(link)
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Monday, March 18, 2013
Spring Break 2013
= so, so good.
So far, by the numbers, in exactly no order:
1 wonderful conversation with one of my lovely zees about calling, and consolation and desolation (I'm really into that), and discerning God's will when the sort of God you're talking to also literally sent a giant fish to eat a man and regurgitate him in the right place when we was intent on going to the wrong place.
3.5 pages of my nitration of vanillin and nitrovanillin lab report done.
6 CPR mannequins (plus bags of fake lungs, disinfected plastic mannequin faces, pocket masks, and all the other accouterments of CPR teaching) lugged around the campus center and properly stored after one long morning of teaching.
1 surprise paycheck that I forgot I had coming.
2 dear, godly friends with whom to share a blessed and relaxing weekend, and pray and laugh and talk about biblical womanhood. You both mean so, so much to me, more than I can write, so I pray that I can just live it.
3 chicken breasts poorly thawed but eventually cooked and served with what is really my culinary masterpiece up to this point in my life: alfredo sauce! Sort of, but it was quite experimental and thickened up nicely in some sort of roux-like fashion. My brothers would be proud (not only of the roux, but of my weekend of non-vegetarianism)!
7 text messages home trying to figure out if there's a way I qualify to not pay full price for the MCAT; that stuff is expensive! Still unclear, but at least I can try! Also, 2 incredible and patient parents who love me so fiercely and well and patiently, and who also help me out with things like taxes and making the MCAT cheaper and teaching me to fix blown fuses in cars.
150 pages of my print quota gone. Because readings and lab reports and presentations and problem sets and case studies all ought to be done to the glory of God.
2 houses of worship in which to celebrate God's goodness, find conviction, and praise God. Redeeming Eve at Epiphany, and Rejoicing Sacrifice at NCC! Amen, and thank you.
3 wonderful tromps in the slushy, sleety rain-ish precipitation. I secretly love it.
1 (but 3--no oneness theology up in here) awesome Onyame Okyankop)n Twereduamp)n Awurade Papa making it all happen.
So far, by the numbers, in exactly no order:
1 wonderful conversation with one of my lovely zees about calling, and consolation and desolation (I'm really into that), and discerning God's will when the sort of God you're talking to also literally sent a giant fish to eat a man and regurgitate him in the right place when we was intent on going to the wrong place.
3.5 pages of my nitration of vanillin and nitrovanillin lab report done.
6 CPR mannequins (plus bags of fake lungs, disinfected plastic mannequin faces, pocket masks, and all the other accouterments of CPR teaching) lugged around the campus center and properly stored after one long morning of teaching.
1 surprise paycheck that I forgot I had coming.
2 dear, godly friends with whom to share a blessed and relaxing weekend, and pray and laugh and talk about biblical womanhood. You both mean so, so much to me, more than I can write, so I pray that I can just live it.
3 chicken breasts poorly thawed but eventually cooked and served with what is really my culinary masterpiece up to this point in my life: alfredo sauce! Sort of, but it was quite experimental and thickened up nicely in some sort of roux-like fashion. My brothers would be proud (not only of the roux, but of my weekend of non-vegetarianism)!
7 text messages home trying to figure out if there's a way I qualify to not pay full price for the MCAT; that stuff is expensive! Still unclear, but at least I can try! Also, 2 incredible and patient parents who love me so fiercely and well and patiently, and who also help me out with things like taxes and making the MCAT cheaper and teaching me to fix blown fuses in cars.
150 pages of my print quota gone. Because readings and lab reports and presentations and problem sets and case studies all ought to be done to the glory of God.
2 houses of worship in which to celebrate God's goodness, find conviction, and praise God. Redeeming Eve at Epiphany, and Rejoicing Sacrifice at NCC! Amen, and thank you.
3 wonderful tromps in the slushy, sleety rain-ish precipitation. I secretly love it.
1 (but 3--no oneness theology up in here) awesome Onyame Okyankop)n Twereduamp)n Awurade Papa making it all happen.
Monday, February 25, 2013
My Deepest Fear
I was at a dinner tonight with the new 2013-14 cadre of resident advisers, and, in jest, we suggested that, to introduce ourselves, we should each share our name, field of study, hometown... and deepest fear. After one round of benign and expected "most interesting fact" introductions, we repeated the process, agreeing to share our deepest fear. So what are we afraid of? Snakes and cavities, parallel parking and sisters being in car accidents, tornadoes and lightning, elevators and getting really lost. But for the life of me, I couldn't think of anything. Like... what makes me afraid?
At the risk of sounding like an arrogant, unthoughtful, opaque brat, I said, "I'm Jessica, and I can't think of anything I'm afraid of. I'm not afraid of things." Which sounded like a huge lie. And like a huge cop-out. People started offering suggestions of things I might have forgotten--people lying to me? my mother dying? not getting a job? pain? never getting married? having my tongue slowly torn out of my mouth? something bad happening to my residents/zees? dying?--but to no avail. Not scary.
There was a time that I would have said that my greatest (and perhaps only) fear was that my four years of college would be my spiritual heyday, that everything thereafter would be a fading reminiscence of those days when I'd pray and study the Bible for an hour every morning as I sat on my bed, where I could easily think of 20 people I could call if ever I needed someone to pray for me literally at a moment's notice, where I could pace up and down the aisles after church, praying in whatever language I wanted and singing praises loudly and not caring if anyone else lingering heard me, where I could stand on the steps of the campus center and gather everyone's attention just to tell them that Jesus loved them and that I loved Jesus--and that I'd try to live off stale grace and rancid manna for the rest of my life.
But no. I've been down, and I've been up, and there's literally nothing that can separate me from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:39)--not even graduating from college. Who is my God if He cannot require more of me after I graduate than before? And who am I to fear for His lack of provision? "And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:17)!! Seriously?! Sometimes I am all giddy that those promises are for me, that that's me, the one being transformed. From glory to glory.
Which means I scratched that "fear" off the one-item list. What of these other fears?
1) People lying to me.
People do lie to me, and will continue to do so. I don't quite get what's very scary about this--maybe that we trust people, and them lying to us will breech our trust. I just had to fill out an online survey, and one of the questions was, "How many days in a typical week do you feel like people are basically good?"--to which I had to respond, in the midst of a veritable pond (there weren't enough questions for it to be a sea... so just a pond. Or maybe a small lake) of cheery responses to similar questions about my general mood, "zero." Because people are basically broken and evil, just in the process of being healed. Which means they lie. I trust people, and a lot of them (plus I'm all about giving the benefit of the doubt, and often many multiple times), but because of this, I can't take lying personally. I don't trust regular people like I trust Jesus, who is "not a man that he should lie" (Numbers 23:19a).
2) My mother dying.
I love her so much! She's wonderful, and I can't imagine what it would be like losing her. She's a humble servant of the Lord, and she loves people in such practical ways. But really, let's be honest: she's going to Heaven when she dies, so why be afraid?
3) Not getting a job.
This is the one I understood least--along with people lying to me. My job won't define me, and if I can't land a "job" per se, there will still be work to be done, since people were created in the image of a God who works (see: Genesis 1-2). Moreover, God's a provider, providing even for sparrows who "neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns" (Matthew 6).
4) Pain.
I've been in pain before. It's not fun, but it passes--and wow, there's nothing (not even morphine, as I can attest after my appendectomy) that relieves pain like singing praise. And if the pain doesn't pass, I guess ultimately I'll die of it--see point 8. This is basically irrelevant, but I have a pretty high pain tolerance, too.
5) Never getting married.
Nothing, including marriage, is promised to me. And as much as I really desire to get married, that's that.
6) Having my tongue slowly torn out of my mouth.
What I know is that when the disciples died gruesome deaths, somehow God was always exalted. So I can imagine this sort of torture happening to me, and when I do it takes the form of religious persecution. This is my spiritual heritage in a lot of ways. Paul writes (and God, let me resoundingly agree to the depths and crevices of my soul!), "I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death" (Philippians 1:21). For real! And even if not for religious persecution, but for senseless torture or political reasons or whatever, still--I would glorify God with my body.
7) Something bad happening to my zees.
This, in some ways, tied my hands, since the question was posed by one of my zees. But as much as I think about them, care about them, pray for them, fast for them--no, I'm not afraid for them. Bad things have happened and will happen to them, and though my heart has ached for them, being scared for them will do literally nothing to help them. And, though I do care about them so so much, I am no one's savior, and I can't always rescue them and protect them, or anyone else.
8) Dying.
I spent almost an hour today sobbing. Just crying--saying, Father, you need to come and fix Your world! Because You made it good, and then things fell apart. And anything that still coheres only does so because of you, Jesus! But Daddy, you have to come and fix it, and I'll work right alongside you, doing anything you want me to do, for as long as you want me to do it, and I'll praise you for it. Someday, though, my work will be over, and then--no matter the mechanism of my departure from Earth, tongue intact or not--I will have the honor of seeing You in all your glory, like Isaiah did in the year King Uzziah died (Isaiah 6)! Far from being something scary, I can't image much else that's as exciting as dying.
Is this flippant? It feels like it, because all these answers seem obvious and immediate. But no, it's not flippant. I'm serious.
One last thing I want to say is that all this is an outgrowth. It's painful to me when people talk about religion as a mechanism for self-improvement--like you want to eat more healthy food, so you lie to yourself by convincing yourself that every dessert is infected with a chemical agent that will make you die an agonizing death. You want to not be afraid, so you believe in Jesus. That's what religion is to people who'd believe in religion as a mere means to an end. No; religion, loosely, and faith, specifically, are about striving after truth. Truth, as in there's a Redeemer of brokenness, and He--JESUS--is more powerful than anything that might be scary, including death and demons and no husband and torture and car accidents and pain and elevators and snakes. I used to have plenty of (so, so many!) fears. All I can say is that fear--except fear and reverence of the sort that means being in awe and working out your salvation--is slavery, and "It is for freedom that Christ set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yolk of slavery" (Galatians 5:1).
BOOM! Now that's real.
At the risk of sounding like an arrogant, unthoughtful, opaque brat, I said, "I'm Jessica, and I can't think of anything I'm afraid of. I'm not afraid of things." Which sounded like a huge lie. And like a huge cop-out. People started offering suggestions of things I might have forgotten--people lying to me? my mother dying? not getting a job? pain? never getting married? having my tongue slowly torn out of my mouth? something bad happening to my residents/zees? dying?--but to no avail. Not scary.
There was a time that I would have said that my greatest (and perhaps only) fear was that my four years of college would be my spiritual heyday, that everything thereafter would be a fading reminiscence of those days when I'd pray and study the Bible for an hour every morning as I sat on my bed, where I could easily think of 20 people I could call if ever I needed someone to pray for me literally at a moment's notice, where I could pace up and down the aisles after church, praying in whatever language I wanted and singing praises loudly and not caring if anyone else lingering heard me, where I could stand on the steps of the campus center and gather everyone's attention just to tell them that Jesus loved them and that I loved Jesus--and that I'd try to live off stale grace and rancid manna for the rest of my life.
But no. I've been down, and I've been up, and there's literally nothing that can separate me from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:39)--not even graduating from college. Who is my God if He cannot require more of me after I graduate than before? And who am I to fear for His lack of provision? "And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:17)!! Seriously?! Sometimes I am all giddy that those promises are for me, that that's me, the one being transformed. From glory to glory.
Which means I scratched that "fear" off the one-item list. What of these other fears?
1) People lying to me.
People do lie to me, and will continue to do so. I don't quite get what's very scary about this--maybe that we trust people, and them lying to us will breech our trust. I just had to fill out an online survey, and one of the questions was, "How many days in a typical week do you feel like people are basically good?"--to which I had to respond, in the midst of a veritable pond (there weren't enough questions for it to be a sea... so just a pond. Or maybe a small lake) of cheery responses to similar questions about my general mood, "zero." Because people are basically broken and evil, just in the process of being healed. Which means they lie. I trust people, and a lot of them (plus I'm all about giving the benefit of the doubt, and often many multiple times), but because of this, I can't take lying personally. I don't trust regular people like I trust Jesus, who is "not a man that he should lie" (Numbers 23:19a).
2) My mother dying.
I love her so much! She's wonderful, and I can't imagine what it would be like losing her. She's a humble servant of the Lord, and she loves people in such practical ways. But really, let's be honest: she's going to Heaven when she dies, so why be afraid?
3) Not getting a job.
This is the one I understood least--along with people lying to me. My job won't define me, and if I can't land a "job" per se, there will still be work to be done, since people were created in the image of a God who works (see: Genesis 1-2). Moreover, God's a provider, providing even for sparrows who "neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns" (Matthew 6).
4) Pain.
I've been in pain before. It's not fun, but it passes--and wow, there's nothing (not even morphine, as I can attest after my appendectomy) that relieves pain like singing praise. And if the pain doesn't pass, I guess ultimately I'll die of it--see point 8. This is basically irrelevant, but I have a pretty high pain tolerance, too.
5) Never getting married.
Nothing, including marriage, is promised to me. And as much as I really desire to get married, that's that.
6) Having my tongue slowly torn out of my mouth.
What I know is that when the disciples died gruesome deaths, somehow God was always exalted. So I can imagine this sort of torture happening to me, and when I do it takes the form of religious persecution. This is my spiritual heritage in a lot of ways. Paul writes (and God, let me resoundingly agree to the depths and crevices of my soul!), "I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death" (Philippians 1:21). For real! And even if not for religious persecution, but for senseless torture or political reasons or whatever, still--I would glorify God with my body.
7) Something bad happening to my zees.
This, in some ways, tied my hands, since the question was posed by one of my zees. But as much as I think about them, care about them, pray for them, fast for them--no, I'm not afraid for them. Bad things have happened and will happen to them, and though my heart has ached for them, being scared for them will do literally nothing to help them. And, though I do care about them so so much, I am no one's savior, and I can't always rescue them and protect them, or anyone else.
8) Dying.
I spent almost an hour today sobbing. Just crying--saying, Father, you need to come and fix Your world! Because You made it good, and then things fell apart. And anything that still coheres only does so because of you, Jesus! But Daddy, you have to come and fix it, and I'll work right alongside you, doing anything you want me to do, for as long as you want me to do it, and I'll praise you for it. Someday, though, my work will be over, and then--no matter the mechanism of my departure from Earth, tongue intact or not--I will have the honor of seeing You in all your glory, like Isaiah did in the year King Uzziah died (Isaiah 6)! Far from being something scary, I can't image much else that's as exciting as dying.
Is this flippant? It feels like it, because all these answers seem obvious and immediate. But no, it's not flippant. I'm serious.
One last thing I want to say is that all this is an outgrowth. It's painful to me when people talk about religion as a mechanism for self-improvement--like you want to eat more healthy food, so you lie to yourself by convincing yourself that every dessert is infected with a chemical agent that will make you die an agonizing death. You want to not be afraid, so you believe in Jesus. That's what religion is to people who'd believe in religion as a mere means to an end. No; religion, loosely, and faith, specifically, are about striving after truth. Truth, as in there's a Redeemer of brokenness, and He--JESUS--is more powerful than anything that might be scary, including death and demons and no husband and torture and car accidents and pain and elevators and snakes. I used to have plenty of (so, so many!) fears. All I can say is that fear--except fear and reverence of the sort that means being in awe and working out your salvation--is slavery, and "It is for freedom that Christ set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yolk of slavery" (Galatians 5:1).
BOOM! Now that's real.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
seasons
Just aware of my own insufficiency today, and taking it back old school:
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Friday, January 4, 2013
Sharing some articles
Just wanted to share some interesting stuff I've read recently!
Clear Decks (Boundless)
Wow. Just wow. This is a message I need to hear literally every day.
Mauritania Bans Plastic Bag Use (BBC)
I've never been to Mauritania, and props to environmentalists for helping to be good stewards of this earth, but... I can't help but wonder what traders and vendors who rely on thin polythene bags to package many of their wares, if Mauritania bears any resemblance to Ghana in that way, are supposed to do now.
Does Confidence Really Breed Success? (BBC)
Short answer: No. An interesting quote from the article, from a researcher at Florida State, Roy Baumeister: "Self-control is much more powerful and well-supported [than self-confidence] as a cause of personal success." The articles's a good reminder about humility, for sure. Lord, remind me of my proper worth in Your eyes.
Neuron Overload and the Juggling Physician (The Lancet)
It's likely I'll post again on this soon, or at least before too long. For now, note that the MD/PA (that's the healthcare, not geographic, dualism) debate has begun in my mind--and while I doubt that this sort of "neuron overload" is that different between doctors and physician assistants, it's just one of those things that makes me sorta wary of the years ahead, excited and believing for grace though I am.
Thoughts from the Dying for a New Year (Coracle)
Beginnings (birth) and endings (death) are two of the most profound, sacred parts of life. God, we need more grace--Let us live unto you and not be beholden to the demands of the world.
And because I've listened to this song about 15 times today, I'll share it was well... Peace!!
Clear Decks (Boundless)
Wow. Just wow. This is a message I need to hear literally every day.
Mauritania Bans Plastic Bag Use (BBC)
I've never been to Mauritania, and props to environmentalists for helping to be good stewards of this earth, but... I can't help but wonder what traders and vendors who rely on thin polythene bags to package many of their wares, if Mauritania bears any resemblance to Ghana in that way, are supposed to do now.
Does Confidence Really Breed Success? (BBC)
Short answer: No. An interesting quote from the article, from a researcher at Florida State, Roy Baumeister: "Self-control is much more powerful and well-supported [than self-confidence] as a cause of personal success." The articles's a good reminder about humility, for sure. Lord, remind me of my proper worth in Your eyes.
Neuron Overload and the Juggling Physician (The Lancet)
It's likely I'll post again on this soon, or at least before too long. For now, note that the MD/PA (that's the healthcare, not geographic, dualism) debate has begun in my mind--and while I doubt that this sort of "neuron overload" is that different between doctors and physician assistants, it's just one of those things that makes me sorta wary of the years ahead, excited and believing for grace though I am.
Thoughts from the Dying for a New Year (Coracle)
Beginnings (birth) and endings (death) are two of the most profound, sacred parts of life. God, we need more grace--Let us live unto you and not be beholden to the demands of the world.
And because I've listened to this song about 15 times today, I'll share it was well... Peace!!
(link)
Monday, December 31, 2012
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Winter, and Womanhood, and Medicine
So I've been waking up early this week, say around 5:00am, so I can join my dad for a day at the office--him writing a sermon, planning worship for Sunday, making hospital visits, lashing a pair of deer antlers to the crown of an old Minnesota Vikings helmet so it can be used for a game at the annual church youth Christmas party; me studying organic chemistry and dabbling in research for a global health paper on podoconiosis.
It's been a blessing, these early mornings and short days: In the office from 5:30 or 6:00am until about 3:00pm, probably with a quick jaunt home in the middle of the day for some leftovers for lunch and then back to work. It's really astonishing, seeing all those things I didn't learn during the hecticness of the semester, and now being able to see--wow!!--just how amazing it is that you really can predict the acidity of a single proton relative to another protons in the same molecule, or that you can somehow sketch out the structure of an unknown molecule by measuring the different responses to differing chemical environments that carbon isotopes or atoms with spin (like protons) have. Like... what?!? What a world. Wow. When I study I know it's all praise, learning about an awe-inspiring world made by an awesome God. Sometimes it's so overwhelmingly awe-inspiring that I even take a quick morning nap on the pews to refresh my mind, and when I come back to my little table and faithful space heater and textbooks and lecture notes in the tiny church library, I am impressed all over again with the wonder of it all.
And then the coming home, when the work is done, leaving the textbooks and lecture notes neatly stacked on my dad's desk overnight: That's a thing of beauty, too. To put aside the work and just relax, because nothing's due tomorrow (or the next day, or the next week, or really for another month, anyway). This is the sort of balance I imagine is most healthy for working people.
So I come home, and just relax. Our TV is in the shop, so partly because of that and partly because this winter I'm being more intentional, I'm reading a book that my aunt gave me, one of those sort-of-for-no-reason gifts that she'll occasionally surprise me with: things that maybe she sees and then remembers me, then buys for me just because she thinks they would be affirming or challenging or good for me. This aunt in particular has always been conscious that I've grown up in a home of brothers, and has always affirmed my womanhood (when it was that, and my femininity, or girlhood, or whatever it was back then before I had womanhood) in a special way, sometimes with these gifts, and sometimes just with words. All my aunts, actually, have done this, but this one in particular.
Back, in a moment, to this book, but a digression on womanhood, because it's really a cool thing: I got my ears pierced in September. They're not pierced now (did you know that about 15% of people have a dermal nickel allergy? I don't know where I read that, but I feel like maybe it's true), but they were. They lasted a few weeks before the allergic swelling got too bad and I'd wake up in the middle of the night in pain, or have to call my best friend to help me put them back in when I'd tried to give my ears a brief moment's rest, so I took the earrings out permanently. And the holes are gone now. If I feel my earlobes, there's still some tiny, circular scar where I know they were pierced--but no holes.
Since I went to Ghana on Bridge Year with the Abenas (Fitaa and Tuntum, white and black, we called them, to everyone's confusion, though it was true), I'd wanted to pierce them. These past few years, see, have been a lot about growing into womanhood, about loving being a woman in every way. I love being able to dress up every once in a while and affirm that I am beautiful with a particular feminine beauty--though looking nice on the outside doesn't mean so much for so long. I love getting my period, because it means not only that my body is a capable one--oh hey, world, I could have a baby someday! And that's exciting! And I want to celebrate it!--but also an active one, living in--making--the same sort of rhythms that go on around us in seasons, stages of life, and day and night. I love doing dishes and cleaning the bathroom and washing clothes (by hand or with a machine), even though I love mowing the lawn and fixing blown fuses in the car too, because part of being a woman is serving (which is not to say that part of being a man is not serving, too, because doing all these tasks are more related to maturity than to gender roles anyway... but I do tilt toward traditional gender roles--my theology, which in turn cannot help but be my politics--that say women, in partnership with men, bear much of the responsibility to the day-to-day smooth running of a house. I guess if I'm a feminist, I'm a very weird one.). I like thinking that someday I'll get to have my own home where and family for whom I can do all these things--and that includes doing the dishes and cleaning the bathroom and washing the clothes. I love the idea of wearing earrings, some small, not-too-noticeable daily reminder of being a woman: little studs, maybe, when it's time to shovel the snow, or some dangly, sparkly ones for a nice evening out.
My former roommate once shared with me a paper she wrote about feminist expression (or the stifling thereof) in Judaism, and one of her arguments discussed a prayer Jewish men pray thanking the Lord for not making them women. And, thanks be to God for men, especially those who are strong in the Lord, but this is my prayer: Thank you, Lord, for not making me a man.
I really think this growing into my womanhood has informed my understanding of my medical calling tremendously: I want to be an obstetrician/gynecologist. There's a lot of fear, I think, or at best uncertainty or misunderstanding, that women have about their bodies. Childbirth might be one of the easiest examples of this: It's hyped up in a lot of the media as one of the most painful and terrifying experiences a woman can have. And, well, I've never given birth. But I've learned a lot about it, and, yeah, I'd have to say I'd agree with the part about it being really painful (also, I've read Genesis 3), and it can also be very uncertain. But I've also seen babies born, and I have to say that women's bodies are a pretty wondrous creation: Bodies that can grow other bodies from a single cell to billions, separate themselves from the smaller body, and then nourish that other body. Wow. Each of these stages wondrous for its own unique reasons! But too often women's bodies are also be the site of a lot of cultural subjugation and neglect, and that's painfully sad. Women's bodies should be well affirmed, and well cared for.
But back to this book: It's wonderful. Truly, truly wonderful. It's called God's Hotel by Victoria Sweet (who graciously omits the title from the cover, but who is an MD). Thank you Aunt Ruth! In it, Dr. S. (as she is known by her patients) tells of her experiences working at Laguna Honda, which is more or less the last almshouse, or hospital serving the poor and chronically ill, in the US. It's her account of trying to understand what a body is, like what's the anima, the spirit, that makes a person a person and not just a body (amendment to previous note about women's bodies, and bodies carrying, birthing, and feeding bodies: That was in the full, "embodied" [hehe] sense of bodies, as in... Jesus took on a body. And we are embodied, in a powerful, so-physical-it's-almost-spiritual sort of way. But now when I'm talking about bodies, I just mean the piles of DNA and proteins and cytoplasm and stuff).
During it, Dr. S. shares about her PhD research (a.k.a. sojourn) into the premodern medicine of Hildegard of Bingen, a mystic and nun who treated patients in the 12th century according to the principle of four [insert plural noun here: humors, seasons, elements, times of day, etc.]. She also leaves the (Lord-willing) future doctor in me yearning for what I understand too well, despite my naive optimism about a profession in healing (or what I pray is at least not just a profession of diagnosing and treating and dragging babies out of birth canals), to be a dying cadence of medicine: Slow medicine. The sort of medicine that allows doctors enough time with their patients to figure out, hmmm, that patient who has long since been diagnosed as having Alzheimer's (i.e., she seems demented but we're not sure why), diabetes, and depression and who is taking all the associated medicines--and more--actually has a dislocated hip after having a hip replacement, and can safely be taken off of literally all of her medications when her pain is mostly gone after her hip is properly realigned. It's a remarkable thing, the way medicine is practiced at Laguna Honda, what with the "white-haired little old white ladies" in one of the wards each wrapped in a hand-crocheted blanket made by the head nurse of the ward and the patients going out for a drink just outside the admitting ward. Romanticized, yes, without a doubt--but the whole thing just tugs at my heart. Maybe obstetrics and gynecology is different in some key ways from internal medicine, but it's the same philosophy that inefficiency is sometimes the most efficient way of caring, and that often an hour-long physical exam and really full patient history speak more articulately than a full blood workup, that I'd like to think compels both me and Dr. S.
In some ways, my ex-pierced ears remind me of the story of Terry, whom Dr. S. writes about. Please, I'll request of you, read the book, for the details are worth it, and such a summary does no justice, and yet: Terry was confined to a wheelchair, and out from under the care of the nurses at Laguna Honda, developed terrible bedsores. Surgeons spent hours grafting tissue from her thighs onto her buttocks and lower back. After she disappeared for several months after having been taken out "for an afternoon" by her boyfriend, Terry's bedsores were back with a special vengeance, the grafts having turned gangrenous and the sores themselves revealing internal organs, decaying deep enough to expose parts of her spine. Modern medicine had given an answer with the grafts, and they--and here we'd like to assign blame, and probably much more of it to Terry than to the surgeons, but let us for now merely remember the social context in which Terry may have lived, and then press forward, keeping our pointing-prone fingers to ourselves--had failed. She would almost surely die of infection, what with such a huge breech in her primary protective mechanism against all the pathogens not only of the world at large, but specifically of an almshouse full of the poor and sick.
She didn't die, at least not soon. She broke up with her abusive boyfriend, quit drinking and smoking, and over the course of 2 1/2 years (people, that's 365 days * 2.5 = 912 days! that's so long!) literally regrew the tissue that had been robbed by her bedsore. Two and a half years. My ears only took two and a half days to mostly much heal, and two and a half weeks until I could scarcely notice that there had ever been a hole there, save for the the tiny, circular scars. But somehow both healings are about becoming: For Terry, becoming free from what had entangled her; and for me, becoming the woman I am. I don't want to be contrived, because I'm not Terry, and bedsores are not ear piercings (though let's be real: how amazingly surreal that our bodies heal like that, just making flesh from what we can't see? Bodies are intricate handiwork to be sure). I want to get my ears pierced again (nickel free earrings this time, no cheap stainless steel!) within a few weeks, and my holes will be back. But there's something profound in healing.
It's late, past my bedtime (the wonderful consequence of waking up so early is going to sleep early, and now that it is already 10:00pm I've transgressed my bedtime by an hour), so here I'll conclude. No simple thesis restatement, as I was taught in school. But let me say that I've been blessed by my winter break so far, and when I wake up tomorrow morning to study more organic chemistry, it will be my prayer for God to keep me grounded in the present, believing Him for what it to come (medical school! residency! ob/gyn practice!) and thanking Him for what has been--and studying that day because He has put it before me for the now.
It's been a blessing, these early mornings and short days: In the office from 5:30 or 6:00am until about 3:00pm, probably with a quick jaunt home in the middle of the day for some leftovers for lunch and then back to work. It's really astonishing, seeing all those things I didn't learn during the hecticness of the semester, and now being able to see--wow!!--just how amazing it is that you really can predict the acidity of a single proton relative to another protons in the same molecule, or that you can somehow sketch out the structure of an unknown molecule by measuring the different responses to differing chemical environments that carbon isotopes or atoms with spin (like protons) have. Like... what?!? What a world. Wow. When I study I know it's all praise, learning about an awe-inspiring world made by an awesome God. Sometimes it's so overwhelmingly awe-inspiring that I even take a quick morning nap on the pews to refresh my mind, and when I come back to my little table and faithful space heater and textbooks and lecture notes in the tiny church library, I am impressed all over again with the wonder of it all.
And then the coming home, when the work is done, leaving the textbooks and lecture notes neatly stacked on my dad's desk overnight: That's a thing of beauty, too. To put aside the work and just relax, because nothing's due tomorrow (or the next day, or the next week, or really for another month, anyway). This is the sort of balance I imagine is most healthy for working people.
So I come home, and just relax. Our TV is in the shop, so partly because of that and partly because this winter I'm being more intentional, I'm reading a book that my aunt gave me, one of those sort-of-for-no-reason gifts that she'll occasionally surprise me with: things that maybe she sees and then remembers me, then buys for me just because she thinks they would be affirming or challenging or good for me. This aunt in particular has always been conscious that I've grown up in a home of brothers, and has always affirmed my womanhood (when it was that, and my femininity, or girlhood, or whatever it was back then before I had womanhood) in a special way, sometimes with these gifts, and sometimes just with words. All my aunts, actually, have done this, but this one in particular.
Back, in a moment, to this book, but a digression on womanhood, because it's really a cool thing: I got my ears pierced in September. They're not pierced now (did you know that about 15% of people have a dermal nickel allergy? I don't know where I read that, but I feel like maybe it's true), but they were. They lasted a few weeks before the allergic swelling got too bad and I'd wake up in the middle of the night in pain, or have to call my best friend to help me put them back in when I'd tried to give my ears a brief moment's rest, so I took the earrings out permanently. And the holes are gone now. If I feel my earlobes, there's still some tiny, circular scar where I know they were pierced--but no holes.
Since I went to Ghana on Bridge Year with the Abenas (Fitaa and Tuntum, white and black, we called them, to everyone's confusion, though it was true), I'd wanted to pierce them. These past few years, see, have been a lot about growing into womanhood, about loving being a woman in every way. I love being able to dress up every once in a while and affirm that I am beautiful with a particular feminine beauty--though looking nice on the outside doesn't mean so much for so long. I love getting my period, because it means not only that my body is a capable one--oh hey, world, I could have a baby someday! And that's exciting! And I want to celebrate it!--but also an active one, living in--making--the same sort of rhythms that go on around us in seasons, stages of life, and day and night. I love doing dishes and cleaning the bathroom and washing clothes (by hand or with a machine), even though I love mowing the lawn and fixing blown fuses in the car too, because part of being a woman is serving (which is not to say that part of being a man is not serving, too, because doing all these tasks are more related to maturity than to gender roles anyway... but I do tilt toward traditional gender roles--my theology, which in turn cannot help but be my politics--that say women, in partnership with men, bear much of the responsibility to the day-to-day smooth running of a house. I guess if I'm a feminist, I'm a very weird one.). I like thinking that someday I'll get to have my own home where and family for whom I can do all these things--and that includes doing the dishes and cleaning the bathroom and washing the clothes. I love the idea of wearing earrings, some small, not-too-noticeable daily reminder of being a woman: little studs, maybe, when it's time to shovel the snow, or some dangly, sparkly ones for a nice evening out.
My former roommate once shared with me a paper she wrote about feminist expression (or the stifling thereof) in Judaism, and one of her arguments discussed a prayer Jewish men pray thanking the Lord for not making them women. And, thanks be to God for men, especially those who are strong in the Lord, but this is my prayer: Thank you, Lord, for not making me a man.
I really think this growing into my womanhood has informed my understanding of my medical calling tremendously: I want to be an obstetrician/gynecologist. There's a lot of fear, I think, or at best uncertainty or misunderstanding, that women have about their bodies. Childbirth might be one of the easiest examples of this: It's hyped up in a lot of the media as one of the most painful and terrifying experiences a woman can have. And, well, I've never given birth. But I've learned a lot about it, and, yeah, I'd have to say I'd agree with the part about it being really painful (also, I've read Genesis 3), and it can also be very uncertain. But I've also seen babies born, and I have to say that women's bodies are a pretty wondrous creation: Bodies that can grow other bodies from a single cell to billions, separate themselves from the smaller body, and then nourish that other body. Wow. Each of these stages wondrous for its own unique reasons! But too often women's bodies are also be the site of a lot of cultural subjugation and neglect, and that's painfully sad. Women's bodies should be well affirmed, and well cared for.
But back to this book: It's wonderful. Truly, truly wonderful. It's called God's Hotel by Victoria Sweet (who graciously omits the title from the cover, but who is an MD). Thank you Aunt Ruth! In it, Dr. S. (as she is known by her patients) tells of her experiences working at Laguna Honda, which is more or less the last almshouse, or hospital serving the poor and chronically ill, in the US. It's her account of trying to understand what a body is, like what's the anima, the spirit, that makes a person a person and not just a body (amendment to previous note about women's bodies, and bodies carrying, birthing, and feeding bodies: That was in the full, "embodied" [hehe] sense of bodies, as in... Jesus took on a body. And we are embodied, in a powerful, so-physical-it's-almost-spiritual sort of way. But now when I'm talking about bodies, I just mean the piles of DNA and proteins and cytoplasm and stuff).
During it, Dr. S. shares about her PhD research (a.k.a. sojourn) into the premodern medicine of Hildegard of Bingen, a mystic and nun who treated patients in the 12th century according to the principle of four [insert plural noun here: humors, seasons, elements, times of day, etc.]. She also leaves the (Lord-willing) future doctor in me yearning for what I understand too well, despite my naive optimism about a profession in healing (or what I pray is at least not just a profession of diagnosing and treating and dragging babies out of birth canals), to be a dying cadence of medicine: Slow medicine. The sort of medicine that allows doctors enough time with their patients to figure out, hmmm, that patient who has long since been diagnosed as having Alzheimer's (i.e., she seems demented but we're not sure why), diabetes, and depression and who is taking all the associated medicines--and more--actually has a dislocated hip after having a hip replacement, and can safely be taken off of literally all of her medications when her pain is mostly gone after her hip is properly realigned. It's a remarkable thing, the way medicine is practiced at Laguna Honda, what with the "white-haired little old white ladies" in one of the wards each wrapped in a hand-crocheted blanket made by the head nurse of the ward and the patients going out for a drink just outside the admitting ward. Romanticized, yes, without a doubt--but the whole thing just tugs at my heart. Maybe obstetrics and gynecology is different in some key ways from internal medicine, but it's the same philosophy that inefficiency is sometimes the most efficient way of caring, and that often an hour-long physical exam and really full patient history speak more articulately than a full blood workup, that I'd like to think compels both me and Dr. S.
In some ways, my ex-pierced ears remind me of the story of Terry, whom Dr. S. writes about. Please, I'll request of you, read the book, for the details are worth it, and such a summary does no justice, and yet: Terry was confined to a wheelchair, and out from under the care of the nurses at Laguna Honda, developed terrible bedsores. Surgeons spent hours grafting tissue from her thighs onto her buttocks and lower back. After she disappeared for several months after having been taken out "for an afternoon" by her boyfriend, Terry's bedsores were back with a special vengeance, the grafts having turned gangrenous and the sores themselves revealing internal organs, decaying deep enough to expose parts of her spine. Modern medicine had given an answer with the grafts, and they--and here we'd like to assign blame, and probably much more of it to Terry than to the surgeons, but let us for now merely remember the social context in which Terry may have lived, and then press forward, keeping our pointing-prone fingers to ourselves--had failed. She would almost surely die of infection, what with such a huge breech in her primary protective mechanism against all the pathogens not only of the world at large, but specifically of an almshouse full of the poor and sick.
She didn't die, at least not soon. She broke up with her abusive boyfriend, quit drinking and smoking, and over the course of 2 1/2 years (people, that's 365 days * 2.5 = 912 days! that's so long!) literally regrew the tissue that had been robbed by her bedsore. Two and a half years. My ears only took two and a half days to mostly much heal, and two and a half weeks until I could scarcely notice that there had ever been a hole there, save for the the tiny, circular scars. But somehow both healings are about becoming: For Terry, becoming free from what had entangled her; and for me, becoming the woman I am. I don't want to be contrived, because I'm not Terry, and bedsores are not ear piercings (though let's be real: how amazingly surreal that our bodies heal like that, just making flesh from what we can't see? Bodies are intricate handiwork to be sure). I want to get my ears pierced again (nickel free earrings this time, no cheap stainless steel!) within a few weeks, and my holes will be back. But there's something profound in healing.
It's late, past my bedtime (the wonderful consequence of waking up so early is going to sleep early, and now that it is already 10:00pm I've transgressed my bedtime by an hour), so here I'll conclude. No simple thesis restatement, as I was taught in school. But let me say that I've been blessed by my winter break so far, and when I wake up tomorrow morning to study more organic chemistry, it will be my prayer for God to keep me grounded in the present, believing Him for what it to come (medical school! residency! ob/gyn practice!) and thanking Him for what has been--and studying that day because He has put it before me for the now.
Friday, November 30, 2012
AWESOME.
I wish I could shout this to everyone I know, but I don't have a Facebook or a Twitter or anything, so here it goes:
GOD IS AWESOME!! Always!!
GOD IS AWESOME!! Always!!
(link)
Last night I was trying to study for my weekly physics quiz today, and it was going horribly. I prayed, "God, you're good, and I know that! You know I didn't sleep last night, and I'm so tired. But you can give me the energy to stay up and study to your glory. So could you either give me the strength to continue, or just let me know it's okay to go to bed?" I felt release to go to bed, but I wasn't quite sure whether it was God or my mind speaking, so I prayed again, and it was clearer: Go to bed!
So I trundled back up the hill to my bed and fell into it at 9:30pm, falling asleep instantly. Before I did so I turned off my phone, which is usually my alarm, and told God, "Thanks for letting me rest. I'm trusting my physics quiz (and the recommendation I have to write and the application I have to finish by noon tomorrow) to you by going to bed now. But I'm also trusting you to wake me up when I need to wake up"--which I figured would be about 5am to finish everything before my 10am physics class.
I literally fell out of bed at 9am the next morning, confused about why God had not woken me up earlier. But I figured He always knows what's up, so I finished and submitted my friend's recommendation and stumbled off to physics. When it came time for the quiz, I approached my professor and the first thing he asked me was, "Do you want to take the quiz on Sunday?"
God is so good!! I'm grateful for His kindness, for giving me the chance to sleep, for letting me have more time to study for this quiz. HE'S AWESOME.
Peace to you for today!
Love,
Jessica
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Don't Wear Filthy Rags!! (or, Everything Outside of Christ is Rubbish - sermon by Zac Poonen)
(link)
Thanks to my friend Lydia for sharing this with me; Wow, powerful stuff here! Basic idea (but you should listen to it yourself): We are so quick to become indignant when God does not act like our business partner, to whom we give things in expectation of something else in return, but we fail to recognize that what we are trying to give God is based on our own merit, which is... worthless. When we think like that, we're like people who have been given hundreds of thousands of dollars by a kind relative when dire straits befell us, and then ask the relative to pay us after doing a favor for him; or like people going to a wedding banquet who are offered free, new clothes to wear but reject them because we think our clothes are better when in fact they are our ratty workout clothes. So the bottom line is this: God does not owe us anything and is not impressed by our works, and that is why we pray in Jesus' name, not ours--because in Jesus' name, each of us takes on righteousness that is not ours and is set on equal footing with infant and mature Christians alike, whereas in our name and by our merit, we are not even worthy to come before God in the first place. Thank you Jesus! I'm excited for Advent :)
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