Have You Ever Wanted To Give Up?

                                      Everyday is a brand new day,
                                       everyday is a journey.


In speech right gentle,
 yet so wise: princely of mien,
Yet softly mannered; modestdeferent,
And tender-hearted, though of a fearless blood.

—Edwin Arnold

Have you ever wanted to give up?

During my almost thirteen years with cancer, I have never been asked that question and I have been asked a lot of questions. I'm almost glad I was not face to face with the individual who asked it, because I was left speechless. I needed to think about my answer, because I had no idea how to answer it. It was never even on my mind. 

How am I to answer that? Did I even have a choice in the matter? I had a teenage daughter to raise and a house to lead. My son was living on his own, but still quite young. I had responsibilities and as far as I knew, there was no other way out. One had to endure for the sake of everyone else who was depending on me.

Maybe I would have behaved differently if I was older, alone or free from the obligations of others. Many people out there make these types of decisions based on what their needs are at that particular moment. We can never judge their decision to quit or not. We have no idea what people are struggling with or facing when it comes to the quality of life. Ask anyone how far they would limit their quality of life and you will quickly see not far at all. We all want to be able to take care of ourselves, by ourselves. 

So have I ever wanted to give up? No, but I cannot claim to answer in the same way in a year or two or even ten. I have no idea what I will be experiencing or struggling at that time. I also cannot answer for others nor judge them for it. We all do what is best for us at that particular time. That's all we can do.

Have a blessed day everyone.

My Crazy Weekly Update

                          Everyday is a brand new day, everyday is a journey.



Is thy cruse of comfort wasting?
    Rise and share it with another,
  And through all the years of famine,
    It shall serve thee and thy brother.
  Is thy burden hard and heavy?
    Do thy steps drag heavily?
  Help to bear thy brother's burden;
    God will bear both it and thee.
ELIZABETH CHARLE

Last weekend, as I looked up into the night sky, I saw a full moon.I knew right then that it would be a crazy week. A full moon always brings out the chaos, havoc and miscommunication. Don't get me wrong, I am not in the least bit superstitious, but too many occurrences have happened where this is true. 

Folks, I barely slept this week with all that has been going on in the world and in my workplace handling of this virus situation. If anything, I hope we learn from this experience and set in place some guidelines for future use. 

Misinformation can be the biggest enemy, the biggest threat that anyone of us can face. Even outside in the public spree, people have no clue or they are misinformed of what is the appropriate action to take among others. Everyone has their own idea of what needs to be done, usually stemming from nothing, but gossip and hearsay.

When I was a young girl, I longed for what the city had to offer.I wanted to experience all the excitement of all the glittery things I thought brought success. People are selfish and do not care as long as their needs are met. I am sorry if I sound like an old woman, but we have turned into Sodom and Gomorrah. 

I wish I could tune the entire world out and just hear the sweet voice of my Savior. There is way too much noise out there and my head aches. Oh, how I long to retire into the cornfields of empty space where birds can be heard singing and wide blue skies overhead. 

I wish I could say that I believe people will change their lives, their lifestyles, their ways, but we know that would be a lie. I read somewhere that we as people have a gratitude level of three months and then we forget what we were grateful for in the first place. Sadly, that is very true. Please, please think about where you are headed, really think about it. 

HAVE A BLESSED DAY EVERYONE. 

So What Is It You Do?

                Everyday is a brand new day, everyday is a journey.

Oh for a closer walk with God,
A calm and heavenly frame;
A light to shine upon the road
That leads me to the Lamb!
W. COWPER.

So last week I posted the following picture on my Facebook page. Well, it certainly created a small buzz where some people thought I was a nurse on the front lines of this coronavirus. So today I thought I would write about what I do for a living.

I work in Quality in manufacturing where we make various cosmetics, lotions, shampoos and bubble baths. My role for the past 4 or 5 years has been of checking and recording the quality of any finished product on the "outside" of the piece. The lab upstairs would handle the quality of the product "inside" the container whether it was lotion, shampoo or any other.

Our day starts with the cart you see below. On it, we have everything we need to do our quality checks like a scale, torque meter, rulers, calipers etc. The cart is also mobile and we do push it around through the entire manufacturing floor where as many as 7 or 10 items are produced at one time.

                              

It takes several people to make just one item. For instance, take a face cream. It takes about six people in total. Someone has to place the jar, another two to place the plastic seal after it fills, then another to check the cap, one to monitor the entire crew/machinery and finally someone to pack the finished pieces into a box to send into the warehouse. It is quite fascinating to watch how things are made.

As you can tell, due to the coronavirus outbreak, we are required to wear the mask and gloves once we are in the building. Everyday when we come in, the security officer takes our temperature to make sure we are safe and will not infect others. We are given two new masks for the day and a pair of gloves to wear the minute we are inside. Of course, we change our gloves multiple times throughout the day. The initial pair is to provide safe travels within the building to our destination without having to expose our hands to any possible germs on doorknobs and such. Safety first.

In the picture below, you will see my favorite spot to be stationary. It is solitary and peaceful, a nice cozy spot to do my work, especially since we are to distance ourselves from others. I share this spot with one other fellow Quality Inspector, my backup Tati.

                                      

I hope you have enjoyed this small view into what I do for majority of my day. Maybe in the future I can share more of my life like the Ministry work or family life.

Have a blessed day everyone.

Just Share It: Ken Harrison

                               Everyday is a brand new day,
                                everyday is a journey





I believe where the love of God 
is verily perfected, 
and the true spirit of government
 watchfully attended to,
 a tenderness towards all
 creatures made subject 
to us will be experienced; 
and a care felt in us,
 that we do not lessen that
 sweetness of life
 in the animal creation,
 which the great Creator 
intends for them
 under our government. 
To say we love God as unseen,
 and at the same time exercise cruelty
 toward the least creature
 moving by His life, 
or by life derived from Him, 
was a contradiction in itself.
JOHN WOOLMAN.

I know that when it comes to my Ministry, I rarely see the people that receive my crocheted items. I do wonder to myself if they like them or even if they prayed about receiving a nice blanket or a scarf. It would be very fulfilling to me to know the items I made were of great use to them. Maybe one day I will have the opportunity to see the good that came from it as the young man below. Enjoy.

Servant Kings

by Ken Harrison

When I was nineteen, I got a job at an underage nightclub working as a doorman. I had walked with the Lord my whole life, so this job was getting me an education in a world with which I was completely unfamiliar. The club was in a rough area of town, and homeless people often milled around the front door. There was one homeless man who was like a mirror image of me, only black. He was the same age, height, and build and always seemed to be around. Even on warm summer days, he was never without his denim jacket with brown corduroy sleeves.

I'd often go to a sandwich place that was open late to get something to eat. Sometimes I ate only half the sandwich and gave the other half to him. I didn't think much about it; he was hungry and I had half a sandwich. On a few cold nights I bought him coffee. Each time I handed him something, he'd just nod. I never heard him say a word.

I really didn't fit in with the scene at that club, and my Christian lifestyle and values were apparent to the owners. They never saw me take part in the club’s activities, so, regarding me as a trustworthy employee, they promoted me to manager within a few months.

One night three guys in their late teens forced their way through the front door without paying admission, and I was called on to confront them. Somehow I got them outside the door, but as we exited, one of the teens threw a punch that caught me square on my jaw. He hit me again and then again. He hit me about ten times over the next thirty seconds. He was a trained fighter and moved and punched far more quickly than I could defend myself. I was finally able to get ahold of him and got him to the ground, which ended the fight. I looked around, wondering what had happened to the other two teens and saw them stretched out on the ground, unconscious. Standing over them was the homeless man, fists clenched. He was barely breathing hard.

“Thanks, man,” was all I could say between gasps for breath. He just nodded.

Twenty years later, after becoming the CEO of a large company, I was walking down the sidewalk in the same city when I saw that homeless man. I could hardly believe it – he was wearing the same denim jacket with the corduroy sleeves. It was tattered and dirty but the same jacket. I emptied my wallet and walked up to him, handing him the cash. “You helped me out once,” I said. He just nodded and walked away.

This was similar to an event that happened to an officer I knew while I was a police officer with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). We were working in the notoriously high-crime area called 77th Division. The gang war was in full swing, and we were struggling with a vicious gang called the Eight Trey Crips. Though they were part of Crips street gang, they killed other Crips, as well as those from their rival gang, the Bloods.

Around two o'clock in the morning on a hot summer night, I was writing an arrest report in the break room of 77th station. An officer walked in with a dazed look in his eyes and a bandage on his head. He shuffled over to the coffee dispenser and put a quarter in, waiting for the weak, lukewarm coffee to drip into a tiny cup. Then he threw down a sheet of paper and stared at it, trying to figure out how to start a report. “Man, what happened to you?” I asked.

He blinked and focused slowly my face. Looking back on it, I realize that he probably had a concussion, but in those days we were told to just “shake it off.”

“l was in foot pursuit of a couple of Eight Treys, man,” the officer said. “l got separated from my partner during the pursuit and jumped over a fence. The kid I was chasing ducked under a clothesline, and when I went to tackle him, the line got me under the chin. I never saw it. It flipped me backward,
and I bounced my head off the concrete. Knocked me out cold, man.”

He blinked a few times. “I woke up indoors on some guy’s couch. He’d seen the whole thing, come outside, and carried me into his house and hid me from the Crips.” The officer held his head in his hands, trying to quell the pain.

“They’ll kill him for that,” I said.

“Yeah ... no,” he said, furrowing his brow. “We called the fire department, and they snuck me out of his house on a stretcher. The gangsters didn't see he had a cop in his house.” He shook his head slowly. “When I came to, the guy said, ‘l seen you around before. You were always fair to everyone. You’re one of the good cops. I wasn’t gonna let them kill you.’ You know, Harrison, if those Eight Treys would’ve seen me laying there unconscious, they’d have put a bullet in my head.”

“Yeah,” I said, “you got lucky.”

“No,” he said, “I treat everyone with respect. I never figured people were watching though. I never thought it would save my life.”

His actions had consequences and they saved his life. My actions as a teenager had consequences, and they saved me a trip to the emergency room. In his case and mine, black men risked their safety and even their lives to save white men because of some small acts of kindness that neither of us realized
would come to matter so much.

Giving a cup of coffee to a cold man, treating poor people with respect, these are small actions that should typify every Christian (Matthew 10:42). But they don't typify every Christian, do they? These are not actions that can simply be summoned up when you want them. They are consequences of living a life of obedience to God.

A man who is in love with God is a man who is in love with other people. Neither that fellow officer nor I thought about what we were doing. Our actions were the outward expression of our nature. We were men in love with Jesus. We acted like servant kings.

 Have a blessed dasy everyone.

Simply Alone

                          Everyday is a brand new day, everyday is a journey.

The trivial round, the common task,
  Would furnish all we ought to ask;
  Room to deny ourselves; a road
  To bring us, daily, nearer God.
J. KEBLE

During this whole coronavirus sheltering in place, I have found myself almost envying others as they remained on lockdown. I am a homebody and even as a child, I was perfectly happy to sit staring out the window instead of venturing out. Don't worry, I have come to terms with the acceptance of my essential worker status.

This morning, I was fortunate to correspond with a few of my family members who are on lockdown. They all professed their longing for the normalcy of everyday, boring, routine life. They totally felt as if their existence has been placed on hold and anxiety ran high. Surprisingly, even the homebodies had enough.

I was fascinated by that, because the more I thought about it, the more I realized just how flawed my way of thinking had been on this subject. It's easy for me to say how much I would love the seclusion, the quiet, the time to myself. So easy to make declarations of all the things I would have done. So easy to speak without thinking, but honestly, have I ever been alone?

Have I ever been alone?

Never. I have stated many times about my deep desire to go off into seclusion for a whole Season. Yes, I have shared how I just could not wait to be by myself. When the day comes for my youngest to leave the nest, could I really face being alone?

This social distancing is proving to everyone just how much we need each other. We all need human contact, that interaction of everyday life with someone else. I remember watching the show "Alone" on television. The contestants were placed on a deserted island, each one in a different location. They had to use their skill as a survivalist to outlast each other the longest. They each had amazing skills like building a canoe, but one thing defeated them one by one . . . loneliness. Staying out in the wilderness all by themselves with absolute no human contact was too much for them.

I think that we all have that longing inside of us. We may deny it (like me), but we can't function properly alone. People need people. That's just a fact of life.

Have a blessed day everyone.

Wake Me Up When Spring Comes

                           Everyday is a brand new day, everyday is a journey.

As to what may befall us outwardly,
 in this confused state of things, 
shall we not trust our tender Father, 
and rest satisfied in His will? 
Shall anything hurt us? 
Can tribulation, distress, persecution, 
famine, nakedness, peril, or sword,
 come between the love of the Father to the child, 
or the child's rest, content, and delight in His love? 
And doth not the love, the rest, the peace, 
the joy felt, swallow up all the bitterness 
and sorrow of the outward condition?
I. PENINGTON.

I've discovered something about myself the other day. I don't do well in Winter. It's just not for me. I'm very lethargic, sleepy, lazy and basically very mellowed out. I could sit for hours looking out the window daydreaming my entire day away. There is not an ounce of creativity or inspiration within me. I'm just there.

I have watched a video on YouTube where this person was saying how she begins all her goals for the year in February. For her, that is the perfect time, because January is spent recuperating from the Holidays. Well, I want to begin my goals in Spring. That will allow me plenty of time to get energized.

I think I am a person who needs to feel the warmth of the Sun on her face. I need longer days that offer more daylight. I need to hear the birds chirping and neighbors arguing outside.

I also believe that our bodies are made to hibernate like all the other animals. Our ancestors all worked hard for three of the Seasons and rested in Winter.

So I am taking it nice and slow, listening to my body. Maybe, my mind needs recuperation, too. I have to say, that sleeping after 3 a.m. is the absolute best for me. My bed feels safe, cozy and warm, very comforting in the Winter months. Very comforting. Why should I leave it so abruptly?

Every morning I awaken later than usual, starting my day slowly. I choose about one thing to accomplish that is the most important thing to do. . . that day. I make all sorts of plans for tomorrow that never materialize. 

Oh, Spring! Where art thou? 

Have a blessed day everyone.

Sheltering In Place

                                           Everyday is a brand new day,
                                           everyday is a journey.

Without murmur, uncomplaining
    In His hand,
  Leave whatever things thou canst not
    Understand.
K. R. HAGENBACH.

I really don't think people understand what sheltering in place actually means. Here we are facing a huge coronavirus outbreak and people are everywhere. The State has been placed on a temporary lockdown and people are in the parks, in the stores, on the streets, everywhere, but in their homes.

The shopping situation just baffles me. Believe me, I totally understand people panicking and running to the stores to stock up. I get  it. What I don't get is the everyday panic buying. Sooner or later one runs out of storage in their kitchen. The refrigerator is full. The kitchen pantry and cabinets are full. Why must they keep running out to the store and buying more and more? I don't get it, just don't get.

Why does it even matter to me? Well, for one thing, all of us are exposed to one another in these stores. All this running around from place to place just opens us up to more chances of getting the virus. Secondly, I need some greens for my salad. Every time I see the parking lots full of people, it turns me off from entering. I don't want to be waiting in line for some lettuce. To me, it just defeats the purpose of being on lockdown to minimize the exposure.

Funny thing, the people that are housebound would love to be an essential worker, because they don't like to be indoors. The essential workers want to be housebound. Isn't that how life always seems to work?

Me? I could be housebound without any problem. In fact, I've dreamed of doing so long before the coronavirus came on the scene. I have a secret dream of retiring and spending the Winter months hibernating inside my little apartment. In my dream, I would spend countless moments crafting and crocheting. Perhaps, even a bit of writing. So many things one could do, just give me the internet and I will be good to go.

I want to shelter in place. I'm not ashamed to say it. I have been looking on to my fellow crafty sisters quite envious of all the projects they are creating. Crafty people know how to occupy themselves. Is it because we are so nerdy? I am a nerd, no shame there, either.

Have a blessed day everyone.