A Letter To My Representatives

Dear Congressman/Senator Bishop/Hatch/Lee,

I am the Assistant Director of Nursing at an ICF/MR in Ogden. We house 83 individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities who require long-term training and care. Every resident in our facility depends on Medicaid for his or her stay here. Our 100 employees depend on Medicaid for their paychecks. The current budget discussions happening in Washington are very concerning to me because of the focus some of the proposals place on reductions in healthcare expenditures. Reducing Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement will place our residents, staff, and community in greater danger of losing jobs and livelihood.

I have a difficult time understanding how making deep cuts to Medicaid, WIC, Head Start, and so forth will do anything to alleviate our nation's real and long-term problems. It's true that our country's health-care costs are out of control, but focusing on who pays the bills is only treating a symptom. We will place in jeopardy the futures of children, elderly and the disabled. What we really need instead is a long-term solution to rising health care costs, so that Medicare and Medicaid expenditures will be reduced along with costs for those on private insurance plans. This problem, I believe, is not being addressed at the national political level where the dialogue appears much more focused on punishing those of the opposite party and fixing short-term problems which are much more about next year's election than they are about solving our health care crisis. This includes attempts to repeal the ACA not because of its provisions, but because of who passed it. This includes budget proposals which don't include revenue increases or cuts to defense expenditures.

I know that we rely on private markets to solve many problems, but healthcare is anything but an open market. Open and functional markets allow consumers to make informed choices. We need real action at the provider and insurance levels to give consumers more information. We need to cut bureaucracy and ensure greater transparency. If every provider and insurance company were required to publicly disclose their charges and reimbursement for the most common procedures, for example, this would allow for greater competition. Don't punish the least powerful citizens of this state for the dysfunction of the most powerful.

I realize that the current political climate appears to punish Republicans with the ability to moderate their rhetoric and appeal to voters on both sides of the aisle. Please know that there are many Utahns like myself with mixed views who are happy to vote for moderate Republicans and happy to influence our friends and family to do the same.

Respectfully,

Jordan Johnsen

Birthday wishes

I debated for a while about whether to post anything today. I can't think of anything really to say. I guess what I'm feeling today is the awful transition from missing what was to missing what could have been. I'm so used to thinking about the brief time I had with my son and how much I miss him as a baby that I haven't given much thought to what he would have been like as a child. I can't believe we just reached his seventh birthday. It feels like time is just flying by.

I have tried to remember him the best I know how, which is usually in private thoughts. Clara will flash a smile and look just like one of Caleb's pictures, or I'll suddenly realize how much time has gone by and look at other people's kids and think, Caleb would be that big by now. I don't feel angry exactly, or cheated, just...I don't know, I guess I'm just wondering today what it would be like to talk with him and hear his little voice talking back to me. I wonder what it would be like to come home and have four little angels excited to see me. I wonder what it would be like to be guiding a little boy through first grade. I was thinking today about reading books and imagined Caleb sitting beside me on the couch reading to me and the image was so clear, and all the sudden I was back in reality and feeling a little emptier than before.

Caleb's legacy for me is alive in how I treat my other children, in the little extra effort I try to make (often unsuccessfully) to be a little gentler with them than I feel like I am capable of, in deciding (not often enough) that I really do have time to chase or play superheroes or tell stories, in extra hard and extra long squeezes and kisses on the cheek and eating of tummies. And yet, every time I go to his grave I feel like I need to apologize for not quite being the dad I know I am capable of, for hoping that I will be with him again but having doubts about my capacity to reach the place where he is.

Caleb, you changed me completely. I love you and I miss you and I hope you are busy where you are but not too busy to look down on me sometimes and give me a little push to be better, and happier, and more content to make the most of the few precious moments I have to share on earth with the wonderful gifts God has given me.

Service

I like the warm glow of service rendered. There's something about imagining someone unexpectedly finding an act of kindness that makes me feel warm and glowy and service-renderful. When I was a teenager and received my patriarchal blessing, it basically told me to dedicate my life to be one of service toward my Savior and to my fellow man. Let me tell you how excited I was as a 16-year-old full of himself to hear that line (I was not, by the way, excited). I remember specifically thinking that I wasn't, for example, going to become a nurse or something.

I see things differently now. I've had enough experiences with service to know that it is one of my life's greatest blessings. For example, a couple of my favorite things to do are cleaning snow off other people's cars and taking garbage cans to the curb. I liked thinking that my neighbor would credit his wife for getting the can out in time (and she would credit him). It didn't take long to get caught, but I still do it most weeks and I take the kids along. We call it "sneak attack" and we work our way to the garbage cans using cars for cover. It's a lot of fun.

I started cleaning cars off five years ago when I was a CNA. I had coworkers who did not own car scrapers and I would go out on my lunch break and clean cars off in the parking lot. It's not something you can do anonymously for very long, but that first little while before someone finds you out is very enjoyable because you picture everyone coming out to their cars and wondering who did that little act of service.

Last night was our adult session of stake conference, and we came outside to find that a lot of snow had fallen (and was still falling). I cleaned off a couple cars while Alison waited in the van, and when I came back to take her home she invited me to stay a while longer to indulge myself. I cleaned off a bunch of cars and we went home.

When I got to the priesthood leadership meeting this morning (I was playing the organ) a counselor in the stake presidency remarked that his car had been cleaned off when he came out last night, and told the man who had been parked next to him to thank his wife on his behalf. Mission accomplished.