Happy Birthday to Me!

Every now and again, we all deserve to have a little chuckle, but I will get to that later, so stay with me and keep reading. I personally love to laugh. Today was my birthday and it was a great day. My family made me feel very special and so did my boss. Gifts are fun and anyone who says they don’t like getting them is telling an untruth. At least that’s my opinion. My husband outdid himself this year. He was very generous and gave me a laptop, met me for lunch w/a dozen roses and chocolates, and took me out to dinner to a very nice restaurant. At home there was some yummy ice cream birthday cake. I’m writing this article on my new laptop. It’s really cool. My kids are very awesome with their love, gifts and their ability to make me feel so very special.

At work they were very nice to me. My boss gave his usual gift card, but he also gave me a dozen roses – nice. Someone gave me cheesecake and a drug rep (side note: I work in a doctor’s office and drug reps bring drug samples and goodies to the office) came gave me a bouquet of balloons. When you tap one of the balloons it sings happy birthday several times. It’s pretty cool until you drive it home in your car and each time you hit a bump it starts to sing and it’s really loud in a small car.

So I end with a little humor:

Three friends die in a car accident, and upon their arrival to heaven, they are all asked one question
"When you are in your casket and family and friends are mourning upon you, what would you like to hear them say about you?"
The first man says, "I would like to hear them say that I was a great doctor of my time, and a great family man."
The second man says, "I would like to hear that I was a wonderful husband and school teacher who made a huge difference in our children of tomorrow."
The last man replies:
"I would like to hear them say: 'LOOK! HE'S MOVING!

© Nadine Z.

Encouragement

The thing about encouragement is it comes at the time when you need it most. The time you least expect it. It’s always a pleasant surprise and the person who is encouraging you never realizes the extent and depth that you are touched. When God uses me to encourage someone, I end up being blessed as well. According to the Oxford American Writers Thesaurus here are some other ways of saying encouragement; cheering up, inspiration, motivation, support, morale-boosting, a shot in the arm. The following is my little tale of how I was encouraged today.

Today being a Monday meant that it was very busy at my job. I had a patient comment how impressed she was by my mad multi-tasking skills. I was trying to get through the day at work and didn't think much of it. My day started with a prayer asking God for some hope for the future. Funny how when I pray those types of prayers, I half-heartily pray and lately haven’t expected anything to happen. So today, I owe God a big apology.

Tom was blessed several months ago with the opportunity to go to Israel. The church board thought he should go on this tour that was being offered and someone else donated the money for the trip. I was really happy for him, but a part of me was a little sad to not be able to go on this trip of a lifetime. My happiness was bigger than my saddness. I was really disappointed for him when the trip was canceled because of war and safety issues. I can’t remember who said this to me, but she thought maybe it was a good thing the trip was cancelled because I was meant to go with Tom. I couldn’t this year because I ran out of vacation time and money would have been a secondary issue.

After dinner tonight, Tom got a phone call from a good friend that he knows longer than he knows me. Carmella called and she told me that she wanted to bless the wife of the pastor. She sold a condo and wanted to tithe some money from the sale and she thought that a good way to do that is by donating the money for me to go to Israel with Tom. I don’t think she realized the dept of which she touched my heart. At first I was shocked and then so grateful. I had prayed this morning for some hope and not really expecting any and out of the blue a dear friend calls and not only blessed me, but encouraged me beyond belief. When the trip is offered again, I have the resources to go. So Carmella, if you’re reading this, thank you from the bottom of my heart. You showed me that God does listen to prayers even when we don’t believe He would do anything with it.

© Nadine Z.

Psalm 23

I saw this picture and it gave me a chuckle. Hope it gives you one also.

Cracked Glass

I know it’s been a while since I wrote anything for this blog. I guess I’ve been in a slump, mentally and spiritually. That is now over for now. So I want to share a little story with you. We purchased two used cars several months ago. I can’t begin to tell how happy I was to drive my car.

Okay, maybe I can tell you. To appreciate the little things in life, you have to remember where you came from. The car I used to drive for example. Where do I start? Now I’m not a very fancy girl and it really doesn’t take much to make me happy. I mean my former car (and I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead), but here are a few of the things it had going for it; the “check engine” light was on for over a year, the driver side window didn’t roll down (or should I say it rolled down, but it didn’t roll up), the visor just hung down lifelessly (but not at an angle that would help block the sun and I used push pins to keep it up so it wouldn’t block my vision), the tape deck ate tapes, the transmission slipped all the time and my ultimate favorite is that in the end it wouldn’t go faster than 50 miles per hour and it had to be driven in 2nd gear. Don’t get me wrong, it made appreciate people who were only going 50 or 60 miles an hour on the highway. Instead of beeping and giving them the evil eye as I passed, I now have sympathy. I start to think that maybe they have car trouble and that’s as fast as they can go. Maybe it’s because of all those people who passed me when I could only do 50 in a 70 mile an hour zone beeping me, cursing at me and giving me looks that say, “If I a launcher attached on my car you’ll be dead lady.” When I start to slip into my old ways, I remember my old car and cut the other guy some slack.

So now I’m driving a car that does the speed limit. I figure I’m way ahead of the game. But then it happened. A week after driving my beautiful car, a rock hit the windshield. It wasn’t very big and it wasn’t in my line of vision and besides, these things happen, right? So another week goes by and there’s another rock, but it’s still okay, because it’s not big and still I can’t really notice it. One day a week later on the passenger side of the windshield this crack seemed to coming up out of nowhere. I look carefully and under the windshield wiper is a big rock chip. I keep an eye on it as it rises slowly and curves. I’m not really upset until a second crack comes from the same rock chip and makes it way up near the first. But what makes me realize I have a rock magnet for a car is the third crack that came from the same rock chip. And just when I think, “This can’t possibly get any worse?” – you got it - two rocks hit my windshield at the same time near the three cracks and leave two big beautiful rock chips.

I knew that this wasn’t good. Maybe it’s prophetic – my windshield having cracks in it. Now it’s not in my direct line of vision and if I try I can ignore it because it’s in the corner of the passenger side of the car. But the thing I noticed is that I started to notice other cars on the road and their cracked windshields. I can’t believe how many cars in the Tri-Cities have cracked windshields and many of them a lot worse than mine.

So, I know I’ll need to replace this windshield, but who has the money. I mean the cracks aren’t bothering me, they are just there. I prayed they would stop growing and a miracle happened – they did. It doesn’t impede my ability to see and drive, so I may not have my physical windshield fixed. On the other hand, God has fixed the cracks of my spiritual vision lately and I can see clearer now. Physically you can drive around and still get where you’re going with cracks in your windshield, but spiritually is another story. Until next time, don’t let a few cracks keep you down or stop you from getting to where you’re going.

© Nadine Z. 2006

Difficult Circumstances

Do you ever find that at times you are in difficult circumstances and you cry out and you cry out (sometimes literally) and feel your prayers hit a brick wall? Thump! Splat! Is it that God isn’t listening or is it that we aren’t listening? I face a difficult circumstance at the moment but it’s not the most difficult circumstance I face (Tom’s health situation still wins out) - it’s my job.

I work in an environment that at the moment I find hostile. I mean to the naked eye you wouldn’t think it’s a hostile environment. It appears that all who work there are nice and courteous, but as you know appearances can be deceiving. I find it difficult to work with people I can’t trust, so I cry out. I cry out and yet there is that brick wall. I have to ask myself why? Is God so mean and uncaring that He doesn’t see my pain? I don’t think so. My God loves me and He is good, these are things I know in my heart to be true. So I believe God is listening to my prayers because He cares for me. Then it must be me. I’m not listening to Him. If I was listening to Him I would try to find out why I’m in the circumstance that I’m in. Is there something He wants me to learn while I’m here (boy am I slow if that’s the case)? Is there something I have not yet accomplished that He wants me to? Maybe I’m in this place because there are lessons I need to learn about myself that will help shape me and strengthen me for what lies ahead.

I may not be the sharpest knife in the draw, but I know I want to know the answers to these questions so that I can move on. So in the future I’ll have to remind myself when my circumstances are difficult that I need to listen more carefully to Him who loves me and hear what He’s trying to say.

© Nadine Z. 2006

Solid Ground

It’s so good to be back on solid ground. Our first day at sea was very rocky. I was so glad for the handicapped rail in the shower when I almost slipped several times because of the rocking. Did I mention the parting gift of the norovirus that infected 115 people on the ship during the cruise? It could have been worse – I could have gotten sick during the cruise and would have been quarantined to my very small cabin like many people were. Even with all of that the trip was good and I had a good time being with Tom. We enjoyed good food and met some nice people.

I took a million pictures every day with my new digital camera that our awesome kids (Lisa & Tommy you’re the best) gave us.

When we boarded the boat we were greeted with a glass of champagne (nice touch). There was a welcome aboard buffet lunch. It was nice, but what we really enjoyed was the house band playing as we got ready to set sail (picture to the left).

Before you can set sail we had to have a lifeboat drill. As you can tell from the picture below who had control of the camera because no picture of me in that lovely orange contraption was taken. He does loves orange lately (see below for more details on his love of the color orange).Tom ate sushi for the first time and enjoyed it! The best was after 28 years of trying to get him to use chop sticks, he finally did and quite well may I add. I also convinced him to take a swing class! He’s a natural and he truly loves me for doing this.

The best part about going on vacation is getting new clothes. Tom chose to get some interesting colors in both shirts and shorts (bright orange one stands out to me, photo to the right). I did convince him not to wear both bright orange shirt and shorts together. Lisa said that she didn’t want him to look like a traffic cone (see photos to the left) and a good friend, Don said he could look like an orange popsicle in his shorts. All kidding aside, it didn’t look too bad with the white shirt. He’s really very cute no matter what he’s wearing.

Hum . . . the similarities are amazing. (see picture below . . . blog is won't let me place it where I want.)

I did find out that Tom started to twitch when he found out that going online on the ship meant a charge of 75 cents a minute. He did manage to figure out it only took a minute to download his e-mail, log off, answer the e-mail, log on long enough to send his e-mail then log off again. This was the only way to stop the twitching. The following are pictures of Tom at his favorite places in Alaska.

Tom in Juneau.

Tom in Skagway setting up for favorite activity.

Tom in Ketchikan.

The Hubbard Glacier

Tom enjoying the Hubbard Glacier

All kidding aside. We had a great time. Here's a picture of us at the Red Dog Saloon in Juneau having a toast.

The best part of this trip was being with Tom and getting to relax. I will definitely miss my afternoon naps.

Until next time, I hope you enjoyed the pictures. I'm so glad the blog finally worked.

Copyright © Nadine Z. 2006

I'm Back

Okay, I'm back and I have several pictures and an article that I want to post but this blog is giving me trouble and I can't post any pictures. So this is all I'm going to say until I upload my pictures with my real article about being back. Small tease it's called Solid Ground and has pictures of Tom in some new duds. So for now I bid farewell.