The Road Not Chosen

What Am I Doing?

Good question. My life seems to be all over the road right now, but I suppose that is the nature of summer. I haven't posted lately as it seems I am trying to stir several pots at once and this one has been left alone. So here goes:

My Dad was transferred to a pulmonary rehab hospital a week ago, where they specialized in weaning patients from ventilators and helping them regain their strength. Suffice it to say this has not been an easy transition for Dad. I can't imagine what it would be like to be in a coma for most of 6 weeks and then have to adjust to being part of the waking world again, with all its noise & lights & commotion. He is very weak physically but gets better each day, with the occasional small set-back. Prayerfully, he will be home in about 6 weeks.

Evan's hip surgery has finally been rescheduled, after much badgering on our part. The doctor's assistant wouldn't return our 2 weeks worth of calls or e-mails and we really needed to get a date nailed down. Harold finally spent a day calling every couple of hours until we got an answer. So July 28th will be the day, and hopefully nothing will go wrong, making rescheduling a necessity again!

I am gearing up to teach 11th & 12th grade Language Arts this coming school year. This year's curriculum has an emphasis on writing and grammar. I'm also going to throw in some teaching on critical thinking skills. We had used Chuck Colson's "How Now Shall We Live?" in past classes. I am reading it to see what I might be able to incorporate into this year's class. At over 500 pages, it is definitely not light summer reading!

Oh, and the big, fun news is: I got a new computer, with a groovy flat panel monitor, at home! Hooray and blessings to my wonderful husband. My old one was sputtering and threatening to give up the ghost. It had been worked to pieces. We are revamping it and passing it on to Evan. Meanwhile, I have a smokin' hot machine that is fast as lightning! I have downloaded the Microsoft Office 2007 beta to play with. So far, so good & it is visually very well arranged. As someone who spends her work day going between Word, Excel, Outlook and One Note, I am finding this new version fun.

Hope the summer is going well for all of you. Go have a nice glass of tea & enjoy the rest of the day. I know I will!

God Is So Cool!

Don't you love seeing stuff in nature that makes you say, "Wow!" Here's something I hope to see one day (click on picture to really go "Oooooo"):

June 19, 2006—It looks like a rainbow that's been set on fire, but this phenomenon is as cold as ice.

Known in the weather world as a circumhorizontal arc, this rare sight was caught on film on June 3 as it hung over northern Idaho near the Washington State border.

The arc isn't a rainbow in the traditional sense—it is caused by light passing through wispy, high-altitude cirrus clouds. The sight occurs only when the sun is very high in the sky (more than 58° above the horizon). What's more, the hexagonal ice crystals that make up cirrus clouds must be shaped like thick plates with their faces parallel to the ground.

When light enters through a vertical side face of such an ice crystal and leaves from the bottom face, it refracts, or bends, in the same way that light passes through a prism. If a cirrus's crystals are aligned just right, the whole cloud lights up in a spectrum of colors.

This particular arc spanned several hundred square miles of sky and lasted for about an hour, according to the London Daily Mail.

Check this story out (& see a better view of the picture) at National Geographic News.

Read This

Excellent essay on what it means to have a brother who has Down Syndrome.

Kleenex In The Kitchen

My emotions have been sneaking up on me lately. I'm not sure if I'm still trying to recover physically and emotionally from our trip to California or if my hormones are just out of wack. Hard to tell. It's one of those times that I keep Kleenex handy in nearly every room because you never know when you might need one.

My favorite room to cry in is our kitchen. I can sit at the table, look out the French doors onto our nice, bunny-filled back yard, and really let loose. Of course, this is when no one is at home. I am famous for absolutely hating to cry in front of anyone, ever. I come from a long line of people who value tightly controlled emotion above almost all else. Although I do think that gene is kind of recessive in me. Most of the time you can take one look at me and know my emotional state. The problem with this is that I have never been a good poker player. But at least my family & friends don't have to guess whether or not I am in a good mood. It is just sort of, well, apparent.

I actually made myself sick while visiting my Dad in the hospital. After two or three days of trying to tightly control my emotions, I actually started feeling dizzy and nauseous. When I asked God what was wrong, He said, "Just be yourself. Be true to who you really are. You're trying to suppress your feelings. It's making you sick." Now God wasn't telling me to wail and carry on like a crazy person. He was just reminding me that when I try to make myself fit into someone else's mold it doesn't work. I stopped worrying about what anyone would think if tears rolled down my cheeks as I held my unconscious father's hand. Tears in that situation showed love, not lack of faith as some would believe.

So yes I am in a "Kleenex in the kitchen" season of my life right now. But that's ok. As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (Message Version):

So we're not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There's far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can't see now will last forever.

Hey, This Is Pretty Accurate!

Which Saint Are You?

You are Joan of Arc! You don't really want to hurt anyone, but if they attack your friends or your country and no-one else will stand up to fight them, you head into the battle. Beware though, conviction tends to get you killed.
Take this quiz!

Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

Thanks to Linda at Musings From The Windowsill!

An Odd Childhood

I had a most unconventional upbringing. My earliest memories are of racetracks, Vegas casinos and picking up champagne corks in the backyard on Saturday mornings. Oh, there are other memories scattered in there: snuggled into the passenger seat of my Mom's Spitfire as she raced across town at midnight to pick my Dad up from his shift as an X-Ray Tech at the hospital, my Grandma Poulsom using a comb to tug (painfully) through my waist length curly hair that always tangled, eating onion sandwiches with Grandpa Poulsom (much to Grandma's horror!), sitting in the back of a classroom in the evening, coloring, as my mom taught on some obscure aspect of Nuclear Medicine.

My godparents, whom I called Uncle Clyde & Aunt Kathy, taught me how to pick the best race horse & would always give me a dollar to bet on the one I thought would win. (Uncle Clyde also taught me, at the age of 5, how to shift gears as we rode in his red Triumph speedster.) I loved going to the racetrack. It seemed exciting: the flourish of the man with the silver trumpet who would herald the start of the race, colorful jockeys & beautiful horses, all the cheering and clapping! I suppose now it's illegal for minors to go to a track. In the early 60's it was apparently fine. When we were in L.A. last week our hotel was a few miles from Santa Anita racetrack. As we drove past it twice a day, memories came flooding back to me. It is a beautiful track, with the most amazing Art Deco architecture. I so wanted to go walk around it to get a better look, since I never cared much for the structure itself when I was a child. I was more interested in the horses.

My parents would go to Las Vegas and on the rare occasion that a babysitter could not be found, they would take me with them. I would sit under the slot machine or blackjack table as they gambled. Again, something not allowed today, and for good reason! Surprisingly I have no bad memories of this. Probably because as an only child, I was good at occupying myself with a coloring book or something to read.

The odd thing about my childhood is that while I have some very unconventional memories & experiences, none of it was traumatic or horrific. I was always well fed, clothed, tended to & loved. I knew that my family was different only in the aspect that my mother worked & other kid's mom's got to stay at home. Looking back now my parents, who became Christians when I was 13 years old, roll their eyes & say "What on earth were we thinking?!?!"

As I was reading William Zinsser's "Inventing The Truth" (see sidebar) the other day, my mom said, "When you finally write a book, tell the truth!" I mentioned to her that there might be parts of the truth of my life she might not want to see in print. "No, just tell the truth" was her firm reply.

As I thought about this I realized that in my childhood (and my life) no matter how many things should have been done differently by my parents and by myself, God was in control of it all. And so in the retelling of events the only thing that matters is the sovereignty and mercy of God, who protected me and brought me to a saving knowledge of Him. That is the truth!

Songs That Help

Link: Songs That Help.

I am listening to this song almost non-stop right now. It is so majestic & puts my mind and spirit in the right place!

Hallelujah - Hillsong United

Lessons From The ICU

Harold & I got back from California about 1:30am today. It was an exhausting 6 days, which seems kind of silly as nearly all of it was spent sitting in a chair by my dad's bedside. He is hooked up to several machines, all of which have unique beeps. After a day we could tell which one was beeping without even looking. We met several of Dad's doctors, which was good. The staff caring for him is awesome & kind. We are thankful for all the wonderful nurses in the ICU.

Dad's condition is more critical than we originally thought. While his aortic valve transplant has done great & he has healed from that, his lungs are not well. He has Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. ARDS is not a specific disease; instead, it is a type of severe, acute lung dysfunction that is associated with a variety of diseases, such as pneumonia, shock, sepsis (a severe infection in the body) or trauma. A lot of what has been happening to Dad has been complications of ARDS. There is no known specific cause for ARDS. The outlook is very unclear. Some patients recover fully and some don't. The hope at this point is that they can pinpoint the source of an infection he currently has & that will help his lungs begin to heal. If they can get him well enough to leave ICU he will be transferred to a rehab facility to help him regain strength & muscle tone that he has lost after so many weeks in bed.

So how am I with all this? It has been very emotional for me. Yesterday was the last time I will see him for 4 weeks, when we make our scheduled summer "vacation" trip out there. Or it may have been the last time this side of heaven. But from my point of view, his heart condition has been so serious for so many decades that for many, many years I have never taken any phone call or kiss goodbye for granted. I have lived many years knowing that each phone conversation with my Dad could literally be the last. I am at peace with that. Our last conversation before he went into the hospital was very good. He told me how much he loved me & how proud he was of me and my life. What more could a daughter ask for? So I left with sadness but also with hope. It is all in God's hands. I trust Him to do the best for and with my Dad. Our prayer is of course that he would make a full recovery but God alone knows the number of Dad's days

I will write more about other things later but right now I am going to go take a nap! Thanks as always for your prayers. (Oh, and if you are one of my family members reading this, don't mention this post to Mom!)