In Focus

The temperature has dipped below 30 at night and hasn't crested above 35 in the daylight for the past few weeks now. The air is dirty and crisp, there is 5 day-old snow on the ground. My skin is dry and itchy, my lips chapped and my mittens and gloves within arms reach at all times. I must look like the chubby little boy from A Christmas story - all tightly bundled and waddling down the street as I take my evening run.
The week has come that I have dreamed about for months.
My LAST week in Idaho.
The end is in sight.
The lists are made, the data entry begun, the packing plans created and our travel agenda set.
I am coming home.
On the horizon is the finish line (albeit a temporary one) and it is in focus.

I'm not sure what to write tonight - other than to say that I am excited and my spirit feels grounded and focused on the tasks ahead. I am thankful for the support in these hard weeks with friends and family and lots of prayer and pep talks to set my soul back to walking the narrow and grace-filled road. I have needed the reminders, the love, the gentleness, the honesty.

As I was finishing the last of my required reading - from quite a loud and aggressive book - I happened upon this quote below. I have recently been working at a large volume, high $$ specialized practice of physicians who are not shy about prescribing medications. I have struggled in my spririt with how to balance what I was learning and witnessing daily, with what I was to be adopting as my own personal style of healthcare delivery. Where was God in all of these prescriptions and what am I supposed to do about it?
The words below must be un-packed at a later date but for now I need to digest them and hopefully I will be taught from within what my role will be in this dizzying labrinth of faith and occupation in the 21st century.

" I find my attention...is directed to increasingly costly, and to a lesser degree increasingly successful, provisions made and measures adopted, to cater to the needs of the biological component of man. Even on a purely scientific level we have probably grossly over-estimated the achievement of medical science, yet when one considers man in his true proportions, it is humbling to realize, (and more so to acknowldge) how relatively little we have benefited many of our patients... to consider Christ's challenging question 'What is a man profited even though he gains the whole world and loses himself?...'
To what extent do I profit my patients or others if I treat them exceedingly well; but do nothing whatever to improve the welfare of their true selves? ... "

Dr. Denis Parsons Burkitt
research physician responsible for identifying
and naming Burkitt's Lymphoma