I enjoy reading articles with titles like, “Advice I would have given my younger self.” Often some of the advice has to do with avoiding mistakes or heartaches that happened along the way. Well, I have experience with some of those!
I could have avoided a five-year detour into dietetics if I had the confidence to stay pre-med in college.
I could have skipped over two boyfriends and some awkward and painful moments that resulted.
I could have avoided a year of long-distance dating.
I could have gone straight into Internal Medicine and skipped many painful experiences in clinic + started making an attending salary a year early.
If I know anything from time travel stories, however, it’s that my life would be a lot different if those things hadn’t happened. Would I even be a doctor? Would I have any of the friends I’ve made in the last fifteen years? Would I be married to my husband? Would we have had Lindy? This year I’ve gone on two road trips and attending two weddings that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t become a dietitian and ended up in Yankton, South Dakota. Thank God it was so. Not every instance is so clear, but it’s reassuring to look back at mistakes I’ve made and see how God has used them to bring good things into my life.
Things I DO regret?
Giving away my apple peeler corer slicer. At the time, the convenience didn’t seem worth the imperfections in the final product. How wrong I was.
Singing a classical Latin piece for the final show choir concert, instead of a crowd-pleaser. Ah, the hubris of youth.
Allowing Birdie to keep me company at the table when we were living alone together. She was already a trash panda but if anything this cemented the behavior. Unwatched plates will never be safe.
By the time this is posted, it will be past that time of the month, but as it is… right now I’m in it.
The last one or two or three days of my menstrual cycle. Wondering if, this time, maybe I won’t get it. Telling myself not to hope for that because the next time I go to the bathroom there will more likely than not be a rust stain on my underwear. Feeling a tickle and wondering if it’s blood or just routine cervical fluid. Debating whether to keep sitting on the couch or to walk to the bathroom to check. Feeling a stupid sense of relief when there’s nothing there, and immediately chastising the feeling. Feeling the tickle again when I sit back down and resisting the urge to return to the bathroom. Checking my period-tracking app again to see if it’s too early to think about buying a pregnancy test. Six dollars for either an abrupt I told you so and resigned waiting for the inevitable red gush or a lottery ticket to keep hoping on. Deciding it’s worth it. Preparing for the hope bubble to swell in the next few hours until it’s burst with a single blue line. That won’t stop my heart from beating faster while I wait for the designated two minutes.
Where is God in all this? With me, I guess. He hears my worry and sees my restlessness. He knows if I’m getting my period in the next minute, in one day, in one week, or in nine months. He knows if I will get pregnant again or if I will go on, month after month, with a regular cycle of blood.
I haven’t had as much experience with death as some.
On one hand, my childhood contained plenty of animal death. Cows died sometimes. My dad shot three of our dogs when they got too old to move, and we tearfully brought another dog to be euthanized at the vet when it was diagnosed with diabetes. Countless cats disappeared, and more than a few kittens kicked the bucket, some in gruesome ways. One night when I was ten or eleven, I wanted to feel sad (kids are weird) and tried to tally up all the animals I knew that had died. I can’t recall the total but it seemed like it was over fifty.
On the other hand, I was spared the death of someone I loved until after college.
My dad died in a plane crash the summer I turned twenty-three – that was my first real experience.
A fact about me I’m ashamed to share: I’ve never performed CPR in a read code event. The opportunity never came up in med school, and when someone coded in the ICU during residency and I saw everyone lining up for their turn at chest compressions in what seemed quite obviously to be a futile attempt at resuscitation, it didn’t seem like giving a few of my own chest compressions was going to help me or the patient.
I’ve observed several codes, none of which ultimately was successful. (This demonstrates how few I’ve seen, because statistically in the hospital about 1/3 to 1/4 are at least successful at restarting the heart.)
I didn’t pronounce someone dead until my fellowship year. An older woman in my care had been placed on comfort care with the goal of leaving the hospital on hospice. She wasn’t doing well, but had been stable for several days. Right before the end of my shift, her nurse paged and asked me to come up, because my patient had died. In a moment of gallows humor, I had a shock when I was listening for a heart beat and watching the patient’s chest – it was rising and falling. Then I realized her air bed was still on. The nurse turned it off, and she was still.
Our daughter, Lindy, died in our arms. She just gradually stopped breathing. The nurse listened to her heart and said she had died, but when the nurse practitioner came to confirm, her heart was still beating, slowly. It kept beating for a few more hours as we held her close in the hospital bed.
Yesterday I spent the afternoon sitting next to a great aunt who is dying. Part of the time she moaned and moved her head back and forth, most of the time she slept. I don’t think she knew I was there. Her pulse was high, probably 120 beats per minute. Still breathing steady but sometimes with a rattle. I sat with her in the hospital in July and thought she was dying then, although she’s further down that path now. I don’t know how long her earthly journey will continue. Sometimes it happens so quickly, like with my dad. Other times over a few hours, with Lindy. My great aunt is taking a harder, longer road, God only knows why.
I hate death. People say death is just a part of life, but they’re wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
What I do know is that the God of the universe experienced death as Jesus Christ, and he conquered it.
I am haphazardly reading through the Bible and have just started the book of Job. I find Job to be a challenging read. Today, I read the first reply of Eliphaz the Temanite, who has the dubious distinction of being the first of Job’s three friends to open his mouth. Despite being with Job for the explicit purpose of comforting him, his words are far from comforting. He implies Job is whining, wonders why Job is having so much trouble dealing with his problems considering that he’s given advice to people in bad positions in the past, suggests that Job must have done something worthy of punishment and deserved what happened to him, and ends by saying if Job simply repents and learns his lesson God will forgive him and bless him more than he did before.
Yeah, no, if you have a friend going through hard times, this would not be the speech to emulate.
However, despite Eliphaz being utterly wrong about things – the narrative has told us repeatedly that Job is a righteous man who has done absolutely nothing to deserve what has happened to him – he says a lot of things that are, at face value, true. For instance, in Job 5:17 he says, “Blessed is the one whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.” This is echoed in Proverbs 3:11: “My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke,” which is itself quoted in Hebrews 12:5.
My dad taught us a saying about proverbs, which is not original to him: “Proverbs are principles, not promises.” Proverbs teach us about how the world works, the principles of how God has set things up. Most of the time, they accurately describe what life is like. Life, however, cannot be reduced to formulas. I think that is intentional. God wants us to live by faith and trust him. He intend for us to manipulate and control our lives through promises that work like magic spells.
While Eliphaz was factually correct in saying God’s discipline is good, and we should welcome it into our lives, he applied this truth wrongly to Job’s life. He demonstrated knowledge of how life works, but not wisdom in applying this knowledge. Jesus does not do this. Solomon may have been the wisest man on earth, but he has nothing on Jesus, who knew Proverbs as well as anyone and also wisely interpreted the Law.
On a broader level, how do we deal with situations where something is true on its own, but made false in context? In the above situation, many of Eliphaz’s statements were true, but they added up to a false argument for Job’s guilt when taken altogether. Would it still be ok to pull out the truths and use them, divorced of their context? I have never read Marx or Nietzsche, but I’ve certainly read a lot of quotes from their works and some of them ring true. Overall, I reject their overall arguments (or, what I understand their arguments to be, never having read them). But is it acceptable to pull out the parts I agree with and say, This is true? To do this, must I include a disclaimer explaining the context? Or is the “truth” irrevocably damaged by the part it plays in their larger arguments?
Stretching the questions a little further, what if the stated truth is untainted by the context of the argument, but rather by the person making the argument? Attacking an argument by attacking the person making it is a logical fallacy, an ad hominem attack. You’re not supposed to do that. And yet, Jesus didn’t allow demons to address him as Lord. Is a shirt that says, “Jesus is Lord – Demon” going to convince anybody? Wouldn’t it do the opposite?
I’ve read a few articles discussing this question, including one from The Gospel Coalition on Jonathan Edwards. Edwards still has a large influence on Protestant Christians today, and he was a slave owner. How does that influence how we interpret his writings? Does it?
Although the context is different, there are similar questions about truth and its context in the medical field. In medical school, we learned about Wegener’s granulomatosis. But we don’t call it that anymore, our professor said, we call it granulomatosis with polyangiitis, because Wegener was a Nazi. On a more serious level, the scientific community didn’t know what to do with the discoveries made by Nazi scientists who experimented on people in concentration camps. Many of these findings cannot be duplicated because they were blatantly evil and unethical. But there have been blatantly unethical experiments run in the United States as well. Sometimes they resulted in knowledge that could improve people’s health. Is it ethical to use knowledge obtained through unethical means?
I don’t have answers to these questions, and I’ve gotten pretty far away from Job’s friend’s words. Well, I’ll end on a piece of good advice. As Thumper’s father said, If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.
The White Coat Investor and most other reasonable personal finance blogs for physicians recommend saving 20% of gross income for retirement. (People who aren’t physicians usually do fine with saving 15% because they start the process earlier and benefit from more years of compounding.) If you are aiming to retire early, you need to increase that percentage.
With my current job, I am technically employed by two different organizations, the result being I get two salaries and can contribute to both a 403(b) and a 457(b). But wait, there’s more! One organization provides a 501(c) with a mandatory 5.5% employee contribution and 8% employer contribution, and the other organization contributes an extra 9% of my salary to a different account (I have no idea what numbers go along with that one).
All together, if I max out my 403(b) and 457(b), and all personal finance sites recommend maxing out tax-advantaged space, taking into account the forced 501(c) contribution and employer contributions, I’m saving 25% of my gross income. And we haven’t even considered the backdoor Roth IRA! We could save another $15,000!
This begs the question, do we want to do this? Would I ever consider saving less?
What if, instead of going for a 25% percent retirement savings rate, I went for 20%? This would involve me not maxing out one of my retirement funds, which would feel weird after reading so much about the importance of doing so. It seems like everyone is doing it. (This is probably not true.) Does that mean I’d fall behind? Would I be missing out?
What would we do with an extra 5%? Would we save it up for something big, like a bathroom renovation, a new business venture, adopting a child? Would we just inflate our lifestyle by eating out more, going on more trips (my husband would hate that) and upgrading our stuff? Would we give it away, as gifts, family assistance or support to organizations we believe are making difference?
I have, of course, a few thoughts. The first is that, the extra 9% from one of my employers comes with golden handcuffs, meaning if I leave my job before I’ve worked there for three years, I forfeit the money. I don’t plan on leaving my job, but life does weird things sometimes, so in the spirit of not-counting-my-chickens-before-they-hatch I’m not going to include the extra 9% in my savings calculations until I’m past the three year mark. Taking everything else together, and including a little extra that goes into a taxable account, we’re saving right at 20%. Meaning, we can kick this decision down the road for another two years.
The second thought is that there are a lot of warnings in the Bible about putting too much faith in money. A wise man in Proverbs asks God to avoid giving him too much wealth, lest he put his faith in his riches and not in God. The rich man in Jesus’ parable is foolish for building up his possessions and not putting any thought to the fact he could die any moment and that he has an eternal future on the other side of death. Jesus teaches that our hearts follow our treasure. James castigates rich people for mouthing platitudes while ignoring the poverty of their brothers and sisters. The Bible also teaches that wealth is not a bad thing, but the implication is that it comes with the responsibility to use it wisely.
I know that I am tempted to derive security from the money I’ve saved up – that’s just I am. Because of that propensity, I believe it will be wise to avoid going beyond 20% retirement savings in the future. Instead of hedging my bets by stashing away another five percent or more, I can ask God to use what we save to provide for our needs. My husband and I will need to have more discussions about it, but I’d prefer to use the money we’d otherwise be saving for the benefit of others. One can make the argument that by saving more now, there will be more to give in the future… but the future is uncertain. I don’t want to wait for a mythical tomorrow that isn’t guaranteed.
Of the many unattractive traits I possess, one of the biggest offenders is my judginess. I am at least self-aware enough to know I have this problem, but that hasn’t kept me from continuing to pass judgement on basically everything.
It goes both ways. I used to think I’d outgrown my perfectionism, but the reality is I’ve just shed some of the more attractive and superficial aspects: my bed is generally unmade now, and my sock and underwear drawer is a disaster, but my inner critic still takes me to task about these things when it’s not smothered by doomscrolling or ice cream. That is to say, I judge everybody, but I reserve the highest standards for myself. Failing to live up to my expectations is the norm. I assure you that I am properly castigated when this happens.
One of the new items that I have started passing judgement on is the disability rearview mirror hanger. (I am actually unsure what this is called. I refer to the blue tag thing that hangs on the rearview mirror to signal that is ok for you to park in a handicap parking zone.) I feel qualified to do this because I am now the possessor of one of these hangers. And wow has it provided a lot of opportunity to judge!
First, the instructions that come with this hanger clearly state that it is only supposed to hang on the rearview mirror when you are parked. A lot of people violate this rule. I can’t say that this is any more dangerous than displaying the seemingly-no-longer-as-popular-as-they-once-were fuzzy dice, but when you’re aware this is against the rules it is hard not to mentally eye-roll every time I pass someone driving with the blue tag hanging from their mirror.
Second, seemingly a lot of people use the handicap designation who do not actually qualify for it. I completed handicap parking forms for several patients in residency, and I truly believe everyone I completed it for had a legitimate reason for it. Once I even gently declined to do so by reading the specifications and asking my patient if he thought he met them. (Thankfully, he agreed with my assessment and said he didn’t.) Apparently a lot of PCPs aren’t as careful as I was. One possible explanation could be they don’t want to fill out the forms over and over. My PCP submitted for a “permanent” handicap parking permit for me. I’m hoping the disability isn’t going to last more than two years, and theoretically it could resolve itself any time. Perhaps a lot of people get the permanent permit and then continue to use it when they are no longer disabled. (If that’s the case, then I have even more to judge them on!)
My mother-in-law has a handicap parking permit (egads! that’s what it’s called!) that she uses on occasion and I still haven’t figured out why she has it. My husband says it’s because she has a bad leg, but she doesn’t use any assistive devices and although she’s slow moving I’ve never seen her have any trouble getting around other than being out of shape. The alternative explanation is that my father-in-law can’t see, but given that he still drives and a handicap parking spot is for parking, not driving, it makes even less sense. You can bet I judge them on it.
My most recent judgement episode occurred at church, because of course it did. Our church is well attended, which means that it has a parking problem. Unfortunately for me, people with disabilities, or at least handicap parking permits, attend church, and the spots are almost always taken before we arrive. (Admittedly, we’re almost always a minute early, which is to say, late.) Last Sunday, I observed a family of four get into an SUV parked in one of the prime handicap parking spots. To be sure, two of the adults looked to be in their sixties or early seventies, but none of them seemed to be having any trouble walking to their car as I self-righteously hobbled up the steps to the non-handicap parking section where we’d lucked into finding a spot several rows farther back.
Are you sick of me yet?
Whooo boy. I need to stop judging my “disability” against other peoples’ disabilities before it’s too late. When I start comparing myself to others and taking pride in a positive self-assessment, I’m a loser, not a gainer. I’m not strong enough to handle the original sin, and it’s certainly not part of God’s plan for an abundant life. Beyond that, of anybody surely I should understand that there can be more going on on the inside than what we can see on the outside. Now, it seems fairly obvious that some people don’t need their handicap parking permit, but can I truly say that? Do I know what would happen if they had to walk up the stairs, or on uneven ground, or another fifty feet? No. (Unless this is regarding my in-laws. They would be fine.)
Thank God, I am not the one who determines if people are righteously using their handicap parking permit or not. I am responsible for righteously using my own handicap permit, and my master can judge the rest of his servants.
This past weekend, my husband and I got up two hours too early (I forgot about the time change!) and drove from Omaha to Denver-area Colorado for a medical school classmate/roommate’s wedding. A few random thoughts/highlights:
Eight hours and change is a very doable day of driving. If you leave at six in the morning, you’ll be surprised how fast you get to your destination. (Oops.) All in all, the benefits of driving this distance vs flying handily outweigh the drawbacks.
The bride asked my husband and me to sing the song for the first couple’s dance. The song was Sweet Symphony by Joy Oladokun and Chris Stapleton. Well, my voice is not like Joy’s and my husband is generally antipathic toward county music. Nevertheless we agreed, after warning my friend several times that we were going to sound quite a bit different from the official recording (“What do you mean?” she asked, genuinely confused). For myself, I was most worried about the low notes that are just outside of my range. Well, the time came to sing the song, and between being slightly dehydrated, having just eaten a good meal, and sitting next to several gentleman who were smoking cigars, it turns out the low notes were just fine but I couldn’t sing the high ones. Quite the unexpected and unsettling turn of events. But no matter. Almost everyone was half way drunk and my friend hadn’t taken much time to feel the feels during her big day, so the couple’s dance was her opportunity to cry. Despite the substandard singing on my part (my husband performed admirably), it was a rousing success. We and the other darker black guy at the wedding got a lot of compliments. (He was more annoyed about the situation than I expected.) Morals of the story: the things that go wrong are often not the things you anticipate and plan for (go figure), and given the right conditions even the mediocre can be just what’s needed.
We saw a bumper sticker that read, “Carpe Scrotum. Seize life by the balls.” We are children and thought (think) this is brilliant.
On the way back, we enjoyed one of the most gorgeous rainbows we’ve ever seen. Initially, it was a super-bright swatch of color with clear Roy G. Biv color divisions. (My artist husband had never heard of Mr. Roy G. Biv, which threw me for a loop. I guess for him it is just obvious? Is it a problem that I still rely on this mnemonic?) Shortly thereafter, however, it became a clearly defined full rainbow, and driving in the middle of Nebraska on I-80, we were able to see the end of the rainbow on both sides. Clearly. So many rainbows are like stars, they disappear if you look directly at them. Not this one. We exclaimed over it for about five minutes, in awe. Amazing how God works.
While I’m on the subject of rainbows, I’ll just mention how much I hate the term “rainbow baby.” I can’t articulate why, exactly. It doesn’t really make any sense related to the Biblical understanding of rainbows. God doesn’t promise another child after you lose a baby, and some women have repeated miscarriages or stillborn children. Maybe it seems too soft and cute when the reality is no matter how many children you end up having you still have a dead one and that never goes away. Maybe I’m just bitter because I haven’t had my “rainbow baby” yet.
I have two memories about Moulin Rouge before I saw the movie.
The first memory involves me riding in a car with one of my more pop-culture aware cousins. A song was playing, and she said that it was from the movie Moulin Rouge, and in the movie the moon is singing that part. Obviously, this sounded bizarre.
The second memory involves a senior in the class ahead of me and the final show choir concert of the year. Every senior in show choir could choose a song to perform at the concert, and she chose “Your Song,” by Elton John. Only she didn’t say it was by Elton John, she said it was from Moulin Rouge. I didn’t know any better, but I thought I was a nice song.
After watching the movie, I can confirm that the singing moon is bizarre but overall makes sense in the movie world, and that Your Song is a good song. If one song pops into my head when I think of Moulin Rouge, however, it’s Ewan McGregor crying, “All you need is love!”
Well, I don’t buy it.
My husband is a long-time gamer. He is also much more interested in music than I am, so in the car we’re usually listening to one of his playlists, which contain a lot of video game music. One of those entries is “You’re My Number One,” a song written for a Sonic game and sung by the very soulful, very white TJ Davis. It includes the lyrical gem
All I need is you
For always and forever
All you need is me
Remember when I say
All we need is love
For us to be together
Cause you’re my number one
It’s a catchy beat but definitely not winning any awards in the songwriting department. The last time I heard that chorus, I turned to my husband and told him, “You aren’t all that I need.” It was a nice romantic moment.
Finite, fallible humans and the love they can give are no match for our needs. For one thing, they die way too easily. What if the only person you need, whose love is all you need, dies in a car crash? What then? And, how can they possibly fill up the hole if your heart? My husband and I love each other deeply, and that doesn’t keep me from having moments of discontent and restlessness. I’d like to say that it’s not because he’s not enough, but of course he isn’t enough. He’s human. None of us are enough.
God created us to be dependent on him. He’s the only one who can make the love songs true – all we need IS his love; if he’s our number one, we have all we need. He can fill the hole in our hearts.
