The Demotion of Emotions

  [Sometimes I'm a bit too cute in my use of rhyme and alliteration. 

Hope this title fits the topic.]

   Right now, I'm listening to "A Place of Springs", a tune by Phil Keaggy, on PANDORA... and then Billy McLaughlin, Leo Kottke, and Bruce Cockburn.  Music tends to relax me and help me to release bad emotions and focus on tasks at hand or shift my thinking to something good or beneficial.  This piece of music began the process, and will probably "do the trick."  The TV in this room is on 'The Beverly Hillbillies'.  Listening to beautiful acoustic guitar music to the backdrop of Jed, Jethro, Granny & Ellie Mae just doesn't seem to fit somehow.  But anyway, I try to block that out.  I might turn the TV off, except that I'm here with my dad in a shared room of a rehab center.

   This is a time of some stress, anxiety, confusion, bewilderment, a lot of different emotions, but many of them taxing on the body and soul.  We went from a hospital situation where dad's health and vitality were a moment-by-moment concern, to a rehab center, where many older adults with dementia also reside.  A lady keeps grabbing me

every time that I walk down the hallway, supposedly thinking that I'm her son.  I was on a phone, and she kept grabbing the phone cord and pulling on it.  Another gentleman on this wing kept calling, "Come here, Nurse!", even after the nurse had come to check on him.  This yelling persisted, he called for her more than a dozen times, so loudly that everyone on the hall could hear him. 

[These two circumstances are as much a source
of amusement as they are an annoyance.]

   Emotions run a gamut from good to bad, positive to negative, irritating to sentimental, and sometimes all of them converge to produce an effect that is overwhelming to us.

   In the midst of all of this, it is peaceful to listen to the music, and seek rest for one's soul.  And we as a family also seek that rest and peace that comes from trusting in the Lord.   The stress and distress still come back on a daily basis, but we can always find rest for our souls if we seek it in the right place.