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.
 

 

the conviction of brilliance

i'm not stupid. let's just start by stating that simple, accurate baseline truth, agree and move forward. as a corollary, we can also agree that i'm not very humble either. and as we're agreeing on character traits, i'm an incessant arguer. but i will not argue about not being humble.

its important to establish a baseline in the conversation.

now regarding my general absence of stupidity. (wait, excluding fits of anger at inopportune moments, some relationships i decided would be fruitful, and the inability to season food---salty only, i manage beautifully with sweets, coming from a long line of sweet-toothed stubborn diabetics).....
humm i wonder if i can call all of these something else and still claim intelligence, here i go again..


renaming the above: anger issues, discernment issues, extreme spontaneity, a conviction of being able to change, or better yet save people, and reluctance to put in the time to learn to cook.

but intellectually, I've had historical fits of brilliance.
of which i never actually understood the springing mechanism
acute and delicate insights one day, clueless the next
mastered my high school literature and philosophy class, unable to grasp the symbolism of a cult movie the next decade

so when i never understood the Bible, all of it, the writing style (not even noticing that "style" needed to be plural), the good news, the symbolism or lack thereof, the awe-inspiring Spirit, the punctuation, the what-i-thought-were-really-bad-bedtime-stories, the what-i-thought-was-a-lame-attempt-at-poetry, and the i-cant-tell-anyone-that-i-don't-understand-what-the-big-deal-is-all-about.

times of shame and arrogance.

in my mind, if i am brilliant, and by own doing, who else's?, and don't get this, it must be its fault

i mean, come on, look at me! i was reading great authors, had memorized exquisite poetry, was an avid cinephile of independent alternative movie-making.
i was slowly but surely on a path on intellectual and cultural eliteness.
slowly and painfully and exhaustingly and terrified of missing out on the next creative movement and be kicked out of the club.

a club where a pervasive sense of discomfort, lack-of-fulfillment, fear instead of satisfaction, were feelings that i had numbed down. and i had no time to decipher the Word of God.
i knew that was the right thing to call it, i knew the right answers because that is what an intellectual does. i was waiting for a feeling to kick in and make me magically understand this book BEFORE i open it. because i had no time to waste.

not that i was praying to understand it.
prayer was another right answer, a didactic accompanying an empathetic facial expression at funerals, or sessions of comforting friends breaking up, or neighbors experiencing health issues, etc, you get the picture...
prayer wasn't for me or by me. it was a word, a good sentence closure, a visit-ender, i'm praying for u, good luck with everything, bye! and a lie i recognized uttering every time i promised it to someone.

the shock that followed understanding the Good News still lingers.lingers in my head. my heart is at peace and at joy and at awe, and the journey keeps springing amazement at who God is. i dont know how He managed to pierce my hard stubborn, arrogant know-it-all heart, but that's what He does. He is amazing.

the shock lingers in my head still. the fact that with all my brilliance, intellect, years of church going, i had not comprehended a tiny, plain, simple sentence. Jesus died for your sins. what does that even mean?

that was a while back, and we've had a bumpy journey. where i was still kicking and screaming, and pouting in a corner and crossing my arms in refusal when He would hand me my Bible to read, and laughing at him when He would say the word discipline, and pressing play on a cult movie on Netflix when He would call me to talk to Him.

but i have learned discipline and i'm still learning. when i don't run away and actually sit and read my Bible, i am in awe and in beautiful shock and in adoration at what i'm learning.


see, working for an intellectual eliteness reputation is the biggest obstacle of all for asking questions.  because you cannot afford to look stupid when you are building your own kingdom. what does this crazy story have to do with jesus? you only ask the questions that will confuse others, and to which you have invented the answers to assert your intellectual superiority. and soon you will stop asking even yourself these questions, wait, why did jesus come to die again? because if you don't believe in your kingdom, then who else will?


The great lethal irony of misdirecting the occasional fits of greatness that He gave, and using them to judge His world, His word, and Him, building up from there to where you don't understand anything at all. what kind of Love digs into that, uninvited, to make all things new?











 

Musical envy

importing old country music cds borrowed from a friend, you know, one of those people whose dark living rooms, dusty kitchen counters, and torn down trucks carry a treasure of music legends and brilliant unknown artists, all of which you've never heard of.

maybe because you're a foreigner, and you were busy with your people's music legends. (to my Lebanese friends I will now admit, I have seen maybe two Fairuz plays, and can only hum the well known classics). none of that "b-sides for the elect" superior attitude.

maybe because you grew up without itunes or pandora.

or with overworked parents trying to raise kids and carry a household of fourteen in war time. sharing delicate Arabian notes floating on exquisite love poetry or the musical anarchist themes of the seventies would have been Ultimate Irony.

maybe because you just learned to ask when in ignorance. maybe you just reached that magic point, not of the illusion of absolute self-assurance, but of serene security in a mixture of worldly and Christ-grounded identity, where you are not terrified of other people's opinions. asking for musical recommendations is now acceptable.

i am making up for time lost in musical education by borrowing cds, stalking people's musical tastes on social media, and most importantly learning to listen. ha! because acquired deafness is probably at the root of all ignorance.

loudly turning music on, and wandering about the house pretending to do chores, or studying, just adds a layer of noise to the roaring cerebral to-do lists engines in my head.

music was not intended as an instrument to drown your thoughts or numb your co-existing experiences. for people who need "something in the background" let's just admit that this is merely where it is: in a background where the arrogant brilliance of your musical choices doesn't matter anymore.

 hey! my thoughts are dangerously tipping to bitter jealousy..

true. i envy you, respect and admire you, sometimes don't comprehend your taste at all. i don't know how you did it, how all these names and cassettes and endless spotify lists became knowledge to you.

so i will keep borrowing. and learning to listen, trying to make up for lost time.

so i have a few tunes to introduce my children to, in an era where justin bieber will likely be the classic of the time.





 

Tornadoes and M&M's

only until recently did i understand the difference between a tornado watch and warning. this issue may be a source of confusion to a multitude of people,that confusion then translating into the topic of casual conversation and the smallest of talk.

but for us foreigners, we know the cultural areas to focus on and fight to acquire, in order to prove, mainly to ourselves, that we are not FOBs (fresh off the boat) . A few years after hitting shore, after the initial self-deluded FOB-denial phase has passed, and we acknowledge our initial condition, we vow to be born again and strive to slowly shed our persistent FOBiness as we grow in visa years.

tornadoes and the weather are not covered by the doctrine of fitting in.

Acceptable initial steps after cross-cultural baptism:
acquiring an acceptable accent that makes the overworked and minimally tipped lady at starbucks understand you need waaaate'  instead of the phonetically correct wo-ter, taught to you devotedly in school,
acknowledging college sports as the gods of ever-changing and ever-returning seasons even if not endorsing them,
learning that no one will invite you twice for coffee, or offer you M&Ms more than once because you politely refused the first time, thinking you were visiting your mom's second cousin's great-uncle's widow (as the tradition is for the pope to refuse the conclave's decision twice before solemnly wearing - in my opinion that which would have made Simon-Peter cut the designer's both ears, and more than likely, delicate hands)

what a liberating realization. yes please, no thank you, how very few occasions to clearly express you desires and be on your way
this is a young country, and to catch up with the millennia of brother continents, has had to abandon, the triurne negation tradition. There are many facets of freedom. That was one of mine, gained after years of claustrophobic mathematics of convention.  

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