Thoughts on Job and Prayers for Friends in the Way of Hurricane Irma

September 9, 2017 — Leave a comment

Thoughts from Job and Hurricane Irma

Screen Shot 2017-09-09 at 11.40.53 AMI found the Book of Job very comforting to me during the loss of so many of our family members lives. This morning as I was praying for my many friends in Florida I began reading it again. 

If you didn’t know, Job was a good man who bore unbearable tragedies. After suffering so much, he and his friends try to figure out why such disasters would happen to him. 

The book of Job asks us to look beyond blame, accept uncertainty, and trust God for what we cannot see or control. Basically look to Him in the midst of the storm.

Job was a wealthy man whose possessions included 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yokes of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and tons of servants. 

Job also had 7 sons and three daughters. 

He lost them ALL for awhile….

Job 38  (Message Bible) Job 38 and the bible

 Job had been begging God to speak to him and God finally spoke from the EYE OF THE VIOLENT STORM:

 “Why do you confuse the issue?

    Why do you talk without knowing what you’re talking about?

Pull yourself together, Job!

    Up on your feet! Stand tall!

I have some questions for you,

    and I want some straight answers.

Where were you when I created the earth?

    Tell me, since you know so much!

Who decided on its size? Certainly, you’ll know that!

    Who came up with the blueprints and measurements?

How was its foundation poured,

    and who set the cornerstone,

While the morning stars sang in chorus

    and all the angels shouted praise?

And who took charge of the ocean

    when it gushed forth like a baby from the womb?

That was me! I wrapped it in soft clouds,

    and tucked it in safely at night.

Then I made a playpen for it,

    a strong playpen so it couldn’t run loose,

And said, ‘Stay here, this is your place.

    Your wild tantrums are confined to this place.’

 “And have you ever ordered Morning, ‘Get up!’

    told Dawn, ‘Get to work!’

So you could seize Earth like a blanket

    and shake out the wicked like cockroaches?

As the sun brings everything to light,

    brings out all the colors and shapes,

The cover of darkness is snatched from the wicked—

    they’re caught in the very act!

 “Have you ever gotten to the true bottom of things,

    explored the labyrinthine caves of the deep ocean?

Do you know the first thing about death?

    Do you have one clue regarding death’s dark mysteries?

And do you have any idea how large this earth is?

    Speak up if you have even the beginning of an answer.

 “Do you know where Light comes from

    and where Darkness lives

So you can take them by the hand

    and lead them home when they get lost?

Why, of course, you know that.

    You’ve known them all your life,

    grown up in the same neighborhood with them!

 “Have you ever traveled to where snow is made,

    seen the vault where hail is stockpiled,

The arsenals of hail and snow that I keep in readiness

    for times of trouble and battle and war?

Can you find your way to where lightning is launched,

    or to the place from which the wind blows?

Who do you suppose carves canyons

    for the downpours of rain, and charts

    the route of thunderstorms

That bring water to unvisited fields,

    deserts no one ever lays eyes on,

Drenching the useless wastelands

    so they’re carpeted with wildflowers and grass?

And who do you think is the father of rain and dew,

    the mother of ice and frost?

You don’t for a minute imagine

    these marvels of weather just happen, do you?

 “Can you catch the eye of the beautiful Pleiades sisters,

    or distract Orion from his hunt?

Can you get Venus to look your way,

    or get the Great Bear and her cubs to come out and play?

Do you know the first thing about the sky’s constellations

    and how they affect things on Earth?

 “Can you get the attention of the clouds,

    and commission a shower of rain?

Can you take charge of the lightning bolts

    and have them report to you for orders?

What Do You Have to Say for Yourself?

 “Who do you think gave weather-wisdom to the ibis,

    and storm-savvy to the rooster?

Does anyone know enough to number all the clouds

    or tip over the rain barrels of heaven

When the earth is cracked and dry,

    the ground baked hard as a brick?

 “Can you teach the lioness to stalk her prey

    and satisfy the appetite of her cubs

As they crouch in their den,

    waiting hungrily in their cave?

And who sets out food for the ravens

    when their young cry to God,

    fluttering about because they have no food?”

Before and after afflictions So the LORD blessed Job in the second half of his life EVEN MORE than in the beginning. Job now had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 teams of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys.

So God gave Job double of what he lost.

However, he only gave Job back 7 sons and 3 daughters, which the SAME amount he lost. 

I always wondered why? Until…

I realized that Jobs other children were still ALIVE in heaven. 

After this, Job lived 140 years and saw his sons and his grandsons, four generations. 

Then he died, an old man who had lived a long, full life.

We will all suffer in this life.  It is appointed to mankind to suffer. It is a fallen world.  We may not know the “why” today but some day we probably will.  Instead of asking “why”, we should ask “what”.

What is God up to?

What is God trying to do in me?

The “why” will have to wait for someday in eternity.

My prayer for my Florida friends today is that you will be safe and run into the arms of the one who is waiting, the great comforter.  In the midst of violent hurricanes or calm, normal days He is there and He is Lord and in control. 

*If you are interested in more of Job, what else happened to him, what his friends tried to convince him was wrong and other things he said, this is a good place to start.*

Read more: https://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/job-bible-story-summary-with-lesson/#ixzz4sCLCLO9V

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Israel Stinson

Children’s Hospital of LA Deceives Parents & Kills Baby Israel

August 26, 2016 — Leave a comment

Israel StinsonIsrael Stinson was abruptly taken off life support to the devastation of his parents, Fronseca and Nathaniel Stinson.

Perhaps you haven’t followed this story but I have and I am just as horrified as his family is.

You see the long and short of it is the hospital declared Israel “brain dead.” After many court battles Israel’s family moved him to a hospital in Guatemala, where they began to feed Israel and give the family hope.

According to Alexandra Snyder, the families attorney, three Guatemalan doctors, including a neurologist, declared that the boy was NOT brain dead after all.

That diagnosis was based in part on EEG, (electroencephalogram), or other tests used to measure electrical activity in the brain, she said.

Snyder, the families attorney declined to name the Guatemalan doctors or their hospital but dismissed the idea that their opinion weighed less than that of American doctors.

“We’re not talking voodoo here,” she told The Post. “They have access to the same equipment as American doctors. Many of them probably have degrees from American medical schools.”

From Guatemala, the family posted more videos in which they said Israel was improving. After 3 months in Guatemala, Israel was accepted as a patient in Children’s Hospital in LA. HOWEVER, within days the hospital once again went to court to remove the ventilator from Israel.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge removed the restraining order, saying the case had already been decided at state and federal level before the family traveled to Guatemala.

And with that, doctors turned off Israel’s ventilator.

Can you imagine?

  1. Your child pronounced brain dead.
  2. Leave county and improves.
  3. EEG’s and several doctors say your child is NOT brain dead.
  4. LA Children’s Hospital accepts you child back.
  5. You come back ONLY to have the doctor’s go to court and take your child off the ventilator?

I’m sorry but there is something really wrong here. It is the duty of parents to PROTECT their children. 

Please read more details here and here but most of all pray for this grieving family.

“What I really don’t understand is why this hospital agreed to take this little boy in the first place,” she told The Post, saying the boy’s parents never would have brought Israel back to the United States if they had known the hospital was going to pull the plug. “They knew exactly what his condition was, what his treatment was, and they agreed to take him. But it appears they only accepted him as a patient to put him to death. …

Yes, that IS the question, isn’t it?

WHY?

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Judge rules OK to stop ventilator for 10 minutes

June 15, 2016 — 1 Comment

Mirranda Grace Lawson

Mirranda Grace Lawson I spoke to the parents, (Patrick and Allison Lawson) of Mirranda Grace by phone several weeks ago, right after Mirranda had been on life support due to choking on a piece of popcorn. A friend of mine from W. Virginia contacted me.

I was able to connect them to Dr. Paul Byne to help them in their fight to save Mirranda.

Dr. Paul A. Byrne is a Board Certified Neonatologist and Pediatrician. He is the Founder of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at SSM Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center in St. Louis, MO. He is Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at University of Toledo, College of Medicine. He is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics and Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.

Dr. Byrne is past-President of the Catholic Medical Association (USA), formerly Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at St. Louis University in St. Louis, MO and Creighton University in Omaha, NE. He was Professor of Pediatrics and Chairman of the Pediatric Department at Oral Roberts University School of Medicine and Chairman of the Ethics Committee of the City of Faith Medical and Research Center in Tulsa, OK.

Mirranda choked on popcorn on May 11th.  Miranda had a lack of oxygen resulting in her being in an unconscious comatose state but still alive. When a person, especially a young person, is unconscious and on a ventilator, the desire is to get their vital organs for transplantation into others who have a greater lobby.

Within a few days the doctors and hospital were presenting to the parents that Mirranda was “brain dead.” However, they could not confirm “brain death” without doing the crucial and lethal apnea test.

On Thursday, June 9. After the judge heard the testimonies, the judge said he would rule on Friday, June 10. His ruling was that the doctors and the hospital could carry out the testing and evaluation at their discretion.

The judge heard testimony that the removal of the ventilator from Miranda could only harm her and possibly kill her. Yet he ruled that the doctors and the hospital could remove Miranda’s life support.

Parents you must be fully informed and armed with the truth before such a decision is forced upon you at the time of greatest distress.

Part of every declaration “brain death” is the apnea test which is not for the benefit of the patient.  It is the last so-called “clinical” test to achieve the declaration of “brain death.”     

I know you have heard me loud and clear many times on this blog, and it is the first thing I tell people when they call, DO NOT DO THE APNEA TEST.

The need for a ventilator doesn’t mean the brain is permanently incapacitated or ones’ health cannot be restored!  This “life support” device is a supplement to the patient’s compromised, weakened physical condition and is necessary for providing the patient with oxygen while removing carbon dioxide during the most crucial period. Time and continued medical care are necessary for the ongoing treatment to protect and preserve the patient’s life. The ventilator provides the patient and physician this valuable time as it eases the patient’s distressed respiratory system allowing time for therapy and healing.     

Knowing full well how critical the ventilator is, to withdraw it when it is needed most is absurd! Yet, it is planned for the patient to be taken off for up to 10 minutes – the patient can only get worse! This test is sometimes lethal. Make sure to instruct all medical staff:  “DO NOT DO AN APNEA TEST!”

Associate Professor Cicero Galli Coimbra, Head of the Neurology and Neurosurgery Department at the Federal University of Sao Paulo, Brazil has completed the study, “Implications of ischemic penumbra for the diagnosis of brain death. Apnoea testing may induce rather than diagnose brain death”.[20]

The study discovers that where there is brain damage there may be an area of the brain that is destroyed plus an uninjured section (even if there is no apparent function) and between the two a penumbra where brain cells are not functioning but recoverable. In severe cases a person may be wrongly declared “brain stem dead” or “brain dead”.

Coimbra’s research shows that the testing for “brain death” both delays treatment for the patient and that the actual apnoea test may bring on that state.

Coimbra CG (1999) Implications of ischaemic penumbra for the diagnosis of brain death. Brazilian J Med Biol Res; 32:1538-1545 Study available athttp://www.unifesp.br/dneuro/brdeath.html… Accessed 8 May 2007

 Professor Coimbra echoes this wisdom with a knell of mourning:

“… a review of the literature shows that some of even the most severely head-injured patients (GCS of 3 or 4, with pupils fixed to light) who are not subjected to apnoea may recover to normal life. Early labelling of these patients as dead (for transplant purposes) during the past 3 decades has diverted medical researchers away from developing novel therapeutic resources that could already have saved many thousands of human lives throughout the world.”[30]

The family has set up a GoFundMe page for Mirranda. If you can’t donate please pray for the Lawson family and Mirranda Grace.

Success stories of people declared brain dead waking up.

 

 

Source: Judge rules OK to stop ventilator for 10 minutes

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The Caulk Family

Strength

June 12, 2016 — 2 Comments

Strength

Many people have said to me over the last 4 years, you are so strong, your faith is so strong, your family is so strong. I have tried to explain that I/we are not strong and what strength you see is not us but our deep abiding faith in God.

I’ve thought about this a lot over the last few years. What makes people think I/we are so strong? 

The Caulk Family It most certainly is not the fact that we are strong! It is not the fact that we don’t share our sadness and grief, it is certainly not the fact that all of us have not been a hot mess throughout our journey of grief the last four years. 

ALL people suffer in life that is a fact. No one escapes the fact that at times life is hard. We are all human and life on earth will never be perfect. 

We could have gone silently into the night and avoided the discussion or we could share openly and remember them. We talk about them publicly and privately, because Mike, Jamie, and Lillian are loved and not a day goes by that we don’t think about them. 

When you raise five kids as Mike use to say, “someone is always having a bad day.” He would say this when we were trying to go somewhere and a have a good family day and one of the children was sad, crying or didn’t want to go.

I have found this is the same way as we walk through our grief. Someone in our family is always having a bad day, no rhythm or reason…just hit with waves of grief. No one sees that day coming but we understand it. We do our best to love each other through it and know that it will pass and tomorrow it will be someone else’s to have a bad day. 

We talk about them because Mike, Jamie,and Lillian are never far from our minds. Contrary to what most people think we want to hear their name’s and hear stories they shared with our loved ones.  In many ways, we have moved on and yet we haven’t. But, I/we have ALL changed. 

As I sit on my deck this cool, Michigan morning I am thinking of each of my children and how out of their pain and grief we have all grown closer to God and grown in our empathy for other people’s suffering. 

For me personally, when I hear stories of Chad, Justina, Jahi my heart breaks for the pain their families endure and I can pray with compassion. I know them and their pain all too well, I see it in their eyes and read it in their posts. 

Our priorities in this life are just NOT the same

We emphasize and weep with those who are suffering and we can’t just scroll through Facebook and causally say, “I will pray for you”. We pray or we don’t say we will.  We understand their pain because we have felt it…experienced it. 

So when folks say, “your family is so strong” I believe what they are really saying is not that we are strong but that we are vulnerable and have tried to share our journey authentically with others and not avoid the conversation of our grief, pain, and faith.  

In this world in which we now live, full of sound bites and social media our family has done our best to not hide in a closet or pretend all is right in our world, all of the time.  I think people identify with that because everyone at one time or the other is going through something. Sometimes it is hard to be vulnerable and lay it all there and yet speaking the truth is many time’s not easy regardless if the conversation is about grief or anything.  

When we lay it all out there for you to read we are being vulnerable, we are sharing who we are, our true selves, our grief, pain, and HOPE. This is who and what we are and forever will be.

We haven’t pretended life is good ALL the time because life on planet Earth is never void of pain for any of us. Yet no one wants to talk about pain or suffering on Social Media and especially not death. We have also shared what we do know and that is that God is good ALL the time even in the midst of our pain and sorrow. 

…even when we question WHY?

God is good and someday we will know, and understand. (Although we are not convinced it will even matter when we get there and are reunited with our loved ones’ forever. 

C S Lewis referred to earth as a Shadowland. A preparation for the reality of what is to come. Where nothing will block the light of the sun/son and we will SEE the real thing…Jesus, Heaven, Earth as it was meant to be. 

“Farewell to Shadowlands” is the title of the last chapter of the book The Last Battle, the last book in The Chronicles of Narnia series.  On the last page, C. S. Lewis writes:

“There was  a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are–as you used to call it in the Shadowlands–dead.  The term is over:  the holidays have begun.  The dream is ended:  this is the morning.”

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them.  And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after.  But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. 

All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page:  now at last they were beginning chapter one of the Great Story which no one on earth has read:  which goes on forever:  in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

So the Caulk’s are weak, and yet we are strong, but the strength is not from us or what you think you see in our family but comes from the Creator of the Universe who projects His strength through us and in us. Who is STILL changing us and molding us into His image. 

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. I Corinthians 12:9-10

Mike CaulkI miss you today, Mike and I can’t believe it has been three years.  A normal day that changed us forever. 

You leaving us does not change us for the worst but allowed us to believe more than ever, and long for our true home…out of the Shadowlands where we will be together forever. 

See you soon! We love you for eternity. 

In Grief, Heaven ,
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Scientific Study To Overturn “Brain Dead?”

May 12, 2016 — Leave a comment

Scientific Study to Overturn Brain Dead?

This has been all over the news for the last month, so I won’t say too much more. Just bring it to your attention if you missed it.  Ira Pastor is the CEO of the Bioquark a biotech firm located in Philadelphia. He will be spearheading the study approved by the IRB. (Institutional Review Board) All studies using human subjects must have this approval.

They are currently looking for 20 patients, pronounced “brain dead” to begin the study.

I am actually looking forward to the results of this study. There have been any studies on those pronounced “brain dead” in many years. I think the last was the Minnesota Criteria where they stopped using EEG’s to see the brain activity as it would alarm parents.

Pastor believes that brain-dead individuals, considered legally dead in America, are only mostly dead. Brain death, he says, is a curable illness.

At the point of death, everything BELOW the brain stem, which is technically unsupported, is still alive and quite functional and capable of doing stuff if properly supported.

Photo Credit Shutterstock Underwater.

A trial to see if it is possible to regenerate the brains of patients who have been declared clinically dead has been approved. Reanima Advanced Biosciences aims to use stem cells, injections of peptides, and nerve stimulation to reverse “brain death.

The study aims to use stem cells, injections of peptides, and nerve stimulation to reverse “brain death as noted in the current clinical examination.

Based on the premise that many amphibians, fish, and even some mammals can regenerate large portions of their brains after severe trauma. They don’t need cutting-edge therapies or laboratory conditions to recover from brain death; they just sleep for a while and wake up with fresh brains.

Why don’t humans and other primates have this regenerative ability?

That’s one of the main questions the ReAnima teams are looking to answer right now.

“There is no ‘magic bullet’ for reversing brain death,” says Ira Pastor.  “In this project, we’re employing a combination of biological regenerative tools, along with an array of medical devices used for stimulation of patients with other severe disorders of consciousness, such as comas and vegetative states.”

Regenerating a brain-dead patient’s nervous system will not be a simple task. “Nature thrives on complexity,” says Pastor; and the ReAnima project’s goal is to “train” severely damaged brains to rebuild themselves around whatever neural structure remains intact, using a combination of the latest therapeutic techniques.

If individuality boils down to nothing more than connections between neurons, but “based on several factors, we are placing our bets that the human mind is much more than that,” he says, “and on the idea that memory will be a recoverable commodity over time.”

Many of our bodies’ cells die and are renewed thousands of times over our lives, yet we manage to hold onto our personalities – even those of us who suffer from Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Is brain death any different?

The Study

Patients will receive daily peptide injections directly into their spinal cords to go with biweekly stem cell treatments, according to the New York Daily News. They’ll also receive stem cell injections in the brain along with laser and nerve stimulation techniques used to awaken comatose patients. For a six-month period, the patients will be observed for signs of regeneration in the upper spinal cord, which regulates respiration and heartbeat.

“If someone wants to criticize us for helping the family whose 3-year-old accidentally drowned in the pool, or whose 16-year-old flew off a motorcycle with no helmet on, who do not accept the statement, ‘Sorry, there is nothing else we can do for them,’ from a global modern medical establishment that generates $7 trillion annually, then so be it,”

Dr. Pastor believes that there is still much to learn about the depths of human life, and this project will serve as a stepping stone in unveiling the deepest mysteries of the human mind.

I’ll be following this groundbreaking study.

 

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