An Early Morning

This morning began early, really early. I continue to be amazed that God is allowing me to actually DO what my heart desires and yearns to do. Medicine continues to surprise me and my own reactions to the things that happen around me are no exception.

I walked in on a code blue yesterday in the operating room and I was taken aback by the fact that I didn't panic, I didn't feel emotionally distraught, I simply stood there amazed. I watched as they worked to save a man's life and I was intrigued by what the doctors and nurses were doing. I wanted to learn from the experience, store it away in case I ever found myself in a similar situation. A surgeon I've been following did an emergency procedure to secure an airway and I felt respect for his steady hand and his skill. This morning, the man is alive. His prognosis isn't good but I know who's really in charge and the end game is up to Him.

It is beginning to occur to me that medical school, as a process, works. Several years ago in that code situation I would have found myself in a panic. My mind is starting to see things in a new light and part of me wonders if that means that I care less about the emotional nature of certain situations. Is this a self-preserving process, this almost mechanical detachment or retreat, at moments, into another part of the brain? I'm not sure but for some reason I think I'm starting to feel a small taste of confidence and oddly, with it comes an even stronger desire to lean more on the great Physician. I find myself in awe of God and His ability to train and equip a person for their calling. He promises that He will complete the good works that He begins in each of us and I'm excited to continually be molded and shaped into what He has for me to become.

He Comes

He comes and I will wait
There is no minute, no hour
He comes and is not late
All time is in His power

He comes and I am still
His breath upon my face
He comes and brings His will
My pulse begins to race

He comes and I am weak
My lips can taste His gift
He comes, my heart to seek
My will begins to shift

He comes, I feel the heat
He fills me with His light
He comes, I am complete
My Beloved in the night

The Pursuit

I tried to chase the sunset
Horizon long before me

The sun knelt

I reached farther, faster, stretched
Breathless

I tried to catch the last rays
Pounding pulse of the day
Threads of light strained
My hands open, grasping, willing
Breathless

I tried to bargain the beauty
Ecstasy, the glows final gasp
Pursuit of the last flash
My arms wide, aching, shaking
Breathless

I tried to follow the limit
The dwindling end of day
Fearful, the silent cease
Until I saw the sunrise
Breathless

Chinese Proverb Say. . .

I was at dinner the other night with a good friend of mine. We met in my divorce recovery class about a year ago and since then we've kept in touch via Face book and e-mail. While at dinner in this fantastic Chinese restaurant, we talked about how much we've both grown in the last year and where we've both sort of been stagnant. Over beef with broccoli and steamed rice, I came to the realization that it's time I got angry about what happened to me.

I've been battling this for a long, long time. The difference between anger and hatred, the fear that comes with realizing that this kind of emotion is something I've never really felt before, and the reservations I have about how necessary this is to my healing are concepts I've both mulled over and avoided. What really is anger and what does scripture say about its role in our lives?

I know that we're told not to sin in our anger. It's interesting to me that God doesn't say "If you happen to get angry". No where are we commanded to not get angry and I can't find anything that says that anger in and of itself is a sin. We're definitely encouraged to forgive, but does forgiveness mean that you don't feel mad anymore? All things I intend on exploring in the coming days and weeks.

As we ate, we talked about how being abandoned by your spouse lets fear into your life. For a while I've been afraid that the brokenness I've felt has made me unworthy of being blessed with beauty in my life. I've made mistakes in the last year and a half and God has blessed me all along the way but there have been times when I've wondered if I really deserve His blessings, as if somehow I'm now tainted or shamed into some form of second class citizenry in His eyes. Common sense tells me that's not true but the heart is a world all of its own.

While I sipped my Jasmine tea, I realized that these feelings come from a desire to shoulder all of the responsibility of my divorce. While I know it's impossible that there isn't SOME part of this that is somehow my fault, I took my portion too far and decided to take total responsibility. There are still no explanations for my ex-husbands decision to leave me. However, just like science still doesn't completely comprehend the role an individual gene plays in determining exactly how a person will look, I may never comprehend my role in my divorce. That makes me no less or more responsible and, in God's eyes, no less or more a child of His.

The fortune cookies came and I carefully eyed the small black tray with the bill on it. Feeling that it was a good metaphorical representation of how I still feel inside, I reached over and picked up the one that was broken and smashed. I popped open the wrapper and picked out the cookie, shard by shard. Per my own tradition I saved reading the fortune for last and when I pulled it out, the paper felt unusually thick. To my surprise, there were twelve fortunes inside that one broken cookie! As we read each and every one of them, my friend and I threw our heads back and laughed at the irony of it all. It's just like God to pack a lot of great blessings into something broken and less than ideal. The value of a person rests in His eyes and it cannot be diminished by our circumstances or our mistakes. THAT is more than just good fortune-it's His grace. . . and I'm grateful.

Stethescopes and Monkey Wrenches

The mechanic and the doctor have a lot in common. I drove my car to the Ford dealership yesterday because it has been acting kind of "funny". I parked, walked inside, and approached the man at the counter. He asked me, "What brings you in to see us today?". I told him my car had been acting strangely and he said, "Tell me more about that". After we discussed the various sounds and went through how long it had been acting this way, how consistently, where the sounds were coming from, how it handled certain situations, etc, he said "We'll get someone to take a look at it and run a diagnostic. We should have something to tell you in a few hours." Shaking my head in confusion, I went and sat down in the customer lounge with a strange and familiar feeling.

I despise dealing with my car. When it doesn't work properly, I just want someone to fix it. Don't explain to me how it works, why it doesn't seem to be working right now, or try to convince me that I need a different vehicle. Just fix it and fix it now. I wonder how many patients feel that way when they come to the doctor's office. They don't really want to know why they're sick, they just want the cure and the sooner, the better. Of course, I've never heard a doctor trying to convince a patient that they needed a new body but maybe that's something for the future. I can hear it now "Ms. X, you really should think about that heart transplant because, at this rate, replacing your heart just might get you another ten years on your current liver (Wink, nudge)".

Each of us can find a connection to other people through our careers. And some of us even enjoy being on the other side of our jobs from time to time. I know that I enjoy sitting back and being the patient. When I go the doctor, I don't tell them that I'm a medical student unless I'm asked directly. Some people just don't get that. "Why not?" they ask. It's simple. I find a comfort in letting someone take care of me and take the wheel for a little bit. It's a relief not to think about what I should do for myself or the mechanism behind my aches and pains. And who wants to be quizzed about the top bacterial causes of sinusitis when you're suffering from your own sniffles?

When the mechanic was done, he promptly reminded me that there's another thing the auto shop and the doctor's office have in common. After his diagnosis and treatment recommendations, he turned to me and said, "That'll be $100."

Suddenly, I felt nauseous.

Time

Time. It's a mysterious and frightening thing. As a species, we've given it life. We mark it out in seconds, months, millennia. We say it marches on, stands still, flies and even loops back onto itself. We've given it a face (father time), say that it laughs at us, and even has a memory. There have been books about it, movies made to explore its nature and its temperament, poems composed in honor of it's faithfulness and consistency.

The bible begins with a discussion of time, giving humanity a place to start, and it concludes with an extensive look at time's end. For such a widely discussed and explored concept, we still seem to know very little and we continue to be surprised by the multitude of ways that time can cause us trouble, joy, and catch us off balance. I've been thinking a lot about time lately.

None of us know how much time we've each been allotted. Some of us have a good idea that we may have less than others but, of course, only God knows for sure. I was in clinic yesterday with an eight year old boy and we were waiting for the attending physician to come back. There is an interactive activity center on the wall with the moon that you can make orbit the Earth and a space ship that you can turn so that it faces other planets in the solar system. When you turn the ship towards a planet, an opening in the bottom of the ship tells you how many days are in a year on that particular planet and how far it is from the sun. The boy started reading the numbers and asking me to help him figure out how long it would take to get to certain planets if you started from the sun. He pulled out some chalk and I got out my phone so we could use the calculator on it. Writing on the chalk board, we figured that it would take about 55 years to drive from the sun to the Earth if you went 210 miles per hour for 24 hours a day/ 365 days a year. We did the calculation for other planets and it dawned on me that no matter what planet we did the calculation for, we were still measuring by Earth time. He asked me, "If we moved to Venus, do you think we'd still care about our birthday's?" That question took me by surprise. I thought about that for a long, long time.

Tai Chi

For the last week, every morning when I leave for the hospital, there's an Asian man standing in the grass by the shelter doing tai chi. His clothing is simple: a rumpled khaki button down shirt and shorts. Most mornings there's a little mist coming off of the pond and the silence, combined with the mist and the green surroundings, is almost too real to be in front of me and not on the pages of a book or the big screen. For a few moments I'm not in Columbia, Missouri. He moves, slowly and confidently, his arms making shapes that flow from one form to the next with liquid precision. I'm transfixed, amazed, transported. And it's not that he seems so out of place that freezes me in my tracks. It's his focus.

I'd give anything to have focus like that. In the midst of a living, breathing city where thousands are waking, fixing their breakfast, brushing their teeth, this man seems so calm, so quiet. Imagine if we could all adopt that kind of focus in the midst of a million things to do by five o'clock. The only place I can think of where I've felt anything close to what I see in this man is in my prayer time. When I'm listening to God, the world could fall apart and I'm pretty confident I wouldn't notice until I said got up off my knees. Does that mean that those times when I feel so unfocused, so strewn about in my day to day activities, I'm actually stepping away from the throne? Is it possible that our focus shifts from the King of Kings to our surroundings and that's why we all feel so stressed?

I don't know if this man is a Christian. I don't know what he hears during this time each day. Does he hear God? Does he hear nature? Does he focus on his own heartbeat or the movement of his chest in and out as he breaths? Who knows. I should probably ask. I know that the Lord would have me ask myself why it is that there are times when I allow my own heartbeat to drown out His voice as He beckons me to His feet. The real question is, with this awareness, do I focus on Jesus as He says "Come" or the distracting lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub of my life?

The Call

There comes a time when we all must decide what's important and what's not. Am I going to worry about how someone else might feel just because I've come to the conclusion that devoting myself to this daily calling is more important than anything else? Why don't people understand that when God calls, you have NO choice but to answer? And it's not like I feel forced. There's a place in my soul that says "YES! Yes God, I'll make this calling my breath and sustenance and trust You for EVERYTHING else."

How do I describe this? What's the best way to explain to the world just how I feel about becoming a doctor? Being obedient to God and answering His call is like inhaling for the first time. When that voice comes to you in the stillness of your soul, every nerve in your body tingles to life and your own voice bucks at the opportunity to escape your lips and say "Here am I!". I can only imagine how the prophet Samuel felt as a child in the temple when God called his name in the dark. It must have been magnificent and humbling and frightening and filling all at the same time.

I feel so free! I feel so wealthy! And yet, I know right down to my toes that I have nothing of my own. I'll take THIS servitude over being indebted to anything or anyone else any day. In Christ I'm the freest servant, the wealthiest debtor, and the greatest of His least. I'd gladly prostrate myself before the King for all eternity because I know, in the end, He lifts your head and the chance to look in His eyes is worth a billion lifetimes of servitude.

What's the good news? Heaven isn't even like that. We're told we get to rule by Christ's side as co-inheritors of eternity. I can't even fathom! If we're wealthy now with empty hands lifted in praise, can you imagine the riches of heaven when we can lay our crowns at His feet? There is no end to the wealth of His love. There is no "You are Here" star that marks where we are in His favor. It just IS. He just IS. And the call to serve is so strong, so powerful. It reverberates down my spine and shakes me to my core. What's left when the smoke clears? My heart. And it's full. So full.

Thoughts on Paul

God doesn't always wait for us to change. Just like Paul, sometimes he splits the ground, blinds us, and forces us to look at our own souls in a way that shakes us to the core. I've been thinking about Paul lately. He was traveling the road to Damascus. He was one of the biggest persecutors of Christians of his time. He had spent his life thus far seeking the blood of the followers of Christ and trying to punch holes in the gospel. It makes me wonder why, if God knew He would eventually turn Paul's heart towards Him, why didn't He do it in the beginning of Paul's life? Why didn't He take young Paul and impact him early? The only thing I can come up with is that He wanted Paul's testimony to be BIG. An early personal encounter with God would have given Paul more years of closeness with God but it wouldn't have allowed one of the greatest testimonies of all time to be born. Paul HAD to spend that time in the dark so that when the light hit him, he would be blinded by the truth of it and those around him would know that something amazing had happened.

There is a darkness inside all of us. We've all traveled the road to Damascus. We've all spent time sitting on the mountaintop, listening as that seductive voice says "I'll give you all that you see and more." Many of us have chosen to look inside and see what God would have us change rather than look at the riches below that comprise the empty promises of the enemy. Some chose to believe the lie that this world can give us all that we want and more. I encourage you to pray today for those who are basking in a false sense of wealth. Those who chose to think that just because they are "good" or "try" that means that they have surrendered. Like Paul, we all need to be shaken, blinded, and shown the truth. It's not always pleasant but in the end we wind up with a testimony that will move the masses towards God. That's the point, right?

A New Pandemic: Be Aware and DON'T Wash Your Hands

There's a pandemic sweeping the globe and the media doesn't seem to be talking about it too much. I'm actually surprised given the fact that US media can smell blood a thousand miles away and they will do anything to make a mountain out of a mole hill - but I suppose they also make mole hills out of mountains. . .

Apparently this infection has a latent phase of months to years and, at this point, there's no way to test for exposure. No one is sure how it's transmitted. Experts aren't sure if it spreads through the air or via direct physical contact. Some suggest that perhaps even SEEING a case of this disease may be enough to start the physiologic processes that predispose an individual to developing a full blown infection. No age is spared. No socioeconomic class is immune. There is no vaccine. No one is even certain that having the infection will protect you from further outbreaks.

And the kicker is, this isn't new. This disease has been around since the beginning of time. It's probably wiped out more people than HIV or cancer. It affects every organ system in the body and it particularly targets the central nervous system. Signs and symptoms include personality change, mania, antisocial behavior, increased basal body temperature, vasodilation, blood loss, insomnia, diaphporesis, tachypnia, tachycardia, shock, coma, and in some cases, even death. Each person may present differently and sometimes diagnosis is difficult to make. Post infectious states for some survivors are characterized by weight loss, depression, anxiety, somnolence, more insomnia, and feelings of hopelessness while others may experience an improvement in their productivity, increased blood flow to core organ systems, and increased basal metabolic functioning.

It's hard to say what will happen as this infection wreaks havoc on the world. It even reared it's head in Atlanta yesterday and that's not the first time the US has seen an outbreak. A couple hundred years ago it killed thousands upon thousands of Americans. Don't get me wrong, I don't think this disease is a bad thing at all. Would I cure it if I knew how? No, and trust me, some people have tried. It takes a hold of a person and either forces them to give up or become more than they ever thought possible. You might have even heard of it. It's called Freedom.

Untitled

I asked an Echo "Where is your voice?"
And it replied to me in same
I said to the Echo "I am Erica"
And found we shared a name.

I sought out the Echo "Where are you from?"
And it looked for for my source too
I sat in silence with the Echo
And found myself with You.

M&Ms. . . and bleeding?

Have you ever tried to really savor the flavor of something but each time you do, you find yourself just crunching right through it and each time you swallow, you curse yourself again for not being able to just let it melt in your mouth? I'm eating Peanut M & Ms right now and for the last 6 or 7 pieces, I just can't seem to let it sit in my mouth until I get to the peanut. I only have two left (a Fun-Sized pack) and I really want to get to the peanut on at least one of these darn things before they're all gone! Why? So I can taste all three layers. . . candy coating, chocolate, peanut AND experience all of the individual stages that come with that. You know, candy coating and chocolate, chocolate and peanut, chocolate, peanut, candy coating. There are a lot of things in life like that. All those stages of a job - being the new person, being the middle man on the totem pole, being the boss. Now, some people just want to be the boss and some people are happy being the new guy all the time which is why they never stay with a job long enough to know their co-workers middle name. I'm working on savoring each stage in life, each experience, painful or pleasurable. It's all a part of humanity I guess. Sometimes I really hate being human. It's hard to want all of those good things in life and know, deep down, that you dread the difficult things. And at the same time, I've grown to kind of enjoy the difficult and uncomfortable, when it comes. I DON'T go looking for it, OH NO. I'd be perfectly happy if I never had to experience loss, sickness, loneliness, anger, brokenness, fear. But it's there.

I wonder if Jesus, in His perfect human existence, ever cut his hand while working at his carpentry and sat there saying to himself "This is pain. Remember this." I mean, we all know that He eventually suffered the cross and we can't even fathom that amount of spiritual, emotional, and physical pain. We live a reflection of the cross in our own suffering but we'll never know what His experience was like and, no doubt, He knew that. So, when He stubbed His toe or felt exhaustion, did He stop and think "This is what they feel. This is frustration, impatience, clumsiness." Maybe, maybe not. But we do know that He had the patience and fortitude to live His life knowing what was coming. Maybe we don't know our futures because we wouldn't have the patience to wait for the good things and the strength to stand firm while waiting for the storm.

Hmm. . . there's that peanut. AND it has that paper thin sheath around it that peanuts sometimes have. I didn't expect that.

What IS beautiful?

Loaded in that question are many interpretations. First, one could ask "What does beautiful mean?" There is also "What makes something beautiful?" or "What things are beautiful?" According to the dictionary, as a adjective, beautiful is:

1. having beauty; having qualities that give great pleasure or satisfaction to see, hear, think about, etc.; delighting the senses or mind: a beautiful dress; a beautiful speech.
2. excellent of its kind: a beautiful putt on the seventh hole; The chef served us a beautiful roast of beef.
3. wonderful; very pleasing or satisfying.

Everyone wonders, at some point or another, about their own definition of beauty. It seems society has standards for beauty that change by the moment. I prefer to ignore those as it seems silly to me that standards so fleeting are so highly valued by the masses. That does not mean that there aren't SOME aspects of current pop culture that I find highly attractive to say the least. I'm certain I'm not alone and that most men and women could say the same. In fact, a female friend and I were having a conversation about admiration the other day. It's unavoidable that we notice those things, people, or places that give us pleasure to think about, hear, taste, smell, feel, or look at. A soft blanket, a burning candle, the woodsy taste of chamomile tea, Debussy, that warm feeling in the morning when your sheets are a PART of your skin and your eyelids are rose petals that seem to flutter on their own. These things, and so much more, are beautiful to me.

Of course, we all question our own beauty too. Now I say this, not because I feel that we are all inherently vain but, because I think we all desire to give pleasure or satisfaction; to be excellent of our own kind; to be very pleasing. It's human nature to want to be such for others. To be considered an "excellent specimen" of human being is an honor that people strive for all of their lives. Not just physically, of course, but intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. All of those things draw people in whether they realize it or not.

If it was all about seeing, then the occipital lobe of our brain would be bigger and centrally located. Sight is almost completely compartmentalized from the other senses. You can't smell or taste, either in their entirety, one without the other. You can't experience sound as God meant for you to without being able to experience vibration on some minute, tactile level. That information in itself tells me a little bit about what God values as important, and, in a sense, what WE should value. Still, we are creatures of habit and we don't exactly walk around tasting and touching each other. . .

Relief

A bird has decided to live on top of my car. Every morning when I go out to my car, a Robbin is perched on the hood, the door, the trunk. Why a bird decided to spend it's mornings perched on my car, I don't know. I can't answer that question any more than I actually get into the head of my fellow man, as tempting as that sounds and as much as I would really LOVE to. I think it would be great to sit inside someone else's psyche for a few minuets and find out if my mind and their mind work anything alike. Do other people feel giddy about their life's calling? Do others imagine that they are a superhero when they get stuck in traffic or wonder when they're paused at a stoplight what conversations take place at this intersection every day when other cars are stopped here? Who knows?

Now that I've started to FEEL things again, I'm surprised by the emotions that I find myself experiencing about certain situations that probably would have left me numb before. Annoyance at a six hour surgery yesterday that barely allowed me, or the other student, the opportunity to see anything or LEARN anything, for that matter. Contentment with being by myself for the remainder of the day yesterday. And, dare I say it, optimism, for the future. I'm also afraid of some of the other emotions I've been feeling lately. Especially certain times when I allow myself to dream, briefly, about the possibilities that await each new day. I've been asking God to be my filter for some of these "scary" feelings and I pray desperately that if I start to head in a direction that is self serving or outside of His will that He will change how I feel. I trust that He can do that. I mean, if God can turn the hearts of man towards Himself, then He can certainly change the heart of one woman, one who's willing, no less, towards His will and make His desires for her life clear. And then I feel relief, which is another one I haven't felt in forever.

Doubt

So I watched the movie Doubt today and I must say, it was really thought provoking. I was left with a sense of amazement at my own preconceived notions of the world, people, and how things fall together. I was on the phone with a friend a few days ago. I trust this friend and he has amazing foresight. At one point in the conversation he said "Don't be surprised if. . . oh, I won't even go there" and then he trailed off. Now, the subject matter of this conversation was sensitive to say the least and I could have been left filling in the rest of that sentence with whatever my muddled mind would like to hear. "Don't be surprised if you win the lottery. Don't be surprised if the sky falls. Don't be surprised if you find out that you really do love this life, after all." But instead, I'm left with a blank. I didn't ask him to finish his sentence and frankly, I don't care what he would have put in that space between the dots. It was interesting to think about what I would put there if I wanted to.

Another thing, now that I've started this blog, I've started to think about just how much of my half eaten soul I want to bear here. I've decided to try and put very few filters on and I know that may come at a price. Maybe someone will read something they don't agree with and decide to be mad at me. Maybe I'll write something that I wish I hadn't. Either way, it's safer this way than a dozen conversations. The spoken word is immortal. People remember what you say and they rarely forget, especially if it's something that causes them discomfort. The written word can be erased. Maybe I write something and a few days later decide that I shouldn't have. I can just go back and erase it like it never happened. Maybe you read it, maybe you didn't. If you did, there may not be any evidence later that the sentence you didn't like read as such, it really won't matter and we can all just be in denial. I've almost decided that blogging has come about because we don't write each other long, drawn out letters anymore. Our lives are filled with text, cell phones, and quick e-mails. People need the blank stare of a page that doesn't talk back to them. Our voices are different in the written form. There are less immediate filters, more freedom, less permanence. We can write a letter to many people at one time, share our souls, and still have time for Facebook. I think I like this, I say to myself. I think I'll keep it. Maybe I'll finally get around to telling the world that I. . .

What's up with this life?

Just when you think you have it figured out, you know, a pattern has developed that you're used to. Maybe you've been sad all the time for some reason and you finally get into a groove where you're used to it and there aren't any surprises except the varying degrees of dark blue, black, and brown that make up your life. You get used to holding you're breath for fear that you'll burst into tears. Then, BAM, something happens, maybe something small and suddenly you remember what it was like to FEEL something, really feel something.

I don't know how long it has been since I've smiled a smile that came from within. You know, one of those smiles that starts somewhere other than your face and before you know it, it's on your lips and you didn't have to THINK about putting it there. It happened yesterday and at first I was scared. It's like it was the straw that broke the camel's back. I have been feeling so down and depressed lately and I was thinking at first that I'd regressed in the last month but now I see that I was actually taking some steps towards becoming human agian. Some tension was building right before this little break through and even if the reason for my little moment of happiness turns out to be different than what I thought, at least I can feel again. At least I can breath.