my non-Christmas spirit and the obligatory yet unplanned end-of-the-year post.

the obligatory year-end post but not really

this post was not planned and anyway this year i am not doing anything obligatory for Christmas.

no planned Christmas light shows, concerts, eve, gifts or carols.

i have read (or at least saved in my read-later list-which rarely gets read, like all of yours if you're honest) all of the reminiscent introspective melancholic end-of-2014 posts that showed up in my news feed. and even then, the competitive spirit of writing one of my own did not kick in.

partly because of my work schedule, obviously the rookie always gets to work Christmas, which is expected. expected is always less traumatic.
partly because of practical reasons like computers bought as gifts because they were needed two weeks ago, florida trips being planned and payed for before Christmas when the tickets were cheap. come to think of it, i could have wrapped all that and put it under a tree and abided by the spirit of the season.
so as i am writing this, i realize that the truth is maybe i really am not in the spirit of the season. the slumber of the competitive spirit may just be the 8th criterion in the DSM IV of depression.

the spirit of the season. i have done the lights and the gifts and the carols before, simultaneously listening to sermons and podcasts telling me that this is not what the season is about. and i nodded, and agreed and still planned outings and took part in the obligatory fun. not putting it down, i mean it was fun and i felt i belonged to the world around me. and i sure hope to do it again next year or next decade, whatever.

but his year God made me stop. MADE me. and gave me His spirit.

see i believe he talks to each one of us, if we listen. and he talks differently to each. depending on how we are wired. elementary my dear watson, right, he has done the wiring. not so easy to believe though.

i am not good at following rules and making wise decisions and He knows that. i am not good at changing my way of life because i agree with a commandment, even if it convicts me. essentially i am not good at repenting and obeying. He has to make me. He has to speak firmly in my ear and He knows it.
in fact He knew this about me before i realized it. He knew this about me even as i was patting my self proudly on the back for "getting" this whole repentance-obedience-submission deal down. i thought i had nailed it.

until i faintly asked him to speak. half desiring it or maybe even less that half. really i just wanted my plans to work out if possible, but by then i didn't have the stamina to make it happen. and those of you who know me, know it takes a lot to run out the stamina.

i asked Him to speak because of the fog in my eyes and the tumult in my ears and the tears in my head. as my plans were crumbling down and i had no more desires to hide in, no more plans to build on, and no more directions to build a reputation towards.
God waited for me to erect all my castles on the sand, waited until all the rejections were delivered and the disappointments exploded, waited until all the coffee was drunk and my head was pounding, until all my adrenaline had run out and my body was exhausted and my eyes were tearful yet defiant. waited until a child ( that i was babysitting) was screaming at the top of her lungs, inconsolable and terrifying, to break all my pedestals and the fences i didn't know i had built, and made me talk to him.

in arabic no less, because in that state who can think in multiple languages. in arabic because its the language of the scared and disappointed child in me, and the language of the angry rebel. not just talking but singing in arabic because it sounds even more sarcastic and irreverent and insubordinate. and also because He knew it would also calm the screaming baby and put her back to sleep.
hopefully someone is laughing by now because really, it was a pretty ridiculous situation. yet so finely orchestrated.

and there started my week of just throwing myself into His arms and His word and memorizing experiencing His presence and reading and enjoying Him and missing Him and running back. really not trying to sound holy here, all of the above have been on my to-do list but never really got done.
because i and we profess to know that He will be there when everything crumbles and that sounds great, but really we are hoping nothing crumbles and we can just stash Him as a very expensive insurance contract in some dusty drawer.

Jesus was born for our sins, but really, the social calendar of Christmas is not an ideal time to ask for sin to be revealed. not when you have all these cards to address. the immeasurable gift of God is what is to be revered but surely, after i'm done with all my social activities to put me in the spirit of the season. that was me, and i suppose will probably be me again, but even if i will just realize it just this one time, i am thankful for this revelation of destructive and blind irony.

and because He delights in giving gifts, because He knows that there is no gift bigger and more enjoyable than Himself but yet He knows that i still doubt and ask questions, He has pointed my attention to everything else He's doing and letting me be a part of.

like the kids that i took care of at church last year who randomly run to me with love and a smile and a hug when i thought that they had no clue who i was, and that serving these two hours a week at church really didn't matter all that much.
like the letter from a patient who i took care of at 11 pm on a weekend, the memory of whom had drowned beneath my fatigue and sleep deprivation, and complaints of a difficult schedule.
like friends expressing that they felt loved and cared for, when i figured that i had just written another antibiotic prescription, no big deal.

so this year has been a roller coaster of jobs and graduations and travel and athletic feats and deepening friendships and mended relationships. mountains that seemed insurmountable until He got me through and the landscape looked beautiful from the other side. trust that wavered when the next hill was in sight. sour relationships and disappointed hopes and wasted time in my book.

what if another lesson for me was to measure time not by the achievement of the end result that i had planned, but by what God has shown me about Him on the way. what if the whole point of failed relationships was to strengthen mine to Him.

i have heard him whisper in my ear and i even wondered why he doesn't try to sound clearer. elementary again, but God has been screaming in the world and in my heart for years. i am thankful that the sound fog lifts a little year after year. i am thankful that i am looking forward to hearing him clearly, His voice and not the echo that my sinful heart blocks and deforms.

this has been so far the most real Christmas season, spirit, joy and peace that i have experienced. i will look forward to the plaza lights and a wrapped gifts next year but this year, i feel i've caught a glimpse of real.joy. which still feels funny considering the actual practical debacle of some circumstances.

and this post that i was not planning to write just had to be written, as a testimony to the immeasurable love, the faithfulness, the strength, the delicate planning, the power, the kindness, the tenderness, the presence of God this year, that just exploded this Christmas in the firework of an intricately weaved plan. that is but a mere glimpse of the glimpse of the glimpse of His plan, from everlasting to everlasting. 

the Great Fears: the culture of texting and crashing patients.

the culture of texting and chatting. i'm not quite old enough not to claim it as my generation but as the rebellious continent-confused nostalgic francophone Lebanese, i never quite claimed it or enjoyed it.

to be truthful, texting does appeal to me as a means of conversation, avoiding all the necessary polite tournures de phrases before addressing the issue you just wasted seven minutes of your life introducing. i find it hard to relate, empathize and love over the phone so: straight to the point and saving precious minutes here and there, minutes used to knock down other essential items on the to-do list.

saving time, using time, sparing time, for the sake of…? what am i doing with all this time? worrying about time. do i know that i sound crazy? yes, but this is how most of the great philosophical debates and spiritual revelations probably started in history. at least this is how they start for me.

they sound even crazier when God sits me down to type them, or hand write them for the sake of further time saving 

when i was still using a computer that required ten minutes in its two step start up: turn on. three minutes later: hard disk not found. press hard on turn off button. wait two minutes. turn back on. your system shut down unexpectedly, would u like to proceed. yes. 

it was the system of deliberate un-expectation. 

just like waving the image of the man you like out of your brain to trick the Lord who made your brain into giving you what you're not really asking for. because the dark twisted portion of your brain believes that God is whitholding what you want. but i digress.

in the days of the old metal square that believed itself a computer, the typing the beginnings of my great spiritual debates was done with two thumbs on the instantly gratifying screen of an iphone.

all that to say that i fully enjoy the benefits of introverted conversation through  the veil of technology. never through a computer screen surprisingly, but i haven’t had enough time yet over the past six years that this specific symptom has manifested, to elucidate that non-inclination.

back to the main doleances and the intended topic of this post.

perhaps it is my french-nurtured-endless-sentences-with minimal-punctuation-and-twelve-jumbled-thoughts-literrary leanings.

i do not understand, tolerate or forgive multiple small texts sent in a chat-type fashion, in a systematic morse-like pressing of send, like that poor soul you see in catastrophic movies, pushing on his small beeping button, sweating his brain off, in an attempt to save humanity, through the frantic pressing and beeping.

it must be the stuff torture devices are made of. and it makes me almost cry of frustration as i hear more beeping  drilling into my soul in the five seconds it takes me to reach the phone in my tiny (but extremely well-decorated) apartment.

perhaps it is the most commonly unimportant topics usually addressed in chatting-qui-se-veut-texting, i thought. maybe i should address the selfishness in my heart for wanting to love people on my own terms, in my own time, and only on topics that i deem worthy. maybe it has nothing to do with the beeping.

but really if they.were.just.written.in.one.paragraph.

read in one sitting.

one continuous thought.

one nice large blue rectangle on my screen rather that ever appearing new bubbles, making the screen flicker, my brain startle and my heart sink ever so sligthly

and only.one.beep.

yes, i DO have tried changing the ringtone, thank you very much for the suggestion. maybe the same musical note, if repeated so very often, would have driven even Haendel to eradicate it from his Hallelujah all together.

maybe if changed to a traditional ring, the way God and Alexander Graham Bell intended it. #fail

maybe its an undiagnosed lack of affection for specific people communicating. tried and tested. most are deeply cherished face-to-face. or when they send a appropriately sized cyber-communiqué. so it's not the people, it's the bip.

i pray to be someone who loves people, who is quick to repent and willing to serve.

but i really do.bip.not.bip.believe.bip. that the intellectual trauma and the emotional breakdown caused by.bip.the.bip.incessant.bip.beeping. bip.of.bip.multiple.bip.small.bip.texts. is a heart issue.

en passant on the heart issue: if life-giving communication was meant to mimic the heart beat of life, we would have all been speaking in one.word.sentences.like.the.robots.with.the.nasal.voices.in.eighties.movies.

one of the godly women i look up to whole-hearteldly hates group messages. and she loves Jesus. there you go. justification through the spiritual mentor. Jesus never had to deal with group sms and the incessant exasperating bip. nothing to learn there so i'll take the next best example to follow.

 (Although we could arguably analogize that the most certain interruptions of his frequently irritating disciples to the dreaded bip. which disciples he didn’t turn off with a mighty smack of his hand. have i ever mentioned how thankful I am for the faithfully recorded irksomeness of the same disciples who were loved and sent to make similar disciples of all nations? but I digress again)

my inner therapist truly believes this is related to The Great Fear.

Of Getting Paged, that is, about a Crashing Patient.

The Great Fear Of Getting Paged about a Crashing Patient while standing in line with other sleep-deprived people-studying-to-help-people, in the cafeteria twelve floors below, for the first meal in 10.5 hours, trying to grab the last stale salad before the grumpy lady at the cashier’s station decrees closing time.

The Great Fear Of Getting Paged about a Crashing Patient while on an excruciating elevator ride with a bored- and confused about disease and death in a fallen world- child pushing every floor button.

The Great Fear Of Getting Paged about a Crashing Patient while returning the last six pages of the last minute and the half.

The Great Fear Of Getting Paged about a Crashing Patient while trying to softly communicate your medical point of view on a landline, all your senses helplessly witnessing the sinister beeping and the flashing arrows of multiplying unreturned calls grow increasingly bright and terrifying on the tiny pager screen.

The Great Fear Of Getting Paged about a Crashing Patient while trying to phonecall a hello to your mother 3000 miles away (preaching to yourself that an eight hour time difference makes being awake at 3:49 am allright), pretending to call her to check on her while truthfully really just needing to hear a friendly loving voice on your seemingly eternal terrifying cold and eerie night.

The Great Fear Of Getting Paged about a Crashing Patient while wrapped in a plastic sterile tent, because the hospital only carries extra-large sterile gowns, trying to focus on sticking a two millimeter wide vein in someone’s father’s neck through your blurry eyes and scratched eyeglasses.

The Great Fear Of Getting Paged about a Crashing Patient while running in a reception-free hallway trying to return a page from ten minutes ago on your cell phone, while the terrifying beeping continues on the machine of death strapped on your waist, its radiations dangerously close to your ovaries-the kind of thoughts that penetrate your exhausted brain at 3:52 in the morning.

and to alleviate the drama and terror of the above descriptions for non-medical personal, The Great Fear Of Getting Paged about a Crashing Patient while trying to empty your twelve-hour-full bladder while simultaneously-and precariously- trying to hydrate for the first time in said hours.

if The Great Fear is the root trauma behind the trauma of the texting bip, la boucle est bouclée and brings us to the explosive knot in the vicious circle.

why don’t i just silence my phone. and stop complaining, and wasting analytical power and people's time. 

because The Great Fear is above all missing a text about someone crashing. in my life that is. because buried in the midst of all the blue bubbles and important-but delayable-topics may be a truly emergent message. unlikely you say, but not in my conditioned brain. not in the volatile middle east. (cf:explosive 3 lines above). not in a hospital's operating room for a last chance to say goodbye.

where i have been

the question is really who and not where i have been. a puppet on a wild string. an unpraying untrusting believer attempting to control her future with endless to-do lists. boards were over early october and the job search was on hold for lack of mental boxes to fit it in.

and then Haiti happened.

after being indoors and in-boards all summer, unsuccessfully hiding my irritation at the excitement that was squealed and posted about Haiti-the return, i also discovered that running away on a gateway-to-the-west weekend instead of resetting my brain at home is less than therapeutic at my age.

with less than 24 hours to pack, thankfully with much less debilitating anxiety than last year about now-familiar Haiti mechanics, i questioned the wisdom of booking this trip on a whim. (not that much had been weighed and measured and artfully planned in my life till now). my world was probably going to collapse during these five days, and i was too tired to care. so i just got on that plane.

and then Haiti happened.

flying into Haiti i was struck by how big, how powerful, how mighty the creator of all this is.



He holds the earth in the palm of His hand and knows each of us by name.

i didn't remember seeing all this the first time we were flying in. our plane was three hours late then and it was dark outside. i had been scared and tired, and my heart was still blind to the extent of God's love.

this time, i was excited (that had kicked in as soon as we left the kcmo tarmac) and missed the people who, while I wasn't looking , had crept into my heart and weaved the colors of friendship.

 

 

oh how He can use a storm and a plane delay to hide more of His glory for a little while longer, while he prepares and refines us. He knows that our hearts will fail to see the big picture, that they need to be led step by step and cared for, and protected from themselves.

 

 

God created these mountains diving into sparkly salty waters. He was in control when the ground shook and the mud overflowed. He cares for the land and for each and every one of their souls.

 

 

 my heart, the one where He lives and where they live is broken today, by the love that i 've received and the glory that i witnessed. broken by prayers that have been answered, and answers that awaken the awe of a God who listens and pulls you closer than you can imagine.

"I have been telling you that I love you, that I listen to you, that I will answer you. that I have given you life. that I have given you the most beautiful gift ever given, that I have given you myself, your creator. I will keep blessing you and giving you better gifts than you have ever imagined. I will open you eyes so you can see the gifts that I give you and I will look at your face and smile at your surprise and delight in your thanksgiving. why are you surprised, why do you still doubt?"

 

God had happened. in Haiti. and in Kansas City. and in His world, not mine. His world did not collapse during these five days. and who i am is someone to whom He keeps showing how beautiful His world is.
.

 

 

i know what you're feeling

balancing two encyclopedias on its head,  realism walks ungracefully the dangerous line over the pit of fire, between objectivity and cynicism. i'm not sure i understand this self proclaimed statement myself. pin now, think later.

anyway.
just came back from Lebanon, an impromptu "vacation" that i spent helping out my mom. all dusty scraps of paper and invaluable antique items from a hoarder family inclusive. which explains the twenty day delay in writing a new post. i wonder if i'll ever run out of excuses?

a little-too-sweet taste in your soul of artificial self satisfaction when you've made someone happy.

all that was done out of love for someone who loves you back, cannot help but nudge a question of would-i-do-it-for-someone-i-care-just-slightly-less-about than my neat schedule of the day: my own personal charity, proceeds benefiting my social life, fitness goals and checklist of tv series to catch up on.
are you tired of hearing about my schedule? so am i. defaut de fabrication, deformation professionelle, obsession maladive et j'en passe! my ego always insults my id in french, its just something we do.
 
along with scheduling with a hand of steel, objectivity regarding palliative care is another feature that i thought was an attained goal of my profession (eternal medical trainee that is) 
they have really nothing to do with each other, but it makes for a nice transition, don't you think?

i've found myself drawn to, gifted at, and comfortable, at heart, with palliative care discussions with patients and families since early residency. my head somewhere is uncomfortable with this comfort and attempting to analyze its roots.

is it exposure to familial deaths so early on in life? i remember being surprised in college at a friend's unfamiliarity with death when her grandmother passed away. my bittersweet feeling of superiority, of 'death maturity'. i had all those feelings down, from the guilt, to the anger denying the grief, to where my spot in the line of condolences was.

is it the opportunity for blunt honesty that i crave (and i know they crave it too, after days of polite exchanges of hopeful uncertainties).  in discussions where most people don't want to be the ones saying these three raw words, the ones that answer all the unspoken doubts, the ones that liberate from excruciatingly unrealistic hope, three words can bring the liberation of answers, of closure, and let the light shine on comfort, on relieving pain, on bigger and everlasting hope.

i've bonded with daughters and prayed with wives and hugged mothers after the decision to relieve pain has been made. i've helped them make the right decision of selfless love in the face of certain odds. i've even answered the miracle question-nothing is impossible to God, He can still heal, what if we withdraw before He does. yes He can, and if this be His mighty plan, then no ventilator that i disconnect or no morphine that i order can ruin His healing plan. God's schedule will not be hindered by a timeline that i ordain in my icu kingdom.

and yet, i found myself become the patient's family, wonder if the outcome is certain beyond a shadow of a doubt, rationalize and minimize the amount of pain she was in, ask myself for a horrible second if i was deciding her fate to give myself some rest, so i could sleep again, so i would stop being terrified of what would happen and how she would die. i heard the guilty thoughts of betraying her trust, of playing god, of not searching for other solutions.
i've believed them for one brief second of "patient family" time. seconds that flipped the coin so i would truly know the fleeting thoughts in a daughter's head, after i've said my three words.

for the record i am talking about a cat. who was sick and not eating and still loving you with her (one)big green eye (under her likely heent tumor).for those of you who are or have been a pet's human, you will understand with no apologies needed.

i'm thankful for my teenage grief because i can understand theirs, i'm thankful for the years of training for giving me the ability to objectively recognize pain and certain outcomes, i'm thankful for the doubts because they convicted my intolerance of love's desperate what-ifs.
the agonizing few days' journey on a cat's palliative care blood stained couch made me a better doctor. God does really redeems everything, if you listen.
















 

city girl and other short confessions

the maalouf sisters have had a great two weeks. first 5k, which also happens to be a social event on every colorful-mess-loving, awesome-childhood-reminiscing, curly head's bucket list.

discovering new KC breweries and bistrots might be a daily activity for lots of people. we have always had a different approach, being submitted to two sets of numbers: calories and dollars.

the amount of motivation it took to even place an insanity video in the dvd player, the agony of required 30 hour calls to deserve your salary, the torture in repeated fittings of the new dress that simply won't zip all the way to the top, the sense of victory sliding that credit card to pay for the 80% off teal leather designer boots just made us into less frequent frequenters of the overgreased, overpriced, over-tipped for, catastrophic heartburn and guilt producing fake authentic french cuisine.

symphony in the flint hills this weekend, another bucket lister, complemented by an apple maps mishap regarding the location of fort riley. once we got to the dirt road and met with another technology trusting lost citadine, we crossed "experiencing rural living" off of our to-do lists and came back to the highway.

it's sad really, i never wanted to be a city girl. i imagine myself being able to do hard physical work. and truly connecting with nature. probably connected to a crying point once it was time to separate the baby cows from their mothers. i only know that that is done because i read it in a romance novel somewhere. here we go, city girl again. i am the cliché city girl. not so cliché in the city are we? with curly hair flying around and an exotic accent? great, solved the cliché part at least in my head.
then the intensivist nature kicks in. i panic thinking about how much time do they have to reach a hospital if they have a STEMI. there is no way they make the whole 90 mns door to cath lab. do the hospitals even have a cath lab?? does 911 even answer calls here? what about babies, deliveries, online shopping, 5000 people mega-churches, podcasts, sepsis? do they have CRRT in their hospitals? what if the preemies need ECMO?
aaaah the arrogance... the false comfort of modern medicine and the illusion of online communities.. ...
yes i realize all the false comforts i rely on and the modern lies i have believed. first step.
 as far as the whole cowboy (yes boy, not cooking cowgirl) fantasy, i will just submit to the reassuring reality that God put us where we are supposed to be. i'm sure i'll find some hay to cut, or whatever, in heaven.






 

running; from a one night stand to an engagement.

Jesus satisfies all my longings.... the hymn is stuck in my head, and popped there during today's run.. (now yesterday's run. for more information on procrastination, please refer to post #1)

now what u need to know about today's run is that it was not craved but just on the schedule. the Q 2 days run intermittent with occasional insanity abs video and various older shaun-t videos schedule.

 

my favorites videos are when i feel my time is optimally invested, when more than two and the half muscle groups are being worked out (never mind that i am so exhausted that i end up vegging out in front of the Tudors, wasting a quintuplet of the time that i would have spent doing ten biceps curls), i am thankful for a cyber-trainer who understands my need for multitasking in a disorganizedly to-do listed life. 

 

anyway, that self inflicted workout schedule left me exhausted at the end of may, and excessive unrealistic ambition only reaped lack of  application.

it was not helping that the little clinical work i had to do at the hospital gave rise to endlessly eclectic to-do lists of studying, organizing my beloved closet, completing the shoe collection picture catalogue, updating my iTunes music collection into a multitude of playlists. all of the above currently half-done at best. the tragedy therein lying not in unfinished useful tasks, but rather the impossibility of crossing them off the to do list in brightly teal markers.

re-reading Romans that i just finished with my community group, and rewriting Romans notes mixed with a Romans study guide stolen from the laundry room in our st. louis apartment complex, started off as a to-do list and brought much joy and enjoyment, and has now got to find the time to fit into all of that.

digressing again r we? running, you're writing about running.

the whole running business started as i decided, one night with no moonlight, that i'd be doing the insanity videos one year from now. that sounded like a very maturely realistic time frame and far enough to alleviated any low self esteem ideas of i could never do that.

insight also kicking in about my poor exercise tolerance, and wanting to do the insanity videos, like all normal insane people do without pausing the video every 5 minutes. or maybe everyone does but the image in my head is the one I think I need to achieve, and not the realistic average of an experienced community. (average... i would refuse any such description on pure principle!...)

 i needed to increase my exercise tolerance and make myself breathe longer. VO2 max. i only leaned that term when it applied to me and not to my patients as a part of my education. i will treat you only of you suffer from a disease that interests me. or that i had time to read about in the midst of my life improving, God serving life. He couldn' t have possibly meant for me to serve him through absurd physics equations and boring disease concepts...

to make myself breathe better, i went for a run. low expectations and no experience made up my baseline of running for one minute .

hey at least i had overcome my worry of what people are going to think with the red face, sweat drenched, poor-form-one-minute-runner. yes i ran outside . i was already proud of that particular gutsy move

God might have been changing my heart from the time i used to make fun of 5-am-snowy-days-runners to that out-of-the-blue decision to Insanitize , to the ridiculous thought that running could be  just a bridge to that, and not a new love in itself.

changing my heart to the point of craving the next run twenty-four hours after the last run, apart from it being scheduled, (i only disobey the schedule for Jesus) or more accurately the set of one-minute-painful-slightly-faster-than-fast-walking-from-one-telephone-pole-to-the-other shows. 

to the point where i took a class, bought expensive running shoes , not on sale. i, the one whom without Jesus would be finding her identity in her elaborate outfits, and the pleasure of finding designer deals, mysterious discounts and colorful outfits.

today's run is that it was not craved but just on the schedule because my romance with running hit its first bumps on the road. but God redeems what He has created, and what he has deemed to be good.

running and i made up and are more in love than ever.
 

 

abysmal plans

it is 6: 47 pm and i sit on my couch with an overheated computer on my lap .who knows if that's normal, ever since the glittery stickers on my toddler Dell faded, i have lost interest in its therapeutic needs. a new computer has also not yet found its place on my to-do list or my budget. what's the point, i would not appreciate its marvelously intricate world of possibilities. really all i need is a half-clean screen, an internet connection faster than good ole dial up and a keyboard. I would still be using my nineteen ninety seven Lebanese twenty pound dead weight if it would fit on my lap and stream netflix.

well it is now 6:55, eight minutes spent on one paragraph only took my feelings of doom to abysmal dimensions. see i was supposed to be heading to the Roasterie between 4 and 5 pm, pretend to read about lung cancer while really copying Bible verses on orange glitter paper with a teal marker, that God ordained be brought back from a bookstore in Achrafieh Lebanon, probably for this specific design of my spiritual edification.

twelve minutes of reading would have made me feel really comfortable in my newfound knowledge of chemicals i had never heard of as risk factors for lung cancer. chloromethyl esters. so i am supposed to ask the sweet eighty year old in my clinic- with whom i have just flirted a little to soften the blow of a posterior speculated nodule in the apico-posterior aspect of his left upper lobe, if he has ever been exposed to that thing.

or am i supposed to, in addition to relocating to the first world to better learn to save lives, leaving my elderly cat and my one-eyed nounours (a plushed bear typical francophile name) in the master bedroom my parents let me have in the newly built house of my youth in the Lebanese mountains, where the breeze flows through each of the vast windows, encircling your soul.... (are you still following: we were at "am i supposed to":) learn the materials involved in every single welding, construction, naval, et j'en passé! job, to pinpoint what caused his cancer.

He has it. that's all they want to know. and how long does he have, can he still help his wife pickle the tomatoes this year. sweet old man with the aggressive daughter, we all comment, but hey guess what, if it were my dad in that tiny clinic examination room, you would bet i would be aggressive to the 24 year old looking curly haired foreigner doctor with the occasional blank stare (as she is trying to remember the name of that chemical so she can ask him if he was exposed to it.)

it is now 7:14. i meant for this to be a post about how my plans for the day got messed up. i guess my patient's abysmal news trumps my OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) miseries.

off to the roasterie then. i seem to remember my marque-page (book mark) was stuck to a paragraph describing how most trials do not support the observed beneficial association or a role for supplemental beta-carotene in the prevention of lung cancer. 
i mean that is great news for me, i hate carrots (and claim a deadly allergy involving terrifying dimensions of tongue swelling if i cohabitate with carrots at a relative's Christmas dinner table).

my joy of living in denial and my natural tendency to laziness also cling to evidence-based medicine to avoid searching for evidence supporting nature-based medicine.

but who knows, i mean God must have had a reason for making carrots, besides me using them as ghastly entertainment at the dinner table. let the poor man eat carrots and pickle this year's batch of tomatoes.
 

at the beginning.

i've been wanting to blog for years. ok maybe not years, but i'm Lebanese, i exaggerate. its in my dna and generational legacy.

i was encouraged to actually start (blogging, are you still following?) by a group of women i met while on a baby-hugging trip in Haiti. that turned out to be a God-meeting, prayer building, identity fixing trip. but everyone has been blogging about that so i will hold off for now.
having made that decision, it probably means i will be randomly posting about Haiti as thoughts and prayers fly in my heart. im not really a decision following kind of person. but im asking God to change my heart.

first post written 2 days after being back home.... (wait, am i home, are the States home? is the hospital home? but then when i talk about my mom, i say she is back home, i.e in Lebanon, Leb for the Initiates).

donc.... 2 days after being back home, sitting in pulmonary clinic waiting for patients whose charts have been looked up yesterday to not waste time (a regular demonstration of my OCD)

Joking around with acquaintances who know nothing of the world or the God I just met (or maybe i'm judging them to be like that, i mean, do i really reflect the God of love in my life?) 

sitting in pulmonary clinic, thinking about Haiti , praying to not loose sight of the Jesus i had my first date with after a prolonged long-distance relationship.

also planning the path to the previous level of fitness i was at before leaving. kicking myself for not maintaining the resolution not to binge on the remaining cliff bars and cereal bars from the trip. (i usually don't buy cereal bars - so i wouldn't eat them- duh. )so i have to taste every single one not to miss an exceptional opportunity : prelude on my relationship with food)

 

the degree of fitness has decreased by 50% in 10 days.

no numbers (in miles or minute) since i still can't live up to full disclosure and honesty. i like to pretend Jesus doesn't know. in this case it's ok that He does since He will not be making fun of my diminished VO2max. he would tell me to press on and that He's standing by the treadmill, ready to activate the emergency response system should my historical clumsiness slide off of the treadmill.

since while running, i'm following some dumb reality tv show that i didnt know existed because i don't have cable,(the purpose being not to watch dumb  tv shows, remember?). with the advent of hulu, that resolution pretty much died off.
 

anyway, what i meant to say, is that i ignore Jesus standing by the treadmill and get mad about how people might make fun of my minute by minute running victories. (approval idol anyone??)

i believe  this flight of ideas perfectly preflects my general brain of mind. and the vision for this blog but then again, I don't know where God will take it, and take me..

ps. this paragraph was posted multiple days after la redaction.  another case of inglorious procrastination