fall

On Thursday, I declared celebrate fall day.  In honor of the crisp air, I went running, baked banana bread, and made chicken noodle soup.  It was satisfying:)

Today I worked for 13 hours.  It was both strange and familiar to be back on a cardiac unit in a hospital–it’s not the life I want anymore, but it’s the means that have been provided to the end I hope for.  As I sprinted down the hall while a patient was coding, I felt again the sobering adrenaline rush that hits when life is hanging so precariously in the balance.  I’ve been hesitant about this job, and it’s not going to be easy to balance with the damands of school.  But today  I was given, yet again, the privilege of holding the hand of a fellow human being who was walking through pain and suffering and fear.  It may not be the context I want to practice in the rest of my life, but these patients are still in need of care, skill, comfort, and compassion.  I pray that I will be filled more and more with the One who is compassion.

I’m trying to press on to Thanksgiving.  It’s my favorite holiday, and it’s been three years since I’ve celebrated it with my family.  I’ve set surviving until then as my short-term life goal:)  Two tests, two papers, one major project, and a many hours spent like today are between now and then.  I will have much to be thankful for besides the pumpkin pie and poker.

But then, I already do.

What looks like failure is success
And what looks like poverty is riches
When what is true looks more like a knife
It looks like you’re killing me

But you’re saving my life

But I give myself to what looks like love

And I sell myself for what feels like love
And I pay to get what is not love
And all just because I see things upside down

What looks like weakness can do anything
And what looks like foolishness is understanding
When what is powerful has not come to fight
It looks like you’re going to war
But you lay down your life

What looks like torture is a time to rejoice
What sounds like thunder is a comforting voice
When what is beautiful looks broken and crushe
And I say I don’t know you
But you say it’s finished

What Is Not Love, Derek Webb

insufficient for the task

This new season of life is not what I expected it to be, but even as I write that I realize that the corners in life rarely give way to the roads we are anticipating.  While I can’t yet see what will come out of my unmet expectations, I have only to look on past experiences to know that, somehow, this too will be for good.

People ask me what I do, and I say I study.  It’s mostly true.  It’s my job (other than the paying one), and even my calling right now.  When I’m not studying, I’m probably being lazy and wasting time and wishing I could be much more diligent and disciplined.  I’m beginning to see through the fog that has closed me in these first 7 weeks (can it be such a short time?  it feels so much longer) of graduate school. The schedule is relentless, and like much of life and sanctification there is enormous frustration that there is no point at which we can say, “The work is done.  I’m tired.  I can quit now, even if it’s just for a little while.”  It has felt as though I stepped into another world that shut me off from time and ability and energy to maintain old relationships and invest in new one.  I’m determined that it will not always be this way, but I am also learning to accept my limitations.  I’m not invincible, and I can’t do it all.  I can’t even do most of it.

I’m grateful for the small things that are actually heaping measures of grace: classmates who I can call at 11:30pm to say, “I don’t know how to approach this paper!”, professors who genuinely care that we grow into well-equipped practitioners, a kitchen with bright spots of red, a roommate who brought me Trader Joe’s Ruby Red Chai tea from her trip to CA, random scattered friends around this city who are still there even if I only manage to see them once a month, cousins who love me even when I don’t ever see them, cooler autumn days and open windows.  See?  It’s a lot.  Even on the days when some parts of life seem very empty, the cup is still full.

I’ve continued to read Dr. Helen Roseaveare’s writings.  I know that we are changed not so much by what we read and hear of, but through the fires and rivers we must persevere through.  Still, I hope in some small ways of thinking and believing that I will be changed by what I am learning of her journey to laying everything down for the sake of the Cross.

“I would put the realization that in myself I was a failure.  I was unable to reach the standard I myself had set, let alone God’s.  Try as I would, I only met frustration in this longing to achieve, to be worthy.  I’m sure that, for me, this first lesson had to be thoroughly learnt so that, when I did come to acknowledge God as my Lord and Master, I might not succumb again to the temptation to feel that I could succeed or achieve anything ultimately worthwhile in my own strength . . .

Only as I found my own insufficiency did I realize His sufficiency.”

Helen Roseaveare, in Give Me This Mountain