Sometimes I Trust God

Sometimes I Trust God

Sometimes I trust God

in the warm afterglow of 

intimate worship.

And sometimes I trust God

with the resignation

of someone who has lost a battle

and has no other choice.

At other times I trust God

with the grim determination

of a fighter about to enter the ring.

Lately, I trust God 

with a tear in my eye

and a tear in my heart

from bending my will to God's.

Mostly, I trust God
out of mindless habit
accustomed to the company of my King.

But, in the end,
whatever my motive
the best way I can honor God
is to trust Him.

All We Wanted Was Our Country Back

  

    Yesterday was the inauguration of our 45th president, Donald Trump. His win was a great surprise to the liberals who had believed their own propaganda about Hillary's overwhelming victory. The conservatives were also surprised, but by the childish, almost third-world reaction of the losing party who refuse to be "Trumped". So on behalf of the deplorables, let me explain what happened. All we wanted was a president who:

•       Put American interests before global ones.
•       Supports an economic system that offers greater opportunities to the laborer than the lazy, and understands the goal is to create wealth, not redistribute it. 
•       Knows our prosperity isn't something to apologize for. We didn't steal it. We built it.
•       Calls terrorism what it is, and not "workplace violence".
•       Does not apologize, like a battered wife, to countries who attack us, as if we provoked them.
•       Recognizes that Israel is our one friend in the Middle East, and the only nation on whom God has placed his blessing.
•       Knows that we cannot placate enemies who want to kill us.
•       Respects the principles upon which this country was founded.
•       Understands that disagreement is not hatred, bigotry or oppression.
•       Remembers that citizenship is a privilege, not a right, and should go to those who respect our culture and our laws.                                               

     Yes, many of us, most of us, wanted someone wiser, more humble and less vocal than Donald Trump. But anyone old enough to vote, is old enough to know we don't always get what we want, especially in elections. Whoever our choice might have been, God is sovereign, so we must accept and support the president we got.  And all we really wanted was our country back.

4 Days Dead

    We just studied the raising of Lazarus in BSF and I have been thinking a lot about those four days Lazarus was dead. Not wondering where his consciousness was all that time, or how he felt at being called abruptly back to earth. There is no knowing that til heaven, but I plan to attend that seminar. My thoughts have been with his sisters and the other mourners. How bleak those four days must have been. It looked like Jesus didn't care, like God was doing nothing at all, like hope was dead. But all the while Jesus was waiting for his Father's timing. And, in the end, the miraculous raising was all the more glorious because of those four days.
     So, in my rush to see my prayers answered, I may be trying to rob both myself and God of greater glory. Not to mention robbing myself of the peace I could have by trusting God while I wait for His answer. I will try to remember, when my prayers seem to have fallen into dead space, that I might just be in the four days phase.

The Snatcher and the Shepherd

     I should not have been surprised when, a few weeks after God's divine intervention on the road to Rimrock, our son began to doubt again--not God's reality, but His plan. Satan had snatched away much of the beauty of that experience. To paraphrase a current ad campaign, "When you're Satan, that's what you do." Satan loves to turn truth into lies, faith into doubt, and good into evil. He is the Snatcher. He snatches the seed of God's word sown into the world (Mt. 13:19) He snatches the joy of new believers by making them doubt their salvation. I vividly remember my own experience of that. And, if he could, he would snatch Christians themselves from God's hand. (John 10:29) Sometimes, he even snatches the joy of the Stone Pillar from Reed and I. The Snatcher is not only the bearer of bad news, he is bad news. The good news is, we have a Shepherd.
     The Shepherd knows his sheep in all our frailty. It does not matter that the Snatcher is strong and the sheep are weak, because the good Shepherd is our protector. He has promised that nothing can take us from God's hand and that promise is just as true for those He is drawing to salvation as those who already belong to Him. The hand that draws us is the same one that keeps us. The Snatcher is pursuing our straying son, but so is the Shepherd. The main issue is not the desire of the sheep to be back in the fold, but the desire and love of the Shepherd. Trusting the Shepherd who found me and has taken care of me all these years is the least this Lamb can do.

If I Gave My Son

     There are many who feel that salvation through faith in Christ is too exclusive. They are right. Jesus himself said the way to heaven was a narrow path and that few would find it. This sets off the "fair meter" all humans are born with. But it seems more fair to me if I think of it in terms of the following parable. If:

     My son and I were walking on a lonely stretch of road and saw a house on fire. We could see through the windows that there were people inside but they did not seem aware of the danger they were in. The windows were barred from outside and the front door was already on fire. The only way of escape was the back door and the fire above it was already collapsing the door frame. My son was strong and brave, so he volunteered to stand in the doorway and support the burning beam to make a way of escape for those inside, risking his own life to save them. He called from the doorway, but only a few of the residents came out. I banged on the barred windows telling the people inside to run to the back door to safety. But they did not run. They did not even stroll. One argued that there was no fire, another said, if it became necessary, she would try to squeeze through the bars on the window. Several others were trying to put out the flames with hopelessly ineffective extinguishers. "Please", I told them, "my son is suffering in the doorway. He is dying to save you." But they answered, "We don't want your son to save us, offer us another way."
     Would I do that? Now I am not nearly as gracious or merciful as God, and my son is not pure and perfect like Jesus, but I am a parent and I know how much I love my son, and those who ignored his sacrifice would deserve their doom. God gave his Son, there is nothing He could offer to up the ante, even if He wanted to  It was grace that God provided any way. And it is grace that He has not provided many, leaving us to wonder if we are on the right path. It would seem fair to me that my only offer was my final offer, if I gave my son.

Time, Travel and Weasels

     I love to travel, especially when it is winter, and especially when the destination is somewhere warmer, which is about anywhere this year. So I was delighted to find out Reed needed to go to Dallas for training in February. Once Reed's training schedule was confirmed, I went to Kayak, which is my default flight search sight.  I found a good deal for the week we needed through JustFly, but it required flying out on Delta and back on United. JustFly sent me to Delta to book the outgoing flight. Presumably, they would send me to United to book the return flight. But I never got to find out because, after having input traveler information twice--when I got to our zip code it perversely returned to the beginning of the search, so I input the traveler information again, got to the payment portion and realized Reed needed to pay for his ticket on his company card. I could not pay separately for two passengers. Reed and I would need to separate. After 39 years of marriage, this was not as traumatic as you might think. But when I went back into JustFly, I couldn't find that fare again. I wound up trying Expedia, whose $400 fare turned out, after I put in our information, to be $1775. But I spotted the elusive thing again on Hotwire, which promised there were just 3 tickets available for that price.
    I decided, since money was no object for Reed's ticket, and it certainly was for mine, that I would book my ticket first. That part went smoothly, but before I could make Reed's reservation, I had to back out of Hotwire and enter it again to find the $400 fare. Unsurprisingly, there were still three tickets left at that price. I carefully double checked Reed's info (after nearly listing him as female) and he gave me the correct credit card (after nearly using the one from his other employer). But the site refused to accept the card. So he called the director of maintenance to find out why the card would not work, only to discover he hadn't okayed the school with the chief pilot yet. No problem, I had 24 hour free cancellation. But, problem, it was Saturday and Reed's boss wouldn't talk to his boss until Monday. Reed couldn't call the chief pilot directly because his boss would regard that as an act of treason. Since that company's credit cards get hacked on a regular basis, that was probably why it was declined. I estimate that I spent 4 hours between researching fares and attempted bookings and only managed to get a ticket for the person who did not need to go.
     So I am going to Dallas in February. I am skipping school, even if it's paid for.  I hope Reed gets to come. I think travel sites are created by sadistic, unemployed travel agents, or possibly weasels--probably both.

Other Diagnostic Misses

     The irresponsible response of the nurse practitioner to my son's gall stones sent me on a trip down medical memory lane. Being blessed with good health, I had little experience with doctors as a child. But I wish my doctor or parents had taken my dislocating kneecap seriously so it could have been fixed in childhood. I still would have had an embarrassing scar, but I also might have had a chance for normal muscle development in my left leg, maybe even avoided what my husband calls "my funny walk". Speaking of knees

• The doctor I saw shortly after the epic dislocation when I lived in Denver, told me that if it only happened once or twice a year, it was no big problem. However, the orthopedic surgeon who repaired it said he had never seen such a loose knee. When he opened the skin, my kneecap popped off, giving entirely new meaning to the phrase "skinned knee".
• After we moved to Kalispell, I visited an elderly couple in our church who were having health problems. When Grace called the doctor on a weekend suspecting her husband had had a stroke, the doctor told her to bring him in on Monday. Admittedly, this was long before the miracle clot busting drugs we have now, but strokes were still considered a medical emergency, not a "see you Monday" kind of event. I have often wondered if that was Dr. Palchak,
• who was our family doctor for a short time. His reputation at the hospital confirmed my own experience that, if he didn't know what was wrong, instead of referring patients to specialists, simply ignored the symptoms. One victim of his lethal incompetence died because he ignored her tail bone pain until the cancer it signified was inoperable.
• Another bone-head call I saw while working at the hospital was when a doctor decided to experiment with a dying brain cancer patient. Since the brain itself does not have nerve endings, he decided not to write an order for pain meds the night I sat one-on-one with him. I never got to know the sweet, Christian man the staff described. I spent the night calming an incoherent man in excruciating pain.  
• For painfully inadequate treatment, last year I wrote a letter on my brother Roddy's behalf to the clinic he visited twice for a persistent cough. Like most people who actually pay for their physician visits, Rod does not go to the clinic if over-the-counter products are sufficient. Therefore, his two visits telling him to drink lemon tea with honey were about as effective against his cough as singing "Kumbayah". Roddy can cough or sneeze hard enough to cause problems with his neck. Finally, he made an appointment with his family doctor and got the prescription cough meds he needed, but he paid $108 dollars in copays for the three visits.
• My home care client didn't have to worry about copays and had many regular visits because of her diabetes, but seldom went to the doctor for other complaints. So when days of constipation prompted a visit to the walk-in clinic, I knew the nurse practitioner's conservative recommendations weren't going to be enough. By nighttime the discomfort was so bad, she used her Life Alert and went to the emergency room where she had to have an impaction dug out.
• Closer to home, several years ago my 83 year old Dad took my Mom to a doctor in Missoula because she could barely walk. Dr. Yawn (probably not spelled correctly, but fits her bedside manner) ordered knee x-rays, diagnosed the problem as arthritis, and sent her home. No walking aids. No pain meds. No therapy. No follow up. Just a woman who can't walk sent home for her elderly husband to cope with. 
• My father-in-law also had arthritis in his knees. His doctor recommended a double knee replacement. The doctor who replaced my knees said doing both at once doesn't double the difficulty of recovery, it quadruples it. Besides the difficulty of not having one good leg to stand on, he had a bad reaction to the pain meds, so they stopped giving him any. Double knee replacement. No pain relief. To make matters worse, the new knees didn't relieve the old pain so all that suffering was for nothing.
• Also for nothing, were the times I took several of our spare sons to the walk-in medical clinic in Evergreen. Generally, if they walked in complaining of, for example, a sore throat, the nurse would diagnose that they did, indeed, have a sore throat and send them home. I'm pretty sure what they wanted was relief from the problem, not a second to their diagnosis. As the person paying the bill, I definitely wanted more than confirmation of what we already knew.

     That is why I could not reassure Tracy that seeing a doctor for his stomach pain would be useful. There are too many unprofessional health professionals. My diagnosis is that they are either missing the brain cells required to understand treatment follows diagnosis, or have a heart defect--no compassion.

Snapshot

         My son was recently hospitalized, so I had a chance to interact with several nurses.  Most were capable and kind, but the nurse he had the night after his surgery was more like one of those in-your-face coaches on the weight loss shows. She decided, based on the snapshot of information she got from his records and appearance, that his health problems must be due to weight, lack of exercise and smoking. What she did not know was that he gained much of that extra weight after he gave up drinking. Trading vodka for milk was a good exchange. Too much milk can make you fat, but too much vodka can kill you.
     She also didn't know that he just got a gym membership and that he formerly did weight lifting and body building. I understand that one of the functions of health professionals is to encourage healthy lifestyles, but too much encouragement is actually discouragement. The doctor who treated me while I had Grave's disease, blamed my blood pressure, among other things, on my weight gain. I had lost 30 pounds through the course of my illness. The 30 pounds I gained brought me back to my normal weight. But that was not in her snapshot--and she is no longer in my view-finder.
     The encounter with the night nurse bothered me because, according to my nurse son, that is how he treats his patients. He considers having unhealthy habits evidence of being uncooperative. That if you really want pain relief, you won't mind not smoking. To use a "Star Wars" reference, he does not know the power of the dark side. A friend recently told me how difficult it was for her to stop smoking, even while watching her husband die of COPD. She worked for the same hospital my son was in, and only stopped smoking when they refused to let employees smoke in their own cars in the parking lot. I'm happy for her smokeless-success, but I think hospital policy is excess when it changes from encouraging to threatening. Flu shots are similarly "encouraged". You don't have to get one--unless you want to work there.
      But the main reason that nurse bothered me was because she reminded me of me. I, too, judge people based on snapshots, even when I know them well. Half a dozen times in the past year, I have decided what Tracy's problem was and what he needed to do about it, only to find I was looking at behavior when the root went much deeper. Thankfully, the Lord shut my mouth before I started blasting away at the tip of the iceberg when the truth was below the surface.
     I have had the same profile picture on Facebook for many years because, despite many attempts, I cannot take a decent selfie. Please don't judge me by my snapshot.

Miss Diagnosis

     Our youngest so had so little confidence in doctors even as a boy, that I used to ask him what medical school he graduated from. That's why Tracy recently suffered through four days of severe stomach pain despite my suggestion that he go to urgent care. I let the matter drop, so the fact that he was finally willing to go, indicated the seriousness of the problem. He left with little hope of getting relief and I certainly could not give much encouragement having witnessed so many unsatisfactory medical visits personally, with family members, and with home health patients. In place of platitudes, I urged him to make sure the doctor heard that he could not function in this condition. "Function" is a word health practitioners sometimes respond to.
     So Tracy went to urgent care complaining of severe pain and having been unable to eat or drink for four days. He told the nurse he had taken 800 milligram ibuprofen that did not touch the pain and that it hurt even when he drank water. She suspected gall stones and sent him to the hospital for a CT scan. She correctly diagnosed what was amiss, but her follow up was also a miss. The hospital sent him back to the clinic for further instructions, the clinic sent him home. The nurse practitioner left Tracy a message after hours telling him to take ibuprofen for his pain (hello? we discussed this), not to eat fatty foods (that would be easy since he couldn't eat anything) and to wait for the stones to pass. The latter, to use current vernacular, isn't even a thing. Gall stones do not pass, like kidney stones, although sometimes they get stuck in the bile duct, but that causes even more serious problems. Maybe she was banking on the rare occasions when the stones dissolve, but the odds of that happening are about the same as of winning the lottery.  She also offered to schedule a surgery consultation--eventually.
     The nurse practitioner hit dead on with her diagnosis, but fouled the follow up. What he needed was pain relief, I.V. fluids for dehydration, and surgery. After hearing the nurse's clueless phone message, Tracy and Reed went to the emergency room. I sent Reed along because he knows how to be confrontational enough to be taken seriously, but not taken to jail, as our muscular son might. At the e.r., he (Tracy, not Reed) was given strong pain meds, IV fluids and, since surgery was scheduled for the following day, he was  admitted as an observation patient. I have found the usual length of an e.r. visit to be four to six hours and this was no exception. Reed got home after midnight. But we slept easier, if briefly, knowing our son was finally being taken care of.
     Unfortunately, I have encountered many health practitioners who consider their job done once there is a diagnosis. And the treatment pendulum has swung from getting a prescription every time you see a doctor, to their recommending the over-the-counter products most people try before they go to the trouble and expense of a doctor visit. Four days after Tracy's surgery, the clinic finally called. They wanted to go over his lab results. He wants to go over their heads and file a complaint. I will be glad to help write it. I know how to be confrontational while using pointedly polite language. Medical care that ends at diagnosis misses the point. The patient is not seeking information, he is looking for relief.

Stinky Sovereignty

     Some people have cats. We have a Maynard. But for the past couple weeks, Maynard, who is normally as happy as a stoner with Cheetos, hasn't looked well. His tail wasn't as fluffy, nor was his fur in general, his eyes were goopy, and he was hiding out in the basement instead of exploring the outdoors. I knew he had tape worms because of the rice-grain shaped egg casings by his tail, but Maynard refused to eat the canned food I mixed my only dose of worm medication with. So last week I took him to the vet. Maynard is so scared of going to the vet that he usually pees in the carrier on the way. This time, I could tell by the smell that he had provided a stool sample instead.
     Because of that sample, the doctor discovered that Maynard had both tape and round worms. If he hadn't panic pooped on the way to the vet, we would have solved only half the problem. That's how sovereign God is. He uses millions of tiny events as pieces of a greater plan. He knew we were worried about Maynard and what would be needed to make him well. As a bonus, the vet's office cleaned up the cat carrier and the vet was highly motivated to clean the cat before taking his temperature. Maynard is exploring outside as I write this. The God who delights to do the impossible is also the orchestrator of the ordinary events of our everyday lives. He is sovereign, even when it stinks.