Author: PamThorson

A Continual Feast

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A cheerful heart has a continual feast. –Proverbs 15:15

I love Thanksgiving. I love everything about it, the colors, the fragrant chill in the air, the idea of stopping for a moment to give thanks to the Giver of everything else.

It has been a glorious day, especially welcome after a couple of incredibly hard weeks. Today I immersed myself in the heavenly aromas of the season and let my soul take it in like a starving drifter who has been finally invited to the table.

It’s amazing what can heal a person.  After a bruising year in nursing school, I thought I would soon settle back into some semblance of normalcy. Instead, I have been swept into a swirl of heartbreak. A host of hurting family and friends have kept me busy and spent me emotionally these last months.

In the process of fighting for my faith, my friends, and my family, I realized I have been skating near to the edge of the wilderness. Like the children of Israel, I have been doing a lot of grumbling in a dry and thirsty land.

But not today.

Today I remembered my many blessings as I stirred up all our favorite Thanksgiving goodies. Tonight I sat with the people I love and laughed and stuffed myself with the treasure of God’s bounty.

The food was good, too.

It’s amazing how different the world looks through the golden glow of gratitude.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all. I thanks my God every time I remember you!

The Nurse Who Remembered

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Nursing carries heavy responsibilities. It requires long days, longer nights, and impossible schedules. In celebration of one of my favorite nurses, I’ve reprinted an except of our story from my book Song in the Night. Her name has been changed, but everything else is as it happened in the summer of 1997.

One nurse in particular that we loved was named Mandy. She was slender and petite, with lovely dark hair and makeup that was always perfect. She had an exotic air and a husband who was a businessman in Africa. She always seemed to know what to do and did it expertly. Kevin said that she did the best job of suctioning the secretions out of his lungs of anyone on the floor, so I watched her carefully and had her teach us her own technique.

One day in particular, things were very trying. Kevin was still stick, and I just had to go run a quick errand. There was no other family member to stay with Kevin while I was gone, and Kevin kept begging me not to leave him. Mandy saw my dilemma and offered to sit with Kevin until I came back.

Thankfully, I took her offer and rushed out. I knew she was busy, and Kevin wasn’t the only patient that needed her. So I hurried as fast I could and breathlessly returned to find her sitting peacefully at his bedside, chatting amiably with Kevin as she gave him a manicure.

A warm rush of gratitude flowed over me. She could not have realized how little of our human dignity was left after these long weeks. The harsh environment of living in the world of the near-dead had ground us far into the dust. Although people around us had been so good to us, and most of the medical people tried, the very nature of the situation was immensely dehumanizing. We existed on little food, sleep, or comfort. Rehab schedules did not allow time for living. Whoever was staying with Kevin slept on a big chair that folded out into a small bed that was in his room. We often slept and lived in the same clothes. Our world revolved around learning a myriad of medical procedures, basic caregiving, and getting Kevin through another day.

There wasn’t time to truly grieve, to hurt, to process what was happening, or even to feel. We were often treated like machines, pushed and prodded and educated in things we neither envisioned nor wanted to learn. There were days Aaron and I didn’t know who was taking care of our youngest daughter or even where she was. That haunted me, and it caused recurring nightmares in which I had lost her. For a while, she bounced between friends and family. At fifteen, Daniel was learning physical therapy techniques and sitting long hours with his brother. Erik worked full-time down in Lewiston and drove the 100 miles up to Spokane, every weekend, to help.

I understand that by necessity, the medical world is run by schedules and operates under financial limitations. Faced with the politics of medicine, it’s easy to reduce a patient to “the C2” in room 210 or “the gallbladder” on the fourth floor.

But Mandy had remembered otherwise. She remembered that we were people…hurting, frightened, and overwhelmed. And she cared enough to stop and help us that one afternoon in the way we really needed help.

– Pamela Thorson

Song in the Night
copyright 2008
Published by Luminary Media Group

Spring Always Comes

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Indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves
so that we would not trust in ourselves,
but in God who raises the dead.
2 Corinthians 1:9 NASB

At the dawn of Easter morning each year, I love to open the Bible to the Gospels and re-visit the tomb of Jesus. Every year, I find find it still empty, and Christ’s victory over death thrills me anew.

The celebration of the resurrection of Christ always comes with the first stirrings of nature out of the deadness of winter. This time of year, it is easier to believe that God can make the dead come alive, for the good news of the resurrection is preached with every living thing that bursts triumphantly from the dark winter earth.

I’ve never liked winter. Every year, it overtakes us, killing everything in its path and heartlessly freezing the life out of all it touches. In the dead of winter, we are surrounded by death. I walk through my garden in the winter, and it seems as though nothing will ever grow there again.

But I’m not worried, because I know its emptiness is temporary. Spring will come. It always does. We all know that.

It’s harder to have that same trust through the winter seasons of our lives. When we bury a parent, a child, a spouse, or a dream, we only see the finality of it all. As we face our own mortality, death seems like the ultimate reality.

But one moment in history changed all that forever. It all changed with one empty tomb.

Yes, we still live in the winter season of time. Death still reigns over the physical realm of this planet. But its days are now numbered. It’s just a season.

And God is Lord of the seasons. He is Lord of the past, the present, and the future. Because He knows the future, He is not worried. He’s been through this winter. The Master walks through His garden and knows that this is all temporary. He knows that because He’s been there. He entered the grave and came back with the keys to death and life.

He’s the One who emptied the tomb, and He’s the One who commands the spring that always comes. In the darkness of our winter night, we can rejoice in this:

Spring always comes. 

This is our hope. And hope is a powerful thing.

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