Who is The Mole?

Last week, on June 2nd, ABC network launched a new season of The Mole. For the record, The Mole is my favorite reality TV show. I loved the first season and was upset when the show was dropped three episodes into the second season. I somehow missed subsequent seasons and would love to see them on DVD (hint, hint). At any rate, I think that as far as reality TV shows go, this show has the right mix of physical challenges, mental challenges and intrigue that the others shows have to manufacture by casting polar opposite personality types and fostering dissention. The Mole's concept is that there is a saboteur in the mix and so it incorporates by design what the other shows have to get via overly dramatic personalities.

With that brief introduction, here are my initial thoughts on this season's game:

1) John Kelley is a dud. Boy, do I miss Anderson Cooper.
2) For all my (above) talk about not needing any drama amongst the contestant's personality types... this season has it in spades... c'mon, casting officer... why stoop to this low?
3) I can't wait for Bobby to get eliminated.
4) I also don't like Mark... but as he is a good player, he'll probably be here for a while.
5) So far, their teamwork stinks... it will probably take a few more episodes to eliminate a few of the more vitriolic players before they can gel and get to work actually adding some money to the pot.
6) My guess for the Mole so far.... Alex. Why? In episode one, at the dinner before the elimination the following exchange occurs:
Mark: "...leading up to the quiz, everybody is going to be miserable."
John Kelley: "And that is music to the Mole's ears."
Mark: "Of course it is."

Ok, I may be reading too much into it, but the producers have a penchant for slipping in clues where they remain hidden in plain sight (or plain speech). For instance, in season one, they had Anderson Cooper munching on an apple during one scene. The apple was the state fruit of Washington, the home state of that season's mole. So.... Alex is a musician... I think John Kelley was given that phrase to slip into conversation... That and Alex acted pretty suspiciously in this last episode... I guess we will have to wait to see if my intuition is true.

-jeff

Up in smoke

Ok, you know that sinking feeling you get when you've done something that you don't understand with your computer and now you are afraid that you've done something to cause irreparable harm to your computer/files/life. Are you familiar with phrases like, "Blue Screen of Death"? Although I didn't employ any intentional method to destroy my data, I did have a heart-stopping moment this weekend.

For several years now, as my collection of personal digital photographs has swelled to the tune of tens of thousands of pictures, my lovely wife has delicately encouraged me to back up our precious memories onto a more durable medium (CDs, DVDs) rather than using a fragile magnetic hard drive. In the past 5 years, I have gone through three hard drives on my PC and ALL of my Emery's Memories work currently resides on one 400 GB external drive. Amelia has expressed her trepidation about losing data at key times such as my clean install of two years ago (I only managed to lose my .doc and .pub files from 4 years of youth minsitry - well 30% of them that weren't backed up onto CDs). I have reassured her that I am fully aware of the situation and it is under control. But I must admit that on Saturday, I was sweating bullets.

Here's the low-down: I've been increasingly depending on my trusty Macbook Pro since I acquired it in September of '07. Unfortunately, the video and photo files I've been doing with Emery's Memories have quickly whittled down my available 120 gigs of hard drive space to about 20 gigs. Soooo... I decided to clean up a bit. First of all, I went through and tossed duplicates or bad photos. Next, I got the external hard drive from my PC (I have one for my Mac, but it is just for backing up the Mac) and set about dumping all the Emery's Memories Projects onto the PC external drive. Because I have an Intel based Mac, it read the FAT32 partition with no problems and I happily transfered gigabyte after gigabyte of information. Skip forward a few days... I had just a few more files to transfer to the backup PC drive and then I was going to take it back to the PC and hook it up to make sure all the files got transfered and were readable before dumping the 40 gigs of data in my Mac's Trashcan. I reconnected the firewire PC backup drive to the Macbook and got this message: "This volume is not initialized. Initialize now? YES NO" For those of you who are strictly PC users, this is akin to formatting (essentially erasing any existing data on the hard drive to have a clean slate). I selected "NO" and took the external hard drive upstairs to the PC to see if it would read it there. Amelia was sewing and saw me come upstairs to the PC and hook up the drive.
Am: "Hi, honey. Whatcha doing?"
Me: (nonchalantly) "Oh, I'm just checking to see if the files I backed up transfered alright."
Am: "You know, I really wish you'd go ahead and put all our old pictures on CDs."
Me: (thinking - SHE KNOWS), "Oh, I know, I know. I'll do that soon. Promise."
----I reboot the Windows Machine and wait. The drive comes up..... I click on it to open up the file explorer window, waiting to see the almost 300 gigs worth of pictures, videos and music I had stored on the drive unfold gloriously before my eyes. Nothing doing. My PC mocks me with the following message: "This drive is not formatted. Format now? YES NO" -----
Me: " Ahhhhh... nuts!"
Am: "What's wrong, honey?"
Me: "Um.... well, I had this drive hooked up to the Mac to transfer a bunch of files and now neither computer is reading it."
Am: "Is that the hard drive with all our pictures on it?"
Me: (almost whispering) "yes"
---------pregnant pause-------- (for reference, ladies: HERE # 72)
Am: Can you fix it?
Me: Um... I'm looking into it now.
------ Furiously searching Google (no, I'm not feeling lucky), I found a forum that explained my problem. It seems that even with Intel based Macs, if you attempt to move a file that is more than 4 GB, the FAT32 system doesn't handle it very well... so the Mac tried to use it's file handling protocol to tell the drive how to handle those files. The next time I tried to access the drive, the partition table was corrupted with data from both the Mac's way of reading files and the PC's way of reading files. Therefore, neither one of them recognized that the drive was formatted at all. Luckily, all the data was intact. I downloaded some free software that analyzes the drive and recreates the partition table and Volia! 30 minuts later, my PC can read all my glorious data. -----
Me: (with newfound confidence) Ok, sweetie, it is all there. Not a byte missing. I just had to (and here I launched into a long winded explanation of the difference between NTFS and FAT32 which she promptly cut me off)
Am: So... will you please back up all our pictures onto CDs now?
Me: Sure.... soon (tm) .

Needless to say, I really worried for a while there that I'd really messed up and lost all the digital copies of our pictures for the last 5 years or so....

So, I'll leave you with this little joke:

One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD and Satan also came with them. The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?" Satan replied, "From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it." Then the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my Son, Jesus? With all the technological advances on earth, he has proven himself adept at mastering all of them." Satan said, "You've given him every advantage, it is not a matter of mastering technological skills, he already knows it all. If you kept yourself out of the equation, I'll bet that he couldn't even beat me in a typing test." "Very well," said the LORD. He called Jesus and arranged for them to each have a computer brought before them and told them the rules of the typing test.... the first to finish with the fewest errors would be declared the winner. It was no ordinary typing test and their fingers flew across the keyboards. After 15 minutes, Satan began to break a sweat. After 30 minutes, he crowed, "HA! I'm almost finished!" Just then, the power in Heaven winked out and then back on. "NOOO!", Satan screamed. "Not fair! You can't have a power outage in Heaven!" The LORD said, "Well, it appears that Jesus is the winner." Satan yelled, "That is not fair! How can you say that he won? We both lost power and all the test data!" The LORD replied calmly, "Yes, but Jesus saves."


Moral of the story: Don't be a moron like me.... back up your important data.


-jeff

Semester's End

Well, it has been a while since I posted anything here and I thought I would give you an update.

It has been a busy month or so. My last post dealt with my experience with "Ne'igalomeatiga", my kidney stone. Turns out that it is a common type: a Calcium Oxalate stone. That means that I'm likely to get another one if I don't watch it... soooooo... I hope I can minimize the risk.

Since my last post, it feels like the level of academic work that was due, impending or otherwise looming at the end of the semester has all been compressed into the space of a week or so. I'm on the downhill side of the onslaught though, having attended the last official class session this morning. Now all I have left are two write-ups for my Assessments class, a take home essay test from Internship 1 and a final exam from Advanced Psychopathology between now and next Wednesday. Oh, and supervision and clients and work and sermon prep and processing about 800 wedding pictures for two different clients. Shouldn't be too tough.

I'm actually in a kind of melancholy mood right now. It might have something to do with the fact that it is midnight and I should be either sleeping or working on something that will make my life less hectic tomorrow (paying bills, doing homework or such). Nevertheless, I am blogging so I'll share my emotional state with you.

Firstly, I know that counseling can be an emotional drain on a therapist, and I expect that downt the road it will be, but right now, I feel pretty energized with the few sessions that I've gotten under my belt. Part of the reason is that it challenges my mind to process the stories I'm being told and to push them through a filter of all that I've learned in the past few months and try to make connections and see patterns and make sense of the jumble that spills out in front of me in the therapy room. As this happens, it is not just my clients who are in therapy, but I am there too, so I'm part of this process of examination and exploration. I walk away from a therapy session having been subjected to new information and I have to find some way to make it make sense. Therapy changes people... mostly the therapist, I think. Perhaps I'm still too new to the process and so that is why I feel like I'm taking so much away from each session. Time will tell.

Secondly, my family is undertaking a shift in our level of comfort. As you may know, we have been living with Amelia's parents for a little over three years now, since we moved back to Abilene. What was a short term plan has turned into a long term proposition as it quickly became apparent that living rent-free was a wonderful way to begin the process of getting out of debt. Part of the debt was self-inflicted, part of it was medical emergencies and part of it was sudden job loss related. However we got there, we didn't intend to spend so much time leeching off of Amelia's extremely gracious parents. So, three years later, we've decided that despite the lousy housing market, despite the rising cost of food, gas and general living expenses, that we need to be a household unto our selves. This will not be easy. So far, it has mostly been discouraging. I was supposed to spend some time tonight getting our expenses lined out, calculating our debt and monthly expenditures, but after doing my required duties at the hospital, I only managed to watch LOST and work on my sermon for Sunday. I'd appreciate any prayers you could send our way.

Thirdly, I've been giving a little thought to a paper that I'll have to turn in later this summer called the "Theory of Change" paper. We have been instructed to formulate a theory of change based on what we know from some experts we have studied (Prochaska, primarily and his theory of Transtheoretical change). We are supposed to integrate two of the therapy models we've studied and weave them into this model and come up with our own "meta-theory". It should be an interesting exercise. Recently, I've become wrapped up with a song that is occupying my mental processes and informing my outlook. I have, in fact, set up another blog just to explore this train of thought, so I won't blog about it here, but direct you there to read those ramblings, if you care to: lovelikecrazy.blogspot.com

Finally, I'm really, really, really enjoying doing Photography. I shot my first solo wedding last weekend and it went great. In yet another shameless plug, go visit my page for my budding business and tell your friends. I give awesome discounts to friends, poor college students, families, complete strangers everyone who asks... I'm just enjoying it so much. I appreciate all the affirmation and validation I've gotten from the work. Have a great weekend.

Emery's Memories : Fine Photography

This, too, shall pass...

Amelia tells me that I'm a lousy patient. I don't like to admit I'm sick and when I finally admit it, I don't like to take drugs because in my convoluted thinking, how will I know I feel better unless I know when the pain stops? Nevertheless, I had to revise my drug-taking philosophy this past week. Let me back up and tell you the whole story...

Wearing the little white gown that doesn't close in the back

Ok, so last Sunday, I was driving home from Galveston where I'd spent several days at a conference. I'd worked in three side trips to see friends along the way and I was pretty tired. Enterprise Rent-a-Car had set me up with a nice little Chevy Cobalt which I was enjoying, but toward the end of my trip I began to wonder if I wasn't getting a little saddle sore after racking up almost a thousand miles in the blue beast in three days. About an hour away from Abilene, I actually stopped and bought some Ibuprofin because my back was hurting so much. I arrived home and put a cold-pack on my back and it helped a bit. Monday arrived and I felt fine all day, but in the evening, my back was hurting me so much I laid on the ground and cried for a bit. It was at this point Amelia began prompting me to make an appointment to see a doctor. Loathe to spend money on a deductible just for a lil ole backache, I declined. Tuesday, apparently vindicated, I boasted to my beautiful bride that I felt fine. In the evening, we took a walk around ACU on the Lunsford Trail with all three kids in tow. Each of the kids had some vehicle they were riding and I bent, twisted, pulled and ran alongside them as they rode along. I was feeling fine. Amelia witnessed my limber form and told me that I wasn't allowed to complain of a backache any longer. Wednesday found me feeling great once again and I was glad that my nagging back pain was gone until..... church time that night. Once again, my lower left back began to ache deep inside and I couldn't make the pain abate. I tried putting pressure on it, I tried sitting differently, I tried breathing deeply. Finally, I got home as quickly after church as I was able and took some painkillers and hooked up a heating pad and whimpered as I tried to get comfortable. Thursday, a full four days after I first noticed my back pain, I had my first real spasm. It was at about 4:30 pm while I was working at the MFI clinic. I broke out in a sweat and got nauseous and couldn't sit comfortably. The pain in my back was sharp and acute and worse than anything I could remember. It lasted for about 10 minutes and then I went back to feeling pretty normal. I was scheduled to work at the hospital for my chaplaincy job that evening and hoped that I would be able to function until my shift ended at 11pm. So, I went to the hospital and as soon as I got a chance, I went down to the Trauma Center where I found the charge nurse, Judy. "Judy, " I began rather innocently, "If I were to tell you that I thought I had a kidney stone, what questions would you ask me to screen for that?" Judy raised her eyebrow at me. I described my symptoms and she told me, "Yeah, it sounds like a kidney stone. Do you want me to check you in?" I assured her that I felt fine and that I was hoping that it was not going to be a bother that night. She smiled and said, "Ok, but I predict you'll be back tonight. Let me get you some stuff." She walked off and a few minutes later was back with a handy dandy paper funnel/filter thingy and a sterile urine sample cup. "Strain all your urine and try to catch it, so you can let your doctor determine what kind of kidney stone it is." I accepted her gifts and went along, full of ominous foreboding. "Don't feel bad, chaplain! Bigger men than you have come in here crying for morphine. There's no shame. Don't try to tough it out!" She called to my retreating form. At about 10:20 that night (40 minutes before my shift ended), I'd been trying to walk it off and take it easy and hope that the pain subsided, but I couldn't take it any more. I had to get some relief. I called the backup chaplain... only to discover that earlier in the day, he'd had a steroid shot in his neck for a slipped disk and had taken some prescribed sleeping pills. So, I called his backup... only to be reminded that my backup's backup's wife had recently been discharged from the hospital... But I was told to go ahead and go to the Trauma Center and we'd all hope that none of us got paged. So it was, at 10:30 on Thursday, I was pacing in the waiting area to be called to triage.

They put in an IV so I could get some good drugs and then pumped me full of saline to try to help me flush my system faster. There was a drug aptly named, "Flomax" that was designed to help my urinary tract do it's thing better and more painkillers that you can only get from the hospital or through illegal means. They also had me fill out a form, where for the first time in my life, I admitted that I was experiencing pain that, on a scale of 1-10, where 1 is "I have no pain" and 10 is, "I'd sacrifice endangered Rhinos to the dark gods of the 18th dimension to make it stop", I came in at about 9.8.

Later, I looked it up on dictionary.com: Agony [ag-uh-nee] noun :

1.	extreme and generally prolonged pain; intense physical or mental suffering.

2.	a display or outburst of intense mental or emotional excitement: an agony of joy.

3.	the struggle preceding natural death: mortal agony.

4.	a violent struggle.

5.	(often initial capital letter) Theology. the sufferings of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane.

and the little known 6th entry: The process of passing a kidney stone.

So, as I've related my little tale to others, one common theme has emerged: many people liken the pain of passing kidney stones to that of giving birth. Some say it is as close as men will ever come to knowing the pain, while some females even admitted that having experienced both childbirth and kidney stones, they'd opt for childbirth. So, I've come to a decision... if it is a girl, I'm going to name her, "Lo-Ruhamah " and if it is a boy, "Ne'igalomeatiga".

Peace, love, and no kidney stones be unto you, good reader.

-jeff

Perspectives

I've been mulling this blog around in my head for a long time. One of the greatest blessings God has given me is a regular swift kick in the pants. I'm speaking metaphorically, of course, but the idea is that whenever I get so wrapped up in myself that I begin to harden my heart, God somehow opens my eyes my giving me a glimpse into someone else's life. Now, I'm not trying to brag that my life is so much better than others around me, what I want to convey is that we all have our own stories. I sometimes get so caught up in how mine is unfolding that I forget that my story is interwoven with those around me. I find that when I lack the perspective of my story among those other stories, I lose something.

One of the things I enjoy about my job at the hospital is that I get to leave when my shift is over. Sometimes, it is a difficult job. Sometimes, when I get up at 7 am on Thursday and I know that I won't get home till after 11pm that night, I start my day weary. By the time I get to the hospital after class, work, family, study, everyday life... I know I still have a few hours of visiting people who are sick, lonely, depressed, traumatized, etc. And yet...and yet... on days like that, when I lack the empathy to see beyond myself, God shows up with a swift kick to get me back on His path. Most recently, it was a young lady who delivered her baby at 19 weeks. The baby had major developmental problems and she delivered it stillborn, but it was a fully formed little thing. The family requested a chaplain to pray over it and bless it. What do you say to a husband and wife in this situation? I don't remember my exact words, but the gist of the prayer was that God knew this life and formed it and held it in His hands and for whatever reason, God chose to bring that life back to Himself. I called the baby by the name its parents had given it and asked God to honor his family with a blessing of peace, with the knowledge that the One who gives and takes away is still in control and can give them peace and comfort. They thanked me for the prayer and shortly after, I left them with their family and friends who had come to visit. Perspective... when I got home, I quietly visited my babies, my precious heavenly gifts and softly kissed them while they slept. I thanked God for them and for giving me empathy so I could pass on some measure of comfort to that family.

Tonight, Amelia and I were talking to a friend and she mentioned something about her family and when we looked puzzled, she realized we weren't up to date on what was going on with her. She shared some details of her life and the struggles she was facing with her relationships and parenting and finances and her desire to please God in how she handled it all. As she shared with us, I wished that I could give her something to help her bear up under the load she carried, but there was nothing I could realistically do for her. I offered her a blessing and expressed that I wished we could do something more her and she said, "Oh, I just appreciate you listening. I'm sorry I kind of dumped all over y'all." Perspective... while we drove home, I thanked God for the woman of character sitting in the passenger seat who loved me in spite of my shortcomings. I thanked God for giving me empathy to be able to listen to a friend and be a blessing of encouragement in her trials.

The last lesson of perspective relates to why I'm studying counseling. It was a rare reminder from Hollywood. A little background: the TV series Friday Night Lights is about a town and the people who live in it. The story centers around the local football team and the characters are all embroiled in their own drama (which attracts viewers which attract advertisers...yada yada) Anyhow, in a recent episode, the quarterback has had a series of setbacks in his personal life and kind of withdraws from his responsibilities and friends. When the coach comes to his rescue after he gets drunk and skips school and has to pick his grandmother up from the hospital after she fell, the viewer is not all that inclined to feel sorry for the quarterback. After all, he's made a series of bad decisions and has let his grandmother, his teammates, his friends... he's let them down. The coach pushes him down the hallway into a bathroom and into the tub and turns the water on him, as he sits in the tub, fully clothed. "Do you know how many people depend on you to make good decisions?" the coach asks. "Huh? Do you have any idea? Your grandmother, your teammates, your friends. You'd better start making them. You'd better stop being so damn selfish. And stop feeling sorry for yourself!" The quarterback shouts, "SHUT UP! You don't care about me! You left me for a better job! (last season, after mentoring him into being the 1st string quarterback) Your daughter left me for a better guy! (again, last season... his first romance and a bitter breakup) Carlotta left me for Guatemala! (his most recent girlfriend) My dad left me for a damn war! (His father is a soldier fighting overseas)" .... long pause.... "Everybody leaves me!" ... long pause... "What's wrong with me?" The water continues to pour down on him and the coach realizes all that this 17 year old is shouldering. Coach: "There's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you at all." What started out for both the coach and the viewer as a delinquent kid getting a good talking to turned into a reminder that we all carry our burdens. Sometimes, our burdensome stories spill over into other people's burdensome stories. It gives me pause... and perspective.

Whenever I lack empathy, it is because I don't know enough of someone's story. I probably just need a swift kick. Thanks, God.

-jeff

Lunar Eclipse 2-20-2008

According to NASA, the last time there was a total Lunar Eclipse was in August of 2007. I pulled out the ol' camera tonight and took pics of the one that happened. The next one isn't until Dec 21, 2010. Maybe by then, I'll have a 1600mm lens and I'll get some better shots. :)
Enjoy the slideshow.

-jeff

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Some Random Thoughts on Valentine's Day

Love. Four little letters with so much baggage...
My day began with a fast stop at Wal-mart to pick up some inexpensive roses for the day. Now, I don't usually start my Thursdays out by trading a couple of hard earned sawbacks for flowers, but today was special. Today is the day that love crass commercialism abounds. On Valentine's day, we have been conditioned (or coerced) by society to spend money to demonstrate the love that we have for others. Today is a day when bachelors everywhere sigh with relief that they don't have to fork over their dough on some sentimental hogwash and bachelorettes sigh because they don't have a guy who'll fork out some of his cash to "show" how much he loves you. And the odd thing is, it isn't even really about getting something on Valentine's day... it is about other people seeing you getting something on Valentine's day. If the gift is thoughful enough or complicated enough that it shows effort, a guy can get away with something really cheap. Ok, I think it is safe to say that the Valentine's day experience, while it may vary from person to person, is mostly superficial.

I had a conversation with the mother of my son's kindergarten classmate about a flyer that was sent home two weeks ago. It was from the PTO regarding a fund raiser they were advertising. For about $2 each, parents could have the PTO deliver to their child's classroom on Valentine's day: A) a helium balloon and a love note from Mommy/Daddy B) A small stuffed animal or C) a small bag of Valentine-themed candy or any combination of those three . The mother said, "So, if I don't do this for my kid, I'm some sort of bad parent, right? 'Cause you know that other kid's parents are going to do this and so if I don't do it, my kid is going to think we don't love him! Sheesh." The power of crass Valentine's commercialism at work... even in such an innocent venue.


I had a conversation with a friend who is in a long-distance relationship about Valentine's day this afternoon. I asked how she and her fiancee were going about doing the holiday "thing" considering they were hundreds of miles apart. She told me, "He really objects to the whole Valentine's day idea. He doesn't feel right being 'forced' to do something artificial to somehow prove that he loves me on any certain day just because. " >insert pregnant pause< "But I told him that although I understood and I didn't expect him to spend lots of money... he'd better do something today."

I must admit that I have lived at both ends of the spectrum. I have righteously raled at the injustice of a superficial holiday and it's negative effect on my slim income and I have gone overboard with an obsequious display of romantic verisimilitude. This year, I kind of made do with what I had. The wife and I went out earlier in the week because I had to work tonight. I picked up a dozen roses at the supermarket to deliver to special people today. I took roses to my daughters and gift to my son, a rose to my wife, mother, mother-in-law, some other key people and even gave a couple of roses to a buddy who needed a quick gift for his wife but couldn't pull together the cash to get her some on his own.


But none of what I did today was about love. It was about crass commercialism. Love is when I tell my wife to go on to bed because she's had rough day and I offer to bathe the kids and put them to bed. I was loving when I offer to go out of my way to help a friend with a difficult chore. I was loving when I held my tongue instead of criticizing someone when they made an honest mistake. I think that we demonstrate love when, out of genuine concern for someone else's well being above our own, we give... our selves, our time, our energy, our effort, our concern, our encouragement.

So, here's a bright idea for us to try: Let's strike a blow at crass commercialism every day for the next year by being intentional about how we choose to go about our day. Look for opportunities to show love to someone tomorrow when they least expect it. It may be a pre-meditated show of love, or it could be a target-of-opportunity kind of thing where it just kind of happens. Let's turn every day into a day that we can love and appreciate each other and see what kind of world it can become.

/idealism off

Whew.. was getting kind of sappy there for a minute. Seriously, for four measly letters, love is a pretty misused word. The English language use of the word: Love covers so much ground, you almost need qualifiers to give it context. The notion of love that we focus on for Valentine's day is a commercialized romanticism. Being off the market, so to speak, has helped me shift my focus to a more filial definition. I want my kids to know a definition of love that isn't defined by the marketplace or mass media. Despite the best intentions of the PTO, I don't think they are doing anyone any favors in the self-esteem department by offering this service for valentine's day. Remember high school? Yeah... I hope your experience was better than mine. Not only did I not ever get any of the "pre-packaged" love from anyone, I was also too poor to manage to scrape up enough to let that girl know that I liked her... ANYHOW, now that I'm a daddy, I want my kids to know that they are loved, but not by the world's standards, but by God's standards... unconditionally. So I took the time to do Valentine's day my way... by not doing the PTO thing, but by hand delivering a special gift to them and reminding them that I don't just love them with roses and gifts, but with every thing I do for them. Did I succumb to Mass Marketing? Yeah, kinda, but I did it on my own terms.

One more story before I leave you. On Sunday, I was paged to the ER by a patient who requested a visit from the chaplain. When I got there, I met a guy who seemed to be perfectly healthy. He spun me a story about how he had been down and out, bouncing from town to town and how because he was pretty sick (he listed about 5 things that are terminally ill diseases), and how he basically didn't have anything, if I could help him out. I expected him to ask me if I could give him some money or food or something, but I was caught off guard by his request. "So," he said, "I was wondering if you might could help me track down my mother." He told me that his mom lived here in Abilene and that the last time he saw her, he had done wrong by her. It involved him lying to her and taking money from her and using it poorly. "I know she may not ever want to see me again, but I just want to make things right with her." Still expecting some sort of shakedown, I agreed to help him make some calls of names from the phone book. Amazingly, after a few calls based on some sketchy memories of where she lived and what name it might be under, he reached his mom. She agreed to pick him up after he was discharged. He thanked me and told me again his plan to try and make things up to her. I wished him the best and went on about my business. ----> today, I started my shift at the hospital and I had a note that a patient had requested a visit from *me*. When I got to the room, I discovered it was the guy from Sunday. We visited for a few minutes and he told me that the ER had called him to tell him that they had cultured his blood and he had some bad stuff they needed to treat right away... so he ended up back in the hospital after all. I asked how things went with his Mom. He smiled and told me that it was like heaven. I asked, "What do you mean?" He told me, "When she picked me up, she told me that she was only going to say it once... I'd better not lie to her. That is it. That is all she said about what happened before. I know I have to earn her trust back, but it is like it never happened. She wants to help me out. She is helping me get on SSI, she set me up with a room in her apartment. I don't deserve this, man." He went on to tell me about the few days they'd spent together and how, for him, it was overwhelming to be loved by his mother after he'd spent all this time thinking that she was angry with him and hated him for what he'd done. "I don't really care now, if i kick off, Chaplain. All that matters is that things are right now." That was the icing on my Valentine's day cake.

Score one for God's love being channelled through a parent. Happy V-day everyone

-jeff