(*) Good analogy...

I was talking to my friend Ben today and he shared with me a very good analogy from the book Abba's Child by Brandon Manning... I would like to share it with you. Well... very much simplified and paraphrased. Life is like a box of chocolate... um... oh, wrong book, wrong movie.

Life is like a pond. When we feel like our life is in a mess, it's like the pond has been stirred... the water is now muddy and we can no longer see clearly through the water. Our reflection has become distorted. If we don't have 'stillness' in our lives, and we cannot be stillness and wait in solitude for the water to calm down, and we keep on stirring the water (trying with our efforts to fix things or not addressing the issues from the root and continuing asking God 'why, why, why'), all we are going to see is more muddyness and more distorted images of ourselves through this pond. We will not see who God has created us to be until we spend time waiting on Him, and waiting for the water to be still. It is then, after the 'ripples and mud have settled,' can we start to see clearly our reflections and the clarity in our environment. It is then we can see things clearly and get to know ourselves without distractions or lies.

Amazement!

I was so ecstatic today! I paid a visit to one of my patients today. Remember the girl I told you about in a previous blog, who survived a plane crash and suffered burns all over her body. Several burn surgeons and I spent countless hours debriding and skin grafting her 2 months ago. She continued to have more grafts… Today, I had an opportunity to visit her in her room in the Burn ICU. As I entered the room, I had to take double looks! She was beautiful! She was setting up, chatting with some nurses… her deep green/blue eyes were open, looking around. Her face was flawless, little to no scars (her whole entire face was burnt). I remember doing surgery on her 2 months back, with her completely frail, hanging on by a thread, and her eyelids sewn shut. I prayed for her each day that she would survive and be there for her children and husband. God answers prayers! As I stood there, I was too much in shock and amazement to approach her. I was too shy to introduce myself to her to say how much I was a part of her recovery and how much I had prayed for her even shed tears for her. I thank the Lord and simply slip out of the room, in complete amazement!

Another day...

Another day in the ICU… Between rounding for 5 hours at a time, learning about fascinating physiology, learning to managing the ventilator, placing in central catheters and arterial lines, lumbar puncture, engaging in discussion about patients with the neurosurgeon/ gastroenterologists/ cardiologist/ nephrologist/ infectious disease specialist, I had another chance to witnessing patients dying today. Timothy, my friend, I really appreciated your comment in my last blog about ‘Death…’ I feel that to do the ministry as our Father called Christ and also us to do is to actually do something that is out of the ordinary. In essence, ‘going against the grain.’ To fight the urge to be the ‘status quo.’ (Btw, I like how you infer ‘status’ as ‘dead’ or ‘no influence’ as if the ‘status quo’ means ‘idle’ and ‘doing nothing’) How do I know that the patient needed to be left ‘alone’ to deal with grief? We assume that. May be we don’t need to expect ourselves to extend comfort and compassion to family at times when no comfort seemed to be enough. However, we need to show people we genuinely care. We also need to show people there is hope.

Death...

As we run down the stairwell from the Medicine Intensive Care Unit (ICU) to one floor below, the attending physicians and our team of 12 ICU residents, interns, and me (the fourth year medical student) arrived at a chaotic scene. There was a surgeon doing chest compressions so vigorously, it seemed as though he could have touched the floor, through the patient and the bed, with each pump. There were respiratory techs managing her ventilator, there were nurses standing by to push medicines to revive her heart, and other nurses with the electric shocker near by. Patient’s husband was at her side, grasping tightly to her hand, and fighting the flood gate of tears that was ready to explode as if the dams are crumbling.

She was young... actually, not much older than I am. I am sure her life was clean, and she hadn't tried everything to destroy her body like many of our patients before they end up in our unit. She was dealt a pitiful lot. Her vice was one that she didn't ask for, or earned. It was a very rare kind of cancer that had spread all over her body. She was so young.

Just as we stopped compression and almost stopped all the meds, her heart got stabilized. A few minutes passed by before her heart rate started to show signs of the peculiar rhythm that we are too often familiar with before patients breathe their last. At that moment, as I tried to fight back the tears in my eyes, the following image was burned into my mind: there was silence in the room... There was nothing to be said... well, nothing can be said. The husband had his head buried in her neck, his cheek to her cheek, in their ‘essence’ saying the last goodbye... One dying heart and another left forever broken and crushed. I can't help myself; I don't know what to do...

Then, as cold and manner-of-fact as we came, we left the scene. The patient’s heart was still beating, but, not for long. I knew the Lord was taking her home.

I have seen at least a patient die every day or every other day since I been here. Other than doing the best we could to help patients maintain all of their vital functions, what else could we do to help them and their families transition into the next chapter of their lives? What do I do when I see the husband’s heart break and bled out right in front of me? Why were my feet so glued to the ground that they won’t move an inch even when my heart wanted to be next to his? How do we become compassionate for the patient and their loved ones? How do we not become a machine, an ‘artificial intelligence’ filled with medical knowledge and algorithms? How do we apply ourselves in ministering to God’s Beloved in their last moments? How do we deal with all the sadness and brokenness we see? How do we deal with the feeling of being inadequately prepared to respond to the broken heart?

(*) Why does your loving God allow suffering?

As the atheist and agnostics say, why would a loving God allow or even designate suffering? Well, to those people who ask… here is what I need you to know: I think in the bottom of our hearts, we want the same. We want essentially a world without sadness, diseases, sufferings, and impurities. Have you ever thought about what you are saying? You are telling me that you want this world to be Heaven! A place that almost seemed too good to be true; a place that cannot be explained by a scientific mind; a place that require your faith and trust to believe.

God had built into our beings a desire for perfection; A perfection that is very much a reality. You may ask, “Why then is the God that you’ve described ok with imperfection and suffering?” Well, God is not ok with imperfection. If He’s ok with it, then there is no necessity for His existence. He has granted us Grace out of His omnipotence, so we have the promises that in His timing, we will not have to accept imperfection as our lot.

So, why are you fighting so hard to be ok with this world of imperfections? I am not ok with this world of imperfection and suffering, and I fight the urge to accept it and to say that there is no hope and no salvation. I resist all temptation to say that there are no more than what we can perceive with our senses. I say that the hope for salvation, Heaven, and eternity with God is the only answer to why we had to suffer, and why there is never going to be cessation of tears on this side of Heaven. In fact there is never going to be true-peace in this world. Continual rejection of the reality of God is the acceptance of imperfection.

Furthermore, the God that is worthy to be worshipped and revered is a God that is completely powerful, omnipotent, omnipresent, loving, compassionate, holy, and able to redeem us from our imperfect condition WITHOUT our merits. If we can earn ‘holiness’ through our actions, then we can achieve god-hood. If we can achieve god-hood, then we ourselves become gods, or god-equalities. That theology ends up with a god that is really not God, and not deserving worship… because, ‘if you work hard enough, you can be god too!’

So, a Holy God is a God that is so pure and perfect that we can never achieve, and never earn a seat at His dinner table… Moreover, it is because of His omnipotence, He is able to grant our ‘redemption’ without us working for it. It’s a gift. It’s Grace!

People of this world work too hard for the wrong goals. The Great Deception started in the Garden when Satan deceived Eve and Adam to disobey God and to earn their ‘supernatural’ knowledge and position to be god-equal, was why we had to suffer. Creation suffers because of that disobedience and our undeserved craving to be god. All creation cannot wait to see perfection revealed… soon.

So, why do atheists and agnostics say there is no God or there is no knowledge of God or why suffering is everywhere or why does people in virtually every religion out there say that they can earn their way into perfection? I think fundamentally our world is still under the original deception. The truth is that, it is easier to lay blame to God why He hasn’t designed the world as they’ve wanted, and why the ‘delusion of God’ had to exist, since religious fervor is ‘unacceptable’ to the scientific mind. It is not an argument for the existence of God. I believe, people are simply refusing to accept a God that they cannot become!

Quick note

Just a fast line on my where abouts... I am doing a month of intensive care unit at the Maricopa Medical Center in Phoenix, then I will be in Sedona for a month of Emergency Medicine. Then, I will be home for Christmas. I think I got spoiled by Ventura's good weather, now I got back to Phoenix, I'm feeling hot and dry.

I went out for a bike ride with my friend Larry yesterday at dusk, it was very nice. Other things going on with me: preparing to start my acupuncture course, preparing to go to Cambodia, and getting ready for a couple of residency interviews.

That's it for now. I am going to take a little nap now...

(*) Thoughts on Grace...

God, my heart is hurting... it aches when I see a homeless person in the hospital for disease of their situation and their mind; it aches when I see babies that are congenitally deformed and seeing the love of their parents poured out knowing their babies won't make it past their first birthday; it aches to know that around the world women and children are suffering abuse and neglect; it aches knowing that there are people here who are in such hopelessness and despair and completely impoverished in their emotions and spirit; it aches for my personal struggles with sufferings and disappointments; it aches for the ones I love who have to suffer...

God in His sovereignty allows, and many times destines us to go through hard times... even times to experience physical harm and death. I would like to believe that my God, who is an awesome God, King of kings, and LORD of lords, and a God to be revered and feared, and a God to be loved... I would like to believe that my God is in TOTAL control over my joys and my tribulations. Everything that happens to us is not and will never be a mistake! Everything that happens to us has a purpose. There are NO coincidences!

As Proverbs chapter 17 tells us "Fire tests the purity of silver and gold, but the LORD tests the heart." God, let your holy fire burn through us! Let it burn off all the impurities in our lives so we can worship You with a pure heart! You've promised us that Heaven, the eternal dwelling, will have no more pain and suffering and tears, I look forward for that place.

Because Your holy fire burns for us, You, in Your wisdom have indicated to us that our physical bodies will not survive into eternity. You'll bless us with a brand-new and glorified body... so, why should we focus any longer on the conditions of our physical body? Why don't we focus on the condition of our 'Spiritual body,' which will survive into eternity?

God, this world is not fair, and there is no justice! Justice is corrupt. As king Solomon says in Ecclesiastes: everything is meaningless. Everything that we devise and is a part of this world is meaningless, chasing after the wind. We work so hard and fight so hard, but yet, when we pass away, all that we toiled for become spoils to other people.

Grace, defined by Merriam Webster: "1 a: unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification b: a virtue coming from God c: a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine grace." Our redemption and guarantee of eternal presence with God is granted by God to us, which is totally and completely independent of our performance. The presence of God's Grace makes obsolete the rules of this world. Previous to our acceptance of this free gift of Grace, our lives are full of lists of 'good' and 'evil' deeds. Everything we do in life either made us feel good or guilty. We gauge our closeness to God or to celestial attainment by how we perform.

However, in the light of Grace, this 'balance' and ever burdening 'list of good and bad' completely disappears. We are no longer held in the balance. Our actions are no longer good nor evil. Our bodies are no longer healthy or damaged. God’s Grace says that WE ARE GOOD ENOUGH. We are pure enough to be in His presence. He accepts us! In the presence of Grace, there is only one choice: the choice to accept it. To deny it, or to turn your back to it, means that you are turning down the best gift that you can ever be offered and to receive.

In the presence of our awesome King, the Prince of Peace, the Redeemer of our Soul and Spirit, and the Granter of Grace... every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that He is the LORD. We have no choice what kind of sufferings we have to walk through; we have no choice what kind of injustice we have to experience; we have no choice in our struggles to make sense of things... However, we do have just ONE CHOICE, which is TO ACCEPT GRACE.

I can fight, I can struggle, and I can deny... but in the end, the acceptance of Grace gives me PEACE to be ok with suffering and struggles. The presence of Peace takes away the physical and mental pain from my being so I can start to love God and to share Him with others. It is then that I can help those whom my heart is aching for.

Thank you Lord Jesus, I Accept.

I love Alaska, the final frontier!

YOU CAN'T BEAT THESE PICTURES!!!

Can you believe it? I was in the ‘great last frontier,’ ALASKA! I went there from 10/15 - 10/19/08 for an interview at the Providence Hospital of Anchorage for the Alaska Family Medicine Residency Program (AKFMR).

My first impression: Alaska’s natural beauty is amazing, lots of raw beauty, people are calm and nice, dawn and dusk takes about 2 hours, cold (20F in morning for a guy from CA), simply beautiful!

About AKFMR: the only residency training program in AK serving all of the 660,000 people. Their mission is to train family physicians to serve in rural Alaska. So, that makes a pretty hard core training program.

The first night I got there, I stayed with a first year resident and his roommate, The Accountant. As an introduction to the homegrown subsistence, they cooked me some genuine caribou brats! It was delicious, slightly 'gamey' (as in it tasted like wild animal), but very good! We sat around the table and talked about Alaska, and about how they are both avid fisherman and hunters. They hunt everything that God placed on this green Earth. But, they have respect for environment and the natural cycle, so, they don't just hunt for fun... Alaskans hunt to stock up their freezers so they would have food for the rest of the frozen year to survive the harsh winter. They also fish salmons and freeze them so they have fish for the rest of the year. They plant vegetables and harvest them. They make all their own meals. And… they exercise no matter its windy, snowy, icy, or when it is below zero!

Halibut Sandwish at Seward; Cajun blackened salmon

The second day I drove down to Seward in the Kenai peninsula. I drove along the ocean and took pictures of mountains reflections, bald eagles, beaver dams, glaciers, icebergs, swamps... I also went through the cool 2.5 mile tunnel in Portage to go to the sleepy sea town of Whittier. Then, I visited the wild life preserve at Girdwood. (I was surprised at how small the musk-oxs are!) Then, I went and toured around the town of Seward... I also ate a very delicious halibut sandwich at a little deli in town. That night, The Accountant taught me how to make 'Cajun blacken' silver-salmon that he caught earlier in the year. It was delicious... um, um, um... you have to be there.

The tunnel from Portage Glacier to Whittier

Going to the Kenai; Bald eagle sitting on the branches!

The next day, Friday, it was my scheduled interview at the hospital. I got there at 7:30 am and the day was started by meeting new people, staff, residents, and the program director. We were presented with all sorts of information about the program and all the in's and out's. We were also taken on a detailed tour of the hospital facility. Then comes lunch... then interviews. The hospital is brand new and beautiful with all new equipments. The interview was very good, had good conversations with all my three interviewers. That night, the residents threw us a welcome party at the house.

The day after, I drove up to Talkeetna, where it is called "Doorway to Denali" and "Home of the bush pilots." It also is a town pretty much like the town in the TV show, Northern Exposure. Here you can actually see Mt. McKinnley, which is the tallest mountain in North America, towering over 20,000 feet!

I am very pleasantly surprised by the natural beauty of the State of Alaska, its people (or the lack of people), and with the residency program. I will return!

Hanging out with Ben, eating some ribs!

Chicago Ribs at Ventura