Donna's Page

Blessed are the flexible...
they shall not be bent out of shape.

Hello everyone. I'm Donna. and, as you might suspect, this page was done without my knowing it. But that's my brother. A little about me? Well, as one might suspect, I'm very Catholic too. I have the opportunity to serve God as a Registered Nurse in my home town. The picture? Well, I finally got my brother to change it. The other was very old and very dark. Who says older sisters don't have any say in what goes on!

 

What a spectacularly jamb-packed year this has been!!!   I am overwhelmed with all it has been to me both in whom I have met and all I have encountered this year professionally in my job, and socially with the many new friends I've been fortunate to have known.   I can barely believe the lessons learned, the ideas formed, the appreciation gained, the experiences accumulated.   I have been given a gift of learning myself through the graces of others.   What better place to learn what God intends for us than through His creatures and His creation?  His charity and His Sacred Heart are so hugely evident in my patients, and in those whom I've met who care for them.   How lucky we are to have a God who allows us to appreciate so entirely all He, Himself loves!  How blessed we are to know joy in all that is around us.

I met a new nurse recently who saw me smile and asked if I liked what I did for a living.   Like it???  It is the most gracious gift of God to be allowed to be His hands in serving those He has created... in doing for them what He would do for them.   Yes!   I love this privilege!  I see Him in them!  There is nothing I would prefer to do!   I had a patient refuse me entrance to his room once, telling me to go help someone worthy of saving, someone who will have a chance to live, and to not waste my time with him.   His wife was sobbing quietly in the corner.  I closed the door and approached his bed.   I sat below him and made him look at me.  I whispered to him that it was my honor to care for him, that by caring for him in his terminal illness I would learn love, that it was by his sacrifice with his pain that would allow me to learn tenderness and strength to give to everyone else I cared for.   And that through his ability to allow me to care for him, I would find his strength and love to give to others.   And that the caring for him in particular was a profound honor to me personally, if I never had another patient as long as I lived.   In that moment, I understood my vocation.    He and I both cried.

 I have had many such moments with patients.   I have had many patients tell me that God sent me to be with them and with their families.   Many.   I have told each of them that God sent me to them to learn from them, to be blessed by them, and to carry their blessing as a legacy to everyone I will care for as long as I live... that it is their blessed gift to all whom I will touch for the rest of my life.    It is an amazing thing to me that I see each of my patients as if they were the most important thing on earth to God.   Which convinces me of the fact that His Sacred Heart is in each of us, that we are indeed made in His Image.   To me this is the holiness of the Body of Christ made evident.

I am lucky.   I do nursing.  But I am also convinced that this is what each of us is intended to see and to do in whatever capacity and talent we've been assigned.   God loves us in profound ways.  And He intends that we love others in that same way.   How lucky we are to have each other.  What greater gift could He have given, than Himself and each other.   John Paul II and Mother Teresa are right:   this is NOT a culture of death we live in.  We are the life to each other as we live in His Spirit.   And in this, is Joy!!!   .... Love, Donna

My Self-portrait
 

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   An If -      For Girls

 
    If you can dress to make yourself attractive,
    Yet not make puffs and curls your chief delight;
    If you can swim and run, be strong and active,
    But of the gentler graces lose not sight,
    If you can dance without a craze for dancing,
    Play without giving play too strong a hold,

    If you can master French and Greek and Latin,
    And not acquire as well a priggish mein,
    If you can feel the touch of silk and satin,
    Without despising calico and jean,
    If you can ply a saw and use a hammer,
    Can do a man's work when the need occurs,
    Can sing when asked, without excuse or stammer,
    Can rise above unfriendly snubs and slurs,

    If you can make good bread as well as fudges,
    Can sew with skill and have an eye for dust,
    If you can be a friend and hold no grudges,
    A girl whom all will love because they must,

    If sometime you should meet and love another,
    And make a home with faith and peace enshrined,
    And you it's soul, - a loyal wife and mother,
    You'll work out pretty nearly to my mind

    The plan that's been developed through the ages,
    And win the best that life can have in store.
    You'll be, my girl, the model for the ages, -
    A woman whom the world will bow before. >>