I have been really struggling ever since that awful non-evalutaion with the one-foot-out-the-door-and-couldn't be bothered neurologist. I know I have dysautonomia. Not merely from world-recognized test results, but from the trails and travails of the wretched condition. But his words were so dismissive and so ... thoughtless. And I really did fear what my GP would think of his report that I was perfectly fine and should go out and support myself.
I wept all day Friday. I wept on the drive to my appointment. I wept checking to my appointment. I wept through the nurse's intake and vitals. I wept through my appointment. I wept on the way home from my appointment. I wept.
I was thankful that my GP's first words were: "He certainly differs from all your other medical records." At one point she said it wouldn't hurt if I were on memory medication, but she did not actually write a scrip. She wants to find a way to get me to a neurologist who will 1) listen and 2) have at least a passing familiarity with dysautonomia.
Her nurse, when handing me my refill script for the generic Lipitor, told me to go fill it at Meijer. She said they fill it for free. Yes. FREE. I just don't see how that is possible, but they fill generic cholesterol and diabetes medications for free. I went. That will save me $120 a year.
Of course, whilst I was in the store, still weeping and very, very, very thirsty, I promptly spent the money left over from the sale of the little table and the $10 I saved not paying for my medication on drinks. Yes, I spent $30 on drinks (including cucumbers for my lemon cucumber water). I bought some cranberry Sierra Mist, raspberry ale, Granny Smith apple ale, Granny Smith apple drinks, and cucumbers.
This whole having ale thing is new to me. I have never been much of a drinker, given the generations of alcoholics in my family. I have, however, savored the discovery of Moscato wine and now fruit ales. Alcohol, however, forces you to make really hard choices with groceries if you want to include it. And, I admit, the sinner in me is struggling with my neighbor popping over and asking for drinks. I really shouldn't be buying ale for me, but I cannot afford to treat her, too. Maybe I should set a personal limit (and announce it) of having something to drink just once a week ... or twice given that I could stretch liquor a long way with adding it to milk. But only one ale a week ... if that.
I have been distracting myself with hard labor, which angers me that someone would be stupid enough to paint steps with indoor latex paint and angers me that I am actually doing hard labor.
These were my steps when they still had most of the paint on them. The problem is that they are extremely slick when wet (or snow covered) because of that blasted paint and they are pitched from house to front sidewalk, most likely from 95 years of settling.
This is how far I got after spending six hours trying to scrape them (including the use of a heat gun). I was very discouraged. You see, there are FIVE layers of paint: light grey, dark grey, house red, orange red, dark red (from top to bottom).
Then Firewood Man brought me this product to try, after asking around about removing paint from concrete without resorting to hiring a sandblaster or a sodium bicarbonate blaster.
[In case you are wondering, it really, really, really hurts whenever a drop of it lands on your skin.]
Clearly, I need to do another go around and another can.
Only I am too weary.
Too weary and in too much pain.
What I thought, basically, is that if I can get it back to the concrete, even if it is stained red from the bottom most layer of paint, it would not be slippery. I also thought, that, maybe next Spring, I could use a concrete stain to even them out a bit and just leave them as "old" steps.
Why all the work? Someone (not me) fell ... again ... on the steps when it was raining last month and I thought that I could no longer ignore the problem. I really was all ready to just ignore it until after I leave this house. SIGH.
The second rosemary bush is potted and in the solarium. Saturday is our next day of sunshine, so I hope to harvest the last of the oregano. Amos has decided that since the raised bed is nearly empty, now, he should hop up atop it so as to better greet my neighbor when she is out in the yard. That makes for dirty puppy paws. SIGH.
I cannot figure out how to take a proper photo of them, but the sheared and shortened free (created from a broken bit of plant) hanging baskets from the front porch are now in their winter home. I sure hope they survive. By the end of the summer, they looked rather pretty with the colors of my house.
Lately, I have been having rash thoughts about trying to stain the airing porch deck. I keep thinking that surely all that wet, pressure treated wood would have dried out in the fall winds ... even though it keeps getting rained on repeatedly. I could live with the raw wood on the back porch all winter if I could prime and paint the airing porch railing and get the deck stained. Being covered, even I can tell that that back porch railing is going to take eons to dry.
I've watched several You-tube videos about how to water test pressure treated wood, but I just don't get what I am looking for. Apparently there is some tool you can use to test the water content of wood, but sadly Tim doesn't have one.
Firewood Man ... he's in a world of pain and not working. He needs oral surgery, again, and still hasn't been able to get it scheduled. I am trying not to melt down over the extended delay of finishing the back porch. I mean, he certainly cannot control the weather and I wouldn't wish an impacted tooth on my worst enemy.
I would be pining for firewood, except for the fact that we had this spate of warm weather that prompted me breaking down and turning the HVAC system from heat to air-conditioning tonight. Tomorrow's torrential storms are going to flip-flop the temperature back to fall.
In addition to working on the front steps and sealing that 5-inch strip around the edge of the back porch from where the walls were removed, I have edited and set into a template an article on sinking a sale before it starts and started setting a newsletter into its template. I have updated eBlasts emails. And served as a personal shopper for my sister again. With the long days of rain ahead, I might just have to break down and finally polish the silver and take the time to clean again.
Other than making some Pasta alla Vodka to have another pasta option in the freezer, I haven't cooked at all. You can barely tell. I really could at least get to November without cooking again ... that is ... if I were able to let myself actually run out of Chipotle Chicken Chili.
I miss cooking.
Greatly.
I need to cook.
There are two bits from Michael Card's Commentary on Matthew I have been pondering:
First: Hesed (mercy in Hebrew)
The fifth benediction (Mt 5:7), the central benediction, marks a shift. It is a blessing focused not on one of the suffering groups but on the merciful. The concept of mercy, hesed in Hebrew, is the defining characteristic of God in the Old Testament. It is the word God uses to define himself (see Ex 20:6, 34:6; Deut 5:10; Num 14:18-19). Only in Matthew will Jesus confront the Pharisees twice with the words of Hosea 6:6. In Matthew 9:13 and 12:7, he challenges them to go and discover what this means: "I desire mercy and not sacrifice." The first occurrence happened in Matthew's house. Hesed is always reciprocal; if you are shown mercy, you are expected to respond with mercy (see Mt 18:21-35). Here, in Jesus' core benediction, the promise is made that the reciprocity goes both ways. Those who show hesed in the kingdom will become the recipients of hesed.
AND
Next we come to the law of reciprocity [Matthew 5: 38-42] (Ex 21:24; Lev 24:20; Deut 19:21). This law demands that a lawbreaker suffer a reciprocal punishment that suits the crime. If, in the commission of a crime, an eye was lost or a tooth knocked out, the punishment should be in kind. This is also known as retributive justice; in essence, you should get the punishment you deserve.
But that is not so in a perfected and fulfilled understanding of the law. The citizens of Jesus' kingdom will not see retribution or reciprocity. If struck, they will offer the other cheek. When sued, they will render more than the judge decreed. If forced to carry a burden one mile, they will go two. (Behind this statement is the Roman law of impressment. According to the Julian code, a Roman soldier had the legal right to require anyone to carry his burden for one mile. We see this law in effect when Simon is forced by the soldiers to carry the cross of Jesus [Mt 27:32].)
To the followers of Jesus, the citizens of his kingdom, will learn that their citizenship is based precisely on not getting what they deserve. His mercy, his hesed, makes their citizenship possible. Once they realize all that his hesed had made possible, they are obliged to respond to the world with the same hesed. We do not give people the punishment they deserve, because we did not receive the punishment we deserved. We love our enemies because God loves his enemies.
I still find this first sermon of Jesus rather ... hard. Confusing, even. In short, I think, Where in the world is the Gospel?????? But a few things stand out here that I marvel at and find myself pausing to try to grasp, even knowing it is not possible:
- God defines Himself as Hesed. Jesus' first identity assumed is that of sinner. In the assumption of that identity, in having John baptize him because it is the way to fulfill all righteousness, Jesus, too, is defining Himself as Hesed. Only the world does not yet understand that, even the one who came to prepare the way for Jesus, even John the Baptist. Had he had his way, Jesus would never have been baptized for us, never taken on the identity of a sinner. Good thing that God's way prevailed, eh?
- It is easy to say that the Word of God always accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish, but I have never really thought about how that means that the Law, in all its fierce, uncompromising human-flesh-impossible standard, accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish. It kills those who do not fulfill it. Or, to put it another way, it does not save from death any who fail to accomplish it. If you skip ahead to the next thought below, I think about how the perfection of the law and the perfection of the flesh is met/matched in Jesus. I hear so much that the Law never saves; it only kills. However, in Jesus, the Law fulfilled does save.
- Jesus could have confronted the Pharisees with Psalm 51:16-17 instead of Hosea 6:6. I wonder if Hosea was better because it is the words of prophet....
- How odd, really, that the Simon was made to carry the cross. After all, Jesus was not a Roman; the cross was not the burden of the solider. And yet it was. The cross is the burden of a sinful life, the wages of it. So, I wonder why the solider made that choice or if it was something that God prompted that we might all know the burden of the cross was not/is not Jesus' alone, but rather the burden of humanity.
- There is ever so much fighting out in the world for ensuring that one gets what's fair, what's due. That perceived sense of fairness is behind so much of the cyberbullying that goes on in both private and public what clogs and bogs down our justice system. Yet kingdom citizenship depends upon NOT getting what one deserves.
- In all the talk about the Law that I have heard/read, to my admittedly faulty recollection, never have I heard it tied to/explained as perfected and fulfilled ... when the talk is about Law and the flesh ... as if somehow that makes it unperfected and unfulfilled somehow. How different would our conversations about the teaching and the preaching of the Law be if, first and foremost, they were about the perfected and fulfilled Law that justifies us, makes us righteous in Christ, rather than as a behavioral guide ... as if we could manage to fulfill it.
- In all the talk about mercy that I have heard/read, to my admittedly faulty recollection, never have I heard it tied to/explained as Hesed, as something inherently reciprocal. I have not the right words to say what is in my head about this, but if we talked and wrote more about Hesed and less about acts of mercy that folk "should" being doing, mercy might be better understood ... and more prevalent amongst the citizens of Jesus' kingdom who still remain here on earth.
Second: When Something is Unique in a Gospel
Whenever we encounter a passage that is unique to one of the Gospels, we must always ask ourselves why the author included it. Most often the answer to the uniqueness is found in the life situation of the author or his audience. Matthew will make it clear that the religious leaders consider Jesus to be a lawbreaker (see Mt 12:1-10). That charge will stick to his followers in the decades to come (Acts 6:13; 18:13; 25:8). If indeed the Gospel of Matthew was written to Galilean Jews who were experiencing the first waves of persecution in their own synagogues, this unique word of Jesus took on a new significance.
Jesus insists that he has come to fulfill, not to abolish, the law. He solemnly speaks an "amen" in Matthew 5:18-19 as he declares that it is the nature of the law to accomplish its divine purposes, and those who seek to stand in the way of the law will suffer the consequences in the kingdom. Note that Jesus does not conclude that lawbreakers will be barred from the kingdom, but only that breaking the law will affect their position in the kingdom. Eligibility for the kingdom is based solely on the new identity that Jesus grants by his grace.
Thankfully, I have not yet forgotten some of the unique entries of Mark. The one that sticks out most in my mind is that John the Baptist did not say that one was coming who would baptize by fire and by spirit, but just by spirt. Mark's audience would be hypersensitive to the word fire.
Here, that last bit about eligibility being solely based on the grace of Jesus Christ, crucified for us, basically tells those embattled Jews-soon-to-be-not-Jews, to be lawbreaker-Christians, that even if you happen to be a lawbreaker, that does not mean you will not be a citizen of the kingdom of Christ. In other words, you are forgiven. Or, to put it another way, Matthew 5:17 is a very personal way to say "You are forgiven" to a group of folk who will need to hear those words, to cling to them, in the coming years.
I think so often about how very personal and intimate my beloved Psalter is, even as it is so utterly universal, so one-size-fits-all. I have never once thought about any book in the New Testament as being personal and intimate, even as it is so utterly universal, so one-size-fits-all. I am thankful that Michael Card is committed to point out, pondering over, and even celebrating the unique bits of the Gospels, savoring them as a most perfect word of God, rather than some sort of error or omission.
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