Captain’s log…aid and comfort

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”
James Baldwin

Captain’s log:
800 days 8 days and counting and still no sign of
the ship home…or is there…???

Ok, so I am in no way, shape or form a Trekkie however I did grow up watching the original
Star Trek whether I cared for it or not–all because my little brother liked it…
it was to watch either that or the fake and phony WWE Saturday night smackdowns with
“Mr. Bionic Elbow, Tapdance on your Tonsils himself, Dusty Rhodes”

And yet oddly I could always relate to that one opening line from each Star Trek episode…
Captain’s Log…
as I was an avid keeper of a diary and marker of time.

And so since I have been stranded on/ in this barren planet house of
our son’s with a mending Sherrif, I thought I should attempt a transmission from this great beyond,
attempting to connect with the outside blogosphere…
maybe even getting beamed up—or is that beamed home?

The Sherrif has been mending quite nicely…that is until recently.

(a typical male out shopping/ Julie Cook/ 2019)

And no that is not a picture of him at the local jail but rather in the shopping cart
of the local Target (pronounced Tarjay)

And here he is even attempting to take after his sister, the Mayor,
by showing an odd affinity for his toes…

(evening bath time and toes/ Julie Cook/ 2019)

Meanwhile, the Mayor has been her busy self with all sorts of mayorial business.

(a Mayor who loves her flowers/ Julie Cook/ 2019)

Here we see her actually working in her yard—the Mayor has not quite yet grasped the concept of
deadheading spent blooms, preferring rather to remove all blooms…

She fancies herself as a natural-born landscaper as we see her assisting her “Da” in
gathering up pine straw…

She has also been busy in the decorating process as she had installed her very own new
additions to the main bathroom…voila

(the Mayor very own toilet / Julie Cook / 2019)

Yet unfortunately, during what was supposed to be a week of productive healing,
I must report that the Sherrif has gotten an upper respiratory infection
along with a throat infection…we’ve been to the Pediatric Urgent Care earlier in the week.

And thus, in like kind, the Sheriff has graciously now passed along this malady
to his day nurse and chief woobooville aid.

Since the Sheriff is still very puny, we are scheduled to go see his pediatrician this afternoon.

A six-month-old who cannot blow his nose and who is constantly coughing, as well as
drowning in a sea of mucus as his throat is sore and hoarse…
squeaking and croaking rather than cooing and babbling, is well, troubling.

So hopefully, this now ailing nurse will then be able to depart, late this evening,
after nearly 9 days of constant care, beaming homeward—
we hope… while the Sherriff begins to finally dry up!

Prayers said that the Mayor and the remaining staff will stay as healthy as possible!!

(the Mayor comfoting the Sheriff / Julie Cook/ 2019)

The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you;
he will never leave you nor forsake you.
Do not be afraid;
do not be discouraged.”
Deuteronomy 31:8

The Mayor almost didn’t make it…to her party

“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

(a subpar Mayor struggles through illness to be the belle at the ball..or is that prettiest
pumpkin in the patch?? / Julie Cook / 2018

Well, Poppie and Moppie came up Monday to take care of a croopie baby…
but croopie turned ugly real fast when we had to race to the Urgent care last night,
Tuesday night, with an escalating fever and the signature seal-like cough…

Turns out the croop is RSV, or Respiratory syncytial virus, which for adults is more
like a viral cold-like illness…
but in an 8-month old infant can suddenly become quite serious very quickly…

(a miserable crying Mayor recieving albuterol treatments)

The wheezing, cough congestion and gasping for breath lead to a required
but much hated breathing treatment.

This entire situation was not well received by The Mayor who has simply been feeling
like crap…but she was quite the trooper…despite wailing throughout the treatment,
she managed to sit very still.

The treatment was successful in that she did feel some better and actually slept a tad more
then the night prior (all her aides were most grateful)–
The doctors even sent us home with the machine and a prescription for the meds that
go into the machine.

Aides Poppie and Moppie had to administer another treatment in the morning…
of which I think was harder on Poppie as he is the Mayor biggest push over assistant…
with her dad coming in a fast second.

But like all typical politicians, the Mayor rose to the occasion…
she was ready in the nick of time to don her mayorial Halloween garb in order to meet
her neighborhood constituents as she sat on the front porch in Moppie’s lap while mom
handed out candy…opting to be a Pumpkin in order to show her support to the
gourd and squash family.

(Moppie with The Mayor / this particular year it was too hot to wear the black leggings
that came with the outfit)

Now there are some out there in the far left media who might perceive the candy
handouts as some sort of bribe or even some sort of discriminatory treatment against
the sugar intolerant…
But the Mayor insists her actions were all in good fun…

I’ll be here in the Atlanta Woobooville office for the remainder of the week until
a certain mayor can quit coughing like a seal…

And by the way… we are not nor have we ever attempted to be insensitive to any member
of the pinniped family…nor do we show any sort of incorrectness to those who happen
to bark like seals…
This Mayor works very hard to be steadfast and fair especially to seals, pumpkins
and the younger neighborhood constituents who all showed up in a fine array of attire.

I think Batman was a particular favorite.
But the dad that came dressed in full Native American Indian Cheif regalia
was a bit much…something about all of those feathers…

Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved,
for you are my praise.
Jeremiahs 17:14

Operation

“To convert somebody,
go and take them by the hand and guide them.”
St. Thomas Aquinas

(one of my favorite games as a kid in the early 1960’s was Operation by Milton Bradely)

Yesterday my post centered on ailing…
ailing as in being sick and in turn needing a doctor…
I found today’s quote, offered below by Fr Jean Baptiste Saint-Jure,
most timely.

The ailment I was speaking of is actually the condition afflicting most of us as spiritual beings.
And as I noted, we are in desperate need of a doctor…with that doctor
being the Great Physician.

And we must know that this Great Physician has offered each of us the cure…

A cure found in the form of Salvation through the blood of His son Jesus Christ.
And yet oddly, or sadly depending on who you ask, many who are sick care not nor want or
even understand that they are in need of the Physician let alone a cure…

And even if we were aware, many have simply chosen to rewrite the prescription in order for
it to be more applicable to the desires of living life our own kind of way.

When a person who is sick is offered a prescription of medicine, and if taken correctly,
the medicine will offer a cure…why then would that sick person play fast and loose
with the dosage or even opt not to take the medicine at all…???
as it appears that they are assuming that they know more than the doctor knows.

When I was a kid, I loved the game Operation.

I loved it because I could play it with a friend or even better, I could play it alone…
while practicing my “skills”—that way I could mess up as much as it took to finally
get good enough to remove the parts without any repercussion.

I could play it for hours as I’d work on removing those things
the patient would need removing…
The winning of the game went to the person who could remove all the necessary parts, using the
special tweezers, without touching the metal sides of the opening, causing a buzzing sound.

I’d hear that buzz and think “uh oh, I’ve just let my patient perish on my operating table.”

After all my practicing, I imagined my skills to be so good that when I grew up,
I could indeed be a surgeon.

Little did my young mind comprehend that being a doctor and a surgeon would require
a great deal more than using a pair of electrified tweezers to remove a tiny plastic
piece of bread or the equally tiny little-broken heart…
the one piece that really would test my skills.

And so when I read the quote offered today by the good father, I found it rather timely
with my thoughts from yesterday.

The good father reminds us that when we are diagnosed with something rather serious
and are offered a procedure that promises to make us better… or say that it’s not even a promise
but a hope that it might make us better…we put life and limb
on the line by trusting the doctor and allowing him or her to cut us open.

And yet we are not willing to allow the Great Physician to bring us healing.

And the thing is… His healing is a guarantee.

We trust ourselves to a doctor because we suppose he knows his business.
He orders an operation which involves cutting away part of our body and we accept it.
We are grateful to him and pay him a large fee because we judge he would not act as he
does unless the remedy were necessary, and we must rely on his skill.
Yet we are unwilling to treat God in the same way!
It looks as if we do not trust His wisdom and are afraid He cannot do His job properly.
We allow ourselves to be operated on by a man who may easily make a mistake—-
a mistake which may cost us our life—-
and protest when God sets to work on us.
If we could see all He sees we would unhesitatingly wish all He wishes.”
Fr. Jean Baptiste Saint-Jure,
An Excerpt From
Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence
p. 90

ailing?

“Sin separates us from the presence of God”
David Fiorazo, The Cost of Our Silence

(image of a WWII medic’s bag found on pintrest)

Slowly picking my way through David Fiorazo’s book The Cost of Our Silence,
picking as if I was walking ever so slowly and ever so carefully through a thicket of
freshly ripening blackberries…
eyeing the bushes just so as I closely look for the riper and juiciest berries…
so goes my reading.

And whereas time is also a contributing factor to my lack of speed, I seem able only to
take in a page here and a page there…

I’m jumping around a bit as yesterday I offered a look back to our nation’s backstory
as we took a peek back in time to examine the ideals that the pilgrims had brought with them
as they left family, friends, and home an entire ocean behind…
risking everything, including their lives, in search of a place where free worship of
the Creator would be paramount.

Today I’m going to skip ahead in our story, just a tad before I backup again another day
as there is still much that needs to be shared historically as to why we are the nation we are…
or perhaps that is,,, the nation we were…

However, today, as I was taking in a page here and there…
the following quote really jumped out at me…

“We can (and should) talk much about the love of God,
but we are doing the gospel and those who hear us a disservice if we do not also talk
about sin and the wrath of God.”

For you see this is a bit of a recurring theme of mine…
the theme that there is both sin and wrath…
God’s wrath to be precise.

But no one wants to hear about sin, sinful nature, repercussions, a wrathful God, consequences,
etc…
Because instead, we’ve turned all of that into political correctness and tolerance.

David goes on…
“There are many symptoms of the disease (sin), but God has provided a cure (Jesus Christ)
for the cause and has given us a written prescription (the Bible) to follow.
The Great Physician is always on call, so let us speak about the only remedy and
keep referring people to Him!”

Our culture has no idea that it is ailing…no idea that it is truly sick.
It ignores the symptoms, denies the disease, and discredits the Physician
more and more each day.

Any psychologist will tell you that it is human nature to run through some very basic
emotions when confronted with something really bad and or tragic…
with denial being right up there in the earliest stages.

Churchs today are so desperately wanting to cling to dwindling congregations or to a
youthful generation that is heeding the call of the world, so much so that the Churchs are
compromising the entire concept of sin and God’s wrath. Going so far as to offering a
desperately needy and thirsty people a watered down Gospel narrative…having turned it
into a feel good placebo.

No one ever really wants to hear that they are living wrong, immoral, sinful lives…
they’d rather be patted on the head, handed a sucker and told to go scoot off
and keep playing.

But that is not the reality of our world.
It is not the reality of the Chrisitan faith.

If we do not accept sin for what it is…
If we do not admit that we are in need of healing and saving…
then we will incur wrath…

So rather than deal with such, myriads of folks have opted to simply deny any such thing.
No God equals no sin, equals no illness, equals no need, equals blisful ignorance.

And so we, those remnants of the faithful, who understand that sin is sin, death is death,
Satan is real and that healing and saving are paramount… must speak.

We must speak up, out and loud.

David reminds us that opposition to such talk will be a given.
There will be pushback.
There will be ridicule.

But we must remember from whence comes that pushback and ridicule and to where it is actually
directed.

“Most of us understand in today’s culture that living our faith in public will attract
resistance, ridicule, and even hatred.
If we remember our struggle is not against flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12),
we will not take it personally when people come against us.
Their problem is with Jesus Christ, not us.”

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers,
against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces
of evil in the heavenly realms.
Ephesians 6:12)