words of brian houston from hillsong church, australia

If you are going to become what you want to become you gotta stick to your visions and dreams and stick to your word. The Bible says “Let your yes be yes and your no be no.” Not just yes when it is going well but let your yes be yes when it is tough.

Stick to your job.
Stick to your faith.
Stick to your commitments.
Stick to your marriage vows.

Lets decide that we are going to become who God has called us to become.
Your commitment, your attitude to leaving, your attitude to being and your attitude to cleaving, determines what you become.
What becomes of your marriage, what becomes of your family, don’t take it for granted.
Don’t take it for granted that these dreams of yours will come to pass.
If you don’t leave certain mentalities I can tell you now that they won’t come to pass.

Leave
Be
Cleave
Become

Become all that God has called you to become.



Brian Houston

vocational pooh...arms of comfort

i work at a hospital. i have a professional job title but the reality of what i do is two part: pooh crew and while i am not saving lives i invest in the quality of the patient’s day and the healing process.

pooh is the force with which i have met much vocational resistance...metaphorically speaking.

close friends know the tensions and questions of purpose i have experienced in relation to my pursuit of asspiring to become a nurse. the academic tension-jumping through the hoops of prerequisites, short admissions openings and long waiting lists. the bread and butter tension- midnight shift, day shift...craziness and boringness of going to work. spiritual tension- things with great worth met the most resistence. i am still on track to get into a nursing school.

why nursing? an unheard of question not long ago. i witnessed the power of nursing in africa. i was a photographer watching and documenting. i came back wanting to be more than a watcher. i wanted to be part of the healing process.

stateside i have often forgotten that desire to be part of the healing, while crawling through the mess of body fluids, painful anxiety and sleepless confusion of night shift both mine and the patients not to mention sleepy eyed doctors. MANY TIMES i have pressed the "code button" of nursing. dramatically and urgently attempting to amputate it from my system. but i cannot shake it. nursing is what i am supposed to do. not stateside no, but somewhere in africa. someday. someday soon.

stateside pooh crew is practice, i get an unlimited amount of personal protective latex gloves and i have working plumbing that takes the pooh far far away (there are nights when i leave the hospital and I could swear the huron river level has risen without rain but from the stank of my shift). in africa who knows if i will start with enough gloves and plumbing that works let alone plumbing that takes the mess away.

it is my shame that i have wandered and lost focus so many times. lost sight because of selfishness. an image in this weeks TIME brought it all back into focus.

The article is called The Deadliest War and the caption for the image: Arms of Comfort- At a hospital in Bunia, Congo, a mother tries to soothe her two young children suffering from malaria and dysentery.

anything but pooh

(warning the following contains several uncouth, unsanctioned PG-13 medical terms)

so who flung pooh?
it is not exactly what it sounds like but it is
(some of you know me to be a “s*** magnet” but that’s a different conversation)

i have shied from blogging

(is that really a word yet? may need to update spell check)

because as it is i think our self that is aimed at media is saturated with so many memoirs
(autobiographies, personal agenda marketing, yack- yack-yack & blah-blah-blah)

who really cares?

for some reason most of us care and that is why humans attempt to engage (enrage) with others

we are defined by others:

tried the individualistic model of existence with all its “be true to yourself” rhetoric
(ridiculous rhetoric)

(gross generalization warning!)
as an individualistic vagabond one can’t stomach the fact they once needed training wheels because their personal paradigm is based on a radical “me first!” mentality and that is why it sells

“just because it sells, doesn’t mean it works” – anonymous, fictional infomercial producer

from my limited experience as one of the herd
we are defined by others in a powerful way
sometimes it is sweet intimacy
bitter pain

in poor man’s terms the works of Shakespeare were bitter sweet interpersonal exchanges
why does reality TV work so well?
And if you watched ya need an alliance to win

(another anonymous quote warning!)
it doesn’t sound trendy yet

“for the self it is more rich to be true to others”
-some simple proverb, hard to put words on

(personal memoir types of sentiment warning!)
I ventured to blog because I am betting that most of us have a part of us that is starving for
conversation, connection, contact

There must be lots of money in the personal ad industry
Just look at your email account’s junk box or
people are starved for conversation, connection, contact

when I hear the word “blog” an image of a make shift bridge develops in my mind
it is pretty simple and that is why I am testing the realm of blog
converse, connect, contact
I confess I sometimes listen to others so that they will listen to me
take a dump
blog

who flung pooh?