Lucille Yuen

The job of “mattress tester” used to be a joke, meaning that if someone said that was what they did for a living, they were putting you on about what they actually did or were tongue-in-cheek “lazy.”

Well, meet two actual “mattress testers” — hubby and me; and we never WORKED so hard! Our broken down mattress had become unbearable, with us waking up every day with aches and pain, which is a sure sign we had waited too long.

We’d long tolerated sleeping on our hammock-dented mattress, and I had reached the point where I would not stand for it any more. Too bad it had to get to this point before hubby would give in. His neck and lower back hurt every day, too, but he’d been taught some exercises by his internist that would stretch the pain out, so he was willing to do them, and let it be. I, on the other hand, could plainly see that people aren’t supposed to wake up in pain and have to exercise to get over sleeping!

Money was a major factor in putting off buying a bed, but since the store allowed a year to pay the bill without interest, I knew I could save enough to pay it off before we got into trouble.

Oh, we researched mattresses like our lives depended upon it. And to tell the truth, buying a mattress that would serve properly, was paramount. Our quality of sleep depended upon it, our short and long range health depended upon it. People are supposed to change out their mattress sets within 8-10 years, max. I say, if you need to change sooner, do it!

We lay down on several types each of Thermapeutic, Sleep Number, Denver Mattress, Sealy, Serta, Sterns and Foster and Simmons mattresses to exhaustion! By the time we were finished with the last mattress set on the last day of testing, we knew each mattress INTIMATELY! Whew! You are supposed to lay down at least 15 minutes to get a real feel for a mattress. Of course, the mattress you are resting on may have had 100’s of people on it before you, so it’s probably going to be firmer when you get it for real. But that’s ok.

We’d tried mattresses from $4,000 (Thermapeutic) to $750.00, and then bought the best buy for us. It is NOT a pillow top, which type nearly killed us before because the depth of pillow on our Sterns and Foster turned out to be TOO soft. I was talking to someone at my physical therapy session…yes, my doctor sent me to physical therapy for my back…and she pointed out that the deep pillow tops will become lumpy in time, and you can’t take them off to redistribute their stuffing. Yep, don’t I know it! Better to buy a topper and put it over a less densely padded mattress and replace it when it gives up the ghost.

Coils, coils! It’s not so much the number as the way they are configured within the mattress for support, but there needs to be at least 375 of them. The density and the way they are linked or not are important, as well. Then there are the layers of cushioning over the spring system, and what those layers are comprised of.

The nice thing about the Sleep Number bed was that ostensibly, you can adjust the mattress under you to a firmness that suits you, which can indeed be different from your spouse’s comfort needs. They were a little over $1,000, but the company doesn’t have sales and any return is your financial responsibility to a tune of around $250.

Goldilocks should have kissed those bears for only having to try THREE beds before settling down. She was spared a lot. WE, on the other hand, conducted a marathon of bed testing over a couple of weeks that included 6 stores, asking questions about the differences between one model to another, warranties and qualifying factors, return policies and obligations, viewing the cutaways for mattresses and box springs, discounts and totals, after of course, lying down on everything!

I sure hope this mattress works.

Remember when you were in grade school and the kids in class brought valentines to share with one another? It was always a wonderful, festive time that allowed kids to remember one another and take home a lot of brightly colored mementos of a fun time.

Well, yesterday on Valentine’s Day, my kids sent me Valentines in the form of floral bouquets to tell me they love me and want me to get well. Imagine my surprise and the sweetness I felt settle upon my heart when I opened the cards and realized their thoughtfulness!

One cannot appreciate how much flowers mean when one is recuperating until you are fighting for wellness yourself. The little kindness of one of my visitors from church of just a little votive candle and her taking time to visit assured me she cared for me and was very uplifting. Every card tells you someone cares and helps your morale.

It’s like a cheer team encouraging you along to get strong and become well again, and I am so grateful for them all.

My family has concerns and demanding schedules of their own, yet they took time to demonstrate their love. I am blessed to have these kids as my own.

Two of my sisters in California sent emails to say they were glad I was doing better, too. I hadn’t heard from one in quite some time. That was very nice and encouraging, as well!

Receiving mercy often teaches one how to give mercy, and I am glad to have learned how better to show it. Mercy is not strained, it flows easily from gratitude for mercy experienced.

Today is Valentine’s Day and I have the perfect valentine in my husband, the man whose heart has loved and kept me for 43 years. Today when I went downstairs to breakfast, I found a gift bag with an envelope purse in it and the best card a woman could ever want. I had been looking for an envelope purse because they lay flat and are fairly inconspicuous. My dear friend, Carolyn, says it well when she says she keeps her personal possessions on her body when she goes out, because as she has aged, she finds it easy to forget her purse, sunglasses, etc. if she lays them down. Slinging an envelope purse across your body assures that your purse and your belongings stay with you.

It wasn’t necessary, but it was so like my San to do something that he knew would mean so much to me. This week has been a messy one, with me going in to have a cystoscopy done on my left bladder that turned difficult. No one could have anticipated that it would mean that the doctor would find a growth in the ureter on the right side and that by excising and cauterizing it, that the ureter’s membrane would have thinned too much and that urine would leak around my kidney, causing pain and vomiting.

No one could have anticipated the wait in the emergency rooms of two hospitals that ended up with me being admitted to the hospital and another surgery to place a stent in my right urinary tract. No one could have anticipated the pain, discomfort, difficulty and disruption of our lives.

And then there was my San, with me all the way and running back and forth to the hospital and tiring himself in his compromised condition for my sake. My faithful husband, he was.

Thank God our church believes in caring for its members. The sisters of mercy of Christian Fellowship really came through for us. San does not cook, and both of us were going to need nourishing food that was palatable, inviting eating. And then there were the cards, flowers, phone calls, and hospital visits. Do I believe my church’s people really care for me? I know they do now. Yes, they do it because we believe in something—that we want to be like Jesus, but they cared about ME, too. That brings tears to my heart and eyes.

So, I love my Savior, my valentine—my dearest San, and the people who showed such kindness for their Lord’s namesake.

Happy Valentines Day, all, for today commemorates love that unselfishly gives of itself, which is true love. It’s not really the day that celebrates the flesh, but the day that reminds us of a Christian saint who showed Christ’s love so long ago when it was rare to care for people other than for personal reasons. It certainly is the day to commemorate true love of two people who will give all for the other.

I am deeply troubled to learn that you are abolishing abstinence education from Ohio’s public schools. I believe that doing this is grossly unfair to our youth. They need respect for the marriage bed reinforced, not the opposite. Practicing abstinence before marriage puts a discipline in place that affects one’s attitudes toward others, protects one’s psychological and physical health, and will help preserve one’s marital relationship later.

Marriage and the family is the bedrock of society. It is within these institutions that people have the best chance to be emotionally healthy, learn how to behave and become homogenous members of society at large. People fail the institutions, not the other way around. I believe impressionable young people should receive moral reinforcement at school for abstinence before marriage not only to protect them emotionally and physically on the personal level, but to preserve the family. Our young people will carry the torch as adults from the past into the future. What they do with marriage and family will either tend to preserve their local communities and more broadly, keep the nation or not. Sexual abstinence is about self control, respect for others in relationships and responsible provision for the product of sexual union. Truthfully, our young people need to learn about that more than ever. There are many forces pulling at them today that are confusing, that are indeed sometimes even counter-productive and damaging.

Therefore, I believe measures you have initiated to dismantle abstinence education since taking office do not serve Ohio’s public school students well. In fact, it is a travesty for our children and for the future of Ohio, and I urge you to restore funding for Abstinence Education to encourage the important, truthful message that avoiding casual sex is the only sure way to avoid the physical and emotional risks associated with irresponsible behavior.

Yesterday I had a longing to get some ‘50s vintage music for my birthday party on Saturday, so hubby and I perused the music at Barnes and Noble, Best Buy and then at Circuit City.

The really nice thing about Barnes and Noble is that you can listen to the selections you are considering buying. Yeah, but, their music selections are expensive. Yet, I decided that it was worth it to see what they had. Great choices—especially the album of three discs with the top singers of the ‘50s era. Not the rock ‘n roll singers, but notables like Louis Armstrong, Rosemary Clooney, Perry Como, Doris Day, Peggy Lee, Jonny Mathis, Dean Martin, et al. Top artists with top songs—listenable music with words you can understand, and clean sentiments. I mean, the album even has “The Glow Worm.” What’s that? I barely remember the name. Well, I now own this album, which cost with a discount $48.03, which I refused to buy right away. Sticker shock.

We decided to go to Best Buy, which wouldn’t let you listen to anything and wouldn’t let you return it if it was a lemon. Oh, you can go online and listen to facsimiles, but I had bought a “Fabulous ‘50s” CD at Wal-Mart the day before for $7.00, and after I got it home and played it, it put off a kind of tinny or echo-ey sound. Was planning to return it, and didn’t want to make the same mistake at any other store—especially if they don’t let you return it (because they know about sneaky people who download their CDs and get their money back, leaving the store with a used CD they can’t sell).

Decided to visit Circuit City. They had CDs by Madacy with UV22 applied technology so that their recordings will “retain virtually all the detail of the high-resolution source, preserving the sound-stage and tonal balance of the original, without the need for a special decoder.” Sounded like a winner, so I bought “Happy Days ‘50s and ‘60s.” I wanted recordings of the rock ‘n roll I remembered from my teen years, and this one had actually been advertised on TV a while back (which I remembered, but refused to consider buying because they were expensive then). Still the CD was almost $14.00. It didn’t have some of the funny songs that another Madacy recording had, so I bought that one, too—$6.99. Ok, so now I have all these ‘50s songs, from rock to pop. How do I feel after behaving in such a gluttonous way? I’m as happy as a puppy that just had a bowl of warm milk! Ya know what, I plan to dance at my party Saturday, and everyone is invited to join me!

Our friends let us use their cabin near Mio, MI a couple of weeks ago. I was a bit rattled and really looked forward to a few days of retreat.

It was a four hour drive, so hubby and I listened to Kurt Eichenwald’s book, “A Conspiracy of Fools,” about the Enron scandal. Verrry interesting…

We finally arrived, and when we opened the door, we were greeted by an expansive great room with windows looking out through trees onto a rolling, verdant golf course. The whole upstairs was great room, except for the half bath and the master suite off the hallway to our right. The warm cabin-in-the-woods decor welcomed and set us at ease immediately.

Hubby had suggested we could stop by a national forest on our way in, famous for its first stand trees. Most everywhere you’ll see trees, but first stand means the original trees. Real old…and I understand that the forest floor hardly has any undergrowth or if you will, overgrowth…I noticed weeds, bushes, grasses everywhere under trees as we sped past, and thought it’d be nice to be somewhere with trees that didn’t have lots of yucky growth under them.

However, I’m glad we didn’t go there, because we were tired by the time we arrived at the cabin, and we were glad for daylight by which to acclimate ourselves to the house.

It’s a log home, but there’s nothing “cabin-y” about the place. It’s more like a lodge. The walls are all 3-D debarked log and it is a two storied affair, rustic, but expensive and a complete household. The thing I really loved was the open look onto the back area, afforded by a wall of windows. Lots of light…my favorite thing. Hubby and I sat at either of the dining tables and just read for hours. He went outside and sat on the back porch a lot. I was catching up on my Bible study and thinking and praying until I’d feel the tension from concentrating so hard, then I’d take a break and read my Ann Perry novel. Every day was absolute quiet all day. In the evenings we watched movies from their collection, which included some pretty good stuff.

Quiet, beauty, Bible study, time for thought, no responsibilities, reading for fun, good movies and good food, including some taste-bud kissing Amish strawberry rhubarb pie… Yepper, we got rested.

Thank you, Lord, for blessing our friends and for their kind hearts and generosity.

“You can use my phone card. I know you won’t be on that long,” my friend said. Our hubbies were at a getaway so remote that cell phones wouldn’t work there. I was stunned. She’d let someone other than her family use her phone card? I wouldn’t abuse her kindness, but still…

I was seeing another example of my friend’s ability to be generous. Earlier this summer, I had watched her share her “peach skin” tomatoes that we’d found at a farmer’s market. These were small, orange colored, peach-fuzzed tomatoes—sweet and non-acidic. We’d just made our purchases when three girls from our church greeted us and after a brief exchange, my friend told them about these interesting tomatoes we’d bought and offered samples to them. Interesting…

I remember other acts of mercy by a couple of other women that humbled me. The summer we moved to our current home, while hubby was gone to close the other house out of state, I got sick with the flu. I was so sick, I couldn’t lift my head off the pillow. Fortunately, we had selected a doctor before I got so sick. He phoned in a prescription to the drugstore down the street, but I couldn’t get to the store.

I had just met the neighbors on either side of us, but when the lady to our right learned I was too sick to go get the medicine, she immediately jumped on her bicycle and peddled to the pharmacy. Her car was in for repairs, but that didn’t stop her. Then later that day, she came over with delicious hot soup and rice so that our little family had something to eat. It was more than I had ever expected, and was a lesson in mercy.

The next most impactful act of kindness, because of its unexpectedness, happened last Christmas. A group of ladies who traditionally get together for lunch during the holiday, met at a tea house and exchanged gifts. I had participated in the gift exchange before, and each time, I’d draw the name of the young woman who’d always bring a cheap present. I’d always selected a very nice gift of the price level the group had agreed upon. This time, I decided I wouldn’t participate in the gift exchange. Well, the lady who’d invited me surprised me with a bottle of nice smelling lotion. Sometimes, when your heart has been through a winter, a simple act of thoughtfulness like this can change your mind about things dramatically.

Everybody’s hearts need to be treated with respect and consideration—it’s called love, folks. So often, we meet people we don’t know. They may be good people or bad, but it doesn’t matter. We may not have presence of mind to treat them as the special folks they are. We may even have to be guarded because they’ve learned to return suffering for suffering. We also take our families for granted. They are the ones we should know how to love the best, yet we may be oblivious to the hurt we cause them. People who would be friends, we forget to cultivate with love, instead we may find something they do or say irritating, and we withdraw from potential life-long friendship. How foolish is that? And how obvious is it that we may need forgiveness?

Our Precept Bible class opened this fall with a study on forgiveness. Forgiveness is love in action. I know I have to practice it. An incident with hubby, or anyone for that matter, can lead to dispiritedness and instead of nursing anger, I am reminded to choose to forgive. “Forgive?” I say to myself, then in another split second, I know that is my ONLY option. “Give me a second,” I say to myself as I get a grip and deliberately move my feelings toward “forgiveness.” Yup, and in a little while, I laugh at myself and think, “Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it? …well, yeah, it was hard. But it is nice to know in a little while, anger and the desire for vengeance can be replaced by love, obedience and peace. By His grace at work in me, I can choose God’s way—to “love one another, forgive, be kind, tenderhearted,” you know, see the other guy as loved by God and worthy. Wow. I’m making progress.

As we have delved more into the study, I have been reminded that at the heart of mercy is love. There’s the parable of the king who forgave his slave 10,000 talents in Matthew 18:23-35. There was no way that foolish servant could have paid the debt, and the consequence would have been the sale of his wife and children and himself, the break up of his family.

We looked at what was behind forgiveness of indebtedness—and that was compassion (v. 27). We are called into salvation by the God of agape love. We’ve known what it is to be truly loved, forgiven of an impossible debt of offense to the Creator and Savior of mankind, the Sovereign of the universe. We’ve known what it is to know His kindness—His work of grace in our hearts—the transformation from being sin-locked self-seekers to cleansed people capable of love, good works, and grace in our relationships. That’s big. He’s given us a changed worldview. God orientation vs. selfishness.

So when we’ve been given so much, including daily guidance for thought and circumstance, can we not give some of that back to our fellow man in emulation of our King’s mercy? And isn’t this system of values and belief worth preserving in the society in which we live and move?

Because of Jesus, I choose mercy, forgiveness and generosity to characterize my life. It helps my heart to let down and preserves my body and mind. Thank you, Lord. You did this.

You let people pass through my life to teach me by example, and You cause me to want to do likewise. You ARE worthy of praise and adoration.

You know the blown art studio glass ornaments we call Christmas ornaments? The wicca (witches) crowd is now claiming them for themselves. I suppose it’s because they are pretty to look at and catch the sunlight. They are Christmas kugels (balls), according to the German people. When these type of blown glass balls were introduced to the market, they were called Christmas ornaments. Witches are calling them wicca balls to divert attention to their demonic system, but I’ll make a point of it to call them Christmas ornaments everywhere and anytime; neither will I buy them from anyone who calls them “wicca balls.” You betcha. Witchcraft is an abomination before God.

And I won’t be the only one to claim them for Christmas, either. I will also wish people “Merry Christmas,” (with a smile) whether they think it’s vogue or not, to keep the commemoration of Christ’s coming.

We sense the change in the air, do we not? Is the younger generation ready to impact for Christ in this day of challenge? Or have the minds of those in their forties and younger been so compromised by the preaching of evolution, false gospels, the seduction of advertising and materialism, the deliberate infection of the eye and ear gates with immorality, and the constant pushing of evildoers to silence the truth of the Bible that those who must take up the standard and lead, lack the will? Well, I hope not, because there’s coming a day when all the secrets of the heart will be examined publicly in the light of righteousness. You see, we have the Bible.

Do I seem cranky? Am I “hateful” in my speech? Let me explain. There are things people are doing today that are an abomination to God. There is no real justification, only lame excuses for following the lead of sinful human inclination. My comments are founded in fear for my country’s soul and future, and for the people, individually. This nation had an awesome beginning, and we will end in infamy if we mold a society without a conscience toward Christ. He is the only Savior from sin and man’s only hope for regeneration. It saddens me to know that many are making choices that will eat them alive.

Feel free to refer others to this blog site. To comment, please push the “comment” button with your cursor, and write in the comment box and push “save comment.”