“Lay down what’s good and find what’s best”

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Chaos. Confusion. Frustration. Goodness. Mercy. Blessings. That’s what we have dealt with through this season of transitions in our life. …

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One banana and a cup of tea

One banana, a cup of hot tea in a cozy cabin on a cold winter day. This is representative of most of my mornings now. Simple and unhurried. The mug is a favorite of mine. I bought it a couple years ago at the hospital gift shop when I worked in the clinic there. It sat on my desk to remind me that the Triune God lives within me and regardless of what circumstances the days would bring, I was to rejoice always (1 Thessalonian 5:16. The verse on the cup)and be His representative to the people I served and worked with.

My mornings then were anything but unhurried. Infact, most days held a fair amount of chaos and drama from the time I got up until I closed my eyes at the end of the day. But sometimes it didn’t end then. There were nights that same  chaos and drama entered into my dreams.

I worked in a county medical clinic as an RN with a wonderful and professional healthcare team. We never knew what was going to be presented when patients walked through that door. We had to be prepared to deal with everything from the routine wellness exam to the common cold to potential life threatening situations or complete irrational meltdowns. Preparation to meet every need was the order of each day. We had to be able to think on our toes. There were times when we did not have what we needed on hand, times when we needed to tailor a treatment to the patient’s specific needs or had to improvise to get a job done but always, the patient’s well being was first and a good outcome foremost. Education was a big part of care giving. It was critical that patients understood their diagnosis, their medications, their treatment plan and the outcome goals. Sometimes empathy and a hug were more therapeutic than any drug . I even had opportunities to pray with patients. I can recall some very tearful pleas going up to the Lord as well as some praises. But regardless of the patient’s reason for coming or their spiritual preference, they all needed to be encouraged and cared for. A few minutes of my time, a smile and warm respect were essential to the well being of every person. It was not always appreciated nor offered in return and it wasn’t always easy to administer. But I tried to remember that often the unkind folks are the ones who need kindness the most. #rejoicealways!

The phone was never silent and the party on the other end was usually calling to have a need fulfilled. A prescription refill, advice, an appointment, a question regarding treatment plans, a referral to another physician or specialist, a request for records or documentation, a report, an authorization for procedure or diagnostics,  a complaint and so much more. But much time was spent answering the phone or making  calls.

I cannot say the job was not rewarding. There were far more good days and postive outcomes than there were bad. I did enjoy caring for people and interacting with them. Most of my patients become very dear to me over the course of time, some even like family. I could often anticipate their needs and they trusted me to offer them my best. Many patients were thankful and went out of their way to make sure we knew they appreciated us.

My co-workers functioned well as a team and I never worried about having the necessary support in any situation. We did a great job of taking care of each other and our patients. We made the most of everyday together and laughed and celebrated special events together. Birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, babies, graduations were all good reasons for a potluck and treats and we had plenty! When my mother became ill and my co-workers had to step up to the plate and fill my abscense, not one person complained and when she died, those people made sure I knew they cared with cards, gifts, food and hugs. The environment could not have been more supportive.

But neither can I say that it was not stressful, demanding and challenging. Caring for other people takes a tremendous amount of committment. It requires physical,emotional and mental energy that can be exhausting. It was not the kind of job you walk away from at the end of the day. You may well clock out and walk away logistically, but it goes home with you. The patient newly diagnosed with cancer, the patient that died unexpectedly, the family that is falling apart, that moment that you weren’t as professional as you should have been, it all goes home with you. You wonder if you forgot to complete any of the high priority tasks. Did Mr A ever fully understand your instructions regarding his treatment? Was the new mom comfortable with understanding what to do for baby’s fever? Did that trucker who was calling from out of state park his truck , call for that ambulance and go to the ER for his chest pain as he was directed? Did I document that well enough in his chart? Did I remember to pass on that message from the med surg floor to doc in the hustle and bustle of the day, did I remember to clean up and restock the treatment room after that last procedure? Did I forget to call anyone back, is there a patient who will have a night of anxiety because I forgot to call them?

Then there was the pile of work still there on the next work day. The prior authorization you are struggling to obtain for a diagnostic test, medication or procedure, the documentation that has to be worded just right in order for Mrs J’s home oxygen to be continued, the stack of prescriptions that need to be faxed to the pharmacy, the documentation that needs to be faxed to insurance for continued cancer treatments for the next quarter, the immunizations that need to be registered with the state. Your mind is constantly engaged as you try to think of people and resources that you can plug your patient in to so they can get the assistance needed for their well being. The accountability and responsibility of a healthcare professional is a full time commitment. You never get a vacation from it mentally. It is always there in the back of your mind even when you are not aware of it.

But for me, it wasn’t just the caring for people that overwhelmed me and stole my joy. It was the changing dynamics of  our culture and of the whole  healthcare system. I first entered nursing after graduating in 1989 and in 26 years the world and healthcare have changed dramatically. It has always been challenging and demanding. HCP’s have always worked long hours and given of themselves for the welfare of others. No one goes in to the field without being aware of the nature of the beast. But until you begin to deal in people’s lives and start working within the confines of a system that is not always about the best welfare of a person but rather the bottom dollar, you cannot be prepared for what is actually experienced in the field.

There is a change in the way people view healthcare today. Rather than accepting sound advice on prevention and making healthy lifestyle changes, patients want a pill or a quick fix. It is no longer sufficient for a provider to map out a basic plan for smoking cessation or weight loss  with diet and exercise, or anxiety relief through prayer and meditation, insomnia with a prescribed change in routine and diet as a first plan of treatment. Good old common sense counsel is not acceptable anymore. Folks expect to walk out of the office with a prescription in hand to fix whatever ails them.

And there is a change in the role of government, big pharma and insurance companies in healthcare. The powers that be have more control leaving the healthcare providers ( the ones with the education and expertise) less control in deciding how the patient’s care is administered.

There is the issue of liability. Lawsuits abound and some of them are unbelievably ridiculous. The thought of litigation is concerning. When I had a television, it seemed as if every other commercial was an ad for a law firm promising to win some medical lawsuit.

Ever changing technology, new medications, new medical equipment, new policies… constant changes. Everything is continually changing in the name of progress.

I understand change and progress are part of life and many great things have been accomplished over the course of my lifetime. Things that have vastly improved the quality of life for many, including myself, for which I am thankful. But change is not always good. Faster and more convenient are not always better. Medication is not always a good replacement for wise counsel and time spent administering it.

I began to feel that the one arena of my life that I thought would always be about the good of others was now just another stressor crushing me. There was no part of my life, personal or professional, that was untouched by the rat race.  The struggle was real and the burnout painful. That cup on my desk was often in the way as I worked. I rarely gave it a thought even though I may have looked at it often all through the day.  I was too preoccupied to take the time to jejoice always. I had no peace and no sense of contentment. I had no time for my Savior and I was missing those quiet seasons when I could just be still and know that he is God.

Looking back I am aware that He was using my life even then to glorify Himself and to bless others. He is God and He is good. But He used that discontentment to shift my direction. As His children, we are in this world but we are not a part of it and we cannot let it wear us down and lose sight of Him, His plan for us or our calling to honor Him by obedience to His word. I had lost sight of all of that. My life had spiraled downward. As desperate as I was to be joyful and to be a joy, I was too beaten down  and something had to go. I resigned from my job. It was just one of several modifications that would be made in my life for His glory.

I may one day return to nursing, I don’t know. He knows the plan. But for now, I am content to spend time resting in His Word, and being restored spiritually. There are new dreams and a new journey in sight. I look forward to where He will lead me. But for today I am content eating a banana, sipping a cup of tea and just breathing.

The ever spinning hamster wheel

Well this is entry two and it has been far more than a week since I published my first blog. So much for my goal of publishing a weekly blog. I have thoughts tumbling around in my mind all of the time. I just have difficulty organizing them to put into a writing.

At any rate, here we are. If you have read my profile, you already know a bit about me and the life I live. As I mentioned there, my husband and I live in an off grid cabin with our critters in the midwest. But until April of 2015, we owned a mortgage on an old farmhouse on a small acreage that consumed most of our energy, our time and monetary resources. We raised our family in that house and were blessed by and thankful for God’s provision of it for many years. But the kids grew up, moved away and started families of their own. Rarely did any of them ever come home to visit and even more rarely did they ever all come home at once. As Charlie and I grew older, the house just grew bigger, emptier and more of a burden to maintain. We worked more than forty hours a week to try to keep it up. Every week just seemed like a monotonous cycle that reminded us of little hamsters on their wheel. Around and around those furry little rodents furiously run to go nowhere. We were exhausted physically, emotionally and spiritually. Our Christian joy was little more than a flicker and our prayer life was virtually non-existent. This was not how God intended for us to live. Stressed out, unfulfilled, discontented, no time or energy to study the Word, pray, or even care about anything. We were not living to glorify and honor Him. Our life had become an ever spinning hamster wheel.

And so, we began to pray, asking for guidance to change our lives for His glory and purposes. And that is when the dream, the vision if you will, began to awaken into the plan that ultimately ended up in a completely different style of living. We sold our farm house and “retired” from our five day a week jobs. We bought an RV for some travel and we converted an old farrowing house into a cabin. We live on a little less than an acre and rely on the solar and wind power with a generator for back up. We have a some chickens and a garden so we can eat. We havent looked back nor have we felt more blessed and free.
The journey is far from over. We continue to work on further simplifying our life. We take more “stuff” to Goodwill or the recycle center almost monthly. It is amazing what we are able to live without. It is not an easy transition after living 50 plus years in a modern world full of consumerism, convenience, fast food, grid supplied electricity and television. It has been a struggle to give things up. Though we have electricity, it requires constant monitoring of our system for the wind and solar input to be sure the battery bank is charged. We have a generator for back up when the elements do not supply our need. It isn’t as convenient as being tied to the grid was and we are limited in the amount of power that we can create which means we are limited in the amount we can consume. For example, I once made our bread in an electric bread maker but those little bread makers are power hogs. Bye bye bread maker! Now I do it the old fashioned way, in a bowl without an electric mixer. That’s right. I use my own two hands to knead that dough. And guess what? I enjoy it! There is something gratifying about stirring the flour, water, salt and yeast with your hands, watching it rise, punching it down and letting it rise again before baking it. When I set that fresh loaf on the table for my beloved to enjoy, I feel like the Proverbs 31 wife.

Our cabin is one room so as to minimize our need for lighting and it is heated only by a woodstove with a kerosene heater as a backup source. Someone has to get up in the middle of the night to stoke the wood stove so we can wake up to a warm room. My wonderful husband generally does this. (He deserves fresh home made bread.) Our cook stove is a small four burner rv stove and oven. Because the oven is small, it quickly heats up and uses less propane than a conventional one. Obviously I do not cook the Thanksgiving turkey for the family gatherings. But it does a fine job of baking a pie or loaf of bread. My electric crock pot is now powered by the woodstove in the winter and a hay box in the summer. (I was the Crock-Pot queen when the kids were growing up! We even made hot fudge cake in it!) We have future plans to build a rocket stove and a solar cooker to provide more cooking options in summer. With no air conditioning and high humidity, cooking is kept at a minimum during the summer. We have a freezer for food storeage and we keep frozen two liter bottles of water in it. We use a cooler for refrigeration and simply rotate the frozen water bottles to keep it cool.

These cooking and refrigeration changes have necessitated changes in our eating habits. We find ourselves eating more seasonally. The summer garden pro duces the best tasting fresh vegetables and fruits during the spring, summer and fall months as well as providing a harvest to be canned, frozen or placed into cold storeage for the winter months. Winter means more consumption of staples such as fresh made bread, beans, rice, casseroles and homemade stews or soups. Our chickens happily free range around our little acre and in return lay eggs with bright orange yolks and flavor that cannot be matched by any grocery store eggs.

We rarely plug in the television. We prefer enjoying outdoor activities as the weather permits. Aside from the gardening, we enjoy camping and hiking as often as we can in the warmer months. We especially enjoy taking the grandsons for outings. Here in the Midwest there are trails, caves and beautiful parks to provide plenty of adventures for us. During the rainy seasons or cold winters, we can use our smartphone or computer to watch Youtube and PBS. Laundry is done at the laundromat once a week. Sometimes I do it by hand in summer and hang it on the line to dry. I do enjoy using my sewing machine to sew and there are occassions when I have to run the generator to use it. Again, that all depends on the wind and solar situation. I am looking into converting one of my machines into a treadle machine.

If anyone would have suggested this life to me 30 years ago I would have been horrified at the very thought of it. I chuckle about that now. I truly enjoy our simpler life. It isn’t necessarily an easy life. We don’t expect it to be. But we are able to spend more time together. We have far less home maintenance. No utility bills and no mortgage means our income needs are less and so we do not have to maintain a traditional 40 hour work week. Vacations are no longer two week rat races. Cold winter months can now be spent in the RV visiting kids and grandkids in warmer states. More time is devoted to prayer, Bible study and looking for opportunities to serve. We have more freedom to focus on living for the One who died for us. We have more flexibility to pursue whatever He sets before us until He calls us home. We have more time to “just breathe”.

Getting Started

I have written so many unpublished drafts since I initiated this blog site. But life happens and it gets in the way. Good intentions do not always lead to the accomplishment of our goals. And it isn’t easy to orchestrate it all in an easy to read manner nor is it all really meant for everyone to read. So there is that…the sorting and deciphering and organizing of the content, all of it labor intensive. Then there is the intended reader to consider. Will they benefit from it, will they enjoy it, will they be critical of the work and lack of writing skills? Finally, there is self critiquing. Once I manage to get something composed I leave it alone for a while and then come back to it. That always ends up with deletion of the work and time invested because, after all, we are our own worst critic.

I do not even know when I first started the site. I have started and deleted it several times and each time under a different name or title. I do know that at one point I had a specific purpose for the blog and so I kept the current name of the blog with the intention to eventually get back to writing.

I wrote often as a young person, though nothing was ever published. I took writing courses all through high school and college at the encouragement of my educators who felt there was some potential to be developed in me. But my parents dicouraged it as a first choice of career to pursue so I went to a two year nursing school and obtained a nursing license so they could be assured that I would never starve and would always have work available to me. I regret not pursuing my dream.

So. Where to get started. Well. I am not a writer. I am not highly educated. I do not hold any degree higher than an Associate Degree in Nursing. (DISCLAIMER: Yes, nursing is an honorable career and does require a great deal of skill and critical thinking. Nurses are very bright, educated, energetic, professional people and there is no higher calling than that of serving others. So to all of my health care professional peers,I hold you in the highest regard and have tremendous respect for what you do every day for others)I do not intend to go back to school for more education or to earn any more degrees. I am not wealthy, have not travelled extensively, I am not a high profile figure in my community. I do not have any aspirations of being a published author of some great work.

I am, however, a human being. A very blessed human being with a wonderful husband, children, grandchildren and, above all, my Saviour, Jesus Christ. I have experienced life with ups and downs. I have good days and bad days, I have dreams and a bucket list. I have a one room cabin with a warm wood stove on this miserable winter day, I have a sewing machine and this computer. I have a desire to reach out to others and be a glimmer of hope where there seems to be none. I want to be real with people. And I had an epiphany through the culmination of events that happened over my life time, particularly recent years, that led to some significant changes in my thinking and my way of life which intiated this blog site with it’s title which leads us to here. Getting Started.

So as I struggle with discipling myself to make a weekly entry on this site, I hope and pray these writings are in some way a blessing to those who may need one and a glory to the God who has guided my entire life and blessed me with a journey that has been rich with blessings thus far, even when I strayed or when I would have preferred not to go through some of those experiences…those times of fiery refining. In the coming days I will make some entries with regard to #JustBreathe# and some of the events that led to changes that have taken place in the last couple years to simplify life. I do not know what lies beyond that in the way of this blog. Perhaps that will be the end of it and perhaps not. But come back and we shall see where we go from there. If you have comments or questions, I would love the feedback and interaction. It may well inspire something. Until next time, just breathe.

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This blog is intended for the purpose of helping me to sort things out emotionally and spiritually. Perhaps I will learn through it or teach through it. Maybe I will find healing in composing my th…

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