MSNBC - Terri Schiavo dies, but battle continues

Did something of our society die with her?

President Bush has said, "...millions of Americans are saddened" by Schiavo's death. “The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak,” he added. “In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in favor of life.”

In favor of life. This is not just about Terri Schiavo but about those who, as the President also said, live at the mercy of others. How do we decide? If we are going to save premature babies, we have a responsibility to them. And if we aren't, how do we pick? Some low birthrate babies have major handicaps; others go on to live a relatively normal life. I don't know that there is a way of knowing early on which baby will be "normal" and which won't. How would you tell? And who would be the one to look new parents in the eye and say, "Sorry. Your baby doesn't make the cut."? We have the same responsibility to people in Terri Schiavo's condition. IF we choose to save them, then we do what we can to maintain them comfortably.

I have heard it said that the President and Congress intervened for Terri when they should not have done so. One judge even said that they were interpreting law in a way that the founding fathers did not desire. Really? Thomas Jefferson, one of our founding fathers said the following:

"We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

We denied Terri Schiavo her LIFE. I think the founding fathers would be very disappointed with our judicial system. As is our God.

Forbes.com: Update 3: Court Issues Age Discrimination Ruling

Matthew 20

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

1“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. 2He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
3“About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ 5So they went.

“He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. 6About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’

7“ ‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.

“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’

8“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’

9“The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. 10So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12‘These men who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

13“But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? 14Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

16“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

ABC News: Schiavo Appeal Rejected Again in Atlanta


The latest attempt by the Schindlers to save their daughter asked the federal court to look at all of the state court's records, not just a summary. Doesn't seem like too much to ask when a life is at stake.

I don't see how Judge Birch can say that the legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a way that is "demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people our Constitution."

I doubt that deliberately starving someone who was disabled would ever have entered the minds of our founding fathers. And, regardless of what Michael Schiavo and the courts are saying, wouldn't Terri be entitled to change her mind? I think that, as the poor woman is in the thirteenth day of being starved to death, the mere fact that she is hanging on shows that she wants to live.

USATODAY.com - Diagnosis will not be verified by autopsy

Today I was really upset all day because of a phone call that I got last night about which I could do nothing, really, except worry. Which I did. I did a lot of praying too, but not having that omniscient viewpoint, the praying did not appear to be doing any good whatsoever. Consequently, by the time I checked my e-mail in the PM and found a nasty response, I was in tears.

I should have known better. The second half of Matthew 6:8, in talking about prayer, says that the Father in heaven knows what you need before you ask. Such was the case today. As I was crying and walking in the park lamenting to God that I did not know what to do, the situation, 150 miles away, was being resolved.

I give God the credit for the resolution. While not all the parts are fixed, things are better. I wish I were a little smarter so I would remember things like this more quickly. It would save me a LOT of heartache.

Or so the radio show said. And while I know that to be true, and I know that negative behavior usually results from a past trauma, it doesn't make it any easier to take.

Andy McCarthy on Terri Schiavo & Congress on National Review Online

Terri Schiavo Receives Easter Communion and Morphine for Pain

So it continues. Terri is receiving morphine for pain? What about all the reports that said that starvation and dehydration were painless ways to die? What about her being in a persistent vegetative state and not being able to feel pain?

I have a distant cousin who was in a car accident fifteen years ago and is disabled. His girlfriend dumped him when it was clear that he was not going to recover. When his parents brought him home, he had a feeding tube and the doctor told them not to try and feed him. His parents did feed him, starting with soft foods like jello and pudding, and now my cousin eats what his mom prepares. I think most of America knows about people like my cousin; it is just that the disabled make them uncomfortable.

Michael Schiavo, by trying to deny his wife communion and insisting on her cremation and the deposit of her remains in Pennsylvania, not in Florida, has taken putting the disabled "out of sight and out of mind" to new lengths. May God have mercy on his soul.

MSN Women - Article

I LOVE this article! As far as I am concerned, this is what getting older has done for me: it has let me be me. I think women just come to a point where they don't feel they have to apologize for who they are as they age. As far as I'm concerned, that point can't come too soon for anyone!

I got a haircut today.

Now, if you are male, you may not think that anything special goes on when you get a haircut. But for me, and for a lot of females I know, there is a bonding that goes on when someone else works on your hair, especially someone that you like. And I like my hairstylist. Her name is Donna, and she is about a month younger than I am, a mom of two and grandma of one. We have a lot to talk about.

Today, we talked about aging and doing it gracefully. Donna is sort of worried about the whole thing, but she thinks maybe she should have a big party since neither of her parents made it to fifty. I thought that was a fine idea.

Then we talked about our kids, and I told her I was ready to kill my daughter. Not really, but you know how you say those things. She reminded me that I LIKE being a grandma and my daughter has not yet contributed to the grandchild pool. Better to wait. By then she might not frustrate me so much.

We moved on to the grandchildren, and I told her that mine are now living about eight hours closer than they used to and I am jealous as all get out of the grandmas that live in that city with them. Donna could understand that. I told her, though, that I had given the situation over to God, and I really have. I prayed and prayed and prayed that my husband and I could live close enough that I could help with those babies, but....we don't. So God must have a better idea, and I really do trust Him to come through there. I have trusted God for big things in my life before, and they turned out well. Usually. Or at least I understood why they didn't.

The thing that Donna and I talked about next were the things we haven't turned over to God yet. Like our jobs. Donna's situation in that respect is more difficult than mine, I think, because she is divorced. We both look at our jobs as a means of maintaining our independence, though. I don't know where she is with that but, as anyone who reads my blog can tell, I value my independence and don't like things like RA that threaten it.

Donna laughed, at us really, because we aren't done worrying about the jobs yet. She said sometimes she has a mental picture of God calling the angels over to watch and saying, "Hey guys! Look what happens when I poke her here. Isn't it hilarious?" Now, I do think that God has a sense of humor, but I don't think He is cruel. I think of him as more of the parent, and I imagine His shaking His head at whatever it is that I am currently worrying about. I imagine His talking to whomever it is He talks to saying," That Becky! We have been over this three hundred times already. I keep saving her and saving her and saving her. When will she learn that I am faithful?"

Sad truth is, I KNOW God is faithful. And I know that I am not the CEO of the universe, as an advertisement on Christian radio reminds me. But the job thing is big to me. And my school district is laying off fifty-one people. And my job has never been real secure anyway. And I have thought He was getting me ready for something else. But I'm not ready to quit worrying about this yet.

But I really want to be.

Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. Psalm 46:10

The Globe and Mail: Schiavo's parents ask Supreme Court to intervene

I have read much of the information that is available about Terri Schiavo, and I am aware that I do not know all of the facts involved. I believe, though, that there is a lot more than we as the public are aware of, and I wonder if those people who have said Michael Schiavo is within his rights to request Terri's death have been on the website that I started reading two years ago:http://www.terrisfight.org. Some of the information there about Terri's state of consciousness is disturbing, especially in light of the fact that her husband and court-appointed doctors maintain that she feels nothing, either emotionally or physically.

And I don't think living wills will solve anything if Terri's husband is successful in his attempts to euthanize her. As a person with a chronic disease and a handicapped sticker of my very own, that frightens me. I watched people over the weekend, people in WalMart who were pushing the wheelchair of a disabled person and had to continually straighten her head, a woman in church who walked her Down's Syndrome daughter to her seat. Are they frightened too?

Nine years ago, I had a thyroidectomy. In preparing for the surgery, I was asked to make out a living will, and my husband and I discussed the very issues that Terri now faces. I did not want to be kept alive by extraordinary means, but we both thought removing food and hydration would be cruel. We thought, though, that the issue of removing a feeding tube is different from the decision to have one inserted.

We had just watched my mother die as her brainstem failed, and the watching was painful. She lost her ability to swallow, and so my dad kept her alive with protein drinks and as many milk shakes as she wanted. Not a lot actually got in her, and although her official cause of death was a heart attack, I am pretty sure her lack of nutrition was a major contributor. It wasn't until about three weeks before my mother died that her condition was correctly diagnosed and we discovered that she could communicate pretty much as well as she ever had if you just gave her a pen and paper. She just couldn't get her words out.

My mother did not have a feeding tube, probably mostly because my dad had not yet faced the fact that things were that bad. And she died. In my mind, though, as in those of a lot of other people, not having a feeding tube is much different from taking the feeding tube away. One is not taking extraordinary measures; the other is starvation.

Why does this frighten me? Well, because in Scandinavia, people are already euthanized. And I think if we blur the line about where life has meaning, about what it means to live life with dignity, then euthanasia could become the norm here. My medical treatment costs a lot of money every year, money about which the insurance company periodically puts up a fuss. If we euthanize, then I assume they will put up more of a fuss. At what point in time will I no longer live my life with dignity? At what point in time will I no longer be able to take the medicines that allow me to move? In countries with socialized medicine, I would already be denied my TNF blocker because my rheumatoid arthritis is serum negative. It is that medicine which has allowed me to keep my employment, so I am aware of what doing without it would mean. And my cataracts and hearing loss are probably both attributable to my RA meds. When will the insurance company or the government say enough is enough, that they want to save their money for younger people or people with less severe disease?

My husband tries to reassure me. Nothing like that will happen, he says, as long as he is here. But what if he isn't? Or what if our government takes the decision out of his hands? What if a court-appointed doctor says that my life is no longer worth living?

If we blur the line about where life has meaning and where it doesn't, the rest of our citizens better beware. Because if Terri Schiavo's life is no longer worth living, if what she is doing has been determined BY SOMEONE ELSE as NOT living, someone could say the same about theirs.

MSNBC - Court: Schiavo feeding tube won�t be reinserted


I can't imagine what it feels like to sit at your daughter's bedside and watch her die.

I can't imagine knowing that her death will be purposeful.

I can't imagine what goes through your mind as you think of the people who have brought about her starving.

I can't imagine any of it.

But it's here.

I hope our country is ready for the consequences of it all.

I wasn't yelling, really. Just stating my opinion, although sometimes I know it is hard to tell the difference.

Since my husband has been a supervisor for the railroad, his mind is always busy, even if he is on vacation. Don't get me wrong; his mind has always been busy, and that is one of the things that I love about him. It used to be busy with things that related to us, though, and now he doesn't have the time to think about them unless they are urgent.

I have never been a particularly patient person, so this irritates me. Like when I tell him an added detail of a topic that I have mentioned fifty or so times and he looks at me like I am from outer space. I explain. Through my teeth. And normally he makes the connection. However, it would be nice if he could make it a whole lot earlier.

I know he tries. One teacher that I work with says the problem is that her disks are full. His certainly are. And running a search takes time. It is just that I remember the old days, and they were good. I feel threatened by the new days.

Such was the case this morning. My husband had been bustling since around seven, which is actually sort of late for him, and I knew he was tired, so I said I would walk by myself. He had received a call from the railroad even though they knew he was on vacation, and I mentioned it. I had thought that maybe this year we could take day trips during vacation and get things done around the house since he doesn't have time when he isn't on vacation. That doesn't seem to be possible, though. I guess if I want his attention, I need to get him away.

As I went to find my shoes, somebody knocked on the front door. Hard. And they kept knocking. My husband answered it, and shortly thereafter he yelled for me to bring the bucket. Seems his work truck was on fire.

A fireman lives across the street from us, so things were not as bad as they could have been, although the taillight assembly on the truck is melted and I don't know how much we will end up paying the volunteer fire department. I am thankful.

See, yesterday, in an effort to complete my "honey-do" list, my husband had cleaned up the yard and burned some things in our burn barrel. This morning, as he was bustling, he took the ashes out and put them in a plastic bucket in the back of his work truck to take them away. He didn't want to dump them in our yard because there were nails in the ashes. He was outside several times and didn't see any smoke from the truck, but evidently that bucket was too close to his spare tire and, well....combustion happens.

Fortunately, our across-the-street neighbor (not the fireman) noticed and ran to our door. Fortunately, the fireman noticed and brought his fire extinguisher. We have two. Neither one of us thought of them at first. Fortunately, the "fire snake" my husband carries for work in the back of his truck did not ignite. Otherwise, we may not have had a garage.

I am sure the across-the-street neighbor was scared. The garage on this house burned two owners ago, and he lived in the same house he does now.

I was scared, too. Scared because things could have been much worse. What if I had left on my walk and my husband had not known about the flames? What if....

But he's fine. And I told him I felt bad about yelling at him. I said that maybe God was trying to tell me never to yell at him again.

And he smiled and me and said, "No, you can yell. Just not on Tuesday."

Thank God things weren't as bad as they could have been.

The following is from a poem by Nanao Sakaki...

...To stay young,
To save the world,
Break the mirror.



I am now old enough to believe in the generation gap.

I guess I have known about it for a while. Take Depression babies, for instance. My father is one of them, and he does not believe a meal is complete unless there is bread and butter on the table, something that I do, but usually only for holidays or out of deference to him.

One Christmas not too long ago, he and another Depression baby, my husband's step-grandfather visited. I put bread and butter on the table. They were the only two that ate it, and they were both happy.

Yesterday, I sat at dinner with my daughter and my niece, who is about to turn eighteen. I listened to them share their views about body piercings, tattoos, tanning packages and music, much of which was not an issue when I was their age. Still, I think I would have considered all of those things wasteful. Maybe not, though. Maybe I AM getting old and stodgy.

When I was their age, the issues were things like having a car and the gas to make it run. If you went out to eat, you only went once a week, and you considered it a special occasion, not just an opportunity to socialize.

I don't think their attitude is all wrong, mind you. I do think people can and do work too much. I just wonder where the dividing line is.

And since I haven't figured it out yet, maybe I am not so old after all.

MSNBC - Schiavo feeding tube removed



Is Judge Greer now in contempt of Congress? And what difference does it make that the House is Republican-controlled. I don't think this is about Party lines at all!

And who cares whether Michael Schiavo's attorney thinks the way Congress acted is disgusting or not? I am still frightened for our country. This case seems more and more to be a test case for euthanasia, and once we blur the line about when life matters, who knows where things will end up?

Herald.com | 03/18/2005 | Congress intervenes in Schiavo case

At least there has been a stay of execution. Hallelujah!

Rev. Robert Johansen on Terri Schiavo on National Review Online

OK. I will admit that the National Review is conservative. I will even admit that some people would have a problem with a priest's medical evidence being seen as credible. Sounds like the guy has done his homework, though, and this is not the first time I have heard of Terri's being denied therapy and other treatment. I have heard that Michael Schiavo refused to allow her to be fed by mouth, though. That does seem cruel and inhuman. And I am even more disturbed that, on a pole I took on MSNBC online this morning, my vote to keep Terri alive is in the minority.

One of the things Congress is promoting to help Terri is a writ of habeas corpus. I have taken the following definition of habeas corpus from THE 'LECTRIC LAW LIBRARY'S LEGAL LEXICON ON HABEAS CORPUS, which is located at http://www.lectlaw.com/def/hoo1.htm.

HABEAS CORPUS - Lat. "you have the body" Prisoners often seek release by filing a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody. A habeas corpus petition is a petition filed with a court by a person who objects to his own or another's detention or imprisonment. The petition must show that the court ordering the detention or imprisonment made a legal or factual error. Habeas corpus petitions are usually filed by persons serving prison sentences. In family law, a parent who has been denied custody of his child by a trial court may file a habeas corpus petition. Also, a party may file a habeas corpus petition if a judge declares her in contempt of court and jails or threatens to jail her.

Maybe Michael Schiavo's experts were biased. We all know that the courts are. Petitioners present evidence that will help their cases and do their best to bar the evidence that will hurt them. What would it hurt to let Terri have at least an MRI so the court could reconsider the facts involved in her case. Is it hubris that keeps the judge from reconsidering?

If we as a nation would allow the right of habeas corpus to an individual who was sentenced to death for a crime, can we fail to allow the same right to Terri Schiavo?

Where will we be as a nation tomorrow? Will our legislature give as much attention to Terri Schiavo as they are giving to steroids in professional sports.

I heard a sermon on the Beatitudes today, and the beatitude being discussed was "blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." The preacher told about a student nurse who had a non-responsive patient and was told that the only way to deal with that patient emotionally was to detach herself.

The nurse could not bring herself to treat her patient like an object, though. As luck would have it, she got called in to work on Thanksgiving, and she wasn't happy about it. Nevertheless, she decided she would still talk to her patient, and she told the woman that, although she wasn't happy about being at work, she was still glad to get the chance to see the patient on Thanksgiving.

The way the preacher tells it, the phone rang and the nurse went to answer it. When she turned to look at her patient, she saw, for the first time, that the woman's eyes were on her. And she was crying. That was the most response anyone ever got from that patient, and it wasn't too much later that the patient died.

The nurse was heard to say that she was really glad she had met that patient early in her training because otherwise, she would not have known what mercy was. Her definition? To give of herself to someone who could not give anything back.

Let us hope our legislature has mercy on Terri Schiavo.




USATODAY.com - As House passes bill to delay Schiavo case, Senate unsure

I didn't really like that movie, WHAT DREAMS MAY COME, but I liked it better than the book. I didn't like it because I do not believe in reincarnation. I did like it because of the way it depicted hell. My idea of hell is separation from God, and I do think that often you put yourself there.

That is why it is so hard for me to listen to my daughter say, "Why bother praying, Mom? What good does it do? I never get anything that I pray for anyway."

When she was little, my daughter prayed a lot. And she believed that she got answers. Her dad and I watched her faith falter in middle school. We had high hopes that it would rebound, but she got discouraged. With Christians, I think, not with Christ, but sometimes we react the same.

It look as if school, something that she has looked forward to, may have slipped through her fingers at the moment for no logical reason that I can see. She has been through a lot in the past six months, in the past five years really, and she is devastate that this, too, seems to have slipped through her fingers. Like her marriage did. This is her last dream, I think. And I don't know what to tell her except that I love her, and I am sure that right now those are pretty empty words to her. It is hard to believe in a future when your present is a torture for you.

I want to tell her that I've been there and she will be OK, but I haven't been. Not in her own private hell, anyway. And I don't care what anyone says, a person's personal battles are theirs, and though other people may have experienced something similar, nobody has experienced THEIRS.

Instead of telling her that, though, I will pray. And I will pray that God opens her eyes to the times when He does take care of her. I am certain that knowledge is being blocked from her at the moment.

She quotes this verse to me, which I know in the King James but she sees in the NIV:

1 Corinthians 10:13
There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

Why, she asks, has God given her more than she can bear?

I don't know. But I will ask. And right now, my faith that He will answer will have to be enough for both of us.

I am an upstanding teacher. I am morally upstanding, but I am also over six feet tall. My hair is not quite as red as it used to be, but still, I am told I can be rather imposing.

I shrunk in front of the otolaryngologist as he glared at my one liter of Diet Coke.

"How much do you drink a day?" he said. "How many of those bad boys?"

Now, I have long appreciated caffeine, but I lost my taste for everyday coffee a while back. I like it; just in limited amounts. That must have been when I switched to Diet Coke. I like it too, in pretty much any amount. I have a taste for Diet Pepsi Twist too, but the market wasn't good for it in Indiana, so I can only get it on trips. I will drink my last bottle tomorrow.

I told the man the truth. I probably drink three liters of liquid a day, and most of it is Diet Coke. Sometimes I drink more. I used to drink water too, back in Ohio, but I don't really like Indiana water. And some or all of the medicines that I take for my rheumatoid arthritis did a number on my taste buds, so I like to drink something I can taste. Diet Coke. Preferably with lime.

The doctor glared at me again. "What?" he bellowed. Maybe he didn't bellow, but he looked awfully big from that chair and I felt awfully small.

He went to the door and called two nurses to the room. "There," he said as he pointed to my Coke. "She drink three or more of those bad boys a day!" The nurses tsked and shook their heads at me.

The doctor proceeded to tell me that, although I probably was helping Coke stay in business, I wasn't doing my body any favors. Truth be told, I already knew that. I have, at times decaffeinated myself over the summer. I thought maybe when I turned fifty, I would do something about it. That wasn't so long ago (eleven days, to be exact.) The thing that held me back was that I NEED my caffeine. From somewhere. And that is what I told the doctor, but he showed me no mercy.

"You," he said, "are a caffeine abuser!"

Me? Upstanding citizen that I am? Defiantly I thought that, if I am, so are fifty million other people. Besides, it is easier to think of caffeine abuse in relation to the office coffee pot or Starbucks. The doctor, however, would not relent.

He told me that he saw signs of dehydration in my body, despite the fact that I was on my third one liter of Diet Coke for the day. That, he said, was bad because it made my mucus really thick. He gave me a pamphlet on post-nasal drip that is really sort of disgusting except that it said you probably wouldn't notice it if it were thin enough. Which mine was not.

He didn't think the allergy treatment I had received over the years was correct, either, so he started me on a medicine for non-allergic vasomotor rhinitis. The symptoms are pretty much the same as allergies, but in this case it means my immune system is hyper-sensitive to certain pollutants. Duh! I have rheumatoid arthritis! My immune system is hyper-sensitive to my own body! I'm not sure it would know something that it should attack!

Anyway, I now join the realms of people who have high frequency hearing loss. This is about the age where such loss may start to show up, and in my case it may be aggravated by two of the medicines I take for my RA: plaquinel and methotrexate. It may be aggravated by the RA itself. In either case, I do not want it to get worse.

So. Today I drank my next to last bottle of Diet Pepsi Twist. Then two half liters of water. Then a cappucino when I met my husband for lunch, but he forgot about my needing to change. And then a liter of water. I don't have a headache from lack of caffeine.

I think I'm making progress.

I know I haven't met all of them, but here are just a few.

Abby, age twenty and a college sophomore has juvenile RA and many of its accompanying problems including vision impairment. She is very wise about some things. It was she who had the courage to yell at me when I was whining about needing my handicapped placard. "Do you think you are the only one? Nobody wants this, but it is what it is. Grow up and get it. It will make your life easier." Abby was my student, but she taught me nonetheless.

Sue, age fifty-one, went into remission when she had her last pregnancy, but her daughter is on the way to middle school and the symptoms are back. She looks at me with fear when I see her in the hall. "How are you today? Why are you limping?" She remembers what the pain was like and doesn't want to be there again.

Donna, age fifty-seven, was diagnosed seventeen years ago. I am the one who looks at her with fear. Her disease has progressed twelve years farther than mine. Her feet hurt her. Her shoulders are stooped. Her fingers have almost completed their outward drift. Yet, she is out there. Working. She won't quit.

Bev, age unknown. Sixty something, I would guess. She is a greeter at my church, and her RA is also in remission. She knows, though. She never reached to shake my hand because she knew how it could hurt. And she watches me because she knows that whatever happens to me could happen to her. This disease may go into remission for a blessed few, but it doesn't seem to go away.

Betty Jean. She is seventy, I would guess. Her disease progressed rapidly, and she now uses a walker. She is at church every Sunday, and she has a smile on her face. I know she hurts. I look for her, and I worry if I don't see her.

And finally me, age fifty. I did not realize that my disease had a face until my last visit to the rheumatologist. He looked me over and talked about the pattern of my disease. My disease. I own it now. It is a part of me. A sobering thought.

Nevertheless, as I watch the other faces of this disease, I know that they, like me, have changed for the better in some ways because of it. Why? Have we slowed down because our bodies have? Are we better able to listen? I hope so. Are we more sympatheitic to the suffering of others? At least for me, I have had to face the fact that I am vulnerable. That my future may not be as easy as I have hoped. And knowing that, I have persevered, using the faces of RA that I know as inspiration.

In Luci Swindoll's book NOTES TO A WORKING WOMAN, one of her chapters begins with the words, "One of the joys of growing older is that life validates what we already know but have been unable to define." Please bear that in mind as you read what I say next.

When I was younger, I felt injustice differently than I do now. I had lived almost thirty years before I met someone who could not afford electricity, and I was sorry for that. Children suffer without utilities. I did not understand how people could let that happen. I also felt guilty when people who didn't have the things I had would tell me that it wasn't fair that I had what I had because, well,....it ISN't fair.

I had someone get angry with me because my husband married me because he loves me and hers married hers to have babies. I have a friend, my best friend, actually, who has always been jealous because my husband talks to me and hers doesn't talk to her. While I think I can relate to her frustration a bit, her situation is not my fault, and that is something I have had to learn.

Lately, my friend has been making different comments. Different but snippy. She wanted to know why we didn't fly to see our son in VA since we were in the big bucks. (I think we may have actually climbed into the upper middle class, but I haven't checked the stats on that.) She made a comment about our garage the other day, a sour grapes kind of comment. We didn't have a garage when we lived in Ohio, although we always meant to get around to building one. She DOES have a garage. It is not my problem that it is not attached to her house or that her husband uses it for a workshop instead of a place to keep cars.

I love my friend, truly I do, but I am no longer willing to feel guilty about things over which I have no control. The fact of the matter is that SHE got to stay in Ohio with her family. HER grandchildren (1 1/2 at the moment) live in the same town that she does. Mine have moved from ten hours away to four hours away, for which I am thankful, but it is not the same as having them in the same town.

So. I just want to go on record here, where it is safe to say so, and say that I only want to feel guilty about things that are my fault, and there are often quite a few of them. I am a sinner. Fortunately, I am forgiven. That other part of the world, the fair one I felt was there when I was younger? I think it might only exist in heaven. So life isn't always fair. It won't be to me or to anyone else. And I AM sorry that such is the case.

But the unfairness is not always my fault. And there is not always something I can do to fix it.

I am not surprised that this offer was refused, but I still think the whole thing is bigger than it looks. I have met very few twenty-somethings who are not sick and have end of life wishes. Certainly they have discussions, but that is not the same as reaching a conclusion.










USATODAY.com - Schiavo turns down $1M offer

This is a nice idea, but I don't think the whole thing is about money on a grand scale, although I think it might be for Michael Schaivo. I think it is a test case to introduce euthanasia in a big way in this country. Note the fact that "some" doctors say that Terri is in a persistent vegitative state. The consensus is not unanimous.

It still feels wrong to me that in a world where we fight to include children in public education whose responses are similar to Terri's, her responses are of no value. I could ask when they lost value, but the answer is obvious: when it became clear that she was not going to recover from her collapse. As a society then, do we have to make up our minds about different? When is it OK and when is it not?

Just thinking about the answer to that question frightens me.









This USATODAY.com - Schiavo gets $1M offer

I find this disturbing. My grandparents gave me a copy of IN HIS STEPS when I was confirmed, and it IS a decidedly Christian book. Not too long ago, though, when I went back to college, I was asked to read books that went against MY religious beliefs, and I did it. I did complain when I was asked to role play, and my instructor very kindly gave me another assignment.

IN HIS STEPS didn't mean that much to me when my grandparents gave it to me, although I did read it then. It wasn't until much later in my life when I began to see the lessons it could teach me and actually processed the fact that what Jesus would do was often quite different than what the organized church did. I assume that Professor Mitchell was teaching about the religious revivals that took place during the late 1800s when he assigned the book. Why would its reading not be appropriate in that context?

When my husband went back to school, he went to a Catholic college and, having been raised Catholic, was surprised at the diversity in the religion department. The last religion course he took was taught by a Hindu. My husband wrote two papers for this man and received an A on both of them. The final assignment was a review of the course. Students were to tell what they had learned and whether or not it meant anything to them. My husband did so, and in the course of his writing he mentioned that although his teacher had said that Christianity was a very exclusive religion, he had found it to be INCLUSIVE. The paper he got back had angry comments all over it stating that my husband had not understood the course at all. An F had been written but scribbled out. I guess the teacher figured that he probably couldn't justify an F since he had given my husband two As, so he replaced the F with a D.

My point here is that people react so violently to Christianity, and I don't see why. Is it conviction? The old Adam, as Christians say? Or is it something else? Maybe in the search the human race seems to have for the right way to do things, they instinctively rebel when the right way isn't their way.










Family.org - CitizenLink - FNIF News - Christian Professor Loses Job

USATODAY.com - Judge nixes Schiavo intervention by agency

This whole situation really frustrates me. Of COURSE Michael Schiavo's attorney says that Jeb Bush has orchestrated the latest intervention. He has to make the whole thing seem political, not moral.

I thought it was interesting that last year at this time, I had heard nothing of Terri Schiavo's supposed bulemia. Does her husband think that makes it appear that she wanted to die even then? IF she was bulemic, then she had an unhealthy response to her situation, but I don't think that proves she wanted to die. Musician Karen Carpenter died of complications from an eating disorder, but no one ever intimated that her eating disorder was a death wish!

Why can't Michael just back off and let Terri's parents take care of her like they want to?

Cataract means waterfall. Normally, I like waterfalls. I did not connect the idea of cataracts at all to the deterioration of my vision or the fact that I could never seem to keep my glasses clean. I just thought I needed a different prescription or that maybe the anti-glare coating was not all it was cracked up to be.

So when I went to the eye doctor yesterday, I did not expect him to say that I had cataracts. For an eye doctor, I think he is sort of clueless, but maybe that is just because I teach the visually impaired now so I know more. He will ask me if I use my glasses to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night or if I can see his face when he is three feet away from me. He asks this because my right eye is a -14 and my left is a -12, which is pretty bad vision-wise. One of the first things I learned as a teacher of the visually impaired is that visually impaired people SEE. They just don't see as clearly as those people who are not. (Maybe I should tell my doctor.)

I am supposed to go to the eye doctor every six months for a field vision test because of one of my RA meds. Since I don't like to have my eyes dilated, I waited a year. I thought maybe I waited too long because my vision is too blurry for me to read much, and reading is something that I enjoy. Also, I have found that I am much more sensitive to the light outside than I used to be. When he was done with my exam and told me I had early lens changes, I thought he meant the presbyopia, and since I already wear bifocals, I wondered why he called the changes early. Turns out he meant cataracts.

I have an evaluation for surgery on May 2. I want to see better, and evidently if the surgery is done, they will replace the lens of my eye with an implant so that I WILL see better. I have worn glasses since first grade. I am not sure how this will feel. I guess it is just one of the many experiences of growing older, but I think it is a strange turn of events for a teacher of the visually impaired. Technically, because of glare, I now AM visually impaired!

Today, my Bible reading was in Deuteronomy, Chapters 8-10. In those chapters, Moses reminds the people of Israel how God has taken care of them and how they rebelled anyway. As much as I would like knowing that I am NOT rebellious, such is not the case. I am no better.

After I read my Bible, I went to school to tutor one of my students and then on to the rheumatologist in Indianapolis. He recently increased my medication so that it costs almost six thousand dollars every eight weeks. That doesn't matter so much right now because I have good insurance, but come September I will have the good old 80/20 kind, and twenty percent of that sum, not counting the monthly blood tests, is a LOT of money.

So, after the doc checked my joints and told me he was upping one of the cheaper DMARDs which he had lowered because it messed with my white blood count, I asked him if it was possible to have this disease without going bankrupt. He didn't answer. Instead, he proceeded to tell me how the meds had lowered my C-reactive protein to an acceptable level and that I still had break-through disease activity. I knew that.

It takes about ninety minutes to get to Indy, so I have lots of time to think on the drive. I like to listen to Christian radio when I drive alone because it keeps my mind on the right things, usually. Today, Moody radio was raising money, and they kept quoting the verse about having your treasure in heaven, where thieves do not break through and steal. This brought my mind back to the Remicade, and I wondered how long our finances could stand the expense after my husband retires. What I heard, or maybe a better way to describe it is that I felt it, was "Stop. Now." Immediately I knew I was being reminded that God has taken care of the situation so far, so why worry? And the worry went away, although I did feel humbled by the encounter.

My father, who I believe is a man of God, questions people who say they have been led by the Lord. He wants to know how they know it is God who is doing the leading. I don't know how it works for anyone else, but I am always reminded of Scripture or of something that the Lord has done for me or my family. Usually, the Voice interrupts abruptly to stop me from thinking in a way that I shouldn't be thinking anyway. I don't know what to say to my dad about that. I suppose, if what I heard was contrary to Scripture or urging me to do something that I knew was wrong, I would worry about my sanity. That is not the case though. It is more along the lines of "Be still and know that I am God." Sadly, I do need to be reminded of that on a regular basis.

How I wish I could be like Job who said he would trust God even if God killed him!

Local News - Marion Chronicle Tribune - www.chronicle-tribune.com

As I look at a possible change in career, I still have to be thankful for the people that I have met over the past four years while working in special education. I think that all of education has suffered from the philosophy that education is a process that yields a product. That may work in business with machines, but I think it is much less effective with people.

It looks like the special education coop here is about to be dissolved. The question I hear over and over as I go from school to school is, "What about the children?" Who will take care of Stephanie if she is stuck in a mild program because that is the only alternative? How discouraged will the moderate kids be when they are mainstreamed? How can the rural districts cope by themselves? I heard similar questions when I was in gen ed, but the fact is that gen ed kids WILL cope in some way because they have the innate ability to do so. Special ed kids, for the most part, do not.

I know you have to look at money. I know you have to look at standards. But what about the children?

Sometimes, because my thinking is preoccupied with what job I will work next year, I forget that I am not the only one who wonders. My son, who will soon be discharged from the Marines wonders. The secretaries downtown and even some of the administrators wonder. And though many of us believe that God is in control of where we end up, we have a hard time allowing Him to work. He takes so darn long!

Today I was presented with proof that it is better to wait, though. A year ago at Christmas, my husband was offered a job in Dearborn, MI, and oh, how I wanted it! We would have been so close to where we lived most of our married life and MUCH closer to most of our family. My husband and I talked the job over, though, and decided it was a bad career move. He would have no company vehicle, and his salary would have been capped at about $4000 less than what he is currently making with no chance for advancement. I understood all of that, but I was still sort of angry with God because something I wanted so much had been dangled in front of my face and was so obviously wrong.

Today, my husband came home and told me that the particular job he had been offered and all the others like it are on the chopping block. The man who took the job was from archives, and that department has been eliminated, so he doesn't know where he will go. How thankful I am that God knew better than I did and presented my husband and me with a clear choice! He protected us, although I didn't see it then, and He deserves praise for having done so.

Why is it so much harder to have a boring day than it is to have a busy day? Today I had one student from 7:15-8AM and the next from 9AM-9:45. The last two were sick, so really I have been free since then. Unfortunately, school for me lasts until 3PM. I would bet this has something to do with chronos versus kairos, but I am not yet ready t write about that. I am, however, quite bored!

I didn't think that I lived vicariously through my children, but I guess all parents do in the way that my pastor mentioned it in his sermon yesterday. He said that when our children do well, it makes us look good, and the reverse is true when they mess up. He's right. I just didn't think I tried to make my children have the life their father and I had. I thought I encouraged them to find what would make them happy.

HOWEVER, yesterday I was talking on the phone with my daughter. She is finding her way back to happiness after a divorce, and she mentioned that she might go out to California to visit a friend. Now, I know she doesn't have the money to do that, and I told her so. Her dad and I have been encouraging her to save. Currently she is staying with her grandfather, but she is twenty-five and I know she wants to be independent. My daughter said she had some vacation time coming, and she wanted to do something special. When I told her that her father and I did not take vacations of that magnitude when we were her age, she responded with, "Well, I'm not you!"

Whoa! Does she feel that I have forced my values on her? I thought that I was pretty accepting as parents go. I think I will have to re-evaluate myself.

The lesson we had in Sunday School was really interesting. I thought about this story differently than I had thought about it before. I had always pictured the woman with the bleeding problem touching Jesus as He went by with the crowd and hoping that she would be healed and He would (maybe) not even notice. I don't think it ever dawned on her that He would stop and comment. Our teacher said that culture-wise, by touching the hem of Jesus's garment, she was placing herself under His protection.

There is another issue here that I never really considered, either. Verse 30 says that Jesus felt power go out from Him. Didn't He send it? Or is this one of the times when the separateness of the Trinity was revealed and He only felt the power as the Father released it in response to the woman's faith. Was the woman, by virtue of her faith and her touching Jesus's garment, placing herself in the "aura" of His healing power? Is there such a thing? I know it was her faith that healed her, but there must be something about being in the presence of God. Otherwise, why would Moses's face have shown after he came down from Mount Sanai?

Then we went on to the dead girl, and our teacher was wondering if the girl knew that she was dead, if she had been dead such a short time that she didn't know. I think that she knew, but I don't know how a twelve-year-old would process such an experience. And I think that she was in heaven; otherwise, how do you explain the verse, "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord"?

I love it when our Bible study is this intense because I feel like I come away knowing an iota more about my home. Heaven. I can't learn any more than an iota at a time until I get there. I hope I can remember and apply what I learned today.

This morning, I took my husband with me to get a certificate of deposit in my own name. I have never done so before. I had a savings account before we were married, and I opened my own about six years ago, right before we moved from Ohio. Obviously, I closed that one, and I waited a while before opening my own here.

In my particular marriage, my money, his money and our money has never been a problem except for the fact that I always feel better if I buy my husband presents with money that I know I have earned. I wasn't threatened by not having my own account, but because we are getting older, we thought I should have some money I could access in an emergency.

Truth be told, my husband does the checkbook and makes out our taxes. My checks have been direct deposted for so long that I really don't see the money I make. And I don't care, except that I feel productive. The money is pooled for our mutual benefit. My husband says I would give all of ours away if he left me to my own devices. I don't know about that. I like being comfortable and knowing that the bills are paid. Beyond that, though, thinking about such things gives me a headache.


The reason for the CD is that it is short-term and more than triple the interest rate my savings account is earning. It really surprised me that my bank did not bat an eye when I withdrew what to me is a large sum of money. Nor did they ask for my ID; maybe I should worry about that. The bank where I opened the CD wanted two forms of ID. Since I don't carry my Social Security card, they wanted a credit card. My husband wasn't comfortable with that, though, so they ended up settling for my insurance card. That amuses me because before I got this job four years ago, I never had insurance in my own name. I guess I would have had to go home and find my Social Security card, but then again, on those other jobs I would not have made the money to invest.

In a strange turn of events, when we got home and checked the mail, our property tax bill was there, From 2003. (Sometimes Indiana is a little behind.) Anyway, although both my husband and I are listed as property owners, the tax bill was addressed to me.

I think I am responsible about finances, and I realize that I actually need to learn about them. I have begun to realize that not having ever set up housekeeping on my own sometimes leaves me at a disadvantage. Getting this CD is, I guess, my first step.

Once upon a time there was...

No, that's not the way I want to start.

Four score and seven....boy am I glad I am not there yet! This is enough of an adjustment.

Half a century ago..... No, that just sounds too old.

Fifty years ago today, a little girl was born in a small city in south Jersey. She was the third of what would end up being four children. There's not a lot that I know about her birth, really. Her parents were both twenty-nine. Her mother had a hard time with all of her pregnancies, but she said later that delivering this little girl was easy because of something called "twilight sleep." Her father said that the doctor was nowhere near the delivery room, but they had to pay him anyway.
Her mom was a homemaker; her dad worked for Owens-Illinois. I am not sure what his actual job title was.

Two siblings awaited her arrival. One was a boy of eleven, the other a girl of seven. Nobody ever told me if they were excited or not, but the mom and dad were, and that's what counts.

The family lived in a duplex on a quiet street. I have seen it. It looks roomy. They lived there for twenty-one months after the little girl was born. Then the dad was transferred to Ohio.

I am that little girl. And although today is my fiftieth birthday, I know that within me lies the girl who lived in the duplex, the one who moved to the apartment in Ohio. I wonder, sometimes, how life really was for my parents. My son is twenty-six and looking at him, now, I know how young they were at twenty-nine. When I was twenty-nine, my children were five and six. It was the year before my brother-in-law was killed in a tragic accident while working on the railroad, but nothing momentous happened that year. At least nothing that has stuck in my memory.

My brother-in-law was thirty-seven when he died. He left a twenty-three-year-old wife, a three-year-old boy and a three-month-old boy. After the funeral, one of the railroad wives came up to me and said that his wife was too young, that it should have been one of us. "Why?" I wanted to scream. "Would we have missed our husbands any less? Didn't our children need their dad just as much?"

That whole situation was bad. My husband was there when it happened and, as if that were not enough, he heard all the gossip as the railroad reached a settlement with his brother's widow. His brother was a foreman, and the railroad gave his wife a smaller settlement because they said that if he were going to be more than a foreman, he would have been by that time. I think it upset all the men who knew about it. Washed up at thirty-seven? That's a pretty young age to have achieved all that you can.

I didn't do anything momentous at thirty-seven, but at thirty-eight I went back to school. I had planned on doing that once the kids left home. I went early because I was tired of subbing and having people ask me why I didn't get a real job. Subbing in Ohio wasn't like it is here in Indiana; you actually had to have a four-year degree to do it. Going back with two teenagers was sort of hard, but my husband was very supportive. He didn't complain about the money or the housekeeping that I let slide. I am very A-oriented. Had to have 'em. And I did. I took sixty-four hours in eighteen months so that I could get my English certification.

Just as I was finishing, my husband went back to school, so our kids never really got a break. He was working full-time at that time, so it was hard for him, too. He always regretted not having finished his degree earlier, but the family into which he was born needed him, and he rose to the task. Then his situation changed, and he was not predictably free during the week. Thank goodness they have weekend college now!

Before he got done I got my first "real" job teaching English in parochial school. Junior high. I have to say this...I learned a lot about working hard when I worked at McDonald's during college, and I learned even more working at the parochial school. It was rewarding, but it WAS slave labor.

Just as I got comfortable in my job (they say it takes four years, which is the amount of time I have been in my current position), Norfolk Southern purchased ConRail and we moved. I was really thankful that the move involved a step up for my husband. He disproved the statement about his brother and became a supervisor when he was forty-eight. Truth be told, I breathed a sigh of relief that he had a job, period. I know there are many who have not been so fortunate after a buy-out.

But the move was a bigger deal than I thought. Being three hours away from your family does not sound like a lot, but it really is. And it is hard to make new friends in a new town. Silly things matter when you move, like finding a TV station that you like or a grocery store that you can live with.

Then our son got married and I got RA (reverse the order, though.) Talk about adjustments! He is in the Marines, and he got married 9/10/01. In case you missed that, the next day was 9/11. And I had to get used to not being able to do the things that were once easy for me. For a while there, I was looking at using a walker, which was a big thought to me at the age of forty-six.

Fortunately, things have not turned out as badly as I feared. Turns out, there ARE nice people in Indiana. I didn't have to use a walker. And for four years I have had a job that, although I never would have sought it out, has allowed me to serve other people. Some of them are pretty helpless and need all the people looking out for them that they can get. I don't know that I would have even considered it if I hadn't already been slowed down, and it has been a lifesaver in that it kept me moving when I could easily have quit. My son and daughter-in-law have presented my husband and me with two precious grandsons, and my daughter has come through a bad marriage and is landing on her feet. Not even the fact that my old car broke down today and we replaced the dishwasher yesterday can take away my gratitude that despite all the things that have happened to me along the way, I am here. I made it. To half a century.

And as the little girl who was born in south Jersey looks forward to the next half, she will carry with her the tall, shy teenager, the new wife, the young mother, the woman who has survived tragedies and wept with joy. I wonder who they will become.

My dishwasher is broken.

For the first twenty-one years of my married life, I did not have a dishwasher. My parents did not have one either, so most of the time I didn't feel the loss. Sure, I wanted one, but there were other things that I wanted more. For the most part, I washed every dish that got washed for twenty-one years. (My husband did help some, and I fought my kids about helping like all parents do. Fortunately, they are MUCH better at washing dishes now that they are living on their own.)

Anyway. The dishwasher is only two years old. It needs a new touchpad, and fortunately the touchpad has a two year warranty. Unfortunately, it came to our house two years ago on the seventh of January. It is a Whirlpool, so we thought we were buying quality. The serviceman said that Whirlpool is all that he owns. Then he told us that the part, minus his service call, would be $167. His service call was $39.95. That's a heck of a repair!

We bought the broken dishwasher at Lowe's, but when I got on the net to find out who serviced them, we got the name of a little appliance dealer. They are having a sale and can give us a new dishwasher comparable to the one we have for $319. That's sort of a no-brainer then; why have the old one fixed? The new one will be delivered this evening, and my husband will put it in when he gets around to it. He means well. He just works a lot of hours.

I asked the advice of a serviceman before, years ago, about a refrigerator. His advice was sound, and we have not purchased a side-by-side refrigerator since. This serviceman said that consumers were way ahead when dishwashers and other appliances had pushbuttons and dials, but you know progress! Maybe computers do a lot of things better, but they sure do cost a lot! He said, too, that this is a common repair on a dishwasher. I hope we don't find that out again soon, or that if we do, it happens while the machine is still on warranty.

The funny thing is, though, it is just my husband and me here, so I don't even use the dishwasher all that often. The family that lived here before us had kids, and their old machine lasted three years after we moved in. You would think, wouldn't you, that the more use it got....?

Oh, well. I like having the convenience of a dishwasher too much to do without one. I am just glad that, at this point, it is a luxury we can afford.

I thought I remembered fifth grade Social Studies. I liked my fifth grade teacher; her name was Mrs. Parsons. Social Studies was where I found out that there was something called abstract thinking, or if I had known that before, it was the first time in school that I remember its mattering. Mrs. Parsons gave stars on the board for good responses, and I liked that. Social Studies was my downfall star-wise until I caught on to it.

This year, one of my students is a fifth grader and I tutor her in....you guessed it. Social Studies. The first part of the year was really interesting to me because it was about Indiana history, and I hail from Ohio. Second semester, though, she is studying American History, which I have studied before, obviously. Maybe I just wasn't old enough to see the things in it that I see now.

I don't remember hearing that George Washington, at 56, did not want to be President. He thought he was too old. Everybody liked him, though, so he was elected anyway. Washington, although in favor of a strong central government, didn't like political parties. They fought too much.

Nevertheless, parties developed: the Federalists were the precursors of the Republicans, and the Democratic-Republicans were the old-style Democrats. According to my student's book, the Democratic-Republicans, or Antifederalists as they were called then, had enough influence to get the Bill of Rights added to the Constitution. They tried to protect the people. Thomas Jefferson was one of them, which I find sort of funny because her book says that he worried that the President might one day be king. Didn't keep him from being the President, though.

I am amazed at the similarities between what happened then and what is happening now. The U.S. needed a strong central government if they were going to survive against any other nation, but any of the mistakes that government made,anything the people disagreed with, took power away from them. I guess it is that neverending story of whenever power evolves. It is only right for you to have it if you fix things the way I want them fixed.

Still, I feel fortunate to live in this country. I wouldn't want to live in one of the Scandinavian countries that openly practices euthanasia. I am glad life means more here. And I don't think even Canada, with their socialized medicine, holds a candle to us. In Ohio, our family doctor was from Canada, and he said once that Americans who fought for socialized medicine using Canada as an example frustrated him. "If Canada worked the way it was supposed to work," he said, "why do you think I am practicing medicine HERE?" Despite the fact that I think women are still somewhat of a second class, I think we have it better here than we do anywhere else in the world. And if I disagree with the President or any politicians, I can vote to try and get them out of office or at least write and tell them what I think without being in fear of my life.

I'll end with a quote from my student's book. Ben Franklin said it when he was asked why he agreed to ratify the Constitution. "I consent ... to this Constitution because I expect no better and because I am not sure that it is not the best."

Despite our government's flaws, I agree. I don't know of a better one.

Another thing my daughter-in-law and I talked about were churches, the Jehovah's Witnesses in particular. She knows a couple who are Jehovah's Witnesses, and she wanted to talk to them about it, particularly since the wife had been Lutheran, as she is.

I didn't know much to help her out. I believe the Jehovah's Witnesses believe in salvation by works, which I do not. I would bet the wife would say something like the Jehovah's Witnesses offered her a definite plan of salvation. This is something that I think Catholics and Lutherans, in my experience, are bad at. The reason I think they are so bad at it is that they, as denominations, do not make it clear that it is belief in Jesus Christ as Savior is what counts. They make it sound like it is more important to be Catholic or Lutheran. People want salvation to be understandable, and I don't think that it is. I think you have to accept Jesus's sacrifice as one of faith, and I think you have to come to the realization that, no matte how good you are, you can never, by yourself, be good enough. Jesus's blood, not your works, is what makes you good enough.

Anyway. My daughter-in-law said that the Jehovah's Witness husband had said something to her about organized churches wanting money. I have heard that complaint lots of times, and it is true, I think; all churches want money, presumably to further their own cause. I think what the believer has to sort out is whether their cause is the cause of Christ.

Then we talked about tithing and the attitude of the heart. I told her about an old girlfriend my son had. Her church asked for W-2s and told people what they owed! We talked about how it isn't how much you give that matters, but the attitude of your heart when you give it. Whether people like it or not, churches, like any other organization, have expenses, so they need income. There is a definite need there, not even counting the charitable ones. People seem to want their churches to have lots to offer; they just don't want to be the ones who pay for the offerings.

All in all, Beth and I had an interesting trip from Ohio to Virginia. I hope she got as much to think about out of it as I did.