A dish on the menu ...

--- So glad it's you.

Sometimes we all need some validation. Am I as good a person as I believe myself to be?
Have I succeeded in my goal of being a decent sort? Am I doing my job with excellence?
Am I diligent and dedicated? Or merely dogged?

Alot of HealthCare professionals and para-professionals forget to validate each other. Perhaps I would be one of them if not for some very good training by my battle-axe Nursing Instructor. I drank in every word she said thirstily, understanding that her decades of experience counted for __much__ where I knew little.

It can be hard to find nice things to say to some people who may not measure up to my expectations of what I believe their job to be, but knowing I likely do not measure up to theirs either, I can always find something to say of a positive nature.

A woman I work with at a difficult assignment noticably tenses while we work. She told me after we finished and had exited the home that she did not think our client liked her much, and that she believed he liked me only a little more. I knew that. He can't stand either one of us. He likes little and cute women who flirt with him to do his care. He does not like strong women who do their job capably and without his input. He needs to keep control of something. It does not bother me much as I know that next year I will not be going to this gentleman as he will be in other realms. As long as I am not the one in the wheelchair I can afford to be gracious. I kill them with kindness. Sometimes I almost choke on it but I do it anyway. It is an important thing for me to do. To be kind. To always be kind. To always be a little kinder than necessary.

Believe me, humble pie is not my favoured dish on the menu.

Months with no R's

Sunday afternoon my family and I went for dinner in a clean family restaurant.
I ordered the "pulled pork" and ravenously devoured every crumb.
It came with fried sweet onions and a sticky honey-garlic sauce. It was delicious.
Cold comfort when not a few hours later my stomach began to protest.

I went to bed groaning.
It was apparant that sleep was not going to be easy.
I was up and down all night and the next morning I felt _all right_ but just so.
Thinking it was just a poor choice off the menu I went to work.
By my second client, I had already hit the beach washrooms twice.
By the fourth I had stopped in the town, *and* at a friends, *and* was green at the gills.

Still, I thought it had abated.

I walked into one of my Ladies and as I stooped to put my keys down, my guts roiled.
I stood upright and stock still.

"Are you all right? You look not yourself."
Damned straight.
She had her companion serve me some flat ginger ale which calmed the roiling.
She filled a flask for me for later. Saved me, that did.

I told her I thought the pulled pork was pulling me.
"Pork? In August? Never eat pork in a month without an R."

She allowed as how refrigeration had made that saying somewhat archaic but having suffered a full 48 hours with stomach and intestinal distress I think she may be onto something.
I spent the next 24 hours in bed moaning.

Bugger the bollocky pork anyway.
[With a pointy stick!]

I was back to work today and back to return the flask.

"Thank you so much for the ginger ale. Well and truly you saved me."

"OH , my pleasure. You save ME every day."

I said she was being kind and she said she was telling the truth and we parted both smiling.

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Inspirational

This from my *in* box today!
God bless you Widdy--
=========
Dear Friend-
As I was sipping my coffee and reading this mornings devotion you came to mind.
This devotion is from Oswald Chambers who was a Scottish minister in the late 1800s to early 1900s.

July 6th. VISION AND REALITY
"And the parched ground shall become a pool." Isaiah 35:7

We always have visions, before a thing is made real.
When we realize that although the vision is real, it is not real in us, then is the time that Satan comes in with his temptations, and we are apt to say it is no use to go on.

Instead of the vision becoming real, there has come the valley of humiliation.
"Life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And batter'd by the shocks of doom
To shape and use."
God gives us the vision, then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of the vision, and it is in the valley that so many of us faint and give way.
Every vision will be made real if we will have patience.
Think of the enormous leisure of God! He is never in a hurry.
We are always in such a frantic hurry. In the light of the glory of the vision we go forth to do things, but the vision is not real in us yet; and God has to take us into the valley, and put us through fires and floods to batter us into shape, until we get to the place where He can trust us with the veritable reality.

Ever since we had the vision God has been at work, getting us into the shape of the ideal, and over and over again we escape from His hand and try to batter ourselves into our own shape. The vision is not a castle in the air, but a vision of what God wants you to be.
Let Him put you on His wheel and whirl you as He likes, and as sure as God is God and you are you, you will turn out exactly in accordance with the vision.
Don't lose heart in the process.

If you have ever had the vision of God, you may try as you like to be satisfied on a lower level, but God will never let you.
You can read his daily devotions at http://www.myutmost.org
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I know Oswald Chambers well. "My Utmost for his Highness" is my most dogearred daily devotional.
Doesn't mean it took.
I am still a work in progress.