That morning, I awoke to one simple sentence in my inbox that threw my well-intentioned plans and imaginations for the next 4 - to 30 - years to the wayside.  I realized that the lacquered door I had been knocking at for months until my knuckles bled had always been bolted shut.  When I finally turned away in cold clarity, I was shocked to find right beside it a door open ajar just enough for me to slip through.

Yes, it hurts that my best - truly, my best - was not enough and that I was last pickings, a theme that I may never escape from.  It's hard not to feel like all this time, energy, money, and tears were wasted.  It's shameful that I was the only one who believed I was suited for my dream.  With bitter gratitude, I know that I am being protected from the future that I could never anticipate.  This I know, that I can trust that there's more to the story.

So, I'm still at the threshold and haven't taken my shoes off yet, but it's warm in here.  Voices I don't recognize yet are calling me in.  Soft music is playing around the corner, and there are big windows that let in the light and the breeze.  It's now that I realize deep down what my feeble prayers have been asking - for some place to finally be like home.  For a place where I can be myself, and be at peace.  To one live fully, without having to sacrifice other precious parts of myself or parts of my forever.  For somewhere I can grow roots, where there's room for someone else to grow with and alongside me.  That's all I want.

A simple talk about my pursuit of OBGYN turned into sharing of faith and the other person's recent struggles with miscarriage.  His story was so poignant, and reminded me why I wholeheartedly chose the field.  I remembered the joys in the simple and the profound, and the struggles that I had discovered the heart to bear.  And yet, this moment scare me, because it re-kindled my passion.  As of late I had been coming to terms - even becoming content - with the idea of ending up in another specialty if I went unmatched.  I worry that if it's not meant to be, that I won't be able to tame down those flames while I'm on another path, and that I might always be looking back.

Maybe I'm superstitious or whimsical or am able to make connections and a thesis about anything, but I really do believe in signs.  There are happy coincidences, and every once in awhile luck, and then there are moments that are just so directed to the unanswered or even un-asked questions in your heart that you just have to fully soak them in and etch them into your soul as a roadmap.  I don't think God is as silent as they say, especially if His heart is your mirror.  He likes to amaze us.

Tonight was the perfect ending to my 6 weeks of Family Med.  After all the missed chances I finally got to help deliver a perfectly healthy boy to two wonderful people who couldn't have loved each other more and who are going to love their son.  I got to see the awesome power that woman was designed to have to bring life, strength that she doesn't even realize she has.  And as the radio played "Mary Did You Know?" on the way home, reminded how Jesus came to us just the same way to give the ultimate gift only He could give.

Every day in clinic you see life and all the twists it can turn, but it would be a waste to always be waiting for the next destination and forget how full the present is.  I don't want to forget myself.  I want to grow, not change.  I want to find home by making a home - one of these days.

I don't know what 2017, or 2018, or the rest of the future holds, but I know my heart and when it is being pulled and I know when God is nodding, saying that 'This is good.'  With the audacity to be hopeful, I pray that these moments are reminders of His promises.

I don't think it serves us to embrace cynicism as though there's wisdom in it. - Nadine Smith


To my children I will say, "Fill your skin with kindness and find solace in your solitude.  It takes bravery to be kind.  But to be brave you will need to know how to stand for something even if you are completely alone." - Nikita Gill


But I've heard the tender whisper of Love in the dead of night. - 'Good, Good Father' by Chris Tomlin


June is wide-eyed and blushing, and I am squeezing raw lemons over my own heart. - freethepoets

I don't know if it's just the part of me that wants to redeem or re-write the past, but pediatric oncology is still on my list of potential specialties.  Maybe once I go out there into the wards as a doctor and not a bystander, it'll be way too much to handle.  But maybe the things that break your heart are what God has put on your heart to try and change.

Humans of New York has been doing a series at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, interviewing patients, their parents, nurses, and doctors.  Each is very poignant, but I study the doctor ones particularly carefully to see if I could or want to one day be the same.  This one especially gets to me, because at some point you ask the question - when is it worth it to stop fighting, and how strong must you be to let things go and just live, even if only for a little while?

“All doctors have those patients who sit on our shoulder. Their image is always with you. One kid will pop into your head every time you hit a wall– when you encounter a disease that is so unrelenting that you’ve exhausted all therapies and you’re still not even close. One memory will keep you going. It’s a different kid for every doctor. It’s hard to know why they stick with us. I remember one patient that had red hair just like my son. And I remember one five-year-old girl who made me laugh, because when I asked her how she was doing, she told me: ‘I don’t know. You’re the doctor.’ And then there was the boy early in my career who was born without an immune system. He’d already lost two older siblings to the same disease. He lived the first two years of his life in an isolation room with no windows, and his entire exposure to the world was through a black-and-white TV. We gave him a bone marrow transplant, and suddenly his immune system came online. And we took him for a walk in the garden. This boy who had spent his entire life in a windowless room. And a sparrow landed on a bush, and he pointed at it, and said: ‘Bird.’ That moment will always be with me.” 

It's just about that time in life when I can say that... everyone is getting married.

Not just distant relatives or the sons and daughters of family friends or people who used to be my church counselors, but my actual peers.  My old classmates (who I knew as very different kids) who are suddenly jumping the ladder, mature enough to make one of the biggest decisions of their lives.  Although I'm happy for them, I still always wonder... how did they find the one they love so soon, and how do they know that they're ready?  Just how?

I see all the pictures of people gazing longingly into each other's eyes and can't imagine being in that situation and being able to believe it was real.

Maybe if the right person came along at this very moment, I still would miss that opportunity because of all the flaws I still have to work on (that, eventually, would scare him away or make him regret his decision anyway).  Frankly, I don't know how to make someone happy.  I don't even know if I'm ready to be that happy myself.

Today I wore my long, vintage, wool ochre coat (the color of rich curry and 70's elegance), so long it almost reaches the ground.  I felt fabulous and warm, but yet light and fluid.

Everywhere I went today I was met with the busy chugging of trains passing through, both distant and afar.  Traveling back and forth like clockwork.

There was soft worship music all around - the grocery store, the coffee shop, the thrift store.  Here, people are trying to live in and share His love daily, it seems, with something so simple as a background hum that might catch someone's ear at the right moment, or a Wifi password, 'comeasyouare.'

And the rain.  Brief but heavy, sustaining everything in the Valley, washing away the dust.

I went to a Third Day concert with Namratta and was struck by how their old songs had been ingrained in my heart from when I was younger.  They were the songs I sang when I first learned about God, and the words flowed out just as easily as back then.  Songs like "Your Love Oh Lord" used to sound so simple and lighthearted but to still be able to sing them now, with a childlike heart, even after all that has passed and is still dauntingly to come - it means so much more.  What was first love has deepened.  To be reminded that God's mercy and love and goodness and just who He is hasn't changed after all these years is a great comfort.

The night before the last first day of classes, this was what God had prepared:

'On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."' - Mark 2:17

I am here for a reason much greater than I, greater than any small hopes I plan for myself.  There's a much bigger picture that I need to keep striving towards.

There's nothing quite like taking a nap underneath an open window on a misty day, breathing in the cool, fresh breeze that was left after the rain.  It really is a luxury to be still, and a luxury to have the time to do so.

There are only a few weeks left.  Life is still so fluid, and I could never ask anyone to stay in mine.  If only I had the courage to show love from the beginning.

We have security cameras all over school.  I wonder if the guards can see me smiling stupidly every time after walking away from talking to the cute second year.  They'd probably get a good laugh.

The mentorship program started today and my 7th graders just began opening up, and I already have so much admiration for them for even bothering to see what it is we do.  They face a lot of adversity, but the tools they need are stored in their spirits.  I can tell they feel silly for saying "I want to be a doctor" at that age, but so did I back then.  It all starts from some sort of step in the right direction and seeing where it takes you.  I find myself wanting to flood them with words of wisdom but really all they need is one more person that believes in them, then they'll figure it out on their own.

There have been lots of little miracles today, and God has been present in it all.

As it's now officially a lunar new year, and since it's THE year of the sheep (yay!), maybe some big things are going to happen.

- How to be young (again).

- How to genuinely say sorry, and how much healing there is from letting go of bitterness every time.

- I want to be found and pursued... but so does he, whoever he is.

- I may never be good at big parties and mingling.  Maybe I'll always have the urge to go hide in the bathroom or sit alone on the porch until someone comes to find me, but that's okay.  Even though gatherings are uncomfortable and can feel futile, they're still very important.  They hold so much possibility.  You never know who you'll be able to reach out to in a moment.  So keep on showing up and keep your eyes open.

- Keep your best memories close.  They will serve you well.  In dark times, they will remind you that there are more memories to be made.

- No one's too deep for God to reach.  It doesn't make sense and might not seem "fair," but that's the beauty of His grace.  And I'm thankful, because I definitely didn't deserve it either.

I didn't purposefully stay up until midnight, but I couldn't fall asleep because of the fireworks.  I didn't even bother to take a peek outside at the display for even a minute - didn't seem like anything special this year.

I'm not interested in a lot of things anymore.  Friends who leave everything to the past-tense, who ask for a general overview of my life without bothering to ask about what those things actually meant, who can't even comprehend that there was much more substance in the cracks in between.  Meaningless interactions that are supposed to be part of the quintessential 20-something experience.  Boys who only act to get a reaction out of me.  People who settle.  People who expect to be happy 24/7 and play the victim when they aren't and use that as an excuse for their mistakes.

All these things that annoy me are from my own faults, of being cold and logical and critical.  Not letting anyone in until I know I can trust them.  Not making more effort than necessary.  At this point though, I don't have any resolutions to changing that.  Then again, this overall frustration is also a sign of caring too much... ironically.  It's selfish to not give your all to people when love is what everyone needs.

According to the zodiac calendar, this year is supposed to be ours (the sheep - the cautious, sensitive ones).  Who knows?

Tonight, I went to see an outdoor movie screening with my good friends Helen and Aly.  It was located at a local brewery and since the film was Top Gun, it was mostly adults in the audience.  Probably since I was wearing a somewhat crazy skirt I got a number of looks, but I felt so out of place I never let my gaze rest on anything for more than half a second.  I never quite feel like an adult in these situations, where someone would want to approach me at any moment.  Maybe I just feel like an awkward turtle 13 year old again when guys look st me.  Maybe I'm not ready to be found just yet?  I dunno, how do people actually meet each other in real life?

Today was the first day of summer, and I felt like I was really filled and blessed.  I climbed Rattlesnake Trail with friends and met an amazing view of lush green mountain peaks, crystalline water, and wispy skies.  For the first time in a long time I felt like someone actually wanted to know something about me, not just facts about me.  My internal clock did not tick away to warn me to quickly move on to the next thing.

As short as this summer is going to be, I'm going to make sure I'm "full" in order to be ready for the next step.  Life is always on the move nowadays, so it's moments like these that I'm grateful that I can still stop and breathe deep.

If anything, it's so exciting to see people in my generation growing up to do amazing things, following their dreams, and making a positive difference all over the world like they always said they would.  We're doing pretty good.