PASS!!!!

Alexsandra M Mayes RN

The day before life begins.... or ends

Life, yes it must be lived but sometimes there is this overwhelming urge to sleep through a couple of days to avoid what has now become one of the biggest fears for all nursing graduates. The NCLEX... I have never been a person to dread taking a test. In fact, I actually like taking tests. My mind struggles over questions and works so much that after your done you feel like a mush brain.  It is a good mush brain though, a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

This morning I woke up with a terror that kept getting worse throughout the day. I studied for a few hours and after I couldn't handle one more question about normal saline drip rates, boggy uteruses, and what Kussmaul respirations are associated with I stopped. I got up from the couch and for the first time felt nauseated about a test. Quickly, I got on my running clothes and sat down at the piano. The piano usually helps me release tension. I picked a song that could release as much tension as possible and begin to pound violently on the piano. During the quieter parts of the song the nausea crept back in only to be quickly pushed back down as I focused on making my fingers hit the right notes with as much of my strength as I could muster. The song ended. The sickness was back instantly. I ran out the door and down the road. My side started to hurt. The pain stopped, my stomach started grumbling. "This may be the worst run of my life," was the thought hitting the top of head as I jolted along. I kept running, my mind wandered to other things taking the nausea away. The test would all of a sudden pop back into my mind. There came the creeping crud again. By the end of the run I had settled into a slower pace than normal but was able to keep my mind off the test. So, as you can see, I am officially terrified of this test.

Nursing school does this wonderful thing and will let you see the test grade immediately. This is unrealistic for the NCLEX considering they are nazi's about the test. You go through metal detectors, searched thoroughly, and then videotaped to ensure maximum security. They have to review the tapes and make sure you have not cheated. Then they can release whether you have passed or failed TWO DAYS LATER. That is an eternity to wait to see whether your life can go continue or stop. Anyways, whoever reads this blog please pray with all of your might that I pass the wretched, bigger than life test.


P.S. on another note please pray for my dad. He just called me while I was writing this and told me about a health problem that I had begin to notice but has gotten worse. He is not doing well at all and we need to figure out what is going wrong. Please pray really hard, I'm scared for him.

Laws of Dating

So I'm sitting here watching The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe and am now wanting turkish delight. I love this movie but of course like the book more.
Anyways, that's not what I am writing about. I picked up a little booklet, called Laws of Dating, something that I had read a couple of years ago and wanted to share some of the highlights out of it. Of course there are way more points than I can put in this blog but since the whole world is focused on love at this time of year I want to add a few points from the book. Not really about love, but about dating. It maybe can help see why relationships haven't worked out or what to look for in your special someone in the future. It really helped me especially through my break ups. (not that all these things were wrong with my relationships).
So the laws:
1. If it isn't easy and isn't fun, break up!
2. Date only people whom you would consider marrying.
3. If your dating partner uses/abuses alcohol, prescription meds, illegal drugs or mind/mood altering substances of any kind, break up.
4. If your dating partner is physically, sexually, or verbally abusive, break up!
5. Before you date, know how far is too far.
6. If either party needs to rescue, fix, or change or to be rescued, fixed, or changed, break up.
7. If either party tends to control, dominate, or isolate the other party from friends or family, break up.
8. If you find it difficult to talk or to be accurately understood or if you find that the two of you avoid unpleasant issues in the relationship break up.
9. If you've been the victim of molestation, incest or rape, get help before you date seriously.
10. Surrender your dating life and your sexuality to Jesus. (the most important)

Anyways, I don't know what this will do for you but maybe it will help in someway and this Valentines Day don't think of your singleness (I'm trying not to do this) but think of others. In our quest to find what true love is remember...

P.S. I love Aslan

sigh

Why is it that I still want when I am so blessed? I look around at my family and friends, who could want anything more? I have the world's best family who are there for me no matter what. They care and love others so much. I have the best brother ever! He, if God decides I will marry, will make it very difficult to find a guy because he's just that awesome!
My friends have such amazing values and I am finally comfortable with who my friends are. I can be myself around them and they love me for who I am and don't think I am to crazy. Why is it that I need anything else? What am I looking for?

There's this hole inside of me that longs for a different kind of love. I feel lonely even when I am with amazing peeps. Sometimes I wish that God hadn't created a longing to be with someone special. It makes it so difficult to wait for the right one. How do you know if someone is the right one? I thought I knew but God has a better plan in mind. The other day I was thinking and a terrifying thought struck me. What if God has decided that His plan for me is to be single for the rest of my life?

Being a wife is what I've always dreamed of. Cooking, having little kids running around outdoors and filling a home with laughter, cleaning (yes for some odd reason I like it), and just everything that involves building a home. Decorating, painting, making a home beautiful and raising Godly children. Doing my best to be the women in Proverbs 31. What if God tells me no?

"When I am afraid, I will trust in You." Psalm 56:3

A song that I have rediscovered.

Fading memories ignored
I crawl across the forest floor
Pool reflects an orphan child
Dirty, lost, alone and wild

Fatherless and nameless still
Fallen heart and broken, will
there ever be a place where I belong

I cower ‘neath the monster trees
And try to stand on tired feet
But gravity knocks me to the ground
Where I give up, and tears roll down

I claw the dust and beg the end

Curse the day that I began
to hope there’d be a place where I belong

I hear a sound I recognize
You lift my chin and seek my eyes
Song of love You sing to me
I ache to sing it back to Thee

"Father Love prepares a place
Brother Jesus leads the way
Follow to the place where you belong!"

How did I miss this wondrous song?
The forest sang it all along
"River rinses all your shame
Father offers you His name

Father Love prepares a home
Brother Jesus leads you on
Follow to the place where you belong!"

"Father Love prepares a place
Brother Jesus leads the way
Follow to the place where you belong
Follow to the place where you belong!"

Chris Rice

Glee

Ok, I'm going to have a venting session about tv. I despise it (Ok, I do like football). But even that is a waste of precious time that could be spent doing something else... In particular I hate tv shows and the one I am thinking about at the moment is Glee. It came on after the super bowl (by the way Go Packers even though I wish the Colts had made it there and would have won... sigh) and I was so disturbed by the lack of intelligence that was in that show. I can kinda get the solving crime shows and the doctor shows. It makes you think about what's going on. Particularly doctor shows like Off the Map. I could get sucked into that one but I am not going to allow myself to. Back to my rant about Glee... I could name off at least ten things morally wrong with the show but on top of that it's unintelligent, lots of cursing, no self control, AND boys run around singing and dancing. Come on! Testosterone where did you go? Go chop down a tree, ride a horse, go camping... Ok... I know that I will probably be thrown off the face of the world for having just made such a statement about Glee but I don't even care... Throw me off world, I think I would be more at home on mars.

@Wesley again

Missionary Munitions (Ministering as Opportunity Surrounds Us)
"If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet."
John xiii. 14.
"Ministering as opportunity surround us does not mean selecting our surroundings, it means being very  selectly God's in any haphazard surroundings which He engineers for us. The characteristics we manifest in our immediate surroundings are indications of what we will be like in other surroundings. The things that Jesus did were of the most menial and commonplace order, and this is an indication that it takes all God's power in me to do the most commonplace things in His way. Can I use a towel as He did? Towels and dishes and sandals, all the ordinary sordid things of our lives, reveal more quickly than anything what we are made of. It takes God Almighty Incarnate in us to do the meanest duty as it ought to be done.
"I have given you an example that ye should do as I have done to you." Watch the kind of people God brings around you, and you will be humiliated to find that this is His way of revealing to you the kind of person you have been to Him. Now, He says, exhibit to that one exactly what I have shown to you.
"Oh," you say, "I will do all that when I get out into the foreign field." To talk in this way is like trying to produce the munitions of war in the trenches--you will be killed while you are doing it. We have to go the "second mile" with God. Some of us get played out in the first ten yards, because God compels us to go where we cannot see the way, and we say-- "I will wait till I get nearer the big crisis." If we do not do the running steadily in the little ways, we shall do nothing in the crisis."
Oswald Chambers

I have recently realized that I have been waiting until the correct time to serve and that God will show me what I am supposed to do or where I am to go. After reading this however, I realized that serving is looking for things all around you and going out of your way to make others feel loved. Like randomly vacuuming one of your buddies rooms, cleaning the kitchen, mowing someone's lawn. Serving IS the little things. I have been looking for the big things but the little have to be learned before the big service opportunities can come. I don't really know what it's like to live where you do but you know and have the opportunity to reach out to others like nobody I know. God has given you so many amazing gifts and I feel so blessed to have such an amazing brother like you.