Somebody's First Trip to the Emergency Room...

Lately bedtime has been a battle with Julia not feeling good. She just wants to he held while she sleeps and HATES being layed in her crib. Last night was no different. She was out hard when I laid her down in her crib and after I left her room she started crying. I thought I'd just let her cry it out like I had done before. Well...15 minutes later (she's crying very hard by this time) Jeremy and I were watching the news and we heard a loud thud on the wood floor. We tore off the couch to find Julia laying on the floor in front of her crib crying harder then ever. My heart sunk. She can't even pull herself up on a piece of furniture yet and for her to pull herself over the crib Jeremy and I were shocked! Her bed was atleast halfway down into the crib but Jeremy started lowering it all the way to the bottom right away. As I was rocking Jewels she was just laying still, still crying. All of the sudden she started throwing up and didn't stop. I called my mom crying. Long story short, by the time we left for the ER she had projectile vomited 3 times, was very pale and had a HUGE knot on the top of her head by her soft spot.

She was checked out and no broken bones or brain bleed. We're still watching for signs of a small bleed that can happen over time. I got up a couple of times in the night to check on her and she seemed to be ok. This morning she's crawling around again, clapping and playing. What a relief!!! God was watching over our baby! My mind just kept going back to situations I'd seen in the hospital where babies and little kids had gotten brain bleeds because of something like this. Thank you God! And thank you family for praying last night!

Faithfulness

Let all creation rejoice before the LORD, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness.
Psalm 96:13

I feel that I have been tested and challenged by God this week and I am ashamed to admit that I did not pass some of those tests and challenges very successfully. I have been struggling with being faithfull in that God has me completely in His hands and my life is in His control. I know that I'm better off being completely surrendered into His hands and don't know why I doubt Him and His control of my life, I just do sometimes. It seems like I'll completely surrender to Him and things go like they should be going which to me is living in complete awe of what God is doing in my life. But then I get rapped up in my job, family and everything else going on around me except God. I feel a heavy load of guilt when I get this way. I get to the point that it's almost like I'm scared to completely surrender to God again and doubt that He can take care of me the way I think I should be taken care of. I shouldn't be worried about every detail of my life, God will take care of that. I should be rejoicing in the things He has provided for me and my family, the life and creation He gave me to enjoy and be Blessed by. God is so good to me!

Burnt

I don't know how in the world a person could burn Mac and Cheese, but I just did.

Happy

These are two of the things that I LOVE!

Chocolate and Shoes make me Happy.

They are shoes made out of chocolate!

Rearranging Furniture

It stormed here in Newton Saturday late afternoon/eveningish. I know the picture below isn't very discriptive of a storm but it was the sky to the north of our house. As I sat rocking Julia and it thundered I remembered when I was a little girl. To keep myself from becoming scared during thunder storms I would think that the thunder was God rearranging His furniture in His house. The louder the thunder, the bigger the piece of furniture! I would also think when it was just cloudy out that God was sad about something (I usually thought that I had been caught doing something bad and that's why He was sad!). When it was raining, God was crying. Of course I LOVE storms now but everytime I think of when I was little!

This is me rocking Jewel's while she was asleep. I've been sick the majority of the week with stomach and sinus junk. Hopefully tomorrow I'll start to get back to my self.

Cultural Diversity

I went to two full days of meetings in Hutch this week for work...as part of my continuing ed. The class was on a variety of things, Death and Dying, Ethics, Cultural Diversity, Pharmacology etc. As one of our speakers was talking to us about dropping all judgements about patients and his or her family at the door before we enter their home, room, facility etc...she read "A Perspective of Cultural Diversity". (As to who did the math or if all the facts are correct I don't know but it just caught my attention.)

If the entire earth's population could be shrunk to a town/village of 100 people with all human ratios remaining the same it would look like:

57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 Northern and Southern Western Hemisphere persons
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess 59% of the entire worlds wealth and all 6 people would be from the United States.
80 people would live in substandard housing
70 people would be unable to read
1 would be near death
1 would be near birth
1 person would have a college education
1 would own a computer
When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for both acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.
The following is also something to ponder...If you woke up this morning with more health then illness, you are more blessed then the million who will not survive this week.
If you have never experienced the danger of battles, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pains of starvation you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death...you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep...you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet and spare change in a dish someplace...you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.
If your parents are still alive and still married...you are very rare, even in the United States and Canada.
If you can read this message, you are more blessed than over 2 billion people in the world that cannot read.
ELNEC supercore curriculum

I'm admitting today that when it comes to working with patients that have a history of (or are currently) using drugs, are homosexual, have AIDS etc...I often enter the room judgemental...even when I don't realize it. The perspective above kind of opened my eyes in a different light then what I've been use to hearing at church, not sure why, it just did. It is not my place to judge, God will take care of that and I definitely don't condone the use of drugs, homosexuality etc...but I need to learn to love my patients (and family and friends) no matter what their past is. As a patient's caregiver once told me..."I love her, but I don't have to like some of the choices she's made". Every single person is created by God, in God's imagine.

This is a weird post to me. I haven't posted anything like this but it was on my heart and if I post about it, I think it will help keep me accountable. I am truely Blessed for what I have and I thank God daily for it. Besides the perspective about changing my way of thinking about my patients, family and friends it also reminds me to never take anything for granted. We can be gone in the blink of an eye. Life is too short for me to judge.