Automated Rejection Letters

I have been applying for jobs at our new home. I know that the perfect job will be offered to me at the perfect moment. I am not forgetting that as easily as I have in the past. 

However, today I received an automated rejection letter for a job I thought I really wanted - a job I thought was perfect for me. It was a position at an outpatient infusion center which is where they give chemotherapy, blood, antibiotics, etc., to patients that can walk in and out of the hospital each day. 

But then, later today, I applied for another job that I really want. I was thinking to myself, "kt, what do you really want to be doing career-wise in ten years?" And the answer is that I really want to be teaching nursing students. I love the thrill of seeing students understand something for the first time - of bringing them to that point skillfully. I love being with them when they experience their first patient death, when they experience their first victory in independent problem-solving, or helping them recover after their first patient yells at them. 

So I applied for a position teaching LPNs at the tech school Thomas is going to. And I was even so bold as to write in my cover letter that I've received a job offer for every interview I've ever had! That might've been a bold move, but I'll tell you: I'm tired of not getting face time. 

News

A couple of days ago, I was sitting at the table and my arm started itching. I told my mom I needed to get the pest killers here. They come to the complex every Friday. Then yesterday, I got some itchy hives. I took benedryl and went to bed. This morning, I woke up with hives all over my body. My palms look like I'm developing graft vs host disease, but I haven't received any transplants lately, at least not that I know of. I think it might be fenugreek seed, an ingredient in the granola.  

They've gone down now after a nice concoction of zyrtec, prednisone, hydrocortizone, and benedryl. I'm blaming my sleeplessness on the prednisone. I found out today that we don't have any transitional health insurance, so that's really nice. At least I went to Urgent Care. But I learned in Uganda that money doesn't matter as much as I thought, so I'm not stressing about it.

I got back from South Sudan last week. In case you don't know, Sudan has been a war-ravaged country for many years. They are now rebuilding in a period of peace that began, at least on paper, in 2005. The war took many lives. There are many orphans. The country is very poor. 

Death is a cultural norm. Resources spent on life are sometimes considered wasted. A child on the compound has chronic hepatitis B and esophageal varices. The blood vessels in the esophagus are swollen and have potential for bursting. In that case, a patient will puke blood and likely die from blood loss. Treatment was available for $2000. Someone said, "Why are we treating him if he's just going to die anyway?" This attitude pervades. On the compound, there is a different attitude, because there is the Lord, who breathes life, who created life, who offers hope. And the purpose of Cornerstone Children's Home, where we spent the majority of our time in South Sudan, is to bring a hope and a bright future to children who otherwise would have none.

I helped some kids. I took them to the doctor and gave them medicine, and they got better. I thought some toddler twins had tuberculosis based on the reports of their long-time symptoms: fevers, productive coughing, neglect after birth. But they got better after five days of antibiotics and cough medicine. Their lungs were totally clear when I left. This was the best part of the trip. But it was also the worst part, because five days of antibiotics probably would have made them better a year ago or maybe two years.

One child, Simon, stepped on a nail, and it almost went right through his foot. He went to the hospital, and said they put an injection into the wound. I'm guessing tetanus, maybe antibiotic? I dressed it a couple of times, told him how to baby it, gave some painkiller...not much, really. But he got better and was playing soccer like normal before we left, and he wrote me a note before we left that makes me cry like a baby. 

One girl, Betty Mundua, was having recurring ear infections. I gave her five days of antibiotics and ear drops. Things were clear before I left. I have a hard time believing that it is totally clear, because she has been battling this for something like years. She probably has nerve damage and chronic hearing loss from a simple childhood ear infection left untreated...and that's even if it's totally healed now.

No-nyo is the nickname which means "little girl" in Madi, one of the prominent tribal languages, of my small friend Dorothy. She had malaria and an upper respiratory tract infection that took her down. She was feeling better after a couple of days of medicine.  

Helen is a woman who is married to Juma John's son. She helps with the cooking regularly and can be seen with her own son around the compound. She had malaria, pyelonephritis, and chronic headaches. I gave her 10 days of IV antibiotic therapy. Her symptoms were resolved sometime around day 7. 

All these children were treated for about $40. But a notebook is something like $8. Materials are expensive. Meds are cheap.

Travel was nightmarish, especially our first attempt at getting home. I think it was the first time in our marriage when Thomas and I were both really angry at the same time. I'll spare you the details, but really, I'll spare myself from having to remember them. Although, it really was kind of...an experience. 

But, as you can see displayed at Jimmy John's in Lawrence, Kansas, "Experience is what you get when you don't get what you wanted." And so I am now more experienced than before. You think I should put it on my resume?

I'll give you the short version. Taxi drivers continuously shouting in Juba-Arabic about us, around us, to us... if you've heard Arabic before, you know it sounds like people verbally ripping each other's heads off, even when they are saying thank you... Juba-Arabic is no different... driving 70 mph toward equally fast oncoming traffic with no visible sign of reverting to the correct lane and "boda-bodas", or motorcycles, everywhere... in between every car, 24 hours of missed appointments, stopping to buy chickens multiple times on an already late bus, arguing with airport officials, emergency travel service at $100/hr - which I only found out after the fact due to poor connection...the list goes on... $4000 for new tickets home (very painful, especially in full knowledge of how far $4000 would go for the children), and an unexpected night in Uganda. 

That morning, we ate better than we had in three weeks, and Africans sang songs to Jesus in English really loudly. It was the most beautiful sound I could have heard, like salve to my soul. We got beautiful souvenirs for our family that afternoon, and we arrived with several hours to spare at the airport. The officials kindly let us into the airport - something we had trouble with before - and all our flights home were on time. So I really can't complain. That one more day in Africa was beautiful.

Believing God

You know? John the Baptist was beheaded when Jesus walked the earth. And the fact that this happened is helping me right now, because things have happened that feel like great defeat.

I'm studying David right now, and there's a defeat that he experienced. Beth Moore said something about it to me today, something like wishing, every time you read through David's life, that somehow, this time, he'll run for his life from Bathsheba at the first sight of her, as if you're reading in the present, and you just know he'll make the right decision. But soon, you remember it's not happening; it happened, and it can't be changed.

I find myself saying sorry to the Lord in deep sincerity about some of those things that have happened, things in the world that miss his mark. That's what they must have felt when John the Baptist was beheaded, like God forgot about being able to save people.

I'll just say I'm feeling it a little bit now: the mother of a six-year-old succumbing to cancer on Tuesday, a nice old man stroked out and unable to speak with me, only pleading for me to understand, somehow, what he can't say, Law and Order shamelessly announcing the most horrible things anyone could ever imagine as to entertain.

Yet He lives, doesn't He? We know He died, and they must have all felt the weight of that as a gruesome mistake in the kingdom - they must have thought that, after spending all that time with Him, He wasn't the One.

But Jesus didn't stay dead. And He is making all things new. And it tears up my heart. It's the only thing that helps us lift up our heads again. We ought to, you know. We ought to lift up our heads, because it's the action that comes out of believing that Jesus is alive.

I'm there.

I just found out I didn't get into the program I was trying for. I was sitting in church the other day thinking about so many things. Should I have made my essay more beautiful like a cookie-cutter? Should I have put a line in my resume about pursuing oncology certification? Should I have left out that part about how walking with people through what seems a premature death makes me starved for greater knowledge? And I thought about the death I was thinking of when I wrote that part, the death I still feel responsible for in a small part of me untouched by intellect. 

Then I remembered asking Him to intervene for every word of that essay, to sway it one way or another in my mind changing the words on the page, or in their minds changing their decision. I said, "Have it Your way, whether I become a nurse practitioner or not." 


And He said, "Every minute, I'm there. All along the way, for every nuance they didn't like, for every minute of your life, even that day when your patient fell asleep for good, I was there. I am."


He prepares us with each minute for the next, and what is there left to do but completely let go and trust the One who's here? He is.

Flashback

I had a little flashback just now. There I was sitting on a metal folding chair on a cement floor looking up and forward to one of our leaders. She expressed, "I think when I get to heaven, I will ask God, 'Why do You love me?'" I knew so clearly her mind at that moment, because I thought the same thing. How could God ever love me?

Now I ask myself the same question, "Why do You love me?" and the answer seems clear and simple: "I AM." It's the answer to the question I thought I would ask until I got Home when the Maker of my soul Himself spoke to me. Turns out He didn't want to waste that much time. As He pulls me out of myself little by little in His sanctifying way, I see that He loves me because He is God. He doesn't love me because I am this or that or any other thing. He loves me because He is made of the stuff. Were He to leave me inside myself, I would ask the question until the question drove me into the depths of despair. I am nothing. But now I know Him a little more. I know He is of Himself. There is no other. There isn't even me. He is love, and he cannot but love me.

While There is a Today

It's been a week worth writing about. 

A while ago, I made friends with a leukemia patient who used to be in the Marines. We talked about God, and he said he didn't want to turn God away, that it was better to be nice to God instead of bashing Him. That night, I thought about asking him, "What if God wants you to run to Him instead of just not running from Him?" I asked God for the strength to ask him, but he was gone the next day. Then I asked God to tell him Himself or make him come back. 

That was a long time ago. On Saturday, I walked into a room to fix the beeping pump, and there he was! I had time that day to hang out with him and his wife a little bit. I told him I pray for him, and that opened up a whole can of worms. I told him I had been thinking about him since the last visit - wanting to get him thinking, somehow, about being active about knowing God. Then he sure told me. He told me that God had given him two visions since our last meeting. Once, he saw great hands come down around him and cradle him. They picked him up gently off the bed and then floated him back down again. Then a voice said, "I am taking care of you." He said, "Okay. Thank You." Later, he heard God tell him, "I am going to give you a miracle." He said, "Okay, thank You." Two days later, his doctor told him that his bone marrow biopsy showed no cancer: "It's a miracle!" He said, "I know. God told me I would get one." And we were happy together.

That was Saturday. On Sunday, the nice man from church who says I am a mystic told me to write a love letter to God. He wanted to read it. He wants to love God more, and he thought maybe reading something I wrote to Him would help. On Monday, I wrote. 

I'll tell you the truth: spending time facing God with everything you are is a hard thing. It's pure honesty and nakedness. There is pain in loving God sometimes. To know Him is to love Him. To love Him is to miss Him terribly. There is a way to see life through this dark glass, and it's a sad way to live. I lived life that way for a while, and then I asked God for help - that He would send me a friend to be consolation for not being able to be with Him, to help me wait for Him. I married that friend. I told God all about that in my letter. I told Him other things, too. Mostly I'm sorry. and thank you. and I love you.

It took me a couple of days to recover, actually. Life has been deeper this week. Time doesn't mean so much and it means more all at the same time.  

That was Monday. On Tuesday and Wednesday, I cared for particularly special patients, very very sick patients, patients near death. Ms T has been a favorite of mine all through her journey. Mr H was new to me. He was very sick, and his family had to make a lot of decisions yesterday about how he will die. Mr H's wife prayed all day on Wednesday. She and her family have loved God for a very long time. Another patient went from us to the ICU and was reportedly doing poorly. She is young with a horrible blood disease. She has spent a lot of time on our floor. I was told weeks ago that she would live a painful, short life and die a painful death.

That was Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday, I went to visit them. I have never done that before - visiting patients on my day off, but these ones were special, and I couldn't stay away. I wanted to help Mrs H, somehow, to get to the point where she could let him go - to recognize what a blessing she would be giving him to let him go see God. After visiting her, I found out that she had gotten to that place overnight. She walks closely with Jesus. 

A long time ago, Ms T came to have plastic ureters placed into her kidneys in place of her real ones - nephrostomies, they are called. Cancer and treatment made her ureters dysfunctional. She was quite well then, comparatively. Since then, she has had multiple admissions for chemotherapy, pancytopenia, neutropenic fever, confusion. Ms T's family calls me "The A Team" and say I tell it like it is. They like that, so I am one of their favorites. She and her family are special to me. I just couldn't really stay away after hearing she had a trip to the ICU and now was back on our floor to die. 

When I saw her, I would never have known that she was any sicker. She was chipper and lucid and talkative. I asked her if she was ready. She said she wasn't, because she wanted to do so much more for other people. She talked about helping her nieces and nephews find the right paths for their lives, things they could pour themselves into and have purpose for life. She wanted to be around to help them with her resources, with her time, with her life. It is a beautiful thing when your last wish is not for you, but for those you love. We talked about thanking God for each day as a gift, doing today, the things you want to do before you die. You may not have tomorrow. I encouraged her to write letters to her nieces and nephews expressing her love and hopes while there is a today. 

That was Thursday. Today is Friday. I got a message that Ms T died this morning. There isn't today for her. Not like us, anyway. I can't wait to go to heaven. It's going to be so nice to see Jesus' face and to understand. I get heartbroken that I'm not there yet. But each day here is a gift, and He tells us that our life is short. Sometimes we hang onto that like our life-breath. Other times, it makes us sad, like right now, because Ms T and her family won't be coming to see us anymore. 

It all reminds me about this friend I have. She had cancer when she was a kid. She got a lot of chemo/radiation to her torso, so her heart and lungs are weak and show signs of being old with heart disease, lung problems, etc. even though she is in her twenties. When patients tell her, "Don't get old." She tells them, "Actually, that's my one goal in life."  I admire her, because she lives her life like everyday is a gift. I went hang gliding with her. She's been all over the world. She's gone skydiving (and likes hang gliding better). She lives her life connected to God, because there's a fact of life that's more real to her than it is to some of us. At any given moment, we could be a few more moments away from meeting our Maker. 

I just wanted to share these things with you to help you with perspective. I have a gift because of the things I see at my job to see life a little bit differently. I see life as something very close to death, not far removed from it. I see today as something transient, and I hope you can go there with me a little bit. I hope you can think: "Thank You God, for Your gift." I hope you can do and say the things you need to while there is a today. 

It is a great thing to be counted with God's own, to be part of something that's wholly bigger than I am. "He will do even greater things than these," He said; and I am counted with those about whom He said that. It's big, and it's good.