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?