God is in control!

Well, I probably won't talk too much on the blog about my job because, well, I work in a crazy unit and it's not always the most happy subjects to discuss with people. However, I thought I would share a little bit of what I have seen that last couple of days. For those of you that don't know, I work at University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. I will admit it is not an easy place to work. I see a lot of things that I never thought I would and some things I would rather never have seen. Univ of Chicago is located on the south side of Chicago and is a level one trauma center. That means we get all of the REALLy bad stuff that happens in Chicago and in northern Indiana (like Gary).
The last couple of days I have seen some crazy things. I took care of my first high profile case. It was all over the news about a family caught in a fire in Gary. We received two of the children from the fire. The other case that we got yesterday was a child (15) who was shot 5 times!!! I have felt the last couple of days that I have been on the show E.R. because of the crazy stuff that has happened. We don't always have stuff like this happen, but probably once a week or so. I feel like I could be Abbey Lockheart from E.R. with all that I have been encountering.
I don't know why I am writing this. It's not like we like to see these kind of things or that it is easy to see. In fact, it is VERY difficult. But, I admit it is such a great DAILY reminder of how I am so not in control of anything that happens. I don't always understand why things happen. Most of the days I leave I question a lot of things. I have brought home many questions to Joel about life, death, sin, God, and evil in our world. It's hard. But I know that I am in this hospital for a reason and that this is such a great place to bring Jesus. What better place for Jesus to be than in the midst of fear, loss, and anxiety. I know God brings me to strength daily to deal with what I see. I thank God so much for that and for being able to work in such an amazing place with such amazing people. And I thank God for having such a wonderful husband who deals so well with me when I am dealing with the things I see. He is such a wonderful support and I love him dearly.
I don't write this to make you sad...I promise. I write it to encourage you to give those you love a hug and tell them you love them. I also hope that you all know that GOD, not evil is in control. We all see a lot from hurricanes and tornadoes to abuse and neglect. But I take heart in knowing that the God I serve loves us all. He is in control of our lives so much more than we are and that He knows better than we do what we need! He loves us all so much. Take heart, He has overcome the world!
http://www.uchicagokidshospital.org/ University of Chicago Web site

Patah gets a haircut...

Well, Patah looks (and smells) a little different today. It must be a totally different world for her since she can actually see what she is doing. Now, I would never want to compare our dogs to kids-we are working our way up. We love our pups and although they are a pain sometimes-getting us up early and the occassional "accident" waiting for us when we get home, we really like our additions. I think it's true that they really do make you happy. Sometimes it's nice to come home from a hectic day at work when you feel like everyone hates you and have your dogs happy to see you no matter what has happened. I couldn't help posting this. Sorry if it is goofy to some of you out there, but since we don't have cute kids like a lot of our friends, we have to post something. I would feel bad posting a picture of Patah without Hireq, so here is a picture of them both after a hard day of play. By the way, there names are Hebrew meaning "dot" and "line"-the 2 smallest in the Hebrew language. Don't worry we won't name our kids after vowels!

Busy life or full life?????

This weekend, I (Kim) went on a retreat with about 20-30 other woman from our church. I must admit, I was excited , but a little unsure at what it would be like since all the retreats I have been on have been high school youth group stuff, college stuff, or taking a high school youth group on a retreat. This time I would have to act like an adult which at times can be difficult for me. It turned out to be a great weekend! We had a great speaker named Ruth Hill who mixed the word with a lot of humor. The theme verse for this weekend was John 10:10:

"I have come that YOU might have LIFE, and have it to the FULL."

I realized a lot this weekend and just thought I would share some of it. Number one, I needed to determine if my life was just busy or if it was FULL. For those of you that know me, we are really busy. However, I couldn't help feeling often that I seemed to waste an awful lot of time for being so BUSY. I realized that I fill my life with so many things that I miss out on a full life. I make so many excuses for NOT spending time in prayer, meditation, and the Word because of being busy. The great thing is that God has somehow still been able to use my flaws and shortcomings for His glory and His kingdom, but I couldn't help wondering how much more He could use me if I was seeking to be used.
I don't know about you, but I LOVE noise. As much as I can say that I hate the cell phone ringing, all the beeping at work (which I hear in my sleep some times), I have to have noise in my life. Even when I want to relax and be still, I constantly feel I have to have music on or something. I wonder why? Am I scared to hear what God wants to tell me? Well, I could go on and on, but the bottom line is my life is just...busy, it's not full. It's not always satisfying, just busy. I want more than that, I want to be able to say I have an abundantly full life. I don't want to settle for just having mediocrity in my life. I want more than that. I want life to the full. I can't wait to see what the means and where that takes my relationship with God. I'll keep you updated!
How "Busy" or "Full" is your life?

It' back!

Yes friends! It's back. Survivor time is here! Some of you may have thought that people don't watch reality TV-well, we do! I married someone who loves Survivor as much as I do. We have watched every episode except when they were in Marquesas (I'm not sure the spelling is right.) We didn't watch it because that is the time we were planning to get married (a good excuse huh?)

We are very excited. Unfortunately (like tonight) I work most Thursdays so we will be taping it. Don't know if anyone else loves reality shows (besides Robin), but we do.

Thursday nights are also fabulous because CSI (Las Vegas) is on. The season premiere is next week, but we are still excited. Have a great Thursday everyone!

How long does it take YOU to get home from work?

CRAZY TRAFFIC IN CHICAGO
There are MANY things that we love about Chicago, TRAFFIC is not one of them... I used to think it was bad in Marion when it took me 15 minutes to get to work instead of my usual 7 minutes. It cracked me up when I was home last time and my mom told me that she couldn't believe that she got stuck in traffic in UPLAND! It delayed her in getting to work. Well, I have one that tops Upland. Yesterday after working a 12 hour night shift (7PM-7AM) I managed to take and hour and a half to get home from work. Granted, some of it was my fault because as my husband can agree with, I am seriously directionally challenged. However, once I got to where I knew where I was going, it still took an hour. As you can tell from the pictures, I got a little bored sitting in traffic. I'm sure people probably thought I was crazy snapping pictures in the middle of bumper to bumper traffic-I totally looked like a tourist. If snapping pictures wasn't enough to make me look crazy, I also had my music turned up really loud and was singing to it. That was the icing I'm sure. I have figured out now how to get home without falling asleep. Bad traffic is the worst possible time to fall asleep, but defintely the easiest. Turning up the music is one such was to keep myself awake. The other is watching people around me. It's absoulutely amazing what people do in their cars. Sometimes, I think they think they have tinted windows or something. Yesterday was one of those days as I caught a grown (rather old actually) woman sucking her thumb...and people think I'M weird for taking pictures? I have also seen many a man in a suit and tie pick his nose like nothing else. AAHHHH, the things you can't see (and probably don't want to) in Chicago. Well, I better go to bed now. Have a great day-and watch out for traffic!

My husband and I in Chicago 

A walk down memory lane

Well, first I should probably apologize to Robin for posting this picture, and Brock, but I couldn't help it when I found the picture. It just captures the essence of Robin and how awesome she is. Brock's awesome too, but since I don't know where he is, I am going to focus on Robin.
So, I looked through more pictures today and couldn't help but put myself back in the memories of what those pictures captured. Some good, some...a little crazy, and some, I guess I would just rather not remember. However, when you go back like that, you realize that ALL of those experiences, good and bad, and even ugly make you who you are. I realize had I not had the experiences, I would not be who I am. This brings me to the picture. At the time when I was at IWU and helping with the Search, I feel that was one of the times I grew in my life the most. Not that I didn't fail a lot and not that I didn't screw up, I did, but I also realized that God had so much more out there for me than what I had thought before then. During this time was when I felt God calling me to missions. I met Ken and Robin as well as many others who helped me see who I really was and the potential I had. I did things I never thought I could. So thanks guys. And to each of you reading this (who know me anyway) you have also contributed to my life and I thank you too. OK, well, I think I am going to bed. Have a great Monday everyone!

Look what I found!

I found this picture as I was looking through other pictures that I could post on our blog. I think this may be when Julie and Nate were first getting together. Just thought Julie and Nate (if no one else) would enjoy this. For those of you that don't know. The Lambs (before they were the Lambs plural) sang and played for our wedding. It was fun to go down memory lane today as I was looking at pictures of our wedding and stuff. I'll post more in a bit.

Just a glimpse...

Well, this is only our second post and I don't even want to mention how long it took just to do this. Some of you may have seen these pictures before, but some may not have. Most of them are of our trip to Ecuador this June. It was defintely an amazing trip! We got to do so many things on this trip that would take 2 blog sites to talk about. The main highlights were; visiting an orphanage, visiting (and working) in 2 hospitals, working in a home for abandoned elderly, and doing a kids club and handing out bread in the city dump. Probably the most profound experience of our lives was visiting the dump. We took 11 high school kids with us, so I thought I would be trying to help them put their heads around this experience, little did I know that I would be a basket case even before visiting the first person in the dump! I still have trouble sometimes with this experience. As amazing as it was, I have never felt more useless in all my life than handing out bread to starving people LIVING in a garbage dump and then leaving. I wanted to stay so bad, I think all of us did. I will write more on that at a different time as every couple weeks or so I go back to the experience.
Most of the other pictures are of these experiences. We loved the orphanage and realized even more that that is what God has called us to do with our lives. We so wished we could have stayed down there, but realize that our place (unfortunately sometimes) is here right now and that we are hear to prepare for the future. Not always an easy thing to do.
The other picture you see is of us and our two puppies-Hireq (pronounced "hear-ek") and Patah (pronounced "pa-ta") These are our orny 1 year old pups that are named after Hebrew vowels. Joel was taking his Hebrew intensive class when we got the dogs so instead of sparky or spot, they got names that no one can pronounce. Anyway, we love them lots and they keep us entertained.
Well, until next time...

Joel and Kim with their heads in the clouds 

Joel with the blind boy at the orphanage 

Kim passing out bread to kids at the dump 

Joel and Lady at Hogar 

The Delp Family 

Kim and Joel in Ecuador