Honoring Chris
Please consider donating to this fund. Christopher Laurie leaves behind a wife (Brittany); a 2 year old daughter (Stella); and an unborn daughter, due in November.
Please read Pastor Greg’s thoughts on the passing of his son. We are encouraged and inspired by his faith in this tragedy.
http://www.harvest.org/chris/memorial-fund/you-choose-dad.html
Love, Bjorn & Liz
A Sad, Sad Week.
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The following is the most encouraging devotion (or encouraging anything, outside of the Bible) that I have ever read. Bjorn and I are beside ourselves this week as we try and sort out a tragedy that has occured within our church family. At some point I’ll probably post more details as to how and why this tragedy hits so personally for us, but for now, this is all that needs to be said.
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By Pastor John Collins:
“Lord, if you had been here . . . ”
These are the words of Mary and Martha at the death of their brother Lazarus in John 11.
There, at that moment in time, when death was cruel and vile and heartless, they stood before what seemed an unbreakable valley of darkness. They wrestled with grief, and the grief was unbearable and unbeatable because grief can never be beaten, only experienced.
And so when Jesus came to them, they said it, “Lord, if . . . ”
They both said it, at different times, but to His face. We get the sense that they most likely had said it among themselves, too.
“Lord, if . . . if you had only done this or that . . . ”
It is the perfectly human response of a heart that is broken because hopes have been dashed and their world shattered. Someone they loved has been taken away. Life as they knew it was now different. They stood on the cliff of that dark valley and peered into the blackness and thought, “Lord, if . . . ”
This morning, as I write this, my pastor and his wife stand on that cliff. They are suffering the loss of their eldest son, who was taken from this earth quickly and tragically Thursday. They are battling the unmerciful giant called grief and, like Mary and Martha and every human soul who has waged that battle, they are losing.
It is painful to watch for the end is not near, and with every merciless blow they cry out, “Lord, if . . . ”
I have been in that ring before, but only as a young man of 16. My father had died of cancer. The last night of his life, I left the hospital with the words, “I’ll be back to watch the World Series game with you tomorrow.”
There was no tomorrow. I had missed those precious last hours with him. And I grieved, “Lord, if I had only stayed with him . . . ”
“Lord, if . . . ” is the cry of every forsaken moment, every unsaid word, every failure to perfectly love the ones we love and now can only remember.
“Lord, if . . . ” is how we ask God, “Why?”, when we know He won’t answer, when we are unsatisfied and frustrated by “seeing through a glass darkly.”
“Lord, if . . . ” echoes in the darkness and, like all echoes, it returns with no answer. The price of life and love is death and separation. As C.S. Lewis once said, “That’s part of the deal.”
So where is Jesus? We ask, “Lord, if I must drink this cup of grief, where are you?” To that, we have an answer in Psalms 139:8–12:
“If I go up to heaven, you are there;
if I go down to the place of the dead, you are there.
If I ride the wings of the morning,
if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
even there your hand will guide me,
and your strength will support me.
I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night—
but even in darkness I cannot hide from you.
To you the night shines as bright as day.
Darkness and light are both alike to you.” (NLT)
For Mary and Martha, the darkness and grief for Lazarus was temporary. Jesus allowed it so that His power over death could be made known at the resurrection of Lazarus.
Jesus was there, orchestrating His plan. Out of the darkness of that tomb came a foreshadowing of his own resurrection, which would give light and hope to all the world now that death was defeated.
Where was Jesus? He was there in the darkness of that tomb. And before raising Lazarus, He was with Mary and Martha, weeping with them!
Where is Jesus? He is forever in the midst of our darkness, in the black caverns of our life. He sees the grieving widow. He sees the grieving father and mother. He sees our pastor and his wife and He visits them in their grief. He knows the pain of the journey.
Isaiah said, “He is a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3 NKJV). It is comforting to know that our sorrows are His sorrows and that He knows the aching sense of loss and grief. God never promised to remove our grief, only to give it purpose.
Mary and Martha were united with Jesus in sadness, the grief of loss. And Jesus entered into that grief.
How sweet and comforting to know our God is with us in our moments of desperation. He is the King who bears the full, blunt force of our “Lord, ifs . . . ” and then sits next to us with a loving arm around our shoulder and weeps.
It is in these moments with Jesus that we come to know that the darkness only hides His face. One day, when the darkness is gone, His face will be the light of heaven.
My heart breaks for Greg and Cathe. I have come to know Jesus through Greg’s faithful teaching of the Word of God. I watch and wince at every blow of grief, but I am confident there are blessings in the buffeting and grateful that Jesus is with them.
By John Collins, Administrative Pastor, Harvest Christian Fellowship
3 Years in the Life of a Medical Student
Ok. So it’s been 3 years. The random 1 or 2 people who actually view our (super exciting!) blog may or may not have spoken with us frequently. If you have, you’ve probably heard us complain about something that confuses you. Your response may be along the lines of….”Aw, I’m so sorry.” Or, my personal favorite “HANG IN THERE, it’ll all pay off once he’s a doctor”. O.M.G. I could use the nickels that I wish I had received for every time somebody has said this to me…..
So, perusing my new BFF Facebook this morning, I found a note from one of Bjorn’s classmates and not only is it enormously entertaining, it is disturbingly accurate - so I had to post it. Now you can understand why we have been crabby for the last 3 years!!!! Here it is - thanks to Julie Jeyaratnam….
Random list of my least favorite things about med school
Thursday, July 10, 2008 at 4:58pm
Following is a random list of my least favorite things about med school. It is not at ALL comprehensive, nor does it necessarily cover the WORST things about medical school. These were just the topics I felt like complaining about on this particular day.
1. Test questions. These are usually asking about something that you have never heard of in your life. It definitely was not covered by the lecture notes, required reading, or review books. Or if you have heard of it, it is something that you had tried to clarify while you were studying, and you extensively looked up the answer to no avail. Now they test you on it because they know there is no correct answer. Or option #3, it is a question for which you DO know the answer, but the correct response is not an answer choice. They instead give you several choices of wrong answers, and you must guess the one they arbitrarily chose to be right.
2. Gunners. There are two types of gunner med students: 1) the studiers and 2) the aces. The studiers are classmates who panic if 3-5 minutes elapses without studying. They will run you over if you get in their way, possibly even hurt you badly, and they won’t give you any medical help either because it would take away study time. The acers, though less obsessed with studying, are fighting to be number one in class rank (there seems to be about 30 of them or so) and they get mad if professors try to give helpful tips or reviews for exams. “It’s not fair” they complain “I won’t look as smart if only 10% of our class fails instead of 50%.” These are the students who will know the answers to all the test questions mentioned earlier, even though they can’t explain how they figured them out. Slapped, that’s what these folks need.
3. “Vacation time.” Fourth year of med school is supposed to be the best year because you get several weeks of vacation time. Little do they tell you that they count the last week you are taking your 3rd year finals as a week of 4th year vacation time. What am I missing? How does 3rd year finals count as vacation for 4th year? It’s not like I’m going crazy over one week, but it’s the prinicple of the thing that matters. Tests are NOT VACATIONS.
4. Abuse. If you ever happen to run into a doctor, please take the oppourtunity to remind them that MEDICAL STUDENTS ARE NOT FREE LABOR. Docs may THINK that we are there just to go out and buy them pizza (and pay for it too). The may THINK that we are there just to be a receptacle for their anger when they feel like dumping. But nope. We’re not. Also, we don’t like to work 18 hours a day 7 days a week, and we don’t like to stay up all night following the night float residents around when they’ve only been up 5 hours and we’ve been up 24 hrs (cause we’re on call). Especially if there is nothing going on.
5. Cost. Medical school costs so dang much. So much that I signed away 11 years of my life to the USAF to pay for it. Arg. Where does $200,000 go? Could it be those cushy call rooms they provide for us at LLUMC? OH wait, we don’t really have call rooms. We sleep in patient rooms on gurneys IF the patients have left. What about the call rooms at RCRMC? (We actually have ones there.) The ones with beds covered in so many dark stains that they look mottled blackish-brown and smell like… rotted something or other? No… those are paid for by the county. Hmm… maybe it was those free rice and bean burritos they gave us for lunch that one time.
6. Boringness. Medical school has a way of making subjects that were once irresistably interesting into something so boring that it could be used as torture. Take bioterrorism, for example. In undergrad, Dr. Shors told us about how the Soviets (ok Russians, whatever) stole several vials of smallpox from us and how they could wipe out the USA iif they set even one of them loose. SO EXCITING!!! Everyone would almost pee their pants in that class. However, in medical school for bioterrorism, we watched 7 VIDEOS 40 min each OF POWERPOINT SLIDES WITH SOMEONE DRONING ON about some random acronyms that didn’t stand for anything, as far as I could tell. 5 slides and 40 minutes of BLAB BLAB BLAB BLAB… ahh I couldn’t stand it. Please, real bioterrorism has GOT to be more interesting.”
Ah, finally. Someone has accurately summed it up
Oh, and pictures are coming hopefully soon! I tell myself everyday “TODAY I will get more pics up on the website”….better busy than bored though!
