I love this! These are the 12 Covenants that the USC football team commits to if they want to play football. I shared them last night and applied them to serving in the church. Thought I'd share:
1. We will accomplish what we do together. We share our success and we never let any one of us fail alone.
2. we are fully grown adults. We will act as such, and expect the same from the people around us.
3. We will not keep secrets. Information that affects us all will be shared by all of us and we will quickly and openly work to separate fact from fiction.
4. We will not lie to ourselves or to each other. None of us will tolerate any of us doing so. We will depend on each other for the truth.
5. We will keep our word. We will say what we mean and do what we say. We trust the word of others to be good as well.
6. We will keep our head. We will not panic in the face of tough times. We will always choose to roll up our sleeves rather than wring our hands.
7. We will develop our abilities and take pride in them. We will set our own standards higher than our most challenging opponent and we will please our fans by pleasing ourselves.
8. We will treat our locker room (church facility) like home and our teammates like friends. We spend too much time together to allow things to go bad.
9. We will be unselfish and expect that everyone else will exhibit this same quality. We will care about each other without expectations.
10. We will look out for each other. We truly believe that we are our brother's keeper.
11. We are students at USC (members of CFC), and as such we will strive to graduate(strive for excellence). We take pride in our grade point average (level of excellence) and expect our teammates to do the same.
12. Losing cannot and will not be tolerated in anything we do. There is no excuse for losing a football game at USC. (There is no excuse for losing or giving in to a battle against the enemy! Souls are at stake!)
Monday, March 29, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Home Again . . .
Well, my brother's family along with me and the kiddos made it safely home early Saturday morning. It was smooth sailing as far as the ride goes, but we received a phone call shortly after we entered Kansas . . . .
Apparently my Dad had grabbed one of the nurses and made an inappopriate comment to her. (I will not go into details to maintain some sort of dignity for my Dad) Anyway, my mom was in tears - she didn't believe he did it, but I wasn't sure what to think. His behavior was completely inappropriate, but could be considered a "normal" behavior for someone with Parkinson's and/or dymensia. I did my best to consol my mom, but what do you say to that? There wasn't much I could say. The nursing home wanted to move my dad to a different facility because they said they couldn't "deal" with him. I was (and still am) of the opinion that people in nursing homes with mental issues (Parkinson's, dymensia, altzheimers, etc) tend to normally show "abnormal" or inapporiate behaviors and that being in nursing home care, it's just part of the deal. I felt like it was "one strike" and he was out.
It was the weekend though, so nothing would happen until Monday. Well, on Monday Mom called again and he did the same thing to another nurse - now, we had to admit that he really did in fact do these things though after my mom talked to him, he had no recollection of either incident and said he would never do what had been described. We knew that, but obviously the medicine or the disease was causing these irrational behaviors.
Yesterday my dad was transferred to Omaha to a facility to help wean him off his current Parkinson's medicine and try to find a different one that may work better. They were very helpful and kind according to my mom. She was at a point of giving up on the med's and just letting him be, but they feel it is worth one more shot at finding something to help with his thinking processes and eliminate his hallucinations and vividly morbid dreams. The facility tries to only keep people 7-10 days and then returns them to the nursing home they came from. There is a chance that it will take longer because Parkinson's patient's med's can be difficult to stabilize, but we'll see how this goes.
My mom had to go back home, so Dad is 5 hours away from Mom and I feel a million miles away from both of them.
Please be in prayer for my Dad - that the doctors will figure out what the best course of action is for him. Please be in prayer for my Mom - that she would be strong in the Lord and confident in the decisions she has to make for my Dad. Please pray for peace in my entire family as we walk through this hard time knowing though that we are not walking alone.
Apparently my Dad had grabbed one of the nurses and made an inappopriate comment to her. (I will not go into details to maintain some sort of dignity for my Dad) Anyway, my mom was in tears - she didn't believe he did it, but I wasn't sure what to think. His behavior was completely inappropriate, but could be considered a "normal" behavior for someone with Parkinson's and/or dymensia. I did my best to consol my mom, but what do you say to that? There wasn't much I could say. The nursing home wanted to move my dad to a different facility because they said they couldn't "deal" with him. I was (and still am) of the opinion that people in nursing homes with mental issues (Parkinson's, dymensia, altzheimers, etc) tend to normally show "abnormal" or inapporiate behaviors and that being in nursing home care, it's just part of the deal. I felt like it was "one strike" and he was out.
It was the weekend though, so nothing would happen until Monday. Well, on Monday Mom called again and he did the same thing to another nurse - now, we had to admit that he really did in fact do these things though after my mom talked to him, he had no recollection of either incident and said he would never do what had been described. We knew that, but obviously the medicine or the disease was causing these irrational behaviors.
Yesterday my dad was transferred to Omaha to a facility to help wean him off his current Parkinson's medicine and try to find a different one that may work better. They were very helpful and kind according to my mom. She was at a point of giving up on the med's and just letting him be, but they feel it is worth one more shot at finding something to help with his thinking processes and eliminate his hallucinations and vividly morbid dreams. The facility tries to only keep people 7-10 days and then returns them to the nursing home they came from. There is a chance that it will take longer because Parkinson's patient's med's can be difficult to stabilize, but we'll see how this goes.
My mom had to go back home, so Dad is 5 hours away from Mom and I feel a million miles away from both of them.
Please be in prayer for my Dad - that the doctors will figure out what the best course of action is for him. Please be in prayer for my Mom - that she would be strong in the Lord and confident in the decisions she has to make for my Dad. Please pray for peace in my entire family as we walk through this hard time knowing though that we are not walking alone.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Heading North . . . .
Well, Friday afternoon I leave with the kiddos and my brother's family to head to Nebraska to see my parents and my Grama. This will be the first time I've seen my dad, not at his home, but in a nursing home. I am praying that I can be strong for the kids and not break down in front of them. This is one of those moments you pray never comes, but you know is inevitable.
Watching your parents go through things like this is, in fact, in the natural order of things. It really doesn't make it much easier though. Now, I've never lost a child, and I pray I never do - I have a dear friend that lost her 8 year old daughter . . . that's NOT in the natural order of things, so I imagine that to be exponentially more difficult than this.
The thing is, I have been very sheltered from death in my family. People have died, but it's been great-uncles/aunts and one Grama. That was in the natural order of things too. I think I am struggling with my dad so much because he's still pretty young - he's 67 - not the average age of a person in nursing home care. Heck, I have an employee at Batteries Plus that's 72 and he can outwork some of my young employees!
I know fairness has nothing to do with life, but I still struggle with the "fair" thing. It's not fair! He wasn't a drinker (occassional, but not a lush - and not at all the past 15 years), he wasn't a smoker, he was a great dad and a great provider for our family.
I could stand before God and argue until I was blue in the face, but the bottom line is - God is in control and He is not surprised by my dad's condition nor my frustration, anger and sadness.
I thank God often for the fact that my dad turned his life around about 11 years ago. If it wasn't for that - I don't know what I'd do or how I'd be reacting to all this. But I do know - I have hope - that one day, my dad will be free from the cage of his body, without pain, confusion, and frustration. One day, I will see him again healed and whole and free.
I love you dad!
Watching your parents go through things like this is, in fact, in the natural order of things. It really doesn't make it much easier though. Now, I've never lost a child, and I pray I never do - I have a dear friend that lost her 8 year old daughter . . . that's NOT in the natural order of things, so I imagine that to be exponentially more difficult than this.
The thing is, I have been very sheltered from death in my family. People have died, but it's been great-uncles/aunts and one Grama. That was in the natural order of things too. I think I am struggling with my dad so much because he's still pretty young - he's 67 - not the average age of a person in nursing home care. Heck, I have an employee at Batteries Plus that's 72 and he can outwork some of my young employees!
I know fairness has nothing to do with life, but I still struggle with the "fair" thing. It's not fair! He wasn't a drinker (occassional, but not a lush - and not at all the past 15 years), he wasn't a smoker, he was a great dad and a great provider for our family.
I could stand before God and argue until I was blue in the face, but the bottom line is - God is in control and He is not surprised by my dad's condition nor my frustration, anger and sadness.
I thank God often for the fact that my dad turned his life around about 11 years ago. If it wasn't for that - I don't know what I'd do or how I'd be reacting to all this. But I do know - I have hope - that one day, my dad will be free from the cage of his body, without pain, confusion, and frustration. One day, I will see him again healed and whole and free.
I love you dad!
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