The experience started this morning when I headed into what will in about a week be my future office. I was supposed to meet with my Dr. this morning so that I could meet some of the members of the staff and so that I could attend a provider meeting during lunch. I got there and announced myself to the smiling, friendly lady behind the counter. She took me back into the office and placed me in the conference room. Where I sat waiting anxiously for whatever was going to happen next. I am by nature quite shy until I feel comfortable in a situation and this was definitely not what I would call a safe environment yet.
The Dr. that I will be working for came skipping in...she is very bubbly and vivacious...she said "oh this is perfect timing...you couldn't have come at a better time!" I was thinking oh, that's great. We will be able to have a little time to chit chat before this meeting and get on the same page before I start working next Monday...at least that was what was going through my mind...God had other plans however. The next thing I knew, Dr. D was throwing some lab results before my eyes and asking me to pray for her and the family that she was going to be sharing these results with....wow...didn't see that one coming!!! I was of course more than willing to pray for her and this family that I had never met, but whom I could only imagine having to face hearing such negative news...I told Dr. D that I would definitely pray for her and the family and she smiled and I thought that was the end of it...then I noticed that she was standing quietly by my chair with a look of expectation..."oh, you want me to pray out loud right now!?" I managed to croak as my throat felt like it was closing and my heart started racing...I don't know about the rest of you, but praying out loud in front of other people is REALLY REALLY hard for me. It takes me a while just to build up the nerve to do it in front of people that I have known for years and whom I feel comfortable with...I'm not sure why this is so unnatural to me other than that prayer has always seemed like such and intimate thing to me...and I have NEVER been good at expressing my feelings/thoughts into words. So, I forced myself to try to remain calm, and begged God silently to give me the words to say...and God, being faithful allowed me to pray right there in that conference room...in front of Dr. D without passing out or stumbling too much over my words. I don't know if the words I said were what Dr. D needed to hear, I hope so, but it was more than that, it was a prayer said from the heart in honesty and with hope that God will hear my request and take a hard situation and use it to His glory...I don't know how He will do that, whether He will choose to heal or to teach through suffering...but I do know that He is in control. He was in control as I walked into that conference room and as I was petitioned to pray...and nothing that happened today happened by accident...So, I was stretched...I felt a stitch come loose...I felt thrown off balance and I wondered what other unexpected twists the day held.
Dr. D went back to seeing her morning patients and I tried to pull myself together enough to be able to face the upcoming meeting and interaction with a room full of people whom I had really never met before....all the while thinking about that family and the bad news that they were about to be faced with.
A short time later, the meeting commenced. It was a discussion about upcoming Saturday clinics, flu clinics, and the push from the head of the health care clinics to come up with a solution to the never ending problem of too many patients seeking care at urgent care or the ER in the evening hours. There were a LOT of things thrown around during the meeting and I was feeling increasingly OVERWHELMED......STREEEEEETCH... I felt another stitch in my composure coming loose...I kept thinking...am I going to be able to do this? I feel so unprepared and completely unqualified to do this....am I gonna be able to do this...panic... panic!! I had to keep reminding myself that if this is what God had called me to that He would equip me...
The meeting was concluded...and I briefly got to talk with Dr. D. She told me not to worry that I would be fine...but hello! We all know that it is in my nature to worry...I think I would worry that I wasn't worried about something. I had intentions to ask everyone that I know to pray for me...and pray diligently...because after that meeting and the feelings of complete and total inadequacy, I am REALLY going to need that divine intervention!
Dr. D gave me a stack of reading materials, which oddly, almost made me feel a little better and I walked myself out to my car where I sat for a minute trying to catch my breath and send up silent pleas that God would somehow teach me everything that I would need to know about medicine before next Monday...Hey, our God is big...it could happen.
I drove myself to B and N and sat for about an hour trying to absorb as much knowledge from a medical journal as I could.
I couldn't spend too much time at B and N today, because we had to be at small group early tonight because we were going to be doing the ropes course. We started our small group tonight at about 6. We started out the night with a game called "tanks and missiles." Each couple was a team. One person was blind folded (the tank) while the other directed them on where to go to get missiles and what direction to throw them. ok...lets just say that small group was all about stretching me personally tonight. This activity was actually really hard for me. I had trouble communicating to Zack what he should do when he was blind folded...and it was equally hard for me to be blind folded and have to depend on Zack to talk me though what it was that I needed to do. (apparently Zack and I need to work on our communication because we did not do very well at that game.)
sorry some of these pictures are blurry/grainy..our camera has issues at dusk.
Cliff's tactic was rolling around on the ground...pretty humorous, but also effective.
It was amazing how hard it was to communicate which direction to move, throw, or face
Zack and Gretchen were really good at it.
The next thing that we did was called the wobbly woozy. It is 2 wires placed a short distance from the ground in a "v" shape. each couple got up and tried to walk as far down the V as they could relying on each other to stay balanced and upright, while the rest of our group was there to catch them if they fell. I was not anticipating Zack and I doing very well at this one. I wasn't sure if we would be able to trust each other enough to not fall flat on our faces after taking about three shaky steps, but I was pleasantly surprised. We did much better than I would have ever imagined. As we debriefed after all of the couples had gone, I was struck by what a poignant image this was of what marriage is like and the need for community. Zack and I did best when we were looking at each other and working together to reach a common goal. If we took our eyes off of each other and looked forward to what seemed to be an impossible goal, or if we started to worry more about ourselves than the collective "us", we grew shaky. Also, we never would have made it as far if we hadn't had the support of our friends around us, the knowledge that they were there to catch us when/if we fell. I think that that is such a great picture of marriage. We need to constantly be purposefully working on strengthening our marriage by spending time together growing, trusting, being selfless, but to me it also showed the importance of having a community of people who are in your life fighting for and encouraging you in your marriage. We love our friends and family...we have been so blessed over the years by their encouragement and their willingness to fight for/with us through the ups and downs in life, whether that was through meeting physical need, helping heal an emotional scar, or spending time in prayer for us. We love and appreciate ya'll so much more than I can put into words!!!
Our last challenge of the night was a team challenge. We did a type of obstacle course on steroids and we had to do it as a team. We split into 2 groups and the individuals in the group had to help/ support each other in order to maneuver through the different challenges within the course. We each had our moments of discomfort, but we were able to work together to make it through the course and it drew us closer and definitely stretched us out of comfort zones. There was some relief when our feet were firmly planted on the ground, but it was an experience that will forever change us...even if in just a small way.
Jaclyn and Kevin
Christy and Hector
Ground school
Cliff and Pam were having some house alarm issues that they had to deal with.
But they got it all worked out!
We ended on a side by side zip line.Please pray for me as God continues to stretch me and prune me, hopefully making me into the person that He desires.
1 comment:
LOVE this!!! You're such a beautiful person from the inside out...can't wait to see what God is going to do in your heart and life over the next few months!
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