Entry Thirty-six

Too much of a thinker... So much so that I get tired of myself just thinking and mulling things over and over.  As if mulling even more might magically lead me to answers that were previously unrealized.  My brain is tired of thinking.

But it's obviously a good thing to think, in general.  We'd be pretty boring creatures if we didn't.  So here's one thought I thought was worth having:

There is a big difference between questioning yourself and questioning God, and I think the Evil One enjoys helping me confuse the two.  See, I've been doing a LOT of questioning lately.  Choosing a medical specialty is just around the corner for me (hard to believe it's already here!).  We've also recently left the "books only" part of schooling behind, and actually interact with colleagues/patients/attendings daily.  It's enough to overwhelm your system, if you're like me and have intentionally avoided looking too far into the future until now.  In all of this, questions about my faith have also surfaced.  Referring to my previous post, I feel like all of the "stuff" my life is going to be made of should reflect Christ somehow, if I call myself a disciple.  He has called us to a pretty rigorous course, dying to self, denying self, and following him.  The problem is that I do call myself a disciple, but the "stuff" that makes up my life right now... not so reflective of Christ.

In pondering all of this, I start asking questions like "do I really believe what Jesus said? Because my mind and words might say so, but my actions and choices are not so clear."  And there is a very small, dangerous step from the question, "do I believe Jesus?" to the question, "is Jesus believable?"  It is such a small step, but such a powerful difference.  And if I let one question lead into the other, essentially, I am faulting Jesus for my own failures of obedience.

It's like the rich young ruler from Luke 18, Matthew 19, and Mark 10... but at the moment I can't remember why.

Truth is truth, whether you believe it or not.  That's what makes it truth.  So when I ask myself, "do I believe Jesus?" or "am I believing Jesus?" that should not be a reflection of Christ's character at all.  It is a reflection of my own.  It reflects my own faith, or rather my struggle with doubts.  But it does not change the fact that Christ Jesus is believable, trustworthy, and faithful.

"Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, because he who promised is faithful." 
Hebrews 10:23

Entry Thirty-Five

After a year and half of not writing a thing, (journal, blog, school paper...) I realize I miss it.  Writing is such a great way to process thoughts.  And I've had plenty of those over the past 1.5 years.

But let's start with the current struggle, shall we?

Being an adult.  What's that about?  I have finally reached a point in my life where I am no longer a student of the books 95% of the time.  It's still books for about 30% of it.  But the rest is clinicals.  Working in the hospital, seeing patients, writing notes, learning how to actually apply some of the mass of knowledge we've accumulated over that past 2 years.  So now, I get off at 5:00pm most days, and come home and... what?

School has consumed my world for the past two years.  Almost everything else I spent time and energy doing was a coping mechanism, aimed at getting through those two years of school.  Exercise was to keep stress down, trips were to escape long enough to reboot, even taking Sundays off to rest was just a habit designed to make me more productive the rest of the week.  Now, school and medicine are becoming more like a job.  The kind normal people have where you leave work at work and you don't constantly have to take it wherever you go.  So now school is no longer my life, its a job.  So what is my life?

Medicine is not a life.  It is arguable a major definer of my lifestyle in the future, but it isn't a life.  Being a student was a life, or at least I had made it such.  And now that's changed.  So what do I want to do with my life?  My spare time?  My resources?  My energy?  Medicine takes up a huge fraction, but not the whole pie anymore.  So... I feel like I finally need to grow up and figure out what my life is really gonna be made of.  Welcome to adulthood, me.

Entry Thirty-four

Here's the thing about blogging: if you don't keep up, there's no catching up.  I don't like it 'cause I know how much I've had to say the past three months, but the opportunity to say it all as passed.  Anyhow, these are the important highlights:

We started Block 2 and got Spring Break in the middle of it.
I went to Tahoe with a couple of friends for a week of skiing and watched my Toppers make Hilltopper Nation proud in the NCAA tourney.
Got back from Tahoe and finished Block 2 with a much longer block test than 1.
Shadowed some in Labor and Delivery and the ER and got to remind myself why I'm in medical school.
Started the home stretch of Block 3 while my parents worked on relocating to Memphis (dad took a job at St. Jude's Children's Hospital).
Finished Block 3 with a bang and now am all but officially a second year medical student!

It feels good to be one year down.  There's always some mixed feelings when time flies by so quickly though, mostly because I feel like there is so much more I still wanted to do before it was over.  However, we had a blast and I couldn't have asked for better classmates and friends to go through it with.  Here are just some of them at our post-year-one grill out:

Now that we're done, there is so much I want to do with this summer it's ridiculous.  Some of it will get done, some of it won't.  But I'm hoping that God has more important things in mind than my vain plans and that by the end of it, I'll be ready to dive head first into year two.