Biodocs – Biomedical PR

Tonight I cooked meals for a brother in need in memory of my Grandma Fern. I pumped gas in my car and thought of my Grandpa Frank, who I never met. I told a story to my kids and thought of my Grandpa Al, who died in May. And then heard that my Grandma Irma is gone to heaven today. I will miss her hands, her nightgowns, her kind heart and her easy smile, watching TV game shows (she always knew the answer first), and reading her hand-me-down murder mysteries. There was no warning or illness, just a kind neighbor who checked on Grandma daily and found her today beside her bed.  As a nurse, my heart breaks that she may have suffered alone.  But my brother Daniel had wise words – “she may have been in pain, but she didn’t suffer because she knew she was going home to be with Grandpa”….

“In the darkness of despair and the prison of pain, we often say things that we later regret, but God understands all about it and lovingly turns a deaf ear to our words but a tender eye to our wounds.” ~ Pause for Power, Warren W. WiersbeMy mother brought me a china plate for my collection of mismatched china (we eat off beauty every day) and I promptly broke it.  The very next day.  My first reaction, unfortunately, is still to throw a tantrum.  I remember her warning me, as a teenager, that I if I chose that agitated state of heart in the quiet of my room and privacy of my brain, it would settle in and become a habit that was nearly impossible to break.  And, I regret to say, I went on heedlessly…nay, obstinately…and let it settle in.  Now I struggle with th…

The shape of my eye changed because of a physical hardship: I hit a toilet with my head, with my eyes open, and my eyeball got smashed.  I don’t know yet if the effects are permanent, but I do know one thing: it has changed my focus.  Literally.  I focus my camera just as I always have, but because the “perspective” in my eye itself has changed, what I see looks…different.  There is more blur.  Almost like I am less attached to the subject.  Yet more art?I’ve admired a few photographers for years: the one I love most is Amy Glover, first a professional alliance, then friend, then the woman who discipled me, and now fellow artist.  The allegory between art and soul is so complete, it’s almost too good to be true.  Just as I’ve followed the “perspect…

Reading the lyrics of “Wonder” by Natalie Merchant the other day brought me back.  Made me think some things over.  I had to scan a few photos in for another post, photos from my childhood album.  This is my favorite picture in that album.  Whenever I start thinking I might be making some headway in this photography hobby of mine, I look back and I am reminded that I have a long way to go to match my dad’s black and white film and Canon A1 with it’s old kit lens…a photojournalists camera, his first major purchase as a high school student.I remember fainting and nearly dying at a friend’s wedding when I was in high school.  I remember them thinking I was pregnant and hemorrhaging or something, and how I said a thousand times through gritted teeth that was impossib…

Someday, 30 years from now, I want to be able to truly, honestly speak these words. To say that trusting God has become habit, whatever pain or suffering has been my life for the past hours, days, months, years.  This is from Joni Erickson Tada, on a recent radio program on suffering. She has been a quadriplegic for 30 years and now is suffering worsening of her disabilities while she endures treatment for breast cancer:It is at those times—and they happen all the time—that I fall back on the wonderfully godly habits that are just part of my character now. “We rejoice in suffering because suffering produces perseverance; perseverance produces character” (Romans 3:5-6). I’ve changed. I’m no longer the 14-year-old kid that I was once back some 30-odd-years ago.I’m a woman who …