Colossians 3:16
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

I love this verse. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you RICHLY in all wisdom”…how awesome is it that. We have a wealth of information in the Bible if we only take our time to read it. I SO don’t use my time wisely to keep the Word of God in my heart. I should spend more time with Him daily and become RICH in His wisdom. “Teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs”…We have so many songs that we sing that are so deep in meaning, AND, at different periods in our lives, the words of the songs mean something else to us or even just a different line in the song means something to us. God is so AWESOME to give talent like that to people who can minister to us.

Admonish – I love that word…1. to indicate duties or obligations to, to express warning or disapproval to especially in a gentle earnest, or solicitous manner. 2. to give friendly earnest advise or encouragement.

Teaching and admonishing…..hmmm……..

“singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” - I’m glad that it doesn’t say that you have to have a pretty good voice, or I’d be in trouble!! Grandma sang beautifully the other day – The Old Rugged Cross - I learned so much from her that day. She has no idea what an honor and a privilege it is to take care of her in my home. She is teaching my children valuable lessons that they absolutely can’t get anywhere else. When Lynden sings with her, or they talk or play together, Lynden is growing so much in COMPASSION and I love that…that’s HANDS ON experience! Lynden is so lucky to have that.
Logan put Grandma to bed the other day. Now, all he did, was tell her to lay down in the bed a pulled the covers up to her chin, but still…it’s something. He also took it upon himself to assure that she was fed that night and made her a bowl of soup. In a 14 year old boy kind of way, he is learning MAJOR lessons too.

I am so blessed to live the life that I have…no matter how hard it is at times. I am so blessed to have people who love me and will teach and admonish me with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. This is what we are supposed to do – as instructed – to one another.

Ecclesiastes 12:1-8

Ecclesiastes 12:1-8
Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say,
“I find no pleasure in them” –
before sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark,
and the clouds return after the rain;
when the keepers of the house tremble,
and the strong men stoop,
when the grinders cease because they are few,
and those looking through the windows grow dim;
when the doors to the street are closed
and the sound of grinding fades;
when men rise up at the sound of birds,
but all their songs grow faint;
when men are afraid of heights
and of dangers in the streets;
when the almond tree blossoms
and the grasshopper drags himself along
and desire no longer is stirred.
Then man goes to his eternal home and mourners go about the streets
remember him – before the silver cord is severed,
or the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
or the wheel broken at the well,
and the dust returns to the ground it came from.,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
“Meaningless!! Meaningless!’ says the Teacher.
“Everything is meaningless.”


What is the meaning of Life? Meaningless! Life without God is MEANINGLESS!

I just love this passage. I think it is one of the most artistic passages in the Bible. God was so good to the people that wrote the Bible – what talent He gave them. So that millions of years later, the Word will still be THE WORD. We have very artistic writers today, but none can compare with the ones that wrote according to what God placed on their hearts during that era. I could go off on a tangent now about “for such a time is this…Esther”, but I will refrain (for now). Isn’t it amazing that God interwove all of the writings of the Old Testament characters together to form what we call our Bible today….

Anyway, I’ll get on with it…

Verse 2 talks about a man’s mind – “before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain;” What a beautiful word picture! What did the author think when this came from his brain to his pen? He obviously spent much time in prayer with God to have that simile. The SUN and the LIGHT and the MOON and the STARS grow dark and the COULDS return after the rain. HOW AWESOME IS THAT??? (I just get so excited about stuff like this…) Right here, we have a passage about Alzheimers! Can you believe it? The sun, light, moon and stars make up the universe – our lives are controlled by these (I’m talking about scientifically…) The moon controls the ocean and the sun give us light and temperature and …do you get what I mean? Can you grasp what I am so poorly trying to say? Parallel that with the mind. The mind controls our whole body. Without the mind, our nervous system would be haywire and nothing would be possible. God controls all of that. The rain is a parallel to the same rain that we talk about frequently - the storms of life, trials, tribulation, problems, - and when we have been through RAIN storms, clouds come…over time, we lose our minds because of all of the stress or because of disease, or whatever….but usually it is later in life….which is what this passage is all about…the process of growing old. What an amazing word picture….

Let’s go on….

Verse 3 talks about hands, legs, teeth and eyes – “when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men stoop, when the grinders cease because they are few, and those looking through the windows grow dim;”. Hands trembling, legs holding up a stooping body, with very few teeth, looking through the eyes that are becoming blind……a beautiful picture of a person growing old – in poetry…

Verse 4 talks about hearing – “when the doors to the street are closed and the sound of grinding fades; when men rise up at the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint;
Hearing – everything is cut off from the sound by a door closed. Man often rose to the sound of the birds, but as we grow older, the hearing goes and they can’t hear the bird alarm chirps any more….

Verse 5 is about our ability to move about freely – “when men are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets; when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags himself along and desire no longer is stirred. Then man goes to his eternal home and mourners go about the streets. This is such a beautiful statement! When men are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets – as we get older, we are less able to protect ourselves as we have in the past….but we often fight that every step of the way down the old age path. Nobody wants to give up their independence, and most fight it.

When my grandmother was starting to decline (in Itta Bena), I wondered WHEN was going to be the moment that I had to take her independent living arrangements away. Just taking the keys away was hard, but after the third time that she hit a car and almost ran over her friend in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly, it no longer became her choice. BUT, she didn’t want it to happen and fought it every step of the way. It was hard for her to give up that – the keys and the freedom that went with it, but it was also freeing of her (although she would never have admitted it.)

“The almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags himself along” is so POETIC! I get chills just thinking about it! Did you know that the almond tree blossoms in the winter? Did you know that the blossoms are WHITE!??? Isn’t that a beautiful statement in poetry? Winter is usually, in the literary sense, the “season of old age. I believe that this passage is directly speaking to the winter season of life, the old age, and the WHITE hair….and the grasshopper dragging himself along is speaking directly to the gait of an older person.

And leave it to God to not leave any thing out….”when desire is no longer stirred” is speaking to the sexuality of people as they age. I may be wrong, as we know in the nursing home, that desire is often there to close to the very end of life, but when it really is the end, I don’t think anyone on their death bed is actually thinking about sex. That is a gift that God gave us for pleasure, but when I think of someone actively dying, I believe that spiritually, a person is preparing their hearts and souls for the awesome experience that they are called for – seeing Jesus face to face.

Somehow, I think seeing Jesus face to face completely erases the desire for sex.

Anyway, I won’t go further on that subject…
But then we face death…

People mourn for us, some more than others, but then they move on with their own lives…and their own challenges…
There are certain people that have died in our own lives and we mourn for them, but the world just continues on…people pick up the pieces and keep on going….and it really doesn’t matter about the person who died. That person might have made huge influences on our lives, but not so much that we can’t function without that particular person. We take the memory of that person and get on with it…occasionally attributing a lesson learned from that person to the task at hand. Those are never forgotten, but life goes on and everyone adjusts.

Well, I didn’t mean for this to get morbid or anything. I am most inspired by the genius that wrote it! What a beautiful word picture about getting old and losing your mind….

1 Corinthians 1:26-31

1 Corinthians 1:26-31

Brother, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential, not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God - that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”

WOW! The first sentence is enough to contemplate for DAYS….

“BROTHER, THINK OF WHAT YOU WERE WHEN YOU WERE CALLED.”

It has taken me about 5 minutes to get past this sentence just to write this…WOW, what a STATEMENT!

I can look back on my life and realize how things have worked together to put me where I am today…and I feel that there are times where I go through things now and I know while it is happening that there is a reason for it, but I’m not sure what, YET. (Jeremiah 29:11 – “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, ”plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”)

In my calling to be a nurse:

• the struggle just to get it out of my mouth, just to tell somebody that I felt the call to BE a nurse – knowing that I would be told that I would “never make it!”,


• attempting to get into school,


• after YEARS of attempting to get into school, finding out I was pregnant with Logan,


• putting school off,


• finally getting into school and overcoming the insecurities not being smart enough to pass school,


• making it through school with no money to EAT with or feed our child,


• overcoming the insecurities of the knowledge that I didn’t know that I had in the ICU,


• having to be on my own in a truly scary position as I traveled as an ICU nurse and at MMRC where I was completely alone with really sick people,


• interviewing and accepting a job in long term care that I knew NOTHING about,


• overcoming the insecurities of the knowledge that I didn’t know that I had in the long term care setting,


• developing into a leader and overcoming the insecurities of the knowledge that I didn’t know about leadership


• overcoming the insecurities of everything that I thought I knew, when other people judged me and terminated me (I really let that one rip up my mind!)


• Accepting very difficult positions as director and leader of troubled homes, watching them change and become better, but not taking the credit for all of the work that had been done to accomplish it, (I have since learned to take credit, but give ALL of the credit to God and His guidance)


• Losing a friend to the ego that he succumbed to, but more importantly, gaining the knowledge OVER my insecurities that I actually do know what I am doing in long term care, and leadership, and the one thing that I hope never to forget is this: “think of what you were when you were called.”

(There seems to be a common thread....could I be insecure??)

This is NOT the complete timeline of events leading me to where I am now in His Calling, but it is a little timeline for the things that I have note as significant along the way. (Ephesians 1:11 “Even when we’re blind to the evidence, God works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His Will.”) There are so many side branches to each one of these limbs of the tree (Philippians 2:13 – “God works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.”), and some of them I will probably explore in these ramblings…but, at first glance, I am always in amazement as God uses His Word to show me how I fit directly in His plan….

In the scripture, it says, “Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.”

I fit the bill for:

• Not wise by human standards,


• Not influential;


• Not of noble birth;


• Foolish,


• Weak,


• Lowly and despised

All of the above!

At the beginning of this “timeline”, I was so weak (I couldn’t even tell anyone that I wanted to be a nurse because I KNEW that they would not think that I was capable of it.) I remember one time (I must have been about 12) when I said that I wanted to be a nurse, but my friend, Sandy, and my mother said, "You're too compassionate to be a nurse. You will cry all the time!" (Well, I do cry all the time...at the bedside of my dying patients, when someone is hurting, when I want to do MORE and I can't...I cry a lot).

I was not wise by human standards (most people would have probably just sat on a waiting list of nursing schools until they get in, but I had the wonderful idea of moving across the country with no money or job or support of any kind and doing everything the hard way…that certainly didn't work out!)

I was certainly not of noble birth. I’ve never had anyone that I can off the cuff remember “pulling strings” for me.

I was very foolish (among MANY other things, the moving across country had to be one of the silliest things I ever did!).

Not influential (I think at that point in my life, if I talked to anybody, it certainly wouldn’t influence them in anything but the fact that they should pray for me because I did not have a clue about anything in the world! Honestly, people probably thought I needed to be locked up somewhere to prevent me from hurting myself with my stupidity).

Despised is a little difficult for me because I really don’t think that I have ever been despised by anyone and as for

lowly, in the early stages of my calling, I was lowly in almost every aspect of my life….financially, emotionally, physically, spiritually…so, probably more than any of the other points being made, lowly fit me the best.

I can see as the “timeline” progresses, I have become less of every one of these traits, but I still have a LONG way to go…I am still weak and foolish, still have no influence, and still am not wise by human standards, but only in areas that God is not ready to develop in me. In many ways, over the last 11 years, God has, in His Timing, taught me as I needed to know, about the calling to be a nurse in the role that He has established for me. He is in control of this life that He gave me, even when I think I am in control…even when I have taken over and told HIM that He was not in control, He has never let me fail so miserably that I couldn’t get back up, brush it off, and continue the call. He has always been a loving and caring Father, a disciplinarian, a guide, a nurturer, and a safety net (because I am His child.)

Isn’t it awesome that we serve a Living Savior that not only uses us in our weaknesses to minister to other people, but also teaches us through our weaknesses how He has so enhanced our lives and points out blessings that we can only have received had it not been for His Divine Intervention in our lives. I often learn more about situations when I look back at how far I’ve come…how I am prepared by Him (Jeremiah 29:11 - “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, ”plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”) to have “such a time as this…” (Esther 4:14 – “…and who know but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?”).

Based on all that I have learned, before accepting His call to this vocation and since that time, I can look back and see how I have grown in His Love and Wisdom. I also see how much more I need to fully let Him control my life and this calling, and just be appreciative that I get to go along for the ride! What an awesome adventure He has chosen me for…

As an aside, Jeremiah 29:11

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, ”plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

The Lord DECLARED this – He didn’t just say it. He didn’t just pass it along for someone to write down, He DECLARED it.