A Wonderful Web Site: www.TakeThemAMeal.Com

 

A few years ago, when Doug had surgery, a dear friend from church offered to arrange to have dinners delivered to our house for a week or so after he came home.  I was six months pregnant with my daughter at the time.  My boys were still attending a public elementary school.  Life was busy and taking care of a recuperating husband just added to that mile-long list of things I had to accomplish every day.  Having dinner delivered in the evenings made my day a little bit easier.

Months later, this same dear friend was stepping out of her role as the Meal Coordinator for our church.  She told me that she'd been praying about who to ask and she wanted to know if I would like to lead this ministry.  Knowing what a blessing it had been for my family months earlier, I was delighted to be able to do this for other families in our church.

I was given a list of names and phone numbers of people, mostly women, in our church who had agreed to prepare meals for families in our congregation who were hospitalized, had just given birth, had just lost a loved one, or who were going through a difficult time in their lives. Now, I am not a phone person whatsoever.  I only talk on the phone when it is absolutely necessary.  I prefer email or face-to-face conversations.  My husband and I don't even have cell phones. (We do have TracFones to communicate with our children when they are home alone and we're at the hospital or out and about.)  I wanted to lead this ministry and I knew that God would be honored by it, but I didn't enjoy calling people to ask them to make and deliver a meal to someone.  It just seemed very time-consuming to call person after person until I could reach someone who was available to take on this task.  I tried to come up with a more efficient way to fulfill this role as Meals Ministry Coordinator, but was unsuccessful and continued to use telephone calls to complete this task.

When a friend shared Take Them A Meal with me, I was thrilled! This web site enabled me to create a meal schedule for a family, including which days meals are needed.  I simply enter the details and send a single email that is received by all of the Meals Ministry volunteers.  This allows the volunteers to sign up and share what they are bringing so that the family receiving meals doesn't wind up with 12 pans of Lasagna.  I am able to provide details about what the family does and doesn't like to eat, any food allergies, what time they eat dinner, and how many people are in the family.  These details are helpful for the volunteers and keeps everything organized. 

The web site also sends out an automatic email to each volunteer the day before their meal is needed, reminding them that they have signed up and also what it is they signed up to bring.  Since it stores the email addresses of everyone I've sent emails to in the past, it takes just a few minutes for me to create a meal schedule for someone. 

 

Who's Hearing the Gospel In Room 224?

During Doug's last hospital visit, the kids and I visited him after lunch one day.  The nurse came in to check on Doug and asked if our kids had a snow day that day, since they were at the hospital during "school hours."  When I told her we home school, she was full of questions.  She had been thinking of homeschooling her son because he was being bullied at his public school.  We began talking about our reasons for homeschooling and how God nudged us down that path.  Instantly, I could tell she was offended by my faith and my reasons for homeschooling.

A few sentences later, she revealed that she grew up attending a Catholic school and had read the Bible, but she had abandoned her faith years ago.  I began to encourage her to change her heart, when she got a page from another nurse and had to leave, but she assured me she'd be right back.  After she stepped out, my husband said that he'd already tried to talk to her and she shut him down and she was going to feel "attacked."  

Doug and I exchanged a few sort-of-not-nice words with one another about obedience to God and our faith.  Our boys, who had said nothing until then, chimed in with their observations.  They began talking about how you could "feel" the Holy Spirit when we were talking to this nurse.  They compared it to a movie and kept wondering what we were going to say next. They are at an age where they are intrigued by wars, battles, and the fights between good and evil, making this conversation between the nurse and I extremely interesting to them. If nothing else, I was glad that my three children were experiencing firsthand how not everyone will be receptive to us as Christians and not everyone will choose Jesus.  I think my husband had the same thoughts.

When the nurse returned, my husband, who moments earlier said my words sounded attacking and harsh, pretty much threw a spiritual brick at her head.  She explained how she's a "spiritual" person and is raising her kids to have good morals and values and is a nurse because it's what God wants her to do.  Before I could say anything, Doug blurts out, "Well, that's good and all, but you need Jesus Christ" and proceeded to explain how God sent his son, Jesus, to die for our sins.  This is where I'd like to say that she accepted Jesus right then and there and her life will be forever changed.  Instead, she said she didn't have time to talk about this anymore and had to tend to another patient.

This experience was not new to neither Doug nor I, but to my children this was baffling.  Why didn't she want to hear more, to know more about Jesus?  They couldn't understand, after hearing about God's love for someone, how that person could not immediately be affected.  The Bible talks about child-like faith and I love that I have three examples of this in front of me nearly all of the time.  What a great reminder! There are times when I share my faith with someone when I wonder exactly who it is I am witnessing to.  At the time, I thought it was the nurse.  Looking back, it was really my children.  It would have been wonderful for them to see this heart-broken woman turn to Christ.  But they learned more in that half-hour of overhearing our conversation than I had taught them all morning using our highly-rated homeschooling curriculum!

Kidney Stones and Caterpillars

A couple of Wednesdays ago, my husband woke me up at 3am, telling me he had a kidney stone and needed to go to the Emergency Room.  I'd been asleep for approximately four hours.  In an effort to get just two or more hours of sleep, I plugged in a heating pad and gave him some Ibuprofen.  Doug gets kidney stones frequently, thanks to his Crohn's Disease, so this was not a new thing for us.  Usually, he is able to pass them on his own, but occasionally, he has to have surgery to remove them.  Five minutes later, he insisted this was not helping and was not going to help and he needed to get to the hospital.

Still in denial, I got in the shower and started getting ready for the day.  I knew an ER visit would take hours with testing, scans, etc. and I was hoping that with a little time, the kidney stone would make it's way out.  As I was stepping out of the shower, Doug came in the bathroom puking.  Fun times.  If you've never gotten dressed and dried your hair with someone hurling their guts out three feet from you, you're missing out!

We arrived at the emergency room and were ushered into a room where an IV was started, blood tests and CT scans were ordered, and Doug's pain and nausea were alleviated, sort of.  The CT scan revealed not just one stone, but a massive stone blocking the ureter, along with several other large stones close behind it.  His entire left kidney was approximately 1/3 full of kidney stones.  His urologist decided that the best way to remove these stones was by a Percotaneous Nephrostomy.  It would involve two surgeries: the first one to insert a tube through his back into his kidney and the second to use that tube to remove the stones.  The first surgery was scheduled for Thursday and the second would be scheduled as soon as a special team of radiologists and doctors was in place.  Apparently it is a tricky, surgery that takes three or more hours to complete.  He was admitted to the hospital for what we thought was an overnight stay.

Throughout that night, an infection was causing Doug to have a fever of 103 degrees.  It was a scary time of high doses of antibiotics and lots of prayer, but two days later, the fever finally came down.  The surgery to put the nephrostomy tube in his back was complete and as soon as he was rid of the infection, he would be allowed to come home before the second surgery two weeks later.  Thankfully, that happened on Monday, so now we just wait for phase two.

While all of this was happening, I had some custom orders placed.  One of these orders was for a baby cocoon that looked like the caterpillar from the Eric Carle book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  I have seen these adorable cocoons, but didn't have a pattern for one.  My mind was kept busy with figuring out how to make this thick, warm, wonderful cocoon and little matching hat.  I love it so much that I want to make more, so I created a listing for one in my Etsy shop:  https://www.etsy.com/listing/123077460/knitted-the-very-hungry-caterpillar-baby   I am always grateful for these projects, so that my times spent in hospital waiting rooms seems productive.  My husband felt how soft and cozy the cocoon was and wondered if I could make one for him.  It may have been the Dilaudid talking, but it might not be such a bad idea!  If you visit my husband in the hospital after his second surgery next week and he's wrapped in a cocoon, you'll know what I was doing in the waiting room while he was being operated on.  But more than likely, I will just stick to knitting hats or a set of golf club covers!