Take Time

I managed to wrangle a few days this week to meet my sister and her family up in the Finger Lakes region of New York. Venturing to a place called Chimney Bluffs on Lake Ontario, I experienced a rainy, cool and very breezy day (if you can call a wind tunnel "breezy"). Since I like photography, my trusty Canon was along for the ride.

It was a good day. Despite the weather, which provided a rather non-colorized gray sky, I got some good pictures. But after tripping through the stones on the shore, jumping out of the waves to keep my feet dry, struggling up the side of the bluff, fighting the wind, constantly readjusting my hood to keep my ears from freezing off, and having achieved mucho-megabites of photos I can use to try to keep my parish nursing ministry alive, I realized I was missing something.

You see, when I was younger - before I had too much to do and not enough time to do it in - I always had time for God amidst the wonders of his creation. Nature always provided profound moments for me to experience "the Other." Those were the moments that helped me place what I was and who I was in and against the world. Amidst life's pain, confusion and disappointment, it was those moments that helped me experience the profundity of God, to lose myself in him, to worship and to pray. As I made my way off the bluff today, I realized that those moments had become fewer and farther between. Realizing I had missed out on the most important part of my walk, I hesitated and considered stopping to meditate, but the hour was getting late. I wanted to spend more deliberate time with God, but chose not to.

As pastors and parish nurses, we become virtually useless to ourselves and to others without taking time alone with God, because we lose the core of our ministry. It is our relationship with God that we tend to neglect as we get busier, but it is that relationship that led us to our vocation in the first place. Without nurturing our spirits, our attempts to nurture others become a witness of hollow words. We encourage others to do things we no longer do. Of course, we intend to spend time with God, and although that pull to be alone with the Lord increases, our time gets waylaid by the less important things of our lives.

Take time. Take time to experience God's creation. Take time to meditate and to pray. Take time to LISTEN to God. Get rid of your camera, or whatever it is that keeps you from seeking him, so you can experience once again the God who led you into service for him.

Do I love the fact that I got some good pictures today? You bet. But I wish I had more fully experienced God's creation by setting my camera down for a bit and taken the time to abide with him in a more focused manner through his magnificent creation. God still loves me, I know. So thank you, Lord, for your understanding and grace. Goodness! You've made a magnificent world!

What Do You Know About Yourself?

Pick up any woman's magazine these days and there is some sort of self-quiz inside. Though of questionable validity, by simply answering the questions may discover things about yourself you didn't know, like how your favorite color provides insight into your personality, or why your choice of pet characterizes you, to how you and your spouse could have a better sex life. When I see these I wonder why anyone would take them. Certainly I have better things to do...

But once in a while, I take them anyway. Why? Sometimes it's fun. So if you also enjoy an occasional moment to respond to these little questionnaires, why not answer one that tells you something meaningful about yourself?

So here is one that barely borders on meaningful, if that. I certainly won't vouch for its accuracy. Its usefulness may simply be, for the theological neophyte, to open doors of inquisitiveness concerning the history of your own denomination or the Christian church in general. Your results could be:

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan
Emergent/Postmodern
Neo-Orthodox
Roman Catholic
Charismatic/Pentecostal
Classical Liberal
Reformed Evangelical
Modern Liberal
Fundamentalist

If you've never come across these terms but end up being labeled as something you're not familiar with, investigate it, especially if you didn't "score" where you thought you would.

Why? Because although parish nurses advocate medical care, we deal with human beings from a wholeness perspective. If I dropped the medical advocacy issues I deal with on one side of a scale and the emotional/mental health issues on the other side, the emotional/mental side would slam to the ground, launching the medical advocacy side into low earth orbit. Everything that is medically related has emotion and psychological issues interwoven. You cannot address the former without confronting the later.

I absolutely believe that the only way to gain insight into the psychology of any individual is by having first learned about yourself. I'm convinced that without the earnest, detailed and often painful work of self-exploration and analysis, we will forever be blind to the inner workings of another. Though we can never be totally self-aware nor achieve total understanding of another, we are not to throw our hands in the air in defeat without trying. It does mean that for us to even approach a level where we can be useful to others, we must first look at ourselves. Anything that may help us do that could be a useful tool.

Does that mean this little quiz linked to above is useful. Well...maybe not this one, unless you take it a bit further. However, in the future I will post a few tools that may help you to discover how fascinating it is to help people deal with their inner beings after first examining your own. If it takes simple, little questionnaires to start that process, so be it. I know we are all worth it - both you and the people you care for. God created - and he said that it was good!