Author Archives: rachrn34

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Eat More Chicken

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imageIt’s been a little over two years since I was able to run a half marathon. It’s not been quite five months since I had my foot surgery and when I crossed the finish line the announcer said Rachel (didn’t touch my last name) from Arnold just finished her first half since foot surgery. It was an awesome feeling to cross the line and get a medal.

I woke up at five am to be ready to run at seven-thirty. Because of the construction on fifth street in St. Charles I thought it best to park in the casino parking garage. It was a mile walk to the start line. I got in line for the bathrooms and by the time I had my turn I ran up to the start and crossed the start line within one minute. Runners are always fun to talk to and in the bathroom line these two younger girls were doing their first full. They had bought into the hydration theory and the red-head had sucked down like 24 ounces of water and was working on Gatorade. She was doing the potty dance for fifteen minutes and was considering just peeing her pants. When they ran past me she said I wish we were running with you. Me too, sister, me too. And for the first five miles I was thinking about running a full in the spring.

When I first signed up my goal was to finish and then I signed up for Vegas race and realized I need to finish in three hours or less to have time to shower before we hit the road for six hours. (I know I will just ask for a late check out so I’m not pressured). However my friend Shelly wasn’t able to walk it with me so then I set a goal of less than three hours. I would have succeeded if I hadn’t had to wait for a bathroom for five minutes at mile four. It was my turn to do the potty dance.

Around mile six and seven we ran through new town. I finally realized it makes me think of the houses from the movie Edward Scissorhands. I even saw a dinosaur statue which would have been way cooler if it were a shrub. So I was trying to pick out which house he would stay at. And this folks is what I think about to get through this.

Well mile 9-10 was the horrible hill that is like three of mine. It goes on and on and on but after that it’s a nice downhill. I decided I was running the last mile straight and texted Meg to tell her so that I would do it. My last mile was a 12 which is pretty good for an average pace of 13:45 for the entire race.

I’ve been a little hard on myself for missing my goal by a little under two minutes. I have to tell myself to knock it off. I just had major foot surgery and only been back running for 14 weeks and started with 1/2 mile at a 22 pace. But you know my motto: the faster you go, the sooner you finish.

Mole moral:Never park a mile from the start. The walk back to the car seems like it’s 20 miles long and dying seems so much easier.

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Small Group

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imageI have been meaning to write this blog for three weeks but have had zero discipline to get it together.

Three weeks ago at church Herc was doing announcements and promoting small groups. The last time I was in a small group was four years ago when I was doing starting point with him. I had Dr. Veronikis surgery about week four of the study and that was such a disaster, I never made it back. After that I used my job hours as an excuse as to why I couldn’t join one. Well then Herc mentioned a 5K running group and a lightbulb went off in my head and I got that prompting Tom speaks of that said no excuses you are signing up. So I did and I saw Christy (Herc’s wife) was the leader-score. So about a week ago I got a group email and Jimmy (Christy’s brother) is co-leading. Double score as Jimmy was my first small group leader. I also saw that Heidi had signed up and she was in my first group as well. Then I found out there was a book to go along with it. I should have known this but sometimes I’m not as smart as I look. I was even more excited about the book  especially when I found out there are only three discussion questions each week

When I arrived tonight I found out Jenna was also a leader. I know her from Facebook only and knew she went to Oak Bridge. I can’t remember exactly how we became friends but I have always enjoyed her posts. So she shared her running story and I wanted to jump out of my chair and say we are sole sisters. Her story is similar to mine. But I figured I better keep it in check for a while. I will let these people discover how crazy I really am over a period of time. No sense springing full CR on them on the first night v

We did a thirty minute run/walk. Jimmy was in charge of keeping time. Some people ran the whole time and no, I was not one of them. My goal for the group is to encourage others and hopefully give them a love for running like I have. Running is my God time and I work through a lot of stuff I wouldn’t deal with otherwise. Sometimes I yell at him or attempt to boss him around. It never works but I feel better afterwards.

I cannot wait until next week. I have asked for Wednesday’s off or to work 7-3 only. Hopefully it works out. I’m pretty much willing to work whatever days or time needed so I think it will work out. After all this was God’s prompting so he’s in charge of my work schedule!

Mole moral~God is smarter than he looks. He had Jenna create a running bible study group to get me back in small group!

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Working full time is for the birds and I am not a bird

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It’s a good thing this blog is not my paying job because I would be living out of my car by now. I haven’t had a chance to write since I said good-bye to my work buddies. I then signed up for a bunch of extra shifts at work. Brian has not been working full-time for a while. He tends to have at least one if not two days off work each week due to no work. This sucks because he also does not have vacation time so it’s without pay. So I decided to pick up the slack. I actually clocked 40 hours within one week about three weeks ago. Let me just say getting up at 5:30 to go to work is no fun at all. I am not awake until 10 so the beginning of those shifts are quite entertaining for my patients and the people who I work with! However its been a great learning experience. Everyone seems to think coming in and taking five surgeries back to back is difficult. I find that way easier than having five patients, sending three home and getting three new ones. By the end of 12 hours I have no idea who is who or what is going on. Not really but it makes not violating Hippa really easy because I’m too old to remember all those names by the end of the day!

Besides working all these hours, Brian and I decided it was time to stain the deck. He did the floor and I am working on the railings and steps etc. Our deck rocks until it has to be stained. Then I cuss at it because it is so huge!

I am also training for a 1/2 marathon. I found a couch to 1/2 marathon guide which is what i am using. This keeps me from walking/running too much in one week. I just did my 8 mile long run yesterday in the glorious cool weather. I remember thinking that how horrible I felt for two weeks after my last surgery was more than worth it!

I am still working on Kayla’s quilt made out of dance costumes. I’m still cutting out triangles but the light is at the end of the tunnel. I think I will have enough for four quilts but I want a huge selection and just keep cutting. I have actually lost my mind.

Back to planning our 25th wedding anniversary trip. Now that Allyson started high school today, I have my computer back!

 

Mole moral~Never a dull moment and never do I sit still!

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Saying Goodbye

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imageToday I said good-bye to a couple of really good co-workers but not before going out with them the night before after work! I will miss E. Hayes and Wankster Willy (aka Erin and Lindsay). Wankster is always so much fun to be around. Last night she had me in tears when she was pretending to be a patient and complaining about some of the crazy things people come up with. A couple of the residents joined us and they may think twice before they ever party with the women’s health crazies! Lindsay has graduated and is an athletic trainer and starts her new job on Monday. She plans to get her masters and then teach. Oh how lucky and blessed her students will be! Erin is going to work in Dr. Murray’s office. Dr. Murray is one of our gyn/oncologists and she made Erin promise not to tell us she was leaving until Dr. Murray was out-of-town so we didn’t kill Dr. Murray. Well guess what, I plan to slap Dr. Murray when I see her next. Erin joined WH when she was 19 as a tech and she was in nursing school. It has been a pleasure to watch her grow into a wonderful nurse. She has also gotten married and had two children in this time. I feel like my own children are leaving the nest. They will both do well and bless those they come in contact with. I will be interested to see who God replaces them with. Things always change even when we don’t want them to!

 

Mole Moral~ I am way too old to party like I’m 25. It’s been a rough day for mama mole! However, it was worth if for all of the fun I had last night!

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We Are Camp Nine “Made New”

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This may be the first time I have actually written about every session. I usually have great intentions to do so but get home and back in the real world and out of sight out of mind. Sad but true. The last session was about being made new through what Jesus did on the cross. All of our sins are forgiven: past, present, and future. Things in the universe break down naturally over time. Just look around, except at me. God doesn’t want to improve who we are but implement a permanent new through Jesus. So because of Jesus you stay new no matter what you do.

This all lead up to what I call the “altar call”. Except at camp, people don’t come down to the front but just stand if they have decided they want to follow Jesus. After that the camp breaks into their small groups and the small group leaders talk to the kids and pray with them that they believe in Jesus and accept him into their heart. This is such a much better way than when I was a kid. Every week the church I went to had an altar call. The congregation would sing Just As I Am which the pastor would say things like “If Jesus is calling you to come down front and you don’t come and you die this week you will go to HELL.” Do you know how scary that was for a kid. I wasn’t sure if Jesus was calling me or not. (I was around the age of 10). What if he was and I didn’t go down and I died? Would I burn in Hell forever? It was scary to get out of your seat and walk down to the front but I finally did it but I have no recollection of my age or the date or even the time of the year. I do remember going to a small room and a lady praying with me. I think somewhere around 30 kids from our church stood up. Earlier in the day 14 of our kids were baptized in the ocean. They were kids who had already accepted Jesus and now were publicly identifying with him. In a couple of weeks we are having a baptism service at church and the kids that were baptized will tell their story and then the church will show the video of their baptism. Baptism services are the best.

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This was the first year I had a Fitbit tracker at camp. I set a record for total steps for the week. I was 10 weeks post surgery and for the first time in two years had two feet that weren’t on fire! I could have done without knowing how little sleep I got. I am an 8-9 hour a day person so an average of 5 did not cut it. Although I did nap and sleep on the bus, most of them did not register as sleep because my heart rate was not low enough to be considering sleeping. My heart rate is around 42-44 when I sleep. The sign of a finely tuned athlete! Hahahaha. This totally explains why it took me three days to recover! I was talking about some of the nurse stuff that happened at camp. I was busier than I realized but I enjoy every moment. I must give a huge shout out to my roommate Lynn who is so helpful. Especially when a kid would wake me up out of a nap and I wasn’t fully awake. She would make suggestions. She was talking about not coming next year because all of her kids are grown but I being selfish said who am I going to room with and who is going to keep me on track. She did get to observe me in full on nurse mode. When the girl was dehydrated and started puking and was not responding to my satisfaction, my spidey senses went in full gear and I started bossing people around to get done what I needed to get done! That usually means I am panicking but not showing it! The kids asked me why I didn’t just start an IV and run fluids in. Well folks, that would be practicing medicine without a licence. The state board of nursing puts a paper out every 3 months and it always lists what nurses get in trouble for. One time a nurse started and IV on another nurse and gave her a bag of fluids. I can’t remember if she was hung over or pregnant but the nurse that did that got her license on probation. So there will be no IV starts at Big Stuf camp!

 

Mole Moral~ It is only 362 more days until Oak Bridge leaves for Big Stuf! I will be honored to go as the nurse again next year! It’s the best busiest, exhausting week of the year! I wouldn’t have it any other way. There is nothing more awesome than watching kids understand there is a God who loves them!

 

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We Are Camp Nine “Brave”

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This was the last morning session and it was a good thing. Getting up at seven in the morning was killing this evening shift girl. Especially being up until midnight or a little later.

The foundation of every virtue is courage which is seriously missing in our culture. It takes a lot of courage to stand up for what is right, or the little guy, or anything out of the norm. How much easier is it to get with the flow and follow the leader than stand out. I guess this goes right along with being real. Often the right thing and the hard thing are the exact same thing. And if we are real honest, the easy thing is so much easier but often leads to not so great results.

Stuart said the way to obtain courage is to love someone deeply and to know you are loved deeply (by God). So the most powerful version of you, is you fully convinced of God’s love. That feeling loved by God has been huge for me! I have taken more risks and had more courage ever since I first experienced it seven years ago. So I am loved and I am braved sometimes. He finished by listing three incredible gifts.

1. We have existence.

2. We have opportunity

3. We are loved.

 

Mole moral~ I really have no idea about the three gifts so next year I better take better notes. Until then, may more courage and love surround us all.

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We Are Camp Nine “Real”

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Stuart started out session five with this statement “Social media, where fools go to feel important.” I found that so interesting and he wasn’t really ripping on social media necessarily. However, how many people define their self-worth by how many likes or comments they get? Although I may not define my self-worth, I am always interested in how many people see my stuff. This blog is a perfect example. It will tell me how many views I have had. Sometimes I remind myself that even if only one person looked at it, it might be just the person that needed to read my crazy stuff that day! The biggest issue with social media is that it allows you to filter your image by showing the best and hiding the rest. Everyone has that one person that they know that spends all of their time doing just that. They project the perfect image and yet most people can see right through it. I will be first to admit that when I am having chaos in my life (and I have had a lot recently) I become quiet. I don’t feel social media is the place to air all of that but I also have no problem putting up the silly side of myself. And as for pictures of me, I have no clue how to Photoshop or edit so what you see is the real (scary) deal!

It is almost impossible to be real if you are living with secrets. Everyone needs to have one person they can tell everything and anything to. I am fortunate to have a person like that in my life. It is also impossible to be real if you feel like you need to be fake to be loved. Say what? If you can’t be who you are but who others think you are supposed to be then it’s difficult to love yourself. It’s also real difficult to like yourself when you don’t think God loves you.

That statement really hit home and caused a flashback to my very first camp, eight camps ago. I never really thought a camp would be better than my first one, but this one blew it out of the water. Anyway, seven years ago for the first time ever I felt that God loved me. It’s hard to explain and most people think I’m crazy but up until that point, I knew in my head people loved me but I couldn’t feel it. Oh it is almost heaven like to be able to feel it. So when Stuart said that I got the goose bumps!

Then he went back to the secrets and he stated people who have nothing to hide, hide nothing. Confessing your sin (secrets) might cost something but concealing it might cost everything. He also reminded us failure is an event, not a character trait!

Mole moral~This session validated me and the fact that I really try to be real all the time. Sometimes my lack of filter can get me in trouble but I’m pretty much my real self all of the time. Watch out world!

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We Are Camp Nine “For”

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Now that the distractions of surgery and the ER have passed and I am back home, I plan to finish up the sessions over the next few days. Session four was Wednesday morning and Stuart Hall was back. He and Jared Herd are tied for my all time favorite speakers. Jared has had a child or two now so I am not sure camp will see him again. However Stuart is older and his kids are almost grown.

Are you known for what you are against or what you are for? Most people are known for what they are against, drinking, drugs, abortion, democrats (just kidding) but not what they are for. Jesus was known for his love and that he came to teach love. This was new to the people of this time because of the religious craziness that was going on back then. They had over 600 crazy laws they attempted to follow to make them worthy in God’s eyes.  Jesus came and said love one another as I have loved you. He did not say your ability to change people’s behavior will prove to the world that you are my disciples or that your ability to follow a ton of rules will prove to the world that you are mine. He said your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples. Then he started talking about circumcision in a room full of teenagers. That was quite comical but his point was that Jesus made circumcision irrelevant because it was just another one of many rules that was now obsolete. Just like sacrificing a perfect animal for forgiveness of sin. The religious fruitcakes of the time asked what the most important commandment was and the answer was simple, love the lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind, and the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.

He concluded with love is the most powerful force in the universe and the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. You have to be FOR someone to convince someone. (My notes are lacking here because I cannot remember what the point of that was.) So who will you be FOR? What will you be FOR? Will you be known for what you are against or what you are FOR?

 

Mole moral~I want to be known FOR helping others, being kind and showing love

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We Are Camp Nine ER visit

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It’s been a few years since I’ve taken a kid to the ER at camp so I was due. The worst part about it is my dang anxiety about driving someone else’s car and not having a clue where I’m going. Now last summers cake hunting helped the anxiety a lot and I now have a phone that yells at me where to turn. However Herc was kind enough to drop us off and come back later and get us.

This ER was crazy, they had you sign in by computer and then wait to be called. The kid I was with was really dehydrated. When they brought her to my room she was barely answering questions. I was trying to get her to drink but after about six ounces she almost threw up so I knew it was IV fluid time. After they called us to triage they took her to a room and got an iv in and within a 1/2 a bag she was much more perky and after 2 full bags she was ready to remove her IV and be discharged. Her nurse was really good and I liked her even though I got the lecture that the leaders should be making the kids drink. Apparently every other patient was dehydration and heat exhaustion. Her room leader felt bad and I said you cannot pour water down the kids throats. If the kids are big enough to spend a week away from home they should be big enough to stay hydrated. We got back around 2 in the morning. I missed the late night music session but I already have the camp music on my phone so it was ok.

 

Mole moral~It’s good to check out other ER’s to see how they do things. However, there is no place like Mercy.

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We Are Camp Nine Big Stuf Interns

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IMG_8816This is my very favorite kid and Big Stuf intern. His name is Dan. I met him four years ago on the way to camp. We were on the same bus and it was during the get to know your bus neighbor game. I am not going to lie, I hate that game. It’s where you move seat to seat and talk to every person. It is so hard for me and we actually skipped it this year. However, if we wouldn’t have done that, I would have never met Dan. One of the questions we were to talk about was what is your favorite restaurant. I had written down Steak N Shake (I’m real exciting) and Dan had written Subway. He saw that and high-fived me and said we skinny people can eat fast food. I was like time out, I’m not really skinny and I told him how I had lost forty pounds and how I run like a crazy person. Anyway by the time I switched seats, there was something about him and instantly became my favorite kid besides my girls. After we returned I checked in on him and prayed for him. (Ok stalked him for those who know me well. Haha) I would find out later that Dan had run into Tom (pastor) at chick-fil-A who told him he should do the Oak Bridge internship and he agreed. This past fall/winter when Dan told me he had applied for the Big Stuf internship I was so excited. The opportunity to spend the entire summer at camp leading kids would be so incredible and a life changer. When I found out he was chosen I was thrilled for him. The interns have to pay to do this so most of them fund raise. They do stay in a hotel and are fed for free. However, Dan told me it was camp food all summer so that ended the camp nurse dream. This was the best camp ever. I really never imagined any could out do my first year but this one far surpassed it and I have much more to write about. However I was at the hospital until 2 with a kid who was dehydrated so I must nap for a while. I am so thrilled that Dan was here the entire summer and I am confident it was a life changer for him!

 

Mole moral~Often the things we dread the most, turn out to be life blessings. Without the get to know your bus buddies game I would have never met Dan! He truly is my favorite kid!