Call for prayer for Mrs. Queen

Nick Queen's wife is in the hospital with a bowel obstruction. Please keep her in your prayers today and tomorrow.

Morning notes

Things feel as depressive as the cloudy, dreary day it's starting out to be here in Kentucky.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has refused the appeal for Terri (hattip: Wittenburg Gate). I can't say that this is not unexpected. The court's opinion is here. As I expected, it states prominantly that we are a nation of laws. Yes, we are. So was 1940s Germany. That didn't stop Nuremburg, and the rule of law doesn't mean it's not murder now, either. At least one judge had the courage to say that there was no real harm in putting the tube back in.

I trust that the Lord is working, but it is so hard to see it with my eyes. As the one person said, "I believe, Lord. Help me with my unbelief!"

No News, at all

The two tikes had an expecially bad behavior day a couple of days ago, and Milady and I agreed that it was primarily because of too much TV. Milady said no more Dish Network, and I shut it off completely. Since the siding guys have taken the dish off the roof, there's no way it's coming back, either.

The only problem with this is that I feel isolated from the "real world" of talking heads, even though Cutie-Pie and Holmes (as Neal Boortz calls Hannity and Colmes) and Scarborough are as close to "real" as the Weekly World News. (Don't even start on Chris Matthews, Lou Dobbs, or Larry King....) I get tired of the shouting, yet I want more. I must be addicted or something. TV talk: the crack cocaine of television. It has a ring to it. ;) Michael Savage is the closest to a talking head as I can get now, and he's a blowhard with a microphone (sorry, Michael, gotta call them as I see them).

Looks like I'm stuck with foxnews.com and the blogs as my source for "real news". At lea st I know the biases there.

Praise when a prayer gets answered

We have been doing some much-needed and well-overdue home repairs this week. The roofers put a roof on the house in 2 days (including minor cutting), and the garage in the equivalent of 1 (they had the old roof off the garage in 4 hours, and then got rained out, but it only took them 3 hours on Sunday to put the roof back on). Then yesterday morning, we got a call "We have your windows and a cancellation. Want your windows and vinyl siding today?"

Of course we said yes. After scrambling to get everything ready for the guys, we let them do the windows. They got all of them in and caulked on the inside by day's end Monday, but they didn't tape or finish wrapping the outside of the windows. I didn't learn this until after they'd left AND after I learned that it was supposed to rain today. Needless to say, I was not happy.

Milady calmed me down enough to point out that the rain wasn't scheduled to occur until morning, and that they would have plenty of time to at least put up tape before the rains started. She also suggested that we pray that it not rain until the windows were wrapped.

As of 3PM today, the last window left to be wrapped was the big window in my office, and it never gets wet from the rain (it's under a porch-like eave). The rains didn't start until around 4:30PM.

If I am going to ask God for something, it is only appropriate I thank Him when he does it.

Mourning

I mourn for the pain that Terri Schiavo must feel now. I cannot imagine the torture that she is suffering right now.

I mourn for the Schindler family. Watching their daughter sit for a decade in nursing facilities when they are sure that simple physical therapy would help her is torture.

I mourn for Michael Schiavo. I cannot understand the drive to starve a spouse, no matter how it might be said spouse's desire. I couldn't do it to Milady, even if she told me she wanted me to do so. Moreover, I mourn that he has felt the desire to commit adultery with multiple women, including his current live-in lover.

I mourn for George Felos. He has truly made bitter sweet and sweet bitter.

I mourn for Judge Greer. He has decided that it is more important to have the right to die than it is to preserve life. I cannot excuse that he was just doing his job. He desired to make the decision he did, and his desire was death. I mourn that he has felt the need to seperate himself from his last church, as this is a sign that his walk with God is not right.

I mourn for the doctors who are killing Terri. They have decided that it's more important to die than live, to kill than to first do no harm. The people whom we have counted on to serve us in making us better are now our lords who can decide who deserves to live, and who isn't good enough to live.

Most of all, I mourn for this society. Our society has decided that it is more important to do what we want than to to obey God. We sacrifice our children to convenience and "lack of desire" like the followers of Molech of old. Put the old people and the infirm in a nursing home, and help the pained and hurting end their suffering with pills or gas. Above all, make sure that no one who has a lower quality of life bothers our quality of life.

America, be very afraid. Ninevah repented in front of Jonah. Rome repented upon the blood of the Christian martyrs. We know of the miracles that would have saved Sodom a nd Gamorrah, Tyre and Sidon, yet we work on committing sins that would have made them tremble!

The Bible says that the Lord gives those who are in sin over to their own desires. I fear that this is our fate, America, that our desires will be the end of us. This I mourn most of all.

One more thing I can do

I find it very frustrating that it seems there is little to do, but this is one thing I can do.

The Kentucky Packrat blog will stay white text on a black background until either Terri Schiavo receives regular food and water again or until we are done.

I've got more to say, and will do so later this morning.

Call in the Federal Marshals

Terri Schiavo should not be sitting in a Florida Hospice, subject to the whims and fancies of a Circuit Court Judge more intent on killing her than executing either justice or the law. She should be in a military hospital in the protective custody of the Federal Marshals, a material witness into a civil rights violation case against Michael Schiavo, Greer, and as many co-conspirators as can be found.

At least that's my humble opinion.

BTW, thanks to TheAnchoress and The American Mind for the kind links.

Quick Notes

David N. Bass in WorldNetDaily quoted a Bible verse that sums up the Terri Schiavo situation:

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20)

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach (again on WorldNetDaily) has an equally good article on Terri's situation, as well. Read it.

The Culture of Me

Many people, including Jay of DeoOmnisGloria.com and myself, have commented against the US having a culture of death. I believe that the problem isn't a culture of death. Death is incidental. Instead, it's a culture of "me".

People are doing what is right in their own sight. If a shirt's got a light tear, throw it away. If you don't have the money right now, put it on credit and pay it off later. If you've put too much on said credit, and some little unforseen event occurs, then take bankrupcy and you can get more credit right afterwards. Take medicines, surgeries, cosmetic procedures, and quick-fix diets to patch up what ails you or what is inconvenient. Marriages are as disposable as the $5 dollar cameras we can now buy.

It's the ultimate expression of the hippie concept of "what feels right is right". It was possible for the "peace and love" anti-materialistic children of the 60s to turn into yuppies because it feels really good to make some (or even a lot) of money. A second income in a fulfilling job is good to keep even when it ends up costing more to go to work than to stay home.

The ultimate expression of this has been a quote I've heard often during the Terri Schiavo case: "I wouldn't want to live that way". Of course you wouldn't. I don't want to be brain-damaged either. Number 1 son didn't want to lose half a lung to pneumonia. My mother-in-law didn't want to die from ovarian cancer. TheAnchoress' brother-in-law S didn't want to die a lingering death. John Paul has no desire to slowly deteriorate from Parkinsons.

Job didn't want to be tested by Satan either, but when God answers Job, God doesn't justify Himself. He doesn't justify Himself to us either. Instead, there are times in our lives when we will have to do things, be places, or even give up things we hold dear (even our health) because of God's plan for us.

By interfering in God's plan by unnaturally ending a life (and y es, withholding food is ending a life) is the ultimate rejection of God's will. I don't know why Terri Schiavo is in the condition she's in. She may be there from abuse, or a potassium imbalance. She may be PVS, or "simply" severly brain-damaged. It might be that Terri will never return to even a resemblance of her former life. Nonetheless, what does it say about us when we are willing to throw her life away because she is no longer convenient to her husband or society.

Rage

I am sorry that I had the last story on so long. I was in class all afternoon, and didn't see the fact that Judge Greer had ignored the Congressional subpoena.

If Federal Marshalls can go in and send a boy to Cuba at gunpoint (even if they were right to do so), and kill kids by igniting tear gas at Waco, then surely they could be used to feed one woman.

Update: No rejoicing to be had now

BlogsForTerri has the good news that Terri Schiavo has been served her subpoena as a witness for the House of Representatives, but we must not be so joyous that we lose focus. The pro-death forces will go to Federal Court to try to void the subpoenas, on the basis that she is unable to answer the subpoenas since she's "PVS". Fortunately, the courts have been more ready of late to argue seperation of powers, which may keep them from arguing with a Congressional subpoena.

Keep up the phone calls, Emails, and actions.

Less than one day

Blogs for Terri has the information that covers the fight to get the Habeas Corpus laws passed through Congress. Please go there for more information.

Multiple blogs have pointed out that Andrew C. McCarthy has an excellent point: where are the people screaming about torture now?

It is time to fast and pray. We have to pray that we haven't become such a "throw-away" society that we are willing to throw away humans.

Murder from the bench

(I had a good post going earlier, and then Mozilla crashed on me. Oops...)

Judge Greer has ordered that Terri Schiavo not be given food or water even when the feeding tube has been removed. This is judicial murder. We must ALL pray that Florida's House Bill 523 passes.

House Bill 523 does a very simple thing: it requires that a person's choice to refuse medical care be spelled out in writing. While I hope that this will be enough, I think Judge Greer is too committed to murder to turn back. I suspect that he will try to rule the law unconstitutional by declaring that HB 523 violates the right to die. One can only hope that the Florida Court of Appeals will contain Greer.

Not blogging in a while, and now multiple posts

It seems I'm having one of my insomnia nights (the rest of the family are asleep from family night), so I'll post a few tidbits.

Everyone, please pray for Nick at Nickqueen.com. He has posted an honest post about some depression problems he is facing right now. One of the comments on this thread is my own. I will reproduce my comments after the "fold", just so that I can keep them around here, but it's better at Nick's site.

in the outer also has a series for dealing with depression, with the latest being this post. While I certainly would wish depression on no-one, it is a blessing to see how the Lord is helping people like "the bloke" in situations similar to where I've been.

I am blessed to "only" have mild depression-like symptoms that don't need clinical intervention. I was also greatly blessed in getting my current job. I don't want to bad-mouth my last job (I still have friends there, and one never knows when you'll need to cross a bridge you're burning ;) ), but the stress of expected 48-50 hour weeks and lingering memories of my past mistakes were causing us too much stress.

I would post more, but it seems that the simple act of typing in the last three paragraphs and cut-and-pasting the comment was enough to make me tired. Amazing how trying to keep up the blog will do that.

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Here's my post at Nick's:

I would have sworn that I was reading a post by myself here.

I am over 300 now, and on a "one pound a week" diet now, after trying the Atkins diet, losing 60 a couple of years ago and then slowly gaining it all back. I am also chronically late (but getting better :) ).

A lot of my depression-like problems seem to be a very mild case of seasonal affective dis order. My wife and I have banned ourselves from making any serious life decisions or purchases from January to April because of a couple of "winter-blues" mistakes.

Insulin resistance/hypoglycemia and pre-diabetes can also induce the symptoms of clinical depression. If you're eating a lot of starchy foods or sugars, consider switching to a lower-carb diet for a while and see if that helps. If you (or anyone else) are headed into type 2 diabetes, you need to see a doctor NOW, to get this under control.

How's your sleep schedule? You can start a depressive cycle by choosing to get too much or too little sleep. Sleep deprevation will cause clinical depression which causes sleeping problems that cycle in, especially if you have SAD-like symptoms as well.

It may also be that you are chemically depressed. Effexor and its cousins are very good for people who do not have a psychological or other medical reason for being depressed, yet still are.

I would definitely talk to a good Christian internalist/GP who is more interested in finding a solution than throwing medicine at you, and talking through the problem.

Finally, you should get your small group and/or prayer groups at church involved with praying with/for you. You are a very influencial member of the Christian Blogsphere, and as such will be a target of spirital attack.

You'll be in our prayers.

This time 10 years ago

I was in Beattyville, KY, sitting outside Tincher's Motel in the cold. How I got there was an interesting story.

Milady is from Beattyville, and we went to her hometown to get married. On the 11th, we went to Cedar Village in Irvine for the rehersal dinner, and then went back to the hotel. My dad, grandfather, brother-in-law-to-be, and a friend of mine were to stand with me, and my dad was assigned the task of planning the bachelor party. Now, I had no desire to see a stripper or go to a strip club, but it was a bit depressing that my father was too cheap to propose a trip to a "decent" strip club in Lexington. Instead, he proposed a trip to a Richmond club. It's really nice to know your father thinks so much of you that he'll take you to a scuzzy strip club for your wedding. ;)

Instead of a bad bachelor party, we went back to the hotel. Somehow, everyone ended up in the room my friend and I shared. And then they started smoking. Luckily, I was less allergic to smoke then than I am now (these days, I start having asmtha-like symptoms around smokers), but my entire family smokes. I finally couldn't breath, so I went outside. I sat outside talking to the maid for almost 2 hours. Finally, my family got too tired of talking and went to bed, so I could go back to bed myself.

Milady and I wanted to both contain costs and make things work easier for everyone, so we did pictures before the wedding. I saw Milady wearing that white dress, and I almost passed out. She was so beautiful. If I'd not seen her until she walked down the eisle, I'd have locked my knees and passed out for sure.

The week before the marriage we had one of the worst snowstorms of the decade, but the weather that day was the best I could have asked for. We had members of my family I hadn't seen in years drive about 3 hours to come to us, and people from campus (I was still in UK then) drive 2 hours to come. We were so blessed by our guests.

The funny thing is, Milady still k eeps getting more beautiful every day.... :)

Do I get a masters? Decisions, Decisions....

One of the reasons (although hardly the primary one) for me coming to my Current Employer was that I would have easy access to the University so that I could get my Masters should I so desire. Last semester, I didn't have time to start, so I'm considering starting in the fall. If I start my CS graduate career now, I can get in under the 8 year rule (you have 8 years in which to graduate), while it appears that that may change to a 4 year rule soon.

As a big "on the other hand", there is a Biblical Hebrew class being tought in the Fall as well. That would be all new stuff, compared to the 2 classes I'd be retaking (I took 2 of the 4 required 500-level classes as an undergrad, but it's been so long they won't count) if I do a Masters now.

I just can't decide which to do....

Sad Mac

I've had fairly good luck with computers over the years. I've got a 15 year old Mac IIsi that still boots every time I turn it on. I've only had one lemon out of new purchases, and that one I built from parts. Work machines were sometimes an exception, but given how hard I've been on them (a LOT more use per day than the home machines), I've not considered their failure rate exceptional. However, my work iMac G5 has decided that it hates me much earlier than I would have liked. I think it got jealous when I brought Milady's new Toshiba laptop in to copy the MP3 collection... ;)

It is drawing video pretty much randomly across the screen, and periodically freezing to boot. Terribly disappointing considering how pro-Apple I've been (and still am) of late. The only problem is that I'm now having to work on the 700MHz P3 running Windows XP that I managed to salvage from the graveyard 3 months ago while I was waiting on my iMac to get here. Going from a real machine to this piece of junk hurts.

post-live blogging the Pope's Blessing

For a protestant, I'm blogging a lot about John Paul... :)

I just watched the networks' coverage of John Paul giving a blessing after his Sunday Angelus message. Fox News had a low-rent satellite link with about a 3 second lag, so the poor early-Sunday anchor couldn't even talk with the reporter without them talking over each other, and then having to sit say nothing for seconds at a time. CNN/CNNI was technically better since the CNNI reporters were in Rome, but I was astonished that they had to ask whether the Pope's windowside blessing "counted". I suppose my Protestant background came out, but it's hard for me to imagine that something isn't valid because the script wasn't followed....

It is clear that John Paul takes strength from the prayers and adulation of the people. When he is filmed in a non-public area, he is listless and tired, but when he is facing the public, he really gets some strength. I hope John Paul can confound his critics even more and be a producti ve member of the Christian community for years to come.

Call to support Incapacitated Persons Legal Protection Act

U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Melbourne is working to introduce the Incapacitated Persons Legal Protection Act (first seen by me on nickqueen.com, then here on terrisfight.org). This would explicitly authorize and require the Federal court system to act upon Writs of Habeas Corpus for violations of civil rights cases.

Normally, I am a states-rights libertarian (small l). I believe that Roe v. Wade was the ultimate in a century's worth of court cases trampling the powers of the states. However, I do believe that the Federal Government can be right when it bars the states from acting. The Federal courts were right to act against Jim Crow, since Jim Crow was the ultimate anti-libertarian expression. (Seperate but Equal isn't when the government acts as an agent to keep things unequal.)

Here, the State of Florida is making a civil death sentence that allows the level of heresay that wouldn't convict a person of littering, much less a capital crime. The Federal Government IMHO has the authority and obligation to prevent that kind of crime.

Not for us

It seems that the Packrat household never gets anywhere early, to Milady's constant consternation. (She is by nature punctual, if not early. The rest of the family, including me, will probably be late to our own funerals.) This last Sunday, we were running almost on time for the 9AM church service, so we hurried to an empty pew in the sanctuary without looking around. After the music started, I noticed that we were near (but not directly next) to a person whom has allegedly done some rather un-Christian things*. I started to get distracted by his presence, then that still small voice pointed out, "Let me worry about him, you pay attention to me".

It's easy for me to get distracted at worship. I'll worry about my pager, or the next blog entry, or the headache that hasn't quite faded from the week before. I spent almost an entire Michael W. Smith/Max Lucado/Third Day concert worried about how I wasn't feeling all that much. I tend to emotionally think of worshi p as something for me.

But it's not. It's about praising God. I might be more comfortable with singing Christian rock, while my grandparents and their church needed the 75 year old hymn books in order to be comfortable. I can't stand a tie, the older generation can't stand going without. Some need to be formal, some need to be "even more undignified than this".

The key to it all is that point that I had to be reminded about yet again. The point of worship is that it's about praising God. It's about raising our voice to Him, to point out Him and to lessen ourselves. We can't think of ourselves in the process.

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* No, no more details than that. It wasn't gossip, but any more information would be telling too much. Sorry.