Observations post-residency... day 2

I kind of feel like the fog is beginning to lift and I can begin to process and reflect on the past month of busy completion of residency and on the last 4 years in general. Observations on day 2...

I was driving to meet Ryan for dinner and found myself stuck in traffic. I asked Ryan if he knew of an accident close to our restaurant... and then realized that this was probably NORMAL rush hour traffic that I've rarely experienced while working early and late hours.

I was sifting through a pile which had been designated, "Shannon's stuff," in all of the hubbub of moving/packing/sorting, and I found... my license to be a doctor for the coming year, membership for an OB/GYN group, insurance information, chocolate, flowers. :) You know, the inconsequential items. It is amazing what can be set aside when you are pushing for the finish line. I'm not sure my physician's license was something that 'hinders' (from the verse in Hebrews that says, " let us throw off everything that hinders.. and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.") but at least it was something I did not need for my last few weeks in residency. The flowers were a sweet gift for my last day at work from Ryan. I took a picture of them so that I could enjoy them at work.

I just noted another date night on our shared google calendars. Google calendars has made our marriage much easier. We don't have to talk or communicate as much. :) If it is on the calendar, that is what we are doing. If there is nothing on the calendar- we can fill it with something and hopefully tell each other what we volunteered them for or who we are going to dinner with next Saturday. But on a more serious note, that intentionality of putting "marriage" on the calendar or to-do list has been very important to us. If we don't work at it and spend time thinking about each other and what we can do to make the relationship better, we will drift apart. I cannot tell you how many times when I was desperate to sleep or just quickly finish one more thing that Ryan gently reminded me that we needed to focus on our marriage. He sent me invites for date nights. Though many times that meant we simply went on a walk after eating dinner at home, it was a reminder that we needed to focus on each other. And we got formal marriage counseling. Not because things were terrible, but because we knew things could be better, and because it was a formal time to get together and talk about our marriage. With all the emphasis on pre-marital counseling, I think both of us wish that plain old marital counseling would be more of a normal thing. To borrow and illustration from our medical school marriage mentors, it is much better to get vaccines and to use bandaids and first aid ointment rather than waiting until an abscesses forms and the infection requires a visit to the ER. In the same way, it is better to go to counseling as preventative maintenance than waiting until you are on the brink of divorce. We are certainly not perfect, and we readily admit that counseling has helped keep our marriage strong through the adversity of medical school and residency and our first child. We hope more people will find this worthwhile and invest now in their marriages. I'm so thankful for it.

End of an Era... almost

It has been 25 years since I started school in Kindergarten, and now I'm finally done. I graduated on June 21st after 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school, and 4 years of OB/GYN residency. I took my written board exam on June 30th. So I'm done! Except I'm going to start French school in September. And I still have oral board exams in 3 years when I return to the US. And there is always continuing medical education. And re-accreditation exams. So I guess when they told us at our entry into medical school that we should be life-long learners, that was very true. However, the formal, consuming, intense training is over and for that, Ryan is very grateful.

Ha! I'm very grateful too. I just realize how much he has had to put up with, especially after having a baby. And as I enter into a season of life where I have some time to reflect, I am sure I will have a lot more to say about residency. It was so rich, but so intense. I thought I might be utterly relieved when the pressure was off, but to be honest, I feel like I'm floundering a bit. It's like I was a goldfish in a bowl with piranhas nipping at my tail, but now I'm released into an ocean and there are still dangers out there, but it is hard to know where to start. I started out getting sick and sleeping the whole first day. Today I read emails- still had some unread from February! I updated Facebook. I'm updating the blog. Zoe will get updated on her overdue vaccinations before we give her to her new family. And hopefully, I can start packing for our move and our long roadtrips to see family. The end of an era is simply marking the beginning of a new one.

Subliminal Messages

Do you ever find yourself humming a tune and wonder how you started? For me, it is often the last song I heard on the radio, but occasionally it has been a song I have not heard in a long time but is very applicable to the moment. During a conversation this week, I hadn’t even consciously recognized that I was feeling unsettled. But at that moment, I found that I was singing in the background.  

“My peace, I give to you. My peace, I give to you. It’s a peace that this world cannot take away and in difficult times, it won’t fade away. My peace, my peace, I leave with you.” 

Or at work since Sydney has been born, I have found myself humming, 

“Lord I need You, oh, I need You. Every hour I need you. My one defense, my righteousness, Oh God how I need you.” 

It is a cool reminder that our brains are wonderfully made, and perhaps the Holy Spirit is working inside our subconscious and bringing encouraging words to run in the background of our mind. Isaiah 30:21 reads, “And your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it.’” I wrote that verse on a notecard and had it on my bathroom mirror long enough that I had memorized it without trying. It brings to life the common command in the Bible that we not forget His words, that we write them on the tablet of our hearts and on the doorframes of our houses. When we are faced with a challenge or given an opportunity to have a spiritual conversation, the word of God that we have written on our hearts can spill out. “For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.”  Luke 6:45. 

The motivation that will sustain us

When I was in college, an engineer shared something in a class I attended during missions emphasis week that has stuck with me. He talked about having the right motivation to go into missions. 

Here is what he shared, paraphrased:

There are many reasons why people may pursue a career in full time missions. I know I have identified with most of these during my journey.

• The lure of the exotic or desire to travel. 
• A feeling of guilt that we have more and thus are obligated to help out the rest of the world. 
• We have something they need and the means to give it to them.
• Obedience to God. This is my "calling" in life.
• They need to hear about Jesus.
• We have medical expertise that they need and are dying from the lack thereof. 

When looked at more closely, all of these reasons have flaws. Yes, even going out of obedience to God. 

The lure of the exotic/desire to travel will quickly fade, especially in the face of culture shock

The guilt we feel in having more than someone else will dissipate when we have things stolen from us

The importance of bringing a message to people will become frustrating when people reject the message we have.

Bringing medical expertise will not save everyone from death, and we may get highly discouraged at the pain and suffering that we cannot alleviate

Going out of sheer obedience to God, though that is a good thing, will lead to burnout if that is the only thing keeping us going. It may even mean a poor attitude prior to the burnout.

So what should be our motivation? 

1 Cor 10:31 So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. 

So our motivation to go to Congo to bring them better medical care or a better fuel or a closer community through a soccer ministry should be to bring God glory. And whether you as the reader of this blog are currently in school, taking care of kids, playing guitar, going to the office, or working in the field, you can have that same motivation- do it all for the glory of God. This will remain in the face of adversity, during culture shock, seeing patients die, and being rejected. Bringing glory to God is the motivation that can sustain us.

On Being Missionaries

It got real when we received our prayer magnets in the mail. "We are official missionaries now." I told Ryan. You know the pictures that stay up on your fridge or bulletin board or stuffed in your Bible... for years and years. We worked hard to make sure our picture was good, which was no small undertaking with a 3 month old. It felt like the 3 little bears- not too __, not too ___, but just right. She had to be awake, diaper changed, not sick (had just gotten over a cold), and dressed in a cute outfit but not yet spit upon. I wanted to be awake, not post-call, not on call, showered- ha! And Ryan, well he can be ready anytime. So the minute that looked like it would happen, we had to find someone to take the picture. We asked some friends if they were available. Unfortunately, they were running errands and were at the mall at the time. No matter, we went to them! Our official picture was taken at the mall with an iPhone. Now you know.

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about having the title of a missionary. I confess that one of the barriers I had when we were praying about making the jump from short term trips to long term missions was that I had a perception of missionaries when I was little was that some looked frumpy, some looked foreign, some looked out of date (possibly a result of being on our fridge for so many years!), and some of their kids looked awkward and acted shy. On the flip side... in Kenya I met some amazing doctors who gave up lucrative careers to be there, I wish I were half as cool as my cousins who grew up in Bolivia and are bilingual, and some of our best friends are working in videography and photography as official missionaries. Regardless of whether people see us as frumpy and our dear Sydney awkward, the goal is not to make much of ourselves, but to make Jesus famous.