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.
















 

"the accent is not the issue" and other changes

tonight is the big night where i mix my worlds and upload a picture to the blog. initially intended for instagram, with insta-sharing to facebook evidently.

i've recently started mixing my other worlds too.

-french world with a lebanese accent (lebanese, not arabic, and frenchie lebanese, make no mistake)
 -lebano-arabic world with a frenchie attitude rooted in an unorthodoxly deeply Lebanese family (we all think our family is unorthodox right? to avoid saying unique. intellectual people know that unique is dépassé, an ordinary unspecial desire).
-american world with a sorority wannabe accent, as my sister likes to call it {that really started when starbucks would not understand that i wanted a cup of water. wo-terr. i could've accepted the curious looks. or "unparanoid" the look for what it might have been: the tired one of an underpayed starbucks employee who couldn't care less about an accent. yet i now say waaate'. and Gad instead of God. you gotta follow the music}
.
and as many times as it has happened that a patient, or a consultant, or a nurse has appreciated me for my work, or alternatively has not appreciated bad work with no accent from another, i still can't get it into my head that the accent is not the savior, nor is it the issue. it is not the accent that pleases or turns people away.

that's all dandy, although let's leave the whole people pleasing, acceptance seeking (or really just strong opinion seeking) idol for another post. the latter might very well include how the accent has been a heart issue this whole time. eureka.

back to the picture

 

well that is not as great a picture as instagram would've made it to be. filtering away the ordinary into art.

 

but i'm keeping it since i announced a picture 

what am i going to do, delete all the above ramblings triggered by the picture announcement?

there's something you need to know about me. i don't do starting over. but i persevere. or evolve.

i wonder if starting over even exists. it's never the same bouncing ground, when you re-start something based on the lessons from your non-successes.

 

the picture says 07:55 AM.

which to some, is the time they come back from their run

some can run at 11 AM in 105 F and indulgently smile at my rookie, red, puffy and drenched face as they are expertly hopping out.

some people's warm ups are other people's half marathons.

 

some people's change of heart is the victory.

and isn't amazing how God just nudges your heart, just as little as He knows you can handle, to change what you didn't even imagine could be better differently. and He makes every change unique.

 

from idolizing sleep and despising early morning risers- if not early-rising for what the world has told us productivity entails-to what I consider uncoerced early rising for me.

i woke up willingly, no snoozing.

coffee and other addictions still require rising 45 mns prior. He will probably make me change that, and when i rebel, just change it Himself.

baby steps for big heart changes. 



 

A post that was not supposed to be about what it's about

i haven't posted in a while, busy with overthinking, overworking, overworrying, over to-do listing, over-medicining, overachieving.
i was mentally and physically exhausted by the end of two weeks of consults and two weeks of intensive ICU regimen. mixed with my first 5k run, a road trip to the symphony on the prairie, a road trip to southeastern Kansas for a lecture, and writing ever-renewing to do lists, shifting items around as if re-writing them on a new corner of a piece of paper somehow meant part of that job was done.

read between the words performance anxiety regarding the lecture, achievement anxiety regarding the to-do lists, fitness anxiety regarding finding time to run during all that, religious anxiety regarding not exploding in people's faces when I was tired- as my newfound insight had shown me i have been prone to do for the last 33 years.

oh and the women's conference. somehow in my unplanned post, the women's conference portion did not make my mental anxiety list. elyze fitzpatrick was speaking at church, over 2 days. too long, i just want to sleep! and i need to run! but i have to go. (have to is the most frequently used term in my family)
 
i had never heard of fitzpatrick. i thought attending a women's conference would be cool. (i don't know how i've evolved to this "hanging out with women is good" mentality after preferring male friendship all my young adulthood years, and avoiding overemotional, over analytical and overdramatic female friendships as much as possible. if there was to be any overdrama in my life, i'd be the one producing it. in case you're wondering, no that did not turn out well at all in any of my relationships).

i mainly attend all the events at church that i can to build deeper relationships and because i have realized how much i have to learn. speakers and conferences are an amazing teaching experience, but i have to admit that they cater well to my hunger for hearing about Jesus, mixed with a lazy reluctance to just pick up my Bible and read, or just pick up my brain and talk to Him.

back to the conference. i was physically exhausted but spiritually refreshed. a new baptism i felt. there is something to be said about listening to a woman state repeatedly and sing of Jesus' love for her, and her need for Him, a woman who has theoretically "achieved" all that you, in a dark dusty corner of your head, still believe that you need to make everything right.

marriage, kids, a carrier, peer approval. all of the above will make everything right culture tells us. what a horrendous lie.  i realize the devastating impact it has on my friends and coworkers and random girls i meet when i hear their stories and their longings. the prison it keeps them in and it had kept me in all these years. a lie that even after not-believing-it-anymore, even after putting out trust and hope and happiness in much more powerful hands, we still occasionally lean towards,

fitzpatrick is a strong experienced lady, who has the gift of preaching the Gospel in a slightly estrogen-laden sarcastic manner. the gift of guessing crazy convoluted women doubts and reminds you, again and again -because she knows you are a woman and need to hear things twenty different times and in twenty different ways- reminds you of His love for you.

not love "but maybe he didn't like me as much today", not love "because i did good and didn't explode in anyone's face today", not love "but i still remember all these horrible things ive done and it's weighing me down and i dare not look him in the face" UNCONDITIONAL, EVERLASTING, NEVER-ENDING, ALL-ENCOMPASSING, ETERNAL LOVE.

im not trying to sound like the jesus storybook bible. okay fine, maybe i stole a word or two from there. google elyze fitzpatrick and buy her books. youtube her, amazon her or whatever new app is available since my last techno culture check. it will change your life.  and the beauty of the modern age, is that macho-men-types-what-does-a-womans-conference-speaker-have-to-do-with-me-types (don't get me wrong, pretty attractive types they are) can order books or listen to her gender-clandestinely. i'm sure you have crazy convoluted men doubts of your own too.

what is amazingly obvious is that God tells you that He will change your heart when you start following Him. You don't really believe it. maybe you hope for it, but don't believe its possible. i mean yeah yeah sure he created the heavens and the earth blablabla but this is di-ff-rent, God. I tried to change on my own and couldn't now, could i? yes yes i know You created me and all, you can do all things, but let's be realistic. it's hilarious what condescending little creatures we are to the Creator.

just to say not only He changes you, but every time, you think you've got it, the whole creation/fall/redemption/restoration business, BAM- He slams it in your face in a whole new different way that leaves you panting with excitement all over again.
He knows when you need to be reminded of heart truths that you've packed aside, because you're an intellectual and too busy considering deeper theological or to-do listal issues. He is there in your to-do lists, your failed attempts at non-explosions, your missed runs and your lecture performance.

He is also there in a blog post that was supposed to be about "overthinking" and somehow ended up being about Jesus. hmmm. funny.

 

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.