On grace

Why can't you show me your beauty
without all of your thorns?

There are two things that I have always wondered about my spirit. One is "am I really chosen?" And the second is "why would God choose me?"

I came to believe a long time ago that God doesn't get it wrong; that he's all-knowing and infallible. I believe that if God has brought himself to my attention, then it must be for a reason. But I'm not special, am I? How could I be? I'm flesh and bones like anyone else, biological and human matter. How could I be special? I'm not a "good" person. I mean, before choosing to believe what I do about God, I wasn't doing anything particularly good in this world for God to have thought "Yep, there's a good person that I choose to be associated with". No, I wasn't doing anything particularly good then and I'm not doing anything of that nature now either. So why would God focus on me? Part of me recalls that verse (Matthew 7:21-23) where Jesus said that not all of those who invoke his name will be saved, in fact most of those same people, he will call out on their hypocrisy and tell them that they will have no part in heavenly his kingdom. Geez, so is that me? Am I just someone who happens to have knowledge of the biblical scriptures but really I'm not a true Christian?

Then I start thinking best-case scenarios and I think, yes, God did "choose" me to be his follower but I don't know why or for what purpose yet, but it will be revealed. Then I think, even the Hebrew Scriptures have stories of unholy men and women, of Gentiles, that were "chosen" to do good things for God's chosen people but who themselves weren't any better for it. Oh boy, am I just a pawn? Would that even be so bad if God used me, someone who he does not think so highly of, for those of his people that truly do deserve his grace? And what will happen to me when my purpose is served? Will one day my mission and use be complete? Will God one day say "you've done enough" and just leave me on my own? Then a certain panic comes over me because I don't want that. I love him!

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to be of use to God. It's not a volunteer position either, because I believe God does give me so so much in this life. But what if I've only benefited from God by receiving all these blessings from him but really he doesn't consider me one of his own, part of his team? I mean, he said himself that the sun shines on the good and bad. What if I've been a very fortunate bystander?... I get all these fears and insecurities in my mind about how "good" a person or how "good" a Christian I'm being that I can work myself up into a paralytic despair.

Then the other day I heard a talk about God's grace and it really breathed hope back into my heart. See, as a Christian I learnt about God's "undeserved kindness". It was always about how great and wonderful God is and how we deserve nothing of all the good things he gives us, since we're born with sin already imprinted in our blood and are incapable of anything good. Our whole Christian lives (and mine in particular) was all about guilt. God was my shoulder to cry on, my welfare office I asked for all the help I needed, acknowledging how weak and useless and unworthy a being I was. But you know what, if you substitute the word "grace" for the term "undeserved kindness" then God becomes more than a safety-net.

A God who gives grace is a compassionate God who doesn't remind me of my sin and wrongdoing every other second before offering me his help. Grace. Oh wow, what a difference a word can make to my whole being! Grace; yes, I am in receipt of God's grace - and he doesn't ask that I justify my existence. He doesn't ask of me, he gives. He doesn't expect of me, he guides me lovingly. He isn't asking me whether I'm good or bad or worthy or not, he shows me how he has absorbed my sin in that one single act of martyrdom. He didn't need to know what each of my sins were, he said I forgive them. It really is such an embracing word. It really does describe the kind of God I learnt to love, not the one I was taught to fear.

On what I've been doing (and why I bought a house)

As you may be aware, I have for a long time being hesitant about buying a house, versus renting. I have blogged about my fear to own a house before. And you know why I haven't being blogging recently? 1) I often have to censor myself completely so as not to say something about some or another frustration at work that may get me fired, 2) I also often censor myself about saying something that could offend someone close to me, 3) I bought a house and I've been very busy!

I wish I had some "mature", philosophical, or financially-savvy reason that I could tell you is why I bought I house. I don't. So I can only share with you these photos and hope you understand.

It made mum so proud to take this photo
When we lived in El Salvador, no-one of my family could have fathomed this. 

My animal-babies get their own room.

I have no qualms about pampering animals like this.

          

An outdoor area to continue to pamper the animals. 

Growing plants for myself and the animals.

On language

Over the last few weeks I have become concerned with the question of “am I racist?” Now, I am someone who usually prides herself on being a very accepting and non-judgemental person. Really, I have in the past even being judged for being too accepting of others, treating members of society whose behaviour is considered less than moral as my equals. I can proudly say with all honesty that I have absolutely no qualms about treating patients from any background (ethnic, theocratic, nationality, sexuality, criminality, etc.). However, I am bothered by one thing that affects me on a daily basis: people talking in a language I don’t understand constantly in at a place I must attend every day. And so I ask myself, ‘What is wrong with me? Am I racist? Why does this bother me?’ And, you know, the potential answers scare me as they threaten what I think of myself as, my own identity as an open-minded person.

Interestingly, English is not my first language. I am a native Hispanic. So how could it bother me when people speak other languages I don’t understand in my presence? Well, one thing that has helped me understand exactly that (and that indeed I am not racist) is the fact that I speak two languages. See, when I am around people that similarly speak the two languages I speak and others who speak only one of those languages, I will choose to speak the language that is common to all persons present. Why? Because I think this is considerate and non-excluding of others. But what if I want to have a private conversation with someone else? Then I will go to a private place with this person and speak to them in whatever language is most suitable. I could switch to speaking to another language in the presence of people who don’t understand the language to have a “private” conversation with someone else, but isn’t that rude? Yes! To me it is. I consider it so. To me that is inconsiderate and treating the person who is present as if they were unworthy of my respect, acting as if they didn’t exist or weren’t in the room when I am talking with someone else. I would not speak to someone in Spanish to have a private conversation with them when I am surrounded by solely English-speaking peers.

So, am I racist? I don’t think so. Maybe I am sensitive and expect others to treat me how I treat others, with consideration and respect for their feelings. I don’t know. I do know I just don’t enjoy feeling excluded. And I certainly don’t enjoy being made to feel non-existent or unimportant in a group of my peers.

On what I (still) believe

I have been missing a lot more of my religious meetings than not and people have asking me whether I still "believe". Yes, the people who ask me are usually members of my congregation; and, yes, I do suspect they ask me only to know whether I'm still an 'acceptable' person for them to talk to and not an evil ex-member. I'm still classified as a member, albeit what in my religion is called an "inactive" member, for reasons I won't go into just now. But do I still "believe"? Well, yes, I believe many things...

I am a person learned in science, medicine, and theology. I love all of these as subject matter immensely and I'm a nerd who finds these subjects of study very interesting. Yes, I still consider myself a Christian as much as I am a scientist and a doctor. There are beliefs I choose to have; things I choose believe based on what I've read, studied, seen, and some just based on hunches. That's how I practice medicine and that's how I act in the rest of my life too. Well, of course, the practice of medicine is and has to be less based on hunches and more on reproducible evidence that has a higher standard of proof than religious beliefs do, but both are a combination of both hunches and "evidence". Fortunately, however, I am never asked if my belief in science has lapsed because as we all know and expect, scientific knowledge is meant to grow, change, and new knowledge must replace old one. My religious beliefs can only grow within a confine before it's considered irreligious by some, though. But what do I (still) believe?

I believe that God has given us an intelligent mind with the ability not only to accept, but also to ask questions and learn. I believe curiosity is a great learning tool, and learning is a gift. I believe learning only grows us as respectable human beings. I believe we all have a conscience and an inbuilt system to determine whether new knowledge is good or bad for us; whether or when to apply it. I believe knowledge enlightens us.

I believe that in a bad situation I can pray to God to ask for his help. And I don't know how God does it, but I will pray for it anyway.

I believe that in good or stable situations, I will pray to God to express my gratitude for allowing me either to experience that or for bringing it about. I don't know which one is the right way it happened, but I will pray with gratitude anyway.

I believe that God is the only one with a right to judge me and any of my actions, and not any member of my religion (regardless how "high up" they are).

I believe that God evaluates us in much more complex ways than meeting-attendance.

I believe that being a member of my religion doesn't automatically classify you as a good person, and that lack of membership doesn't necessarily mean a person is unworthy or bad.

I believe that one of the greatest aspects tarnishing my religion is the fact that former members are shunned and association with them is actively discouraged. I believe that is cruel and inhumane. Further, I believe God would frown upon this practice.

I believe that the members of my religion really do try their best. That is not to say that they are well-guided in all their beliefs, but they believe with purity that what they are doing is right - and that is why I cannot judge any of them negatively.

I believe God loves me. And I believe God is not offended or even blinks an eye at the fact of my believing what I believe. I believe he sees my intentions and my background and knows why and how I am who I am and forgives me for what I err in.

I believe God does not expect from us anymore than a particular individual can give.

And my overwhelming belief is that God's intention/purpose is summarized in this: "love your neighbour as you love yourself". I believe God (or the concept of God) does not exist to cause division, to instigate guilt and prosecution, or to punish or reward us for our behaviour and thoughts, but rather only to promote that each human being treat each other with respect and as our equals.

On protocols

A lot of things have been troubling me this week. A lot  of those things I can't mention because they may get me fired, so let me just focus in on an interesting thing I have recently noted about me and "protocols".

When I was younger, in medical school, I wanted to just "know" things. I wanted things to have an answer. I wanted definites. But, of course, medicine is all about uncertainties. One lecturer once said that if you can't deal with uncertainty well then you're going to struggle with medicine. I struggled with medicine. I was either fortunate or unfortunate to go through the post-graduate medicine program where so-called "self-directed" learning was encouraged. What this translates to is "teach yourself medicine at home using these resources, pay the university exuberant fees for not teaching it to you, and then come for the exams". Needless to say, I was not a fan. Some people thrive on that style of learning, but I always felt it was a cop-out. The university kept saying something to the effect of "didactic learning is the devil", but I really craved that devil the closer to exams we got. I understood that you do have to develop your own clinical reasoning abilities, but teaching basic anatomy and physiology facts should be one of the things that the medical schools teach. Yes, we all learnt it eventually, but it didn't have to be as painful, if you ask me.

So as much as I craved instruction, teaching, and protocol (i.e. what to do when) when I was in medical school, as soon as I graduated, "protocol" became my enemy. As an intern in a government hospital one of the first things you will be told about is the protocols - hospitals are full of volumes of them! Sure, a lot get ignored at many levels of the business of running a hospital, but one faithful group of adherents to the protocols were one special group of people that as an intern you deal with a lot every day: nurses. I think nurses have a protocol for everything in hospitals, from their precious lunch breaks to when a perfectly good IV line should be changed. Don't get me wrong, I'm not "nurse bashing" - in fact many of those who have worked with me as the one off the odd doctors who was loves and has a has a lot of respect for nurses.  And I do think a lot of nursing and medical protocols are good and they're there to ensure things are done consistently, and also to acknowledge that in emergencies our brains go out the window and we need almost to be reminded almost even to breathe too.

But there were also a lot of redundant and annoying protocols. The hierarchy in nursing circles, as opposed to medical ones, however, is more immediate. So if you don't do things according to the protocol then the nursing team leader is right there on the floor to hold you accountable to it; whereas in medical teams, you'd be lucky to get a consultant/boss who knows the intern exists or has a name. Doctors also have a lot more autonomy to make clinical decisions and can therefore deviate more readily than nurses  from the protocols. Nurses in the wards especially hate it when doctors ignore their protocols! One of the more ridiculous protocols a nurse forced me to oblige to was to take from her hand a pack of medication and hand it to a patient personally because nurses aren't pharmacists and therefore weren't allowed by hospital protocol to "dispense" the medication to the patients personally. But doctors also aren't pharmacists, so I didn't understand why I had to walk all the way to the other side of the hospital to pass a box of medication from the hand of the nurse to the hand of the patient standing right next to her. What did I need to understand, though? All I had to do was to "follow the protocol" and obey the ridiculous request. Actually, I found it comical, and I made a big deal about coming up to the ward to carry out this all life-saving task.

Interestingly, now that I am the consultant in private practice, I have entered a quest to find all the protocols for general practice medicine that I can find. Did I suddenly develop an incomprehensible lust for protocols? No, I still haven't, but what I have come to realize is that in the "real-world" (the world outside of the hospital) our legal system requires that we have a good goddamn excuse for deviating from the protocols if something ever goes wrong for one of your patients. And the protocols in the real-world aren't about tedious and mindless obedience of procedure, but about things that actually put patient safety at risk. Let me give you an example, hopefully without revealing too much of what those things I don't want to mention are: Say a clinic owner asks me to do something a certain way to cut running costs; I could do what he says, but if my patient risks suffering because of it, you can be pretty sure I am going to prefer following the protocol that all my peers are encouraged to uphold in order to minimize risk to my patient.

Turns out I still am just like I was in medical school, wanting to just "know". That lust is still alive in me, although now not there just to be able to pass exams but in order to be better equipped to do the best thing for the patients who put their trust in us in their most vulnerable times: when they're ill.

At my "other" job.

On mothers and caring

I’ve had to bite my tongue in the last few weeks not to comment on some of the injustices I see happen in this world, especially when it comes to family – and especially our mothers. But I’ve seen a TV program recently about child carers of ill parents and my faith in humanity has again been restored! It felt to me so amazing to hear such grateful and selfless adolescents speak of the help they render to their parent and the sacrifices they make in their lives – and yet they are able realise that these things are to help a fellow human being and that the universe isn’t all about them. How refreshing! How amazing and admirable and such mature behaviour from these young souls. These young people spoke not about themselves and not about chores or burdens, but about something that seemed natural and dutiful to them – the way our parents didn’t whinge or throw a tantrum whenever we needed to be fed or clothed as babies, it was just a fact of life that the stronger person looks after the weaker one.

One of the most truthful quotes I have heard in the last week from a patient of mine was that “some parents have great children, and some have children that stay children”. Most of us grow out of the belief that the world revolves around us and we are the most important creature in the universe, but it may take other people up to the day that they have their own children to realise this (if they ever do).

In the last week my older patients have been telling me the stories of how their children did this or that for them or gave them presents in whatever form for mother’s day celebrations. And it’s great to hear. And yet I can’t help but also think of this as a sad thing that a lot of these parents have had to wait 12 months to get this kind of attention from the people for whom they have sacrificed so much time, efforts, money, and opportunities. On days when I feel particularly pessimistic, I think that for some of us offspring out there Mother’s Day should be renamed Hypocrite’s Day. Now, I use that particularly strong word purposely because I believe it is wrong to neglect or ignore a person except for one day a year when the media and commercial entities force us to remember them. I mean, sometimes our parents may have no need for flowers or chocolates, but they would be absolutely grateful if only we brought them a bit of food when they’re sick and are unable to meet their needs alone. When we were younger, every day was ‘Our Day’ and our parents fussed over us.  I wish so much that for those of our family (at least) we can be bothered to fuss over them when they’re in need – even if it doesn’t fall on a “special day”, and even if their problem isn’t cured by just flowers, chocolates, or material gifts.

You know what most of these mothers tell me they wish more than anything they get on Mother’s Day? That every day was like it so they would get to see their children more; that their children called them more often and asked how they are and how they may help;  and that their children showed appreciation and love for them more often.

But let me tell you also about a question I was asked recently too: Do I believe in Karma? Well, I guess I call it differently as I don’t have a traditionally Buddhist or Hindu belief system, but aside from my theo-philosophical beliefs, there are my social psychology beliefs. I once heard the story of a woman from my family who had several children but in her elderly years lived alone and was left to fend for herself for food, money, and all basic needs. But where were her children? Well, when these children were very young, this now-elderly woman abandoned her young family and left them to fend for their own. Now you ask why are her children not looking after their elderly mother? Well, because she is to them just another person whom they barely know but happen to share 50% of their DNA with. It’s hard to feel sorry or help a stranger who many many years ago only taught you that those that are weaker don’t deserve your help. I don’t call that karma but setting an example, reaping what we sow. It’s sad, but sometimes the truth is also sad.

What is wrong with this world? I don’t know. All I know is that nothing changes if nothing changes. I know that if you want to see different then you have to do things differently, and not wait for them to happen. I want there to be mothers out there that are loved and appreciated by their children. I want there also to be children out there who are shown by their mothers how to love, how to care, and what things are right and how to do them right. I want to set a good example. I want to have good rewards for my deeds. I want one day to be both a good daughter and a good mother.

On being religious

You know, I’ve always described myself not only a spiritual person, but also a religious person. Which is not to say that I am a divisive person of the view that ‘my religion is right and all others are wrong’ but a person who thinks that religion and theology are fascinating topics of intellectual consideration! But it is hard being religious. It is hard for so many reasons and on so many levels.

You know what I consider the single greatest detriment to the standing of religion in our world? Humans; other members of our religions. I don’t believe it is extremism or the varying beliefs, not the names of our Gods, not our values, but our fellow worshippers. Those other things may turn off a great many people off religion, but it is our co-worshippers who turn off those of us who are already believers. People often ask me if I am Christian because my mother is and she’s forced it on me or because my culture almost demands it. And my answer is I am Christian despite my mother and despite my culture and despite a lot of other Christians I have known.

It is incredibly difficult to remain a Christian, or a member of any other religion for that matter, without feeling an element of shame in admitting that part of our identity because of the negative connotations of some religious people’s acts. We live in a very well-informed society, in a very scientifically-advanced society, in a society where knowledge on almost everything is easily accessible to everyone. The “sins” of our religious co-worshippers and of our leaders are exposed and become common knowledge – and yet how do we maintain dignity in acknowledging association with such people, with certain practices, with unusual or seemingly illogical beliefs? In my case it isn’t “blind faith” or ignorance but rather a choice.

And what makes it particularly hard for me to call myself a Christian? The judging attitudes of my co-worshippers. For some reason a lot of members of organized religion consider that they become holier the more they judge others, like digging up and speaking of others’ faults somehow bleaches their own soul of sin. I don’t remember reading about that in the bible! I do remember reading all those verses about judgement belonging only to God, that our duty was only to love our fellow humans and not to pass judgement on them, and about the hypocrisy of any imperfect human judging others since we are all sinners. It always strengthened my faith to know that God is a loving God, that he knows our deep intentions, and that he knows we are imperfect and does not ask of us any more than we are able to give. Yes, God has great qualities – but, oh boy, our fellow worshippers are a lot harsher! They often judge those outside of our belief system and those within our religion with a wrath that is all so ungodly! In fact I believe it is so ungodly that it is evil.

I remember one of the first accounts in the Bible being about Adam, Eve, and the serpent. The serpent’s deal was that he thought, ‘hey, how come this God dude gets to be boss? Why can’t I be boss? Why should only he get the worship from these humans and angels and such?’ He wanted to be God. And you know what our religious co-worshippers are really good at? Trying to do the same thing: to rob God of his unique role of being the rightful judge of human behaviour since he is the only one who knows our deepest inner thoughts and intentions.

I made the choice some time ago to answer only to God. I made the choice to consider all humans, and not just those that call themselves Christians or belong to my particular denomination, as my equals. I made the choice to place my trust in only one God and accept that those who claim to represent him here on Earth are still only my equals and are not interchangeable with God.