Here's the thing...when I started this blog, my goal was to show my ruminations on my quiet time with a humorist's slant, the end result being the potential of having a book full of relevant, gut-deep observations on the Christian walk that also made people laugh until they coughed up various vestigial organs. I wanted the gut-twisting sincerity of The Shack, some light apologetics, and over it all a funny twist that kept even shallow people coming back for more just to hear the next joke or wisecrack.
Thing is, my life hasn't been very funny lately. I'm not saying it's been bad. God blessed, God blesses, and God will bless. But God has also introduced new things into my life that actually caused a pause in humor for some time. I kept hearing complaints like, "You have no sense of humor any more." For me, that's like hearing that you are missing a leg and somehow failed to notice it. I didn't want to write about the goings-on because the lessons I am learning, though straight from God's palm and a privilege for which I am thankful, are not funny sometimes. I have wept more, prayed more, felt more despair and frustration and anger and, to top it all, that all-consuming sensation of PAIN in the last few months than I think I ever knew I had the capacity to bear. But I've also felt more gratitude, both to the people around me and to the God that cares for me, loved more deeply, prayed more openly, and appreciated the things that I have so much more.
To not write about the things I'm going through is to do a disservice to God, and to the one who might, by some chance, stumble across these bits of information translated into words on a computer screen and find some help, answers, identification, or succor in my groping and grasping attempts to find a way home.
So here's my big info-dump update: A few months ago I started experiencing severe lower abdominal pain that actually landed me in the hospital for a couple of days and knocked me out of commission for work for about six weeks. The financial devastation aside, I don't know what to do with myself when I'm not at work, and there were days that the pain was so intense I could barely leave my bed. So many tests have been and will be run, but there is nothing forthcoming at the moment. I am still in pain. I have an entirely new appreciation for my patients who have lived with chronic pain for years. I have lost my job, an entirely separate story about God's infinite grace that will be elaborated upon shortly. I feel like the only two things I do any more are sleep and hurt, and there's no point in denying that I have been having depression issues from it all.
Still, there is no way to deny that God is good. I have never been without food, without a home, without medicine. And the following story is an object study in literally being crushed beneath God's mercy. Read on, I beg you.
Since going back to work, I had sensed a difference in my supervisor's attitude toward me. They were, for the first few days, very courteous, but cold. I felt them watching me through the weeks, waiting for me to slip up. Then my workload began increasing. They started giving me "extra" work that seemed almost designed to trigger the pain I was having and exhaust me, as well as cutting away hours of time during which I could have been attending to my patients. I repeatedly requested relief, was promised it, and was given none. I was also denied a desk job that would have taken me off the floor and been so much easier on my body.
Then, the fateful day came. I'll start off by saying that I had a dream the night before all this erupted, about being saved from evil by angels. I've been dreaming about angels a lot lately. I'll write about the dream in detail here later, but for now the synopsis will serve.
That whole day at work I was battling a choking feeling of despair. The place that I had once felt such warmth and appreciation was now cold as ice. Even as I was clocking out, I knew that my time there was short if this atmosphere kept up. Then on my way home, I got a call from my DON. She canceled my shift, and wanted me to come in and "talk with her" about "some things that were going on at the nursing home." I'm not an idiot. I was very blunt, and asked her if I was fired. Her answer?
"No, I can't do that unless I've talked to corporate." In other words, just a matter of time.
I went home and spent about four hours on the floor of my room on my face, weeping, praying, begging God for some miracle, some way out. I wept and prayed so hard that I ruptured blood vessels under my eyes. The bruises are still there. Somewhere along the way, I prayed this, and I think I will remember it for the rest of my life:
O God, Who knows my name
Who makes no wrong moves
Who holds my life
Make me an instrument
Mold me only to serve You
You cannot slip, You cannot falter
Go before me, O Maker of ways
Where there is no way
Hold me, You whose hands are steady
Though You slay me, yet will I trust in You.
Between calls and text messaging from a gimpy phone that eventually sulled up and refused to work and sending out e-mails, I managed to activate the powerhouse prayer chain that it is my privilege to be a part of. A long talk with my dad soothed me, a long talk with my mom justified me, and soon I had a plan. Much more prayer, much more prostration. I finally rested, after talking to the roomies, and drifted into a dreamless sleep.
When I awoke, my mind was crystal clear, my resolve rock-hard. I felt like one about to engage in battle, and I was aware that it could very well be the fight of my life. I fasted from food and liquids, something I never do, but I felt that anything I introduced into my body would shake my focus. I took only enough water to swallow my medication, brought food and water for after the meeting, and headed out. The weather was cold and rainy, but there was an atmosphere of warmth in my car. I felt as if the angels from my dream the previous night were in my backseat, wrapping their wings around me. For all I know, they could have been.
When I arrived for the meeting, I found a dollar in the parking lot. It was laying there in the standing water on the parking lot, crisp, folded in half, waiting at my feet. I bent over and picked it up. There was a certainty in my heart at that very moment that God was undoubtedly, unshakably on my side, that He would fight for me, that He would rescue me.
To make a long story short, after listening to a nonsense write-up, being shouted at when I attempted to defend myself, and being denied the right to sign my write-up slip, I turned in a lengthy resignation letter that told her exactly what I thought about what was happening, clipped together with my name badge, and walked out the door, dignity intact.
I drove straight to my doctor's office, cried on her shoulder, and together we formed a plan. I needed to find an interim job, something flexible, that would let me do as much as I could do with my last gasp of insurance and hopefully get this pain diagnosed. She also knew a few people in town that were hiring for nurses, including a home health office, with which I have experience.
As I was leaving the doctor's office, Dr. Horsley came bursting out of a room with a very nice lady in tow. She introduced us, and told me, "This is the woman that owns the home health office I told you about." Before I left, I had a job, two and a half hours after I had resigned. The lady kept hugging me and telling me that God had brought me to her. I have to admit, I agreed, and I could and hugged that woman into bits.
So there you have it. That one set of circumstances has shattered, scattering into a million rainbow pieces of Grace and Mercy. Where it will lead in the future, no one knows, but for now, I'm safe in the arms of Love.
All this to say, I feel a duty to begin blogging again, if only to record the things that are happening and how God is slowly, slowly breaking me down and reworking me into something that He can use for His glory. If anyone reads it, gains anything from it, excellent. Who knows, there may even still be something to laugh at in this mishmash life.
