Conflicting Morale

3/25/08

I haven't had more than two weeks off work since I graduated high school 25 years ago. If you have been reading along, you will know that the streak has been broken. It has been three months since I last worked. Sounds like an introduction at a support group, doesn't it? Oftentimes in my career, I have been so exhausted from running to and fro that I begged for a brief respite, a chance to sleep more than six hours without worrying about where I had to be the next morning. Now that I have had that chance, it is like the consuming the little book in Revelation, so sweet going down, but bitter in my belly. The mental game has become an all- consuming task. I wear sloth and procrastination like a coat. Anger is an itch waiting to be scratched just below the surface. Confidence of my business acumen has eroded to a stubble. Resumes are cast on the wind like chaff. The irony of the situation is like a man on a yacht, lost at sea. "water water, everywhere. But not a drop to drink." The incessant search for land or another ship consumes so much of his time that he cannot appreciate the luxuries he has been provided. Fear of dehydration sours any potential comfort. Yet for all that, what can the man do. Land will come, eventually. But will it be too late. What is too late. Dropping the metaphor, I have until maybe November until we can't make a mortgage or car payment. From there, things get worse fast. Physically, I can feel the toll which once again is an irony. Never before have I had the chance to cook the proper food, exercise enough, and sleep enough all at the same time. Yet my nights are tormented by physical infirmities (purely psycho-somatic in nature) that I rarely sleep for more than five hours without waking up. My skin crawls at night. My back aches. The backs of my knees feel like someone is pulling at the tendons with a pair of vise grips. I am afraid to take analgesics because of the possibility of another episode of atrial fibrillation. Miraculously, I haven't put any weight back on. But I can no longer afford to go to the gym.

I am in a vicious cycle of procrastination. If I work around the house, I am haunted by the fact that I should be looking for work. In addition, I know that everything I do costs even more money that we don't have. But when I start looking for work, I can no longer take more than four hours before I am so demoralized that I just give up. Then there is time spent studying. I have to study for a college course and need to study for additional certifications to boost my resume. But with children in the house most of the time, I just can't focus. When I do get quiet time, my mind quickly wanders to undone housework, unfinished projects and additional effort I could put toward finding work. At the end of the day, even when I give up and turn the stinkin' tv on or read, there is no chance to relax because I am haunted by everything that needs to be done.

 

 

Blessings

1/10/2008

As the days wind on with no prospect of work, I can feel my self confidence ebbing away. A general funk has taken over my thoughts creating a fog through which I experience everything. It is at a time like this when I am reminded to count my blessings.

When I woke up this morning, I was still in a warm house, surrounded by loved ones in perfect health. Meanwhile just three miles away, others were waking up to yet another round of life draining kemotherapy in an effort to beat back the demon gnawing at their life. Down the hall others scarcely wake up at all. Having no hope of recovery, they are mostly sedated to keep them comfortable in their last hours. And down on the first floor, there is a woman who just hours ago had every hope of a long and vigorous life. Now doctors are working desperately to restore her vital signs after the accident so they can begin the endless hours of surgery. Even with a positive outcome, it will take years of therapy and plastic surgery to accomplish anything remotely close to what she used to call normal.

In an apartment down the street as the couple rises out of bed for the day, little is spoken. She longs for a home. He longs for a son. Both of them are forever forbidden from their dreams due to infertility. Sure adoption is a consideration, but deep down in each of their psyches their longing is to produce, love and nurture an heir, not to a fortune, but something more important than money. They long to see the miracle of a part of them in the eyes of another. But it never shall be.

In our very own community a mother wakes her children for school. She makes sure their clothes match, urges them to get their backpacks and makes their lunches while they eat breakfast. But there is a hole in the morning air for them. The father has left. Divorce is imminent. She hasn't worked in years. He has decided he wants nothing more to do with them beyond what the attorneys demand of him.

So when you look at it that way, I guess things can always be worse. My four children are well. My wife is well. We have some extra time during the day while the kids are at school to actually have a conversation. The kids are gaining a new appreciation for how good homeschooling was. I am learning just how much money we have thoughtlessly wasted as I now watch every dollar being spent. We are all learning something.

Ancient Signs and Markings.

Not so much a question, but a curiousity, is there a correlation between the mark on the hand and forehead of Ex: 13:16 and the one in Revelation? Was marking the hand and forehead a custom. Cain had a mark on his forehead as well.

Wiped out

If every Egyptian soldier was wiped out when the Red Sea folded in on them, who other than the Israelites was left to tell all the other city states that were later fearful of the Jews because of what God did to the Egyptians. Was it Moses father in lawJethro who visited him in Ex. 18? It is also interesting that all 600,000 plu Israelites crossed the Red Sea at night. I always thought it was during the day.

Was Lazarus truly buried?

Of course he was put in a tomb. But according to tradition, the embalming process took a full forty days Gen. 50:3. If he was only in the tomb 3 days from his death, was he embalmed? If not, why not?

Near Miss

11/16/07Well, isn’t life interesting. Has your body ever tried to tell you something and you just didn’t listen. For months, I have been stressing out trying to keep a company on the brink of bankruptcy afloat. All along, my life habits were deteriorating. Too few, too large meals of the wrong foods and no exercise. As time went on, I just didn’t feel right. Naturally, I chalked it all up to stress. Then it happened. I had managed to slow down my personal life to allow me more time to rest away from work. So one Saturday, we had breakfast very late, played a few rounds of scrabble, and later had some vegetable soup for dinner. The kids were asleep when the missus and I settled in for a movie. As the movie started so did my usual heartburn. I fetched some Tums and started munching on them and sipping water. About an hour later, I started having this anxious feeling in my chest on top of the heartburn. For as long as I can remember, I have had what is called PVCs, premature ventricular contractions. Every once in a while, the lower half of my heart beats out of sync with the upper part. It feels kind of like a hand reaching in and giving your heart a little squeeze, not painful, just unsettling. I have had a battery of test done and was assured that it wasn’t anything to worry about. Well that Saturday night, I started to worry. That feeling I get when I experience a PVC was happening, only it didn’t stop. I casually went upstairs and got the stethoscope (doesn’t everyone have one)? My goodness, my heart was beating 140 beats per minute, and that was lying down. Curiously, there was no pain at all, except the heartburn which was going away. I let my wife listen and her face turned ashen. After deliberating for a few minutes, I agreed to go to the hospital. To be honest, it wasn’t the going to the hospital that bothered me, it was dragging my kids there at 11:30 at night that bothered me more than anything. I remember being afraid. I was afraid that while everyone was screwing around, my heart would just decide to take the day off. I was afraid of the inevitable impact of a fatherless household on the development of my girls. But seriously, I did not have this feeling of unfinished business. That’s what bothers me the most. In those moments of uncertainty where you don’t have sufficient information to know you are not dying, to not feel desperately like you need to finish something seems beyond sad.Don’t get me wrong, I would miss my children and they would miss me. My wife would be shaken. But I have always known that she is so incredibly charming and loving that after a time, she would easily find love again. Once I got wired up, they figured out that I was experiencing atrial fibrillation, which is ironic because I had just watched a PBS show about it a week before. There’s something for the psycho-somatic crowd to talk about. Atrial fibrillation, or a-fib, is when the electrical impulses in your heart don’t follow their normal chain of events. Normally, the small upper chambers contract, then the lower ones. Sometimes the signal gets scrambled in one of the upper chambers (atriums). As a result, that chamber just quivers like Jello on a dashboard. The rest of the heart is working overtime to make up for the lack of efficiency. I remember laying there worrying about my children sleeping in another ER room across the hall. Pam had gone to get the two oldest and brought them in. After they were there for just a couple minutes, the monitor showed my heart rate going down fast. It went from 112 beats per minute to 39 and was still slowing. I really thought this was lights out. I was panicking trying to signal my wife to get the kids out without scaring them. No kid should have to watch their father die before their eyes. She finally got the hint and scurried them out. Fortunately, things leveled out again. But that was creepy.Now that I am out of the hospital, the afib has stopped and my heart is back to what is called normal sinus rhythm. I am on meds to keep my heart rate down and feel just fine. Life has changed though; More trips to the gym, more smaller meals, no trans fat, no sugar, far less starch. Now all I need to do is find a job where I don’t work for a jerk and I’m on easy street.