Life-saving CPR

Being a senior in nursing school it has become easy to dwell on the fact that I am graduating soon and will be expected to get out in the world and work, to put to practice what it is I have been studying for for the last four and a half years. Perhaps when people talk with me they might find that a career in nursing is not my number one goal and that I am not truly passionate about it compared to some. Though I’d say both of those statements are probably true, I don’t desire nursing as my ultimate career and I am not passionate about it as much as I am other things in life, I would also say that life-saving is important and it is something I look forward to being apart of. Life-saving is the calling and purpose of a nurse; to implement as much possible care for a patient that will promote health and life.

If there is one thing I've learned this semester in level 3 it’s CPR!!

Annie passes out in the floor… “Annie Annie, are you okay?” No response. Check her pulse. No pulse? Okay, start chest compressions. 30 compressions. Press the chest to the beat of the song “Staying Alive” just hard enough to crack a few ribs. 30 compressions complete, next check airway. Give 2 rescue breaths. Repeat until intervention works, CPR giver tires out, someone else takes over CPR, or person dies and is unable to be resuscitated.

A nurse’s goal is to always advocate and promote patient health, it is to go to great lengths to enable patients to live with as much physical, emotional, social, and spiritual well-being as possible. Life on this earth whether you’re resuscitated by CPR or not is short. There is an end. And after that end there is an eternity.  

As a believer in Christ it is my job to be an advocate of life for all people I meet. To go to great lengths to go, and serve, and love people, but most importantly to do so by telling of the saving grace that is offered by Jesus Christ.

It may be cheesy, but in the same way CPR is a pneumonic we all know stands for a method that brings someone back to life…  

CPR used to bring one life can stand for something like this:

Christ

Perished

[and was]

Resurrected

This is what brings life eternal. Believeing that Christ came and lived a perfect sinless life, that I cannot do. Believeing that He died for sin on the cross bearing all guilt and shame and was laid in a tomb. Believing that Jesus Christ, three days later, defeated death and rose again to life!! This is what is life-saving. This is the kind of CPR everyone should be given. Believing in Christ as the Son of the Most High God, His Perishing and His Resurrection as the ultimate intervention to withstand death deserved, hell.

Of course being a nurse is fruitful labor, it’s a rewarding career and I look forward to seeing how the Lord plans to use my degree. But a true lasting labor that I hope I am able to tire myself out for includes relationships I can invest in and tell this saving knowledge to.

I write this as reminder to myself that going to school, one day working in the nursing field, one day being a wife and mother- though all esteemed, important and needed jobs, they are not the kind of work that will last an eternity... Working without Christ as the center is like chasing the wind, it’s futile.

-LauraLBrown

 1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,
4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot.
8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you!

Romans 8:1-11

Fervent Prayers

For the last two and a half years I have kept up with "A Thought-A-Day Journal". This is where each day I write a couple of liners down that happened throughout my day that I hope to look back on the next year and remember. This journal is made to be used for five years!

The other day I was joking with some friends that know I keep this journal about what could be written about my day... We decided it would say something along the mundane lines of, "I woke up. I worked. I ran. I went to bed." Nothing special or out of the ordinary. Little did I know that I would meet someone that evening that would touch my heart and teach me about devotion to the Lord. 

As some of y'all know, I am not always the promptest of people when it comes to being somewhere. If something is made to sidetrack someone it will sidetrack me. Arriving somewhere on the exact time I said I would currently isn't my forte. This particular evening I was thankful for that. 

As I showed up a whole forty minutes late to my running buddy Aspen's apartment, I simply just had to apologize. She didn't mind though because she was enraptured into the book she was currently reading and kept me waiting so she could finish her pages. 

By the time we were both set to run my watch showed that it was just shy of 10 p.m. We ran a loop that took about 45 minutes and when we got back, for whatever reason, we stood outside for an abnormally long time enjoying the weather together.

While standing next to her truck, we heard a funny sound and thought it must be coming from an apartment... Looking around we saw a white truck in the parking lot a few cars over with the shadow of someone belting out to Spanish tunes. We got so tickled and assumed it was a teenage boy singing.

As we stood, watched, and listened I said to Aspen, "Dare me to scare him? You can stand here and watch his reaction." For whatever reason, Aspen (surprising me) agreed and thought it would be hilarious! So of course I proceeded and snuck around the backside of the truck, jumped out, and yelled.

To my surprise an older Hispanic woman opened the door and, in her broken English, told us how she was practicing a song she was planning to sing in front of her church that Sunday. She told how she gets so embarrassed to get in front of people with all eyes are on her. 

As we laughed for a while at the fact that we just tried to scare this woman she began to tell us how her husband of 25 years divorced her because she was "ugly". She told us how he had moved on from her to another younger more beautiful woman. She told us how she now lives with her kids because she cannot afford to pay rent for her own home. For her, work is hard to come by and all her things had recently been stolen from someone breaking into her apartment. She explained that her three kids spend their nights drinking beer in their apartment and she doesn't want to enter in until they have fallen asleep. 

As we saw, and interrupted, this lady chooses to sit out in the apartment complex's parking lot in her truck singing praises to the Lord. She told us how she spends her time praying, asking the Lord to save her children. With it already being well past 11 p.m., she explained how every night she stays in her car for hours doing these things until she sees the light click off and she then makes her way into the apartment for the night. 

Both Aspen and I broken hearted and blessed by this lady's story and faith, we prayed for her, we encouraged her, and were encouraged by her. This woman's trust that the Lord will provide for her needs as well as her family's was so strong! She is a new believer, only a Christian for one year, and her devotion to the Lord is as if she has spent years in His presence. 

Recently I have been studying through James with women in my church. Tonight we read through James 5 and discussed how at the end of the chapter it gives an example of an Old Testament character, Elijah, who was fervent in his prayers. James 5: 17-18 reads:

Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, 

and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, 

and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. 

Then he prayed again, 

and heaven gave rain and the earth bore its fruit. 

As pointed out in our bible study, the above verse shows us how Elijah was a man with a nature just like ours! He was a man whose prayer life was powerful and effective. To paint a picture of praying fervently you wouldn't paint someone praying once or twice a week, praying for only five or so minutes during those sessions. No, you would paint it of someone with impassioned devotion praying daily, constantly, with a purpose, expecting and trusting that God is going to work in the said situation.

As Elijah prayed for a drought and then again rain, and as this sweet lady I met last week prays for her children to come to know the Lord, I am convicted and reminded of the importance of prayer and the faith that must be present in this commune. May I have this kind of devotion to the Lord... To pray fervently and expectantly, humbly and confidently. 

I am so thankful for this particular evening that went from trying to scare a teenage boy to meeting a beautiful woman of the Lord. This was a rare encounter that has led Aspen and I to reflect on our faithfulness to the Lord. My Thought-A-Day journal for 5-23-14 ended up not reading simple and mundane events but rather it can be read as a reminder of the sweet meeting of a new friend whose heart desires her family to know the Lord. I hope that one day that may be said of me as well. 

-LauraLBrown

Is anyone among you suffering?

Let him pray.

Is anyone cheerful?

Let him sing praise. 

Is anyone among you sick?

Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, 

anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 

And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick,

and the Lord will raise him up.

And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another,

that you may be healed.

The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. 

James 5:13-16