Pilgrims at Oak Ridge

I just read Hosea 2. Our small group is studying Hosea this semester, and so far it's been great. Jeff did this excellent introduction a few weeks ago and explained a lot about the OT. For instance, I didn't have a clear understanding about the Northern Kingdom/Southern Kingdom division, other than there was a division, and the Northern Kingdom was bad. I learned, though, that Hosea and Amos were the only 2 prophets to the Northern kingdom, who had only bad kings. Everyone else was a prophet to the southern kingdom (i.e. - which was the eternal line of David, the line which Christ would come from). It really is an amazing book. First of all, to think about what God asks this prophet to do....Here he is, this Godly person, called to be a prophet and does God bless him or make his life easy? No, in fact he tells him to go and marry a prostitute, who will leave him and then he has to go back and redeem her again. It made me think about how the Christian life isn't about my com...

 

Of all ten commandments, I think the command to keep the Sabbath is my favorite. Even throwing in all the extra commands in Deuteronomy, still nothing beats the Sabbath Command. I mean, here we have the very will of God, as thundered from the mountain, inscribed in stone, you must take a day off. "Aw, c'mon God, not even just a little back breaking labor by the sweat of my brow?" "No no Jeff, you must spend the day on the couch." "Well, allright." So here Aubrey and I are, on a Sunday afternoon, doing our best to obey God. She is taking a snoozer on two-thirds of the couch, and I am on the remaining third, playing on the computer. Later, I might take a nap myself. Sunday is always our favorite day of the week. We went to church this morning, and our pastor preached his yearly OT sermon, about prizing our inheritance in Christ, unlike Esau, who did not prize his birthright. Aubrey and I had been hoping for a picnic lunch, but the weather soured a bit du...

Well...I am officially feeling overwhelmed. I just came home from a meeting about setting up my fourth year schedule. There is so much to think about. First of all, I have to come to final decision on what I want to do with the rest of my life. And for someone as indecisive as I am, that will be hard. It is just to hard for me to close doors. I like them to be open. Then, I have to figure out what electives I want to take, when I'm going to take them, choose what to do for my required courses, and decide about trying to do an away rotation. As for electives, there are so many choices!! And again, I do not like to close doors. Especially when there are so many great options. I could do rotations anywhere in this state at community hospitals or with private physicians that are easy to set up. I can also do rotations at any other medical school in the country, or at other hospitals where there are residency programs. Ideally, it would be great to go ahead and try to do a rotation so...

As noted, Aubrey is on call tonight. Which for me means a quiet evening here at the house. I started by scrounging together some dinner. I had some leftover pizza bread from last night, which is one of my favorite meals. But there wasn't enough to qualify as a meal, so I had to scrounge further. My efforts were generously rewarded when thorough scrounging turned up an old and forgotten pack of brats hiding in the back of the fridge. The sell-by date was mid december, but judging by the state of the package, I have no doubt we bought them in time, and they have been happily lounging in our fridge since. The remaining brats were covered in frost, the back of the fridge gets pretty cold. So I fried one up, and enjoyed a Natural Light beer with it. I'm actually starting to like the Natural Lights, especially when poured into a frosty mug out of the freezer, and they get really cold and a bit icy. After dinner I revved up some John Piper, and started cleaning the kitchen. ...

Today I am doing what is known in medical circles as being "on call." This means I stay at the hospital all night, sleep in a rickety bunk bed waiting for my pager to go off, and examine any kid who is going to be admitted. As a third year med student, sometimes being on call just means that you go home later than usual if your resident is nice and tells you to leave. But, alas, I think tonight I am actually going to have to stay here all night. I do not get the feeling my resident will tell me to go home. So no nice warm comfy bed that contains 2 very squishy pillows and a nice handsome husband. :( Supposedly there are four kids that we know of now who are going to be admitted. So maybe I will learn something. Until then, I am trying to find ways to fill this afternoon. On the bright side, I will actually get to eat hospital breakfast tomorrow morning. Which really is a treat. Biscuits - Yum!

I have had a somewhat retarded cell phone for a while. Caller ID never worked. Sometimes the screen would just go blank for days at a time. If I wanted to call anyone, I either had to have them on my speed dial, or remember exactly where they were in my phone book. But my sweet husband just realized I could get a new phone for free if we renewed our contract with cingular. So now I am the proud owner of a color screen camera phone!! When I was first using it, it too was having similar problems with caller ID. So my dear patient husband Jeff called customer service and got them to fix it! Hurray! And just now a friend called and the phone told me who was calling. Suddenly, I have the ability of screening my calls. Go ahead, call me. See if I answer.