A SNAPSHOT OF MY HEART

My daughter-in-law sent this photo to our family group message a couple of weeks ago. I love this picture for sooooo many reasons...

I'm doing something I love - reading - with people I love - my grands. In the background are reminders of even more people I love - artwork by three of my kids, the piano where so many of my children made music through the years. You can't see the person taking the picture, my beautiful daughter-in-law, or the people chatting behind me in the kitchen...more people I love.

This picture feels like a little snapshot of my heart.

If you were to ask yourself, "What makes Camille tick?" - or - "What motivates Camille?" - or - "What brings Camille joy?" - well, this picture goes a long way toward answering those questions.

I heard someone say of me recently that the reason I went back to school, got a degree, and took on a full-time job was because I needed the validation that a degree and work could give me in order to feel like I had done something of value with my life. Nothing...nothing...could be further from the truth.

(I may come back and revisit the whole how and why of my nursing journey here in a future post, but for now, let's just say: I went to nursing school because God, and I now work full-time, as opposed to part-time, because healthcare benefits.)

If you've read more than a couple of posts here at the blog (thank you for reading!), you know that I have good days and bad days. Sunny days and days of shadow. Doesn't everyone?

Yesterday was a good day for me. I got a phone call from my granddaughter Lizzy, shopped for birthday and Christmas presents for the grands, and closed out the day spending time with my son Thomas. Thank you, Tom, for the wild ride and good conversation, but thank you mostly just for being you.

Today, I spent time with church family, watched a recorded lecture on the topic of Highly Sensitive People (suddenly I feel soooooo much less like a freak in this world), and wrote letters to friends.

In three short days (they will actually be long days, because work is wild right now), my house will begin to fill with the activity, chatter, and chaos of kids and grandkids gathering for the holidays.

My heart tank is full...and getting fuller.

Today, I am thankful for the good days.

SAFE PLACE

Resting and recharging this beautiful Sunday by spending time with my church family, taking the granddog for a drive, trying a new recipe for autumn sangria...and by writing!

A friend posted on her Facebook timeline recently:

I think the greatest thing that we can offer to someone

is to be their peace, to be their softest and safest space.

After receiving their grudges from the world,

battling their chaotic minds, indecisive sadness, and countless times

questioning their worthiness - they have us -

hugging their sorrows and making them feel like this is their

"genuine home."

- Notebook

A couple of weekends ago, I spent time with my dear friend Jill. Jill has been a "safe place" for me for almost 50 years. In our brief time together, as we talked about I-can't-remember-what, I started crying.

"I'm sorry!" I apologized, wiping away tears. "I cry a lot these days!"

"No worries," Jill assured me. "I'm okay with tears."

I have lived a long, long time in The Land of We Don't Do Big Feelings (especially "heavy" ones like sadness, anger, or frustration). I am a misfit, an imposter, a second-class citizen, often opting not to speak rather than to risk ridicule or rejection by exposing my alien identity with my "accent."

But Jill is "home." She is a true sister in Christ. She doesn't laugh, mock, or belittle my "accent" (aka big feelings), but makes me feel welcomed, loved, and valued. (Maybe Jill is so good at making me feel "at home" because she has Big Feelings, too.)

Lots of seemingly random bits and pieces here on the blog today...but, trust me, they are not unrelated.

Today is Sunday.

Morning worship, study, time with God's people...

Rest, physical and mental...

Throwing the ball for Lefty, trying a new recipe, savoring the Golden Hour as late afternoon sunlight filters across the hayfield outside my window...

Remembering time recently spent in the company of a dear friend...

All these things turn my thoughts to the loveliness of Jesus.

He is faithful, merciful, gracious, kind, good, sufficient, forgiving. He does not mock, ridicule, or belittle.

When he walked on this earth, Jesus welcomed the outcast, touched the unclean, healed the sick, and embraced the broken. "No worries...I'm okay with tears."

Jesus - he is the safest place of all.

NOT WHERE I WAS BEFORE

Last weekend was rough. I was physically and emotionally depleted from a difficult week at work, grieving the loss of a dear soul (read about that HERE), discouraged by various relationship struggles, and missing my kids and grands something terrible. The world felt dark and heavy, and I languished like Jeremiah at the bottom of a murky cistern.

Been there, done that, way too many times to count.

It's not a place I like to be, but how to get out of that dark hole when overcome with weariness and grief?

Sigh.

There was nothing to do but try to start climbing...

Step 1: "I know that the way I feel today is not the way I will feel forever. My feelings will change." At almost 60 years old, I know that feelings come and go, and they can change dramatically in a short time. Life felt pretty dark and hopeless Friday evening, Saturday, Sunday...but by Monday, with a healthy dose of sunshine and warmer temperatures, my feelings began to change.

Step 2: "Despite how I feel today, I am not alone. There are people who love me and who are praying for me." And I began to name them. Teresa, Donna, Katherine, Brenda, Sue, Jill, Cindy, Cathy, Emily, Martha, Helen, Mary, Suzanne,.....

Step 3: "My life matters. Today, my feelings may tell me I have no value, but the truth is, my life makes a difference for good." Weekly, I am blessed to be able to pour courage and strength and comfort into dying people and into those who love them. What a sacred calling!

Step 4: "I am not where I was before." A few years ago, I frequently had no idea how I was going to buy groceries for the week, I drove a borrowed vehicle to run errands in town, health issues were ignored, and gift-giving occasions - like birthdays, Christmas, weddings, baby showers - triggered deep distress. Today, I have food in the fridge, a reliable car, am managing my blood pressure, and am seeing a therapist regularly to work through decades of pain and desperation. Last weekend was dark, but even in the darkness, I knew that my life was far better than it had once been, and that was encouraging.

Despite the fact that my challenges, struggles, and frustrations have not changed significantly over the past week, I am today in a much better place mentally and emotionally than I was last weekend. No big surprise there...but still, I am thankful.

I hope today is a great day for you.

But if it's not, please remember this: today is not forever.

Today is not forever.

Hold on the best you can.

I pray that God will give you strength to start climbing.

LIFE IN THE VALLEY

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me..." - Psalm 23:4a

The Psalmist assures me that when I walk through "the valley of the shadow of death," God will be with me. But what if I don't just walk through this dark place? What if this is where I live, day after day?

Another dear soul left this life to be with Jesus today. I knew this was coming. I whispered to this sweet soul yesterday, "Soon...very soon."

And yet, even knowing this death was a release from pain and suffering to new life and vigor, the news broke my heart.

It always does.

It. Always. Does.

I am grieving today, weeping...again. Grief and weeping are "part of the job."

It never gets easier. 

It. Never. Does.

God says through the Psalmist that "in the valley," He is with me.

What a strange and difficult calling, to live daily with my hand upon the veil.

He is with me.

Such great comfort.

He is with me.

10 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT...

In my last post, I mentioned a tendency I witness frequently - a tendency that distresses me because I see it so all too often in myself - of finding fault with Them/Those People while tenaciously resisting acknowledgment of sin in my own heart. Where does this come from?

For me, I think this tendency comes from a deep sense of inadequacy on my own part, a sense of "falling short" which is so painful that I reflexively divert attention from my own faults to the faults of others in an act of self-defense.

Scattered across my desk are sticky notes and scraps of paper scrawled with ideas for potential blog posts.  Sitting down to write today, I find a common thought jotted in multiple places: Never Enough, Not Good Enough, The Land of Never Quite Right.

To what do these sticky-note "blog ideas" refer?

I have lived my entire life in The Land of Not Good Enough.

An A+ in high school chemistry was not good enough if my 6-week grade average was 96%. If I had worked harder, could I not have made a 100%? First-chair French horn was okay, but could I not also have qualified for All West Band?

I was not the pretty child in my family. I was not the smartest child in my family. I was not musically or artistically talented. I wasn't even the nicest child in my family. I was just....well...meh....

And so, in my little brain, I created this sad, sick, twisted dichotomy of Good vs. Bad.

Them vs. Me.

Everything and everybody sifted into a distorted moral hierarchy.

Extroverted, friendly, outgoing: Good.

Introverted, shy, contemplative (like me): Bad.

Compliant, peace-keeping, submissive: Good.

Strong convictions, idealistic, passionate (like me): Bad.

Tough, thick-skinned, hard-core: Good.

Sensitive, empathetic, emotional (like me): Bad.

Passive, compliant, a follower: Good, if you are a female.

Smart, ambitious, driven: Bad, if you are a female (like me).

Surely you can see how this Me vs. Everybody Else Who Has Life Figured Out dichotomy quickly became unbearable. So I flipped the game and made my own set of rules. Rules that proved that I was the good guy/superior/the winner, and They were inferior/the losers.

But now, finally...

I am beginning to understand that there aren't many Good Guys or Bad Guys, Winners or Losers...that mostly, there is just Different...and we are all just doing the best that we can to survive.

Yes, I am sensitive. Someone points that out like an accusation of inferiority or guilt. I am learning to respond, "Yes, I am sensitive. Thank you for noticing"...like they paid me a compliment.

"You're too idealistic. This is the real world we're living in." Like C. S. Lewis's Puddleglum, I am learning to think and speak clearly, and I would rather live in an idealist's world than someone else's Green Witch "real" world any day.

This is a long ramble to say...

I have lived in The Land of  Not Good Enough pretty much my entire life, and I think it's time to relocate.

There is a sort of "game" I play on occasion with my kids and my grands. It's called "10 Things I Love About ----"

The last time I played this game was with my granddaughter Hazel. We were sitting beside each other, passing notes during church. (Sorry, Gage.) Hazel wrote a note, and passed it to me, and I wrote a note and passed it to Hazel. My note was "10 Things I Love About Hazel," with a list...of 10 things...that I love about Hazel.

You get the idea.

Anywho, this week, I got to thinking, if I played the game "10 Things I Love About ---" with myself....well, I don't know if I could even do that.

Because Myself is Not Good Enough. Never has been.

So right now, real time, I am going to take one more step away from The Land of Not Good Enough, and I am going to try to list 10 Things I Like About Myself. (Come on, seriously? Baby steps, here. Let me learn to like...and maybe one day I'll learn to love...)

10 THINGS I LIKE ABOUT ME (in no particular order):

1. I make really good cornbread.
2. I am ridiculously loyal.
3. I have beautiful children.
4. I am very sensitive. (That is a positive, by the way, not a negative.)
5. And empathetic.
6. I am an idealist.
7. I talk to Jesus all the time. Out loud. Especially when I am driving.
8. I cry a lot.
9. I am quiet and contemplative.
10. I really like my white hair.
11. I make a mean gin and tonic.
12. I love singing along with Phil Wickham - loudly - on the radio.

Well, lookee there...12 things I like about myself! That wasn't hard at all.

Maybe one day, The Land of Not Good Enough will be one of those tears Jesus wipes away, never to be remembered again.

THIS TIGER IS ALWAYS IN THE ROOM

I am a fearful, anxious person. To be sure, I'm not nearly as prone to fear and anxiety as I was, say, 10 years ago. But even after witnessing firsthand the faithfulness, goodness, provision, and protection of God for nearly 60 years, I can slip back into fear and anxiety in a heartbeat.

The tiger of fear may be quieter now. The tiger may nap occasionally in a shadowy corner, but it is always in the room.

I recently participated in a discussion where the leader asked a question that went something like this: "How does our culture reject God today?" 

Almost immediately, answers to this question became all about Them. You know, Those People, people who openly deny the existence of God, disregard his commands, harass Christians, or choose godless lifestyles of flagrant sin.

I don't really feel comfortable talking about what is in the hearts of Those People, but I am painfully aware of what is in my own heart...and painfully aware of the silent, subtle ways that I reject God.

God promises that He will take care of me. I have an almost 60-year track record of God doing exactly that...keeping his promises.

God tells me in his Word to trust him. God tells me to not be anxious.

But I AM anxious.

Right now, the night before the start of a work week that is mapped out with a patient load and work schedule that terrifies me, I sit here with a knot in my stomach, wondering yet again, "Can I trust you, God? Have you got this? Are you going to take care of me? Am I going to survive this week without totally crashing?"

The tiger has me in a corner tonight. With lips curled and teeth exposed, the tiger paralyzes me with its hot breath and a soft, deep snarl.

"GOD, HAVE YOU GOT THIS? ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE CARE OF ME?"

I have no defenses with which to fight a tiger. None. I am a tired, squishy, gray-haired woman with achy knees, slow reflexes, and a mind that can't even remember why I walked into the laundry room 5 minutes ago.

Staring down the tiger named Next Week, I am almost in a full-blown panic. "GOD, CAN I TRUST YOU?!"

* * * * *

Because I don't know what else to do, I am singing the Doxology this evening....over and over and over again inside my head.

This week may eat me alive. Who knows?

God knows. Based on the past 60 years of experience, I want to believe I will survive unmauled.

But if I don't, and if this tiger takes me down, I am resolved to go down singing the praises of God, even if it's only the song of a fearful child desperately wishing light into the darkness.

I

Will

Praise

My

God.

* * * * *

Let's plan to meet here again next week, okay?

Okay?

* * * * *

Post Script

Today is Saturday, October 7. As secondary weekend on-call, I am winding up a work week that terrified me on Monday. Obviously, I survived! 

Was God faithful? Yes, He was! Let me share with you some of the details...

I wrote the above post Sunday evening.

Monday morning, my daily Bible reading just so happened to put me in Romans 8 - that glorious chapter that talks about how "the Spirit helps us in our weakness" and "the Spirit himself intercedes for us." The chapter that tells us God works everything together for the good of those who love him. The chapter that assures believers that God loves us...and that nothing can separate us from that love!

I woke up anxious, and BAM!, God started my day and my week with, "Let's get something straight right now, Camille. I am in control. And, I love you."

Monday night, solo on-call. I woke up every hour and checked my phone, afraid I had missed an urgent notification. Not. One. Call. All. Night. Not a single one. Go figure.

Tuesday, a long, hard day...but Tuesday night, better sleep than I've had in weeks.

Wednesday: my morning Psalm was Psalm 103. A clear reminder of the steadfast love of God. A reminder that God knows I am weak, but He is faithful. Wednesday evening, an encouraging session with my therapist and an unexpected visit with my sweet son Tom.

Thursday, a difficult 12-hour work day that felt like it would never end. But Thursday night, such incredible sleep.

Friday, light at the end of the tunnel! Stumbled home exhausted at the end of the day, heated up leftovers for dinner, and enjoyed a fun movie with my Mom. Signed in for weekend on-call, and guess what...not one single call Friday night. How weird is that?

Y'all, my faith is weak, but God is faithful.

The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him...For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust...the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children's children. - from Psalm 103, ESV

ROUTINE CAR SERVICE...AND A WHOLE LOT OF GRATITUDE

Driving 3000+ miles each month for work, the 5000-mile service visits for my vehicle roll around pretty quickly. I bought this RAV4 - the very first vehicle I have ever purchased, and I love it 😊 - just over 4 months ago. This week, Big Red and I logged over 16,000 miles.

Since I want this car to last as long as possible, I'm a stickler for having it serviced on time.

* * * * * 

My sister and brother-in-law gifted me with a re-put-together Yaris ("Little Red") a couple of years ago, so that I would have a vehicle to drive back and forth to school. That janky-looking, patched-together Yaris has 300,000 miles on it now and it runs like a charm. All Little Red has ever needed from me is regular oil changes (shout out to the wonderful folks at Buddy's in Union City) and a new set of tires.

I'm expecting the same longevity from the RAV4.

Anywho, this is not a post about how much I appreciate faithful Toyotas. It's a post about a very special moment I experienced while I was sitting at the Toyota dealership this morning, waiting for Big Red to complete her spa visit...

"Mrs. Kendall, your cabin air filter needs to be changed. Is that something you would like for us to take care of today?"

One of the cool things about having the vehicle serviced at the dealership is that the technician videos everything he does, sends you the video in progress as he is working on your car, and makes comments, suggestions, etc. I'm sitting in the waiting area, and Mark, the service manager, comes through the door (I've just seen Barry-the-technician's video). Mark asks if I would like the cabin filter changed.

I live in an agricultural area. Drive many, many miles each day. Farmers are combining beans and corn in NW TN right now, and the air is, shall we say, "chunky"? The cabin air filter is supposed to be white. I could clearly see from Barry's video that the filter was anything BUT white. It was naaaaaasty.

"Yes, please change the filter today."

My wheels were also out of line. Rural West TN roads...gotta love 'em.

Mark: "Do you want us to go ahead and realign your wheels while you are here? The charge will be $---."

Me: "Yes, please. Thank you."

So, I'm sitting in the waiting area, working on notes for next week's team meeting at the office while I wait for Big Red to get everything properly aligned, and something absolutely magical happens...

I. AM. OKAY.

No increase in heart rate. No cold sweat. No sick feeling in my stomach. No tension in my jaws. No silent tears. No mental gymnastics to figure out how the heck I'm going to swap groceries for car maintenance.

NONE of that. 

I just go calmly back to working on my meeting notes.

* * * * *

I have lived the past several decades under a dark cloud of never-enough.

Having to choose between buying shoes for my children - OR - groceries to feed them.

Having to sit in the ER parking lot praying desperately that 4 Benadryl tablets would counter an anaphylactic reaction because there was no healthcare to cover medical expenses.

The fuel gauge on empty, but passing the gas station anyway because the bank account had only $2.44 in it...or worse, was overdrawn...hoping against hope that we'd make it back home.

I remember one time when an older lady in my church excitedly told me that all the clothing at Goodwill was on sale for 50 cents an item, so I could buy clothes for my kids really cheap! I cried, because I didn't have even 50 freakin' cents.

Some of y'all know exactly what I'm talking about.

That kind of desperation is exhausting.

(There's a reason why if anyone asks me how I'm doing, my answer is usually, "I'm tired." I have so many years of "tired" built up that it will probably be a long, long time before I feel anything different.)

But this morning at the Toyota dealership...

"Yes, please, change the filter..."

"Yes, please, realign the tires..."

And I was okay.

I WAS OKAY.

No anxiety, no panic, no stress, no cold sweats...

So...

In conclusion:

Thank you, Suzanne and Leonard, for the little Yaris, so I could drive back and forth to school.

Thank you, Nate and Abby, for underwriting my education financially.

Thank you, Helen and Emily and Martha, for being my biggest cheerleaders and for giving me courage to hope.

Thank you, Tom and Carly, for pizza on the porch and for mental breaks from school in the kayaks on the lake.

Thank you, Ben, for allllll the prayers.

Thank you, Reuben, for poems that gave me light in the darkness...and for being a soul that made me feel so much less alone in some very desperate places. Thank you.

Thank you, BMH-UC, for my first real job, for your incredible teamwork ethic, and for supporting and encouraging me every single step of the way on this new journey.

Thank you, Gentiva, for work that aligns with my heart, for fantastic team support, for respectable pay, for healthcare benefits, for PTO (what the heck is that, even?!)...

...and thank you for the company vehicle that is coming next week. Big Red will be happy to cool her wheels.

(You may be a home health nurse if your commute looks like.... 😜)