatted about alternators and solenoids and the weather and families. When we got home he pulled into the parking lot across from our apartment. I jumped out and looked over at our apartment. I could see Robin sitting at the table, looking out the window at us. It was dark but the tow truck lights were flashing and I stood there as the driver unhooked it, thinking how I was going to explain this one.
When I got in he asked, “Was that our truck that the tow truck brought in?”
To make a long story short the truck is still parked there and hopefully my dear brother will be able to fix it for us.
The third area of coordination that is a nightmare is my aerobics class. Today we jumped around and did a move called the grapevine step. I shouldn’t say ‘we’, actually, because I never got the hang of it. Not only were all the people moving their feet in this complicated step, but they were also doing something with their arms. I struggled to keep up but for the entire class I felt like I was going the opposite way from everyone else, stumbling over my own feet. At one point we were marching across the room while waving weights over our heads in some kind of pattern and I heard the instructor say to the class, “Why don’t you make it worth your while and use heavier weights?”
I realized I was the only one with 3-lb weights; everyone else was carrying 5 or 10 lbs. I gave it my best shot, but by the time I was done I had to limp home.
I don’t know if there are any things you can do to improve your coordination, but I’d like to try. I’ve been reading a book about mathematical puzzles and I am struggling everyday to stretch my mind and figure out how to do them. Most of the time I can barely understand them. (And anyway, why would it be fun to try to solve a math problem that no one has ever figured out before?)
Well, I’m going to keep at it. More LEGO X-box tonight, if Robin can put up with me, and I’m going to keep up with the aerobics.

A new year, a new challenge

2010-01-06T19:36:00.000-08:00

Along with my requisite two dozen new year’s resolutions, my resolution to get fit and lose weight involved joining an aerobics class at the local rec center. Over Christmas I ate lots of tasty treats and it was just too darn cold to go running, and well, honestly, I’m a bit bored of running alone and the slightest bit lazy. Robin and I just got cable in our apartment and a world of marvelous sedentary delights were opened up to me. He had to teach me how to use the remote control and navigate through the channels, but now that I’ve got it, it’s tons of fun to watch various shows and movies and news and cartoons. I don’t watch a lot, but I definitely am not utilizing my time as efficiently as I used to.
I remember a time when I wouldn’t watch a movie without knitting or flashcards in my hands. I still can’t handle reading a novel- it has to at least be in a foreign language to stretch my mind.
But all that aside, I had my first class on Monday. I walked over to the rec center and into the big room and there were about 30 ladies and 1 lone man. Most of them looked like retirees- and most of them looked deceptively out of shape. I say deceptively, because by the end of the first 5 minutes I realized I had my work cut out for me to keep up with them.
The instructor had bright red lipstick and she bounced around in tune with the music, yelling out instructions for left, right, two steps this way, two steps that way, etc. etc..
I was concentrating so hard on trying to perform the mirror image of her movements at breakneck speed that I almost crashed into the lady behind me. The deceptive flabbiness of all the older ladies had caught me off guard. They were all wearing lululemon pants and sweat bands and they all had towels they wiped their faces with every now and again.
By 15 minutes I felt like my legs were going to fall off. I looked at the clock and realized that there was still an hour to go. At 30 minutes we were allowed to stop for a brief water break. The older man came over to me and said graciously,
“Don’t worry about keeping up; as long as you keep moving you’ll do fine.”
I wondered if it was obvious that I couldn’t keep right and left straight.
Towards the end of the class we did some stretching and as I bundled up to go, dripping with sweat, I realized I would either die, or get in shape.
Today was my second class and right now I’m sitting with a hot water bottle on my sore legs and trying to relax my shoulders so they don’t ache so much. There were less people in the class, and I was smart enough today to wear my stretchy leggings, so I didn’t stick out so much. The instructor had us run laps across the huge room, waving weights over our heads (at least that’s what I was doing), and at one point I realized I was struggling to keep up with a lady who looked old enough to be my grandmother. The embarrassment was complete.
In front of me was a lady who was about 80 lbs, wearing a teeny tank top and even teenier shorts (if you could call them that). I could see the bones on her back sticking out. As soon as the music started, she was off like a little energizer bunny. She looked like she had springs in all her joints, and during the water break she jogged on the spot. I was dying.
I stumbled home today and did housework and got groceries and went to a staff meeting at work and made a lasagna that turned out runny, and watched a bit of tv with Robin and now I’m contemplating going to bed, even though it’s only 7:30. I’m determined to keep it up with the class, and I’m determined to improve the coordination thing. I’ve heard that most women struggle with right and left more than men (hence the reluctance to drive standard in a lot of women), but no one seemed to be having more trouble than me in today’s class. I believe it can be overcome, though. I’ll keep you posted……

My teaching hobby

2009-12-11T16:14:00.000-08:00

When I used to live with my dear friend Miriam, we were both studying at TWU: I was studying chemistry, and she was studying to be an elementary teacher. We had frequent arguments on the same thing: I was convinced that chemistry was the pinnacle of knowledge and actually made the world turn around. She didn't think so. One day, she spoke the final word that ended all our arguing. Heather, she said, everybody needs teachers. Even chemists are taught by teachers.
Even though I am working part time tutoring right now, I don't consider myself a teacher. Teaching is a hobby for me.
This week the word hobby gained a new definition for me. One of my students has been doing better in his studies, so his mom, not wanting to waste the money she paid for the term of tutoring, decided to send his teenage sister in his place. I'll call her Michelle in the interests of confidentiality. Michelle was not happy to be forced to come to the school.
She came in and I greeted her in French and she responded with rolling her eyes. I made the first mistake of the day by saying to her, "Hey, you look a lot like your mom!"
She glared at me.
"Your mom's very pretty." I said hastily.
She plopped down on the chair.
"Okay, let's see what you have for homework?"I asked (in French).
She pulled out her binder and shuffled her papers a bit.
"I want to play a game." She said in English.
I usually spend the last ten minutes of the lesson playing cards with my students, since they're often exhausted at the end of a long day. Sometimes we play bingo, or crib, and recently one of the younger boys has taught me how to play 'operation'. (scared the pants off me the first time I got buzzed!)
"Well, let's do some homework first." I said.
"I just have an English project." She said, pulling it out.
We were supposed to be speaking in French but everything I said, she answered in English. I decided not to push it, but keep answering in French.
"I need my textbook though." She said. "I don't have it here."
I saw on her sheet that she had to look up the definitions of some words.
"Why don't we use a dictionary for that?" I asked. "We can work on it together."
I got a dictionary and we looked up a few words. A couple of minutes later she slammed the book closed.
"I don't want to do this anymore. I want to play a game."
I smiled nicely.
"Well, there's not a lot of point coming here if we don't do SOME work. I tell you what, I'll give you three choices. We can either work more on your English project, or we can do some math"-
"I don't have any math" She interrupted
"Or we can practice some essay writing and translation." I finished.
She glared at me for a moment and then said, "Ok, writing."
I pulled out a story book and explained how we'd work on translating a short story together. We were three minutes into it when she suddenly threw down her pencil.
"I changed my mind. I'll do the math."
I tried to smile. I remembered Robin giving me some advice for difficult students: If they know you're FOR them, or there to help them, then they'll make an effort. I opened the math textbook. I knew she was working on fractions and algebra, so I turned to the chapter.
"I don't know how to do those." She said blankly, gesturing towards a simple 1/2 + 3/4.
"All right then, we'll work through them together."
I wrote out the question for her. Robin had made a really cool chart on fractions that I'd brought to work with me and I held it up.
"Okay, when you're adding fractions, the first thing is to look and see if the denominator is the same. Now, what number does 2 and 4 both go into? What multiple do they have in common?"
We worked through it.
The next question she wrote out wrong and I pointed it out and she said, "Who cares?"
She said she didn't know how to multiply fractions and when I showed her how to do it from Robin's chart, she wrote the problem out extremely slowly and then looked up at me.
"I'm going to do this one as slowly as possible." She said, "So it takes up our entire time."
I wanted to wring her neck.
We played cards at the end, and I asked her what her plans were for the weekend and she said she had a ringette camp and I said, that'll be fun! And she said, "No, it'll suck."
When she left I felt deflated. The school has a gentle black lab that they keep around to help the kids with anxiety issues, as they generally like to play with him, and his kennel is right beside my desk. I have 16 flea bites all down my right side from him and another 6 on my legs. He came up and tried to kiss me and I pushed him away.
I can't say that I totally agree with Miriam that teaching is the highest calling, although I better not say too much now that I'm married to an almost-math-teacher, (who does believe that chemistry is lower on the intellectual chain than physics and math), but I have to say that it is not really a hobby per se and it is one of the hardest callings. A good teacher deserves their pay, every cent of it. My kudos to all the teachers out there, to Robin, to Miriam, and especially to my mother who put up with me when I was exactly like Michelle.

Evaluating the program

2009-11-20T08:39:00.000-08:00

Well, as some of you may have guessed, my comprehensive plan has been slightly modified by the vagaries of life. Being sick with the swine flu changed things; so did going down to Vancouver for the weekend and just plain old busyness.
The good news is that I have been doing better in some categories. For example, while not exactly meeting any of my goals, I have improved upon some of them. I am praying more. I can now do 3 chinups in a row. My French has improved.
I suppose that too is debatable, though. I had a new French student last week, and I was going over some spelling words for him. I pronounced the word 'parenthèse' and he turned and looked at me with a puzzled look.
"What do you mean?"
I tried valiantly to pronounce it again. His quizzical look vanished and he said, "Oh, you mean parenthèse!"
Yes, of course that's what I meant; that's what I said. But I think the difference was in my emphasis of syllables. Yvette corrected me on it the other day. One of the down sides of learning a language by yourself is not being able to predict the irregularities to rules. Take emphasis, for example. In English, different words have the stress in different places. 'wonderful', for example, has the stress on the first syllable. To say it 'wonDERful' would sound funny. 'Hallelujah' is pronounced 'HalleLUJah. 'Produce' can be pronounced two different ways- and the emphasis completely changes the meaning of the word.
So it is in French, I have learned. Unlike Italian, which has a predictable rule that (usually) the second-to-last syllable is stressed (think spaGHEtti), English and French change at will.
Sometimes I've had to choke back laughter listening to my ESL friends read out loud, now I have become one of them.
Years ago I read an inspirational quote: "Reach for the moon: even if you miss, you'll land among the stars".
I thought about it for awhile and then decided it was a pretty stupid quote. Anybody who had been through grade 2 knows that the stars are farther from earth than the moon. If you reach for the moon and fall short, there's no way you'll even be close to the stars. Not only that, but the chances of actually hitting another intrastellar body while aiming for something else that is lightyears away is pretty darn slim. I modified the quote to make more sense:
"Reach for the stars: even if you miss you might be the same distance from the earth that the moon is."
I suppose I've reached for the stars with my comprehensive plan. You may think I'm hanging around the moon's orbit. Actually, as we all know, there are near stars and far stars. I aimed for some pretty far stars, so hanging around Alpha Centauri suits me just fine.
Excuse me, I've got some chinups to do.

It's an idea.

2009-11-06T08:40:00.001-08:00

Well, I'm still sick, but this time it is sort of self-induced: I got the H1N1 vaccine. The good news is that Robin is still quite sympathetic (as long as he judges that my symptoms are not just made up). I admit, I can be a bit of a hypochondriac. But this time, it really is bad.
Last week I didn't work all week and this week I worked two afternoons, so I've had lots of free time and it's been exceedingly frustrating.
I've always been a highly motivated and busy person so to be sitting around, feeling crummy, not having much work, is really wearying me. On monday I was talking with our friend Marlene and she commented on the necessity to enjoy the slow times because before you know it, you are overloaded with work.
I thought about that for the rest of the day and the next morning my thoughts had consolidated themselves into the perfect solution.
I began Heather's Comprehensive Improved Program for Total Betterment. It took me half the day to write up all the flowcharts and lists but I got it done. Lasting for 12 weeks, this program has several goals in different areas and delineates the individual steps needed to get there. For example, in the 'discipline my body' category, in 12 weeks I will have worked up to doing 12 consecutive chin-ups. Each week I add one on (this week I'm supposed to do 1 a day). In the 'challenge my mind' category, I have to listen to 20 minutes of French a day, write one French essay a week, learn 2 new Latin words a day, study one drug class, etc.
In the 'build my spirit' category I have various bible memory goals. In the 'channel my emotions' category I have to paint/draw one picture a week. It all started out fine. Because the first day was a half day, I cut myself some slack. I did the chin-up, listened to some French, worked on a memory verse.
The second day I was a bit busy with various things and only got 3 different things out of 20 done. I decided my goals needed to be attenuated a bit. The third day I drove to summerland and listened to 80 minutes of French but did nothing else but the chin-up. Today I'm feeling sick and my arm is burning from the vaccination so I doubt I'll even manage the chin-up. I decided that I don't like painting and the running is a bad idea when I'm sick and I don't feel like reading my old physics textbook.
When I first devised my plan I told Robin about it and begged him to tell me it was a good idea. He paused for a moment and then said 'It's an idea'.
I think I often shoot too high. It's better, I believe, than not trying at all, but sometimes I don't have a very realistic view of myself and my capabilities. If only I could take all my good ideas and actually make them happen....
At any rate since I'm sick at home today with not much to do I can do some of the more laid-back things. Perhaps I'll be feeling better tomorrow and I can catch up on the running and chin-ups. I'll keep you posted.

Being sick

2009-10-26T14:40:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I forget to post on my blog because I think, nothing interesting has happened in my life, why would people want to read it?
Well, trust me, I'm not posting today because I have interesting things to say- it's just because I'm so darn bored.
My husband and I are sick, possibly with the H1N1 virus, and he got sick first (several days ago) which is a good or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. From his perspective, of course, it's pretty crummy, but from my point of view, it has prepared him (who has many fine qualities of which sympathy is not one) to be caring towards me. His attitude, of course, is 'Poor sweetheart, I know just how it feels to feel so awful!'.
Actually Robin's lack of sympathy towards me in general is a very constructive thing. I am a natural whiner and yes, I will whine as much as I can get away with and then some. I can also tend towards slight hypochondrism (being convinced there is something deathly wrong with me when I just have a bruise or a split nail). God himself is a perfect mix of mercy and justice and the beauty of my marriage to Robin is that as we grow closer, we are being pulled away from the polar extremes of the spectrum and finding a home somewhere in the middle.
I would make a terrible judge or a police officer, I commented to a friend once, because as soon as I saw a crocodile tear I'd let everyone off the hook.
Robin, on the other hand, would probably be an excellent soldier or police officer (or a high school teacher) because he sees past all the fluff.
That all being said, being sick is an exercise in mutual compromise, because we have to take turns caring for each other, or sucking it up, whatever the situation requires and whoever is feeling more able at the time.
In the larger picture, being Christians is being members of the body of Christ and as such, we're all joined together and have a responsibility to care for each other as we are able. I read this morning in the Dr's office about a girl in Chile (Daniela Garcia) who lost all four limbs in a tragic train accident. She persevered against all odds to become the world's first quadrilateral amputee physician, married her boyfriend, and is very involved making other people's lives better. She does not feel sorry for herself: she is overflowing with compassion towards other people.
All that being said, being sick right now still sucks.

We're all in the same boat

2009-10-14T15:48:00.001-07:00

Last night at work I asked the other woman working with me who would be coming in at 11 to fill the night shift. Usually there are two of us at night- a nurse, and a detox worker, who does bed checks and cleaning and helps me out dealing with problem patients. She told me the name of the girl and I remembered her as having just been hired- maybe this was her third day on the job?
She was 21 but looked 16; very pretty, very shy, very young. I couldn't believe that she had been hired to help look after dozens of big, rough-around-the-edges drug addicts in the middle of the night. Were they crazy? She looked like she would have trouble managing the vacuum let alone having to stand down someone being aggressive and threatening. She looked the very definition of naivety.
I thought I should give her the benefit of the doubt, though, and I said to the other girl, "well, I guess I'm pretty young too." "No, Heather, she said, you don't seem like that at all; you have life experience."
Life experience, how did I get that? I remembered my first day nursing in the hospital as a nursing student. I was 17, 5'3" (I'm still 5'3", unfortunately) and much much more terrified of my patient than she was of me. I stood in the nursing station with my instructor and a couple of other students and felt like walking down the hallway to meet my first patient would be like walking to the guillotine. I don't know if it showed on my face but my instructor looked at me, then took my hand, and put it in the hand of another student, and older lady named Shannon.
"Shannon, you are going to walk with Heather to room 503, and then meet me in 516, okay?"
So we walked down the hall together, hand in hand, and looking back at that moment I wish there was some way I could tell Shannon how much it meant to me. My patient was an older lady with dementia and I don't even think she knew I was there anyway.
Fast forward 8 years and I've navigated nursing and chemistry and medicine and several jobs and countries and relationships and adventures. The funny thing is, I still feel like that 17-year-old sometimes, I still have to swallow my nervousness and go and meet that person anyway, dive in with the awkward questions, have the courage to speak the truth. I don't think any amount of life experience can eliminate that queasiness all the time.
Last night sure enough I had a really difficult patient in the middle of the night and finally I'd had it with niceness. He had been going on and on about his anger and how he wanted to kill someone and all his life problems and how his Dad had abused him and how he hated the other guys here and he didn't want to watch tv with them because it made him want to kill them, and everything hurt so much and I just didn't understand and I should feel sorry for him and blah blah blah. What he was really saying was, I'm a victim, I deserve to get everything I want, and I'm angry at you because you aren't taking away my pain.
"Why are you here?" I asked Kris.
He stopped for a second and then said, "I want to stop using these @#%$%&* drugs, and I'm paying good money for you guys to fix me, and you're not giving me what I want!"
"Kris, it's not my job to fix you. I can't do that, that's your job. I am just here to facilitate it. You need to make up your mind that this is what you want, and then I'll help you."
"You don't understand!" He whined. "Everything hurts so much. Have you ever tried to come off 90mg of Oxy's?" (A pretty high dose of opiates similar in effect to heroin).
"Kris, you are the one that needs to take responsibility. I can help you, but I can't do it for you."
I gave him some suggestions that might help with his middle-of-the-night freak-out.
He swore at me, exasperated. "You sound just like my MOM!!!"
As he stomped away I thought, she's probably one cool lady.
I've written lots in my blogs about the pain that underlies addictions- how these people I work with are easing the abyss of suffering in their lives by dulling it with drugs or alcohol. But in case you get a lopsided view of addictions, in most cases, I have become convinced that there is some degree of choice involved. No matter what crap I get dealt in life, it's still my choice how I respond to it. That's what free will is, that's part of what makes us human. I don't doubt that some of my patients here are truly victims and have got to a point where it is impossible for them to help themselves. But for others, not taking responsibility and not accepting accountability for their actions has become a habit that has become a lifestyle.
So I guess that's an example of life experience, because before I worked here I had a narrow and inexperienced view of addictions- it was something so far removed from my life, it belonged to the people who lived on the streets on Vancouver who were nameless and faceless. Now I realize that we are in exactly the same boat. Perhaps I don't know what it's like to come off of 90mg of Oxy's, but I do know what it is like to suffer pain and make the choice to persevere.
And maybe I'm not as shy as the young detox worker last night, but I do know what it is like to be terrified of your patients and I think actually she's doing a great job.

Baker's anonymous

2009-10-07T15:15:00.001-07:00

I’ve considered starting a support group for bakers like myself.
Hi, I’m Heather, and I don’t follow recipes.
This week Robin tried to convince me that Bob (our pastor) had asked to have a talk with me about my issues with cooking (i.e. not following recipes). For a second I felt as if I had been caught with my hand in the cookie jar and then I realized, of course he’s joking. It is not a sin to improvise with recipes.
Did Christopher Columbus use a map, I ask you? He MADE the map! Recipes, as I see them, are merely guideposts that suggest one plausible method of cooking the dish amongst myriads of creative possibilities. It is the cook’s prerogative, like the artist’s, to create, to experiment, to explore uncharted territory and through the lens of adventure to create masterpieces.
A friend gave me a postcard once of a black and white photo of a woman holding a cake. It said ‘if I can bake a cake, I can build a bomb.’
The problem is, I did my time studying chemistry and yes, I learned how to build bombs, but it doesn’t appear to have helped me in the kitchen.
Kim gave me some decorative (inedible?) gourds from her garden two weeks ago. Whoever heard of a gourd that was inedible, I thought, so I cut it up, boiled it, and baked it into pumpkin pie. Or if you prefer, inedible gourd pie. We ate it and I think it was quite good.
My crockpot meatballs last night were not that great. I didn’t have all the ingredients to start with, so I had to improvise a bit, but the meatballs came out looking fine and I FOLLOWED the RECIPE instead of my instinct and put them in the crockpot for 5 hours on high in a sauce. (Well, I did have to improvise the sauce a bit by putting in apricot jam and teriyaki sauce instead of cranberry sauce and sugar).
You can imagine my shock when I came home from work and discovered 5 hours on high had evaporated all the sauce and left sticky gooey blackish meatballs covered in a sickly sweet sauce. We choked them down with rice.
I made steak for the first time last night. Robin likes it rare but I sort of forgot it was on the BBQ, so by the time I got to it, rare was the last thing you could’ve called it. He made a show of trying to chew it but I think he liked it, after all, overcooked steak is better than no steak.
I could regale you with tales of failed meals or of successful meals. I’m actually having fun learning how to cook things and planning meals, I realize it’s an art and if you wanted to classify me as a type of artist I probably wouldn’t be one of the ones who designs advertisements or paints perfect scenery or sculpts matching wax heads for museums. I would probably be more in league with the huge piece of canvas you see in a hotel lobby that looks like someone walked up, threw seven different paint cans at the wall, walked away and said, world, if you don’t like it, you can stuff it. And strangely they get paid big money for their acrylic temper tantrums and in some lights it looks beautiful and sometimes people cry over it.
Yes, some people cry over my meals, too, I’m sure. As I type I have an apple pie in the oven and I’m convinced it’s going to be amazing, especially because I made up the recipe myself.

Those Crazy French

2009-10-01T21:36:00.001-07:00

So the latest and greatest adventure I’m on: teaching French. It’s probably a combination of the economic recession, living in a smaller town, and the time of year, but I haven’t been able to find much nursing work here in Kelowna. In fact, not much work at all. My own call shifts for detox nursing are about one a week, but I’m lucky I didn’t get laid off like some others there. I am remembering being in Marseille, South France, where the unemployment rate is 40% and aimless youth wander around creating trouble. Or in Antigua, where a day’s wage buys 2 cans of coke. Or Africa, where people trade things for food that should never be traded, like sex, or their children, or their faith.
That all being said, I do have a part-time job, and I just got another, but in a totally different field. It’s not really so far off the charts, though. I’ve always been passionate about languages- in fact, as much or more than medicine, and I have had experience teaching piano, guitar, ESL, and chemistry over the years.
The only difference is that I taught myself French and I wouldn’t consider myself fluent- yes, I can speak it, but no, it’s nowhere close to perfect. Of course I’m not one to let something silly like that get me down, so I applied for a job as a French immersion tutor for high-school chemistry. The day I got the job I rode my bike over to Yvette’s house and said in a panic, I think I’ve got myself into a bit of a pickle. I have a job teaching a language I can’t speak.
Yvette reassured me and I thought, this is okay, I have two days to prepare, I’ll be okay. My first day was on Thursday and on Tuesday afternoon I was talking with Robin when my phone rang.
“Are you on your way?” My new boss asked.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “It’s not Thursday.”
“You were supposed to start Tuesday.” She said.
I opened my email account and stared in disbelief at the email. Tuesday. How had I misread it?
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” I told her.
Traffic on the highway… I recited French words to myself and roared into the school parking lot in my red pickup. My students were waiting.
The first girl was not too bad, her French was terrible and we spent the hour pronouncing numbers. The second girl, however, was fluent in French and I had to stare at her mouth and ask her to repeat herself so I could understand.
She was asking for help with math. I didn’t even know what grade she was in, I hadn’t had time to read her chart and anyway, I haven’t done math for years. She showed me her worksheet and suddenly I felt my eyes go blurry. French math was not like English math. They use different symbols, those crazy people. Commas instead of decimal points. I had to look at it for a few minutes before I understood what the question was asking. But then how do I explain it to a teenager who can’t understand me?
“Tu utilize une calculatrice dans la classe?” I asked her. (Do you use a calculator in class?)
What are they teaching kids these days, anyway. Why can’t they just use calculators? No one does long division on paper or multiplies complex fractions. I tried to explain to her how to do the calculations. I didn’t know the French words for multiply, times, divide, subtract, add, plus, reduce, denominator, numerator, or anything that would’ve been useful, so I just put on my best sexy French accent and guessed what they were.
The hour went by painfully slow. I felt like the world’s biggest idiot and I wondered if I wouldn’t get fired if I went home and read my French dictionary cover to cover before the next class.
“Are you fluent in French?” My student asked me.
“No!” I answered, strangely relieved. “I understand and read it well, but I can’t speak very well.”
“Really? Well, I thought you were fluent. You speak better than any of my other French teachers.”
I stared at her in disbelief.
“Really?”
She packed up her books.
“Bonne chance avec ton examen.” I told her (Good luck with your exam.) Thank heavens I knew how to say that.
I read a quote today by Henry Ford: “Whether you think you can or think you can’t- you are right”.
I think I can teach French. I think I can teach chemistry in French. Maybe some day this job will lead me to bigger and better things, and maybe it won’t, but in the meantime it is a challenge and it is a change and it is pretty fun.

Chinese lanterns and symphonies

2009-09-21T17:08:00.000-07:00

Around me the mountains are like a bowl,
That part feels like home
In the morning the sun shines in my kitchen window
And I hear the traffic outside but it has become a sort of music
The cars going by, the honk of horns, together with the dancing green leaves
On my balcony plants and the tree outside the window.
The hum of my fan joins the symphony, and early in the morning
The neighbor’s truck radio and the sound of birds
They make it a sort of music, they do.

The other night I stayed up late trying to fashion a Chinese lantern
Out of wire hangers and pink tissue paper
It is a misshapen mass, a joke of craftsmanship, a laughing matter
When I lit a candle, though, it was harder to see the imperfections
And easier to feel the beauty of the soft light glow.
A little bit like my life, I think.
I’m trying to find work and there’s none to be had
I learned how to can this summer and I’m learning how to be married
And struggling to feel like I’m worth something

I wonder if I’d kept on the track I’d been going on,
If I’d have been like a blazing fire, hot and white, that burned itself out
Instead I’m like the Chinese lantern, a soft and steady glow
Casting light and casting shadows, filling the room with warmth
Not burning out, just being.
Not amazing the world with my scintillating light
But lighting the way in the darkness, with the wafting aroma of vanilla candles
And the way the gentle light hides the dirt on the carpet and the marks on the walls

Sometimes you might think that putting a candle under the covers,
That it will hide it and extinguish it
But the paper takes a naked flame, cold and sharp
And turns it into a giant pink ball of soft light
That illuminates everything
And somehow in my bowl of mountains
Instead of fighting against the cacophony of the world
I am joining the symphony right outside my window

Collateral damage

2009-09-03T16:23:00.000-07:00

In 1945 when the atomic bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, 250,000 people or more died, most of them on the days of the bombing. But included in those 250,000 were 3,200 Japanese-Americans, Allied POW's, Korean and Chinese laborers, exchange-students from Malaya and a host of other unintended victims.
Not only that; it is more than 60 years after the events and Japanese people are still suffering the physical effects of radiation and the emotional effects of their country's destruction. In Hiroshima, in one day, 90% of the doctors and 93% of the nurses were killed. Most of the citizens had nothing to do whatsoever with the decisions being made by their government about the war. They were simply collateral damage.
It is true that we're each judged by our own actions and that before God we have to answer for ourselves and there is no such thing as blaming with him. We are responsible and accountable for our choices. But there is another thing to consider, and that is the far-reaching implications our actions have on others. That is why leaders are always (or should be!) judged more harshly. When you take leadership upon you, you also take responsibility for the outcome, whether it is good or bad.
Robin started reading a book this week about spiritual warfare and he talked to me about it, about the fact that when Christians investigate issues like that, they can expect to deal with some fallout. Satan would take advantage of the situation to attack us. We needed to be prepared for some blows. Was I okay with that, he asked.
We have some dear friends here who are so filled with the Holy Spirit, so overflowing with God's love and his GRACE, in every sense of the word.
But they've been through the fire. They have dealt with the fallout of every right decision they've made.
Am I ready for that kind of thing?
Last night at the girl's bible study I lead, we came up with a question that we couldn't answer. I felt the weight of it on my shoulders last night as I realized that I didn't know what to do, I had no idea, so how could I possibly model it for these girls if I didn't know myself? Are they going to suffer the collateral damage of me never responding to God in that particular area before?
Last week after one too many verbal assaults and behavior issues, I told a patient to pull his socks up. My boss called me the other day and discussed how this same patient has threatened to sue for the way he was treated by the night nurse (me!). Fallout. I wasn't prepared for the repercussions of my sticking-to-my-guns attitude.
I come home and tell Robin about my day, and he tells me about his, and we share them and we share the results (I told him before we were married that I needed to de-brief after work and actually from almost anything I do!) We carry each other's collateral damage, as well as the good things. Shared sorrows are lessened, shared joys are greater.

Addiction

2009-08-20T09:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to work and barely got through half of the report before I had to take in a new admission. By the time my paperwork cleared up enough to be able to see over the top of it, I was busy assessing patients.
People withdrawing off of opiates like heroin and morphine have a decreased pain threshold, so everything bothers them. "My pancreas is on fire, I think I'm dying". "I have a splinter in my finger". "I miss my kids so much". "I hurt all over".
The withdrawal is tough; most of them turn into whining, sobbing babies. But I would be the same way, I know I would.
"The root cause of addiction", says Dr. Gabor Mate in his excellent book 'in the realm of hungry ghosts' "...is pain". Pain upon pain upon pain.
All my female patients yesterday had been sexually and physically abused. One young woman's father had taken a hammer to her head as a child, so now she struggled with multiple allergies and brain injury-induced epilepsy (daily seizures!) and coping with a drug addiction while trying to parent three active boys. She said she had a yeast infection and when I asked to examine her she refused, saying since she'd been sexually abused she had post-traumatic stress disorder and wouldn't let anyone touch her. (I've sanitized her reply a little bit!)
But the saddest story, the one that kept me awake last night, was a 58-year-old woman named Elise (not her real name) who was trying to detox off of alcohol. Her entire body was covered in bruises. Some of them looked like belt marks. She shook constantly and at the slightest touch or noise she would flinch. She was a little lady and she was unsteady on her feet and needed my help getting onto the examining table.
After we'd talked for some time and she was reassured that I wasn't going to judge her, I wasn't going to hurt her, I really cared about helping her, she told me that she lived with her elderly parents who were also alcoholics. When she drank her father would lock her in her room, and he often beat her. The details (which I'll skip) made me feel sick and I listened to her and comforted her and told her it wasn't her fault and that we wanted to help and that we could find her somewhere to stay. She was tearful at the thought of leaving her mother and said that her Mom needed her, and she couldn't afford to get her own place, and her Dad was always sorry the next day, and maybe she just needed to talk to them and lay out some rules for her living with them.
I encouraged her to write down what she wanted and later I saw her list. Point 1: No more locking me in my room.
Sandra was beautiful, too beautiful, and she radiated vulnerability and sleezy sexuality. Alone in the examining room with me her mask slipped off and she cried and told me that her common-law husband had given her an ultimatum for getting off drugs, otherwise they would break up and he would sell her show horse. But she was desperate to be taken care of. She told me how she had been sexually abused and how she needed to use drugs to have energy and happiness. She tried to stop her tears but they kept coming.
Last night I had a terrible dream and I was crying out and Robin woke me up and pulled me into his arms and held me. It was just a dream, he said. I told him about it and he prayed with me, and I lay there for a long time thinking about it and how lucky I was to have his arms around me, have him looking after me.
Isaiah the prophet talked about Jesus. "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering."
I told Elise yesterday about Jesus, how he was a friend that stood by your side no matter what you were going through.
"Like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we did not esteem him."
Do you think that God cares about these people who are living with pain, upon pain, upon pain? Does he see through their masks? Does he reach out to them in their crippling addictions and offer them hope?
"Surely he took up our sicknesses, and carried our sorrows.... he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed."

Yes, the wedding is over

2009-08-12T13:51:00.000-07:00

Well, that's the end of my lengthy blog hiatus. However.... things might change now that I'm married. I'm used to writing about my life, my thoughts, my perspective on things and now I'm not just by myself anymore. It's quite a bit different and I'm still getting used to it. Sure, I can still write about Heather Mercer (who is the same person as Heather Davies by the way) but I have to be careful that what I write about doesn't violate the personal space of my other half. Of course, as always, clever readers can read between the lines.
We got married on Burnaby mountain which was not what I'd anticipated for a wedding but it was great nontheless. The sun was shining and nothing went wrong (imagine that!). No lost rings, no forgotten vows, the only thing to mar the perfection was the heat, which caused massive perspiration, especially on the part of the groom, whose deep emotions leaked through the front of his shirt during the ceremony.
The morning of the wedding Robin and I and our extended family had a leisurely breakfast and I jumped in the hot tub with Kiara and went for a walk with Robin so we could have some quiet space to talk.
Just before the wedding (about two hours) I was hit by a sudden case of the butterflies in my stomach. It felt like there were a million of them clamoring to get out and they were going to shoot out my mouth at any moment. I put on my wedding dress and my shoes and waited impatiently for everyone to get ready. I'm ready to get married, I told them. What a dumb idea to wait until 4:30 in the afternoon. My Dad couldn't find his wallet. He decided to wash his car at the last minute. One of the cars left without all it's occupants. I sat on the couch and sipped on water and tried to calm myself down.
On the drive to the mountain Dad was joking around and telling me it wasn't too late, he could still call the whole thing off. Daddy, I told him, what I need from you right now is for you to keep a strong grip on my arm and walk me down that aisle and don't tell me I can still walk out. He parked his car behind the garbage dumpster behind the restaurant on the top of the mountain. We waited in the shade of the dumpster and I watched my bridesmaids walk into the crowd of people.
We both cried when we walked across the grass together. Robin was there but he wasn't looking at me (he said I had a scowl on my face). And then we got married, just like that, everyone was smiling at us and I hoped that without microphones they could all still hear us, so I said my vows extra loud.
We took pictures in the rose garden and then went into the restaurant for our reception and it was lots of fun; noisy and the food was delicious and we talked and laughed and danced. At 10:00 or so outside there were fireworks going off in English Harbor and people went out onto the deck and they looked like colored stars in the sky.
We drove away.... (I'll just skip the next part of my narrative since no one wants to hear about our honeymoon anyway, even though they all ask how was it? Fine, I tell them. Do you really want to know what we did? No, I didn't think so. Well, we did go explore, and we slept in mosquitoville in Uclulet and got bitten from head to toe, and we read on Long beach, and we cycled in Victoria, and we Kayaked in Cowichan Bay...)
Now we're back home in Kelowna.
I've moved most of my stuff into Robin's apartment and I set up my plants on the back porch, but they don't look as spectacular as I'd hoped because the Zucchini didn't really grow this year. We still have things to do, like put pictures on the walls and figure out what to do with my car, which is broken down, by the way.
I'm taking a course this month but I haven't even started it yet and I don't feel really motivated to study. It has been a lengthy break for me and it's always a bit hard to get into it again....
Well, I'm not sure what you managed to ready between the lines in all this, because I didn't really intend anything beyond the english words I put down. I'll keep you posted, though.
Have a wonderful day...
love Heather

The wedding hiatus

2009-07-16T13:01:00.000-07:00

I apologize for not writing for two weeks and please forgive the brief hiatus from Hullaballooing- it is due to the fact that I am ridiculously busy with wedding planning. I'm not sure if it will settle down once I'm married but at least then I'll have wireless internet in my house and be able to write any time if I wanted to.
16 days until my wedding! And not just a wedding. A life change. A name change. I'm not sure at this point if I'm nervous or excited or stressed or all three. A wedding is a horrible thing to plan; I don't recommend it unless you have a couple of years and infinite patience and only 3 relatives. Failing all those, it will be worth it if it's what's required to start life with the person you're crazy about.
I discovered there are ways that things are done and there are ways that things are JUST NOT DONE when it comes to planning weddings. For example, you have to send thank you notes for presents you receive. I didn't know about this custom and I am used to expressing my thanks verbally and in person, but I have been educated about thank you notes now and will most likely send them out asap.
I went into a florist's the other day to choose flowers for my wedding. AFter being told that I needed to order the flowers I wanted weeks in advance in the right quantities, colours, etc., and get them made professionally, I decided to just go on the morning of my wedding, pick out what looked pretty, tie it together with a bow and go with that.
It apparently takes a minimum of 6 months to get a wedding dress- it must be shopped for, ordered, sized, and altered. Of course, that doesn't count if you have a friend like Yvette Smith, who looked at a picture I tore out of a magazine, made up a pattern, and sewed the dress of my dreams in four days. That including a sewing machine breakdown and a simultaneous packing for family camp.
Of course planning a wedding in 8 weeks is not everyone's cup of tea, but from what I've seen in other friends, no matter what the length of time before their wedding, they get majorly stressed out. I was told, by the time your wedding comes, Heather, you won't care about anything except marrying Robin. It is true. At this point I just want to marry him. Perhaps the elaborate social construct of weddings and wedding planning and brides and all that fluffy lacy fancy crap just serves the purpose of making two people see that all they really care about in the world is being together, and if they can survive wedding planning they can survive anything.
So, yes, everything is coming together for my wedding and it's going to be a good time, I think. I told Bob (who's going to marry us) that if it rains during the ceremony our plan B is to hold umbrellas. And if he mixes up our names or nothing goes right during the ceremony or reception I don't really mind. It's just a wedding. I have the rest of my life ahead of me to be a family with Robin Mercer and that's what I care about most.
So anyway, I can't guarantee that in the next three weeks there will be any blog postings, but please do keep reading after that because I'll still be happy and I'll still be in a hullaballoo and I'll still need to write to get it out.

Of boats and weddings

2009-07-03T11:57:00.000-07:00

Can you believe I'm getting married in less than a month? We contemplated taking our time and planning a wedding properly, but Robin described a wedding to me as a door to a house. Why would you spend years and countless stressful hours and so much money just building a fancy door and forgetting about the house?
But the reality is that I am going to have a fancy wedding. I squirm at the thought of it. Of course like every girl I like to dress up, and I used to dream of a fairytale day when all the littlest details would be perfect.
But when it comes down to it I just want to marry Robin Mercer and move into his apartment and be a family with him. And I'm much more comfortable in flipflops and a sundress. And I'm scared that the waitresses at my reception will be better dressed than me.
I suggested to Yvette that I was a classy girl and she laughed her head off. So maybe I'm not classy.... but maybe I can pretend that I am for a day and have a proper wedding.
We seriously considered eloping on our boat trip last week with my whole family. In the end I'm glad we didn't because after 8 days with 18 family members on a 30-foot boat, I just about went crazy. Add a honeymoon to that mixture and I'm sure I would've jumped ship.
We sailed around the gulf islands and fished and crabbed and shopped and slept and threw up (I did most of that on the boat) and explored and played games (including a 4 hour croquet game) and fought and laughed. (I'm pleased to announce that my fiance came out on top in the fight).
And I love my family a lot. They are not all easy (and you wonder why I get accused of being difficult! At least I come by it honestly). Yet they are my family, which is something you don't choose but get stuck with, unless it is your fiance, which in this case I think God chose us for each other and made it impossible for us not to get together. At any rate, they are my family, and I love how diverse we all are. I love that my brother Sam has the creativity to design a croquet game involving jumping your ball off a tire ramp through a hoop. I love that Alpha brought enough clothes for a month, which came in handy when I didn't bring enough; and somehow she seems stylish even when camping. I love that Will sat on the front of the boat with Robin and Alpha for 3 hours, getting soaked by waves and chilled by a bitter wind, while only wearing shorts and bare feet. I love that Kiara and Betsy are both so beautiful and cute but in different ways. One dark and exhuberant and the other blond and sweet. I love that my Mom can be suffering from a concussion and a detached retina and seasickness and mothering woes and the loss of her own mother and yet, hardly ever complain. She is a soldier in the truest sense.
I love that my Dad can pilot a huge boat that he's never had proper training for and he can catch pots of crab and do all sorts of things by the seat of his pants, and that he loves us all enough to do it for us. And that he loves me enough to plan me a beautiful wedding.
But I am a Davies first of all which is why I won't be surprised if a fight breaks out on the dance floor and the rings don't show up and our get-away car is an '87 Volvo and my siblings put money on who will be the first to cry during the ceremony. It's my last month to be a Davies. I am happy and sad all at the same time.

Pain

2009-06-19T12:50:00.000-07:00

I always said I would never become one of those mean grumpy nurses. But now I understand them a bit better, I think. Not that I am becoming one, but at least I understand.
Because people lie and cheat and steal. And they hurt and call names and defraud and all that stuff. So nurses (and other people of course!) get hardened to it and become insensitive.
This week at work I had to be tough with a few people, and that's hard for me. I like to be compassionate and kind all the time, but sometimes that isn't the right approach.
Take, for example, my patient Robert. He went to take a bath with some epsom salts to ease the discomfort of heroin withdrawals. He'd been in the bath room for some time and I got this funny feeling about it. Maybe he was in there too long.
I went to the door and called his name. On the other side of the door I heard snoring.
I unlocked it with my master key and there he was, completely naked, sprawled out in the tub sawing logs.
"Robert! Wake up!" I said to him.
I threw a towel over him and shook him and he gradually came too.
"What are you doing?" I asked him. "You were fast asleep in the tub! You could've drowned!"
"Oh, it's not very deep." He said groggily. "And it feels really nice on my sore back."
"Get out of the tub." I told him. "I don't want you drowning in here."
"Aw come on, I'll be okay!"
"Get out!" I told him. "If you're sleepy enough to fall asleep in here, you can go to bed."
He got out. Later that day I had to kick someone out. And I had to tell him that there was nothing left I could do to help him unless he wanted to be helped. It was a hard thing to say. I wanted to put my arms around him and comfort his pain but I thought about something I learned in a nursing conference last week.
The number one factor that influences a person staying off drugs or alcohol permamently is whether or not they feel enough pain. Pain they've caused those they love; pain in themselves from their choices. And if health care professionals (and christians, and counsellors!) work too hard to eliminate people's pain and suffering, we may actually be short-circuiting the process that will set them free.
I'm sorry that you are hurting, I say to him. But it is that hurt that will continue to worsen, that will eventually make you change.
So maybe on the surface I will appear to be a mean grumpy nurse. But inside, I'm really kind and compassionate.

Beds of daisies

2009-06-13T20:45:00.001-07:00

I had detailed plans for today. I had promised my sister Hannah that I would take her shopping and we both like schedules, so I helped her write a list of everything we were going to do. I got up early, read my bible, went for a run, showered, had some breakfast. Got everything ready to go and then headed out to the car.
Instead of 'old dependable' (my giant silver volvo), I was driving Robin's little green tercel for the weekend. I got Hannah into her seat and buckled and then tried to fit her wheelchair in the trunk. It wouldn't fit. It was simply too big for the space. I sweated and pushed and tried to turn it around and take it apart and I finally wrestled the whole thing in and managed to slam it shut. I got into the driver's seat, turned my key in the ignition, and nothing happened.
I remembered suddenly that a friend had told me the night before that my lights were on. Obviously I had drained the battery. There were no other available cars to jump-start it. The only live vehicle on the street was Mindy, Will's little blue car with only three wheels. But it was across the street. I got out of the car. Got Hannah out. Wrestled the wheelchair out of the trunk and reassembled it. I told her we would walk to the mall. It was already getting hot and I envisioned myself pushing her the kilometer and a half uphill.
I was starting towards the house to get my flip-flops when my Mom came out.
"Heather, there's a battery charger in the garage that might work."
Sure enough, there was a car starter kit with cables and everything. I hauled it out to the street and popped the hood. My neighbor Albert was out watering the lawn and he came over and helped me hook it up. After a few minutes the car started.
I wrestled the wheelchair back into the trunk and got Hannah re-buckled in and we drove off.
We went shopping and sat and had milkshakes together and talked and then I brought her back home and went off to meet my friend Anna. I had to pick something up in the mall and we walked around quickly and then she had a lab appointment and I sat in the waiting room. I had planned on meeting Miriam at a certain time but I watched the clock on the wall tick and felt I was wasting my time, I should be doing something. I had nothing to read, nothing to knit, nothing to do. Nothing but wait.
Sometimes life is like that; you rush and rush and then there is nothing to do but wait.
When I finally left I fought through afternoon traffic to get to Miriam's and suddenly there was no more rushing, no more wrestling with things that didn't fit. We went for a walk and bought popsicles and lay on the grass in the park and strung daisies together into chains. It was wonderful.
Sometimes life is like that. I have rushed and rushed for many years. I will be married by 16. Okay, 18. Okay, 21. I will be a doctor by 23. Okay, 25. Okay, 28. I will try to fit myself into something that doesn't fit, like the wheelchair in the trunk. I have tried to start things that wouldn't start, like the car. I have struggled through traffic and fretted while waiting in labs. I've had to let go of 'doing'. I'm afraid there is more of that lesson to be learned, unfortunately.
But why? All I really want deep inside is to lie in a bed of daisies, to talk about interesting things, to enjoy friendship, to listen to children playing in the background and know that everything is all right.
Today I thought about becoming Heather Mercer, sometime very soon. I'm hardly getting used to being Heather Davies, it seems. Perhaps it takes a lifetime to get acquainted with oneself, to figure out what you really want.
I heard Hannah crying in bed just now and I went up to see her and I asked her why she was crying. After a long while I finally understood what she was trying to say between tears.
"You're going."
Yes, I am. But it's okay. I'm still me, and I'll be back to visit. I gave her a kleenex and as she fell asleep I thought about the adventures I've been on and the ones still to come and how sometimes the adventure is just seeing for the first time what has been in front of me all along.

New things

2009-06-06T18:31:00.000-07:00

I recently did several things I haven't done before that had not quite the outcomes I was expecting.
1. Robin and I bought a red truck for a pretty good deal. Plus it comes with winter tires and a canopy, so we can go winter camping in it, or if times get tight, we can live in it year around. Unfortunately the red truck broke down. Fortunately Robin and his friend Rick fixed it today.
2. I bought a rocking chair at a garage sale and Marlene gave me an old stool and I decided to sand them down and paint them red and white. Unfortunately the paint cost me double what the chair cost. Fortunately I have lots left over to paint other things.
3. I decided to make a type of strawberry trifle/pudding the other day. Unfortunately it looked like baby puke. Fortunately it still tasted very delicious.
4. I spent an afternoon and evening with my future in-laws. There is nothing unfortunate to say here: despite all the stupid movies about the in-laws from hell, all of mine are wonderful people and they like me and are happy I'm marrying their son.
5. In an effort to have our girl's bible study in a more interesting location, I led us all to the beach on thursday night, and straight into clouds of mosquitoes. We quickly relocated to a grassy hill which turned out to be some kind of ant-hill. Fortunately the ant hill did not stop us from having a good bible study.
6. Someone called me on my cellphone in the middle of the night this week. I tried to answer the phone but the display light wouldn't come on. Finally I got tired of trying to punch the buttons in the dark and I sat up and turned on my light. Unfortunately I wasn't holding anything in my hand; I had dreamt the whole thing.
7. I didn't have any work scheduled this week or next week. Perhaps something will turn up; I don't know. But it's okay. I have lots of interesting things to do, like work in my garden and paint my furniture and cook.

People

2009-05-26T20:11:00.001-07:00

I rolled out of bed the other morning feeling like a truck had run over me. I knew that this was one of those mornings that even a pot of coffee couldn't do the trick.
I showered and read the bible and prayed. Help me to love my patients the way you love them, Lord. I dressed for work and then rushed through breakfast and made a lunch. Maybe today would be a super slow day at work, I thought, so I threw my knitting needles and a couple of magazines in my purse as I went out the door.
Work started with a bang and didn't let up all day. I had ten patients and they were almost all nuts. One older guy approached the nurses quite distressed; he couldn't sleep at night, he said, because he was a cross-dresser and didn't have any ladies clothes to wear, and could we please find him some ladies underwear so he could sleep at night? I hardly knew what to say.
As I was getting ready to give some morning pills I noticed one of my patients was very drowsy, more than normal. He looked like he was going to pack it in and I elected not to give him his usual sedative. He has long flowing hair, glow-in-the-dark barcodes tattooed under his eyes, and blue barcodes tattooed on his chin and forehead. In his ears he had rolls of tape instead of earrings. At first glance he wierded me right out. But later I found him sitting in front of the tv and I talked with him about his childhood, how he had a muscle disease that prevent him from gaining weight and he was so insecure about his looks that he did anything to fit in- including taking drugs and drinking- but even then, he could never fill the hole in his heart.
One very disturbed young lady kept repeatedly vomiting and asking me for medication to stop it. After giving her two rounds of anti-nausea injections and she was still vomiting, I sat down on the end of her bed and asked her, "Laura, are you making yourself throw up?"
"Of course I'm not! What do you think, I'd do something stupid like that?"
Yes, I did think that. She was manipulative, angry, and so desperate for attention that she was capable of just about anything. I told her not to eat any more and just to stick with fluids until we could get the issue settled. Later she came by the nursing station with a shirt showing her belly. Rules are rules; I told her graciously to go change her shirt. She yelled and swore at me and said she wanted to go slash her wrists but she went off anyway. She came into the nursing station later doubled over in pain and almost crying. Her abdominal pain was a repeat issue and she'd been to the hospital and they were hesitant to operate because was there really a problem?
I'd already given her pain medication not too long before and I lay her down and examined her and then sat down next to her.
"Laura, I believe that the body and emotions and spirit are all intimately connected. What goes on in your body affects your emotions, and what goes on in your emotions can really affect your body."
She nodded understandingly.
"I think it's possible that what's going on with your stomach is less physical, but may instead have it's root in the stuff that's going on in your emotions. And unless you deal with what's going on in your heart, your body is not going to get better."
We talked about it for awhile and she gradually sat up and stopped crying and finally went out, not complaining about the pain at all.
Later I heard her clattering down the hall and she appeared wearing a skirt that barely covered her behind.
"Laura, go change into some pants." I told her firmly.
"They're all in the laundry."
"Well, I'll give you some pajama bottoms, then, but you can't wear that in here. There are other people with all sorts of addictions and we need to be considerate of everyone."
She cursed me as she went away but I stood my ground, feeling frustrated and annoyed. I did my other work and thought, she's not going to get any sympathy from me.
And then as I sat there at the desk God began to change my heart. I got up and went out past all my other patients to where Laura sat on the patio alone, a cigarette between her shaking fingers. I sat down next to her.
"This is not okay." I told her. "I am not trying to make things difficult for you. I am on your side and I want to see you get well. I can try, but really there is only so much I can do for you unless we work together."
She began to cry and I put my arm around her.
"I just feel so all alone. I just want someone to love me."
She began to pour out her heart, about the boyfriend who was cheating on her and the mom who taught her to shoot heroin, and the little brother who was on the streets, and all the pain that was like a deep black pit. But deep inside she wanted someone to notice her, and love her, and take care of her. I talked to her about Jesus and about him being a friend that never leaves you and sticks by you through it all. I talked to her about letting go and asking for help.
"I can't ask for help." She said. "I have to do it on my own...."
"But you can't do it on your own." I told her. "None of us can."
We walked back inside together.
Later that evening I sat with another woman whose husband didn't want her to stay in treatment and I tried to convince her to tell him no and to stay.
"You need to decide for yourself what you want." I told her.
She was like a shy little mouse; she couldn't bring herself to look me in the eye. I wondered if she had ever said no to anyone in her life, let alone the angry husband who was trying to keep her from getting well. She held the phone in her shaking hand and cried as she tried to tell him that she wasn't coming home yet.
It's a long journey, I thought. All these people are desperately suffering. If I only hung out with people whose lives seemed together I might have an easy life. But I would lose sight of the thread of suffering that runs through all of us, and of the truth that it is only by the love of God that there is hope. A perfect life forgets that it needs God. Suffering people help us see every day what it means to need God, and what it means to love God by loving each other in our frailty.

Interesting things

2009-05-20T01:25:00.000-07:00

1. I had a crazy patient named Nate this week. He is very talkative and a little bit nuts and he was hit by a train last year. He rolled up his pantlegs to show me where they'd put the pins in his leg, and then told me to put my hand on his head. There was an area about 4 inches square that was missing the skull and I could feel softness through it. "Now feel this" he told me, and strained down, and as he did, his brain bulged out the hole. Talk about gross.
2. I had a dream today that I was a spy and I was hiding down the side of a building with my head turned all the way left so I was flatter. I woke up to find I was in the exact same position on my stomach in my bed. Only the tree that was suffocating me was actually my pillow.
3. I went to Sam and Yvonne's house for dinner and decided to make a cake. Because Marlene's kitchen is under construction I made it in the toaster oven, in a bundt pan. It rose properly, browned properly, and tasted great.
4. Last night Robin took me hiking up a mountain and on a bridge over a river he gave me a pretty little ring and asked me to marry him. I said yes, of course.
5. The whole purpose of this blog entry was to tell you that I'm engaged. And that I'm ridiculously happy about it.

Addictions

2009-05-15T13:32:00.001-07:00

I started my new job this week and it has given me lots to think about. I'd like to tell stories about my patients but in the interests of keeping their confidence I've changed their names, in case you wonder.
The place I work at is a medical detox facility that helps people withdraw from drug and alcohol addictions. Most 'clients' stay for a week or less and although they are free to leave at any time, the place is locked up and under pretty tight regulations. In the morning I key in a password and I monitor the security cameras and try to keep pretty strict boundaries. There are times when it is alright to let people into your life and trust them completely, and there are other times when you have to keep a bit of distance. For example, one of my clients this week has court charges pending for sexual assault against children.
I struggle to look in his eyes and say, this is a human being, created in God's image, who I am called to love and respect and offer him dignity as he suffers. We are all working through addictions in some way or another. Some are just more on the surface than others.
One of my clients came into the nursing station yesterday and I brought him into the examining room. Ben is only 22 and was brought to the hospital by police last week. On our checklist of illegal drugs he's taking just about every one. His family is all messed up and he was trying to committ suicide so he was put on a suicide watch.
"I'm feeling terrible." Ben told me.
He sat on the examining table with his head hung over, his face pale and sweating and his hands shaking.
"I need something... Can you give me some more Valium?"
I took his pulse and blood pressure and temperature and all that, and assessed several parameters that help us determine his reaction to the withdrawl. I had already given him a sedative a couple of hours before and felt that he wasn't as badly off as he felt- the big issue was his psychological dependance.
"Ben, you're used to popping a pill or having a drink everytime you feel crummy." I said to him.
He nodded. "Yeah, I just know that drugs would settle me down right now. I don't even want them, but I don't know what else to do."
"And you've gotten into that habit of using them to cope." I continued. "But you can't do that anymore, right? You need to find other ways to cope with that feeling. What do you think are other things you could do to help when you feel that way, instead of taking a pill?"
He shrugged. "I dunno... listen to music. But I get sick of that. There's nothing on TV. I've read all the magazines I can."
"What about exercise?" I asked. "Sometimes a run can help... or watching a movie, or eating, or praying..."
"What do you do to help cope?" He asked me.
I reached over and closed the examining room door quietly.
"It's my belief, and that of the other staff here, that the reason people do drugs and alcohol is because they have a hole deep inside of them that they're trying to fill."
"That's exactly how I feel." Ben interjected. "It's like there's this hole in my heart that I keep trying to satisfy."
"I'm techinically not supposed to talk to you about my personal beliefs," I told him, "But we've all got that hole inside of us. I do too. And the only way it was filled in me was by experiencing the love of God and having a relationship with him. People try to fill that hole with all sorts of things, but the only real way is to know God's love for you, and that no matter what you've done, he loves you unconditionally."
"My mom is a christian." He told me, "and sometimes I listen to worship music on my walkman and it really calms me down. But I don't want to believe in it just because she does. I guess I haven't yet found that for myself."
"Have you ever prayed and talked to God?" I asked him. "Why don't you try?"
"I'd like to." He told me.
We talked for some time longer and then he got up to go out, his eyes bright.
"I feel like I hit my rock bottom." He told me. "And I feel like things are getting better. I have reasons to live and I don't want to die anymore."
As Ben left I looked tentatively at the other nurses to see if they had overheard our conversation. I don't want to get fired from my job, you know? But 7 days of medicating someone so they come off of alcohol is not the answer to the hole in their heart. I feel like if I just did that I would be putting a bandaid on a big, gaping wound. I want to give them hope. I want to really love them.
I heard a funny noise in the hallway and I rushed out in time to see Christie, a high-strung skinny street lady, projectile vomit all over the floor. Her roomate was a middle-aged mother that has had her life destroyed by alcohol and is trying to put it back together, and she was very distressed.
"Oh, you poor thing! You're really not feeling well, are you?"
I rushed to help her. Sometimes showing love is a more practical thing, and I settled her in bed with gravol and water and told her everything was going to be okay. I don't know if it will be, but I know that it could be, so that's what I say. I know that 97% of the people who come through here end up back on drugs or alcohol. My hope is that I can be part of helping that 3%, yes, but also for the 97% I want to love them as much as I can while they are here and if they don't choose to grab ahold of the hope I offer them, I'll still love them.

Lost and at home

2009-05-06T10:21:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me the other day that in the last 2 years I haven't stayed in the same place for more than 3 months. In fact, I've slept in over 25 different beds (including a hotel in Paris, a tent at Paul lake, my sister's bed, an old crack house in Chicago, the couch at my brother's house, a mickey mouse bed in New York, a plastic mattress in Antigua).... and now finally, the blue room in Bob and Marlene's house.
My ritual is usually the same wherever I go: I spread my purple quilt cover over the bed. I put my little clock, my bible, and my little green notebook at the head of the bed. And I tell myself, it's going to look better in the morning. I cut myself a bit of slack for the first couple of days cause I know that I find change hard and might be feeling blue for the first little while.
And somehow, some way, God is always good to me.
I was hesitant about my potential job in Kelowna but I had an interview this monday and the manager hired me on the spot and we spent ages getting to know each other. She told me I could work whatever shifts I wanted, I didn't have to work nights, and best of all, there is an entire 62 hours of job training in the next two weeks that alleviates all my concerns about being inadequately prepared for the job. I'll be working in a detox center and I am looking forward to the change of pace from all previous medical experiences. I am going to learn a lot, and I am going to be challenged and rewarded.
I left Vancouver with blossoms falling off the trees and a gentle warm sun, and up in Kelowna it is cold and still a little gray. My room is lovely and I unpacked my boxes (well, most of them....) and made a little home for myself. Yesterday I drove around and got groceries and this morning I went running and I feel like I am getting the hang of this place a bit. It's not a huge city, although I did get lost once yesterday. I made dinner and took it up to Robin and Sam at the house they're painting and on the way back home I did some giant circles around town. Was this the right road? That one? I stopped at various intersections and deliberated about turning left or right or pulling a U-turn. Finally I lifted my gaze up to the mountains and knew in my heart that if I went towards them, I would find the road that led North and led home. And I did.
When I came home I sat with Bob and Marlene and I told them about a difficult decision I had to make and asked for some counsel. They gave me the same counsel my parents would have: they told me God would speak to me, and they prayed for me.
In my dream last night I fell through an icy lake and couldn't find the surface and by the time I was dragged out by a friend, I was unconscious. I awoke in a strange bed with people trying to warm me up and my lungs thick with fluid. I felt distressed and a friend sat with me and began to explain what had happened. As I listened I realized that the story of me falling in the lake was deeper. I hadn't fallen; I had thrown myself in. And not once, but twice. As we were speaking, another friend burst into the room and began to tell me things, giving me advice and telling me I was wrong about this situation and that, and here was why..... I began to feel as if I was swimming under the icy water, trying to find the surface, but not knowing which way was up and which was down.
Suddenly I thought about the fact that I hadn't fallen into the lake; I had jumped in. I had allowed myself to enter that place of confusion and doubts. I looked him in the eye and I said, "that's not true what you are saying. You are wrong."
And then I awoke from my dream. Perhaps this sounds kind of flaky and wierd to write on my blog, but I need to sort if out somehow. There was more to the dream but this morning the answer to my dilemma the night before was crystal clear.
And just like being lost on the road yesterday, I need to find the road that leads North and stick on it until it leads me home. Taking the side roads that seem familiar just leads me in circles. It is the same as centering myself when I move to a new place: I put my blanket on the bed, I put my clock by my pillow. And I tell myself, don't worry about how you feel, Heather, because eventually it will make sense.
My centering point, my North Road for the dilemmas of life is the time I spend alone with God where I listen to HIS voice, and only HIS. It comes when I 'lift my eyes up to the mountains, to where my help comes from'. And once I lift my eyes up and refuse to be drawn into the icy waters of confusion and doubts, then I can find my way home.
Although as a side note, there are other places to get lost, like in the lobby of Robin's apartment building the other day. I actually had to call him on my cell and get him to come find me. Oh well.

Unhappy Heather's trip to the dentist (x3)

2009-04-28T20:54:00.000-07:00

Since I’m moving up to Kelowna, I’ve been tying up some loose ends here. One of those included booking an appointment at the dentist.
I’d been feeling like I had a cavity and it had been awhile, so I went on Monday this week. Let me first preface this by saying that I am a fastidious tooth brusher. I brush my teeth about three times a day, and boy, do I ever scrub them. I rinse my mouth out after drinking coke or coffee and I chew gum all the time (which, by the way, prevents cavities). I realized it had been too long since I was at the dentist when the bristles of my toothbrush started coming off in my mouth.
I lay back in the dentist’s chair while they made small talk (just like hairdressers- it must be a required part of the job description). They took a couple of X-rays and then the dentist held them up to me.
“You have 4 cavities.” He said. “And your teeth need cleaning. And you have serious gum recession that is unusual in a person so young.”
“Can you fix it all?” I asked hopefully.
He laughed. “Well, we can fix the cavities. As for the gum recession, if it doesn’t get better within 6 months, we’ll have to take a skin graft from the roof of your mouth and put it on your lower gum.”
I’d never even heard of gum recession before.
“I brush my teeth all the time.” I told him. (Okay, so maybe I’m not so good at flossing, but seriously, who is?)
“It can be caused by brushing too hard.” He said, “Or not brushing enough. There’s sort of a fine balance. But it is compounded by the fact that you have a type of saliva that is more prone to get cavities, and no matter how much you brush, you can’t really prevent them.”
I knew of course that my problem was brushing too hard. And all this time I was concerned about having white teeth.
So he froze my bottom jaw and then the hygienist applied that horrible instrument of torture called the rubber dam. I tried to be brave but it hurt going in and then she stuck a wedge between my other jaw and asked me how I was feeling.
“I feel like I have a basketball in my mouth.” I said to her, but I think it came out more like “Gurbledy gurp.”
They drilled away. I stared at the ceiling and at the sharp shiny things going in my mouth out of the corner of my eye, and tried to think relaxing thoughts, like pretending I was lying on the beach in Antigua again.
Then they finished the filling, but Oh Joy! There was more. The hygienist took out the rubber dam and wiped the humiliating saliva that was drooling all over my face, and the dentist froze my upper jaw, and then the hygienist put in ANOTHER rubber dam on the top.
“Does that feel all right?” She asked.
“Please can you suction the saliva that is running down the back of my throat and choking me?” I asked. Gurbledy gurbledy gurp.
Then the drill again. I thought about my poor little sister Hannah who can’t have dental work done the conventional way- she has to go under general anesthetic and at the very moment I was lying in the comfortable chair, she was being intubated at Children’s hospital. Some people’s crosses are heavier to bear…. I didn’t feel like whining.
They finished the second filling and then the dentist told me to come back later in the afternoon for another couple of hours, I had been lucky enough to get a spot right away. Might as well get it all over with, I thought.
I had some errands to run and at the bank I used sign language and at the store I smiled with half my mouth and pretended I had Bell’s palsy or something. The cashier responded well to the sad look in my eyes.
Back at the dentist I got into the reclining chair and decided it wasn’t my favorite place to be. There was a different hygienist this time; and she wasn’t quite as intuitive to my pain threshold. She cleaned my teeth with something that felt like a wire brush digging into my gums. Because of my gum recession problem, the tooth roots on two of my teeth are exposed and exquisitely painful. I begged her to give me some freezing but nothing seemed to cut the pain.
“You’re quite a sensitive girl, aren’t you?” She asked, accidentally spraying water in my nose. I stared at the ceiling and thought happy thoughts.
They told me I was lucky enough to get an appointment the next day, too. Back at home I sipped tea and felt a little sorry for myself.
Today I went back to the dentist again for my third dose of punishment, on the other side of my mouth. I feel like all I’ve been doing is hanging out in that quiet office with the whirring drills and polite small talk. The hygienist led me to the torture chair and removed my personal affects. She tilted the chair so I was slanted upside down and told me to open my mouth. My jaw was still stiff from the day before but I did the best I could. Another needle. She started to put the rubber dam in again and I had it with politeness and happy thoughts.
“It hurts.” I said. Gurbledy gurp.
“It’s not too bad?” She asked.
“No, it hurts!” I said. Gurbledy gurp. “I don’t think I’m frozen yet.”
Another needle.
“I’ll put it in first, then adjust it.” She said.
I glared at her, and then the ceiling. And I made pained noises at every single tooth she touched. She went out and left me for a while to let the freezing take effect. I sat there alone for what seemed an eternity. This is not fun. I hate the dentist. I could see my reflection in a mirror in the corner of the room and my face looked like a garish skeleton with a rubber mouth and large tacky sunglasses. How would you feel, Miss hygienist, if someone stuck a rubber dam in your mouth?
The dentist came in and started doing the filling. My neck was cramping and I tried to move a bit. He hit a nerve root and I moaned.
That filling done, the hygienist took out the rubber dam.
“I’m going to put Dura-seal on your teeth next.” She told me. “Try not to touch it.”
She told me to open my mouth wider and she painted something on my teeth and started drying it with cold air. Cold air, just like cold water, causes excruciating pain on the tooth roots, I don’t know why she didn’t know that, but I let her know with loud, pained moans.
“What’s wrong?” She asked.
“It hurts a lot!” I said. Gurbedly gurp.
“Oh, I’m just putting air on them to dry it.” She said.
“I know you are,” I said, “But it is extremely painful.” Gurble gurp gurble.
My sense of humor had evaporated with my sense of longsuffering. The Dura-seal seemed to take forever.
And then the dentist came back in and froze my mouth again. And I kid you not, the hygienist put in ANOTHER rubber dam.
I pushed her away.
“I need more freezing.” I told her.
“The Dr. just gave you some.” She said.
“I know, but I can feel everything. I need some more.”
He put in another syringe-full of novocaine and then the rubber dam went in. This time I think the freezing went right to my head. I began to get dozy. Or maybe it was the whirring sound. Or maybe slanted upside down, all the blood was rushing to my head and I was passing out.
I awoke from garbled and confusing dreams to find the hygienist snapping the rubber dam out. I was in too much of a stupor to care and the dentist wiped the drool and blood off my face. He inserted a piece of blue paper in my mouth (to check tooth surfaces) and told me to bite down. I did.
“Grind from side to side.” He told me.
I did. He took the paper out.
“Hmmm…. Try again.”
I bit down, and ground side to side as hard as I could. He removed the paper again and looked puzzled.
“Dr.,” the hygienist said, “I think she was biting her tongue, not the paper.”
Yes, I must have been biting that thick numb thing that didn’t belong in my mouth.
They ground some more and painted and then the hygienist told me I could go but I felt unsteady on my feet after so many hours lying upside down. I went out the door and I couldn’t even say thank you or goodbye.
The freezing has all come out now, and I’m wondering which quadrant of my mouth hurts the most. Or maybe my tongue. Or maybe my neck, it’s hard to tell. I wonder why it costs so much to spend several hours being tortured by a smiling person in a white coat. I wonder if it would be better just to get dentures. Then I could greet people at the door with them sideways in my mouth. Or I could take them out at night, pop them into a glass by my bed, roll over and say to my honey, “Sweet dweams, deaw” and smile with a lovely toothless smile. Yes, I might just ask them to pull them all out.

Meditations on Matthew

2009-04-22T21:45:00.000-07:00

This winter when I was in Champaign I read a book that touched me so deeply, bringing together in my soul questions that I had hardly dared ask aloud. It was a book called 'Things Unseen', written by a Vancouverite named Mark Buchanan, and the chapter that stuck with me the most and had me thinking this week is about Jesus and John the Baptist.
The story in Matthew goes like this: John the Baptist, the incredible prophet who understood who Jesus really was more than anyone else ('the greatest of these was John'), was languishing in prison, an imprisonment that would eventually culminate in his death. He sent his disciples to ask Jesus, "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect another?"
Jesus answered back by detailing all the miracles he had performed- the lame were walking, the blind were seeing, the dead were raised... but then at the end of it, he spoke a cryptic sentence that pierced to the heart of John's question.
"Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me."
I've read that verse before but skipped over it because I didn't really understand it's significance. But the author of this book gives it his interpretation.
Here was John in prison, surely he didn't need to be educated on the miracles Jesus was doing. Of course we all know about them. Have you heard about people being healed of cancer in Africa? Have you heard of the revivals in South America where the dead are being raised? Have you heard the stories of those who were miraculously given jobs when they prayed, whose cars kept going when they should've died, whose mothers got saved on their deathbeds?
So then why is our friend Kathy, who has a 6-year-old son, why is she suffering from breast cancer? So then why is my sister Hannah still disabled? Why am I still praying for friends to become christians when I am seeing their lives fall apart over and over again? If Christ can do those miracles, why isn't he doing them for me? Why wasn't Jesus doing something for John, the great prophet, while he rotted in prison? Why hasn't Jesus done something for me?
"Blessed is the man who doesn't fall away on account of the One who does all this for others, but who sometimes leaves you- you!- in your prison, with death just outside the door."
"The answer must be", the author says, "that those who never see, never touch, are being forced by a divine austerity, by a God who remains elusive, to grasp the substance of faith..... Jesus calls miracles 'signs'. The writer of Hebrews calls them 'shadows'. Miracles are meant to point to something bigger, more real, more alive, than themselves.... they are fingerprints of God, a clue to his presence, but they are not His hand."
"Blessed are those who don't need the sign, the shadow..... they have not fallen away on account of Jesus. They have grasped that a relationship with Jesus is different from a bargain or a contract with Him... they have understood that a miracle is as much a veil as a shrine, that it conceals God as much as it discloses Him, that it can become not the 'sign' that points to God, but the diversion that keeps us from Him."
And I believe Jesus is saying the same question to us today. Are you going to fall away (to become 'scandalized') because you have heard of God's miracles- and yet never seen them in your own life? When your deepest prayers remain unanswered and your most painful wounds are struck again and again, are you going to fall away from God on account of One who does something like this? Or are you going to embrace his invitation to believe in him- not in spite of his lack of miracles- but because he does not exist to satisfy us with his mere fingerprints- but rather the very substance of himself?
Blessed are you if you do not fall away on account of Jesus Christ.

Happy Heather's soap opera

2009-04-13T23:33:00.000-07:00

I have now been blogging for 2.5 years, at least once a week. My blogs have changed considerably over time: in the beginning I wrote pithy little pieces about scientific facts and theological ideas. Gradually my blogs have become more and more like diary entries, and more and more personal. Sometimes I feel like I am just talking to myself and I have no idea who might be reading it; other times I am extremely careful with each word because I imagine who might be reading it. Once in a while I bump into someone who mentions something I wrote in a blog and I feel startled that they know such intimate details about my life.
But there are a couple of areas of my life that I have never written about in my blog entries. Never ever, and for very good reason. It is because they are too personal. After all, it’s one thing to make people laugh about my adventures cutting up cadavers or nursing patients or selling teapots, but it’s quite another thing to share with the world how I feel about having my heart broken by a guy or how much I’ve agonized about my decisions with school or those days when I feel like life is crashing all around me and I’m a horrible person. But they happen, and they happen to everyone. Not only that, but I know my friends and family care, and I know that to the degree I am vulnerable, they are encouraged.
Of course some people can read between the lines. Perhaps you might have guessed that something is going on between me and someone named Robin Mercer living in Kelowna. My sister, who is my fashion consultant and my advisor on social graces and appropriate behavior, has counseled me that I should stop introducing him as my friend because after all, we’re in love.
I met Robin 6 years ago in Calgary at a conference where it snowed buckets, and we ended up eating pizza in a hotel room with friends and family in the middle of the night. The first moment I saw him I felt like he would one day be my husband. Yet we’ve taken a long and tortuous path to get to each other. Last summer I was sitting with my friend Yvette, crying my eyes out because my heart had been broken by yet another man. I told her, “I’ll never fall in love again”. She said, “Heather, there’s plenty other men out there who would be lucky to have you”. “There was only one other guy I was interested in” I told her, “and that’s Robin Mercer, but I’ve totally lost touch with him”.
“Robin?” She replied. “He was at our house for dinner this week.”
So we started out as facebook friends, oddly enough. Last summer we lay in a parking lot and watched shooting stars and he held my hand and I thought perhaps I’m crazy to be falling for him, I don’t know if I can handle having my heart broken again.
Except he hasn’t broken my heart. He is kind of quiet, which is nice, because we don’t have to compete for space to talk, and he is tall, which is good because I fit under his arm perfectly when we walk together. He tells me I am beautiful when I feel I am not and he is very clever and knows most of my interesting facts before I tell them, but he listens anyway, and doesn’t mind hearing them again.
We’ve spent most of our time apart the last several months, but I am moving his way soon and even though I grew up in Vancouver and almost everything I love is here, in a way going to Kelowna is a kind of coming home too. Last summer as I prayed about my future I begged God to give me someone to share my adventures with. I stood on a street corner near my house and as I watched, several planes flew past with their landing gear down, towards Vancouver airport. In my heart the Lord’s still voice spoke. I have more solitary adventures for you, Heather.
Last fall in Antigua and this past winter in Champaign, I truly understood feeling alone; feeling invisible in a room full of people, feeling abandoned in a quiet room all by myself day after day. My own thoughts echoing in my head and making me feel like I was going crazy. I have to admit my blog entries were much more chipper than I was feeling. Who wants to read about me whining, anyway?
But I also learned what it is to be quiet with God, and to know he is there even though you cannot feel him, and to trust in his love when it doesn’t feel loving.
My plans for my life have been dismantled, little by little, but it is okay, I have the feeling deep inside that the adventures God has planned for me are far more exciting than the adventures Heather Davies had planned. And best of all I have the company of someone dear to share them with.
So there, I’ve broken my rule and told you about my love life. Perhaps you’ll stop reading now, which would be too bad, because I have an interesting potential job in Kelowna which should supply hullabaloo-like fodder, and who knows, I might end up working in the hospital or doing all manner of things that turn out more unusual than expected. At any rate I hope to greet those adventures with a smile on my face and a laugh from deep within.

To sell a teapot

2009-04-08T22:22:00.000-07:00

I was working at Surplus Sam’s the other day and I was having a great time. Because one of the full-time cashiers left, Austin asked me to work upstairs as a cashier and doing customer service, something I was more than happy to do. I love talking to people and helping them, and I discovered something else: I love selling them things.
Honestly I can sell stuff at Surplus Sam’s in good conscience: I truly believe that the prices are good, and the store carries merchandise that is one-of-a-kind and would be hard to find elsewhere. Something for everyone, I tell them.
My remarkable sales of the day included convincing a lady to buy a broken hammock because it was a good deal and easy to fix; and convincing an old man to buy 50 yards of white leather so he could upholster all his furniture to match another chair we were selling.
But the last sale of the day was the best. I had been sorting through a showcase and found a teapot and sugar bowl set hiding behind some other dishes. Jonny and I had moved furniture around that day and put a stone table in the middle of the room. I put the teapot and sugar bowl on the table along with some other sets of plates and cups. It was a lovely teapot; a gold handle and lid, with bright blue and orange and yellow patterns of an ocean scene. The sugar bowl was a little different but also beautiful (albeit in a garish sort of way). It was an expensive set, too: the price on the bottom of the bowl was $93.74. Who on earth pays that much for a teapot, anyway?
A slimy sort of guy came in just before closing and was trying to convince me to buy loose leaf tea from him. I was behind the counter and his eyes lit on the teapot.
“How much is that?” he asked.
“It’s $93.00 for the set.” I told him. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Ninety three dollars!!!!” he exclaimed. “What’s it made out of, gold?”
I talked up the teapot for awhile and he carried it over to where I was at the counter and was looking at it.
“I don’t want the sugar bowl.” He said. “Can’t I buy just the teapot?”
I considered it for a moment. I knew we weren’t really supposed to split up sets, but the sugar bowl did look kind of different, and after all, I was sure I could sell it.
“Okay.” I finally agreed. “I’ll sell it to you for 2/3 the price…. Which is a pretty good deal. $61.00 plus tax.”
He opened the lid and saw there was a little chip in the rim.
“It’s damaged! Can’t I have it cheaper?”
I hadn’t noticed the chip and probably would’ve already discounted it further if I had…
“No, that’s already a pretty good deal.” I told him. “Look at what an amazing teapot it is! You can probably get matching cups off of ebay.”
I tried to convince him a bit longer but he finally put it down.
“I don’t want it.”
Another man came in and the two of them started looking at cameras in the display case where I was. I turned to the second man.
“Yes, that camera is a pretty good deal. But what you really need is this teapot. Take a look at it. The shape, the bright blue and the gold. Tell me, where would you find another teapot like that? It’s one of a kind. I myself was thinking of buying it today. What, with my staff discount, it’s a pretty decent price. Someone’s going to snap this one up real soon.”
He started to laugh.
“So, if I get that teapot, will it make me more popular with the ladies?”
“Well,” I said, “ I’m already taken, but if I wasn’t, and you had that teapot, I’d definitely go after you.”
The first guy picked the teapot up again.
“All right, I’ll buy it.”
I gloated as I rang up his sale. I gloated as I wrapped it up for him and he went out the door $68.00 poorer. I gloated as I closed up for the day.
Seriously, what an amazing sales woman! I sold a garish teapot for $68! And I still had the sugar bowl to mark up and sell the next day!
It was probably because of my exceptional talking abilities, my extraordinary communication skills, my way with people, my knack for seeing what things were worth and just what people needed and wanted. I smiled all the way home and as I recounted the story to my sister.
The next morning I came into Surplus Sam’s.
“Where’s that little sugar bowl I put here?” I asked Austin. “I sold the teapot yesterday and I’m going to price it separately.”
“Oh, the blue teapot?” He asked. “Heather, that wasn’t a set.”
“It wasn’t?” I asked.
“No, they don’t go together. They are both Versace pieces and they’re really expensive. The sugar bowl is $93.74 by itself.”
I suddenly felt as if the giant balloon that was my ego had been deflated.
“How much was the teapot?” I asked in a small voice.
“We’d marked it down to $270.00 because it had a chip in it. The original price was way more.”
“You’re kidding me.” I said. “The teapot was HOW much?”
And suddenly I didn’t feel like the world’s best saleswoman anymore. I had just sold a $270.00 Versace teapot for $68.00. And that man had walked out of the store and I had thought I was something special but actually he was the one who had got the good deal that day. I felt like I had been stung. Perhaps I should donate the next 3 days of labor to Surplus Sam’s. Perhaps Austin would want to fire me. Perhaps I should offer to forgo my lunch breaks for the next week.
And so I learned an important lesson that I should’ve learned before. It seems that it is a repeat lesson, one that takes the shape of a broken-down Volvo and a Versace teapot and I suppose whatever other object God would like to use to teach me the lesson. Pride goes before a fall, and the more I allow my pride to get inflated, the bigger the fall is going to be. Pride is expensive, I have been told.

The silver bullet rides again

2009-04-01T22:09:00.000-07:00

After my last success playing the mechanic, I felt confidence oozing out of my pores and decided to brave the 4 hour journey from Vancouver to Kelowna in the 'silver bullet'.
"Your car doesn't have an e-brake?" Miriam asked dubiously when we planned our trip.
"No worries," I told her, "Brakes failing only happens in the movies."
Little did I know the drama that awaited us.
Miriam and I left on friday in my old Volvo, and we took turns driving and listening to music all the way to Hope. We stopped in Hope to go pee and buy coke and then hit the road again, Miriam driving. We were chattering away in French and everything was going fine until about 20 minutes outside of Merritt while snaking up the big hill, Miriam suddenly exclaimed, "The car is smoking!"
"Pull over!"
She pulled over onto the narrow shoulder and just before she shut the engine off I saw the thermostat needle all the way up. I popped the trunk and billows of smoke came out. Great. I couldn't see where the smoke was coming from but after it cooled a bit I called my Dad on my cellphone and described the situation to him.
"You're probably out of coolant." He suggested. "Wait til the engine cools down and then put a couple of water bottles in."
I remembered filling the coolant last week (yes, with water instead of antifreeze) and seeing the liquid disappear down inside. Perhaps it was lower than I had thought.
We used up all our water in the engine and I contemplated pouring my coke in, but the coolant reservoir still wasn't full. AFter 15 minutes I started driving again, babying the car up the long slow hill. Within five minutes the needle popped up to the danger zone again and I had to pull over.
"Maybe we should flag someone down and ask for water." I suggested.
We popped the hood and stood behind the car waving our arms. Within 3 minutes a truck pulled up behind us and an older man got out.
"What's the problem?"
He fortuitously had 4 liters of windshield wiper fluid in his truck and he came around and poured it into the engine for me.
"Uh oh." I suddenly noticed a puddle beginning under the car. "It's leaking right through."
"It looks like your water pump is cracked."
Suddenly a cop car pulled up behind the truck and a police officer got out and came towards us.
"Is everything okay?"
"My water pump is gone." I said morosely. "I think we'll have to get it towed to Merritt."
A third truck pulled up in front of us and a man got out and started talking to the police officer.
"Oh, so you finally caught up with him, did you?"
The two men started arguing. "You almost killed me!"
"Get back to your cars!" The police officer was saying "Both of you! Get inside!"
Miriam and I looked at each other. Maybe we should get back in our car too. We climbed in and watched the police officer talking to the two men separately with his ticket book out and meanwhile we called BCAA, thanks to Miriam's membership card. The tow truck would be there within an hour. It would be a free tow to Merritt, or $300.00 to Kelowna. Friday night. What were the chances of getting a water pump installed at this late hour? We would have to stay over in Merritt. We had only planned a two-day weekend anyway- as soon as the car was fixed we might as well just drive home to Vancouver. I felt like crying.
I sent a text message to Robin Mercer telling him we were going to be late and then he called back.
"We're getting towed." I said, depressed. "We'll probably have to stay in Merritt overnight."
"No you won't," He said, "I'll come and get you."
Now this was turning into an adventure.
The two men had driven off and the police officer came back to the truck.
"Sorry about that." He apologized. "My bad luck to have to deal with that. Are you going to be all right?"
We assured him we were fine, even though we were a bit confused as to what had happened. We sat in the car and talked and read for the next hour.
When the tow truck showed up I jumped out and ran to meet the driver.
"Boy, are we glad you're here!"
"Don't you recognize me?" He asked. "This is the second time I've been here today."
I suddenly realized he was the second man who had stopped for us that day.
He winched the silver bullet onto the back of his truck and then while we sat in the cab on the way to Merritt he explained everything. He had been driving home when the first man had cut in front of him and nearly made him have an accident. He had called 911 to report his dangerous driving. The first man had stopped to help the two damsels in distress, as had the police officer, as had the second man, and it was just the luck of the draw that they all happened to recognize each other on the side of the highway. The tow truck driver had driven back into Merritt and then got the call to go pick up an '87 Volvo and he had laughed cause he had just been with us.
Well, he dropped our car off at an auto shop that would fix it the next day, and then he drove us across town to the Starbucks to wait for Robin. Miriam and I both had cards that had been given to us and we sat and drank tea until Robin came to get us in his Toyota Tercel.
By the time we got to Kelowna it was late (we both forgot the way back to our car) but we stayed up anyway for a few more hours.
All in all we had a wonderful weekend, although slightly dampened by the fact that Miriam had to take the greyhound home on sunday, since I was obligated to stay and wait until my car was fixed. Apparently there were no water pumps in Merritt and they had to order one in and in the end it was my most expensive trip to Kelowna ever.
But educational, yes. I learned all about leaking water pumps and why you should always make sure that when you fill the coolant reservoir, whether with water, antifreeze, or wiper fluid, you actually fill it, and don't just pour it out onto the pavement like I must have done the week before. I discovered how romantic it is to be rescued by a handsome young man in a green Tercel (who said anything about a white horse, anyway?) And I finally followed my Dad's lifelong advice, and yes, before I left Kelowna, I purchased a year's membership with BCAA.

An oil change and an attitude change

2009-03-25T20:49:00.001-07:00

I pride myself on being a fairly intelligent woman; not the type to overlook important details. For example, the level of oil in my car.
My trusty gray Volvo had begun to make a funny high-pitched sound. Years ago I read ‘auto repair for dummies’ and although I didn’t learn how to fix anything, I did learn how my car works and I learned where certain parts of the engine were located. I know that a car is like a pet; you can’t just feed it and leave it, it also needs regular maintenance. I have learned from trial and error that it is a good idea to keep gas in the tank and how to change a flat tire. I also knew that it is important to check the oil and top it up.
I don’t really have a good excuse for why I haven’t checked the oil in months. I put it off, I guess. Every time I remembered I was already in the house or I was late for work or something like that. But the noise in the engine was getting insistently louder, and I knew it wasn’t a squeaky-fan-belt-noise or a grinding-transmission-noise or a worn-brake-pads-noise. I suspected I should check the oil.
I finally did last week and discovered to my horror that instead of the smooth sheen of oil on the end of the dipstick, there were clumps of brown gunk. Oh no.
Luckily my brother Sam was in town for the week. Luckily for two reasons: a) he knows all about cars and b) he doesn’t make me feel stupid for not knowing all about cars. I called him out to take a look at it and he groaned.
“You’re almost totally out of oil. You just took a few years off your engine’s life.”
He didn’t have to try to make me feel stupid; I did feel stupid.
“Put some 15-40 in right now.” He told me, “and get the oil changed as soon as you can. Hopefully it will be okay.”
The more I thought about my car running out of oil, the more embarrassed I felt. How could I have let that slip by? That definitely wasn’t the behavior of a truly intelligent woman. How could I remedy the situation?
I decided there was only one thing to do. I would change the oil in the car myself.
I drove to Lordco and went in and asked the woman at the counter for an oil filter for my ’87 Volvo. I felt quite smug at the look on her face.
“You’re going to change the oil yourself?” She asked disbelievingly.
“Of course.” I said. “It’s not rocket science.”
“Well, is your car a 740 or 760 series?” she asked. “A four or six cylinder?”
I suddenly wondered if my face showed my stupidity.
“A 740 series” I said slowly, “but maybe you’d better check the size for the 760 as well.”
I bought the filter and the oil and drove to my Dad’s shop. I parked my car in the back and spread cardboard under it and found a tray and waited for the engine to cool a bit, then I wiggled under with a crescent wrench and tried to loosen the bolt to let the oil out. It wouldn’t even budge. The wrench slipped off and I banged my hand on something and it started to bleed. Perhaps I was using the wrong type of wrench. I actually had no idea what type of wrench to use but I had this vague idea that if I saw the right one, I would recognize it. I went back into the shop and began to look through the drawers full of tools. Outside I suddenly heard a truck pull up and it was Luis, the very capable man who works for my Dad and seems to know the location of everything and anything. He came in and saw me standing there with nothing but a lonely look and a wrench.
“I’m changing the oil in the my car.” I told him nonchalantly. “I’m looking for a wrench but I can’t seem to find the right one anywhere.”
“You need a different kind.” He told me.
“Oh, I know that.” I said quickly.
He opened a drawer and pulled out a combination wrench. As soon as I saw it I knew that it was the right tool, of course.
I went back outside and wiggled under the car and tried to move the bolt but it wouldn’t budge.
“Come out.” I heard Luis say. “Let me try.”
I wiggled out and he squiggled under.
“Don’t do it all the way!” I shouted under the car. “I want to do it myself!”
“I just loosened it.” He told me as he slid out.
“How?” I asked curiously.
“I just tried a different angle, that’s all.”
He told me to put gloves on and I went back under the car and emptied the oil out and only got a bit on my forehead and a bit spilled out of the pan, but that was okay. Luis showed me how to hammer a screwdriver into the old oil filter and twist it off and I put the new one on. I recapped the bolt and put new oil in, and let the car run a minute and then put a bit more in. I filled up the windshield wiper fluid with water and poured 2 liters of antifreeze into the cooling system and closed everything up, got rid of the black oil, washed my hands, and put away the tools.
I thanked Luis for his help and drove away feeling very, very proud of myself. Seriously, how many girls do you know that can change the oil in their cars? Even though it wasn’t raining, I turned on the windshield wipers so I could see what a good job I’d done filling up the fluid.
But my joy was short-lived. The windshield-wiper fluid spraying up on the window was fluorescent green. It could only be one thing. I had poured the antifreeze into the wiper fluid reservoir and water into the cooling system.
I turned the car around and drove back to Luis.
“Look at my windows.” I told him. “Antifreeze. What do I do?”
He assured me that I hadn’t harmed anything, but I would just have to let the antifreeze run out and then refill the wiper fluid again. I felt suddenly deflated. I knew that the windshield wiper fluid reservoir was built into the frame of the car and I couldn’t just lift it out and get the antifreeze back; I would have to let it spray out.
I drove down the road with my wipers on and the spray on full-blast. But antifreeze is not like water; the very characteristics that make it ideal for preventing freezing in your engine also prevent it from evaporating in the air or on the windshield as you drive. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw it jetting out behind me in a green mist. I slid down as far as I could in my seat and wondered what other drivers thought of someone who had their wipers on even though it was sunny, and had a trail of green liquid spraying behind the car.
Perhaps the whole experience would’ve turned out better if I hadn’t been so smug, I don’t know. Perhaps I should re-read ‘auto repair for dummies’, or at the very least, ‘auto maintenance for dummies’. Perhaps I will stay away from books entitled ‘Characteristics of intelligent women’ or ‘What antifreeze does to the environment’ or ‘How to act like you know it all when you actually know nothing’.

Love

2009-03-14T23:56:00.001-07:00

I was working nursing the other evening and I walked into my patient Rory’s room to find his food tray untouched and him staring blankly at the wall.
“Aren’t you hungry?” I asked, offering him a cupful of pills.
His face suddenly began to crumble.
“How can you eat,” he asked, “when the person you love most in the world is dying?”
I noticed the balled-up tissues in his lap and suddenly I remembered reading in the nursing notes that his wife was dying in another hospital and he’d been taken to see her that day.
“You have no idea,” he said to me, “How much I loved her.”
And he began to sob. I knelt down on the floor and reached for his hand. I tried to think of something comforting to say but there was nothing and I just watched the tears pour down his face and stroked his hand.
“She is so beautiful.” He said between tears, “and I loved her so much”…
He couldn’t get many words out past that. I felt my eyes begin to fill up too and I just sat there for a long time and cried with him.
Later in the nursing station I mentioned him to one of the other nurses.
“He had thought his wife was having an affair with someone”, the nurse told me, “but then she was dying and he realized he didn’t care about anything anymore, he just loved her so much.”
I sat during my break and thought about Rory for the longest time. He was at the end of his life, and so was his wife, and the only thing that mattered to him was that he was losing the most precious thing in the world, which was her. There was nothing said in that room about his career, about his years in the military, about the fortune and fame he’d made. In the end all that remained was the person he loved.
I’ve been reading in Colossians about how a church should act. Clothe yourselves, Paul says, with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
There is something so soft and tender about those verses. Don’t clothe yourself with success, with assertiveness, with good looks and fancy clothes and lots of money, with an illustrious career, with other people’s praises. Those things may all come by themselves. But God doesn’t look on the outside, he looks at the heart, and he looks at the way we love each other deep down inside. At the end of your life that’s all that will remain.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails….. these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Learning to serve

2009-03-10T19:44:00.000-07:00

This morning my bible reading was from John 13:1-17 (read it!) about Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. The little meditation in my devotional book talked about serving and how Jesus set an example for us as Christians of how to serve. In order to become great, you must become a servant.
I was thinking about it and instead of my normal ‘Lord, help me in whatever I do today’, I prayed, “Lord, please give me the opportunity to serve someone today”.
I worked at Surplus Sam’s today, and the day started out pretty busy, working through a new shipment of merchandise that had arrived the week before and not been finished. I threw myself at it with gusto and sorted, priced and ran stock up the three flights of stairs to the main floor. There were lots of menial tasks to be done, like collapsing boxes, scraping labels off of chairs and taking out the garbage. But I didn’t mind; it was an opportunity to serve.
Sometime in the afternoon Austin paged me from the upstairs and asked if I could bring up some toilet paper as apparently the customer restrooms needed it. No problem! I could deliver toilet paper!
I carried an armful up and wove my way down the hallways to the bathroom. I opened the door and instantly my jovial attitude evaporated. The smell hit me like a wall. There was human excrement all over the floor and it had been tracked in by someone’s shoes. The toilet paper was out and the last person in had used paper towels and plugged the toilet. I gagged.
My heart’s desire at that point, my dear reader, was not to serve. It was to call someone else and tell them it needed doing and that I was not a regular employee anyway and I was in the middle of doing something downstairs. Oh, I had all the excuses ready.
But something in me remembered that scripture this morning. An opportunity to serve. I went downstairs again and collected the bucket of cleaning supplies and a jar of air freshener and I steeled myself for battle.
Once inside the bathroom again I began to gag convulsively. It was horrific. I almost vomited but of course that would have made things worse, so I tried to mouth breath and think beautiful thoughts.
I bleached that bathroom thoroughly and plunged the toilet and dealt with the garbage and put the mango air freshener in.
I came out of the bathroom and headed towards the basement and suddenly felt something funny. I felt great. Not as in feeling happy, but feeling as if I had suddenly become a greater person. In cleaning up that poop when no one else wanted to, I had transitioned from ordinary to great. I floated down the stairs.
There was a wool carpet needed unrolling and vacuuming, and I knew it was a dirty job. No problem! That’s just the job for a servant…..or someone great.

Did you know.....

2009-03-02T22:57:00.000-08:00

I like to divide knowledge into four quadrants. There are the things I know and the things I don’t know, and then there are the things I know but don’t realize I know them, and things I don’t know but have no idea that I don’t know them. For example, in the first category, I know what medications to give for heart attack and I know that my Mom loves me. In the second category, I don’t know anything about ‘a tale of two cities’ (because I’ve never read it), I don’t know how to jumpstart a car, and I don’t know as much about God as I’d like. In the third quadrant, I didn’t know that I knew the way to superstore until I actually got there, and I also discovered that I knew a lot more Portuguese than I thought when I tried to translate a paper. Third quadrant knowledge is usually a pleasant surprise (“Oh, I DO know how to cook steak!”)
The problem lies in the fourth quadrant. Things we think we know but actually don’t. This week I discovered some of them and it was a bit of a blow to my pride.
I went to Kelowna to visit friends and family, as well as to have a bit of a break since just getting back from school. (Okay, mostly I just went to see a particular friend). For the first time in my life I went on a trip without bringing a textbook along. I didn’t even bring an educational book (besides the bible); instead, I brought my knitting.
I was asked if I would play the piano in church on Sunday and I agreed, and spent some time one evening with Robin Mercer practicing some songs. We tuned the piano and guitar together and worked on melodies and harmonies and rhythms. I’ve played piano for years and led worship in church for years and am quite confident in my abilities to play and lead and transpose and all that. We practiced for awhile and I felt okay about them, but I guess Robin was less sure because the next day he asked me if I would go over to Alan Karvonen’s house with him, to work on the music a bit more.
I had a headache and was overtired and pretty grumpy and tried to get out of it. “Do you really need me to come?”
Finally I agreed to go along but felt annoyed at the entire universe. We got to his house and sat down at the piano and got our music and all set to go. I began to play boldly along with Robin on guitar and suddenly Mr. K stopped me.
“Whoa, Heather.”
I lifted my hands off. Was I playing a wrong chord?
“Who’s leading here?” He asked me.
I paused for a second. “Robin is.”
“Well then, you need to let him lead. If he makes mistakes, that’s okay, but you’re just supposed to follow.”
I felt my face go red with embarrassment and then we started playing again.
He stopped me a little later and very graciously told me to hold back and wait for the guitar’s rhythm to come in first. He went out of the room to get a drink of water and I sat there for a long moment, staring at the music in front of me. Suddenly a fourth quadrant bit of knowledge hit me. I didn’t have the slightest idea how to follow.
My entire piano-playing career (which isn’t that illustrious), I’ve always led the music and never really had to follow someone else. At church and camp and parties and any other occasion where I’ve ever played music, I’ve always led. And suddenly, when I had to follow someone else’s musical style, I had not the faintest idea how to do it.
Mr. K came back and he was very gentle and gracious in the way he coached us and I felt like after awhile I was able to follow along a bit better. The next morning in church I was positioned behind Robin as he led and I was so determined to follow him properly that I kept my eyes fixed on his fingers where they encircled the neck of the guitar, and I held back until just the right moment, tried to feel where his rhythm was going and join in. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in playing music.
But I lay awake at night thinking about it. Perhaps it didn’t just extend to playing music. Perhaps it was a larger metaphor for life. Perhaps I actually don’t know how to follow. Being a good leader is important, yes. There was a Roman centurion in the bible who understood it well. His servant lay at home dying and he sent messengers to Jesus asking him to come and heal him. Jesus was on his way and the centurion sent friends to tell him not to bother coming- instead, just to say the word and the servant would be healed.
“I myself am a man under authority,” The centurion said, “with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go’, and he goes, and that one, ‘Come’, and he comes. I say to my servant ‘Do this’, and he does it’”.
The centurion understood what it meant to lead. But more than that, he understood what it meant to follow, which was why he was able to humble himself before Jesus in recognition of his power and position, and ask him to heal the servant. The bible records that Jesus was amazed at his faith and he healed him.
Well, to be honest, this theme hasn’t finished percolating in my heart (I like to mull over things for some time before they are complete thoughts), but for me, it was a bit of a surprise to discover something that I had no idea I didn’t know like that. It didn’t hurt matters either that in church on Sunday, the topic of the sermon was humility. I sat there thinking how gentle and how insistent the Lord is when he wants to tell us something, and feeling like I didn’t want to assert how much I knew anymore, until I found out just how very much I didn’t know.

When one door closes, another door opens

2009-02-21T10:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I left Champaign to come back home to Vancouver. I was all packed and ready and Katie dropped me off at the train station. We said goodbye and I hauled my luggage up to the second floor desk.
"Hi, I'd like a ticket for the train to Chicago."
"There are no trains going to Chicago this morning."
"What?"
I had looked them up online at least twice to check the schedule, and planned that I would catch the 8:00 train to get me to Chicago in time for my 2:00 flight.
"You might want to try Greyhound." The man said blankly and went back to his computer screen.
At the mention of greyhound I felt a wave of motion sickness come on, but I swallowed it back. It was my only option. I lugged my bags down the stairs and found the greyhound office.
"Hi, I'd like to catch a bus to Chicago."
"There are no buses going to Chicago this morning."
"What?"
Just a little hint of panic hit me. I was stuck in Champaign. 2.5 hours from Chicago and I had a flight to catch and no one to call if I needed help.
"Are there any other ways to get there?" I asked.
"You might try getting a shuttle." The woman said to me, "But it'll cost you a fortune."
I dragged my bags to the city bus and shuttle office.
"Is there any way I can get a shuttle to Chicago this morning?" I asked.
"Let me see...." The lady tapped away on her keyboard. "There is one this morning... oh wait, it's full."
She gave me a smile "I'm sorry."
"Is there any way I can trade seats with someone?" I asked hopefully. I had $40.00 in my purse and I'd hoped it would last me a lot longer than one day, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
The lady moved to a different computer. "Oh, actually, there is another shuttle today..." She said, "But it doesn't get to the airport in Chicago until about 1:00. Is that okay?"
A four hour bus ride. I could feel the wave of nausea.
"That'll be great." I answered her.
"Are you a student?" She asked.
"Yup."
"Well, then you get the student discount."
She handed me a ticket and I handed her $39.00. I sat down to wait for the shuttle and in my backpack I had a fortune cookie and I opened it up and it said "When one door closes, another door opens."
I took my car sickness medicine and when the bus finally came I squished in with all my bags and passed out. I slept most of the four hour journey (with my mouth open, nonetheless) and got to the airport and rushed inside. I checked in with Air Canada and went to go through security and there was a lineup of over 200 people. I tried not to panic. After all, what could I do?
A man motioned me aside and asked for my passport. He looked at it and my ticket and then pointed to a different lane.
"Go down there."
Yes! They were going to fast-track me through security! A woman greeted me at the door.
"Have you had this done to you before?" She asked politely.
Suddenly I didn't feel so jubilant. "Uh... what do you mean?"
"Have you had the 'four S's' of security?"
I had no idea what she was talking about but the four S's didn't sound that exciting. She told me to go into a little room with glass walls and stand on a little mat with my arms out while they searched me and emptied my bags and swabbed everything with little wands. When they were done with me I collected my dignity and my clothes and my bags and rushed down the hall to my plane.
Just in time, they were boarding. I got on and sat down next to a huge German man who wanted to talk about international business with me. The pill I took must've still been working because I passed out with my mouth open. I woke up as the plane was taxiing towards the gate in Toronto.
"Are we already there?" I asked, surprised.
"I can't believe you slept through that!" The man said to me. "That was the worst flight of my life! The turbulence was so bad that I was barely able to keep in my seat!"
Praise the Lord.
In Toronto I had to go through customs and security again and then I found myself sitting in a lounge waiting to board. An old man started talking to me. I told him how I was excited to be getting home that night, even though it would be 11:00.
"what do you mean?" He asked. "Our plane is landing at 9, not 11."
"It is?" My ticket had the wrong time printed on it and I hadn't even thought to calculate the time difference. Well, I would just call my mom and let her know I would be arriving earlier. I punched the number in my cellphone. Uh oh, no money left on my phone.
"Would you like to borrow my phone to make a call?" the man asked.
"Yes, thank you!"
The flight to Vancouver was not as fun. I had the window seat, next to a very large young man with the worst breath in the world and a very large lady. The young man was coming from Saudi Arabia and didn't speak English but wanted to talk. I told him Vancouver was beautiful and he managed to say "I... think... Vancouver is beautiful because you are there."
Boy, did I have a surprise in store for him. The last hour of the flight I suddenly began to get sick. I grabbed for that little paper bag and I started retching violently. It was horrible because I was actually making vomiting sounds that everyone could hear. The young man looked like he wanted to get as far away from me as possible, but the lady handed me some tissues and said, "Don't worry, I'm a nurse." (That made me chuckle cause I say the same thing to people.) Thankfully I hadn't eaten much that day (on purpose) but I still gagged for ages and by the time the plane landed I wished someone would put a gun to my head. I folded over the top of my little paper bag and just left it on my seat.
Someone helped me get my bags down and I stepped into the cool night air and felt so happy to be home on Canadian soil.
Some people love to travel. They love the excitement of the planes and trains and airports. I guess I do love it, in a way, but I think I mostly love the new places, not the actual journey. I am impatient to get there and I am impatient with the amount of suffering it necessitates. But I am constantly amazed at the little ways God works to protect me and take care of me and make a journey that could've been horrible, not be so bad after all.....Except for the vomiting in front of everyone, that is....

EXAMMMMMMMM!

2009-02-17T17:49:00.000-08:00

For those of you who faithfully check my blog in the morning (which I think is a great thing to do, mornings are the best time of the day), could I ask you for a favor? Could you pray for my big exam, which will be taking place all day of Feb 18th?
I know I've taken kazillions of exams in my lifetime... most have gone well, although there have been some remarkable not-so-well ones. At any rate this will probably be the toughest exam of my life. So far. My mom was helpful in pointing out a few of years ago when I wrote the MCAT, "This is not the hardest one Heather, you've got even bigger challenges ahead in life."
I'm not sure if she meant to be comforting or just to tell me to suck it up, but it is a good perspective. Just like David was trained on lions and bears for his battle with Goliath... and at the time it may have seemed huge, but little did he know that he would spend the rest of his life fighting even bigger battles...
I feel like it is particularly wonderful and appropriate to write my exam on my birthday, because I can't think of a better birthday present than to have finished it. (Okay maybe there are better ones.)
Anyway, I would appreciate your prayers as I slay this 'manster' (that is the way an old classmate John used to pronounce it, with his thick Greek accent), and know that I also keep you in my prayers as you face life's challenges, whatever they may be.
love Heather

....what was I thinking?

2009-02-15T16:19:00.001-08:00

Have you ever done something completely ridiculous that at the moment seemed perfectly reasonable, but afterwards, made you embarrassed just thinking about it?
Earlier this week I was studying super hard- for four days in a row I was putting in 14-16 hours and I was totally exhausted. Sometime during one of those days I was frustrated and annoyed and decided to go for a walk outside. I went out of the school and there is a park across the street and I started marching around the city block, talking to myself and praying. A man passed me by and said hi. I kept walking.
Halfway around the other side of the park, I ran into him again.
“Hi!” He said, “Nice day for a walk! Do you mind if I join you?”
He changed directions and fell in stride with me. I wanted to say no, I’m not interested in going for a walk with a complete stranger, but I was so caught off guard by his request that I couldn’t find the words to say no. (In retrospect, I could’ve just said ‘no’, but that didn’t come to me at the time).
He began to prattle on and on about his job as a computer programmer and how he liked to go for a walk during his lunch hour, etc. In the meantime, I was trying to formulate the words in my mind to say ‘please go away and leave me alone.’ Instead, I decided to try something that I’ve never tried before. I decided to scare him off by acting retarded.
Yes, I know it was ridiculous. But I did it. He asked me what I was studying and I put on a weird stilted accent and started flapping my hands and swaying from side to side.
“I--- am--- studying---- medicine---“ I stuttered.
He looked at me funny. “You mean to become a doctor?”
“Yes---- to---- become----a----- doctor.”
I made myself go cross-eyed and then rolled them back in my head. When I got to the end of the block I said goodbye and he walked hurriedly in the other direction. I walked into the school feeling rather pleased with myself.
But that is not the end of ridiculous things. After the end of this long exhausting week I went with Katie to the church young people’s winter retreat. We went to a little town about an hour away and slept in a cabin and played millions of board games and had fun together with 20 other people. I gained 5 lbs with all the junk food I ate, but it was fun nonetheless.
Sometime yesterday I decided to go for a little walk. Down the hill from the lodge we were staying at was a little lake, completely deserted this time of year, with a bridge and a boat house and dock and canoes and paddlewheel boats lined up on the shore. I looked at them for a bit and then decided that yes, it was a good idea to take one of the boats out for a spin. The only problem was…. The lake had ice on it. But it had warmed up a bit so I figured the ice was pretty thin and I could break through it and go for a little paddle.
I dragged one of the fiberglass canoes to the dock and pushed it into the water and the ice shattered all around it. I found a paddle in a little shed and then gingerly stepped into the canoe. In the air my breath was making steam and I hit the ice with my paddle and broke it up a bit and then started paddling.
Away from shore the ice began to get a bit thicker, but I discovered that I could lean over the front of the canoe and hit the ice, then paddle forwards a few feet, and then repeat. I was working my way along the shore but then started to get impatient with my progress. I decided I would have more leverage if I stood up and was able to reach farther with the paddle. So I was standing in the canoe, braced against the seat, reaching out and shattering the ice and then paddling. It was grueling work. The boat was rocking a bit but I wasn’t too worried about falling in. (Come on, that type of thing only happens in movies.)
I discovered that the boat would move forward without me paddling if I rocked back and forth a bit. So I started moving back and forth (sort of the same idea as pumping your legs on a swing so you can swing higher.) However, I had to be careful that I didn’t rock side to side, or so much that I fell over, so I braced myself securely and starting just thrusting my hips forwards and backwards to get moving. The ice would crack a bit and I would thrust my hips forward, and then thrust them back again and so on. It worked rather well, I thought, and I moved the canoe around for a bit like that.
After awhile I got tired even of that, so I paddled back to shore. I got out of the boat and pulled it out of the lake and lugged it up the hill to it’s place. Then I went for a walk in the woods for a while, tramping through the snow, and made my way back to the lodge.
I came in the door and was greeted by a bunch of smiling faces. Was there some secret I was missing here?
“So, Heather….” One of the ladies finally said, “We noticed you decided to take a boat out?”
“Yeah, we were kind of worried you might fall in.” One of the guys said, “So we were all standing at the windows watching you.”
I had forgotten about the big bay windows that overlooked the lake.
“I thought that dance you did was pretty good.” Another one of the girls said.
“Yeah, that whole hip movement thing was pretty funny.” Someone started laughing and mimicked my hip thrusting moves and they all cracked up.
I turned a few shades of red and laughed along with them, what else can you do? I bet that they were just jealous they hadn’t thought of taking one of the boats.
…. Unfortunately it is useless to try to convince people to make their own adventures. They either will or they won’t, but in my experience it is always more fun when you decide that it is worth the embarrassment and it is worth looking ridiculous. After all, we all will look ridiculous at some time or another in our lives, we might as well just get used to it.

Nightmares, skirts and poo

2009-02-08T12:28:00.000-08:00

I’ve been thinking about my image a lot lately. Not so much my image, actually, but thinking about how I think about it. This week in school we were talking about adolescent health issues and I was surprised to learn that the average North American girl starts her first diet by age 12. I was surprised and then I thought back to when I was 12 and yes, that’s about right. I think my first one was ‘Heather’s health plan’. The next year, it was ‘Heather’s new and improved health plan’. Then ‘Heather’s health and fitness plan to end all plans’. And so on. Currently I’m on ‘Heather’s elliptical trainer butt-kicking health plan’.
The sad thing is that I’ve never been fat. But I’ve always obsessed over it. I think part of it stems from being teased as a kid, and while I’m sure it was never meant to be cruel, it stuck with me. I remember going out running when I was 16 or 17, with my short little running shorts, and my neighbor came out on his balcony wrapped in a ratty purple bathrobe and shouted, “Good morning, power thighs!” I wanted to die. My brothers lovingly nicknamed me ‘Heather the Hippo’. And it bothered me that I couldn’t fit into my beautiful skinny sister’s jeans and t-shirts.
I haven’t been happy about how I looked most of my life. I wanted thicker hair, bigger lips, longer legs, smoother skin, you name it. And I know I’m not alone in it. I remember reading about a woman’s conference where the speaker asked if any women in the audience were happy with their body. One woman out of 500 raised her hand. Isn’t that crazy? What is to be done about that? There isn’t enough Botox or liposuction or diets or hair dye or makeup or pretty clothes or plastic surgery or silicone implants or facemasks or curling irons, not anywhere in the world. You’ll never make a woman think her body is perfect.
“I praise you Lord,” Psalm 139 says, “Because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
Why is it so hard to believe that?
I had this weird nightmare two weeks ago, which I’m sure was partly due to too much studying. In my dream, I looked in the mirror and discovered to my horror that I had a wide webbed neck, a flattened face with wide-set eyes, my skin was dry and flaky, and where I should’ve had breasts there was nothing.
“Oh my God, I’ve got Turner’s syndrome!” I wailed (Turner’s is a genetic disease where girls have 45X chromosomes instead of 46XX, and most cases aren’t as bad as my dream, in fact most girls look totally normal with it.)
I started to panic. Okay, Heather, breathe. Maybe this isn’t so bad. I looked in the mirror again. Gah!!!
I woke up and ran into the bathroom and was overjoyed to discover my own familiar features.
Then I had another crazy dream this week. I dreamt I was balding. I looked in the mirror and found that my hairline had receded several inches. Not just regular balding, it was hereditary male pattern baldness. Again I started to panic, and then tried to calm myself. Relax, Heather, maybe there’s a guy who likes big foreheads…
This week I bought a beautiful pink skirt for $5 at a second hand store. It is long and flowing, to the ground, with little silver sequins sewed on it and jangling bells at the waist. The weather finally warmed up a bit and I decided to go for a walk, wearing my new skirt. I was walking along feeling pretty good about myself, my new flowing skirt, my hair looked great….. As I walked by a car I looked in the window reflection to admire myself. Suddenly I felt something soft under my foot.
Yes, my dear reader, I had stepped in a pile of dog poo.
You can believe I felt stupid. I started walking through the piles of snow to try to wipe my shoes off and across the street there was an old man staring at me with a funny look on his face.
Farther along on my walk I came to a little creek with a bridge, but because so much snow has melted lately, the bridge was flooded. There was a big pipe that had fallen across the river with a birch branch hooked onto it and I decided to climb over the pipe. I was halfway across and doing pretty good, when my long flowing skirt got snagged on the birch tree. I didn’t want to rip it, but I couldn’t turn around and free it because I might slip off the pipe into the river, and I couldn’t go forward because there was another branch in the way. I tried to gather as much skirt up as I could and hold it out of the way with one hand, while balancing and trying to lift the birch branch up and away from me. I had a moment’s thought that yes, I was stuck on a pipe in the middle of the river with my skirt rolled up and my knickers probably showing, and yes, there were houses lining the bank on both sides. And yes, it would’ve been interesting to watch.
Without describing my contortions to release myself, I will tell you that I got away with only one large scratch on the back of my leg and a damp skirt and I considered myself lucky.
This morning I went to church with Katie and it was hard to sit down even in the comfy chairs because that elliptical trainer (3 days in a row!) has pulled every muscle from the waist down.
The pastor was talking about image and reputation and I began to feel that perhaps God was trying to tell me something. In fact, maybe he had been saying it for a while. Maybe those nightmares and the dog poo were all part of the message. Maybe he wants to tell me that he made me the way I am for a reason, and he loves the way I look, and I don’t have to constantly seek affirmation from other people to make me feel okay. Perhaps it doesn’t matter if I am fat or skinny, or short or tall, or have a webbed neck or a bald head. Perhaps God is looking at my heart and is more concerned with what he sees there, and wants to make that part of me beautiful.
“The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)
There is no botox for the heart. But there is a treatment that creates an unfading beauty, I’ve heard.
“But let it be the inward adorning and beauty of the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible and unfading charm of a gentle and peaceful spirit, which is not anxious or worked up, but is very precious in the sight of God.” (1 Peter 3:4)
We spend so much energy on the outside, on how people view us, on trying to look good or act cool or sound clever. But the truth is, “I live before an audience of one. Before others I have nothing to prove, nothing to gain, nothing to lose.” (General Charles Gordon).

Moving house

2009-02-03T13:34:00.000-08:00

I tend to complain about a lot of things that I shouldn't, and then there are other things I don't complain about, that I should.
Case in point: my living situation here in Champaign. I've had some pretty crazy landlords in my time (like one who rang our doorbell every day to ask how we were doing, and who I tricked into thinking I had grown up in a Masai tribe in Africa and was a pro spear wielder, in case he got any ideas.)
But my landlord here was pretty nice. He picked me up at train station when I got into Champaign and did whatever he could to make the house comfortable (like fixing the furnace when it was -27, buying a tea kettle, offering me rides.).... maybe too nice. I had thought I was moving in with two ladies and the landlord was in a separate suite, but we ended up sharing the kitchen, and the other girls were never there, and when they were there, they were either drunk, passed out, or screaming on the phone with their boyfriends and moms. (I kid you not, the amount of times I was woken up to hear one of them screaming profanities at their loved ones...)
Then I found out my landlord was married, but his wife lived in another state, so he was kind of lonely.... and most of the time I would come home from school exhausted and alone, late at night, and it was just us there. Creepy, huh? Saturday night one of the girls came home really late with her boyfriend and I could hear them stumbling around drunkenly, smashing things, yelling. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning one of them burst into my room and I woke up and told them to get out. No, maybe I should be the one to get out.
I'd met a really nice girl at the church I've been going to, she gives me rides to school on the days I don't ride my bike. I asked her if I could move in with her. She was more than happy to have me come stay in 'Chateau Katie', as she called it, so I moved in this weekend.
Like night and day! I walked into my room and almost cried. It was so beautiful. I sank into bed and it was like jumping into a cloud. I realized then that the whole month I'd been sleeping on a bed that had springs digging into my back, which probably explains why I tossed and turned all night. And not one, but two pillows! And a little carpet beside the bed! And the bathroom was clean! And Katie is a wonderful person and I can hang out with her and eat breakfast together in the morning and watch tv with her if I have time.
So I'm extremely happy and feel so blessed to be living there for the remainder of my time in Champaign. God doesn't always give us what we want, but he always gives us what we need, and sometimes a little more, just to tell us that he loves us.
This morning I woke up and pulled the curtains and looked out at trees and snow, and it was so beautiful, that I felt overwhelmed by God's goodness. So I knelt on my little carpet to pray, and couldn't stop smiling.

Fire in my soul

2009-01-31T08:39:00.001-08:00

16 years ago, today, I was baptized. I remember it distinctly; I was a talkative but serious little girl with knobbly knees and wispy brown hair and glasses that were too big for my face. Ever since I was really small I remember lying in bed at night and talking to Jesus. In some ways he was more real to me then- I had a vivid imagination and the lines between reality and fantasy were blurred, and I had no problem believing in and loving someone who I couldn’t see. (After all, I had at least 3 imaginary friends who kept me company!)
But it was the most natural thing in the world for me to believe that he existed, and that he loved me, and that he had a certain way he wanted to live my life. I was anxious to let everyone know how I felt and make a commitment to God that would last my whole life. But there was one major problem standing in the way: I didn’t know how to hold my breath under water, and I was worried that when I was baptized and my head went under, I would inhale, choke, and drown.
But the fire was burning in my soul. I thought about God in bed at night and when I read the little white bible that had been my great-grandmother’s. My favorite verse was from Psalms 63- ‘O God, you are my God. My soul thirsts for you. My body longs for you, in a dry and weary land, where there is no water…. Because you have been my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings.’ I was so hungry and thirsty to know God more and to embark on the adventures he had in store for me.
I was almost 9 when I finally got up the nerve to get baptized, even though it had been years since I knew Jesus in my heart. My Dad and two of my older brothers, who I adored, baptized me. I was the last of seven people to descend into the baptismal tank and I remember seeing dirt floating on the top of the water but I was so excited I didn’t mind. I was wearing a little pink skirt and when I went into the water it puffed up around me and I tried desperately to hold it down so the whole church wouldn’t see my underwear and my skinny legs.
It’s funny because as I look back, in many ways nothing has changed. (I no longer wear glasses and my legs aren’t skinny any more, although I still do wear pink skirts that fly up at inopportune moments). I still have that fire burning in my soul towards God, and if anything, it has grown stronger. I know I am an emotional person to start with, but I can hardly stand still in a church service without tears welling up from deep within. I often fight to contain myself- what do you do when you love someone so much and you can’t see them, you can’t touch them, you can’t feel them?
Life is hard, there are so many ups and downs, and often I feel that there are more downs than ups. There have been a few days this month when I was alone, completely alone, and I felt like God was farther from me than ever before in my life. I could not feel him at all. Yet something in me, something fierce that was in me as a little 8 year old girl, something kept hanging on. I know God is good. I know it in my soul, deeper than I’ve known anything in my life.
So anyway, I wanted to share with you, whoever may be reading this, this very special day to me. I am celebrating God’s faithfulness to me, and I can say with all my heart, over these 16 years (and more!) that I have known him, he has never let me down. He has always been right beside me. He has been totally worth everything I have ever given him, and I know that as I grow older and learn to give him more and more of my life, I will see him as more and more beautiful as he truly is.

Raising the dead in me

2009-01-24T15:37:00.001-08:00

Perhaps it was all the talk about obesity and heart attacks. Perhaps it was the many hours sitting still in class, shifting my position every couple of minutes trying to keep the blood flowing. Perhaps it was seeing the sun come out for the first time in a week…. Whatever the cause, I was full of pent-up energy and after school I decided to go running. It had warmed up to a mere -2 and I figured that I could get in a little run before the fading light completely disappeared. As soon as I got home I threw my stuff on my bed and ran out the door.
….Well, maybe it was colder than -2. By the time I got back my ears and fingertips were numb but my face was slick with sweat. I decided to try a facial beauty treatment to improve my complexion. (Why haven’t I outgrown these silly ideas?) I whipped up some dinner and had a shower and started studying.
Later on in the evening my face began to feel uncomfortably warm. I looked into the mirror and it was a bit pink. Oh well, it will be better by morning.
I woke up in the morning, and looking in the mirror I was shocked to see that my face was bright red- not all over, but blotchy in some spots and with white circles around my eyes. I’m not sure what it was, perhaps the combination of windburn from running and then the salty sweat and all that, but I had toasted my face a nice pink color. I tried valiantly to cover it up with some makeup. Well, perhaps if I make my eyes look extra dark then no-one will notice how bright my skin is. I leaned towards the mirror with my eyeliner and accidentally poked myself in the eye with the pencil. My eyes began to water and I tried to swab out the bits of pigment I could see stuck on my cornea. Oh dear, I was going to be late.
I rushed into the kitchen and quickly tried to eat some breakfast and I could see my neighbor pull up in the driveway to pick me up. I gulped down a bowl of cereal so fast my stomach began to hurt. I had read on the news that the temperature was supposed to be in the positives, so I put on my sandals (for the first time!) and ran out the door. As soon as I hit the air outside I realized there was no way the temperature was positive, but it was too late, so I just sidestepped the snow and jumped in the car.
“Hi, Katie.”
Perhaps if I act normal she won’t notice anything is wrong with me. Katie is a really quiet person and she looked sideways at me but didn’t say anything. I got to school late and when I slid into the back row, Eric, who sits next to me, looked sideways and then had a puzzled look on his face. I opened my books and stared at the professor.
I could feel Eric looking at me out of the corner of my eye again. My eyes were beginning to water again. I blinked back tears and delicately tried to dab at my eyeball.
When we had a morning break I avoided the curious gazes of the people sitting around me and nonchalantly went to look at the bulletin board.
I heard laughing and I turned and my classmate Rob was standing there.
“Heather, what’s WRONG with you?”
“what do you mean?” I asked innocently.
“Well, you’re wearing high-heeled sandals in minus 10, and your face is bright red and your eyes look funny. What happened to you?”
Sigh. I had to explain all day. I got up this morning and my face was about 90% better, but I was feeling nauseas and spent time trying to decide if I was going to throw up or if I was going to make it to school. I took some ibuprofen and waited for my stomach to settle and read my bible.

“We were under great pressure...” Paul says in Corinthians, “Far beyond our ability to endure….. but this happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God, who raises the dead.”
Saturday today, and I didn’t have a ride with Katie, so I rode my bike to school. Back down to -17 degrees. I bundled up with a scarf wrapped around my face and ventured out.
I kid you not, biking to school today was the coldest experience of my life. The wind ate through my toque and made my head throb. My double-lined mittens did nothing. As I breathed through my scarf, my breath condensed on it and I could see icicles beginning to form and joining the ones that were forming around my teary eyes.
I made it to school late and the class was about biostatistics and I sat in the back row and tried to warm up, thinking about math and folding paper into interesting origami shapes and wishing my windburnt face didn’t feel so hot.
On the way home I stopped to get groceries and I didn’t have quite enough money for everything and I kept asking the cashier to take things off my bill and it was kind of embarrassing to count out my pennies for her.
I have been struck lately with how much I am at the mercy of God. I’m not talking about the cold weather here, although that is part of it (I’m lucky I didn’t get frostbite on the way to school today!). There are also just the little vagaries of life- the silly things we do- the frustrating things- the hard and painful things. Some of them crush us beyond our ability to endure. Some of them just get us down little by little. But they’re not as random as they seem, I don’t believe. They happen so that we might learn to not rely on ourselves, but on God, who raises the dead.

Champagne powder

2009-01-19T20:05:00.001-08:00

Before I came to Champaign and since I’ve been here, I’ve really struggled with wondering if I was in the right place or not. You know how sometimes you do something, or go somewhere, and you have this sense of peace and destiny within you? Well, I certainly did not feel that way coming here, but it seemed to be the sensible next step to take, so I took it.
I’ve been lonely, and freezing cold, and last week I caught a nasty bronchitis and I think it was Friday, I was stuck at school after class because my ride wasn’t going to leave until 9 that night, and I had green snot coming out of my nose, a sore throat, a stomach ache and nausea, and all I wanted to do was go home and go to bed. Too much homework. Outside it was -27 C and it was too cold to stand outside for a minute, let alone contemplate walking or biking the half-hour home. It was even too cold to wait for the bus, not that it would have come anyway.
I met some creepy guy who was hitting on me and offered me a ride home. Not on your life, buddy. I’d rather stay here. I fled to another study room and felt sorry-for-myself tears welling up in my eyes.
Saturday morning I slept in, no classes…. I studied hard all day with a kleenex-box by my side, and then I had to get out of the house and I decided to ride my bike (it had warmed up to -10) to the grocery store to pick up some groceries. There was also a second-hand clothing store nearby that I went in and bought a sweater from. On the ride back, bags draped over my handle-bars, steering carefully in the middle of the road so as not to hit too many icy patches, it occurred to me that with my orange toque and turquoise scarf and red mittens and fuzzy boots and all those bags, I looked kind of like a bag lady. I had to laugh at myself.
Sunday morning my neighbor Katie, who I met at the church, picked me up to go to the service. It was immensely encouraging and when she dropped me off I felt buoyed in spirit. I cleaned the bathroom, kitchen, all the floors in the house (since my landlord walks around with muddy boots), and read my bible, napped, and did laundry.
Something about being totally all alone in a quiet house, but in the late afternoon I had cabin fever. Outside it was snowing softly, those gentle flakes they call Champagne powder (Imagine that, Champagne in Champaign…), the kind of flakes that fall, not blow, and settle on top of each other in layers so you can see the individual flakes. I got on my bike and set out, hoping to find some kind of coffee shop to sit in and read and write.
There is a half-dead strip mall a couple of kilometers from my house and as I approached, I had to laugh to myself because the trees around the parking lot still had their strings of Christmas lights glimmering softly in the snow. Who on earth leaves their Christmas lights on, a month after Christmas?
I went in and sat down, unthawing a bit. Then it hit me.
Back in August I was a little bit distressed about my future and I had sat in a park one day, talking to God. It probably sounds a little crazy, but I had a sort of vision. In my vision I saw myself in a city in America- in front of an outdoor Christmas tree decorated in lights. Heather, you’re in the right place. And then in the vision I was standing in the lobby of a huge church- a horseshoe shaped lobby, wide doors going into the sanctuary, vaulted ceilings. There were people milling everywhere and they were friendly and warm. Heather, sink yourself into that church. Don’t be afraid of how many people are there, how different it is from what you are used to.
Suddenly I was sitting there looking out the window at the Champagne powder coming down, and I knew in my heart, I’m in the right place. At the right time.
Why am I here? I’m not really sure some days. To study and learn and pass some ridiculously hard exam. To meet some people and perhaps share God’s love with them. To hear God speak to me. Maybe all that and more. But the important thing, is that I’m here, and I'm not here alone.

Perspective

2009-01-13T13:40:00.000-08:00

The other day I got up at some ridiculously early hour and got ready for school. I made coffee and put it in a travel cup to hook over my bicycle handlebars. I opened the front door and groaned when I saw everything wet. Great, a 5k ride in the rain. I stepped out and just about wiped out on the sidewalk. It wasn't rain, it was ice. Coating everything. I made my way to my bike and got all wrapped and ready and then went to get on.
Whoosh! The bike slid out from under me and I crashed onto the pavement. I picked myself up and debated trying to catch a bus to school.... no, I would be really late. I walked my bike a ways and then climbed on and started riding, closer to the center of the road where it had been salted.
The bitter cold wind blustered around me as I biked and I had to tuck my chin down and try to bike in a straight line. 7:00 Saturday morning and I was exhausted from staying up late studying and not feeling too fond of the universe in general.
I made it to school and road up onto the sidewalk to get into the parking lot. The moment my wheels hit the sidewalk, the bike slid out from under me and I went flying, my coffee cup bouncing on the pavement. At least this time I'd fallen on the other side of my butt. I picked myself up, and the coffee, and slid my bike towards the railing to lock it up. One of my classmates came out the door.
"Class is canceled." He said blankly. "We don't have anything until 12:30.
Well, I was hot by that point. I said a few angry things that I shouldn't have said,like why a Dr. with a 4-wheel-drive mercedes would cancel class because of the bad weather when I had biked all the way here.
"I can give you a ride home." My classmate offered. "I'll put your bike in my trunk."
We started towards his car and suddenly his feet went out from under him, his shoe went one way and his books another.
We made it to the car and got the bike in, and he drove me home. The house was cold and lonely and I sat down and studied for a few hours. I was doing practice questions online and scoring around 40%, and the more I did, the more frustrated I got. I was glad to get back to class in the afternoon, but quickly found out that instead of the 3-hour session I was expecting, we were scheduled for several hours. The lecturer was boring, her English wasn't very good, I had a stomach ache, and I hadn't realized we'd be in class for so long so I hadn't brought any snacks or drinks or even money to buy them.
By the time I got home at 7:30 that night I didn't want to talk to anyone, which was just as well because I was all alone. The fridge was almost empty but I decided that what I really needed, to relieve stress, was to have a warm bath. I went into the bathroom, and because the landlord uses the tub to wash his dogs, I cleaned it out. I was down on my hands and knees scrubbing it, and then I cleaned the sinks and toilet, and my back was aching by the time I was ready to jump in. I undressed and lit a candle and then went to put the plug in, only to find that there was no plug. I looked everywhere but couldn't find it, so finally I just climbed in and turned on the shower and huddled under the weak stream. The hot water was out after about 5 minutes so I jumped out and got into my pajamas and jumped into bed to keep warm with my textbooks.
Some days are just like that, you know?
The next morning I had decided to go to church and it was snowing and I rode my bike a few kilometers in the wind until I got to the church, and locked up my bike with fingers numb from the cold, and came inside into the warmth.
Instantly I felt a calm come over me. Someone showed me where to sit and it was toasty in there and the people began to sing and worship God. I felt tears welling up in my eyes. Here I was among family. The pastor was talking about the love of God, and afterwards someone prayed for me, and then I got some coffee, and I met some young women who were there, and they invited me to go for lunch with them. They drove my bike home and then we went out to a little restaurant and sat and chatted for hours and ate Mexican tortillas. They were such nice people and I felt like I could talk to them about anything.
When I got home that afternoon I did laundry and cooked and chatted with my landlord for a bit and then had a nap and then called my family and some friends. I felt like a new person. I felt rejuvenated.
Some days are just like that too, you know?
Today class was interesting and I drank some delicious coffee which made everything better, and I am wearing my favorite hoodie and it is snowing outside, beautiful white flakes drifting against the building. I know it will suck to ride home in the dark, I know it will suck to come into a cold dark house and try to make something to eat and stay up late trying to stuff my brain full of information, but that's all part of life.
That's what we have grace for, which enables us not just to struggle through the ups and downs, but to walk through with a smile on our faces. Tomorrow may be better. Or it may be much much worse. (It probably will be worse since it's supposed to be colder...) But one thing stays the same, here in Champaign, back home in Vancouver, wherever in the world we might be and whatever we are doing. God is still the same. He's still good.
I remember getting an email from a friend who was going through a very difficult situation with his job and marriage. My dear sister, he wrote, unfortunately the situation has not changed at all. But praise God, he has not changed at all either! He's still just as faithful and good as he always has been!

A snapshot at my life in Champaign

2009-01-09T19:43:00.000-08:00

So I got my bicycle. The other morning I got up and I wanted to punch myself in the head. It was about -10 out and I had to chip the ice of my bicycle seat before getting on. I found a way to tie my hat tightly under my chin so that only a little bit of my face was showing, and then covered the rest with my scarf. With my book bag slung over my shoulder and my coffee cup wrapped in plastic bags and hanging over the handlebars (why don’t they invent a coffee cup holder for bikes?), I rode the 5k to school. The school building is pretty warm so after the first class I had warmed up enough to take off my coat, and talk to some of the other students. Coming from a class of 20 in Antigua, this class of 200 seems huge. I sit near the bag next to a Mormon guy from Salt Lake City, a girl from Guadalajara, a Costa Rican named Alfredo (you should hear his accent!), and a very shy bearded Muslim named Siman.
Actually it is refreshing because most of the students are pretty down to earth, serious and intense, with the average age about ten years older than me. This morning I had biked to school in a skirt, coat, turquoise scarf, orange hat, red woolen mittens, a bright pink shirt and a purple hoodie. Plus my fur-lined boots from Surplus Sam’s which have kept me from getting frostbite. I didn’t really think about the fact that everything I was wearing clashed, but halfway through the day when we had a break I was standing in the back swinging my arms and jumping to stretch out a bit. Nancy looked at me and started to laugh.
“You’re so cute.”
Cute, ahh, how I hate that word! Why couldn’t she say glamorous, or full of energy, or something complementary? But instead I felt like a little colorful girl jumping around at the back of the classroom.
Afterwards two guys came and asked me if I wanted to go out on the town with them that evening.
“I don’t drink.” I told them.
“Me neither.” One of them admitted. “I just need to get out.”
I mean, who does drink when you have class at 7 the next morning? Who does anything, for that matter, when you have class at 7 the next morning, and then classes all day? One night this week I didn’t get home until 8:30. I biked home slowly down sidestreets; slowly to keep from getting windburn, plus it was dark and I had no lights. The snow was coming down softly all around me, I could see it in the orange glow of streetlights and I could feel it stinging my face.
We have classes 6 days a week, and there are tutoring sessions on Sunday. I told my tutor the other day that I’d rather sleep than eat or shower. He laughed and said, “You can sleep next month.”
I might be dead next month, I thought, if I don’t sleep now. At the very least no one will want to talk to me. But then all of us students who are here together are in the same boat. No one is getting enough sleep. We have 4 or 5 hours of homework a night and add that to 9 or 10 hours of classes, and throw in 200 type A obsessive compulsive first-borns (I did a survey of my row at the back of the class and 8/10 of us are first-borns and 9/10 have visited more than 5 countries) and there is an explosive mixture. In addition, our professor Dr. Francis has memorized the name of every single student and every 1 or 2 minutes in class he randomly calls on someone to answer a complicated question and you are expected to jump up and answer it. He says he’s desensitizing us. Also, every few days he calls a student to stand up and he rapidly fires a series of questions at them and if they can answer them all correctly in 10 seconds or less, he gives them $10.00. I was on the edge of my seat today but he never called my name….. better luck tomorrow, I guess.
I’m not feeling as lonely as I was when I first got here, but I do sort of feel isolated from my world. It’s funny how I often want to get away, explore, adventure, but then when I leave I am suddenly looking back and through the rosy glasses of nostalgia, I am wishing to be home. Perhaps home is something that eludes us….. until we are finally able to sink our hearts into where we actually are, not where we want to be.

Bloom where you're planted

2009-01-04T18:16:00.000-08:00

I left Vancouver early Saturday morning feeling buoyant. Who knew what this adventure held in store for me?
The airports all went smoothly; only one delay, but I made all my connections and was only mildly sick on one flight. I got to Chicago when it was dark and found the metro station and dragged all my luggage on and sat in the corner and leaned against the railing and listened to music on my dying ipod. I counted the 22 stops down for an hour and then finally got off and the train pulled away and I found myself in a dingy underground station. I’ve been in my share of metro stations all over the world but I’ll have to say that I felt a little nervous in this one, and very much alone. There was not a soul around. I looked around for an elevator but there was a single sign that said ‘stairs’.
I began to carry my bags up, all 150 pounds of them. One flight. Two flights. I switched it up and tried carrying one at a time to each landing, but no matter which way I did it, by the time I got to the fourth flight my arms were killing me and I was wheezing for breath.
There was a ticket booth and I shoved one bag and then another through the turnstile and then asked the lady which way to Union station and was there an elevator?
“Go up and left.” She said impassively, gesturing to a flight of stairs.
Oh no. I didn’t think I could manage anymore. I wrestled up a fifth flight. Then a sixth. Then a seventh. At the top I squatted down on the sidewalk for a minute and felt the bitterly cold wind whip around me and try to yank my hat off. It was pitch black and by the looks of it I was in a sort of seedy area of town. I stacked my bags on top of each other and tried to roll them along the cracked sidewalk, avoiding the calls from guys lurking in the shadows.
When I arrived at Union station I came down a long hallway and suddenly there was a massive train station with old marble pillars and a Christmas tree display and children sleeping on their mother’s laps. I bought my ticket and followed the crowds towards the platforms.
There were hundreds of families, mostly black, carrying their luggage in plastic bags and juggling screaming babies. I waited for the train until it came and then I was ushered into a darkened car by a female conductor that was the biggest woman I had ever seen in my entire life. Her head touched the ceiling of the train car and she picked up huge suitcases like they weighed nothing and threw them onto the top racks. I couldn’t stop staring at her.
There was a family of four in the car with me, and two men, one of whom sat next to me and started talking. The kids were alternating between whining and screaming and the man next to me was very friendly and told me his whole life story and the history of all his past relationships over the two hour train ride. I stared out the black windows at the distant lights whizzing by and listened to him and by the end of our journey he told me he was going to ask God to send him a wife exactly like me, and it was a pity I wasn’t single because I was exactly what he was looking for.
In the train station my new landlord was waiting to pick me up; exactly as he had described himself: glasses, short hair, a green fleece jacket. He helped me carry my bags out to his shiny blue GT mustang and on the way home told me all about the town and drove past my school so I could see where it was. He picked up some milk at the grocery store so I could have tea and then hung around in the house until he was sure I had everything I needed.
The house is big and empty and there is another lady here but apparently she is never here. The last tenants left the fridge full of rotten food and the bathroom looking pretty gross and the house smells funny. But my bedroom is basically clean and I unpacked my bags and set it up a bit. My sheets didn’t fit the bed but I spread one blanket underneath and one on top. The landlord went out and I didn’t have internet and suddenly I was all alone again.
I felt so homesick last night that I cried as I was falling asleep and I kept telling myself that it would look better in the morning. When I woke up to the pale light of morning I looked out and everything was brown. Bitterly cold and windy, but not a stitch of green anywhere; not even a leaf. Everything is flat and dead and brown. I felt the tears welling up again and I thought about home and suddenly these words came to me:
Bloom where you’re planted.
How can I bloom, God, I asked him, in a place like this where I am all alone and everything is dead? Why would you plant me here?
I got up and ate some cereal and bundled up and decided to walk to a church. There was a Presbyterian one down the street and I sat in the back while a lady played the organ and went through the sitting and standing ritual with the 20 other very aged members of the church. Afterwards I left and I’m not sure anyone noticed. I walked to the grocery store and bought too many groceries and on the way back home I thought my arms were going to fall off.
I’d heard it was a safe town here, small-town everyone-knows-everyone, so I stuck out my thumb to hitch a ride. No one stopped. I struggled on, every few minutes stopping to rest on the sidewalk and trying to huddle under my coat and hat against the cold. I stuck out my thumb again for a while, but still no one stopped and I kept going.
After a few kilometers a lady suddenly got out of her car. She was angry and asked me,
“Were you seriously trying to get a ride?”
“I don’t think I can make it home.” I said. I felt sort of at the end of my rope.
“It’s not safe to do that here.” She told me. “I saw you and turned around and came back. I’ll take you to your house if you want and give you money for the bus, but you should never ever do that again. This area has a high number of sex offenders and it’s totally unsafe for you to get a ride with someone. We just don’t do that in this place.”
So much for the small town feel.
I got home finally and put away my groceries and cleaned out the fridge, throwing out all the rotten food. I cleaned the bathroom and swept the floors and cooked something to eat.
And I’m all alone again. Perhaps things will be better when I go to school tomorrow and meet some other students. My classes start at 7:30 and I’m going to take the bus.
I don’t know exactly how I’m going to bloom where I’m planted but in the bible God says that he causes streams to flow in desert places.
“…The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake…”

A new adventure

2009-01-02T17:03:00.001-08:00

So I am departing tomorrow morning, at some ridiculously early hour, on my next adventure. This time I'm going to Chicago. I don't quite know what to expect but I know that it will be adventure and things won't go all as planned but I think that's okay.
I will be arriving in a little town outside Chicago called Champaign late tomorrow night and my landlord emailed to say he will pick me up at the train station and will be wearing a green fleece. In my mind I can picture the train station and it will be freezing cold and dark and there will be a stranger in a green fleece and I will be brave and head off to my new house and i'll be tired when I get there and longing for a cup of tea but I won't have any milk, so I'll just unpack and sink exhausted into my bed and hope that the next morning everything will look better.
Things always do look better in the morning, that is something I've learned. And no matter what, things will work out okay. One of my brothers says that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I always add that the third outcome is being alive but a quadraplegic.
I try not to get my hopes up when I depart on a new adventure, just taking it one step at a time, because I don't want to be disappointed. Something I've learned in the last year is that I've often been disappointed, but that is because my hope is in the wrong place. Hope in things working out is sure to disappoint. Hope in God yields the opposite, and what is that? It is appointment. When we open ourselves to God and choose to throw ourselves on his mercy and TRUST in him and HOPE in him, he in turn is free to 'appoint' and 'anoint' us, and by that I mean that he leads us into the divine calling he has for our lives. It is not boring and it is not disenchanting, but it can be painful and difficult.
I am looking forward to the appointments that God has for me in the next couple of months. For sure they will be unexpected. And for sure there will be excitement thrown in there too.

The Emperor's new clothes

2008-12-27T14:16:00.000-08:00

For some stupid ridiculous reason yesterday I decided to go Boxing Day shopping with Will. The weather was beautiful and we walked up the hill to the mall with snowflakes settling gently all around us and our breath making steam in the cold. There was such an atmosphere of festivity and happiness that it was contagious. In the mall there were more people than I've ever seen there before. We took a deep breath and dove in. Christmas decorations were on sale! 60% off! I got sucked into buying some beautiful christmas balls and then in another store everything was 2 for 1! I bought underwear (which I didn't need) and a summer shirt (which I probably also did not need).
Will and I got separated and I waited outside the store we were supposed to meet at and didn't see him. I wandered through the crushing crowds calling his name and hoping he would hear me. It was stifling hot and there was so much noise and the lights were so bright and I began to feel suffocated and disgusted with myself. Why had I bought those christmas balls? And the underwear? Why had I given in to this rampant commercialism, this greedy striving to get more STUFF, this abdication of social responsibility and the wanton throwing away of money on cheap stuff?
There was a girl standing against a pillar holding a sign that said 'Instead of spending money, why not spend some time talking together?' and she had a group of people that had gathered around her talking to her. I don't know what they were talking about. Maybe they were just stopping to see why someone wanted to talk, not buy.
My last stop was a store with 2 for 1 swimsuits and I struggled out of my 3 layers of snow gear to try one on. The mirror in the change room was dark and I noticed suddenly how fat and ugly the swimsuit made me look. I did not look like the mannequin in the window; I looked ridiculous. I tried to get it off but the tie was stuck and for some reason I was embarrassed like I didn't want anyone to know I was standing in a little swimsuit in the middle of winter in this crazy mall full of rushing people.
I emerged from the mall to find Will waiting for me where we'd originally parted; looking as exhausted as me. We went outside and suddenly all around us was white snow; calm, tranquility, the beauty of nature, smiling neighbors shoveling their walkways.... I felt like I could breathe again.
After dinner yesterday evening I was playing scrabble with my mom and siblings and I was losing but telling them how I was going to beat them all and my mom suddenly asked me, why are you showing off?
I thought about it for a second and then said to her, “it's because I feel bad about myself, so I'm trying to compensate by making myself seem better.”
“Snap out of it”, she told me. “Just grow up.”
I gave her a look that said, “That's not a very supportive and comforting thing for a mother to say”
She laughed. “I only get paid $5/hour for this advice, so that's what you get! If you want something better, you'll have to pay me more.”
I thought about it later, and thought about shopping in the mall, and trying on that swimsuit in front of the mirror. Maybe it's the change in weather, but our bathroom mirror at home has become warped and no matter how you stand in front of it, it looks funny, kind of like a circus mirror. I look in that mirror and see myself looking strange and I know in my mind that that is not what I actually look like, but it still bothers me.
The problem is that in life I am often looking in the wrong mirror. The mirror in the mall tells me that if I spend my money and buy those beautiful clothes and if I get as much as I can I will have value and I will be satisfied. All those people are rushing around and I joined in like one more rat in the rat race.
But the problem is, when I listen to the lie, the lie that money and clothes and buying and stuff and fame and all that, will make me happy; I become disenchanted. I was disenchanted when I saw that girl holding the sign and I realized that I should be there holding that sign and actually talking to people. I was disenchanted when I looked at myself in a swimsuit and felt like the emperor who was walking through the city naked and suddenly realized he had been made a fool of and hadn't actually put on a beautiful invisible outfit: he was naked. I felt disenchanted when I suddenly realized over a scrabble game that it didn't matter if I won, but it mattered greatly how I lost.
Sometimes when we look in the wrong mirror we become deceived about the way things actually are, and we allow ourselves to be caught up in something that is false. And sometimes all it takes to make us see the truth is someone telling us to grow up and snap out of it.
At any rate, you won't catch me boxing day shopping for a while. Maybe you won't even catch me shopping for a while. But I am going to try my hand at scrabble again tonight....

Winter wonderland

2008-12-24T12:57:00.000-08:00

So right now I'm totally snowed in, in every way possible. I went up to Kelowna for a week and had a most wonderful week- staying up late every night, going for 2 am walks in the snow and watching the flakes drift down in the orange light of street lamps....tobboganning, sitting by a crackling fire, playing scrabble and cards and dominoes (I lost horribly), hanging out with friends, watching movies (I finally saw the Dark Knight), eating oranges and chocolate and eggnog and having a wonderful time. Yesterday Will and I started the treacherous drive home and to make a long story short, we ended up stranded in Aggasiz with a broken down car, no cellphone, no tools, no warm blankets, and yes, I had left my wool socks behind in Kelowna.
To make the even longer miraculous story shorter, I spent christmas eve eve sleeping on Will's shoulder in the cab of a tow truck with tendrils of cigarette smoke curling around the cab and outside the snow was falling.
This morning I woke up in my own bed and realized I have a broken down car and the airport is shut down and I'm supposed to leave for Chicago in just over a week and apparently the snow is just going to keep falling. I think I would be excited about the adventure but the fact is, I'm not just snowed in physically, I feel a bit snowed in emotionally.
I feel like I left part of myself behind in Kelowna and I wish I was there but at the same time of course I want to be home in Vancouver for christmas.... of course I do. I love my family and I wanted to see the look on my nieces' faces when they open their presents and I want to sit by the christmas tree and play scrabble with my mom and have eggnog drinking competitions with my brothers and all the wonderful christmas things we do.....
Several years ago a man I hardly knew prophesied over me and told me that I had laid plans, but that God was going to turn them upside down. That he knew the desires of my heart and was going to give them to me, but in a way that was different than expected.
I feel like right now I'm in a surreal world. It doesn't help that everything is buried in snow outside, which makes it seem a bit weird. But things are not going according to plan. Perhaps that's a good thing. Perhaps I just need to go with what is happening and not worry about what might happen.
So while I'm stuck in this winter wonderland I'm going to enjoy it. We have a hot tub on the porch that we can wade through two feet of snow to get to.... and sit in it with eggnog... and of course there is gingerbread and candy canes and christmas carols and family and friends and lots of love and the joy that God brings every day, just one day at a time.

AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!

2008-12-11T20:52:00.001-08:00

Last exam tomorrow! I'm freaking out!!!!!! I'm totally out of motivation and brains and energy, and I'm sort of considering not studying and just guessing on the exam, but it's pharmacology, and that's probably a bad idea.
I can't wait to be done and then I'm going to go to bed, in the middle of the day, yes, and catch up on sleep. Then I'm going to watch a movie. Any movie, I don't care which one, just something on a tv. It's been way too long.

Responding to the face of God

2008-12-04T21:42:00.001-08:00

Another day with crazy patients today.... yelling at me, getting fresh with me, at least I didn't have anyone throw anything at me or pee on my shoes. (Yes, that has actually happened).
I've been studying like crazy recently, and in the next week I expect to be studying even more, because I have my last 2 exams coming up. After these exams I'm done writing exams for UHSA. The only ones I'll have to write are my board licensing exams (big 8-10 hour monsters), one of which will be coming up in a few short months. In January I'm going to a little town in Illinois called Champaign to take another course, and then in the Spring I'm likely heading off the Atlanta, Georgia. These aren't definite firm plans, but since people are always asking me what I'm doing, it's helpful to at least have something to say. (“What do you mean, you have no idea where you're going?”)
I've been discouraged the last few months about my school, and not comfortable settling into my role as a doctor-to-be. This week I went out to TWU, where I studied chemistry for 4 years, and visited some of my old professors. My favorite teacher of all time, Dr. Van Dyke, who taught me organic and polymer chemistry, was delighted to see me and we chatted for a while before he had to rush off to an interview. I was heading back towards my car and he was still in his interview, and suddenly there was this little voice inside me that said, Heather, wait for him, because there is something he needs to say to you.
I dawdled around in the bookstore for awhile until he finished and then I went back to his office with him. We sat surrounded by bookshelves full of chemistry textbooks and talked about life, about school, about old memories and new ones that were being made.
“Heather,” he told me, “There's a piece of advice I want to give you. I don't think you will have a problem with this, but I want to tell you anyway.”
He told me how many doctors he had met had lost the human touch, they became so wrapped up in being professional and doing a good job that they forgot who they were, and who the patient sitting in front of them was. He looked at me with his kind eyes and said,
“This is what you tell them: I am not Dr. Davies. I am a person, like yourself, who responds to the face of God. I will share with you what I know and what I've learned, in the hopes that it can help you. Never be too professional to touch your patients, and to really get personal with them.”
I felt tears welling up in my eyes. At that moment I knew how true it was, what he was saying. It is so easy in this world to put a label on ourselves, or on other people. That man is a doctor. That woman is a librarian. She's a swimming instructor. She's a stay-at-home mom. He's a farmer.
And we put false labels on ourselves. I'm a nurse. I'm a student. I'm a chemist. I'm a doctor.
But what are we, really? Deep down inside, what are you?
You are a person- a living human being- created in God's image, specially created to respond to the face of God. Your meaning and purpose, my meaning and purpose, is found only in how I relate to God. Deep down inside I'm not a doctor, although that's fine if people call me that, but really I'm Heather Davies, I'm a child of God, and I've studied all this stuff about medicine with the hopes that I may be able to share it with other people and help them find healing. Knowledge is intended to serve other people... as an expression of their worth in God's sight.
It's hard to see myself the way God sees me. Some days I feel intelligent and beautiful, other days I feel pretty darn low. (Nursing seems to be a continual blow to my self-esteem!) But it helps to remember, who am I in Christ? And why am I doing this?
I challenge you to ask yourself those questions, in relation to your job. Have you lost touch with your 'patients'? (With your co-workers, your customers, your family?)Why has God given you the skills or the knowledge or the opportunities he has? How does it change the way you work to know that you are responding to the face of God, and out of that, sharing love with those people around you?

Sometimes nursing sucks

2008-11-27T22:53:00.000-08:00

I walked towards my med cart and there was one of my patients sitting there in his wheelchair, looking like he was ready to spit fire at me.
“It’s 8:20” He said. “I have been waiting for you to bring me my pills so I could eat my breakfast. There is simply no excuse for this.”
“I’m so sorry, I’m getting them right now.” I assured him hastily.
It had been a fairly busy morning, and I was still well within the ordered time for his drugs- not that they were anything critical, anyway, like pain medications, or something that had to be given on the minute.
“I can’t believe this.” He said, and wheeled away from me.
I popped his pills out of their blister packs and checked them against his chart and hurried after him.
“Here you are, sir.” I gave them to him with a glass of juice.
“I don’t want that juice!” He barked at me. “I want my pills on time!”
“You’ll have to excuse me this once.” I apologized graciously. “I’ll make sure they’re on time next time.”
He was still glaring at me and I asked helpfully, “What can I do for you?”
“You can disappear!” He shouted.
That is exactly what I would like to do, I thought. I went back to my med cart and continued preparing for other patients.
By the time I was finished with the morning meds I had mounds of paperwork piling up and one of my patients was pushing his call bell incessantly. I went down the hall to assess one of the patients, an old Scottish man. As I usually do, I knocked on the door as I entered and called out “Hello, Mr. Jones!” in a cheery voice.
“Get the f*** out of my f****** room !” He shouted at me from his bed.
“Uh oh!” I said laughingly, putting on my best Scottish accent, “I was just coming to see how you were”.
“How the f*** do you think I am? I’m stuck in this place, for crying out loud!”
“Well, I guess I didn’t need to ask that.” I returned good-humoredly, approaching the bed warily. I have expected him to throw something at me.
He squinted at me.
“Well, you’re beautiful, you are!” He said in his thick accent. “What do you want from me?”
“I came to ask if you’re having any pain, and if you need any medication for it.”
“You’re medication for my eyes, sweetheart! You ARE a fine looking thing.”
“Thanks.” I laughed, moving some things on his tray.
“You know, if you put on five pounds, you’d be beautiful!” He continued, looking at me critically. “More beautiful, I mean.”
“Well, I’m glad you added that ‘more’” I joked, turning to go in a hurry.
“Now I’d definitely be feeling better if I was married to a young girl like you.” He said. “You just ask Scotty here, and I’ll give you what you want, for whatever you like.”
(And a few more inappropriate comments that I won’t repeat here.)
He pulled a wad of bills from his pocket and thrust them towards me.
“$80.00 is what I go for, that’s not too expensive.”
“Uh….” I took a step back.
“I’d really like it if you’d do a black lace show.” He suggested.
“I don’t think so.” I said good-naturedly, and headed out of his room.
“I’ll see you later!” He called after me.
No, you won’t, I thought as I went out, cause I’m sending the male nurse in to help you get dressed.
On my way back to the nursing station I was stopped by another patient.
“Hello, there! You know, you look exactly like my daughter!”
I smiled. “Well, I’ll take that as a compliment!”
“Oh, it is! She’s beautiful! Absolutely beautiful! And you are the exact spitting image of her. Why, your eyes, your hair, your nose, everything about you! Exactly like her!”
But I certainly hope he didn’t look at his daughter the way he was looking at me.
As I walked past him later in the day he whistled and called out, “Hello, beautiful girl! I can’t get over how much you look like my daughter!”
There were other lines today, too.
Me: “Are you having any pain?”…..Mr. R: “Yes, my eyes hurt every time I look at you, you’re so beautiful.”
Mr. G: “I just woke up from a terrible nightmare!”…..Me: “Oh dear, that’s too bad. Are you feeling any better now?”…. Mr. G: “Well, as soon as I saw you, it ended!”
Mr. B: “Can’t you @#$%#$% nurses leave me alone?”
During my break I locked myself in the bathroom and stood in the front of the mirror, feeling discouraged. Shapeless nursing uniform. Tired eyes. Perhaps they were all blind and crazy. Perhaps I needed to let everything everyone said just roll off my back.
Some days having someone, even a crazy patient, tell you that you are beautiful, is flattering. But then there are other days, like today, when it really does make me want to disappear.

Real life

2008-11-25T20:57:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I don't know what I'm thinking. I was at my Spanish class tonight, and we were in Starbucks, and we had finished the class and I was just sitting and chatting with the teacher for a few minutes. We had just started into this deep conversation about life plans when suddenly the door burst open and a man ran in and started shouting and ran behind the counter and was knocking things over.
He was shouting that he'd been shot, and the girl behind the counter was trying to stop him from coming in and he ran towards the back of the store and was leaping around agitatedly. I jumped up (as did one or two other people) and my teacher grabbed his cellphone and dialed 911 and the man was shouting that someone was coming after him. The door burst open again and another guy started to come in but then seeing all the people he just swore at the first guy and threw something down on the floor and dashed out.
I was on my feet heading towards the first guy, my purse poised like a weapon. (I don't know what I was going to do, hit him with it? Use it as a shield?) He didn't have any weapons that I could see and he wasn't visibly hurt or bleeding, which was a relief because there's nothing worse than contemplating first aid on a crazy person that's twice your size.
The girl working there was telling him to leave and he was saying that he was being chased, and then he turned to me and asked, didn't you see that other guy?
Yes, I said. But he's gone now. I looked out the window to see if the other guys were waiting outside. Take a seat, she told him, we'll call the police.
No, don't call the police!
He weaved between the chairs, knocking them over.
To make a long story short, he eventually went out and the police arrived and things settled down, and I ended up sitting and chatting with my teacher and another man who heard us speaking Spanish and came over and wanted to talk to us. I understood about 50% because his accent was so strong, but I nodded along anyway.
I thought about the unfortunate incident as I watched the reflection of circling blue and red lights in the window. Life is not all safe and controlled, is it? When I'm in the hospital there is always a certain risk involved, but there are security guards, and I have tranquilizers to give if I have to, and I am prepared for people to flip out. I'm not prepared for a gun-wielding crazy man while I'm having a quiet coffee in Starbucks. It is a little unsettling.
But that's what life is like- only 100 times worse- for so many of the world, even many in our city. What if I had to fight for survival everyday? Sitting at home studying I feel so disconnected from reality. Real life is not neatly packaged like my textbook. Real life is not quiet and controlled and manageable. Real life requires much more courage and resilience and creativity. Real life is not safe, even if we think it is. But it is an adventure!

Tidings of great comfort and joy

2008-11-21T09:11:00.001-08:00

Why haven't I written on my blog for so long? The first reason, I guess, is that nothing much interesting is happening right now. Contrary to popular belief, I don't always have an exciting adventurous life. For example, the last few weeks have been variations on a theme of work with crazy patients, study by myself and feel like I'm a crazy patient, hang out with my family and realize they're crazy to be patient with me. Actually they're wonderful the way they're patient with me.... I am going a little psychotic these days.
Which is the other reason I have been avoiding blogging is that I don't want Happy Heather's Hullaballoo to be an emotional whinefest, because the purpose of my writing is to encourage all my readers, and honestly, what is so encouraging about reading how I'm falling apart? But the truth is, I sort of am.
This morning I sat in bed and was reading in the bible- The apostle Paul tells the church in Corinth that he has been having a tough time in Asia- actually, “(We) were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life.”
Wow, that doesn't sound like Happy Heather's Hullaballoo at all. But it's true, isn't it? And I know deep inside that I'm not the only one feeling that way. I don't think the normal experience of life is always to be slogging through a never-ending pit of hardship- but certainly there are mountains and valleys in life and everyone has to go through some valleys. My struggles as a medical student are real and grueling, but so are the struggles of other people I know who are going through equally difficult things. Plummeting economy and the prospect of losing your job. The day to day pressure of looking after a disabled kid. Getting your heart broken just one more time. Stuck in a difficult marriage. Everyone has struggles, right?
The first chapter of 2 Corinthians strikes a chord deep inside. (Especially cause Paul repeats the same word a million times. See if you can pick up on it.)
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of all compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.”
Did you see the word comfort again and again? Does it remind you of a soft feather quilt wrapped around you and a cup of tea and your mom patting your hair as you drift off to sleep? What does all this comfort have to do with suffering?
We're sharing our sufferings. Not one of us is alone in them. If you think you're alone, I challenge you to phone up a friend, any friend, and ask if they've gone through any hard things that week. (Hint: try calling my sister-in-law Yvonne...she had a baby yesterday)
Are we also sharing in our comfort? What is that comfort? Read 2 Corinthians 1... here are a couple that stood out to me.
“Jesus Christ... was not 'yes' and 'no', but in him it has always been 'YES'. For no matter how many promises God has made, they are 'YES' in Christ.”
“Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ.”
Can you understand that? God's promises WILL come true. It is him who is responsible for keeping us together. I don't have to worry that I'm going crazy and that I won't make it and that someone is going to have to scrape me off the sidewalk and check me into a mental hospital. Although for the record, if I do end up there, please send me a good looking doctor.

91 and kicking

2008-11-13T23:03:00.001-08:00

You know what I want to be like when I am 91 years old? Just like the patient I had last night.
I came into his room to bring him some pills and he grinned from ear to hear.
“Come right on in, don't be shy!”
I looked at the pictures of his family he had and talked to him for a minute about the weather outside.
“Do you know how old I am?” He asked me with a twinkle in his little blue eyes.
I decided to guess on the low side.
“80?”
“Higher.” He said.
“85?”
“Higher”
“89?”
“Almost! I'll be 91 in January!”
“Well, you sure look good,” I told him. “And best of all”, I pointed to his forehead, “You still have all your faculties.”
“Oh yes, I do!” He crowed. “How many 91-year-olds do you know that can say the ABC's backwards?”
And then without a pause he began to rattle off the ABC's in reverse.
“And how many 91-year-olds do you know that can say this sentence fast, three times?” He asked, and then proceeded with something like “I slept on three slit sheets that sure slipped sleet like shirt sheets”... or something like that.
He rattled it off three times in a row and that beamed at me. “See if you can say that one.”
Growing up with brothers has made me wise to that type of trick. I shook my head and laughed.
“I don't think so.”
I finished giving him his medications and he offered me some grape-flavored candies as I walked out of the room I could hear “slit sheets slipped sheepishly...”
Ah, the joie de vivre! On days when I feel discouraged I will think of him: bed-ridden, in pain, alone; but full of zest and still trying to trick some gullible nurse into saying something rude.

All in the head

2008-11-04T15:42:00.001-08:00

Sometimes work just makes me stop and laugh. I have the craziest patients ever. I often thought that if I worked in a field of nursing with young, vibrant patients who were relatively normal, I would’ve stuck with it and not gone on to medicine. But actually I think the crazier patients really reassure me. They make me feel normal and like I’m not actually psychotic, it’s just in my head.
Yesterday, for example. I approached one patient and as I came up, he said in a very loud voice so everyone in the vicinity could hear,
“Now THAT is one GOOD-LOOKING girl!”
I was sort of embarrassed as I handed him his medication and he leaned over and squinted, trying to read my nametag.
“Heather, LPN. What does LPN stand for?”
The guy next to him groaned.
“Come on, Ray, give her a break.”
“hmmm…. Liquid…. Propane….”
I interrupted him. “It stands for little pretty nurse,” I said.
“Haha!” He rocked back on his chair. “That’s a good one! Little pretty nurse! Well, I’m not asking your age, that wouldn’t be polite, but I don’t know if I should call you a lady or a girl, you look much too young to be a nurse!”
“I’m 24.” I told him, “Which is much too young for you, by the way, so don’t get any ideas.”
“Are you kidding? 24? Why, I thought you were about 16!”
He started laughing and elbowed the guy next to him.
“I know! Sweet 16 and never been kissed!”
I had finished with his medication so I just gave him a withering look and walked away.
Later on I had to come back and see him again and I swear, it was like he saw me for the first time.
“Well, hello! I’ve never seen YOU here before! Where did you fall from? Are you an angel fallen from heaven?”
He looked down at my nametag…. “Heather, LPN. Hello, Heather! Well, what a nice-looking girl you are!”
A bit later in the day one of the other nurses came rushing towards me.
“Heather, can you go to the front door? Mr. Roland is out of control and I’m trying to get the doctor but Mrs. Taylor isn’t breathing…”
“Sure, no problem.”
I rushed to the front door and Mr. Roland, sitting in his wheelchair with a couple of nurses fluttering around him, was like a seething giant about to explode.
I put my hand on his knee and crouched down to meet his eye.
“What’s the problem, sweetheart?” (I couldn’t remember his first name.)
“Get the hell out of here!” He shouted and lifted his leg to kick me.
I leapt out of the way just in time. Well, maybe that approach wouldn’t work. He had a gash on his head that someone had put steri-strips over, and there was a massive purple bruise under his eye. He was talking nonsense, saying he wanted to get out, but he was so unsteady on his feet that he couldn’t stand up. I came up behind him and put my hand on his forehead to feel the temperature, then leapt out of the way of his flailing arms. No, he wasn’t hot, or sweating. I tried to think of the things that make people suddenly aggressive and psychotic. An infection could do it, but he didn’t have a fever. The fall on his head? A stroke, acute pain, drug interactions, alcohol, dementia, there are several possibilities. But with him in this state we couldn’t even examine him. There were already people staring. Another nurse came down the hall.
“The doctor finally gave me an order for an IM tranquilizer.” She said, pulling me aside. “See if you can get him out of the lobby and towards the nursing station.” (IM means intramuscular)
To make a long story short, it took a lot of negotiation, including bribes (“Coffee? We’ve got your son on the phone to speak with you…”) to get him out of the lobby.
At the nursing station there were people everywhere and he stood up shakily and held the receiver to his ear to talk to his son, shouting and flailing around. Suzanne, one of the other nurses, had drawn up the medication in a syringe and was standing off to the side.
“I don’t know if we can do this.” She said. “He’s wearing about 3 layers. We’ll have to get all those sleeves off so I can get it in his arm.”
“No way.” I said, pointing at his butt. “Go ventro-gluteal. We’ll hold him down and just get his pants down a bit and stick it in.”
Mr. Roland was shouting and throwing punches. One of the other nurses had nail marks on her arms and decided it was time to back off permanently. We waved over a couple of male nurses and Suzanne and I came in and I grabbed his arms and hung on for dear life and Suzanne got that needle in and he roared like a cornered bear and threw us off, but it was in. I felt like a superhero. We all retreated a few feet back and watched as it slowly began to take effect. One of the guys came up behind with his wheelchair and I approached cautiously.
“Here, Mr. Roland, have a seat.”
He slowly slumped down, mumbling, “Get the hell away from me. I don’t want anyone to touch me. What are you doing to me?”
And that was that. An hour later the doctor had seen him and he was sitting calmly, eating fruit salad.
And I was down the hall with my patient Phil who between gasps told me he couldn’t breathe and he was sick of suffering and wanted to die right now. I turned his oxygen on and went to get a bronchodilator and by the time I got back he was breathing normally and when the other nurse asked how his breathing was, he said it was no problem. But we checked his O2 sats (a measurement of the amount of oxygen in the blood) and they were at 86% (normal is 98%) and suddenly his chest was heaving again with the effort.
Crazy guy. I think if I couldn’t breathe I’d let everyone know.
So anyway. This week is week of the heart for me, and I’m wondering what’s going to go wrong. Week of the stomach I was nauseous and throwing up, week of the lungs I had bronchitis and was coughing away…. Hmmm….. maybe it is all in my head after all.

Death

2008-10-30T20:27:00.000-07:00

Today I watched the huge maple across the lane
It’s leaves falling to the ground, the colour of flames
A few days ago it was a ball of fire, now death has crept over it
Beginning at the top, the branches are undressed of their glory
And stand like skinny naked sticks defying the gray sky
It is so complete, this death.

A few days ago my patient died in the hospital
I was with him before he went, sitting on the edge of his bed
In front of my very eyes I watched him diminish
I asked a question and he looked up at me once
And I was shocked to be confronted with the yawning pools
of blackness that were his eyes

Some deaths, I have heard, are noble and fine
The pain is no less, but there is some measure of hope
To sustain the one who is confronted with his own end
But this one was like watching him being sucked into a dark abyss
He had no family, not even one, and he knew it
I couldn’t hide in my eyes that he was dying

I wrapped my arms around his emaciated frame
As if I was trying to shield him from his death, his shame
But I cannot keep the leaves from falling from the skies
I cannot quench the scent of death, that pours from his eyes
I cannot soothe the cold finality that tears away his soul
And look inside, and speak of life, when death is knocking at the door

Forced to be real

2008-10-26T14:33:00.001-07:00

Life is ironic and strange and humbling. Yesterday morning I had a deep discussion with my Dad and it wasn’t all that great, in fact I was extremely upset, and I went down into my room and closed the door and lay on my bed and was pretty unhappy. I heard him leave for work and I heard my mom leave and I was thinking how I didn’t want to talk to either of them, I was pretty upset and I didn’t want to be vulnerable and let them know how upset I was. I was thinking how I could possibly avoid them for the next week or so. Sometimes having someone close by who will bring up issues you don’t want to talk about is a pain. Not to mention painful.
I decided to go for a walk with my ipod, for several hours. I have a set of lectures on mp3 files and I love walking anyway so I put them in and was listening to them while I walked.
What is the nerve that is affected in winged scapula? The woman’s voice asks. There is a pause, not quite long enough for me to come up with an answer, and then the man answers, the long thoracic nerve. And on and on.
I walked for an hour. Listened to the lecture, talked to God, looked at the orange leaves falling off of trees and tried to settle my soul. Maybe I would walk all day and come home just before dinner but then leave with my sister without talking to them. Maybe I would stay out late and stay out the next day and then the next day I was working and maybe by then I would be calmer.
I was an hours walk away from home and I heard this loud noise and coming down the road towards me was a massive front-end loader with a huge scoop in the front. I had my headphones in and was in the zone but it was pretty noisy.
My parents were driving the front-end loader. I couldn’t believe it. There was no avoiding them.
“Hi, Heather!” They pulled over. “Where are you going? Do you want a ride?”
No, I don’t want a ride. In fact, I was wondering what kind of parents show up in the middle of nowhere driving a front-end loader just when their daughter really doesn’t want to talk?
“Hop in the shovel!” My Dad said.
I felt like laughing or crying, I’m not sure which. Maybe just punching something. I got in the shovel and my mom got in too and my Dad lifted us way up and started driving.
“So…. How are you doing?” My mom asked.
I am fine, I thought. Just fine. I was trying to avoid talking to you because I didn’t want to face my emotions and here I am stuck in a giant shovel with you driving down the road.
Later that night I went with my sister to a young people’s group but I was feeling sick, maybe I had a migraine, and when I got to our destination, went into the bathroom to throw up and then sat on the couch trying to massage my headache away. We had a good bible study and then afterwards everyone wanted to go make a fire on the beach but all I wanted to do was crawl into bed.
I lay in the car and tried to sleep and not think about throwing up and not think about how crazy my life is and not think about how upset I am about things and all the things that aren’t working out.
Our friend Leonard dropped me off at his house, which was near the beach, and showed me a ratty looking futon in the basement I could sleep on. He gave me some ibuprofen and water and turned out the lights and I lay on the dirty futon in the dark, so cold that I was curled up in a ball with my hands inside my toque to keep them from hurting. I was right next to the water boiler and all the pipes, and every time someone in the building flushed a toilet or something, it sounded like a waterfall next to me. I lay there drifting in and out of sleep and thinking about things.
What is the name of the liver fluke that has it’s intermediate host in a water snail?..... Clonorchis sinensis.
Why is it so hard to be vulnerable?.... Why is everything in my life not working out?.... there is a long pause, and there is no answer. Go to sleep, Heather.
I woke up this morning and the sun was shining in the window and I read in the bible, Cast all your anxiety on him, for he cares for you.
I bounced out of bed (grrr I hate that I’m such a morning person!) and went upstairs and there was my family and I didn’t really care anymore about not talking to them, my Dad had a sore knee and I took a look at it, and made waffles and did Hannah’s hair and drank coffee. Everything is going to be okay.

Helplessness

2008-10-20T20:42:00.001-07:00

One of the things I find the most difficult about nursing and medicine is the feeling of helplessness. Today I was working (as a nurse!) and had some pretty sick patients. I went into Ben’s room sometime in the morning to find him half-way between his bed and wheelchair, about to fall on the floor. I ran over to help him and was shocked to find he weighed as much as a little child. I helped him back into bed.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
He stared up at me with dull eyes sunken into his emaciated face and didn’t answer.
“What’s the matter? How are you feeling?”
“What do you think?” He gasped between labored breaths.
Later I found him slumped over in his chair and I squatted down next to him, trying to see if I could rouse him. Had he had a stroke? I put a hand across his shoulder and felt every single bone across his back and shoulders protruding out. He was literally nothing but skin and bones. He was dying. I adjusted his oxygen mask and turned it up a little, smoothed down his shirt. I counted his irregular pulse and ragged breathing, and I wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his skinny arm. I couldn’t get a reading; it was so thready and weak and his arm was nothing but paper-thin skin stretched over his fragile bones.
“What should I do?” I asked the charge nurse.
“Do you think he had a TIA?” She asked me. (A mini-stroke.)
“Maybe….. I think he’s just wasting away.” I said.
“The doctor will be back soon.” She said. “You can get him to take a look at him.”
The only thing was, I knew what the doctor was going to do. Nothing. What could he do? Maybe some protein shakes, but Ben wasn’t eating. Maybe some pills to keep him from being agitated, but that wasn’t really his problem. He was dying, that was the problem.
Another patient that morning, Richard, had a dose of morphine due and I went to bring it to him. He was completely stuporous and I couldn’t rouse him no matter how hard I tried.
“Is he usually like this?” I asked another nurse.
She sighed. “Sometimes….. He’s up and down.”
Morphine has the effect of depressing respiratory function- in the case of giving it to a completely stuporous patient- you have to make sure the benefits (pain control and decreasing agitation) outweigh the possible risks (respiratory depression leading to death).
“I’m not giving him his morphine.” I said. “You let me know if he gets agitated and I’ll decide then.”
I wasn’t feeling well all shift and when I came off and reported to the incoming staff I felt pretty low about the whole thing. I drove home in my car thinking about Ben dying and not being able to do a single thing for him. No matter what I did, I was just prolonging his inevitable suffering. The same with Richard; nearly comatose, hardly breathing- what could I do for him?
By far the biggest thing, though, that makes me feel helpless, is my sister Hannah. Since I came back from Antigua she has been having trouble swallowing periodically, leading to choking episodes. It kills me to see her getting worse. I would do anything for her, there’s not even a question in my mind. But what can I do?
The only thing I can do is love her. Be her sister, pray with her when I tuck her in bed at night, listen to how her day at school went, be patient with her. Love her.
And that’s the only thing I can do for patients like Richard and Ben and so many others. I can give them their medications and try to treat them, but in the long run, it is the love I give them that matters.
Richard can’t respond but I like to think he can hear me when I talk to him gently as I dress him. Ben stares at me with hollow eyes but I rub his gaunt shoulders as I give him oxygen and I point out that the sun is shining outside the window and it is a beautiful day.

Talking to myself, again

2008-10-18T22:14:00.000-07:00

This week I found myself surprisingly blindsided by the goodness of God. I don't know why I should be surprised, but I was.
I feel like in the last few months I've had quite a few knocks and I guess I was sort of expecting more, not that I think God is mean and likes to hurt me, but I've learned that his training is painful and even though I have been fighting to pray and seek him every day, to be honest, I didn't expect much in the way of answers. Oh, theoretically, I expect them. But realistically? In those dark quiet moments by myself when it's just me talking to myself? Do I honestly believe that these situations are going to work out? The answer was probably no.....
Well, this week I was praying about my financial situation (which is dismal, by the way). I asked God to provide for me and specifically, I prayed about a person who owed me a large sum of money and I asked God to cause them to pay me back. I'd already contacted this person and not heard back from them and was wondering if I should just let it go. So I prayed, and I wrote down my prayer.
The next morning I had an email from her. I bet you thought I forgot, she said, and then explained what the hold-up had been and assured me that the money was in the mail. I was shocked.
I also prayed about my practicum this week. I had called to see about my license for this semester and was told that 3 days before, the provincial regulations had been changed to prevent me from getting a license. No license= no practicum= can't pass the semester. Oh great, I thought, another roadblock. Do I always have to fight them? Again, I wrote down my prayer. God, will you work a miracle?
On Friday I met with the doctor I was supposed to work with, and I explained that I was unable to get the license I needed. Oh, that's no problem, he assured me. I'm the director for all the medical students in that area and I will just phone them up and let them know to give you a license. Again, I was shocked.
And then I was praying about another situation with a friend, that I just didn't know how to approach. I prayed and asked God for direction. Sure enough, the friend phoned, and told me exactly what I needed to hear. I was so filled with relief when I got off the phone.
Last night at about 4:30 or 5, my little niece Kiara climbed into bed with me and fell asleep in my arms, her breathing settling into that familiar rhythm while I lay awake thinking. I got up this morning after not sleeping much and was studying hard all day (Today I reviewed how to perform an abdominal and rectal exam, and I badly need some patients to practice on, so if anyone wants to volunteer.....) and I found myself getting pretty discouraged.
I was thinking about school, relationships, life in general, and feeling desperately like nothing was going to work out. Am I just fighting away at this, trying to seek God, working hard, and nothing is going to come of it? Sometimes I feel tenuously close to the edge of giving up.
I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. “I trust the Lord.” I said to myself in a loud voice. “I trust the Lord! I trust he will give me everything that is good for me! I trust he is good! I trust that he loves me!”
I'm pretty sure that if anyone had come in the house just then and seen me yelling at myself in the mirror, they would've thought I really had gone over the edge this time.
All kidding aside, though, can we trust in God's goodness? I find it hard enough to trust in the goodness of another human, let alone a God I can't see. Does he really love me? Is his heart towards me really full of compassion and goodness?
Yes, I'm telling myself in the mirror. Yes, he is good.
Sometimes we need to speak truth to ourselves, because we forget it, or we get discouraged. Why should I be shocked by God's goodness? Why should I be so afraid that it is all a joke that he loves me and has my best interests at heart?
Get a grip, Heather! And while you're at it, get off the computer and go to bed, you silly girl!

Swallowed up in intestines

2008-10-15T20:27:00.001-07:00

I enjoy what I'm studying and I enjoy learning in general, so a few days ago I did one of my favorite things to do and made an amazingly organized schedule for the next 12 weeks. Since I'll be in Vancouver for about another 12 weeks, and since I have a lot of studying to do, I planned out every single day and made this big spreadsheet dividing up all the topics I needed to cover for all my courses. Each reading selection for each class is in a different color, and I wrote out all the page numbers and exactly what days and weeks I would be doing them.
It didn't take long for my world to fall apart. I realized that I had forgotten to calculate Thanksgiving, Christmas or any other holidays or days off. I also forgot to calculate in my job and my practicum. Oh well, I thought, I can just work a little faster.
This week is my week to study the gastrointestinal tract and by last night I was supposed to have made it to the rectum, but I was still at the esophagus and not progressing very quickly. Did you know that it's possible to get a stone of the salivary glands that is just like a kidney stone? Did you know that 12% of European Americans and ~100% of Native Americans are lactose intolerant and can't drink milk? Did you know that the first sign of stomach cancer spreading is an enlarged lymph node in your neck?
There are so many little peripheral things to learn that it is overwhelming and I am beginning to realize just how much my schedule might need revamping.
It's a parallel of life, really. My philosophy is sort of divide-and-conquer: I like to break things up into manageable pieces and then I feel like I have a semblance of control over them and can accomplish something. It's just an illusion, though. My color-coded schedule might help me be organized in my studies, but is it really going to help me be a better doctor? Is it going to help me be a better person?
Sometimes one can get too focused on the task at hand, that it is possible to miss all the peripheral things that are actually more important than the primary object. For example, keeping to my schedule this weekend was actually not as important as spending a bit of time with my siblings from out of town. And if I'd stuck rigidly to my readings I would have missed learning a lot of things.
I am not advocating flaking out and just doing what you want, learning what you want. But schedules need to be prepared to be shaken up a bit. I've spent a lot of my life being very disciplined about studying. But I have the feeling that 20 years from now I'll wish that I'd taken an evening off and gone to see a movie in the theater or hung out more with my sisters or slept in once in a while.
Haha. To be perfectly honest I'm actually procrastinating right now. I'm sort of discouraged that I don't know everything there is to know about the intestines. But give me time. I still have 3 more days this week!

Bulbous bouffant

2008-10-11T21:03:00.001-07:00

You seriously have to watch this crazy video. The more you watch it, the better it gets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uuCNAwXGaQ

From a tropical paradise to the North pole

2008-10-10T13:10:00.001-07:00

Wow, I haven’t written for a whole week!
In the exciting and sad interim I had my white coat ceremony, in which I stood up and recited the Hippocratic oath with my classmates and received a white doctor’s coat, and gave a speech in front of everyone. I also danced for more hours in a row than I ever have before; including dancing on a table in the bar during our after-party. (You should’ve seen it!)
It is bittersweet. I told myself that I would return to Antigua some day on vacation, but I know that even if I do, it won’t be the same. I said goodbye to the campus I’ve spent so many long days and nights at- the bushes heavy with pink flowers, the goats on the hills staring at me, the little white bungalows and the mango trees- a place that has stolen part of my heart.
My last morning in Antigua I got up early with my roommates and we drove to Half moon bay to watch the sunrise. We watched it come up over the ocean and streak the sky with pink and the huge waves crashed all around us and the salty spray mingled with the happiness and sadness that was so heavy in the air.
I said goodbye to the dear friends I’ve made. My professors, who have been more than just teachers; my classmates who have walked this journey with me, and saddest of all, my roommates. When Burton and Asa pulled out of the driveway and waved goodbye I stood there feeling tears pooling in the corners of my eyes.
“Goodbye, little bit!” Asa shouted at me (that’s one of his nicknames for me).
Burton didn’t say anything, I think because he was feeling too emotional as well. We’ve walked this path together and there have been ups and downs and even if I see him again some day it will be different. I don’t know quite how to express how empty it makes me feel inside.
But it isn’t all sad, of course. I spent my last day on the beach soaking up the sun and I flew to New York with three of my classmates who live there. I slept most of the way on the plane and then went to Marina’s house in Queen’s. Her family is warm and welcoming and they invited me to share Yom Kippur with them. Marina took me to Long Island and we went shopping and sat in a little salon and had manicures and pedicures (which I’ve never had before but it was FUN!) and ate sushi and talked and talked.
I stayed up late with Marina’s family and her husband tried to get me to drink shots of vodka (how those Russians can drink!) and her brother-in-law tried to introduce me to cognac (yuck.) I ate some strange things I’ve never had before and went out with some friends for dinner to a fancy Italian restaurant. (I highly recommend going out with doctors, they always want to pay for everything.)
Now I am back home. It is freezing cold; I think I went from 40 to 0 degrees in two days. But it is so good to be home and I’m feeling happy at the thought of the adventures that are awaiting in the near future.
My focus in the next few months is going to be studying for my board exams- and studying, and studying. I am planning to eat, breathe and sleep it. Well, maybe not sleep….. I figure I have a backlog of about 150 missed hours of sleep from this month in Antigua, which probably explains why I lost weight and have some gray hair and every muscle in my body hurts all the time- but it is okay. I will catch up.
I woke up this morning at some ungodly hour because I have jetlag, and I lay in bed and thought about God and his plans for our lives and how they are not easy and straightforward, but when we have our eyes fixed on him, he shows us the next step, just before we’re ready to take it.

Cutting and dicing

2008-10-03T08:06:00.001-07:00

The highlight of my week was being in the anatomy lab helping dissect a cadaver. The first module class was working on the lower extremities and abdomen of their cadaver, and since I had only practiced on female cadavers and this one was a male, I was interested in taking part. Not to mention the fact that Dr. Rust had managed to get a perfectly preserved dead fetus for us to examine.
A new lab is being built on campus and it is 100 times better than the old one- except for the fact that the air conditioning units aren’t hooked up yet, so it is smoking hot, and leaving the doors open just invites the clouds of mosquitoes in. At least there are no rats, the floor isn’t collapsing, and we have running water to wash in. We struggled for some time to move the body onto the dissecting table and then began to unwrap him.
The unfortunate gentleman had the normal pattern of bodily decomposition- after death occurs, all muscular sphincters in the body relax- which means that a dead body will urinate and defecate- as well as the hair keeping on growing. He was a little worse for wear after having been lying in his own waste for a while and as we unwrapped him Dr. Rust looked at me sternly.
“Whatever you do, go slowly so you don’t splash!”
DHBF (dead human body fluid) exposure is the most disgusting thing that can ever happen to a medical student. It happens when you forget to put on your face mask and you are leaning over with your mouth open and someone’s knife slips and stuff sprays up into your face….. or you get a hole in your glove and suddenly realize that your hand is swimming in liquid…. Or you are rushing to get a new scalpel blade and you slip and put your hand out to steady yourself and your hand lands on the edge of the table and it comes up wet….. There are not too many things that gross me out, but getting DHBF sprayed in my face that day was one of them. I was fully gloved and there was nothing to wipe with so I went up behind my housemate Asa who had a clean spot on the back of his shirt, and I rubbed my face off.
The little baby was cool, though. I took some pictures and I was telling Burton about it and saying how the baby was so cute I just wanted to take him home and put him in a little jar of formaldehyde on my shelf so I could look at him. Burton looked at me blankly.
“Heather, it’s not cute. It’s a dead fetus.”
“He’s a perfectly formed and beautiful baby.” I protested.
“Heather, it’s a dead fetus.”
Whatever. He was still adorable.
As a senior class we took our professors out for dinner this week, and we sat in a little restaurant called Trappas and talked and laughed and ate and took pictures together. Good memories. After dinner most people went out dancing but I was too exhausted from not sleeping that I stayed and had a drink with Dr. Gilbert and then he took me home. I sat at my computer screen for half an hour but I couldn’t keep my eyes open and my mouth closed and eventually I collapsed onto my bed. I slept 10 hours and felt amazing.
10 hour nights don’t last, though. Last night I was studying for this morning’s pathology exam and I only got about 2 hours sleep. I’ll catch up later, I guess.
I’m sort of paranoid about coming out of medical school with gray hair from not enough sleep. But the fact is, I love what I’m learning.
I gave a presentation this week on De Quervain’s syndrome (which is a type of tendonitis of the thumb) and instead of being asked questions by the instructor, I ended up engaging the class and asking THEM the questions. There is something so satisfying about teaching, about explaining to people how something works and seeing them understand and put it all together.
I think if for some reason I don’t manage to get a residency or I can’t license anywhere, I think I will come back here and apply to teach the anatomy lab. I think it takes a certain person to get excited about cadavers- Dr. Rust is a real trooper- but dissection is a necessary skill and what you cut on a real body, you remember.
This week I was deeply engrossed with removing the skin from the lower calf of the unfortunate gentleman, and I looked up to find a couple of my classmates laughing at me.
“Heather, you look like you’re having way too much fun there.”
I was. What can I say?

One foot in each world

2008-09-29T19:51:00.000-07:00

This weekend I took time to relax, finally. I had been looking forward to it for so long. After classes on Saturday I helped Dr. Rust was organize a BBQ for all the students. She lit 20 lbs of coals in a brick fire pit she’d built, and we lay chicken and burgers on it and I fanned the flames. We had to take refuge in her house during a brief thunder shower but then kept cooking.
All the students and professors came together and we ate dinner and then watched a Tom Cruise movie projected onto the powerpoint screen on the wall. I snuck out of the film after half an hour and went over to Dr. Torres’s house to sing Karaoke.
I sat on the couch with him and Vem and Burton and Leera and Dr. Gilbert and Asa and drank rum and beer and sang Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas is you”.
When we’d sung our hearts out we drove to English Harbor to a club called ‘Life’ that was open-walled to let the breezes through. I danced with Dr. Gilbert and my classmate Sabina and then sat and talked with Dr. Torres, who the more he drank, the more open he became. He told me that my class was the worst class he’d ever taught before. Then him and I fox-trotted together to some crazy Antiguan rap. The rain came down all around us and sounded like thunder on the tin roof.
Burton took me home at 1 or 2, I don’t remember, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling and wishing my stomach would settle.
In the morning I cooked bacon and eggs and pancakes. At 11:00 our friend Arnold came and picked us up for church and we sat and stood, sat and stood, throughout the Lutheran service. The power went out towards the end but the girl on the steel drums kept playing and we kept singing. Afterwards I went outside and snuck over to the bell tower and pulled the rope and listened to it clang. (Seriously, those things are loud!)
Later we went to Half Moon Bay, my favorite beach on the island. On the way we stopped at a gas station and Burton accidentally backed up into another car that suddenly appeared behind us. Asa suggested offering the guy some money and Burton suddenly remembered he hadn’t got a driver’s license yet. The owner of the other car looked at his dented car and our broken bumper and shrugged and said, ‘no problem’ and drove away. Only in Antigua, Asa said, only in Antigua do you hit someone’s car and they say ‘no problem’.
At half moon bay we played in the waves for a bit and then I went for a long walk along the shore to the next bay and looked at the stunning wild beauty of it all. Dr. Gilbert eventually joined me and we sat in the next bay together, completely alone on the beach, talking and studying pharmacology. We took turns snorkeling and looking at the schools of fish, jellyfish and eels under the surface. It was incredible. I lay in the waves and it rained for a bit and then cleared up and when the sun went down we walked back to Half moon bay. I drove back home with Dr. Rust and Dr. Gilbert, getting attacked on the way by a cloud of mosquitoes. In a few short minutes as I ran to the car I was bitten 17 times on the back and legs. I look like I have chickenpox.
Today I had an exam and then I came home and was by myself and I walked over to my neighbor’s house to ask him about fixing our car. Mr. Reynolds is an old man with twinkling eyes and more stories than anyone else I’ve ever met. I sat on his porch for an hour and we talked about everything, including him telling me all the sordid details of his multiple relationships over the years. (I certainly learned more than I needed to know!) He told me, Heather, if I was 40 years younger, I would definitely pursue you. Thank you, I said, I’m flattered. You can come and stay here anytime, he said, my door is always open. I will miss you when you go back to Canada.
He gave me four pomegranates from his tree and I fed his dog for him. I had to go back to school where we practiced examining a newborn infant and then inserting a vaginal speculum. Back home I lay by the pool with my pathology textbook and then cooked dinner and now I’m sitting studying and drinking diet coke out of a wineglass.
I will miss it here too. I can hardly believe that I only have a week left here. I told Mr. Reynolds that I will come back on vacation some day. When will that be? He asked.
I don’t know. I don’t much about anything these days.
Do you notice what children do? I asked Burton when we were talking after dinner. When they see something beautiful, they’re all over it. When they want to say something, they say it. They are so filled with joy. They don’t try to keep everything inside and be something they’re not.
If this all sounds disjointed it’s because I am a little bit disjointed these days. There is no continuity between my adventures that helps me organize them in my mind. I have no camera to record the special moments, there is no normalcy here.
Do I want a normal life? Tonight I am feeling that the answer might be yes. Maybe just for a while. But I was not blessed with any semblance of normalcy here in Antigua; I have just been blessed with a serious of unfortunate events, or exciting adventures, depending on how you look at it. And I am learning to respond like a little child and embrace the threads of joy and beauty that are woven through it all.

But while I am living the adventure here, I am still aching for home. Sometimes I think it is in that tumultuous place of joy and sadness that life's most worthwhile experiences lie.

Hanging on

2008-09-26T10:01:00.000-07:00

I haven’t written on my blog for a few days, not because there is nothing to write, but because writing takes emotional energy and these days I am sadly depleted.
There have been some amazing things happening, some good days, some bad days. I had two (almost) full nights of sleep this week which bolstered my spirits a bit. We have had some tricky situations with the student association and some difficult people and I have struggled with my feelings towards one particular woman. I caught myself envisioning how I was going to angrily tear her apart during one of our meetings. Then I was shocked and humbled to see my housemate Burton turn the other cheek and demonstrate a gentle response that did far more than my anger would’ve accomplished. He totally pulled the rug out from under her feet and in the end several people came and complemented his Christ-like example.
I sat on the couch in our house this morning and felt too tired to fight anymore. I had left the sink piled with dishes for two days hoping one of the guys would wash them but finally there were no dishes left to cook with and the garbage was overflowing and the counters were filthy and the fridge was empty and I just had to suck it up and do it. There is dirty laundry everywhere and my toilet is leaking and pooling all over the floor and I haven’t had time to call the landlord. As I went out the door this morning I saw a giant cockroach sitting by the table but I just left him and ran out because we were running late for school and the car horn was being honked for me. At school the power went out so we moved into the open-air cafeteria but it started to rain and the mist was soaking my computer and my notes. Asa took the car and went home without me so I guess I’ll have to hitch a ride with another classmate. I am too tired to cry.

‘I have not knowledge, wisdom, insight, thought, nor understanding, fit to justify thee in thy work, O Perfect. Thou hast brought me up to this--and, lo! what thou hast wrought, I cannot call it good. But I can cry-- "O enemy, the maker hath not done; one day thou shalt behold, and from the sight wilt run."’
- George MacDonald

Hallelujah.

More crazy adventures

2008-09-21T18:51:00.001-07:00

I’m sitting at my dining room table right now, supposed to be studying. Outside it is pouring so loudly that it sounds like thunder on the tin roof. Every 20-30 seconds there is a massive bolt of heat lightening that lights up the sky, then the thunder that shakes the windows. The wind is blowing through the house and even though I’m nice and dry I feel like I’m in the middle of a hurricane.
Yesterday I paid another visit to the infamous bat cave. We’ve made friends with a really nice man named Arnold who runs the resort down the road; he is an adventuresome type and brought masks and flashlights to go with me. I brought a ball of string and wrapped my hair in a turban and convinced my classmate Vem to come with us. It had been raining a bit and we picked our way down the overgrown trail to the entrance of the cave. We stopped at the entrance to put on our hats and lights; I had a headlamp and I tied the end of the string to the rusted railing at the entrance to the cave.
We hadn’t gone more than a few steps into the cave before I realized something was wrong. I heard a shuffling noise and when I realized there was something in that cave other than bats I just about wet myself.
“Goats.” Vem said grimly.
I shone my light down into the blackness and it reflected off the wild eyes of a goat standing right there. It nervously jumped away from me and then towards me as if it wanted to run up past me out of the cave. Arnold was just outside the cave and Vem and I stood to the side of the entrance and suddenly they came in a rush. There must have been a few dozen and they suddenly all came out in a giant herd, pouring out of the mouth of the cave past us. It was a little eerie.
I shone my light around to make sure they were all gone before we proceeded. The last time we’d been in the cave we’d taken a route to the right; this time we went left, unwinding the string as we went. Arnold and I took turns leading the way with Vem following behind. It was late in the day and Burton had refused to come because apparently at dusk all the bats come out of the cave all at once (several thousand?) and he didn’t want to be stuck down the tunnel when they all emerged. Well, the bats weren’t coming out yet, but they were certainly more agitated than normal and we tried to keep our lights down and not shine them at the ceiling of the cave.
We climbed for ages, the sweat pouring down our faces and clambering over the guano-infested rocks, trying to breathe through our masks and avoiding the odd bat that flew too close. At times we had to duck down for a minute until they calmed a bit. We made it into a second cavern and I shone my light up once and saw the ceiling covered in the furry gray bodies of a million bats. I could feel their guano dropping down on me as I went, but I kept my head down, avoiding the nests of massive cockroaches. We came into a third cavern and then I climbed into another one by sliding on my belly. The passageway was too narrow and I felt the instant release of adrenaline as I suddenly imagined the ceiling collapsing in on me like in the movies I had seen as a child.
“I can’t go any farther.” I told Arnold, who was right behind me. “Let’s try the other direction.”
We came to the end of the string and left Vem, who was almost beside himself, holding the end, while Arnold and I went on. The bats were stirring even more and their screams were a little unnerving.
“I think we should go back.” Vem kept saying. “The bats are really starting to move, I don’t think this is a good idea.”
You only live once, I thought. I was trembling with excitement. Arnold suddenly shone his light at one of the walls.
“Hey! Crystals!”
The walls of the cave were encrusted with sparkling crystals, like you see in those giant rocks that are split open in jeweler’s shops. Arnold used the butt of his flashlight and I cupped my hands and he knocked off some crystals into them. The biggest one he put into his pocket. I wondered if they were worth anything; or more importantly, if anyone would brave the bats to come get them. We took some photos (watch facebook, I’ll try to post them soon!)
We’d gone far enough away from Vem and the end of the string and it was getting late, after all, so we decided to turn back. I turned around and suddenly right in front of me was a huge white rat, staring at me with unblinking red eyes. I gave a squeal and then he started coming straight for me, completely unafraid.
“Go away!” I shouted at him, shining the light at him. I jumped sideways and clambered up on a rock and just about put my hand on a giant cockroach that quickly scuttled away. The rat kept coming and the bats were beginning to get more agitated and I felt the cold rush of air as their wings brushed past my face. I looked back at where we’d come from and in the darkness, the small passageway we’d come from was completely obscured in the craggy rock walls. The only clue to where we’d come from was the white string emerging from the blackness. A bat hit Arnold in the head and he shouted.
“Let’s go!” I said, shining my light at the ceiling and suddenly feeling a small bit of panic.
Vem began to run, with me behind him, and Arnold bringing up the rear. The bats were swarming. We were panting as we rushed through the passageways, pulling up the string, leaping over the cockroach nests. It was like a bad Indiana Jones movie. Arnold dropped one of his flashlights but he didn’t stop. We didn’t stop until we made it to the entrance of the cave and clambered out, breathing heavily. We were covered in slime and sweat and I felt like I was crawling in bugs and it was so wonderful to breath the fresh air and see light. You don’t understand true darkness until you are trapped in it, smothered in it.
We cleaned up a bit with some wet leaves and then Arnold and I went exploring the side of the mountain a bit before heading home. I felt exhilarated, exhausted, and filthy, but it was wonderful.
This morning was Sunday and Burton, Arnold and I drove to a Lutheran church on the other side of the island, which was pretty interesting (the pastor wore a long white dress!). It would have been your typical North American Lutheran service, except instead of a solemn organ there was a steel drum and a guy on a pipe organ playing jazzed-up gospel music, and there were little blue and green lizards skittering over the walls. In the afternoon we studied, and since Asa had the car, I decided to walk to the grocery store with my cue cards (about 6 km). By the time I got to the grocery store I was exhausted; I got what I needed and started back. I had several people stop and offer me rides, but I told them I wanted to walk. Halfway back home I was stopped by an older British man in a car who needed directions. A few minutes later he stopped going the other direction and I talked to him for a while. He was already drunk (had a beer between his legs) and he invited me to come to a party he was singing at that evening in English Harbor. It was hosted by his friend Sam, who was a millionaire, he told me. I didn’t doubt the part about Sam, because there are a lot of extremely wealthy people that hold parties in English Harbor, but I politely declined his offer even after he told me was a true gentleman and kissed my hand to prove it.
I kept walking and about 2 miles from our house I saw three donkeys by the side of the road and decided this was my lucky break. I approached them and started petting them and talking nice. Then I came up beside the biggest donkey and started trying to climb on her. If you can imagine me in a little sundress with a bag of groceries trying to climb on a donkey, you’ll have an idea how funny it was.
I got on the donkey and then suddenly thought, now what? I didn’t have to worry for long; she began to run. Straight towards a thicket of thorn bushes. Not only that, but these donkeys here are a little bony and with each step I was bounced on top of her backbone. I wondered which would be worse: being bucked into the thorn bushes, or breaking my tailbone on the donkey’s spine?
I bailed, groceries and all. Picked myself up and limped to the road.
Well, I made it home, and lay in the swimming pool for awhile to recover and then tried to make some supper. As I was cooking I noticed flies beginning to collect around the stove. By the time we sat down to eat there were more than just a few: there were several thousand termites collecting all over the table, around the lights, all over the walls, falling into our food, all over the beds. We searched in vain for their nest but they are in every room of the house, so it is hard to tell. I stood in Burton’s room while he sprayed OFF all over the walls and tried to shake out his sheets and then I just started to laugh. God, I love this place. It is the adventure of a lifetime.

Zaza learns about grace

2008-09-19T03:25:00.000-07:00

Seriously, I don’t know why I feel so happy this morning. Maybe I’m ill.
There has been lots of stress recently and we had a student council meeting the other day and there was shouting (much of it directed at me from one of my beloved classmates!) and some pretty angry feelings. I started to defend myself, and then thought, what’s the point? And I closed my mouth and waited until she was done and then waited some more and then kept smiling and then after the meeting didn’t say anything to her, just smiled graciously and went home. (And cried, but she didn’t know that!)
Yesterday all our classes were cancelled because the school had arranged a community outreach program. I got up at some ungodly hour and met the other keen students at school (there were only 7 of us because it was bucketing rain and pretty early), and we squished in a van and drove across the island to the Port authority. We had to go through security checks and then we set up a mobile health clinic with several stations and put up a sign. Over the course of the next 5 hours we saw about 150 people: doing basic health screening like blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, etc. I was with another student named Charles, manning the patient counseling station. So after the patients had gone through all their tests, they came and sat down with us and we discussed it with them, made recommendations, etc. A little scary and totally fun!
It was ridiculously busy. All the port employees came and Charles and I talked until our mouths were dry. Most of the people had minor health problems and we ended up just recommended healthy diet and exercise, but there were a few that needed more help. One lady was having an acute angina attack so I spent some time with her impressing the need to go to the hospital! Another woman, when I asked if she had any more questions, shared that she had been having panic attacks since going through menopause and couldn’t handle the stresses of life. Thankfully I’d just learned about medications for anxiety the day before and I was able to give her some helpful counsel. One older man told me how he was the union boss and the job was killing him and he couldn’t handle the stress, his blood pressure was through the roof. He was a Christian and I talked to him about true peace coming from praying and resting in God….it was pretty cool.
There was a tv crew there from the local news and the president of the university was there and she came to me and asked if I would say something in front of the camera. I stood up and gave a spiel about hypertension and what the average Antiguan could do to limit their risks and get treated. The camera man stood in front of me while I interviewed patients and he was standing there while I talked to one lady who had a wandering eye. I wasn’t sure where to look in her face (which eye actually worked?) and the camera was hanging over my shoulder and finally I turned to him and said, “Excuse me, could you go away? This is a private conversation.”
My landlady called me last night to say I was on tv and thankfully they edited out my comment to the camera man. I was pretty excited, though, even though I discovered later that I had been sitting on a piece of gum the whole time.
We are having a series of big storms right now and the wind has blown down one of our clotheslines, so Burton strung lines up across my room and down the hall and I hung the laundry up inside to dry. It looks like a little Laundromat now.
I stayed up late last night studying and then caught a couple hours sleep and then got up early. Asa had an exam this morning and was roaring around the house like an army tank about to blow a gasket. Asa has been chronically late and chronically messy since we moved in and the only thing that has kept me from wanting to kill him is the fact that my classes start after him…. So even if he’s 20 minutes late every day, I’m still on time. He hasn’t slept much the last few days and is worried about his exams, so let’s just say that the tension level is running pretty high.
“HD, we gotta leave in 10 minutes” he came and told me as I was still sitting in bed reading my bible.
5 minutes later, “HD, are you dressed yet? Please tell me you have clothes on. We have to leave! I’m all ready to go!”
I threw my stuff in my bag and jumped into my pants.
“Listen, HD, we gotta go! I’ve got an exam!”
I don’t know if he would’ve heard if I’d pointed out that Burton and I also had exams, but we weren’t yelling and stomping around the house. I thought about the fact that anytime I had needed to be somewhere a certain time I’d told him the night before, then woke him up early enough in the morning, and then reminded him graciously, and then Asa still managed to make me late for everything. Sometimes an hour late. I could feel steam beginning to rise from my ears. There is nothing I hate worse than being made late because someone couldn’t get their act together in time- unless, of course, it is being rushed out the door.
Yes, it’s true. I have done a colossal shift in my mind. One major argument over the years in our house has been the issue of lateness. Lateness is rudeness, Dad always said. I hated being rushed out the door and would balk to the nth degree.
I will publicly go on record today and say that I was wrong and Dad was right: I now agree with him that lateness is rudeness. This morning I had to pray for an extra helping of grace. God, please keep my mouth shut so I don’t say anything to Asa. Please help me to be respectful and gracious and resist the temptation to throw something in his face. And please, please let him remember this next time I want to be on time.
Being able to go through daily life with grace is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. It is one that I want produced in my life: can I be publicly slandered in a meeting, talk with patients, appear in front of a camera, deal with a room full of laundry, get no sleep, interact with my roommates, pass all my classes, and still do it all with grace? Can I respond politely and respectfully and graciously when that is the last thing I want to do?
The answer is yes- but only with the help of the Spirit. It’s one of those things that is impossible in my own strength, but totally possible with God.

The best medicine

2008-09-17T09:15:00.001-07:00

Stupid power outages. And other things. We had a second flat tire on our car, can you believe it? In an attempt to keep away the mosquitoes at night, Asa has been burning citronella candles while sleeping. He was sleeping in my room last night (because it has ac!) and in the morning I went in to get something and discovered the entire room covered in soot: all the sheets, stacks of towels, the walls, my clothes, my books and papers, everything coated in black soot. Maybe Asa knew how I would react because he had tried to pile up some of the towels on the floor and then just left for school. Tonight we’ll negotiate who gets to wipe down the walls, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be me.
Our coffee pot dropped and broke the other day so we are making coffee in a teapot. The generator keeps running out of gas…. The night before last, the power went out and Burton had to stay up late to study and didn’t want to leave me alone at home (there were 2 strange guys loitering in the shadows outside our house), so he made me come with him to our classmate Anita’s house to study. There ended up being 9 of us studying there and at 2 or 3 a.m. I went to sleep sharing a teeny double bed. We got up at 5 to get ready for school, but by sometime in the afternoon I was a mess. Everyone was stressed and grumpy at school and there were several arguments and it was so hot I felt like passing out in class. At dinner time Burton looked at me across the table when I was falling apart about something stupid and he just said, ‘go take a nap’.
Last night I slept okay except for getting up at 2:00 because the power turned off (and hence my fan) and I heard footsteps outside my window (Burton turning off the generator), and I got at 5:00 because Asa slammed the bathroom door, the bedroom door, the kitchen door, the fridge door, and the toilet seat. (Why can’t he just close things normally?)
At school we were supposed to take an online exam but the internet went down and we had to restart and then our next class was late. Anita and Marina were so frustrated that they haven’t even showed up yet. Dr. Rust is boiling mad but she lost her voice so she can’t yell at anyone. Actually the whole island is suffering….. the source of the power outages is a feud between the company that owns the power plant and the current corrupt government…. And the island is running out of gas and places like the school, which don’t have a functional generator, are not doing so well. (The generator is missing a part…. They sent someone to Puerto Rico to get it… the airline wouldn’t load it because it wasn’t crated….. when they finally got it crated, they didn’t have a forklift to move the crate…. The dean of the university is trying to hire a private plane to get it here….. there is a tropical depression heading this way and gas has gone up to $13/gallon so no-one wants to fly….)
Sometimes it just makes me laugh. It’s the little things, like going to turn on the generator and accidentally putting my hand on a giant lizard…. Stepping out the door and stepping into a fire ant nest….. taking a cold shower by candlelight …. Being halfway through cooking dinner when the power goes out and it is pitch black….. giant cockroaches under the dining room table…. The stray dog that Asa let in the house that had fleas….
I think the trick is to laugh. Proverbs 31 talks about a godly woman, and I’m encouraged by some of her character qualities. She is clothed in strength and dignity, it says, and she can laugh at the days to come.
Laughter reduces stress hormones, increases life expectancy, increases oxygen to the body tissues, burns calories, helps with sleep, improves work performance, and improves over-all well-being. The average adult laughs 4 times a day, the average child laughs 100 times a day.
Laughter helps us survive the tragedies of life by allowing us to view them as comedies. Happy Heather’s Hullaballoo categorically supports the use of laughter as a survival tool and a necessary daily therapy. Think of me this week and have a good laugh over something.

Solitary adventures

2008-09-14T18:40:00.000-07:00

There are 2 types of people, I’ve heard; the type that recharges by being alone and the type that recharges by being with other people. I am the latter: I need fellowship like nothing else. Sure, I need my alone time, but there is nothing that makes me more energized than being around other people, talking with them, encouraging each other, building each other up.
So far this last adventure in Antigua has been a very solitary one. And I am struggling with it. You know how it feels to be in a roomful of people and still feel desperately alone? Or just to find yourself alone- sleeping alone, eating alone, studying alone, and after a while you are not sure if the thoughts you are thinking are actually real or maybe someone else said them and you just dreamt them….man oh man, I would never ever make it in a convent or in solitary confinement. I would just go crazy.
My housemates Asa and Burton are great and I have no real complaints (except for the fact that Asa is really messy, and even more of a type A personality than me, hence the two of us butting heads a few times). But our schedules don’t really coincide this term and the two of them like to go to the gym and work out so I have been alone a lot.
Last night I was home alone and had to deal with a couple of things myself like filling the generator with gas etc. This morning I was desperate to go to church and the guys didn’t want to so I took the car myself. I only got lost once and ended up on this deserted dirt road with potholes bigger than a car.
I made it to the church; a tin-roofed building full of people who loved each other and loved the Lord. I was the only white person but I didn’t feel conspicuous, I felt welcomed and accepted. I drove home and had to swerve from an oncoming car passing a taxi and hit a pothole on the tire that Asa had already run into a fence, and I got a flat tire. I had to stop for groceries and there were two drunk guys there who started giving me a hard time. They wouldn’t stop until the store owner came and told them off. When I got home Burton changed the tire for me and although we’d planned to go the beach, he had too much homework so he dropped me off at the nearest beach. There were 3 semi-trucks blocking the road so I got out and walked the last 2 kilometers myself. I had sort of hoped to find some of my classmates there but they weren’t there so I sat by myself watching the crashing waves and the wind in the palm trees and picked up shells and swam and prayed and read.
I started to walk home but my injured arm was getting more and more painful and I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it back. The pain radiated from my elbow all the way down to my waist. I prayed that God would help me somehow and one of my classmates Fred happened to drive by and offered me a ride.
At home I made some supper and while I was in the shower it burnt and Burton and I sat there trying to choke it down. When you’re hungry enough, anything tastes good. I wanted to talk to him, about church in the morning and things I had been thinking that day, but he was busy studying and anyway….it’s possible to be right in front of someone and know they don’t even notice you, let alone hear what you are trying to say.
The moon is full over the ocean and it lights up the balcony and the hibiscus are heavily fragrant in the humidity. There is something wild about it, but very quieting at the same time.
Over the last couple of years I have read a scripture over and over again: Isaiah 40 “They that wait on the Lord will renew their strength… they will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
Every time I’ve read that verse I’ve thought of waiting on God for something specific- like, I’m waiting for the Lord to give me the answer to my prayer, or I’m waiting on the Lord to provide for me, etc.
I’m beginning to see that it is very different actually. God wants me to wait on him… for him. Just to remain in that place of being still and knowing that he is God. Quieting my soul and being okay with sitting by the water and watching the waves, being okay with watching the moon alone, being okay with not being able to share my thoughts with someone else. (Hey! That’s what I have a blog for!)

Trying to keep my head up

2008-09-11T14:18:00.001-07:00

When I am in Antigua it is like life is jacked up by 200 degrees and there is so much going on that I have to write about it just to be able to emotionally process it. I was intending to write a list this morning of all the incredibly frustrating things that are upsetting me right now and then I thought, why do that? Why not focus on the good that is coming out of it? I’m not joking when I say it is extremely hard being here. I know some of you read my blogs and think it is pretty darn exciting to be doing what I am doing. But the day to day tragedies here can totally destroy your spirit unless you choose to see them as adventures and keep pressing on. So here is my list of ‘complaints’ and why I am glad for them.
1. It is about 3-4º hotter here now than last time I was here. The heat makes it almost unbearable to sleep at night and in a house with only 2 air-conditioned rooms and 3 people we have been taking turns sleeping in the cool rooms, sleeping in shifts, napping during the day, etc. The bright side is that sweating makes you lose weight and it cleanses your pores and is good for your skin.
2. I haven’t managed a full night of sleep yet (i.e. more than 5 hours). But the good news is, I am optimistic that it is coming tonight!
3. My injured arm aches constantly and at night I have to take ibuprofen just to sleep. The bright side is that I’m learning to be ambidextrous and write and type with my left hand.
4. As great as he is, I would describe my housemate Asa as a bulldozer. He mows through the house leaving chaos in his wake and it is driving me crazy. Spilled food. Clothes all over the floor. Dishes strewn all over. Books and papers blowing in the wind. Doors open, doors unlocked, toilet seat up, etc. He is late for everything and makes me late for everything when we carpool. But on the other hand I am glad because it is teaching me to let go and be more gracious and patient. I am learning that it is not a big deal and I can just relax and ignore the mess around me. (Also he is a chiropractor and adjusted my neck for me so I’ll cut him a bit of slack.)
5. Burton keeps forgetting me at school when we’ve arranged to drive home together and I have to catch rides with other people, walk, or wait for him to show up. The bright side is that I am learning to let it go and be patient and forgiving.
6. The power goes off every day (including water and air conditioning and internet) for several hours at random intervals. The bright side is that we have a generator at our house and I started it yesterday by myself successfully (it’s sort of like starting a lawn-mower)
7. Because the power goes off randomly, we have been forced to completely rearrange our class schedules to accommodate it. Right now that means we start classes at 6 in the morning and go through until we run out of power or our laptop batteries are dead. Then we go home and return at some other time to continue (sometimes even late in the evening if the power is on). The good news is that I am a morning person anyway so I don’t really mind getting up early, as long as I have enough coffee. Not having a fixed schedule is teaching me to just let it go and roll with the punches.
8. The mosquitoes here are insane right now. I have several dozen bites and counting. The bright side is that these mosquitoes are silent killers- they don’t make that annoying whine that keeps you awake at night. And I have lots of OFF and citronella with me.

Have you noticed a theme here? It seems that the trials I am encountering here are hand-picked by God to build character in me. I know that I am a bit high strung and all these little frustrating things are teaching me to take a deep breath, stop shouting and fighting, and just give God room to have his way. There are some crazy things happening here right now (a serial rapist on the loose who has raped 35 women, 3 decapitated bodies found on a sailboat outside our local grocery store yesterday, etc.) and the temptation is to retreat in fear from this crazy adventure I’ve gone on. If I didn’t know God was in it, I’d pack up and come home. (Maybe… I do love a good adventure…) But the fact is, God is in it, and he has tailor-made it just for me. There are some wonderful things too that I did not expect: only 7 ½ hours of classes a day, fun and interesting classes, finding out I did well in every course last term (which I thought I’d failed!), great housemates, no hurricanes, and no ants in my kitchen.

A lame day

2008-09-10T07:12:00.000-07:00

Today was kind of a lame day. The island power plant is having work done which means portions of the island undergo periodic power outages. Ours just happens to be every morning from 9-2 for the next 3 weeks, and sometimes in the evenings. Power outages doesn’t just mean using candles for the evening: it means no air conditioner, no internet, no power-point in the classrooms, no water once the reserve tank is empty, no fridge, etc. The novelty began to wear off last night when I tried to cook dinner by candlelight. Not to mention lying awake at night in the sweltering heat with mosquitoes buzzing around my head.
Today we had one of our classes outside in the open-walled cafeteria with a nice hot breeze blowing through. My arm has been hurting a lot lately (I have some kind of tennis elbow that is exacerbated by typing and writing and is so painful that I have to take a painkiller just to fall asleep), so I had to type all day with my left hand and while I’m getting faster, it is a nuisance. I haven’t slept more then 5 hours a night since I got here so I’m pretty tired.
I came home at lunch time and forgot my key and had to climb in a window only to find no electricity anyway. I was planning on inviting a professor over for dinner so I popped over to the grocery store to buy some food. I had been thinking about apple crumble, but there were only 3 apples in the store…. and 5 rotting bananas. The lady gave me the bananas for free.
I have this awesome recipe from the Sanz that is a ham-banana casserole served over rice (I know it sounds gross), but it is absolutely phenomenal. I had it at their house and written down the recipe in detail and it looked pretty easy so I thought I’d try it.
During lunch break I went to sautee the bananas…. There was a reason I got the bananas cheap. They didn’t brown nicely like the recipe said, they turned into a giant mass of mashed bananas. I didn’t have curry powder, I had curry paste, and when I added it, it turned into a reeking giant mass of mashed bananas. I didn’t have time to salvage my dignity before class so I just left it in the fridge.
After school I talked to my professor and then I invited another new student to come over and I talked to my housemate Asa and he agreed that he would drive home with Burton at 6:00 for dinner. It was just past 5 and I wanted to run anyway so I ran home (with the key!)
I furiously started cooking. I made this amazing looking salad and tried to resurrect the banana dish. Since I obviously couldn’t roll the bananas in the ham slices (and since they were turkey slices anyway), I decided to layer them in the pan. It began to look worse and worse. It was now a reeking giant mass of mashed curried bananas and turkey. I sprinkled parmesan cheese on and threw in some sliced onions and shallots and some frozen corn niblits and more layers of turkey and grated goat cheese and chili powder and salt and popped it in the oven nervously. I decided to name it ‘Vancouver delight’.
We had no rice….I decided to cook pasta instead. I was hot and still hadn’t changed from running by the time 6:00 arrived. Dr. Gilbert showed up with some drinks and I waited until the dinner was finished cooking and then decided to have a quick dip in the pool with him while I waited for the other guys.
The pool was lovely and warm and we stayed out there for ages, talking about medical things, and listening for the sound of the gate opening.
At 7:00 I was feeling more and more upset and I finally said to Dr. Gilbert, we should just eat. I put the now-cold dinner on the table and was feeling like I wanted to kill Burton and Asa when suddenly I heard them pull up. They breezed in the door and obviously didn’t notice the thundercloud over my head, cause when I asked where Leera (the other guy) was, Asa said, “Oh no, I forgot him!” and they said they’d been at St. James’ club down the street. I was smoking mad by now but I didn’t really say anything and we started to eat dinner.
I knew right away that it was one of the worst meals I’d ever cooked. The pasta was like glue and underneath the turkey slices I could see lumps of graying bananas. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Dr. Gilbert discreetly removing the pickled beets from his salad and next to him, Burton was strategically serving himself casserole from the pan and dousing it with tomato sauce like it was going out of style. I felt like crying. I think they must have known I felt insecure about it, because after awhile they started to compliment it.
“This is SOOO good, Heather.”
“Wow, HD (that’s Asa’s nickname for me), you sure know how to cook!”
“What is this delicious cheese mixture on top? It tastes like it has Cajun spice.”
They went on and on.
“Don’t say anymore.” I said graciously, but I was quite serious. The next person that compliments Vancouver delight is going to get a spoonful in his face, I was thinking.
“I love the salad.” Dr. Gilbert kept saying over and over again. “I’m really glad you’re making me eat vegetables, Heather!”
When we were done I started to clear the table and then realized the cardinal sign of a completely failed meal. The casserole pan was still half full. Burton and Asa eat enough for 4 or 5 people and for them to leave a small casserole dish half full meant that they hated it. I put the dishes in the sink and Asa said, “HD, you are such a gourmet cook!” And I told him, “thank you, but that is the worst meal I’ve ever cooked.”
Burton kindly put a hand on my shoulder. “Uh…no, sweetie, that’s not the worst meal you’ve cooked. I’ll be honest with you.”
Burton and Asa gave each other a knowing look and then I saw them take two new plates out of the cupboard and head back to the table. They sat down and Asa picked up the spoon and divided the rest of the casserole between the two of them and they began to eat it. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. These two guys were such Southern gentlemen that they were going to finish that casserole if it killed them. Burton had left one large slimy chunk of graying banana in his bowl and even though I knew he hated cooked bananas I said wickedly, “Aren’t you going to eat that too?”
He looked like he might throw up but he picked it up and shoveled it down. I put the ice cream on the table and Dr. Gilbert was watching me worriedly and laughing a bit.
“Look at this girl!” Asa said. “She didn’t just make us dinner, she made us dessert too!”
“You’re something else, Heather!” Burton said.
“You two better watch out.” Dr. Gilbert said to them, looking at me. “I don’t think you’re reading her very well.”
“HD’s the best cook ever.” Asa said.
I’d had enough. I burst into tears. I got up from the table and ran down into my room.
At least my room was air conditioned. I sat on the bed and cried and felt like a failure. I was mad they hadn’t had the decency to come home for dinner and then mad dinner was so horrible and then mad that they ate it anyway and said it was good.
After a while I thought about the important things in life. And how cooking Vancouver delight was probably not one of them. And how being late for dinner was no big deal, they weren’t mean-hearted, they’d just forgotten. And how they had ate all that casserole trying to make me feel better.
I came upstairs and they all apologized and I apologized and it was all right. I washed the dishes and killed 3 cockroaches and then packed my things and decided to go stay at my classmate Nikki’s place. Burton wouldn’t let me walk alone in the dark and he told me to get in the car and I left anyway and he came after me and we argued about it until I got in the car and he drove me over.
Maybe it’s that time of month. I don’t know. I’m not sure how long I’ll stay at Nikki’s house but it might be for a while. Nikki understands why I was upset that my meal didn’t turn out. Nikki’s toilet seat is never up. Nikki’s shower is hot and she doesn’t have cockroaches and she has a generator for electricity.

Drowning in a sea of testosterone

2008-09-07T05:58:00.000-07:00

Yesterday when I arrived in Antigua it was a little bit rainy but all the sights and smells were the same; it was like starting an adventure where all the little things were familiar but still unknown.
I had spent the night before alone in a little New York hotel room that smelled vaguely of smoke and carpet cleaner, and stared at the flickering tv, unable to sleep. Arriving in Antigua was like stepping into a cold refreshing shower (which I did have, incidentally, and it was amazing). I spent some time talking with the landlady and then after she left, unpacked and lay on the couch with the ocean breeze billowing in through the open porch doors. I was all alone.
I cooked some pasta for dinner and ate some, but I was too tired to stay up and finally locked the doors and turned out lights and went to bed. I lay there listening to the hum of the air conditioning unit and trying to find a comfortable position on the lumpy pillow, and thought about this month I have begun here and felt apprehensive. I tried to pray but I was too tired… too tired to sleep, really. I dozed on and off but then woke to the sounds of frogs and cicadas outside and the wind whistling around the corners of the house. I took a sleeping pill (melatonin, which is a natural hormone your body makes that helps you fall asleep and gets disrupted by jetlag).
Sometime in the night there was a banging on the door and someone shouting my name. I ran up the stairs and recognized a familiar southern drawl and opened the door for Burton and Asa, my housemates. They had flown in and gone grocery shopping and had more groceries than I have ever seen in one car. 9 containers of yogurt (He eats one a day, Asa told me). 5 cartons of eggs. 3 jugs of milk. 8 packages of ham. The list goes on and on.
We sat in the dining room and talked and laughed until pretty late. I felt out of my depth, to say the least and finally retreated to my room just to get away from the overwhelming overload of testosterone.
Burton was a football player and I thought he was huge until I met Asa, who used to be on the power team (a Christian body-building team). Next to the two of them I feel dwarfed (imagine Thomas and Christoph with an extra 200 lbs between the two of them and tell me you wouldn’t feel intimidated!) They are both self-confident, dynamic, outgoing, and very Southern: sort of the definition of redneck.
Asa is a naturopath and chiropractor and when he saw the jar of nutella I’d smuggled through customs, he read the ingredients out loud to me and began to explain to me why I shouldn’t eat it.
“Listen, young man,” I told him, “I’m a quarter your size and I eat nutella all the time. The last thing I’m worried about is getting fat.”
“Ah,” he said, flexing his muscles, “But do you have tickets?” (i.e. tickets to the gun show)
“You think I want to look like that?” I asked him, staring at his bulging guns and imagining myself with my veins popping out.
I pointed out to the two of them that no matter what I ate I was going to live longer than both of them by about 6 years (3 because I’m a woman and 3 because I’m a Canadian).
Burton started to laugh. “But at least we’re still American!!!!”
I gave up at that point.
I started to tell them a story about something sometime later and Asa interrupted me and I told him that he shouldn’t interrupt, it was my turn. He asked if I was always this bossy and I thought for a second and said, only when I feel threatened. As if I have to compensate for how very intimidated I feel by being mouthy, which is unusual for me (not the mouthiness: the being intimidated by men).
I’m not sure what the answer is to survive this month. The last few months I’ve been living with mostly girls (Dad is the only male in the house but he’s at work most of the time), and I’ve gotten used to a feminine way of dealing with things. This morning I got up and Asa’s things were spread through the house in every area he had been. The lights had been left on all night and the toilet seat was up and although they had washed their plates, I’m sure they didn’t noticed the other dirty dishes spread around the kitchen.
I need some more estrogen around here. I feel like I am drowning in a sea of manliness. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with men, because these guys are as gentlemanly and as godly as they could get, but what I wouldn’t do right now for a bit of female companionship. Somehow I am feeling as alone as I did before they arrived.

Sewing is for philanderers

2008-09-03T00:44:00.000-07:00

Have you ever suddenly found yourself in a situation where you suddenly stopped and asked, what the heck am I doing?
It happened to me this week. I found myself at 2:00 in the morning, in my parent's basement, completely naked, completely drunk, trying to thread a sewing needle and talking to myself in French.
Like all good stories, it all started with a piece of turquoise silk from China. My mom was given this piece of fabric, and since she didn't like the color, bequeathed it to me. I decided that I wanted to show my domestic flair and that I was going to sew a dress out of it. (Why didn't I make a pillowcase? I don't know). I envisioned myself at my white coat ceremony next month, floating across the stage in a cloud of silk.
I went to the fabric store and asked for help finding a simple pattern for a summer dress. This one will be good, the sales lady showed me. Oh no, I said, I don't want anything with a zipper in it. I'm not a good sewer and I need it simple. Oh, this zipper will be easy to put in, she explained to me, and showed me briefly how to do it. You will need an invisible zipper, she said, so you can't see it after it's in. No problem, I thought, this is a snap! I can totally do it.
It took me about 2 weeks to figure out how to lay out the fabric and cut it out properly. But even then, the piece was a funny shape, so I had to mix and match a bit and skip a few useless pieces before I got it. Then I started sewing it together, ironing the pieces as I went.
The dress was fraught with difficulty from the start. I sewed the backing on backwards and had to take it out and start over. Then I realized I'd cut some pieces backwards and had to patch them together. Then my mom's sewing machine broke.
I had intended to finish the dress before I left for Antigua so a few nights ago, I decided that I just had to stay up as late as it took to get it done. I had just finished watching a movie with my sister and had the gas fireplace on and it was smoking hot in the basement. I was sitting there trying to pin and sew this slippery silk by hand and sweating bullets and I kept making mistakes and having to take out my stitches and try again. It was past 11 and I finally decided this was ridiculous, I had to take my clothes off or I'd get heat stroke.
I stabbed myself with a pin trying to get the zipper in. I basted the front inside out. Finally I stopped and decided that I needed to set up a system so that I wouldn't make mistakes. An appropriate punishment, I thought, would be to force myself to drink a shot of rum every time I made a mistake, since I hate doing shots. (I know what you're thinking.... Heather, what were you thinking.)
That darn zipper wouldn't go in properly. The shoulder seams were inside out. I accidentally poked the needle under my fingernail and it started bleeding. I sat there with a shot glass and a bottle and my sewing kit and all this turquoise silk and I started to mutter to myself in French so that no one would understand the bad words I was saying. I did not feel like a domestic goddess at all.
At 2 in the morning I put the dress on to see how it was fitting and I went into the bathroom to look in the mirror. I couldn't get the zipper up. It was hard to focus on the mirror as it was all blurry, but from what I could see, I'd have had to be an anorexic praying mantis to get the zipper done up. Not only that, I would probably need a whole other set of boobs just to fill the top out. And to top it all off, as I stood there blinking at my reflection, I realized that I hated turquoise.
When I couldn't thread the needle anymore I finally decided to go to bed. I lay in my bed and had just turned the light out when I heard the whine of a mosquito close to my ear. I turned on the light. There he was, on the ceiling. I got out of bed and climbed up on the arm of my armchair and thwacked the ceiling. Missed the mosquito, fell off the chair. Climbed up again, slammed my hand against the ceiling and killed him. Got back into bed, and then remembered the ceiling was the floor to my parent's bedroom.... then I heard the whine of another mosquito. I turned out the light, got up, but this time I couldn't stay on the arm of the chair. I climbed on the counter top and held onto the curtain rod to steady myself while I tried to lightly thump the ceiling where the mosquito was.
To keep things brief...it was 4:00 when I finally went to sleep.
I should've given up there on that dress, I'm telling you. But tonight I decided to finish the job and hem it. My Dad had politely suggested that I make a belt for it, a wide belt that covered the 'invisible' zipper. My Mom suggested an exercise routine to build up my pec muscles. My sister suggested padding.
I laid the dress on the carpet this evening and began to trim off the uneven bottom of the skirt so I could hem it. I'm still not really sure how domestic goddesses trim their hems, but I'm pretty sure there must be a better way to do it, because I kept trimming and the more I trimmed, the crookeder it got. I took off 4 inches and there was a 4 inch difference from side to side. So I evened it out. By the time I had taken 8 inches off, Alpha suggested I could just sew those pieces back on and it would be the right length.
I'm going to wear this dress, I told her, if it kills me. She started to laugh and I kept trimming the hem to even it out. By the time I had taken off 10 inches I was beginning to sweat bullets. I envisioned myself wearing it over jeans as a long shirt. It looks sort of even, Alpha said, except for those long bits hanging down.
In the end I took off about 12 inches before it was even. I started to pin it in place and stabbed my leg with a pin. I searched valiantly for an appropriate expletive and finally resorted to 'foozball!' Alpha hadn't stopped laughing.
Well, let me tell you, I am going to wear that dress if it's the last thing I do. If I can figure out a way to hold my breath long enough to zip it up, I'll take a picture and post it. Otherwise you'll just have to wait to see the pictures of my white coat ceremony. These days I'm trying to learn from my mistakes and I realize I made a number of significant ones through the course of this sewing experiment. I should've called Yvette in Kelowna and begged her to sew it for me. I shouldn't have tried to put in an invisible zipper. I should've cut the pieces out like the pattern said, not how I thought it should be done. And I probably shouldn't have tried to sew at all while drinking rum.

These are a few of my favorite things

2008-08-31T18:01:00.000-07:00

The crisis has passed..... I removed my run-away bag from my car. (Actually, I needed some of the clothes that were in it and I had to start packing for leaving the country again.)
I didn't work yesterday (I slept in until 11) and I didn't work today and I probably won't work tomorrow, unless I get called (which would be awesome, since I'd make double time), but strangely enough, I'm not bothered by it at all. Okay, I'm completely broke. But last night I was looking through a book on photography that had some awesome pictures of kids in slums in India and I started thinking. There was this little girl standing in the middle of a monsoon flood and she had a purple sari wrapped around her so that all you could see was her huge brown eyes and her little open mouth. She was completely filthy and beautiful and I wanted to wrap my arms around her and take her home.
It's really the little unimportant things in life that are so important, that are worth fighting for. I found a list that I'd written a long time ago of 35 of my favorite things- completely random, but it got me pondering quite deeply. So here it is.... the abridged version, since there are a lot of things that I love and that make me feel alive, and since my censor (Alpha) made me edit it. But I challenge you to read it, and think of the things that make you feel alive, and make a list, and see if you can go experience some of them this week... and maybe leave a comment telling me what some of your favorites are.
Snowflakes
Drinking eggnog
The color red
Sailing on a wild ocean (or lake)
Jazz
Juicy, ripe mangos
The sound of Italian words
Running in bare feet
Spicy food
Inserting IV's
Traveling (anywhere!)
Lying in the sand
Warm tapioca pudding
Trombones and tubas
Swimming
Black tea with milk
Frangipani blossoms
Explosions (when I'm far enough away!)
Colorful skirts
Praying
Wide open fields
The exhilaration of starting a new adventure
Any kind of flowers
Babies... as long as they don't leak on me
Ice skating on a lake
Books
Going for walks
Watching the sun rise
Sleeping outside under the stars
Donuts
Ripe passion fruit
Polymer chemistry equations
Debussy's Claire de lune
Ice cream.... any kind
Being in the middle of a crazy, wild storm
Dinner with my whole family
Hanging laundry on a line

Are you enough without the gold?

2008-08-28T10:41:00.000-07:00

In the last day I learned three important things that totally lifted my spirits.
1)The rest of my class also failed yesterday's exam, so at least I'm not the only stupid one.
2)Coffee makes the world go around. I don't know how I survived 5 days without it.
3)Last night I watched parts of 'cool runnings' with Alpha and learned something important. The Jamaican bobsled team was preparing for their Olympic run, and the night before their big race, the sled driver had a chat with the coach. He asked the coach why he had cheated, many years past, while competing. The coach said that even though he had already won a gold medal, winning was so important to him that he would do whatever it took to win another one, including cheating. He told him, if you're not enough without the gold, you'll never be enough with the gold. How will I know if I'm enough without the gold, coach? The driver asked. You'll know when you cross the finish line tomorrow, the coach told him. And the next day while on their run the bobsled crashed with the world watching. Instead of walking away in despair, that driver got up, and told his teammates they had to finish anyway, and they picked up that bobsled and carried it across the finish line. He was enough without the gold.
I thought about that last night while I studied for my microbiology exam today. Am I enough without the gold? Or does doing well matter so much to me, that I'll cheat, or spazz out, or give up, or become one of those obsessive-compulsive people that no-one wants to live with?
Isaiah 49:4- But I said, “I have labored to no purpose; I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing.”...Yet what is due me is in the Lord's hand, and my reward is with my God.

The coach was right, you know. I studied like a braniac most of the night and when I crossed the finish line this morning and found I also did badly on my microbiology exam, I thought, it's okay. I'm enough without the gold.
I'm sorry to be exposing my emotions like this to everyone. It's a hard lesson to learn. I have one more exam tomorrow and then I can lick my wounds for a few days before heading back to Antigua. But I want to share it with you because I think we are all on the same journey, just in different ways, and we can learn from each other and encourage each other. It's a glorious thing to fight for something and to win, but it's an even more amazing thing to fail at something and still have the grace to pick yourself up and keep going on.

Pathology exam (the censored version)

2008-08-27T12:27:00.000-07:00

So....I've come to the conclusion that when those Israelite guys said they only ate vegetables and water, 'vegetables' was a code word for 'Jewish food' or 'what we normally eat'. Because I'm telling you, eating only vegetables and water did nothing good for me.
Last night was my 5th day. I'd done well on my first exam (15% higher than the class average, apparently) and was studying for my second exam and all I could think about was toast, or eggs, or coffee, or anything but vegetables. I lost 8 lbs this week and as time was going on I felt stupider and stupider. I've battled nausea for about 3 days and I thought if I even looked at another carrot I was going to throw up. I've been studying SO hard, for hours on end, not sleeping much, and I felt like I was getting a handle on things, but I was crashing fast. Last night at about 10:00 I couldn't take it any more. Alpha suggested blueberries and I wanted to throw my textbook at her head but I didn't have the energy to pick it up so I crawled into the kitchen and ate some cold leftovers and made a cup of tea.
Wow. I seriously don't know how I made it 5 days on just vegetables and water.
I studied for a few more hours and then went to bed, praying for my pathology exam (at 7 this morning!) Some time in the night I woke up and had this intense pseudo-religious experience- it was a vision of me preparing for my exam and sitting down to write it- I sat bolt upright and I said, “I am ready to discharge all my emotional energy and everything I am into this exam”. I felt filled with joy. It was pretty crazy. When my alarm went off at 5:30 I bounced out of bed, prayed and read my bible for a bit, then studied, then ate some cereal (YES!!!!) and tea and settled down at the computer to conquer the beast.
The exam was a gong show. About 50% of the questions had spelling mistakes and poor grammar but they were super easy questions. About 10% of the questions were so totally random and based on things I had no clue about. About 10% of the questions were justifiably tough but I felt like I reasoned them out well. I took my time, purposely went through all the choices even if I knew instantly what the answer was. I double checked my answers. After a couple of hours I submitted the test. YES!!!! I could taste victory on my tongue. I had studied pathology like it was going out of style this summer. I had made hundreds of colored flow charts and flashcards and had gone through almost all the practice questions in a review book and studied the textbooks.
You can imagine my shock when my mark popped up on the screen. I know I have revealed many embarrassing things about myself on my blogs (and I'm about to reveal more!), but I am honestly too ashamed of that mark to even tell you what it is. Suffice to say it was below the passing mark. I blinked a few times. What the ****. I've ******* studied this ******* pathology until I ****** **** *****. (Actually I don't remember what I said but it was something unrepeatable).
I sent a very upset email to my professor telling him that his answer key must be wrong and could he recheck it. Then I walked into my bedroom, climbed under my blankets and curled up in a corner of my bed and cried my eyes out.
I don't handle failure very well. I've never done anything with the intention of losing, even stupid things like skipping grade 12, running a marathon without training, picking fights with big guys, or entering a cook-off with fake poo. I lay there all curled up and tried to imagine why I could have failed after I had literally studied my guts out for this test. I honestly feel like I know the material.... I will be a good doctor..... but maybe I am deluding myself. Perhaps I don't have what it takes to get through medical school after all. Dropping out of school cause I'm not smart enough has never been on my agenda. I thought God was in it. For goodness sakes, I've been praying up a storm over it. I know lots of people fail exams, but how many people care as much as I do? I couldn't stop crying.
I fell asleep. So many intense moments in my life have been followed by me falling asleep and waking up feeling different- and this was no exception.
I bounced out of bed and into the shower and was almost mad at myself. Right there was the one stupid reason why I was actually in med school in the first place. Every time I failed at something and got knocked down, I was stupid enough to get up and try again. Man, Heather, can't you learn? Can't you just give up?
I played scrabble with my mom the other day and she had to leave halfway through to go shopping. She tallied up the points and declared that she was in the lead, so she had won. You didn't win! I shouted at her. You quit! There's a difference! I won because I didn't quit!!!!
Well, telling you all this has been an emotional release for me. I'm ready to study for next exam tomorrow. This one is just as much a beast and I am just as scared. But I'm not a quitter. I'll figure out something with pathology- I dunno, maybe the rest of the class failed too, and we'll get our marks scaled. Maybe there is a problem with the answer key. Maybe I did well enough on the homework to pass the course anyway (actually it is well-known that professor never gives anything but 'pass' to all his students, no matter how well they do on the tests). Maybe I'll get kicked out of school and can start my own university.
At any rate, I'm going to win eventually..... if only because I refuse to quit.

*Consoling chocolates and cards can be sent to my home address.

Could you pray with me?

2008-08-23T21:27:00.001-07:00

This week I was praying about my school and my upcoming exams. I always ask God to anoint me with wisdom and help me to study, to honor him, and I was reading in the bible about different people that he anointed with wisdom. I read about Shadrach, Meschach, Abednego and Daniel, who were taken as slaves to Babylon because they were smokin' good-looking, had aptitude for every kind of learning, were well informed and quick to understand. So these four guys were pretty smart to start with. But then, on top of that, God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. I've often prayed that God would anoint me like that- with his knowledge and understanding. I may not be as naturally smart as those guys, but the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, so at least I have a shot at wisdom!
But this week I read the several paragraphs in between: how they asked to eat nothing but vegetables and water in order to keep themselves holy. Oh great. Vegetables and water.
I decided to do a 'Daniel fast' for a week- from yesterday until all my exams were done- eating only vegetables and fruit and water and praying about my exams as I studied, and praying about some other things that are on my heart and mind. I'm not totally sure why I made that crazy decision.
Yesterday I had a wicked headache as I went the first day in about 2 years without any caffeine. I felt sick and had to take an extended nap and didn't feel like studying and didn't feel like eating at all. But I persevered. Today I didn't feel like studying either, but I went on-line to check my university's interactive blackboard, and discovered to my horror that one of my professors had posted notes for our microbiology class that we were responsible for knowing for the test- about 700 pages of material that we hadn't previously covered. I was already overwhelmed. Now I don't know what word to use.
I've felt this way before, usually once a semester (and this is my 7th year in college!), that I was facing a mountain that I had no strength on my own to climb.
Sometimes I don't even know why I'm in school and the only reason I continue is that I don't know what I'll do if I drop out. (But I've learned it's never good to ponder those questions at moments like these.... I'll save that question for a day when I've had more sleep and a bit of coffee.)
It seems impossible that I will do well on my exams this coming week, and actually know the material. I need 70% just to pass, and I feel like I am pretty close to the edge. I've worked so hard, I've really given it my best shot this summer (okay, maybe I shouldn't have gone camping....) but in the end, it's not enough. I've got a couple more days to study and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything I have in me, everything I am, is not enough. Wow, I even feel like crying right now.
I'm telling you this to invite you to pray with me this week. (Don't try the vegetables and water fast, it really sucks.) But I want to be able to tell you at the end of this week, guess what, just like those four guys in Babylon, God anointed me with his wisdom above and beyond what I could supply.
So I'm waiting.... expectantly.... a little hungrily..... studying hard..... and looking forward to seeing God come through.

Brilliance arises out of neuroticism

2008-08-21T23:46:00.000-07:00

There is a fine line between craziness and brilliance, I have always thought. Yesterday I was feeling closer to the crazy line, but after spending all day furiously studying microbiology and making great strides in my intellectual musings, I decided I felt closer to the brilliant edge. Truly, one of the cardinal signs of brilliance is the ability to craft pithy statements out of mundane responses. It began to flow shortly after I arrived home this evening.
It was long past dinner and my mom asked me if I wanted anything to eat. In fact, I had been so caught up in studying that I had forgotten about dinner and didn't feel hungry. But instead of staying that, I popped out this witty little phrase: "Knowledge is the sustenance of the brilliant."
It didn't stop there, my friends, oh no. Some time later Alpha suggested pina coladas. Instead of saying no, I answered, "Alcohol is for philanderers."
Later on my mom asked for help unzipping a dress, and I replied,
"Why don't you ask Dad?" and then, "All great romances began with a dress that a woman couldn't undo herself."
(Even brilliant people have to dodge metal spatulas sometimes).
Later on I went downstairs and commented, "It's colder than a Sistine crypt in here."
When Alpha offered me some of her cheerios as a snack, I replied, "Cheerios are for the feeble-minded."
And then when I was lying on the floor while she quizzed me on DNA viruses, she suddenly pointed behind my head and said very quietly, "A mouse!"
I am not given to emotional exhibits when it comes to small creatures, but I have to admit that I leapt up very quickly with one thought on my mind: get away from the mouse. It took only a second to realize Alpha was laughing at her little joke. I am proud that I did not scream, but it really didn't matter because my heart was racing so fast I couldn't even breathe. When I was able to speak again I responded,
"Fooling the gullible is like throwing fragile teacups around."
So you see, even though I have been studying too hard and am going slightly crazy (I actually put my run-away bag in my car today, in preparation for leaving), there may be some delightful results from all of it. (Besides passing my tests!) I am planning on writing a book, full of wise quotes. It will be witty, it will be brilliant, and above all else, it will be useful. You can carry it in your pocket and whenever you need an appropriate response for a question, you can just pull it out!
Anyway, I'm heading off to bed, for truly great minds are nurtured in the canyons of sleep, as someone once said. And we all know that a wise person listens to the counsel of others, even if it happens to be yourself.

Studying the brain is frying mine

2008-08-19T23:47:00.000-07:00

There is this strange phenomena I have noticed when I have been studying for a long time. (Like today, when I studied neuroscience for several long hours. Which by the way, is an interesting paradox in itself: using the brain to study the brain. It’s like the dictionary definition of ‘dictionary’ or describing popsicles as tasting like popsicles.)
Anyway, back to phenomena. It seems that the longer I study, the crazier I get.
There have been moments in my past when around final exam time I crashed and burned and did things like ate my earplugs, jumped naked into the pond at the entrance of the university, lit several things on fire, got very very intoxicated, etc.
But recently, since I haven’t had a discreet beginning and ending to my semesters (I pretty much have to study all the time), the craziness gets spread out. Kind of like amortizing a mortgage over several years instead of trying to pay it off all at once. It sounds like the collective result of this would make me appear less crazy, but this week, since I have been in medical school for 11.5 straight months AND final exams are approaching in a few days, the episodes of craziness are becoming more frequent.
My family can testify. They will tell you, if you ask, that I have verbal diarrhea right now and frequently spazz out over little things. For example, while trying to explain to them at dinnertime an interesting concept about the brain, I was told to ‘hush up’, which only made me talk faster and louder.
I noticed the neurotic tendencies beginning to arise a few days ago. I decided to run away. I found a little bag and instead of studying, I spent about an hour filling little bottles full of shampoo and rolling my clothes so they would all pack in. I packed teabags, a screw driver set (just in case), some granola bars, a bible, a thin blanket, and a flashlight. I packed the bag and set it in a corner of my room and planned the note I was going to leave for my family. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be back on Sunday.
The only problem was, I wasn’t sure where to go. I didn’t have enough money to get a plane ticket. I was going to drive to Kelowna and show up at the McGoran’s, but then I thought, that’s probably the first place my parents would call looking for me. Maybe I should just drive as far as I could and sleep on the side of the road, huddled under my thin blanket and making tea and unscrewing things with my screwdriver set.
The phone rang this morning and it was a friend asking if I could pick her up at the ferry on Friday. I said yes without thinking, and then after I got off the phone I suddenly remembered that I was going to run away, and now I couldn’t, darn it, cause I had to go to the ferry.
After I studied for way too long today I went to the bank and then went to the maternity store across the street and walked in with my stomach sticking out. I stroked it as I looked at the clothes, as pregnant mothers always do, and gave a knowing smile to the cashier. Will this make me look fat? I asked, holding up a shirt. Honey, you’re allowed to look fat, you’re pregnant.
I contemplated neurological defects of fetuses whose mothers do drugs, while I tried on maternity tops and smiled at the very pregnant woman next to me. I bet she wondered what I was doing in there. I sort of did too. But I spent most of my paycheck on maternity clothes anyway.
The other night at 2 in the morning I had a sudden urge to sew. I sewed a dress on my mom’s machine and then crashed into bed. I don’t know what possessed me, but the next night, the same thing. I sewed a skirt. The next night at 3 I was up mending clothes. When I finally get to bed I lie there still, feeling my heart beat in my chest and the blood pulsing up my neck to my brain. When I hear the whine of mosquitoes I reach up to the light and turn it on and then lie there. Sound is interesting and confusing. A mosquito will often sound as if she is to your right or left (it’s the female mosquitoes that bite) but actually she is right above your head. If you’re trying to place the sound of the mosquito, look directly up and then listen. It has to do with the way sound waves from above you reach your ears. Anyway, I kill several mosquitoes. Then I lie back in bed and look at the black splotches they have left on the walls. When I am tired of that I turn off the light.
At any rate, it is already late and although I haven’t finished telling you my thoughts about craziness and neurological dysfunction, I do have some things I want to sew tonight. I am going to study neuroscience a bit more (please pray for that exam! It is on Tuesday morning, and I think it would be highly ironic if, while studying for an exam on the brain, I lost my mind) and then I am going to sew and then I am going to bed. But not until I’ve brushed my teeth. Maybe twice. My toothpaste is really good.

Taking heart amidst uncertainty

2008-08-14T22:59:00.001-07:00

Well, this is just a plain old serious Happy Heather's Hullaballoo entry. I haven't written for a while because I've been camping, but now I'm back home in the books again. Next week I have comprehensive finals for all my courses (one a day for four days) so I'm frantically trying to learn several textbooks worth of information and desperately hoping it will stay in there long enough to pass the tests. Or ace them, if I have to.
After that I have a WHOLE WEEK OFF with NO HOMEWORK although I might get a head start on the next term and start some reading. I fly back to Antigua on September 5th and am there until October 9th, I think. I'll be stopping over in New York for a day or two each way, and I hear there are some big important museums there, so I might go take a look.
Beyond October 9th , to save everyone the trouble of asking, I have no idea where I'll be, what I'll be doing, how long it will take me to graduate, if I will even graduate, what country I'll be in, etc.. In fact I have no clue. Am I bothered by it? Sort of. I wonder if I'm learning to trust God, or if I'm just so darn weary of being anxious about nothing working out the way it was supposed to that I can't fight it anymore.
Last night I was flipping through an old diary and I stumbled across an entry I wrote five years ago at a church conference. A man named Mark had spoken a prophetic word over me: I had just written 'Mark' at the top of the page and then his words underneath. He said, you've laid plans, but God is going to change them all. God knows the desires of your heart and he is going to give them to you, but in a way that is different than you would expect. Just wait for him and trust him.
Last night I thought, if I could remember Mark's last name, I could look him up and borrow someone's shotgun and go and shoot him. Because the truth is, every single plan I have laid in the last 4 or 5 years has been completely overturned. It is hard to believe that God knows the desires of my heart and intends to give them to me when I keep telling him what they are and he keeps giving me the opposite.
I'm not saying this in a bitter way at all; sort of tongue-in-cheek, because I read this great verse in the bible today:
“Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart, and wait for the Lord.”- Psalm 27:14
It takes strength and spirit to wait for God! At one time in my life I considered making a cd- it would be a motivational cd that was full of whoops and hollers and people shouting, you can do it! Keep up the good work! Almost done! Looking good! The cd would go on for a couple hours like that and I was going to market it to students studying for their exams to play in the background. The truth is, we need encouragement to be strong and take heart. We need the slaps on the back and the person standing on the sideline cheering and handing us water as we run by.
So if anyone is reading this and feeling discouraged about anything, you're not alone! Be strong! Take heart! Wait for the Lord! If I can make it through, so can you!