In the Same Vein

     After more than four decades of being a blood donor, my good vein has finally been pumped dry.  I like donating blood. It's desperately needed, free, and comes with refills. And it's not as if I had other plans for bleeding on my to do list. I could not give blood in college because, believe it or not, I did not weigh the requisite 110 pounds. I started donating when we moved to Helena. The retired nurse volunteers who assisted donors to the snack table (in case they should faint) were so feeble they would have blown over in a stiff puff of wind. After that I donated at a state-of-the-art facility in Denver where I got such a bad poke, the bruise lasted for days. Later I donated at the old courthouse in Kalispell, accompanied by my toddlers who volunteers spoiled with snacks while I lay bleeding. In those trusting days, your donor number was also your social security number. Church ladies and service organizations supplied sandwiches and cookies for the required post-bleed feed.
     Then we got fancy--bar coded donor cards, computerized check-in, with a scanner the elderly volunteers manning the entry desk treat like a deadly, but sacred cobra, tilt donor chairs, television so you can veg and hemorrhage at the same time, monitors that beep when the bag is full and store bought snacks to protect us from the dangers home cooked food.  Before leaving the entry desk you have to at least pretend to read 15 pages of donor instructions, restrictions and prohibitions. In the donor area, a phlebotomist verifies your I.D. and asks what sex you consider yourself. If you consider yourself a woman but have an Adam's apple, you flunk. They take your temperature and blood pressure. To check iron levels they place your swabbed finger behind a plastic shield lest blood should squirt out of your finger and into their unprotected eyes, though the only time this occurred  was on "Dracula, Dead and Loving It".  Then you take a computerized (and extremely politically incorrect) test about the restrictions you just reread in the waiting area to see if you qualify to give blood. This is why I will not miss donating. Paperwork. The assumption that you are unclean. No matter how many times you donate, there are no shortcuts. It's like volunteering to go through TSA security after your flight has been cancelled.
     But, as I said, I am tapped out. My only good vein is in my left arm and, sometime this summer, it shriveled. I have been deferred before--low iron level. I can fix that. High blood pressure. Meds fixed that.  At first, they blamed my inadequate vein on dehydration and, since it was blistering hot last summer, I could believe it. But the heat has gone and my vein has not come back.  It succumbed to the same phenomenon that has claimed so much of my body--old age. So the next time the Red Cross calls, I will ask them to remove me from their list. I'm sure they will be disappointed, they are disappointed that I don't bring a buddy with me to the bloodletting. After 40 years in the same location, Lefty has left the (body) building. And I don't even mind that my sacrifice was in vein.

There's Trust, and then There's Trust

    I trusted Jesus as my Savior in 1972 when I was 16 years old.  I trusted Him to save my soul, but I didn't really trust Him to direct my life. That has been a much longer process.  For many years through my daily quiet time, the Holy Spirit whispered into my heart the same message, "Do you trust me?  I eventually found it easy to trust His guidance in my own life, but I wasn't sure He could do the same for my family--not without my help. It took me years to discover that not only am I not the Holy Spirit's little helper, but that my interference was getting in the way of what He was trying to do. He used people and circumstances I never would have thought of and got way better results. I was especially disappointed that I was not my husband's Holy Spirit because I had so many good ideas about how to change him.
     After all, I was practicing on my children. When children are young, parents get to be their Holy Spirit. We apply Biblical principles to their behavior. We convict them of their sins. We administer discipline. We begin to like the role of Holy Spirit, but it is a job that we need to increasingly work ourselves out of. Just as we do when we move from holding our babies, to walking beside our toddlers, to coaching our teens from the sidelines, to blessing and releasing our young adults. It is God who will see them when they're sleeping, know when they're awake, and know if they've been bad or good for the rest of their lives.
     I think the reason God doesn't change our loved ones' hearts through our nagging is because, like a parent, he doesn't want to reinforce bad behavior--ours. Do I trust the Holy Spirit to work out God's plan in my life? Absolutely. Do I trust Him to work out God's plan in my children's lives? Certainly.  Do I trust Him to work out God plan for them without my words?  Well, I need a few more years to work on that one. There's trust. . . and then there's trust.

Supersize Surmise

     There has been a lot in the news lately about supersizing. Michael Moore even made a movie about it, and he should know, he is supersized. Our bigger portions rest on our bigger plates in our bigger houses that we drive to in our bigger cars. This is all attributed to greed--greed for food, greed for space, greed for power. I'm sure some of that is true, but I discovered something while sorting through some of my mom's old mail, cards have gotten bigger too.  Christmas cards used to be what we now consider "money holder" size. And there was no money--I looked. Wedding and baby congratulations cards she received in the mail were about two inches square, the size I sometimes stick in the bag with a shower gift. The size the post office won't even deliver anymore lest it get stuck in their machinery.
      I just can't chalk this one up to greed.  I have never met anyone greedy for bigger cards. For women it just means more to store, for men it just means more to throw away. Phones, computers and Christmas lights have actually become much smaller. So I close this blog with a Suessical sound.

                                   I surmise that supersize
                                   isn't always greedy and unwise.
                                   Some things get bigger,
                                   some get small.
                                   Is that a bad thing?
                                         Not at all.
                                  

Between the Lines

     It is amazing to me how quickly a parking lot goes to pot (or looks like the drivers were on pot) when snow covers the lines. Customers who have been using the same lot for years will suddenly forget if the parking is straight in or diagonal. Not only do orderly rows become car cacophony, but the carcophony holds fewer cars.  The lines do not confine the cars, they confine the chaos.
     If a parking lot is a microcosm of our culture, why are we trying so hard to erase the lines?  Many today want to blur the lines between right and wrong yet those are the guidelines that keep our society orderly, efficient and safe. If we cannot handle something as simple as parking without guidelines, perhaps we shouldn't remove them from language, sex and violence.  "No rules, just right" makes both the enlightened and criminals feel better about themselves, but it only works for people living in the outback--alone.  Besides, there is not enough snow to cover the lines the conscience draws.  I could expand upon this premise, but you are probably smart enough to read between the lines.

20 Captions You Will Not Find Underneath My Picture

Any phrase with the words:        (unless accompanied by standing next to)

• accentuating her toned arms
• deeply tanned
• tall
• slender build
• athletic looking
• Mensa member (more like Sensa user)
• Pulitzer prize winner
• Nobel prize winner
• Rhodes scholar
• intrepid explorer
• computer geek
• long tresses
• leading authority
• staunch liberal
• fitness guru
• well known musician
• from the reality show
• fitness model
• doctors hate her
• avowed atheist  (so thankful for that)

A Cozy of November

     My November blogs consisted of titles with no words under them.  Although this was a time saver for myself and for those few who actually read my blog, it seemed a little terse, even for me, the word miser.  November, like February, is a rather dreary month in Montana, a place holder for the holidays to come. Until Thanksgiving November is just the cover band for the main attraction--Christmas.  The grass is dormant, but not yet covered with snow, the trees are bare, naked against the cold, the cold is uncomfortable, but not brisk enough to be challenging.  Yet there is a certain coziness to November.
     It is a month for baking and book reading. I can remain inside without guilt because there are few outdoor chores requiring my attention. It is too early to worry about decorating, gifts, and goodies. November demands little more of us than food and gratitude--to our veterans, to our God.  Our language has many words for groups of things:  a herd of bison, a convocation of eagles, so I have coined a word for a collection of November days--a cozy of November.

November has its place to keep

when autumn beauty's gone to sleep,

enters bleak, but leaves well fed 

and Christmas wonder lies ahead.

The First Thanksgiving

     I have been too busy since Thanksgiving to post about Thanksgiving, so today is the day. By the first Thanksgiving I am not referring to the pilgrim/Indian kind.  This was the first Thanksgiving I can remember spending at my childhood home in Missoula that was not shadowed by my mother's mental illness. She was not there to sit at the table, there were no strange noises coming from her bedroom, I didn't even have to dread the duty visit to her dementia facility on the way out of town.  Our daughter and her husband drove over from Helena, my sister's family came from Kalispell.  We ate.  We took pictures.  We laughed. I have wondered since my mother's death in June if the Ghost of Christmas Past would pay me its annual holiday visit--the remnants of sorrow from childhood Christmases long forgotten. The Shadow. 
     The Ghost has come, but it came much later this year. It did not even make it to our Thanksgiving dinner. That is why this Thanksgiving was so different for me. Perhaps it will be the first of many.