I sincerely hope everyone had (or is still having) an enjoyable Christmas. I definitely did. I even ushered at my church this morning at the Christmas service. Apparently this is the first year my church has ever held a Christmas day service (in addition to their 2 Christmas Eve services of course). To me, it makes sense to have a service on Christmas in celebration of Christ's birth, but it was a novel idea for many people that attended this morning. Here is the clip from the bulletin:
"Though it's hard to remember after so many times watching "It's a Wonderful Life" and going to the mall, Christmas is the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth, a poor Palestinian peasant and carpenter who taught people to love and forgive. If that's all you know about Jesus, Christmas will have only about as much meaning as the birthday of Abraham Lincoln or of Martin Luther King, Jr.
If you come to accept what the Bible teaches-that Jesus is not only a remarkable human being but also the Son of God who came to earth-then Christmas changes everything. It then answers some of the most profound cries of the human heart:
"Does God understand what I deal with?" Yes. God shared our human nature, and so, in the words of the author Chuck Swindoll, "He breathed our air, felt our pain, knew our sorrows, and died for our sins. He didn't come to frighten us, but to show us the way to warmth and safety."
"Does God care about me?" Yes. As Joe Stowell put it, "The stunning point of Christmas is that God considered my needs adn the worth of my relationship to Him to be sufficient cause to go through the truama of changing places."
Suddenly, life has meaning, because God lived it. Our body has value becuase God took on a human body. Our death is no longer the final word, because God has overcome it. This baby lying in an animal's feeding trough is everything we've hoped for and everything we need."
I've been enjoying time with my cousin and his eldest daughter from Singapore, my Uncle from Ohio and the rest of my family. I even played some card games a few nights ago that I'd never played before...I must have "missed" these types of games during my college years ; )
If anyone would like to go to Holiday Magic at Brookfield Zoo this weekend or ice skating with me, that'd be fun cause I really want to go.
Monday, December 25, 2006
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes. ~ From "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint Exupéry
So here I find myself in the first week of my four week vacation from nursing school and I'm thoroughly enjoying every minute of it. I'm still amazed at how much I can sleep at night...thus far I'm averaging approximately 10 hours of sleep/night. Hehe. Amidst the business of my Christmas preparations (shopping, gift wrapping, planning get togethers, mailing Christmas cards) I've been thinking about what Christmas ought to mean to me. I see many people at the stores and post office that are super stressed out and make comments like "I can't wait until Christmas is over" and "only 5 days till Christmas, how will I ever get everything done that needs to get done?!" Fortunately I've never felt quite that stressed, even if I've been behind on Christmas preparations. Here's a description of Advent as posted in the bulletin at my church (Church of the Resurrection) that I appreciate:
"To get ready for Christmas, you speed up: you shop, bake, decorate, send invitations, negotiate with extended family, buy plane tickets, write letters, scan photos, take boxes to UPS.
To get ready to worship Christ at Christmas, you slow down: you try to get quiet, give to the poor, read portions of the Bible, wait, fast, feel how deeply you and the world need deliverance, and long for that.
For roughly the last 1,500 years, Christians have taken the four Sundays before Christmas to get themselves spiritually ready for it. We call this season "Advent," which means "Coming," and during Advent, we get ready for two comings of Christ: his first, when he came to deliver the world from sin; and his second coming, when he will come to create a new world. You might pray, "Come, Lord, and deliver me and all your people from our sin and from the broken, wrecked world we live in."
The color of Advent is purple, which the church chose because it's the color for our repentance and for Christ's royalty."
Although I admit that I've not fully learned to embrace this mentality and still find myself caught up in gift giving, etc., I really appreciate the philosophy of quieting myself and celebrating Christ's first coming and what that means for me and the world today, and waiting for his second coming. It's strange that this way of thinking goes against what our culture tells us is acceptable during this time of year and how people skirt the fact that they are celebrating a very Christian event.
"To get ready for Christmas, you speed up: you shop, bake, decorate, send invitations, negotiate with extended family, buy plane tickets, write letters, scan photos, take boxes to UPS.
To get ready to worship Christ at Christmas, you slow down: you try to get quiet, give to the poor, read portions of the Bible, wait, fast, feel how deeply you and the world need deliverance, and long for that.
For roughly the last 1,500 years, Christians have taken the four Sundays before Christmas to get themselves spiritually ready for it. We call this season "Advent," which means "Coming," and during Advent, we get ready for two comings of Christ: his first, when he came to deliver the world from sin; and his second coming, when he will come to create a new world. You might pray, "Come, Lord, and deliver me and all your people from our sin and from the broken, wrecked world we live in."
The color of Advent is purple, which the church chose because it's the color for our repentance and for Christ's royalty."
Although I admit that I've not fully learned to embrace this mentality and still find myself caught up in gift giving, etc., I really appreciate the philosophy of quieting myself and celebrating Christ's first coming and what that means for me and the world today, and waiting for his second coming. It's strange that this way of thinking goes against what our culture tells us is acceptable during this time of year and how people skirt the fact that they are celebrating a very Christian event.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
You don't know this yet, but life isn’t supposed to be like this. *Meredith Grey
Oh why do I do this to myself...my stomach and intestines feel as if they are being twisted and getting progressivle tighter by the hour. I try not to worry about exams...must my perfectionist side always show itself during finals week. I'm having difficulty sleeping and nothing I eat seems to want to stay in me for very long. My dad just suggested yoga. If only I could tear my thoughts away from "normal" child growth and development, bacterial meningitis, step, cancer statistics, unintentional injuries and an array of other pediatric illnesses long enought to do so, that may not be such a bad idea. Fortuantely, I'll be done Thursday afternoon..less than 2 full days away. Sigh.
Monday, December 04, 2006
It's only a thought and thoughts can be changed
Quote by Louise Hay
Take Two! Last week was my last obstetics clinical rotation for the semester and it ended on a very positive note. I spent the day working in the newborn nursery on the mother baby floor and enjoyed every moment of it. The nurse that worked with me was super friendly and knowledgable and was a good person to have to be "stuck" in the nursery with. I performed many assessments on and cuddled many of the little bundles of love that passed through the nursery. These newborns seemed rather large though in comparison to the premature baby I worked with the week before in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).
In the NICU I worked with a male, triplet 1 of 3 that was born at 25 weeks gestation (full-term gestation is 40 weeks) so he was very premature. And get this, he weighed less than 2 pounds...can you imagine! Yes, he was extremely small and I couldn't help thinking how much he looked like a baby bird while he laid there in his isolette, naked except for his diaper with his nasogastric tube and a ventilator which helped him breath. His IV had recently been taken out. His skin was so transparent I was able to see all of his blood vessles through his skin and his eyes, although recently open (they weren't when he was delivered) mainly remained closed. He was tiny. I'm not sure the human eye is meant to see a baby this small.
It got me to thinking about how great advances in medicine have allowed for heroic acts such as saving 25 week old babies. After watching the documentary "Little Man" ( http://www.littlemanthemovie.com/) which documents the conception and birth of a baby born at 23 (if I remember correctly) weeks and the ensuing pursuit by healthcare wokers and the parents to save this baby's life, I'm not completely convinced that saving extremely premature babies is such a "heroic" act. The film is very honest in its portrayal of the struggles associated with having a baby born that premature and its fight to stay alive in the NICU. It documents the little boy's first few years of life and cleary shows his developmental delays and the toll it takes on his parents and sibling. The child in this documentary will always face developmental delays and physical challenges, not to mention the uncertianty of his expected life span. Is it really worth it? For the parents in terms of the emotional, financial and psychological costs or for the child in terms of the phsycial and developmental challenges it will most likely face? If there had been no medical intervention the babies would have died and would have been surgically removed. Yes, this also would have been a very sad situation, I'm not doubting that, I'm simply thinking outloud.
Anyhow, I signed a lease a few days ago! I'm officially moving January 1st. Very exciting.
Quote by Louise Hay
Take Two! Last week was my last obstetics clinical rotation for the semester and it ended on a very positive note. I spent the day working in the newborn nursery on the mother baby floor and enjoyed every moment of it. The nurse that worked with me was super friendly and knowledgable and was a good person to have to be "stuck" in the nursery with. I performed many assessments on and cuddled many of the little bundles of love that passed through the nursery. These newborns seemed rather large though in comparison to the premature baby I worked with the week before in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).
In the NICU I worked with a male, triplet 1 of 3 that was born at 25 weeks gestation (full-term gestation is 40 weeks) so he was very premature. And get this, he weighed less than 2 pounds...can you imagine! Yes, he was extremely small and I couldn't help thinking how much he looked like a baby bird while he laid there in his isolette, naked except for his diaper with his nasogastric tube and a ventilator which helped him breath. His IV had recently been taken out. His skin was so transparent I was able to see all of his blood vessles through his skin and his eyes, although recently open (they weren't when he was delivered) mainly remained closed. He was tiny. I'm not sure the human eye is meant to see a baby this small.
It got me to thinking about how great advances in medicine have allowed for heroic acts such as saving 25 week old babies. After watching the documentary "Little Man" ( http://www.littlemanthemovie.com/) which documents the conception and birth of a baby born at 23 (if I remember correctly) weeks and the ensuing pursuit by healthcare wokers and the parents to save this baby's life, I'm not completely convinced that saving extremely premature babies is such a "heroic" act. The film is very honest in its portrayal of the struggles associated with having a baby born that premature and its fight to stay alive in the NICU. It documents the little boy's first few years of life and cleary shows his developmental delays and the toll it takes on his parents and sibling. The child in this documentary will always face developmental delays and physical challenges, not to mention the uncertianty of his expected life span. Is it really worth it? For the parents in terms of the emotional, financial and psychological costs or for the child in terms of the phsycial and developmental challenges it will most likely face? If there had been no medical intervention the babies would have died and would have been surgically removed. Yes, this also would have been a very sad situation, I'm not doubting that, I'm simply thinking outloud.
Anyhow, I signed a lease a few days ago! I'm officially moving January 1st. Very exciting.
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