Grace

I'm doing a devotional series called "When Worldviews Collide"; basically it's about the differences between what Christians believe and what followers of other world religions believe, and how we as Christians can effectively (and compassionately) witness. Also gives a pretty indepth review of the religions so that we know what we're talking about. So far it's really interesting. The man who wrote it is a former Muslim who was disowned by his family after coming to Christ, so his testimony carries some weight. Anyway, today's lesson was on grace and how no other belief system offers it; sounds pretty pedestrian. I just wanted to share how this author defines grace (everything in quotes is his, not mine).

"For many of us who came to Christianity from another world religion, grace is a profound and startling principle. We were taught that we must live and die by our works. We grew up with the constant terror of the balancing scales. We learned to face death with loathing because we knew we were unprepared for judgment...Do you mean that Christ has given me the means for my salvation? Are you saying that I cannot be good enough? Do you honestly teach that where God knows I am incapable, He instead provides His blood as my means of salvation?....As a former Muslim who was taught that paradise is promised for those who die fighting in the cause of Islam, I will put it in the most graphic terms: By grace Jesus Christ strapped Himself to a cross so that I would not have to strap a bomb to myself."

That blew me away.

Here are some new things that my boy does/says:
1) Ask him "Are you stinky?" and he shakes his head no.
2) Ask him if he wants to get out of the bathtub and he invariably shakes his head no.
3) Says "caca (crap)." His father encouraged him on that one. Pretty soon they'll be holding matches behind their butts and farting.
4) Thinks burping and sneezing are both hilarious.
5) Has a fascination with lids. If you take the lid off anything at all, he wants to hold it until it's time to replace it, then he'll "help" you do so.
6) I gave him a pot and some wooden spoons so he could make music. Did that for a little while then decided the pot made a better car. Pushed it around the floor going "bbbbrrrrrm". I hope this car fascination doesn't parlay into a career in NASCAR.
7) Pokes his finger into his belly button (or anyone else's) and laughs like the Pillsbury Doughboy.
8) If someone says the word "stinky" he waves his hand in front of his nose . His father taught him that.
You can see that in our household bathroom humor has a prominent place.

Got Christmas presents for my boy and his dad via amazon.com the other night at work when things were slow. Online shopping rocks! Got Daniel some cars that stack on top of each other, a play guitar (since he's so fascinated with Jesus's), and a little puzzle with farm animals on it to go with his Baby Einstein farm animals DVD. Also some books in Spanish for Papi to read to him. Hubs is getting a CD of one of his favorite Christian artists, Marcos Witt, a DVD of El Chavo del 8, a classic Mexican sitcom that he likes, and a third gift TBA. Actually, I know what it is but I don't want the rest of the world to know before my husband does. Since his bday and Christmas are the same day, he deserves to get a little extra.

What are everyone's plans for Christmas? We're going to stay put, seeing as how I have to work Christmas Eve. Oh well....

Digging for gold

My boy has figured out how to pick his nose. And he's very good at it. Most of the time he doesn't actually dig around, he'll just sit there with half his finger up one nostril like it's the most normal thing in the world. He did it at dinner tonight and I thought I was going to fall out of my seat laughing. Which is, of course, going to encourage the behavior. My wonderful hubby was the one going, "Now son, we don't do that. Please take your finger out." And I'm sitting there doing my best to hide my laughter. He really is adorable when he does it but I don't want him to still be doing it when he's 16!

Exciting nights at work

Again, breaking with the tradition of not blogging about work, I have to write about some stuff! For those of you who don't know, I'm working on a women's floor -- we do pregnant ladies, new moms and babies, fetal deaths and the occasional lady with another type of surgery. We do a lot of high-risk pregnancies also. As is my custom, I worked Friday and Saturday nights 7pm to 7am and both nights had more than my fair share of excitement. I guess it will eventually look good on a resume, as well as increasing my confidence in my ability to care for these ladies. Friday night I get there and my assignment is 5 patients, one of whom is a woman 7 1/2 months pregnant with.....quadruplets!!! So I'm going along, getting my stuff done, and my quads lady starts feeling bad, having contractions, etc. Okay, well when that happens, we kind of move fast. I found her doc, who happened to be around, and he gives me 3 orders: start IV fluids (which also means starting an IV since she has no access), give her meds to stop the contractions, and get all 4 babies on the fetal monitor. (to get their heartbeats & make sure they're handling the contractions well.) A lot of times it's hard enough to get one baby's heartbeat. So you can imagine how long it took for us to get all 4. There were 4 nurses in there working on this poor lady, who was really nice throughout the whole thing. She ended up being fine and delivered the babies via c-section the next day. After that, the night was ok.

Saturday night, it was even crazier. I get there and the nurse whom I'm coming to relieve tells me up front, "I won't sugar coat it. It's been a bad day." That's not what you want to hear when you're coming on. She's had several patients, 2 of whom were 7 1/2 months pregnant, one of whom has been contracting all day with nothing for pain. Moaning and screaming all day and no one wants to give her anything. This nurse and I both believe she's in labor at 33 weeks, and this nurse used to do maternity nursing in Nigeria. She's probably delivered more babies than a lot of MDs in the US. This patient starts bleeding. Finally they rush her over to Labor & Delivery, where she has the baby (premature) almost immediately. Fortunately, the previous nurse stayed with this patient and helped immensely. Well, the next bit of excitement comes when I go in another pregnant lady's room who's in with pregnancy-induced hypertension (PIH)/preeclampsia. When that happens, the blood flow to the placenta (and therefore the baby) is reduced and you have a great risk of a baby dying in utero. The only known cure is to deliver the baby. We have orders to call if her blood pressure's over a certain number. Guess what?! It was. I retook it, same thing. So I call the doc, she asks me to take it again in an hour. No change. So, this lady won herself a ticket to get induced. Fortunately, she was not bursting at the seams and we could make the transition a little more calmly. That night I got the nickname "Queen of the Breaking Antepartums." (translated: you had a lot of pregnant ladies to send over to Labor & Delivery) Well earned, I might add. The night settled down after that and I ended up walking laps around the floor to keep awake. (And helping the other nurses since most of them had more patients than me. They tried not to give me more admissions because I'd already had my share of excitement.)

On the home front, we're all having a quiet day. Jesus only had to work a couple hours, so we're all hanging out in our bedroom. Hubs is fiddling with his cellphone, I'm obviously blogging, and my boy is pushing the laundry basket full of clothes around the floor like a car and going "vrooom vroom." The menfolk enjoyed watching Elmo on Sesame Street earlier.

Last item -- does anyone else watch that show "Prison Break"? We do and really like it.

My soapbox

I don't get angry that often, but I read something this morning that made me angry. In a survey conducted of 1.5 million Americans, the majority is in favor of taking citizenship away from children of "illegal immigrants" born in the US. (I really don't like that phrase. As if any human being is illegal.") Being that my husband fit into that category when he arrived here 5 years ago, they could be talking about my son! First, whether or not you agree with the fact that the parents are here, that child oughtn't be punished. Second, our Constitution guarantees that anyone born on US soil is a US citizen. We are treading in dangerous waters when we start qualifying that. Third, whether we like it or not, the people born here today are the next generation of Americans. I personally want the people running my country when I'm a senior citizen to be insured and educated, which they will most likely not get if their citizenship is stripped from them. People tend to get very anti-immigrant in the name of national security. We forget that our white ancestors didn't speak the language of the natives living here when they arrived. We forget that our ancestors gave them smallpox,cholera, and syphilis (to name a few) and shoved them off onto reservations. I personally would rather have 20 million people here illegally (regardless of where they're from) who are working, paying taxes (they do) and raising decent children than 20 people who come to this country legally to fly planes into the WTC. Maybe they just surveyed the wrong people. I hate to think that my fellow Americans have become so short-sighted that they now want to pick and choose who among those born here gets to be a citizen.

Today I thought I'd share with y'all a poem that I found several years ago and really liked. I wrote it down, stuck it in my journal, and a couple days ago came across it again. It was written by Amy Carmichael, an Irish missionary to India who served 63 years without a furlough in late 19th and early 20th century. The story of her life is called A Chance to Die by Elisabeth Elliot and it so very much challenged my level of commitment to Christ. I highly recommend it to anyone and am going to reread it myself.

From prayer that asks that I may be
Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee
From fearing when I should aspire
From faltering when I should climb higher
From silken self, O Captain free
Thy soldier who would follow Thee.
From subtle love of softening things
From easy choices, weakening
(Not thus are spirits fortified,
Not this way went the Crucified),
From all that dims Thy Calvary,
O Lamb of God, deliver me.

Another day at the office

I don't normally blog about work (we have way more interesting stuff going on at home usually) but today is the hopefully rare exception. I had the opportunity to care for a young lady the other night who'd suffered an IUFD -- intrauterine fetal demise. Basically her baby had died in utero and she had to deliver him dead at about 5 1/2 months. And she was 16. It was a great opportunity for learning. When I first started working there, I wasn't sure how I would handle IUFDs. Not scared really, just not sure what to expect from myself. It turns out that this is something that, while I don't wish for it to happen, is a great ministry opportunity. People tend to be very in touch with the spiritual side of themselves when there is a death, regardless of the age of the one who has died. Moms (and dads) usually want to hold their baby, no matter what he/she looks like and no matter how little. (This one was just over 1 pound and just over a foot long.) That may sound a little morbid, as babies who've died in utero don't look like normal healthy live babies, and that's exaggerated even more if there's some sort of birth defect. But I think it's great that parents do that. It gives them a sense of this being a real human being and it puts something concrete to go with their sense of loss. We always take a picture of the baby for the parents; even if they don't want it right then, many do come back later for it. This is not a subject I enjoy dwelling on, but like I said earlier, it is a super ministry opportunity. I felt like I was ministering more to this mother than I did with a lot of other moms with live babies. Especially with this mom; she being very young herself needed someone to mother her. I feel like God understands a whole lot about loss; after all, He lost a Son once too.

Birthday shout-out

...to my friend Mandy Talton who turns 27 today. I wish you mucho happiness today and always. Much love to you.

My boy and his kingdom

So now I'm on my regular work schedule -- 24 hours each weekend split into 2 12-hour night shifts. It's not really that bad until about 4am the second night and all my patients are sleeping and there's nothing to do. Then I struggle...even with 24oz. of the Green Caffeine on board. Fortunately, I've sufficiently recovered to update our blog.

Big Boy and Papi got to hang out and do guy stuff this weekend while I worked/slept. Apparently, my boy has it in his mind that any creature that qualifies as an animal is a dog and should, therefore, bark. He pointed at the dogs in one of his books and said (appropriately) "arf-arf". However, when I took him to see some goats at a petting zoo, when Papi took him to the park to see the ducks, and when he saw horses on TV, he said the same thing. It was not until today when we went back to see the goats (who tried to eat his finger) that he made the appropriate goat sound. Not bad for a 13-month old. He also enjoys helping me throw things away, especially his used diapers. He'll grab it from me as soon as I take it off him so we can go to the trashcan...he throws it in and then claps for himself!

If you haven't had kids, I highly recommend it, when you're ready. We are nuts about ours!

Trash day

Friday is trash day in our neighborhood. In the Miles Travis spirit of having really random things on one’s blog, let me let you in on a dirty secret of our lives: the pantry! That’s right, ladies & gents, we clean out our pantry once a year whether we need to or not! The last time it happened, our 1-year-old was a newborn and it was actually my mom who had the ubiquitous honor, as she was staying here doing grandma duty just after his birth. Anyway, it fell to us this year, so we thought we’d list the contents thrown out of our pantry this year (my husband says there’s no “we” in this. He sees no reason for the entire world to know what was in our pantry.) So for your reading pleasure, Rejects from the Pantry:
1. About 25 jars of Gerber & BeechNut baby food, which will be donated to pregnant friends.
2. Half a bag of chicharrones (fried pork skins) plain.
3. Half a bag of chicharrones, spicy.
#2 and 3 were a gift from my grandma to Jesus.
4. Three open boxes of Saltines in various varieties, untouched for about 8 months.
5. Unopened jar of Dole Peaches “best used before August 2004”
6. Partially (read: barely) eaten box of prunes (pregnancy craving)
7. Potassium salt substitute
8. Dog food bowl. Sorry Pansy. We miss you but not that much.
9. Instruction manual for George Foreman grill.
10. Application to UNC grad school. Still in the plans but not in the immediate future.
11. Eraser for dry-erase board. We don’t own a dry-erase board.
12. Paper grocer bag full of Thanksgiving food donated to our church from another local church. I guess they figured that since we’re a Hispanic church we wouldn’t know how to put together a proper Thanksgiving meal. I don't know.

We sincerely hope this brightens your day.

Teeth

Tooth #8 has made its presence known. Now on to meat and potatoes. My boy has his first dentist appt. 11/21. They say you're supposed to have them see the dentist before 18 months, so we're trying to obey. We'll see how that goes. I'm a little nervous.

This has nothing to do with my child but I thought I'd share it anyway. This is my blog, after all. I was watching Oprah yesterday (yeah, I do that sometimes) and it was actually pretty good. She had Ricky Martin on (that's not why it was good, btw) and was following up his tsunami relief efforts in SE Asia. One of the women whose house got rebuilt said this: "I've learned that humans can survive on nothing." That just hit me as being so true. I know our family is guilty of thinking we "need" this or that to survive. A bigger house (me). A bigger truck (Jesus). We have no idea what it is like to live having had everything we own wiped out. Mind you, both of us grew up pretty poor. But we have gotten so comfortable in our current state. We need so very little to get by. I think God made it that way on purpose. If we needed so much to survive, we would probably get complacent and think we don't really need Him. I remember when I was in Haiti feeling the same way. When they pray "give us this day our daily bread," they mean it literally. They depend on God for the food they're going to eat that day, that meal. It's easy here to take that as a figure of speech, and to a certain extent it is. But if we had to pray that every day literally for our daily bread, we'd probably be a lot closer to the Lord than we are. Just a thought.