IHOP Girl: Soul Time

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Soul Time

I think everyone needs "soul time". You may think of it as "quiet time", but you know what I have come to believe that sometimes a "quiet time" is not what you need. Soul time seems to fit better. It can be singing, playing music, drawing, painting, reading the Word, or laying on the floor with your eyes shut as the dog snores beside you. What matters most is quieting the swirling chaos around us so that you can listen. I don't know about you but sometimes I think that I listen best when I'm standing in front of the keyboard playing the same three chords and putting my feelings into words. Somehow I hear Jesus. Your soul time is I'm sure completely different then mine, and that is awesome!! I think I use to get so bogged down in thinking that my time with the Lord had to be separated from my life. In college I had this revelation about how a relationship with God isn't a parallel line to our physical lives, where the two sometimes crossed paths (ie church). Instead a relationship with God is really like a new birth - its the beginning of a new life, a life where God is in every part and thought. You can go to the gym, the store, and clean your bathroom all the while dwelling with God. I don't know it was just such a neat thing to me at the time, and I think that coming back to that point is a great reminder, because it's so easy to forget.

Today I went to the Neuromuscular clinic, and it was FABULOUS! She was able to target my back pain, work with massage to correct it, and give me tips to work on until I see her again. I am a little sore tonight, but my range of motion has already improved!! I am going to brag on Jesus a little. So, I called last night and left a message at the place about scheduling an appointment sometime, and in my head I was thinking that it would be great if I could get in the next day at about three in the afternoon, so I'd have time to sleep. Haha, so the therapist calls me this morning and says that she had a cancellation today for 3pm. Isn't God good?!! I just laughed so hard about how it was the exact time I had thought about. He has such a sense of humor! I had to call up WOT then and tell her how tickled I was that God put that all together - be encouraged, and give God a chance to change the little things in our lives.

The rest of my day I filled with grocery shopping, cleaning the house, walking the dog, making some yummy sweet and sour chicken, and watching a BBC film (which I might add had the girl from Narnia -Susan - when she was 8 or so). I was thinking about how this time last year I was getting ready to move here! How fast the time has gone!! Who knows where I'll be next year, it is hard to believe that life can change so quickly. Most posting later!!! Leave me lots of comments to comment back to!!

1 comment:

shrunken_frontal_lobe said...: WHOA! WHOA! WHOA!

Would you please warn me before you blind me with you blog picture! I don't usually wear my sunglasses when looking at a blog! Geez!

So when are you starting the WOT exercise therapy program? It's a great plan, really works. I use it with fantastic results. Everyone tells me hot HOT I am since starting the program.

He!; 3:44 AM

Movie Night In...I love a good movie!

Mega Mind
Taking Chance (Will make you cry like a baby)
Charlotte Grey (A bit of a different take on Nazi Germany)
Series - Merlin (I LOVE BBC)
Robin Hood (Okay, a love Russell Crowe, you'll have to understand that about me...)
Kingdom of Heaven (Chuck full of acting power with an epic tale)
Miss Potter (Such a great film! Story of the creator of Peter Rabbit)
How to Train your Dragon (Possibly my favorite animated movie ever...I'm like a little kid, I watch it over and over)
Buck (Sundance winner, Biography of Horse Trainer, heart touching)
Lost in Austin (Modern day spin on Pride and Prej.)

Life as a nurse...

Great words by Reb Jeff: Vayishlach: Facing Death

"Rachel died. She was buried on the road to Ephrat — now called Bethlehem. Jacob set up a pillar above her grave. It is the pillar at Rachel’s grave to this day."–Genesis 35:19-20

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidui http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_(Judaism), and preparing the notifications to the community, feel like little fragments of the sacred. I have been entrusted with the care and tending of the most powerful, complex and difficult emotions that a person can experience in life. I have been made, in some small part, a guardian of the memory of a departed soul — a life that touches upon many other lives.After dropping off my older daughter at her high school this morning, I made a stop at Treasure Coast Hospice http://www.tchospice.org/, a remarkable organization that sets a very high standard for the loving and respectful care of the dying. There, I visited a lovely man whom I have seen a few times in his hospice room. I sat by his bedside and listened to him (in full possession of his faculties) as he told me about his worries about his family, the support of his wife after he is gone, and the future of his children and grandchildren. I was deeply moved by the way he put any concern for himself — even while facing death — in a distant backseat to his concerns for his family. When my own time comes, I can only hope to have his awareness of the way that one life can touch so many others.Also at hospice, I visited a woman I have known for the past two years — a dear soul who is a former Jewish religious school director. I sat with her, too, singing psalms to her as I listened to her heavy and labored breathing. I have no medical training, but I have come to know the sound of a person who is close to death. The body begins to fight for each breath as it slowly looses it grasp on life. As I held her hand and sang, I realized that being a rabbi is no protection against becoming one of the people caught in the web of connection. I, too, am changed by the loss of a life that has touched mine.Later in the day, I met with a couple from our congregation. She had just learned that her brother died yesterday in a car crash. Coming to terms with the loss is made more difficult for her by the fact that she and her brother had not seen each other or spoken in five years. Sometimes, people think it is easier to mourn the death of someone who has moved out of your life. In my experience, though, it's harder. Grief is magnified by wounded love and regret. I have no magic words to say to ease the pain of mourning. All I can do is listen, become a vessel in which people place their stories, and offer compassion.Actually, there is one more thing I can do. I can have faith that "all I can do" is all that I need to do. It is enough.In this week's Torah portion (Vayishlach) Jacob watched Rachel, the love of his life, die in childbirth. He was overcome by grief. Jacob had worked for his cruel uncle Laban for fourteen years to earn the right to marry Rachel. Now she was gone. Because she died while they were traveling, Jacob had to bury her by the side of the road. He built a pillar of stones on the spot to mark the place as sacred.This is what we all do, in one way or another, when death enters our lives. We grieve and our hearts break. We wish that we could continue to walk along the path of life with our loved ones forever, but the dead cannot fully join us. We have to leave something behind in order to resume our own journey. So, what do we do? We mark the moment as sacred. We erect monuments — both in cemeteries and in our hearts. The stones we place on top of stones remind us that a life may end, but its sanctity is forever.The Torah says that the monument Jacob built for his beloved continues to stand until this day. A life that touches the lives of others never ceases to send living reverberations throughout the web that binds us all.