Greater

Citius, Altius, Fortius

It's finally here...watching swimming at the Olympics is high on the list of my favorite things on the planet.

Stay discovered

One of the professors in my program forwarded this blog post to us after having had a discussion about intellectual property and publications. It's a pretty cool take on a pretty undiscussed topic...in essence that the people who discover things weren't really the first people to think of it...but they were the first to 'keep it discovered'. And they are often the first ones to take a bunch of thoughts other people may have had but make connections that other people may have not. Good stuff for recognizing your worth but not going overboard with it :)

I also love that a professor in Occupational Therapy talking with students in Health Services suggested a blog on Entrepreneurship...this is the beauty of an interdisciplinary degree people!

So as not to take credit where credit is not due, full blog is here:
andrewhargadon.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/05/ideas-are-cheap.html

Spring in the South

I always forget how spectacular March and April in Charleston is...and sitting at the battery even when you are reading chapters on designing clinical research trials is hard to beat...

Life Like That

I heard this song on the radio yesterday...it's pretty much amazing.  Life Like That - Sidewalk Prophets

Leap Year

Happy Leap Day!  My day started with the usual cup of lovely coffee on the way downtown for class.  After my brain was as full as it could be I headed back home for the ladies to come over to celebrate the fact you only get this day once every four years.  We obviously needed chips, salsa, and chocolate because that is our standard operating procedure.  I promptly locked my keys and cell phone in the car.  Thankfully I have a spare at the house and the grocery store is only 5 minutes from the house so Brandy came to the rescue.  And now we are enjoying the movie Leap Year and dreaming about a Christmas trip to Ireland/London/Scotland...no really...we are feeling it.

Zzzzzzzzz

My posting history is tragic and the year is barely started...apparently PhD students don't have blogs.  Either that or they don't have jobs.  I barely have the energy to type but I feel obligated to at least let everyone know that I am in fact still alive.  I finally went to my blog list and started reading the blogs I used to follow all the time and realized that it's been since...wait for it...November since I read any of them.  Which then made me realize it's been quite some time since I posted my own.  So, here are a few of the highlights and lowlights from the past month...



- my grandfather died

- all my cousins and aunts and uncles had a beautiful celebration of his life

- I'm loving the job

- in a very scary way I'm loving statistics...I know, clearly I need mental health assistance

- it just took me an hour to organize my list of things to do...that is NEVER a good sign

- I've eaten my weight in s'mores and ice cream as rewards for just getting through some days

- I've drank my weight times 8 in coffee as rewards for just getting out of bed



A few facts I've learned in the past month...

- the word occupation in occupational therapy means the things that 'occupy' your time...it makes so much more sense now.  By the way OTs are kinda amazing I figured out in the process of learning about them.

- reviewing 9233 articles to find the ones that relate to my literature review can actually be just one of the to-do items on a list of 20 things to do this week...tragic

- it seems as though literature reviews may be a pretty standard 'oh, I need to do a literature review real quick' thing in my life for the next 4 years...and beyond

- you can in fact listen to the same Jesus Culture DVD over and over again every night while you study and it never get old

- Words with Friends and Scramble are spectacular ways to take a mental break from studying...again, the fact my 'break' is a word game likely lines me up for the mental health assistance

- Emoticons are very addictive...if you do not know what this is get yourself an iPhone and download them, I'm in love (I would insert an emoticon with hearts in it's eyes here if this was a text)



So...happy random Thursday.  I'm giving up on accomplishing anything else tonight and instead I'm going to head to bed.

Panama 2011...at long last

It's January.  We went to Panama in June.  It's absurd, I know.  But, I will not be deterred.  There are a lot of people that sent me money or supplies or prayers for our team or notes that they were thinking of me!  And because of them I WILL post pictures from Panama 2011!  In the interest of sanity, you will unfortunately not get the in depth story of the past two years.  The amount of reading is already stacking up on my desk and the semester is only 3 days in.  But, before I begin, I am doing this!  

In some ways the Kuna Islands in 2011 were the same as they always are.  The people are beautiful.  The trip is hard.  The islands are hot.  You feel motivated and exhausted at the same time.  But the trip this year was also very different.  The islands were more commercialized because they were closer to the mainland - in fact one of the Silas actually spoke English.  And the islands were smaller, we were usually done clinic half way through the second day on each island.  Because we were closer to the mainland we drove to the boats instead of flew...that will likely not be happening again now that we've lived through the experience to see another day :)  No soldiers this year, and the team was bigger so there was a different group dynamic.  In some ways that was sad because we had such an amazing group dynamic last year, but in other ways it was good.  You learn different things when you are in different groups, and part of what I love about going on these trips is how much I learn.  We had a service team this year, which was really cool because they did different tasks around the island as people needed help.  We had more translators which was wonderful.  And at the end of the trip we stayed for an extra day in Panama City which was a nice way to decompress and see part of the country that we never get to see other than out the window of the plane.  

Every year, it is a privilege to be part of the missions team.  I am blessed beyond measure to have been able to go, and to those of you who gave me support in so many way, thank you.  

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
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The 2012 Wishbone

Apparently it's 2012. Classes started yesterday, which means all those good intentions for all those exciting blog posts and all those long talks into the night to catch up with friends and all those to do list items that didn't make the priority list when the semester were in but I was sure would get done during break are back on the back burner. Last semester I was taking 12 credits and could barely keep up with the reading. This semester I am taking 15 credits and working 30 hours a week...riiiight.

So, expect blog posts to not increase readily, however, I am planning to try to post short funny stories to remind everyone who cares to know that I am still alive that indeed I am still alive :) The first of these stories you get today...

When Brandy and I were cleaning up the beach house getting ready to head back home we found the wishbone from the turkey we had cooked that week. We figured we may as well break it and each took a side to pull. 30 seconds later the top of the wishbone that tells you who gets their wish came flying off the top and flew across the room and Brandy and I stood there laughing at the broken pieces in our hands. And that is how 2012 began ladies and gents...expect a rather random and unexpected ride :)

Simply remember

...I simply remember my favorite things and then I don't feel so bad...


When I am in the need for a few I can simply remember some of my favorite things of Christmas Eve 2011...coffee with devotions, icing chocolate roll cookies and eating half of them, sneaking through the aisles of Walmart, little faces staring at the candles at service, singing carols while finding lights for the first time in charleston...in essence having a beautiful day to just enjoy Christmas.







Merry Christmas!

Belated Thankfulness

A few days ago in a devotional I am reading the author asked 'What opportunities have you been given recently to profess the goodness and faithfulness of God?'  As I thought about the question I realized I had a huge situation to profess the goodness and faithfulness of God but was so busy I never even mentioned it...which is generally the way God's goodness and faithfulness gets missed by the way.  So here it is...I just finished my first semester of a PhD program and although I had only one mortgage payment of savings going into it and no paycheck, my bills have been paid, I am not in credit card debt and I never once begged for food or gas.

Even just typing it, I can tell it's tough to explain just how amazing this really is.  As of August 10th I had no job, school started in 15 days, I had a prospect of a job but the process of actually getting it was going to take a while, and financial aid hadn't arrived yet.  When it did arrive it would have paid my tuition and given me about $500 to support myself for 4 months.  First I got an e-mail from my program director that I had been given a scholarship to help cover my tuition for the first 2 semesters.  That allowed financial aid to actually go to living expenses.  But the job situation still didn't move faster.  I was offered a contracting position to help write a strategic plan which would provide a few hours of work each week.  But even adding that to my work at church I wasn't going to be brining in enough to pay the mortgage each month.  Then it gets good.  I won my very first poster presentation at a medical conference which gave me a cash reward.  A friend asked me to give a presentation to one of her classes and had money from the school to pay me.  Three random refunds that I had been waiting on came through right when bills were due.  I found out that the little bit of money I had put in a Roth IRA 5 years ago could be used for school expenses.  Brandy moved in which meant that once she started getting paychecks we would be splitting expenses.  And then last week I won a random drawing at school and got a Visa card.  I mean honestly, that is random people.

So, perhaps this is not the funniest or most engaging story ever, but it is life, and it's proof positive that God knows what's happening whether it seems like it or not.  One of the things that is most amazing is rather than God just providing a big lump of money that made it so I didn't have to worry about it again, He just made money come in when it needed to be there.  My bank account balance spent most of the past 4 months in the 10s, sometimes in the 100s, but it never went negative.  $100 here, $50 there just in time to pay what needed to be paid.  I don't think I would have realized how amazing or been aware God was watching over me if He had just made a lump of money available.  And so, rather than ignoring it or saying a cursory thank you and moving on, I decided to give a verbal (well written) testimony of God's goodness and faithfulness.  I hope it encourages someone to trust that God's got your back even if you don't see how He can possibly pull it off.  Believe me, when I add up the numbers it still doesn't make sense, but it's December, my bills are paid, I have money to buy food and fill up my car with gas and I'm starting my new job on Monday just in time to get a paycheck to pay the mortgage next month.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good and his steadfast love endures forever. (Psalm 107:1)

An Eskimo Hallelujah Chorus

If you want to see something amazingly cool, click HERE
You will not be disappointed!

Alive Again

I found this poem today:

God hath not promised skies always blue. 

Flower-strewn pathways all our lives through. 

God hath not promised sun without rain, 

Joy without sorrow, peace without pain.

But God hath promised strength for the day, 

Rest for the laborer, light on the way; 

Grace for the trial, help from above, 

Unfailing sympathy, undying love.

In case you didn't notice, it's December.  The second Thanksgiving without my mom was in some ways harder than the first.  Last year felt sad, this year felt empty.  We were all there.  We all had fun.  We all enjoyed each other.  But something was missing.  I think Christmas this year may be similar.  So, I'm prepping myself by reminding myself of what God has already done in my life since August 19, 2010.  If He can do all that he has done in a little over a year than certainly he can get me through the second Christmas without my mom.  As Matt Maher sings in Alive Again - I can see the light before I see the sunrise...The sun rise is coming at some point, right now I'm going to celebrate strength for the day and the light that is slowly chasing away the darkness.

The Journal Stacks

Today I was searching for articles for 3 projects I need to do in the next few weeks.  It's very handy if you search from on campus because the websites with journal access will automatically recognize you and allow you to download the papers as a PDF.  Occasionally you will find a paper that is in some random journal that the library doesn't have and that doesn't have online access and you need to request an interlibrary loan, which generally means I'll find a new paper, because I'm lazy like that.  But, for one topic I was looking at there really weren't all that many interesting papers and I have to read WAY too many journal articles to read non-interesting ones on purpose.  So, I went ahead and clicked the 'Find it at MUSC' link...which I found out was in actuality for this one how to find it in the physical bound journals on the shelves upstairs.  WHAT?  You want me to get up from the computer and FIND this thing!?  What century is this!?  But I felt like a bum if the only reason I didn't read an article was because I had to do some legwork.  So, up I went, with my copy card loaded with money that was given to us at the beginning of the semester (when I was SURE I would never need it).  I arrived in the journal region and stopped dead in my tracks as I saw something along these lines...

I'm pretty sure it's been a solid decade since I needed to find something in the midst of THAT.  I informed my brain that 'I really can do this, get yourself to finding the Journal of the National Medical Association Volume 101'.  To make a long story short, here I sit reading my article on exploring socioeconomic variations in diabetes control strategies, none the worse for wear but certainly distressed by how difficult I made that process out to be.  As Jen said when I told her 'what has technology done to us?'

Happiness is...

For whatever reason MUSC doesn't give their students a fall break. So I decided this past weekend that I would give myself one. Wait, didn't you need to study for a statistics test and write a presentation and review an article and organize your speaking points for a symposium? Why yes I did, but when fall finally hits Charleston it is tough to resist it!

And so, Friday night I changed my summer clothes out for my winter clothes, Saturday Brandy, Brittany, Jen and I went to Jen's lakehouse and sat and talked and then came back and made s'mores, and then Sunday after church Allison, Angela, Jen, Sarah, Brandy and I celebrated 'all things pumpkin' or Iron Chef Pumpkin as it were. A four course pumpkin meal all prepared by Brandy...we are talking homemade pumpkin ravioli here people, this was no child's play!
To finish the fall break off Jen, Alli and I shared pumpkin cheesecake and decaf coffee before heading to bed to start our crazy week.

It was truly glorious...but now back to logistic regression...

Some Moments

There is nothing like reality to make your self proclaimed 'doing fine' attitude about grief come tumbling down. It's usually random, rarely expected, and almost always shockingly painful. And you really were doing fine up until that moment.

Grief is an interesting process. I really haven't contemplated the process itself in a while. I did often at first but then I think the actual act of going through it took over and took all my energy. Now that the immediacy of the sting is gone, the process itself is more obvious again.

At some point someone said 'you will never get over it, but you will get through it'. I am through some of the worst of it but I can tell it never goes away. There is no easy way to learn how to live without someone that you miss so much. And so some moments I find myself caught off guard by how real that pain can still be.

Back towards the beginning of this whole process I remember realizing that I was the little girl being dropped off at the nursery and having no concept of time, being heartbroken because I just wanted my mom back. I have no concept of God's timing when I will get my mom back and for lack of a better adjective it's stinks. I may at this point be the little girl that has finally stopped crying and started playing again, but every once and a while I look over at the door and wonder why she couldn't have just stayed and played with me. God knows why...and I have to keep learning to rest in that fact...

What a year can do

It is interesting what a year will bring.  The other day I was thinking about how utterly different my life this year is than it was last year.  I had just gone through what will be one of the worst losses of my life, I was working full time at a job I loved, I had no real plans other than a vague idea that maybe I would go back to school at some point, I was technically still married, my sister lived four hours away, my best friends were just trying to get me through the day let alone expect anything helpful out of me, and I didn't really have any ability to see out of the deep dark hole life had thrown me in.

This morning, Brandy and I got up, I made coffee while she straightened her hair for her orientation in the Charleston County school district (for those that haven't heard yet, she's in Charleston for the next year).  I fed the dogs and packed my backpack, and we drove downtown where I've been sitting in the library writing a bible study for tonight and studying logistic regression and disability for the past three hours.  I thought of something funny and texted it to the girls to make them laugh.  I heard the song Amazing Grace and smiled rather than cried.  Sometimes I get a little melancholy thinking of not being able to tell my mom about how crazy it is that life is so different, but the fact that the melancholy feeling doesn't send me into a crying spiral of disaster is itself a testament of what a year can do.  In one year, and probably the worst year of my life to be quite honest, God gave me a new purpose, a new hope, a new future, a new love of Him and a new life.  So, for those in the pit I just crawled out of, hang tight, call on God and He will meet you there to help you climb out...I promise.

Hope Does Not Disappoint

About three years ago I bought a ring that happens to fit on my left hand ring finger, and so that is where I wear it.  It also happens to look like a wedding band because it's just a plain silver band with one word inscribed on it.  That word is HOPE.  I did not buy it because I hope to be married again.  I bought it because God was speaking very clearly to me about needing to keep hope alive and I wanted something to remind me of what He was saying.  Since then quite a bit has happened that would damper one's hope, so I hold tightly to the fact that before any of it ever began He started prepping me.

About one year ago, actually now that I look at the calendar, one year ago yesterday we held my mom's funeral.  I am actually really glad that we waited a month to hold her funeral.  I have a lot of memories that I don't think I would have if it had been three days later - I was still in shock three days later...which I guess is the point of holding the funeral then.  But, our brains don't work that way, we like to process things, and so we delayed it until September 18th.  And because we did, Brandy and I could write an amazing eulogy for our amazing mother, and after much prayer deliver it with only a few quivers in our voices.  The next day we sat in my parent's livingroom with the funeral done, the posters of pictures filling the room, the vases of flowers filling the kitchen, and our hearts and minds totally overwhelmed with grief.  It was also the one year mark of her death, and I remember us all laying on the various chairs, not talking, very literally not wanting to do anything ever again.

About 20 minutes ago I was sitting here calmly starting my day while listening to music and reading Romans and the one song that can send me into a blubbering, slobbering, crying mess started playing on the iPod...I Will Rise by Chris Tomlin.  Well, to be honest, there are a few that can do that, but most of them I can make it through the first stanza before I start crying.  I know the song is I Will Rise literally by the third cord, and am generally crying by the forth.  When we were in the hospital with my mom, this song struck a cord with my Dad, my Aunt Dona, Brandy and I all at separate times in different places and was one of the two songs my Dad wanted sung at the funeral.  This all being unknown to her, my Aunt Barb e-mailed me and asked if she could sing a song at the funeral and suggested that one.  And so, you can start to see how just the first few cords can send my brain elsewhere.  I had myself a good cry, dried my eyes and decided to write down the hope that I have because clearly hope is a rather important word in this season in my life.  So here it is...

And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.  Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.  And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (Romans 5:2-5)

How amazing is God that three years ago, He knew that today and everything that happened between then and now would happen and I would need that verse to remind me that these light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:17-18).   I will now listen to How Great Is Our God and rejoice that my sufferings will produce perseverance, and my perseverance will produce character, and my character will produce hope.  And my hope will not disappoint because God has given me His love and His Spirit to rise on eagles wings.

Beautiful Quote

All life is interrelated, somehow we're caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.  - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.


I heard this quote last week.  Beyond the fact that I find Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to be insanely inspirational in his own right, this seems to capture the reasoning behind throwing your life into helping others.  However lost and mis-aligned this country may have become since it first embarked on its course, the idea that there are inalienable rights is one that I have always felt needs to be remembered.  The thing is, those living outside our country have the same inalienable rights, and so we really are never far removed from the rest of the world.  It is, when you get right down to it, the reason that I feel so strongly about international missions and would love to do international adoption.  And it is the reason that global health and health disparities are two of the top three topics that led me to and will focus me as I go through this degree.  So, in case you were wondering why I changed course mid-career, there it is.  I am caught in the "interrelated structure of reality" and I plan to do something about it.

The Tale of the Washer and the Cat

I love the book A Tale of Two Cities.  It's been nearly 20 years since I've read it, but I can still remember doing the little character map thing that our teacher made to help us determine how each of the characters and sub-stories in the book intersect.  I literally remember nothing of the story except for the fact that I loved it.  The reason I loved it was very simple - I adore attempting to figure out how things connect and realize that certain things only happened because other things happened, which only happened because another thing happened...and so forth.  It's why I was obsessed with LOST, attempting to figure out how everyone was linked and where the stories overlapped was half the purpose of the show (well for me anyway, some may disagree).

But, why do I start this post with that random fact about myself?  Because today we had a bit of a Tale of Two Cities moment at the condo.  We shall instead call it the Tale of the Washer and the Cat, and we shall begin with right now.  I am presently washing almost every towel I own because they were all used to sop up dirty bleach water that came out of my washer as Scott attempted to get to the pump.  These towels were very handy for the grabbing because just a week ago Nikole overflowed my toilet to the point that I had to use every towel I own to sop up the amount of water on my bathroom floor, quickly washing them and drying them, after which I threw in my sheets to wash before Nik and I headed out to grab a few things as Costco.  When we returned the dryer had finished, the dishwasher had finished, but for some reason the washer was still running.  This was odd since we'd been gone for about 2 hours.  So I walked into the laundry room and noticed that the washer was on the cottons cycle...problem being I had run the permanent press cycle, which was 2 cycles before the cottons cycle...  So, I opened the lid to see what was happening and the washer stopped agitating...never to agitate again (unfortunately).  It only made this odd clicking sound from there on out.

Being that I have absolutely no idea what to do with a broken washer that is full of water and my sheets I obviously texted Scott because well he knows how to fix random stuff, so why not a washer?  And, Scott has the same theory on fixing things as my dad does...if it's broken you may as well take it apart to see if you can fix it because the worst thing that can happen is you can't get it back together to work again when it never was in the first place.  So, Scott came over the next day - granted, he didn't know how to fix a washer but he was a good sport about attempting - and determined that the timer was bad.  Two days after I went to the parts store only to find out that they wanted $125 for the timer - OUTRAGEOUS - so I promptly found one on Ebay and we waited for it to arrive.

About 2 days later I realize that the house is smelling weird, noticed that the smell is coming from the washer which has been sitting full of dirty water and sheets for about 5 days, so I find myself some bleach (thankfully my sheets are white) and pour it in there to deal with the bacteria and smell.  Happy days, it works.  2 days later the timer comes in the mail and the day after Scott comes to install it...only to find out that now it will agitate but still won't spin or drain.  Well, a half fixed washer is not really all that helpful as it turns out, so Scott heads home to do some research and I head to the vet with the cat which as it turns out has her second urinary tract infection of the month and needs more antibiotics.  The reason I know this is because she is peeing everywhere, which is very unfortunate when you can't wash anything she pees on because your washer is broken.

The cat gets her meds, Scott finds out how to tear the washer apart further, and so today begins.  In case you are wondering, this is what a washer looks like on the inside...

When we get inside the washer we find it full of green stuffing, which just so happens to be the stuffing from Kaylinn's dog bed, which I had to wash 3 weeks ago when I realized Mishu had a urinary tract infection the first time.  I threw the bed into the wash, but it broke all apart and I had to throw it out anyway.  Apparently there was mass quantities of stuffing that got sucked into the washer body (how it got there I have no idea!) in all this.  So, we pulled out as much as we could, then we vacuumed out the rest and then were ready to check the pump, which was what Scott determined was definitely an issue since it wasn't draining the water and he had checked all the wires to determine it wasn't an electrical problem. (by the way, I apparently take after my mom and as my dad used to tell her 'use the term we very loosely' - I really did none of this, Scott did all of it, and I am flippantly referring to the effort as we...now that that is cleared up I will continue doing so)

Here is the problem with getting to the pump - it pumps the water out of the washer....which means, if there is water in the washer you need to get it out to take the pump off.  And so, we siphoned as much as we could, then Scott loosened up something in there to try to get it to drain into the tube to go into the big plastic bin we were using to capture water, and to make a long story short after a whole lot of water shooting all over the place and very rapidly filling the laundry room floor, we had many bleach water soaked towels, a bin full of bleachy water, and an empty washer.

Scott then figured out how to get the pump off, took it apart and found this...

That is right - stuffing from the bed. Apparently it had clogged up the pump.  At this point I went to Sonic to get a cherry coke because somehow that makes things seem better, while Scott opened up the pump, dried it out, put it all back together, hooked it back up to the washer, hooked everything else in the washer up, turned it on and VOILA - it worked!  (I did get him a Dr. Pepper and a corn dog, I'm not that much of a jerk...don't lie I know you were picturing me drinking my cherry coke while Scott fixed the washer)

So, why do I call this the Tale of the Washer and the Cat?  Because do you know why all of this happened?  Mishu.  Who you will notice is on the porch because I can't deal with her peeing all over my house and she needs some more doses of antibiotics in her until she will stop.

All of this happened because Mishu got a UTI.  She peed on the bed, the bed needed to be washed, I washed the bed, the stuffing came out and got stuck all in random places in the washer, after multiple cycles the random places started congregating into the pump, which blocked up, shorting out the timer, the timer freaked out and kept cycling because it couldn't drain because the pump was out, until I opened up the lid at which point it totally stopped working and I had a washer full of water and sheets.  And so, this month having a pet is not priceless, it has a very large price tag on it involving new cat food for urinary health, two trips to the vet for meds, a timer for the washer, and a WHOLE lot of hours for Scott attempting to figure out the problem.  Let's just say Mishu is still on the porch because I think that's the safest place for her as I do my bills.

As a footnote, Scott also fixed my vacuum while he was here which was not actually picking up any hair, somewhat of a problem when the point of a vacuum in a house with a cat and a dog is to pick up hair.  And you wonder why I said that Scott gets the 'Friend of the Month' award?  Heck, after today he gets the 'Friend of the Year' award.  And he made me promise to write the disclaimer that no, he is not interested in more random appliance fixing jobs :)