the unexpected chronicles of singleness

yes i'll believe the Lord
His every word is true
and when i hear His voice
i will come close
i'll follow Him
and what He says i will do


how i wish my heart was less fickle. more true to my emphatic musical proclamations.
how thankful i am that He made this song stick in my head as i my brain drowns in a swamp of thoughts and doubts.
every season in which i fall in the auto-congratulatory mode over growth, obedience, and maturity, He is faithful to remind me how much i need the shelter of the cross.
He unrolls the scarlet carpet and gently reveals how i am ever running from Him in a weak remake of the same scenario. each clever attempt more hypocritically pathetic than the last. thankfully pathetic. praise be to Him who brings me back. pouty, ungrateful and irreverent child, stomping over her unfulfilled list of demands.

i run and tackle and hide and fall, and fall, and fall, and hurt: knowing that with one breath, He appeases and comforts and re-focuses the whirlwind. when he ever so slightly turns my face to look at Him, i forget the last two sleepless nights and the cyclone of my imagination. the happiness and hope that i have failed to find all afternoon on social media, are but fading shadows when my heart is filled with His gift of grace and joy.

how long do i have to wait, Lord?
i ask again because the jaded-attitude-of-a-busy-successful-career-woman did not bring the comfort it promised. (surprise!)
i ask out loud, because trusting you means i can forego my pride.
resting in your plan breaks the patterns of despair.
and if i've been silent about struggles to protect my self-confident, self -sufficient reputation and
avoid the aw-s and oh-s and empty words of comfort of the world, i now also ask on behalf of other single women.

if we single women who understand each other's struggles well, if we who just get it, if we don't point each other to Christ, to his sufficiency, to his eternal nature, to his extravagant love, to his finished work, to the example we should be looking for, to the God we are cherished by, and are being made perfect for; to the joy of worshipping Him, to the passion He enflames in our hearts when we look at His glory. to the single God-man who joined our sorrows, the single head of household who toils and weeps with us and is Himself the answer to this particular pain. who else will?


God's plan for you and me, is not about about you or me. i really am not equipped nor created for the weight of all creation to be revolving around me. and when i try to twist an atom of the world to revolve around me or fit the plan that i haven't double-checked with God, i become the twig that snaps.
He may have a man in store who may speak arabic or not know what the mediterranean basin is.
who may have dreads or be bald, drive a harley or an escalade (hopefully not, really. please).
who may love haitian kids or dream of climbing everest ( i wont be going with).

he may this or that: insert all your lists and bulletpoints and dreams and imaginary weddings and ring sizes, career options, musical preferences, physical appearance, geographical boundaries, food restrictions, spiritual gifts, clothing choices, parenting skills, worship styles, and the countless items on THE list we all keep editing, adding to and crossing from, depending on the level of hope placed in the list.


this list does not work. it produces anxiety, endless hours of analysis over maybe's, and shallow relationships defined only by the feeling of accomplishment in laser-ing off the "SINGLE" branded on your forehead.  it is tiring and disappointing and scary.
let's trust the One who made us, who made the world, who made them. let's trust His list.

and let's trust his plan for our lives, man or no man, list or no list. let's work for Him and obsess over Him because that's what we are made for. no wonder other obsessions leave us defeated and empty and exhausted. let's not believe the lie that we are alone or abandoned or forgotten. let's not believe the lie that a created being will love us and understand us better than He will. let us admit that there are things we crave that are missing but that He knows what we need. let us not believe that being single is our biggest problem and that a relationships will fix everything. let us pray to believe He is what we need most. let us not believe that something is wrong with us.
let us laugh together and struggle together and accept together that we don't and won't believe His promises every minute of every day. and let's encourage and point each other towards Him, every time we fall.
let us wish for a wedding waltz but let the ultimate hope always be the wedding waltz in heaven with Jesus.















 

shame and glory

well hello there. 

polite smile, and furtive glance.

re-reading old posts leaves me embarrassed, shocked and a little angry at myself.

what was i thinking, pouring excited, wannabe/think-I-am mature thoughts all over the web. tortured-fleeting-ideas-and-epiphanies. who-am-I-even-talking-to-except-myself. conceited, really.

what were my friends thinking? someone should have called me out on the incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo.

yes yes I know we are harder on ourselves than other people are. but really we're not.

today i am thankful that Jesus died in the muddy pit where i have merely calculated the judgments others may cast, the image, i may have projected and the reassurance i may obtain through the manipulation of re-evaluation.

today i sit looking back amazed at the mighty work He has done while i haven't been online (or onblog, please forgive the pun-ttempt)

a work of silence that i thought i controlled, because of the to-do lists that controlled me. a work of shifting perspectives. how is He going to, how He is using this very moment.

i rarely review the notes i write on fancy little kate spade notebooks.  it is easy to not reassess how misguided, immature and weak one's brain-one's faith : was-is. but i did re-read previous posts out of concern for an image. and He used it to show me that He has been at work.

should a potentially conceited public display of random thoughts continue on the transparent pages of the web, i will likely re-read in a few months-or tomorrow- and realize the immaturity of the now, that i am presently celebrating.

dead flesh wants to despair and lament that i will never be a complete work, an intellectual adult, a successful communicator et j'en passe...
new creation celebrates the Glory. the overwhelming Glory of One who is complete. for me. One who defeated the abyss and meets me in the muddy pit. who loves to refine and change.while i am busy kicking and fighting and neatly tying a blindfold around my head and my heart, the One who opens my eyes to what matters, to Him who matters.

months have passed and things have happened and i haven't kept up and guilt has crept in. where have i been? where have you been? have i arrived yet?can you change that too? i've done so well. when is my turn?

He has made me rely.
He has made me follow
He has used the wilderness and answered prayers and not answered others.
He has given gifts.
He has met me where i have questioned the number and quality of gifts, even the design of the wrapping paper.
He is meeting me where i know i need to grow, He is pulling me where i didn't know that i needed to grow.
He has molded, changed priorities, landscapes and foundations.

He uses my embarrassment for His glory.





 

what Haiti and moving away from KC have in common

you know how it is when you look forward to something? you know how sitting on that plane to Haiti, instead of being anxious you're comfortable and excited at the same time because you know what to expect? and it gets even better because you have a measure to compare your happiness to, the paralyzing anxiety from last time. you are not feeling the sleep depravation from a 3am awakening, that you despised and obsessed on the unfairness of last time.

you know how there is a small part of you that is worried that the first amazing time was a fluke and you might get disappointed this time?

you know how you tell yourself in the midst of it that it was a mistake to come back, that this time is not working, not at all, that you miss your friends from last time. you know how you get tangled in tired and angry-and hungry!- details five minutes before dinner...
you know how you come back and you tell yourself that this was amazing, and suddenly it hits you that it was so different from last time, so different from what you had imagined, so far removed from anything you are able to imagine.

you want to say it was better but you know better, you know it was incomparable.

we trust our memory, our plans, the friends-or just the people we know, even our imagination, but fail to believe that God can do different and do it well. we fail to trust that it could be good. We fail to trust that He is good.
 God changes your heart. for a long time, even after I realized Jesus was Lord over my life, i didn't know where to start. i knew that i needed to start. i wanted him to be lord but i didn't know how to change how I felt and what i wanted. I still didn't want Him. i didn't know how to love God and and how to obey Him.

it (or He) clicked one day in an warm, humid, loud and non-ventilated hotel room in Haiti. a woman i barely knew was speaking of her story and her life. and the joy and trust with which she opened her heart to women she barely knew was God talking into my heart. that evening, my over-educated, over-analyzing mind learnt the simple concept of "asking God to change my heart"

He had changed my heart already and i didn't know it, but He was also empowering me.  He taught me that i did not need to carry the burden of change alone. the strength of the how-to how comes from Him.
its not about knowing how-to, it's about trusting He does.  ok I had a really lame pun instead of this one but i will spare you. reallyyy? you want to hear it? how niiiiice. and brave. it went something like trusting how-He; or Who-He I hadn't decided. sorry. i've only had one coffee so far so bear with me. 

God can change my heart without me asking Him. He can change the world without my help but the offer of participation he extends to me is an invitation to witness and be a part of His glory.

when i want something, i still stand on the ledge, but His Spirit empowers me to not block off the images that the Spirit reveals.

images of fleeting joys followed by pain, images of my wants satisfied by letting go of Jesus' hand, images of death waiting in the precipice. it is terrifying to let go of Jesus’ hand. and i do it every single day to reach for a stupid shiny thing. sometimes i imagine the sarcastic look on his face when He extends His hand again to take mine, like my dad did. but it's probably not theologically accurate. i mean Jesus is funny don't get me wrong, and in my world funny=sarcastic. but i don't think that would be His time for sarcasm. i think He takes our hands over and over and over and over again with a beaming smile because we came back. i think the sarcastic smile is the one of shame i give myself. but his forgiving embrace stomps over my sarcastic smile of shame.

He makes me listen to His will. just as a faint whisper in the midst of the beating of the drum of my desires. but He makes me listen. i yearn for the day where no sinful desires are exhausting my heart. i crave and dread the refining fire He will carry me through because i know i will emerge on the other side of the embers closer to Him.

even as i wrote these words, i am praying to get the job i want and the boy i like, and the money to buy all the purses that i think i need, to fit the bohemian style that i let myself believe defines me.
i' scared to move and loose the friends i made in KC and never go to Haiti again and loose sight of God. I am failing to believe that He is in every city, on every plane and in the heart of new friends that i have not met yet. .

i am letting go of his hand and failing to believe that if His plans are different than mine, if this second time moving does not look like the first time ( for the sake of honesty insert here: the first time when i was paralyzed with anxiety-and anger-because i was moving to KC and then it turned out to be-well a gift from Him), if the other city doesn't look like this one, God can do different and do it well.  and He will do different because He is fighting for me and providing for me.  also you think i came up with this Haiti to moving parallel on my own? hey i was just typing blue fleeting thoughts and minding my own business and He showed up and showed me.

but the minuscule and yet so encouraging change is that He has tuned my heart to listen to His voice, listen to the shout telling me to slow down, to talk to Him about the things and the stuff and the cities and the boy and to sit down and trust Him. sit down and trust Him to go get what i need. He will bring what will be a gift of sustenance and not destruction. Sustenance in Him.

what Haiti and moving from KC have in common? God led me to both and God is in control of all the next times.

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.
.

 

 

the Gospel on shuffle, stop, repeat.

i've been struggling with anxiety. i've been struggling with anger. i've been struggling with fear. i've been struggling with worry. i've been struggling with greed. i've been struggling with idols. i've been struggling with pride. i've been struggling with memories. i've been struggling with the uncertain future. i've been struggling with God.

so many mental and handwritten posts-born out of ire and despair- have gone unpublished, yet have led to more clarity, as muddy as clarity is.

a painful chiseling of my future, a determination of longitudes and latitudes, of dollars and friendships, of big cities or small towns, of shores or plains. He has made me in a way that i want to discover it all, He has made me in a way that i dread change. He has given me friends, He has made them become close enough to reach that point where ungrateful humans become annoyed with their friends. He has given me community when i only really needed Him.

He has carried me through nights and nights of blood and death and dread. He has carried me through miles and miles of trans-atlantic travels. He has carried my brain when paralyzed with fear, He has carried my hardened heart through grief. He has sent angels to protect me from myself, when i wouldn't listened to Him. He has healed the angel's wings, that i had torn apart.

He pursues, oh! how He pursues.  

the Cross that He planned, the Cross that he ordained, the Cross where He loved, the Cross where He forgave, the Cross where blood and justice rolled. the Cross that gave me life.

and despite the Cross, and despite the Word, i keep requesting proof, and signatures and assurances and promises. i keep requesting my way. i keep requesting answers. i keep requesting my crown and my scepter and my dues. i keep requesting my reward.
and i argue about my thoughts, and i argue about my motives, and my heart changes every five minutes, like a child who has cried for a red balloon and dis-interestingly lets go of it for a blue ice cream cone. i exhaust myself with my own thoughts.

thankful that He doesn't change like my inconsistent heart does. thankful He changes my heart although i still doubt it. thankful He has it under control even when i try to grab the wheel. thankful He loves, thankful He pursues, thankful He sanctifies the brat that i am. thankful He talks to me when i wouldn't want to talk to me. thankful He hasn't given up when i'm about to, thankful He nudges and thankful He makes me listen. thankful He reminds me to believe, as i doubt over and over and over again, as i doubt and believe, as i believe but what-if, like a never ending tune on a broken piano. thankful for His endless patience and grace.




 

the hypocrisy of privacy

 

it has occurred to me multiple times to block people with "undesirable" opinions (ie not 98.3% identical to mine), mimicking what the now facebook-despising-intellectual-elite is currently practicing.
how convenient would that be in the real world to tune out all those voices that you do not agree with.

i submit to you that :

b. social media should be a 'training ground for the real world" (if we've achieved that with our sins, take cyber-bullying for example), shouldn't we at least practice holiness online as well?

a. most importantly, blocking people only goes to cultivate the twirling and twirling of the vicious circle of refusing to learn from other people. wait rewind the vicious circle of even considering for a split second that an alternate opinion might be viable, carry some worth.
has humility been obliterated so massively, that we refute ideas as they are bouncing off of one cement wall to another in our cranium, not even peeking through the fence into our synapses?

all that is not me is worthless. cant do more blunt than that, building your own kingdom.

being guilty of that, i also confess that the passive benefit that is the fruit of other people's active facebook scrolling, is pretty appealing to lazy souls.



 

 

"My family's Google searching got us a visit from counterter​rorism police" by Michele Catalano is a blog post that I recently read through a link on a friend's wall.

 

side note (at least I give warning about side notes now...) I've actually never really met this friend, but I've been assured of his highly educated, cultured, eclectic and cosmopolitan nature by our mutual acquaintance. i.e my mother. and you always believe your mother,.she is another example of sanctified opinions bouncing off of cement walls, opinions that you do not question. until that painful moment when you do, and you crucify her for being merely human. how can she be wrong?? she's mom!!! another reason to tell your kids about Jesus, folks. let them trust Him, because He, He has already been crucified and has won. don't let them make you their God. the harsh reality of you being a human mother will crush them someday.

 

 

anyway this seemingly really cool guy posts this article

 

well written, with the right amount of details, funny but not too sarcastic. i loved it. read it. also read it because i'm so proud of having discovered how to insert a link there.




i have been the leftist rebellious anti-capitalist, anti-corporate tween, i swore never to change, and i don't think i have. many things still shock me and disgust me. i've learned to swallow my zofran and pick my battles.
as a professional now (not relying on small envelopes filled with cash and blessing notes left by papi on the nightstand), i also understand that small sacrifices make institutions work. that idealist kids look at the nuances at the horizon but someone has to unclog and oil the cogwheels.

this is not cynicism but the poetry of practicality. il faut de tout pour faire un monde... personally,  i am more likely to fall in love now with the hard-working miner with calloused hands than the languishing poet testing his risk for DVTs laying in a field of daisies. (maybe God will have the miner play the violin in his spare time)




back to the post. i understand the concerns for privacy. for personal liberties. for in-a-perfect-world-theories. for whatever amendment that is, i'll memorize them when i get offered a green card.
but the world is not perfect. i travel multiple times a year and get screened. because of the drawing of a cedar tree on my passport (ironic that the cedar is actually mentioned more than 70 times in the bible, so it really shouldn't be linked to terrorist threats) but the reality we live in dictates that i don't mind, because "random" screening might have, unknowing to me, saved my life.

if that ct scanner, that caused so much ink to be spilled and blood pressures to rocket, saves my mom's life on a 24hour-3 plane trip from Lebanon, or allows me to put my teenage kids on a dream flight to Vienna without experiencing cold sweats of dread, then scan away. of note, the drastically anticlimactic yellow snowman version of me that i excitedly peaked at after that infamous scan, was the least invasion of privacy i have witnessed this summer.

as the world is willingly exposing its toned or cellulitic thighs in briefs that like to think of themselves as shorts, when more breasts are exposed at the grocery store than in haroon al rashid's harem, when the world' sexual prowess is being analyzed on every bookshelf at a four-year-old's eye level, can we please stop hypocritically complaining about the loss of privacy that we ourselves have relinquished?

they can look at all my embarrassing google searches, impulsive groupon purchases, and every single French to English translation that i've looked up for the purpose of this blog, if that might potentially avoid more families being torn to pieces and more firemen developing eosinophilic pneumonias because of criminal dust.

they can come search my house if they think the antique coal iron,
or (god forbid) the polyester pants that i bought were suspicious.

does anyone have a better idea or would you put your children on that plane if a crazy-eyed guy with a machete was boarding? just remember that crazy eyes can be hidden with inexpensive concealer and machetes are now an app on your iphone.

all that from a persistent leftist rebel at heart.
God bless America.




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.