Chatting about: Inspiration

Ruth (Guest): Hello Judy and Brian. Sorry I’m late.

Ruth (Guest): This chapter is interesting, points directly, it seems to me, at the difficulties I’ve had in the last nine years. Unable, it seems, to finish anything, or much of anything.

Ruth (Guest): And I wonder about the nine plus years before. I gave away so many professional services that I left myself poor, in some ways too poor. Was it God’s inspiration, or my own s t r i v i n g to live Gospel values more perfectly than “normal.“

Ruth (Guest): Yes, Judy, I guess that is what I mean. I keep thinking that it is a result of traumatic brain injury. People with ADD have a similar problem.

Ruth (Guest): We will, Dawn, but I hope it’s nothing serious. The grans OK?

Ruth (Guest): Extraordinary practice? Even the ordinary, seems just too much much of the time.

Ruth (Guest): And yet, in the past, I have literally done some of what is described in the article as extraordinary practice of ordinary virtures: e.g., literally washing the feet of a homeless man, who, without socks, had the leather of his shoes and his skin difficult to separate, and doing so as if I were washing Christ’s feet. I really did feel that the stinky job was a priviledge and I think I managed to NOT show my revulsion at the smell.

Ruth (Guest): I appreciate your saying so, Brian. Perseverance is a virtue that somehow I’ve always had. I had to, to survive. BUT that is not the same as accomplishing a task, and particularly not the same as accomplishing it in a reasonable amount of time.

Ruth (Guest): Or, to get through medical school I had as many as five different jobs simultaneously –– in addition to my studies. Somehow, I attended almost ALL lectures and classes, even though it was not required.

Ruth (Guest): And one of my jobs was in an nursing home. I did private duty. There was another woman, covered with sores all over her body, hallucinating. On an iv, she had ripped it out during the day before I came, climbed over the bedrail and been losing blood crawling around with her stumps of legs. She tried to hit anyone who got near her. I’d have been punched in the face with a closed fist had I not ducked away quickly enough. I knew that she was confused and afraid of the police –– must have had an incredib

Ruth (Guest): ly difficult life on the street. I SANG hymns all night and prayed for her. In the morning she was still hallucinating but now she thought I was her mother; she let me wash her whole body and I even had time left to help the nurse get half of the other patients on the ward up and dressed.

Ruth (Guest): I am telling this because I see such a huge negative change in myself ever since I fell down a flight and a half of stairs. I don’t seem to be able to get anything done. I don’t even keep up with my own dish washing! I have trouble accomplishing anything at all.

Ruth (Guest): On two occasions 2 different friends helped me for a few hours, but both have their work. One I never see any more. The other I see almost weekly at a Formation for Ministry course that we have both completed and are now auditing. She finished last year; I finished twelve years ago. Her work is now more demanding than it was when she helped me out.

Ruth (Guest): THANK YOU for your prayers and support.

Ruth (Guest): BTW reading an old journal the other day, I found a statement in a letter I’d written to a patient. It made me smile: “Where you stumble or fall, dig there for treasure! Get a shovel and a pick-ax and dig! Keep going even if it is just to come to another stumbling place.“ That says something to me about finding our weakness, identifying our problems, and being willing to change.

Ruth (Guest): I guess I need to listen to my own advice. God is good! Even our weakness can lead us closer to Him, the greatest treasure of all.

Ruth (Guest): WHEN we examine them truthfully.