Thank God I'm taking biochemistry!

Yes, all you pre - meds and biochemical enthusists, I am glad I'm taking Biochemistry. At least for now since the class hasn't started hee hee! :) I know it will be hard work once the class starts, but as long as our professor doesn't yell at us during exams or anything like that I think I'll be ok...

Anyway, I was thinking about this a few days ago. God had me take this one pre - med class for several very good reasons. The first one is that I think He knows that I like to be in classes where I see His hand in His creation. That's going to become important especially if things start going down the tubes on the homefront with Grandpa :( It's times like that where I'll need to see God's soveriengty. No kidding, there were times when I was preparing for the MCAT where after I studied something like the cell or something like that, I'd just look at a diagram of something and meditate upon the idea that God made it and that it showed His invisible qualities that were reassuring to me at the time (Rom 1:20).

The second reason I'm glad I'm taking biochemistry is that I'll have a cool group of study buddies some of whom still call Newsom with it's greasy grub and all home, and those of whom consider themselves former Newsomites. You guys rock. I'll hopefully meet some other way cool people there as well.

The third reason I'm glad I'm taking biochemistry is that I may have yet another chance to reach out to the prof - maybe - ya never know - that's a BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG maybe. Anyway, I'd have a lot of Newsom buddies to help with that if God calls them to it too :)

The fourth reason I'm glad I'm taking biochemistry is that it will help with the MCAT in April. Zakely said that it would help. So hopefully it will.

lyrical version of Php 3:7 - 8

Trainwreck - Matt Kearney

I'm past the point of returning
For you I'm ruined and broken
There is no way of me turning
You've got my heart in the open

I see it shrink in the distance
In the glow of your glory
And I never will miss this
Bottom line of the story

I see the ocean come crashing
Under lavender skies
I see clouds come flashing
Now tell me, who am I?

Your're the air that I'm breathing
While I'm lying there sleeping
You're the cool of the evening
Now you got me believing,
Singing...

CHORUS:
Trainwreck, I'm a trainwreck for
Trainwreck, I'm a trainwreck
Trainwreck. I'm a trainwreck for
You (Oh lord. yes I am) (x2)

I'll kiss it all with a farewell
Goodbye, how you doing
And let it echo in stairwells
All these songs of my ruin

Now watch me climb my own cross
Without a loss for these words
As I motion a moment's silence
Let it fly with the birds

All else I got without you
Is mucha ado about nothing
I'd rather stand by you gone
Than on the throne of another

You had me all from the start
I count it lost every part
I'll sing it out in the dark
You've got a grip on my heart

(CHORUS x4)

Where could I turn from you
The darkest nights, you know you'd find a way
What else have I to do
What words are there left to say
You are the air that I breathe in
Here is my heart I give
You are all of my reason
You are my reason to live

(CHORUS x5)

This is a cool song :) It comes from the verse, "But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the supassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things..." Philipians 3:7 - 8. Jesus is the only reason he lives because Jesus was the one that 'gripped his heart.' All he sees ahead of him is the glory of God and he won't look back.

Do we? More specifically, do I think that way? No. So much clutter lies between now and heaven - but is the glory of God just heaven? Could the glory of God just be stuff we do in service to Him and from His leadings? Can we see the glory of God every day? I guess for me, I put things like the glory of God in the category of "I'll see it in heaven sometime" or "I'll see it in church or during quiet time." But in the mean time, I have more practical things like daily chores (laundry, cleaning my room), finding a job, doing the pre - med thing, etc. that I need to focus on because to me, it's impractical to just 'have your head in the clouds.' But then I find God working through me in my every day life. For example, yesterday I gave directions to two people that didn't know their way around campus. I was serving them and that was reflecting the glory of God. So, will my life just be practical clutter, or will it reflect God even in the practical stuff? Depends on how I look at it and if I'm letting God lead me. Then all I will see is the glow of God's glory :)

Frustrated Worship

So last night I was playing the piano at the LSC Sunken Lounge. I was working out of a new piano book called "Modern Worship." I was working on the song God of Wonders (surprise, surprise) and Shout the the Lord. Both songs I'm really familiar with and love to sing, so I decided to learn them on the piano.

There wasn't anyone around since it was about 8:00. The room was kinda dim so it made seeing the music a bit hard. That's probably why I found myself making more mistakes than usual when trying to play these songs. Because of other stress, I get irritated slightly easier than usual, so I got frustrated faster. But I kept playing. After my hour of practice, I came out of the Sunken Lounge and saw the sun setting. The sky was really cloudy, so there was a TON of pink in the clouds. A thought popped into my mind which I attributed to the Holy Spirit: "I think this is what you were trying to say." I sat down on the ledge by the flagpoles in awe just watching the pink slowly fade from the sky. The sky was proclaiming that God was the God of Wonders and it was shouting to the Lord that He was worthy of our praise. That's what God meant when He said, "I think this is what you were trying to say." He knew what my heart was trying to say even if my music couldn't convey it yet.

As I thought about it further, if our lives are like worship (actually, they should be acts of worship) we still stumble. We still 'miss the notes' and fall in our daily walks. Kind of like David. He had some major mistakes during his walk with God. I have had some too. But we both pleaded for God's mercy and our hearts were once again right with Him. It's like playing a song, messing up a huge chunk of it, but then coming back for a strong finish. The meaning of the song is still there even though there are mistakes. The song is still felt and the audience (or your music instructor) still knows your heart was in it even through you forgot a few flats or sharps or missed that elusive key - change. In the same way, if we're walking with God and we fall, but we ask God to pick us up, He saw that we fell, but He sees that our heart is still in it and still knew what we were trying to say.

By Faith....

Today we were reading Hebrews 11 - 12 and praying through those two chapters at morning prayer. I thought of a list of things that I knew or that I did because of faith. Reember that it is not me who can take the credit but it is Jesus - the author and perfector of my faith

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." Heb 11:1

1. By faith I listened to the sermons at church and tried to learn from them and lead a good life because of them. Somehow, I knew that God's word was a light to my feet...
2. By faith I knew that cursing was wrong - hearing it made me uncomfortable, and by faith, I took that as a sign that I wasn't supposed to do that.
3. By faith Mom got healed from a cyst when I was in 6th grade. My grandparents never stopped praying for her, and I stepped up to have the faith of my grandparents and completely trust that God would heal her.
4. By faith I knew that my body was a temple. I had heard it in church, but I put faith in the idea that God would somehow reward those that kept their body set apart for Him.
5. By faith I stood up in my 9th grade sex - ed class and said that God desired abstinance because it was His way of protecting us from the ills of sexual immorality. I didn't have any verses to quote and I wasn't Christian at the time.
6. By faith I trusted God for the consequences of trying to take my own life (11th grade.)
7. By faith, I chose to go to CSU and constructed my rationale for going later.
8. By faith I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.
9. By faith I allowed God into my life as a pre - med.
10. By faith I allowed God to become my 'Abba' Father
11. By faith I broke free of my past by allowing God to heal me from its scars.
12. By faith I trusted that God was soveriegn even through the death of my uncle and the illness of my Grandpa.

Hard Core

Ok, so some of you know the beginning of this story. Others of you don't. I'm retelling some of it but adding current issues because it shows that even though we initially backslide when the same situations come up, if we are in tune with God, He will speak to us , pull us closer as we come to Him, and He will carry us through.

Further note: Some of you may even know one of the main people in this entry. All I ask is that you don't mention him by name if you wish to leave comments as the internet is public and I want to keep it as anonomyous as possible.

Tonight, for some random reason, I was thinking about a story in Reader's Digest a monthly magazine Mom and my gradnparents have suscribed to monthly, and a publication that I had my nose in from fifth - eleventh grade. The story was entitled, "The Meanest Man I Ever Loved." It was one Marine's memories of Boot Camp with his drill sargant who ridiculed his every move and wasn't satisfied until a task was done perfectly. At the time, the man despised his drill seargant. However, as his career in the Marines went along, he began to appreciate him more and more, and even have fantasies of his drill seargant saving him from battles and things. He came to think of his drill seargant as a father since as a child, the Marine was in the foster care system and had no long term parent figures. The story concludes with the man reuniting with his drill seargant after a few years out of the Marines and the two men swapping stories with the Marine telling his seargant how much influence he really had.

I realize that this story strikes a nerve with me because I was in a similar situation. Instead of the ruggedness of boot camp, the setting was a darkened lecture hall. I had met the 'most hard core man I've ever admired.' Every answer we wrote down had to be perfect, nothing out of place, no stray marks on the page. Though he never made anyone 'drop and give him ten' when he was displeased like the Marine's drill seargant, he did make lots of people cry. By the grace of God, I was never one of those people. Throughout the semester, my friends and I usually discussed how mean he was, how hard the class was, and how too many solvents had addled his brain. We left the class grateful the grades we had and sanity that remained in us. Most of us eagerly burnt or recycled our notes. One of my friends tore her exams to shreds with gusto.

I thought that class would stay locked within some obscure crevasse in my brain, just like the Marine probably thought that he wouldn't think much of his days in Boot Camp. But the summer between my Sophomore and Junior year, my uncle fell ill with terminal cancer. Suddenly I was remembering the pharmecutical lecture. That class. But I started to think something that didn't quite make sense. Over and over in my diary, that summer, I kept writing, "And I want him to be here...", "...and I don't know how, but he could explain it to me." As I did research on my uncle's cancer as well as chemotherapy, and as I saw my uncle get worse and worse, these feelings I couldn't explain heightened.

One day I was talking to God about all this and He asked me why I wanted this other person around so badly, why I was somehow hoping he would appear in the Auraria Campus Library in downtown Denver where I was doing this research, why I was once three digits away from calling the number listed in the campus directory, and why I near constantly reminiscing about his class when I wasn't thinking about my uncle. God showed me what the Marine eventually realized by himself - this person in my mind was going from who he was as his given role in my life to who I wanted him to be for me at the present moment. He was supposed to fill a gap. I was startled to realize that, like the Marine, I was longing for a father figure. I could speak to Mom about my uncle, but not that much because she, as his older sister, was also reeling from his diagnosis. For the most part, I felt alone, so I imagined someone that wasn't hurting like my mom, but was more knowledgable than I to talk to. Like the Marine having dreams about his drill seargant rescuing him in the midst of combat, I started 'mind - tripping' about this person somehow resucing me from this situation or somehow helping me through it.

As the summer went on, God revealed to me that this way of thinking was a trap. I was looking to an image to help me rather than God. Furthermore, the real person couldn't help me due to his lack of belief in God. "You want Someone hard – core?" God asked me one day. "Think about it... a guy who rules everything, made everything, died on a cross to save the world, and calls His followers to give up everything – even their flesh – to follow in His footsteps." Ok. Most definitely Hard Core. God showed me in His word that He already promised to be the "Father to the fatherless," and was the everything and more that was listed just in Isaiah 9:6. I started to put my trust in Him for those things and leave my heart with Him.

In May I thought I was through with my idealizations, through with my longing for this exxagerated form of a person to rescue me from things, but then my grandfather – the closest person to a father that I have had suffered a stroke. As he grew worse over Finals week, I knew my mind was regressing back into needing that other person. I didn't speak to him, but I wanted to. I saw him in passing several times during the first weeks in summer schoool, but I didn't have the energy to talk to him due to being worried about Grandpa. Plus I knew I really couldn't. But that didn't stop me from wanting to.

The battle raged on: I want to talk to him. But I can't. But I want to. But you should talk to God. But this is the second summer God put me through a trial involving my family. But you still can't talk to... I could feel my mind slipping back down into that pit of my own musings that I didn't want the light of God to ever see (even though I knew He knew.) Slowly I started talking to God even when it hurt. Slowly I would allow my mind to be open to God to comfort it even as Mom and I walked down the hallway to Grandpa's room in his new long term care facility.

My situation is definitely hard core. I am still in the middle of combat – the battle for Grandpa's health, and the battle for my mind. But I have a Rescuer more real than anyone that I had dreamed up. I no longer walked by a particular corner of campus looking up at the 3^rd floor of one of the buildings wondering if a certain window would be illuminated. I watch the sunrise and sunset from my windows in the Lory Apartments and remember God was faithful. Early this month, I showed Mom the horticulture garden and was led to quote Romans 1:20. God's light is bigger than that little light in an office window. God is always by my side through all this, sometimes carrying me around when I am so physically and emotionally tired that I just want to lie in bed. He is the 'most hard core Person that has ever loved me.'

The Brain - Brain Barrier

Yes, you read right. The Brain - Brain barrier not the blood - brain barrier. It's what keeps parts of your brain from not communicating or it keeps parts of your brain unreachable. In my own brain, my random musings and daydreams are a barrier to me thinking and praying through stuff that needs to be dealt with. God and I had a chat about that this morning in place of Infusion prayer. It was good to talk with God about stuff that needed to be dealt with (surprise, surprise.)

God also told me that sometimes I pray from my brain instead of my heart. Meaning: sometimes I pray in a detached manner and say stuff that sounds good like, "Use this for Your glory" or "I pray I see Your sovereignty..." which in itself isn't bad, but when I pray it in place of what my heart wants to say, I block my heart from God. God said, "I know you do that because there's things in there that you don't want to say." Uh huh. But once I say them, I know that God's going to take care of them and I truly feel them lifted. :)

"I'm pre - med, but I forgot why."

I have to write that pesky Medical School admissions essay. The prompt goes like this: Use the space provided to explain why you want to go to medical school. The available space for your response os 5300 characters or approximately one full page... (AAMC, 2006)

Riiiiiiiiiight. Why I want to go to medical school... that should be easy.

I... want to go to medical school because.... um... because... I want to help people.... and.... I like science.... and I like figuring out stuff... and....um...

Ok, so it's harder than I thought. Suddenly it hit me: I WANT TO GO TO MEDICAL SCHOOL BUT I FORGOT WHY! Seriously, I forgot why. I know I picked doctor because Mom said that "over my dead body are you going to become a nurse."
She's a nurse and she doesn't like it. At the time I only knew of one other profession: Being a doctor. If I couldn't be a nurse, I could be a doctor. They're always learning new stuff about how to treat people, so I thought that was cool. I came to that decicision in 10th grade.

I didn't have much of a true identity as I entered 10th grade. School was my identity because it was the only thing I was good at. But school couldn't get you very far - it couldn't make you popular or erase your quirks or past hurts. After I made the decision to be pre - med, being "pre - pre - med" became my identity. I made friends with Linh, Anh, Vina, and Ryan. I would have a future that could maybe cover up or somehow redeem my past. My new friends had dreams of going to college to be pre - med, so naturally, we found a big portion of our lives in common. Being pre - pre med was my life in high school and later in the first half of college. I focused on my classes and extracurricular activities. I didn't get the chance to volunteer much due to transportation constraints and the fact that I needed to work. When I did volunteer, it was with church and premedica with premedicaid. I don't have as much 'medical experiance' as some pre - meds which is somewhat of a source of an anxiety.

Anyway, I jumped from "pre - med sounds good" to "pre - med is my LIFE!!" really quickly. In college, I became Christian. So am I pre - med or am I Chrisitian? The Christian identity will stick with me LONG after any academic / professional identity.

But I do want to see why I decided to do pre - med. I know how God used me being pre - med. He used it to let me come into contact with TONS of people I otherwise would never have met and now we're friends - or they are people I have prayed about and tried to outreach to.

Still, why did I decide? Other than the fact being a nurse was out of the question? Well, I always liked medicine - I was imersed in medicine, being a patient numerious times when I was young and then learning about the medical field with Mom telling me about her days at work. I was good at science. Ok, so I could've become a researcher or something... well, I wanted to help people... no, really, help people. Like be there with them. Like, ask them what's going on. And then figure out what was wrong with them. Dentists do that... but mouths? eeeeew!

Well, that's my musings for starters... now to expand on that and put it in a 5300 character (roughtly 1 page) essay... sigh....

Stuff pre - meds talk about (among themselves)

I got this idea because a pre - med friend and I talk a lot about nerdy stuff. Here's an insight into what some of us pre - meds talk about among ourselves

1. medical problems they had they tried to solve by themselves
2. medical problems other people tried to solve themselves (that pre - meds try to talk them out of doing)
3. trauma in movies - what part of the body got hurt, what pieces of organ those were laying on the ground
4. blood in movies - arterial or venous and why
5. how women docs could do at home vasectomies on their husbands (don't ask, please don' ask!)
6. Medical miracles in the Bible - why they are seriously massively supercool!
7. O - Chem and medicine
8. How the various fumes might've addled the O - Chem professor's brain
9. what not to put on the AAMCAS personal statement section

Christianity Explained

This essay was written as part of the application proccess to this newspaper my church is trying to get off the ground. The applicant had to write it to be a candidate for the position of writer (all positions unfortunately are unpaid...). Anyhoo, the essay had to answer the question, why should I become Christian? So, here it is. I'm including this in my blogs because all my posts touch on my identity as a Christian.

Christianity Explained

Many people believe that to accept Christianity is to accept a set of moral codes with a corresponding set of viewpoints that influence the actions of people that associate with it. Christianity, according to this assumption is to be followed because it will provide a moral framework for one's life and a set of guidelines to judge one's actions by.

However, Christianity does not answer the question of how to lead a moral life. Its basis is set in the fact that humanity has not lived up to a moral code prescribed by its Creator. God's moral code is stated explicitly in the Ten Commandments. Though one may not have violated them through one's actions, God looks at one's motives. If one had the intention of violating a commandment, one is already guilty of breaking it.

These thoughts or actions that break any of the ten commandments separate ourselves from God because He must separate Himself from anything that is less than His perfection. This separation of mankind from God is the cause of physical death and suffering as well as separation from God after death in a place referred to in the Bible as Hell.

The reunification of mankind with God can only be achieved when the wrongdoings of mankind are paid for. This idea of justice happens many times when a crime is paid for by jail time. However, we can't pay for breaking God's commandments ourselves by acting civilly or by doing acts of charity because we are imperfect and any attempt to pay for our wrongdoings is overshadowed by our predisposition to disobey God's commandments.

Christianity addresses this problem through the solution of Jesus Christ. He was the deity of God in the form of man. This meant that He had all the capabilities of God such as power over nature and power to heal people from incurable diseases. These capabilities were demonstrated through the miracles He performed which were recorded in the New Testament. He also followed the Ten Commandments both in His actions and His thoughts. Thus, Jesus was perfect and all powerful in every way. This perfection allowed Him to pay the fine for us by dying on the cross. This payment was not overshadowed by any imperfection, so the payment was the only valid one God would accept.

Therefore, one should become Christian by accepting the fact that he or she can't pay the fine he or she owes his or her God for their violation of the Ten Commandments, and having the faith that Jesus died on the cross as the only viable way to repay that debt. In this way, one can now be reunited with God both in his or her physical life and after death.

Hm...............

So, it's been a long time since I updated my blog. I was in Denver and I had dial - up internet.... 'nuff said. I was also visiting my extended family and cousins I hadn't seen for a very long time. Anyhoo, I'm back in The Fort.

This looks like it may be another one of those random blogs. I want to go outside soon, so I won't be long here. Today I woke up in a bad mood. So I went for a run, but not before listening to the radio wake me up. The song "Flood" by Jars of Clay was playing,
" Calm the storms that drench my eyes, and dry the streams still flowing / casting down all waves of sin / and guilt thats overflowing... If I could swim after 40 days / and my mind was crushed by the crashing waves / lift me up so I cannot fall / lift me up"
My mind this morning was flooded with thoughts about Grandpa and my fears he wouldn't get better and that he was suffering when he didn't want to be. I was sad on the 4th of July because it was the 1st 4th of July without my uncle RG and now Pa wasn't there. So that made me a little sad all week. So one could say that I was doubly hit this summer with continuing to deal with the death of my uncle and now with Grandpa's sickness.

As I was running I was thinking about that. I could let all this crush me or I could let God lift me up. This doesn't mean that I won't ever be sad or in a bad mood or stressed about it. It just means that I will walk through those emotions acknowledging God's next to me all the way through. That leads me to another verse, "In all your ways aknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight." Prov 3:6. If I didn't aknowledge God through hard times, I would tend to not seek comfort in Him and instead seek comfort from someone other than God or my own flesh, both which are bad and not glorifying to God. If I acknowledge God through this, He will comfort me with His word, with His peace, and possibly bringing in another believer to help me.