You've Got to Be Kidding Me

This is just unbelievable. The stress of the past week is unlike anything I have ever experienced in my life, and I've been through some stuff. We have been studying like...I can't even think of an apt parallel. The galling thing is, after approximately 30hrs of studying for this one test, all of us feel still inadequately prepared. I think our minds have reached saturation point, and then have gone beyond that. I was sitting in the Great room today, after clinical, studying and trying so hard to stay awake, but being numbed my Pharmacological overload, and it came to me, God's Word of comfort. You know when it says, "There for the joy set before Him, Christ endured the cross"? Well, I felt like the joy of being done for awhile, being free to rest and not drink enough caffeine to keep a whole school of children hyper for a week, being free to just relax and begin to assimilate all that I have learned, being free to read a book for fun without feeling guilty for not studying, to go out with friends, for the joy of all that, that makes this 'cross' (if I even dare compare it to the magnitude of the cross of the sufferings of Christ, and the joy that awaited Him, which I almost don't because the dif between that and test stress is greater than the difference between the expanse of all created things and an ant) slightly bearable. (Did you get through that sentence okay? my grammar and sentence structure is going to pot along with the rest of me) I am so tired, so burned out, so exhausted, so strung out, so saturated, so wiped, so (fill in any extreme adjective here) that I can't cope any more. The thing that really gets me is my mouth. When I get this stressed, the s-bomb comes out a lot more, and I don't like it. I want to live a consistent life, but I have been failing at that, and thank goodness for the Lord's grace to me, because I am so at the end of my rope that it is actually no longer in sight; so at the end of the line that I forgot there even was one, so done that I'm not even sure there was a beginning. And now not making any sense. Alright, to bed with me, for I have to get up super-early to put in a few more hours before the 8 o'clock test. Father, have mercy on us all...

A Starbucks IV

I am sitting on the couch in the Great Room of our dorm, studying with friends, and trying valiantly to maintain focus and concentration. I am tired. Dog tired. Double-dog tired. So tired that my tiredness is tired. After a million hours in the airport yesterday, I finally got back home @ 2am and after taking a shower to wash off the trip grimies, I fell into bed, having to wake up 3.5hrs later to go study before my final this morning. All in all, I've gotten about 10hrs of sleep the past three days, and I am drinking so much coffee and Diet Coke that I am pretty sure it has completely replaced all of my bodily fluids, and if you stuck a needle in me, some dry roast would come out. Honestly. Yesterday was a comedy in errors; whatever could go wrong did. But, I met a guy on the way back that gave me hope that there are still gentlemen in this world. (Forgive me any male friends reading this; you are all excluded from the 'no gentlemen left' clause, of course.) We were deliriously tired, having waited all day for the flight that almost never was, and finally got to NYC, only to wait in another long line for a taxi. Well, the limo drivers came over to offer all of us 'great deals' as they always do, and he was smart enough to turn it down, which I told him. Never a good idea to take a black cab unless you are feeling up to paying way more than you want to. So, we started talking, and I was soon impressed with his humility, his kindness, his humor. It was a welcome antidote to a crud-tastic day. We split a cab into the city and he insisted on paying the lion's share of the fare, which he most definitely did not need to do. So, in addition to meeting a really cool guy, I also got home for a lot cheaper, and with a lot better company, than I ever intended to. He's only in town for the week, so no numbers exchanged, but maybe I'll run into him again sometime...
Anyway, so I'm sitting here, studying, and our great room is next to a music room for the surgeons and physicians society. Well, we are all here trying to concentrate, and these guys come in and start moving drum sets which subsequently fall over and create a ruckus. Another guy comes in with some Bud Lites, and they start to play in the room over, the same few chords over and over and over and over. My friend looks at me from across the room and tells me to turn down my ITunes...hahaha Ashley, you stinker! Well, I should get back to studying; I'll update this blog with what I've been up to after this week of stinky mcstink finals...And the band played on...

Introspection of a Good, Long Length

"Do not be afraid, I am with you, " God says. How do I not be afraid, when I am faced with the reality of atrocities, the reality of all the evil that I see? Today's sermon answered that question, and after a week of stress and fatigue, I was ready to hear it. The passage was on Revelation 2:8-11, about Jesus comforting the church of Smyrna in their afflictions, and commending them on their holding fast to their convictions, in spite of all of the personal loss they may or were experiencing because of it. Our pastor made the point that the true condition of our hearts are revealed when we are tested and tried. That is when the truth of what really undergirds my life comes out. It is easy enough to be happy and thankful when all is well, but can I really praise God when things are going wrong and everything just sucks (from my perspective)? Can I really believe in His goodness when I see all of the crap that happens in life, and all of the junk people have to deal with every day? How do I speak of the love of Christ to people who have been abused, people who are living on the streets, people who are alone and isolated, people who have weathered such horrible things? If it weren't for one truth, it would all be silly platitudinous nonsense. The truth of what Christ did proves His love, no matter the circumstance, no matter the situation. I can trust Him and what He is doing because He voluntarily entered into this world, gave up everything that He had, all because He loved His people so much, and God so much, that He couldn't stand that the gulf called sin should continue to separate them. Bad things have happened in my life, as have they happened in everyone's lives. It would impossible to believe in a loving and just God, much less a god at all, if it weren't for the reality of His sacrifice, the awesomeness of the gift of His life in exchange for mine. Jesus takes my suffering personally; He willingly enters into it more deeply than anyone ever could, and then rescues me from it. Most often, the circumstances don't change. I'm still in the crud. But my heart changes and I can see that even if I can't see the big picture, God can, and He has a great purpose for each and every event that has occurred or will occur in my life. For many, many of the things that happened, someone couldn't pay me enough money to ever have to go through again; I am just thankful that I made it to the other side in one piece. But I can see now that I am who I am today because of those things, and God has somehow made what was intended for evil for my good. Amazing. He suffered in the garden of Gethsemane for me. He hung on the cross for me, experienced the wrath of God for me. My heart breaks and weeps when I think of His pain and anguish, and what love that shows. And my heart breaks when I hear His name maligned, even in my own head sometimes, because we don't truly realize Who He is. Truly a Man of sorrows, but also a Man of great joy. It is this joy that gets me through the week. It is this love that wraps me up tight and holds me close, even when I feel like I am so alone. It is this Jesus who holds out His hand to me and lifts me up when I have screwed up for the umpteenth time. Because of this, I can trust God in my present circumstances, even if they are hard and seemingly immovable, and I can trust Him for my future. Because I have such myopic vision, I can't see the big picture. But I know Someone Who can, and I take comfort in that.

From C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity":
"Someone once asked me, "Why did God make a creature of such rotten stuff that it went wrong?" The better stuff a creature is made of -- the cleverer and stronger and freer it is -- then the better it will be if it goes right, but also the worse it will be if it goes wrong. How did it go wrong? The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first -- wanting to be the center, wanting to be God, in fact. That was the sin of satan, that was the sin He taught the human race. What satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could "be like gods" -- could set up on their own as if they had created themselves -- be their own masters -- invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history -- money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery -- the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy. The reason why it can never succeed is this. God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on gasoline; now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy apart from Him. God cannot give us a happiness and a peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing. Jesus claimed to be God. God, in the language and paradigm of the Jews, meant the Being outside the world Who made it and was infinitely different from everything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips. One part of the claim tends to slip past us unnoticed because we have heard it so many times: He forgives sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man forgives offenses against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men's toes and stealing other men's money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offenses. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history. Yet (and this is the strange, significant thing) even His enemies, when they read the Gospels, do not usually get the impression of silliness and conceit. Still less do unprejudiced readers. Christ says that He is "humble and meek" and we believe Him, not noticing that, if He were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last characteristics we could attribute to some of His sayings. I am trying to prevent here anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. Your must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

I'm So Glad It's Done

Wow. What an intense, cruddy week. The tests were challenging; the studying was interminable, it seems like. After Pharmacology yesterday, I had to take a nap out of self-defense. I was so tired and worn out, my muscles were starting to spasm and hurt. It was unreal. So, a group of us went out last night to blow off some steam and ended up staying out til 5:30am. And then a new friend and I sat on our roof and watched the sun come up over the city. It was so much fun to just go out and have fun and hang out and dance, other than the very disgusting dancing that many guys in this city seemed to want to do with us. Thankfully, we were protected by two great guy friends who shooed the gross guys away and allowed us to have a good time minus the grossness. Praise God for gentlemen!
In class last week, I was reading the Times, trying to stay awake, and I came across some tidbits that just reaffirmed my suspicion that some people have professions that match their surnames, or perhaps because of their surnames? For instance, I found these nuggets:
From Observatory by Henry Fountain, about underwater volcanic activity, "'A map of the area created using sonar showed what appeared to be cratered volcanoes...' a research project done by Robert A. Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts". See it? Dr. Sohn works with sonar.
Also from Observatory, "Robert H. Hurt, an engineering professor at Brown University, set out to see what could be done to reduce the risk...of mercury in recycled compact fluorescent bulbs". Dr. Hurt researching how to not get hurt by mercury.
And also, "You never know, " Dr. James W. Head III said. He is the professor of geological sciences at Brown and one of the lead authors of an article in Science. Head talking about not knowing.
Excellent. For a collector of all things humorous and nonsensical, these articles tickled my funny bone. Perhaps I should have changed my surname to "Getbetter" or "Careforyou". I can hear it now, 'Paging Nurse Getbetter, Nurse Getbetter, please come to the OR. Dr. Bones needs your assistance.'

Darn It!

I am so ticked at myself. I just got back from studying for what seems like years, but was really just four hours after an 8 hr day of class, and decided to pull out my new, very cute top that I bought a few weeks ago, and haven't worn yet, to wear to class tomorrow. Well, I was looking around, thought I hung it up, looked in drawers, thought maybe I folded it up, looked everywhere, and couldn't find it. And then it hit me: I think I put it in a bag on the floor a week ago, and in one of my frenzied cleaning ordeals (which hit quite frequently) maybe I threw it out! It was made of a thin material, so if I was throwing away a big bag of random junk, it could have ended up in there. That ticks me off to no end. It wasn't expensive, but it wasn't cheap, either. I'm not going to buy a new one. I'll just have a sulk about it until I go to bed and then get over it. Darn it!
Speaking of funny shirts, I saw a guy today who was wearing a shirt that said, "Hoosier daddy" Haha. He was a young guy, so probs got it from Goodwill or something; I figure that it was made in Indiana? Anyway, it gave me a chuckle.
Also funny, while walking through part of Harlem today, I saw a sign for a realtor specializing in helping young professionals build equity. I remember it because the name was quite striking, and wouldn't necessarily be one I'd choose if I was appealing to professionals. The name of the realty was PHAT Cribs, Inc. I did a double-take. Seriously? Is that really what you wanted to name your company? Are you sure? Really? Ummm....okay.

Switch those last two captions--somehow they got messed up.

4th O'July

Fourth of July fun--we got rained on. I'm not sure where the boys were when we took this pic!




Me and the Brooklyn Bridge...it was a beautiful night.



Me and my buddy Starbs