the true test–examine

“Always be impartial and just in your deeds.
Put yourself into your neighbor’s place, and him in yours,
and then you will judge fairly..
Frequently, therefore, examine your heart,
whether it is so disposed towards your neighbor,
as you would have his disposed towards you, were you to change places;
for this is the true test.”
St. Francis de Sales, p. 226
An Excerpt From
Introduction to the Devout Life

(a wee hidden fungi in the woods / Julie Cook / 2021)

Ok, I think we can all admit we don’t like tests.
Be it the studying.
The nerves.
The wondering.
The sweating.
The fear of not measuring up…

The list is pretty endless.

And I suppose there is probably a slight percentage of folks out
there who don’t bat an eye at a test.
More power to you…all two of you! HA!

I was never a good test taker.
I never felt that the typical classroom test captured if I really knew
my material or not.
Math, well, that’s a whole different ball of wax…you either know it or you
don’t and I never did…

But we digress…

Today’s post was actually going to focus in on our disenfranchised police
departments and the woeful and shameful way in which they are being treated…
be it our Border Patrol, various State Patrol, city police or rural sheriffs…
their situations are all abysmal and we should be ashamed.

But I’m going to have to hold off on that thought today as several different
things came racing at me that I felt might need attention.
and if I think about it, it will also tie into how we are
treating our law enforcement as they are just another branch of the tree
of the trouble.

Today, especially today, I have kept reading, seeing and watching
something very troubling taking place between Americans…
and I bet we can all guess as to what that thing might just because
I know you’ve seen it too.

There is a growing and gapping hole in our hearts.

It is a widening gap in our lack of and ability to offer empathy.

Empathy, the dictionary tells us is:
‘the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.’

And what we are witnessing play out in real time right here and now
is how very little in the way of empathy we have—
especially in the way of offering any of it to our fellow human beings-

In particular to those who we do not see eye to eye.

Loathing enters in.
Despise and resentment each set a hard rock in the midst of the heart.

We no longer want to hear the side, thoughts or feelings of those
who we disagree with because we have already rendered them null and void.
They might as well just disappear into thin smoke,
banished away from our presence, our lives, our world…
all because we don’t like their color,
their politics,
their religion or lack thereof…
their views…
or their lack of vaccinations…

So instead we look at them sideways and glare…
we find ourselves wishing them ill or harm.
Some of us have even verbalized such to their faces.

“you need to die”
“you need to rot in hell”
“I hope you are raped”

It’s all actually quite anti-human, de-humanizing.

I see, with my own eyes, that there is a tremendous lack of care, patience
and or regard for our fellow man.

Be it the nurse or doctor who curses the patient who is deathly sick with
Covid, or something else, when they reveal that they had not been vaccinated.
Suddenly contempt and resentment quickly flows freely toward that sick,
and in many cases, dying individual.
Or that contempt is simply heaped upon the grieving surviving family.
Or upon anyone who has opted not to get vaccinated.
It is indeed the clean and unclean..
We are told to trust and follow the science but that science just
happens to be fluid because we are learning on the fly.

“they were foolish”
“they were selfish”
“they got what they deserved”
“they have caused great harm and wasted precious time and money”
“had they not been overweight, smoked, drank or…”
fill in the blank with any other poor habit that might have
contributed to them being sick and dying.

Then there are those who have lost loved ones and now publicly denounce all others
who are unvaccinated for, in their minds, they are the ones who caused
the death of this said loved one.

And maybe all that is true.

Maybe that pro-life person out there should be raped so they can
see first hand how decisions now must be made.

Maybe that person who choses not to be vaccinated should simply
get sick and die.

Maybe the young mother to 6 kids, all with different fathers
should be forced to live on the streets.

Maybe all white people want blacks to be slaves again–
so says Maxine Waters.

The list lengthens daily.

And so our society wrestles with its response.
We wrestle as individuals.

Overlook everything or we simply cherry pick the issues we find most egregious.

I know that I don’t agree with a lot of folks out there right now
about very much.

I can find many ills and reasons as to why I disagree or even get angry with
others and or their views.
Just as others do with me and my way of thinking or seeing.

Yet I still know that all of this is really all wrong, it’s flat out bad.

Maybe I can’t change your views or feelings and maybe you can’t change mine…
but I would not wish ill upon you or those you love.
I wasn’t wired that way and I don’t think you were either.

So that’s why I felt St. Francis de Sales quote, the one I offered at the
start of this post, was so moving and so on point.

We are to have empathy by walking in another’s shoes.
Yet, sadly, our culture is long past that notion.

I won’t walk in your shoes, let alone walk with you period…
that is our society’s current mindset.

Yet I know that empathy does not equate to buying in or giving into the sinful
or the evil—we are not to give such a free pass.
Accountability for our actions remains paramount.

Yet self examination must remain ever present.
Self examination…not hubris and pride, but real deep introspection…
It is most difficult to do because it begins to expose the cracks
in our own facade.
Yet it is what God requires of all men…
The being….to see, to look, to feel, to offer grace, to hold accountable…
but to do so by His rule of play and not our own.
He calls that Grace and He has given it freely…
I think we are to do so as well…

Would you pass the test?

I need to go study…

“I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that
I must hate a bad man’s actions but not hate the bad man:
or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner….
I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction:
how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man?
But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom
I had been doing this all my life — namely myself.
However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed,
I went on loving myself.
There had never been the slightest difficulty about it.
In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man.
Just because I loved myself,
I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I love nurses–they exemplify everything God would like to see in us, His children.

Augustus was the son of a god and he asked the whole human race to swear loyalty
to him as “Father”.
It’s at this moment that God the Father sent the real Son of God into the world…
God works His providence even in the midst of human foibles.
Dr. Edmund Mazza
from Rediscovering Christmas

(Vampire day, again / Julie Cook / 2020)

Well you may remember my tale from about a month ago…
my tale about having to go siphon off an entire pound of blood due to being a
Hemochromatosis carrier.

A hemo what you ask…??

Well, it seems that my body hordes iron.

And who knew that the body only uses what it needs—if there is excess,
well, the body simply stores it up in the organs…where it sits.
Think of a balloon simply filling up with more and more air…
eventually, something has got to give!

The high end of a normal iron level in the blood is 150.
I was sitting at 330…therefore, I have to be milked like a cow in order to
bring my levels down.
Sadly, I do not do well with giving blood.
I never have.
My blood pressure tends to bottom out and I basically get quite sick just before I pass out.

So yesterday was once again vampire day.
I had to go give blood.

I go to the hospital’s infusion center.
Folks are here for their chemotherapy, needed antibiotics, phlebotomies,
needed fluids, steroids…you name it.

Many are cancer patients.
They walked slowly and were pale.
They were minus all hair and bundled up due to the cold.

Many were on walkers or canes.
They were both young and old.

Four of us are divvied up into a quad with hospital chairs in each corner of the quad.
Some curtains were drawn some were not.

The nurses greeted each patient by name.
Many knew the regulars…mainly those who were the chemo patients.
“Hey darling” you’d hear a warbly voice call out to a familiar nurse.

The rapport was enough to make you feel that you were missing out
on some glorious secret friendship.
I felt almost envious as there were many
“I love yous” and “I love you too”—each sincerely and genuinely shared.
An intimate special moment shared between caregiver and patient…
human being to human being.

“Honey, you want me to get you something to drink?”
“How bout a ginger ale?”
“How bout a diet ginger-ale…it’s all we have.”
“That would be perfect!”

Some patients had recently undergone amputations due to infections or diabetes.
They were there to receive high-powered antibiotics.

“Mr. Gentry, we’ll see you back here on Christmas day, ok?”
“Christmas Day, really?!”
“Yes sir, we’ll be here…and so will you, you hear me?!”
“Well only if you wear your hair down…”
It seems that elderly Mr. Gentry, getting about on his walker, is a bit of a rounder
with these ladies—and they all seemed to love it.

He had part of his foot amputated this past week after having cut his foot this past summer
at the lake while playing with his grandkids.
These nurses were all well aware of his hijinks and played right into his devious intentions.
Mr. Gentry needs high-powered intravenous antibiotics every day for a couple of weeks.

I was enjoying soaking in these conversations all the while as I was slowly losing a part
of myself into a plastic bag dangling on the floor.

I really do ok up until the very end of my time being hooked up like a gas pump.
Right before I’m finished filling up the bag, that’s when things go downhill.

And true to form, today my BP fell to 63 over 34.
And true to their form, the nurses who saw all color fade from my body, came racing over
in order to flip my chair up so I was practically on my head,
they next threw a cold washcloth on my head.
They handed me a green puke bag…which thankfully I did not have to use.
My curtain wasn’t drawn and I would have hated being the show of my quad.

All of this was taking place while the nurses changed out the lines and immediately
began administering a bag of fluids.

It is amazing what these fluids can do.

I go from passing out and near-death to right back to the life of the living.

Slowly my BP climbed, but then oddly it dipped again.

This time it didn’t rebound like it did last time.
I didn’t rebound like I did last time.

The nurse had to walk me out to my car this time as I was still a bit woozy headed.

“Go straight home.”
“But I need to go to the grocery store.”
“Do that later!”

But before the nurses pulled my head up off the floor, one nurse came by each chair in our quad
and handed each patient a simple candy cane.
She made certain that each patient saw the story printed on the wrapper…
the story of the candy cane.

You can say what you want to say about Christianity and spirituality within such a setting…
You can throw in your sarcasm about faith in fairytales…but I will tell you one thing…
the folks in those chairs each appreciated their candy cane, mattered not their faith or creed–
they appreciated its story and the fact that one human being was offering hope to those whose
hope was starting to run on empty.

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace:
1 Peter 4:10

Off with their heads!

“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the cat.
“We’re all mad here.”
The Cheshire Cat, Alice in Wonderland

(a toppled statue of St Francis / Julie Cook / 2020)

No, my little St. Francis statue is not the victim of our current hate-fueled madness but
rather it was the victim of a severe thunderstorm.
He toppled over onto the sidewalk and literally lost his head.

Yet, to be honest, seeing poor ol St. Francis having lost his head,
stung my senses a bit.

And so if an old worn garden statue I’ve had for years can prick my emotions, imagine how
I feel watching American monument after monument being defaced or destroyed?

Imagine my dismay over our suddenly removing the names of those more famous among us,
those who are now long gone, being removed from buildings or airports all because their only crime
was having lived generations ago.

What of those now screaming that all white European images of Christ be removed,
or better yet, destroyed?

What of those in the LGBTQ communities exclaiming they don’t wish to co-exist with Christians
but would rather prefer seeing Christianity as nonexistent.

But more about that nonsense later…

Have you ever found yourself pondering the notion of your existence?
As in a ‘why am I here’ sort of pondering?

I know that there have been those amongst us who have felt a keen sense
of purpose for their lives early on…a sense of destiny.
It is a sense of knowing, even as a child, that they were destined for something
so much bigger and so much greater than simply being themselves.

Karol Wojtyla, later the first Polish Pope and Saint, John Paul II felt such.
George Patton, later 4-star general, also felt such.
Winston Churchill, later the UK Prime Minister during WWII, again, felt the same.

As a young boy, Churchill is noted for telling a young schoolmate that he knew
that greatness was in his future.
This coming from a precocious young boy who struggled in his schooling.
A boy who was shipped off to boarding school and was often an embarrassment to his
famously prestigious father.
Greatness was not the initial thought that came to the mind of those who knew
the boy before there was to be the man.

There have been countless others who have also felt the very same sense of purpose.

A feeling that their life was a calling.
A calling to something greater than.

Such callings are often referred to as vocations.
With vocations being vastly different from mere jobs.

A vocation requires a deep sense of dedication—up to and not limited
to one’s very existence.

Those who become members of religious orders and even those who are lead to become teachers,
doctors, policemen, firefighters, nurses…they are but a few of those who we consider as
being called to vocations rather than 9 to 5 jobs.

Those who seek vocations rather than the average job have often felt such calls
early on in life.
An invisible pulling to something so much more than…

If you were ever a kid who attended any sort of Sunday School,
chances are you heard stories and tales about ‘the saints’ —
those brave men and women who dedicated their entire beings to serving God
and proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
Those who were willing to face the dire consequences of doing so.

Gruesome tortures with eventual death being the inevitable.

Some of these men and women had been average folks but many had been roughnecks,
criminals and most often the worst amongst us…
yet God had tapped them early on for something so much greater.

And once the scales had fallen from their eyes and their hearts broken,
their true mission began.

And so, we know…
there is indeed a calling.
And there will be no denying this calling.

Some of us already know this very keenly.
Others of us come to this knowledge reluctantly…but come we do.
And when we do so, we do so resolutely.

So tell me, have you heard it?

Have you heard or felt the calling?

I have.

And so now I know…

This thought will be continued…tomorrow.

Call to me and I will answer you,
and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.
Jeremiah 33:3

Whoever is of God hears the words of God.
The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”
John 8:47

melted pats of butter…

“I am old, Gandalf. I don’t look it, but I am beginning to feel it in my heart of hearts.
Well-preserved indeed! Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched,
if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.
That can’t be right. I need a change, or something.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

(clipart image of a melting pat of butter)

I’ve been heard, as of late, to lament that I feel as if I am a melting pat of butter.

Meaning….
I am tired.

Simply melting away.

But really, who isn’t tired these days?

Nurses.
Doctors.
EMS.
Police.
Firefighters.
First Responders.
Teachers.
Educational Admins.
Parents.
Grandparents.
Work from home folks.
Students.
Kids.

We are all so, so tired.

Physically.
Emotionally.
Mentally.
Spiritually.

Remember, you can go to Walmart or the liquor store…but you can’t go to Chruch.

We are tired of mixed messages.
We are tired of lockdowns.
We are tired of politicians.
We are tired of not being able to work.
We are tired of not being able to move.
We are tired of not being able to pay our bills.
We are tired.

We are tired of being told what to do.
We are tired of being told what not to do.

We don’t know who to believe.

Our leaders are a mixed bag of nuts.
As in many are truly nuts.

And we are tired of nuts.

And so I cling to the One constant…

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Matthew 11:28-30

so much for remedies

Substantial progress toward better things can rarely be taken without
developing new evils requiring new remedies.
William Howard Taft

This picture of the collegiate dammit doll, that does not always
successfully assist my beloved Georgia Bulldogs with a win,
is looking more and more like a potential
voodoo doll as I am just about at that point…
To the point that if I rip off said left leg of dammit doll,
will my own left leg feel any better??

So I went for my little nerve block yesterday…the one I had high hopes for.

Arriving a tad early, they finally called me back to the procedure room.
I had to hop up on the table and was instructed to lay on my stomach
as the cute young assistant pulled my tee shirt up to my head
and my shorts down to my keister while she proceeded to place the
sterile papers on my back in such a fashion that only a sectioned portion of my back was exposed.
She then rubs me down with betadine, alcohol and whatever else she had on that tray.

The doctor comes in donning a lovely lead gown complete with a lead apron for his neck.
I cock to my head to the right to see that the little assistant is now donning
her own cute polka dotted lead gown with matching neck guard as they were both
making darn certain their thyroids were covered up from the x-rays
they’d be using on my back during the procedure.

I didn’t have a lead guard for my thyroid…
maybe cause I was on my stomach or maybe they just knew
that my thyroid was already too far gone to be concerned with.

I explained that the drilling pain in my back and hip had subsided
but that there was now an excruciating burning pain in my inner thigh
and groin with the top of my thigh being totally numb.

“Hummmm, that’s odd…”

Not a reassuring comment from my young tall, just recently married, Asian doctor.

I asked the doctor if this little shot business was instantaneous and he couldn’t exactly say.
He says the goal is to get rid of the pain…
Yes that is my goal as well.

“How will you know where to shoot in order to help these oh so fiery nerves of mine” I ask
“Will the X-ray show that?”

“Oh no, the x-ray just let’s me see the spine, but from what you tell me I might
need to shoot higher.”

Great.

The reason they did a MRI was because they couldn’t see the two bulging discs on the x-ray—
so now he thinks an x-ray is going to steer him straight….?

Like I say,
Great.

As they position the x-ray machine, letting it fire off for an image, they both step back.
I begin feeling a little like Typhoid Mary as they keep taking steps back to a safe distance…
Them in their lead gowns and guards and me in my jacked up tee shirt,
jacked down gym shorts and tennis shoes.

“you’re going to feel a pinch.” he tells me.

Try more like a skewer has just been threaded deep into your back.

My fists clinch as the little beep beep monitor on my finger lets all present know
that I am now in pain.

With each x-ray blast, each step back, each skewering, lidocaine and steroids are injected
deep into my back

“Do you feel the steroid going in, feeling it down in your leg?”

“No”

“Hummm.”

I did however feel not so good.

Kind of heavy in a weird way and now my neck was hurting from being cocked backwards…
herniated discs there as well, but that’s for another day.

They x-ray and skewer me several more times before they finish.

And just like that, my tall, recently married, lead covered Asian doctor leaves the room.

The assistant slaps a small band-aid on my back and tells me to go home, sit with
my feet and legs elevated, no lifting, no cooking…just rest.
“Watch for any white liquid coming from the holes”…leaking spinal fluids I fear,
as she adds “no showering for 12 hours”…

I sit up on the table as I ask her how long it would be till I could tell any difference.

“possibly tomorrow, but give it a week.”

A week???
A freaking week?????
UGH!!!

I get up and go out to my waiting husband…
Who’s looking ever so hopeful—

“How do you feel?”

“Let’s just say that the pain that I came in with, is now going out with us.”
“Add to that a sore back like I’ve just been beaten.”

He takes me home, helps gets me situated and tells me not to worry about supper, he’ll
pick something up.
I tell him, no, that I can cook as I feel no different, but my back is just sore as hell.

I sit on an ice pack for about 30 minutes when I say to hell with this.

My leg still feels like crap and I was now mad.

I started getting supper ready, slamming every drawer and door in my wake.
I went out to start the grill, still slamming and bamming.

My husband comes home to find me in the throws of the tears of utter frustration.

I fall into his arms sobbing that first it was dad, now it was me…
He tells me that we’ll go to the clinic down in Columbus but I sob that
between all the doctors I’ve been to in the past month, between both me and dad…
I’m done…

We’ve seen…
Primary care physicians, his and mine.
Urologists,
Gastroenterologists,
Oncologists,
Radiologists,
Orthopedic surgeons..
everyone’s PAs
CT scans,
Cystoscopes,
Surgeries
x-rays
MRIs
Nerve Blocks
Hospice

you name it, dad and I have done it all… starting late August.

I am done for a while…

When it was finally time for bed, I decided I’d take half a pain pill.
I have amassed a small arsenal of prescriptions that each and every doctor and PA has prescribed…
with me forgoing all of them as they have been various drugs from hell—
sedatives, pain meds, anti-inflammatory meds, nerve meds…
none which have been the first bit helpful, curative, let alone safe with me driving
back and forth literally every other day to dads…

I take only half of the hydrocodone as a whole pill will keep me up and wired for hours.
Hopefully half will help.

At 3AM with my eyes never having actually shut and with sleep now long elusive,
my mind frantically racing, I pondered how in the hell people could
ever get addicted to these things as they only make me wild and
ready to go run a freaking marathon.

I ponder the current affairs of the world.
I’m thinking that in my current mood and state of mind that I could
be put in a room with both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton
and could knock some sense into both of them,
or better yet,
I could knock them both silly.
I was ready to take on Basher Assad, Kin Jong Un, Vladimir Putin and all of ISIS combined.

It was a ‘don’t mess with me’ moment to be sure in the wee hours of the morning…
all the while as my leg was on fire…
which got me singing Alicia Keys’ “this girl is on fire” in my head at 3AM…

I was relieved at first light…the mental madness would now come to an end as
the day and fire of leg would resume..

So, it’s back to square one…whatever square that is….
With the thought of me finding a nudist colony as the whole pants thing is not working
for my leg…
I’ll keep you posted at to what I find…

I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart;
I will glorify your name forever.
For great is your love toward me;
you have delivered me from the depths,
from the realm of the dead.
Psalm 86:12-13

a need for prayer

“The function of prayer is not to influence God,
but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God,
at His disposition, and listening to His voice in the depth of our hearts.”
― Mother Teresa

(broken sand dollar/ Santa Rosa, Beach, FL / Julie Cook / 2016)

I’m a huge believer in prayer and the power found in this sacred and mystical transcending form of communication.

I’ve lived long enough to know that not all prayers are answered as we often hope or even expect.
But I know that there are indeed answers—
I know that there is a powerfully innate connection that takes place when we earnestly seek the presence of the Creator…

We are told …
“Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for,
it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.
For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”
Matthew 18:19-20

So I come before you this evening to ask for your payers…

Our niece, my husband’s younger sister’s middle child, was rushed to the ER yesterday morning and remains in ICU.
Her potassium levels are deathly bottoming out for reasons yet discovered.
She is not responding to the emergency treatments.

Her father, a physician, told us this morning that “they” were being cautiously optimistic but his face told us otherwise.

Her name is Chrissy…she’s a 44 year old wife and mom.

The obvious prayer is that Chrissy be made well…
but I know that there is more to just praying for a “miraculous healing”

I know that prayers must also be said over and for her husband Bill and 14 year old son Eli.
Prayers for her brother, sister and their respective families…
As well as for my sister-n-law and her husband…

Prayers are offered for the nursing staff and the doctors…those charged with solving the mysteries and saving lives.

I believe that many hearts and voices raised in unison create a powerful force.

I ask if you will please join me in this time of needed prayer….

Thank you….