Seven for One

First, I recommend reading 2 Mc 7:1, 20-31.  If you don’t have a Bible handy or can’t find 2nd Maccabees in yours (ask me about that later!), use this link: http://www.catholic.org/bible/daily_reading/?select_date=2011-11-16

This was the Old Testament reading at Mass on Wednesday and it just astounded me.

Where has this woman been all my life?!  This unnamed mother watches her seven sons become martyrs all in one day because of their family's extreme faith in the Lord and some rock hard devotion to His laws.  I love that this reading is all about the chick.  The men are mentioned first, ²⁰but the mother was especially admirable and worthy of honourable remembrance, for she watched the death of seven sons in the course of a single day, and bravely endured it because of her hopes in the Lord.  It's like the author is saying HEY, PAY ATTENTION TO THIS WOMAN!  Because let's be real, in almost every Bible story the males have more cool things to do than the females do.  Until this moment, this woman's greatest accomplishment in life was bearing and raising seven sons.  Not that that is anything to shake a stick at.  A woman's worth was measured by her fertility, and so many sons in one family was considered a huge blessing from God.  Unlike today, when having any more than 1.5 children is just ridiculous.  Actually, what's ridiculous is denying the amazing life-giving power of creation that God lets parents borrow from Him in the sacrament of marriage.  
 
But I digress.  So Awesome Mystery Woman has this incredible gift of seven sons...and she lets them all die.  In fact, she encourages them to die.  What?!  Is she mental?  No, in fact, she is full of wisdom and full of hope.  She realizes two very important truths.  First, while all seven of these sons came from her womb, she doesn't give herself the credit for their existence.  It's all God.  ²² ‘I do not know how you appeared in my womb; it was not I who endowed you with breath and life, I had not the shaping of your every part.’  ²⁸ ‘I implore you, my child, look at the earth and sky and everything in them, and consider how God made them out of what did not exist, and that human beings come into being in the same way.'  She is giving glory to the Almighty Creator and giving back to Him what was always His.  Second, she realizes that eternal life far outweighs a short, grim, earthly one.  While every mother's natural instinct is to preserve the life of her offspring and keep them with her, this one is graced with the ability to look beyond.  In counseling her last remaining son she says, ²⁹ ‘do not fear this executioner, but prove yourself worthy of your brothers and accept death, so that I may receive you back with them in the day of mercy.'  Somehow she knows that while appeasing this evil king would win them more time on earth, a godly mother would instead prefer to share with them the everlasting reward.  In doing so, she commits their last moments in life to gruesome torture.  Each son's death is increasingly monstrous, and their mother dies last.  Scripture doesn't go into detail about how she died.  We probably don't want to know.  But I think we can all be pretty sure what...WHO...was waiting for her on the other side.
 
I am not a parent.  Sometimes I feel like one, but I am getting adequately paid to take care of three or four little ones at a time, and after twelve-plus hours, I willingly hand them over to someone else with a nursing license like mine.  But I think I can at least partially appreciate the depth of Awesome Mystery Mom's sacrifice.  Everyone knows how far moms go for their kids.  To the end of the earth, flipping over semi trucks and making their voices go all deep and scary when their babies are threatened.  But THIS mom says, "No.  These children were Yours first, O Lord.  Your laws are bigger than my desires."  And she knows that the best thing she can do is ensure they will live together forever in Heaven.  How many parents can do this?  In movies where people get tortured, the last straw is always bringing in a loved one.  The person being interrogated drops everything, forsakes all sworn obediences to governments and ideals to prevent even a hair on their special someone's head from being harmed.  It seems unnatural for a child to die before their parent, and when it happens, it is a unique and raw kind of grief that doesn't ever truly end.  
 
But we have this amazing woman to look to as an example of the courage we typically lack.  We have Abraham, whom God asked to sacrifice his only son, the one he had been waiting for until his old age.  Abraham, who in the picture of obedience had his knife to his son's throat when God told him to drop it.  But the ultimate example, the best, is the Father Himself.  After lovingly creating us in His image, we twisted the gift of free will into evil and hurt.  To save us from ourselves, God sent us His Son, knowing He would give everything right down to His Body and His Blood.  God didn't just watch His Son die...He watched Him suffer greatly.  He let his Child suffer and die for a people who didn't even love Him back.
 
Very few of us are called to be martyrs.  Even fewer, I would hope, are called to give their children away as such.  But that doesn't let any of us off the hook.  We are called to be just that obedient...if not unto death, then to the death of our own desires.  We are called to great sacrifice...if not our physical lives, then a daily sacrifice of our former lives.
 
God sacrificed everything for you...weak, sinful, prideful, somehow loveable person that you are.  What will you sacrifice today?

Gotta get down on...Tuesday?

November is a good time to be grateful about stuff. Right now I'm grateful for my job and the weird way things work out. My brother is coming home from LA on Wednesday and I wanted to work as little as possible while he's in town, so I was able to give 2 of my shifts away this week (how many jobs let you do that?) So I was only supposed to work Monday night, but...had a classic clumsy Jamie moment the night before and blew my wrist out. It's not even a cool story, sad to say. I was wearing socks and slipped on the hardwood floor in my bedroom and tried to break my fall with my hand. Textbook FOOSH! (Fall Onto Outstretched Hand, #1 cause of wrist injuries). At least I'm typical. Woke up the next morning to some moderate swelling and pain and realized pretty quickly that I would be a terrible nurse in that state. Amazing and annoying how many everyday tasks require weight bearing and full range of motion in the wrist joint, and how many of those tasks are part of an RN's job description. Writing, repositioning patients, drawing up meds, really any kind of pressure to the hand was just not possible...so I had to call in, as lame as that is.

So now I have almost a full week to let my wrist recover, and it's already somewhat better. Unless I decide to use my PTO (probably won't), I'll have a pretty pathetic paycheck next time but that's not the end of the world. It's like I've been given the gift of time (Chandler: "That's funny because last year I was given the gift of space. We should get together and make a continuum,") because yesterday and today I should have been sleeping and working. After my pretty taxing day of movie-watching, napping, and RICE therapy I received a house call from my chiropractor boyfriend who was concerned about my injury. I told him I got it checked out already and it's just a sprain, but Dr. Sean had to see for himself. What a guy :) And since I'm so pathetic and helpless, he felt the need to cook me dinner and rub my feet! Yep, had to brag a little...I like this one :)

So, my thankful list: my flexible job, not having to set an alarm this morning, time to catch up on my life, my brother visiting (not to mention my whole awesome family who I can't wait to spend several days with), my healing wrist, my selfless boyfriend, my trainer who will figure out a way to kick my butt at the gym tomorrow without hurting my wrist, a new laptop battery that lasts as long as it's supposed to, my roommate and friends far and near, my best friend who is coming home 2 weeks from today, City on a Hill/Life Teen and all the opportunities they provide for enriching my faith, and these 2 gloomy days aside, this gorgeous fall we've been having.

Now I need to get out of bed and take advantage of this freebie day. I spent my morning ice-ing my wrist and watching Friends...so if I go for a run, take a shower, and clean my house, I'll be about 1000x more productive than I was yesterday. And...go!

(Oh and the title comes from a modified version of Rebecca Black's "Friday" that my friend Bob is working on. The jist is partying on a random weeknight which is kind of cooler than on a Friday but mostly an awkward inconvenience. It's gonna be huge, just wait).

"Roughin it...Catholic style"

Nature's Call (n.) - annual weekend of camping with about 150 other Catholic young adults at Lake Pomme de Terre in southern MO/the true epitome of God's country. Activities include campfires and the things you eat and drink around them (turtle, beer, roasted Starbursts), vicious sports and less vicious games, impulsive midnight lake jumping, outdoor Mass, great theological conversations, great idiotic conversations, and general nature lovin.

Being a first time camper, I quickly learned that true roughing it is not my style (see title phrase coined by Jen Revers) so I was thankful for the on-site Port-a-Potties and the very off-site dirty old showers. Amazing how low one's hygiene standards can really go. But anyways, I think God decided that I was having trouble listening lately so He blessed me with visual displays of His love instead. Our campsite was on a steep hill jutting out into the lake, so it was dazzling to wake up to the sun sparkling on the water. But it was the stars that really got me. I've never in my life seen a sky like that, not even from the train bridge in Kirksville. After an overcast day on Sunday the clouds broke through and word around the campfire was the view was killer if you laid out in the clearing where we parked our cars. I grabbed my beach towel and pulled up a patch of grass away from the chatty group, because I had this feeling God wanted to talk to me. I was pretty full of emotions and wouldn't have even known where to start in prayer so I tried my best to just listen.

God didn't speak to me...he sang. His beauty was just staggering. I'm just now remembering that the priest who heard my confession earlier that day (in the woods, the coolest) talked about how God demonstrates his love through beauty, among other things...how appropriate. I laid there, tears streaming down my face, feeling waves of love wash over and over me. The previous night I had slept poorly and that day I couldn't even fall asleep for a nap. Sleep rarely eludes me like that. But basking in God's radiance was like being rocked to sleep by a loving parent.

It became obvious to me that a God who would paint me a picture of such brilliant and complex beauty would never forget me or design anything but plans for my welfare. Or cause me unnecessary pain. Looking back over several months I could see, as I always do eventually, why things happen the way they do. My struggles have made me grow in wisdom and continually draw me closer to Jesus. He has protected my heart at my most vulnerable times, and this weekend even blessed me with some resolution of a particular question. And it occurred to me that any future hurt related to this struggle is not something I need to understand. God usually debriefs me after a while anyways but all I need to know is He has chosen me to bear some suffering for His sake. It's nothing at all compared to what He already bore for mine.

Oh, hey, NC20? I'm there.

Note the well-deserved beer opened immediately after setting up the tent. Woof.

five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes

My alma mater ejected its freshest crop of seniors last weekend, which means I have been a real person in the eyes of the world for a year now. I feel stuck in one of those weird time warps where somehow eons have passed without any time passing at all. As a gut reaction, I wonder what I really accomplished this year. Did I make any major contributions to science? Did I change any lives? Did I even change my own? For my compulsive side, I need to lay it all out for you. Ok, mostly for me.

*Passed NCLEX.

*Became a registered nurse in 2 states.

*Started a career.

*Paid a lot of taxes.

*Spent a fortune on gas.

*Saved a bit of money.

*Transitioned from graduate nurse to staff nurse.

*Was a bridesmaid in the weddings of 2 of my very best friends.

*Watched 2 and soon to be 3 people who I am close to move far, far away.

*Celebrated 3 21st birthdays.

*Began and ended an important relationship.

*Visited my college town 4 times.

*Became a Life Teen core member and got close to the kids in my youth group.

*Moved with my parents to a new home.

*Moved out of my parents' home.

*Decorated my own home.

*Paid my first bills.

*Flew to New York, Chicago, and Phoenix.

*Saw 3 productions on Broadway.

*Road tripped to Texas, Illinois, Michigan, and all over Missouri.

*Sang at 1 college tournament basketball game, 2 weddings, and 3 funerals.

*Learned more than I can ever format into a list about babies, breathing patterns, sputum, IV fluids, placating parents, pain relief, handling impossible situations, time management, storage of gasoline in a home, how to live with someone new, indications for calling my landlady, when to sleep for a night shift, tricks for saving my hard-earned money, when it is worth it to splurge, knowing what I can and cannot do, what my vocation means to me right now, how much Jesus truly loves me, and what things are really the most important.

...I'm tired.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Navigation System

It's funny how an unfamiliar area can become known, but there's no way to undo that. Once a place becomes meaningful, that meaning sticks. For five months I drove the same route to work, not noticing or caring about the houses I was driving by or the places to eat. It was just foreign territory at the end of my 40-minute commute. Then I met him, and it turned out he lives along my thrice-weekly drive. Right in the middle of that neighborhood where I thought nobody really lived, the place that used to mean nothing. Now I can't get to work without experiencing the memories. There's that incredible Italian restaurant where he took me for our first real date. There's the gas station we trekked to for milk and beer on a snow day. And there goes the street where he lives. The destination that at first made me full of nerve endings, all tension and excitement, then comfortably familiar - knowing after a long night shift he would be there with oatmeal and a warm, sleepy smile.

I keep passing the Chipotle where I wish I didn't know his order by heart.
And the restaurant where we broke up over breakfast.

I removed his house from my favorites on my TomTom. I never needed to save it in the first place because after I went there the first time, a map was drawn on my brain in indelible ink. Deleting an icon on a 4.3-inch screen didn't do me much good. I never realized my sharp memory for details until they were all ones I wanted to forget. How is it even useful to remember what road we were on when he told me my brakes needed to be checked out? But I know why I remember it - because I thought it meant that he cared about my safety. I learned in 7th grade life science that the brain chooses to save memories that have some significance attached, and tosses the rest. So as long as I find it significant, I will always think about my brakes when I cross the intersection of College and Grant.

My college physiology courses dove deeper: it is the hippocampus where both long-term memories and cognitive maps for navigation are formed. So ultimately, science rules: it is impossible to separate emotional memories from spatial memory. I can't expect College Boulevard to eventually transform back into the meaningless blur it once was at 45 miles per hour.

All I can hope for is that with time, the feelings that seep out of the too-familiar buildings into my car, my heart, will numb. Because I know the memories are there to stay. Besides, if I really wanted to avoid those altogether, I would just take the highway.

1900-0730

Oh, dearest bloggers and blalkers (blog-stalkers...think it'll catch on?). It's been so long. Work has a way of filling up my time (perhaps why it's called a full-time job) and sapping me of creative impulses. My impulses consist more of obsessively checking an iffy IV because last shift a kid yanked hers out, or that nagging feeling that tells me something is wrong with a baby's breathing that I can't quite put a name to, or just remembering to give meds and take vitals. These are impulses that pay me adequately but aren't that interesting to blog about.

So here is a topic that many non-medical personnel seem to find fascinating, thus the name of this post: the night shift (cue Inception music). Yes, I sleep during the day. Ideally from 9 am to 5 pm. And yes, I eat lunch in the middle of the night. Sometime between 1 am and 3 am. Despite these oddities (or perhaps because of them), I cannot even tell you how pleased I am to work nights. Mornings are a horrible time for me, so it's very pleasurable to be getting into my covers when the rest of the world is getting out of theirs. I have no trouble whatsoever sleeping during the day. I absolutely love the other night shift girls at work. And my patients are usually asleep for over half of my shift. On slow nights I get to read a lot. I see other staff members paying bills, going through their mail, doing online shopping. Because nights are typically slower than days, the pace for learning is ideal. I have time to hone my skills and learn how to do things right. I have become quite the expert at tiptoeing around (nearly) soundlessly to avoid waking sleeping babies and doing vitals, hanging meds, fidgeting with IVs etc in almost total darkness, just by the light of CR/sat monitors and IV machine displays.

A few inconveniences exist on the night shift, of course. My body is easily confused and I've found myself lying in bed fully awake around 4 am on my nights off. Getting up before noon is exceedingly difficult and on my days off I can't really plan on doing anything in the morning. My metabolism is also confounded and I can't for the life of me eat on any kind of schedule. There are times when I can literally go all day without a bite to eat and other times when I feel like death if I'm not ingesting something at least every hour. I find it troublesome to schedule doctor's appointments and run errands to places that aren't open 24 hours, especially the gym. Good thing my work keeps me active or I'd be morbidly obese by now. I've actually been losing weight as I slip more and more into a semi-permanent night shift schedule because eating is such a bother and I'm hungry at such inappropriate times. And, the most irksome aspect of my nocturnivity of late is that I spend quite a bit of time (but would like to spend much more) with someone who keeps a relatively normal schedule. I feel like I'm always coming or going when I see him. But we are working through it :)

I feel like all I blog about is work so here's a sound bite about my time off - the Sunday nights that I'm off I get to spend time with the most incredible teenagers at Life Teen (youth group). I still don't know everyone because I can only see them about once a month but I'm getting there, and the ones I'm getting to know are just mind-blowingly awesome. I hope I am contributing to their lives half as much as they contribute to mine. Catholic kids on fire for Jesus...these ones are gonna change the world. In fact, they already are...and it is so exciting to watch.