My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does, in fact, please you.
And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always, though I may seem
to be lost and in the shadow of death,
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face me perils alone.

Thomas Merton, Trappist Monk

Dreaming

My exam is over. And I'm still waiting for results so I'm in that lovely interim period where I can't do anything about the exam, am in glorious oblivion regarding the results and there is no need to study at the moment.

Today I went to Wesley Owen and bought a load of books. Because I can read again and that is my favourite thing to do. I didn't really need more books but at least they're 'holy' books rather than weird fiction.

I've started on 'Fountains in the dust' by Adrian Plass, Bridget Plass and Angela Murray. It's byline is 'Snapshots from the Streets of South America'. Reading it has been strange. When I was a teenager, I spent a lot of time reading books like this, hoping that I would get to be one of the people that they met out there - someone who has given up their 'normal' life to live and love in a place where no-one else chooses to live and very few are capable of love. It's a dream I still think of, but more and more, I see the reasons I couldn't do it or shouldn't do it. And connected in to that, I struggle to see how my life now and my life in the future can balance.

I love Scotland, I love my family and friends, I love my church and I guess I love the middle class existence (having enough money for pretty clothes, books, hot showers, the gym and the internet). And it makes me wonder if I could give it up... I hope that if it was what God wanted and planned for me then I would go, because giving up these things would be nothing in comparison to the glory of God at work.

So in order that I will be of use in a third world country, I'm trying to train to be a surgeon and to speak Spanish. Both are things which take up time and mean I am working hard. This is turn means not giving of my time within community and with those who do not know Christ because I'm struggling to keep afloat in my training. It's a long term plan. A plan which sucks my life away at the moment in order that I will have more to give in the future.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: is it ok to give up my life and my 'ministry' (I can't think of the proper word) now in preparation for the future? If I died now and went to meet Jesus, would he say 'It's all very well planning and preparing, but what about the people you meet at work, on the street and at social events?'. Can I justify it? Or should I calm down, take things a bit easier, leave myself some time for conversations and dinners and challenging friendships at the risk of not getting a training post in the future and losing my dream?

'Holy' books are all very well, but they always leave me with more questions and things to ponder than answers.

If only.

At long last, we have a sufficient quantity for each of you to have his own. Guard it well! These tuits have been hard to come by. Especially the round ones.
A ROUND TUIT
This is an indispensable item. It will help you to become a much more efficient worker. For years we have heard people say 'I'll do this when I get round tuit". Now that you have a round tuit of your very own, many things that have needed to be accomplished will get done.

GEEK!

Good news, I'm still enjoying work... even though I was working 1800-0200 last night. Strangely, I quite like that shift, it's calmer (even if there are many many patients). And then I got to walk to my car in the silence, it was beautiful. When I got home, I was still pretty awake so I watched some tv and when I went to bed it was getting light, whoops! But today, I'm studying and I've only got a week to go, then there is freedom - I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

This confirms me as a total geek but here are a few of the things that have made me smile like a total idiot this past 2 weeks:
- holding the arm while Kate reduced a elbow dislocation
- suturing a foot and being told it was nice and neat (plus, the patient was a tailoress and she didn't complain!)
- reducing a elbow fracture dislocation
- suturing up 2 arms
- reducing a shoulder dislocation
Can you see a theme there?!
Things I have enjoyed less:
- assessing 11 week old babies
- studying
- realising that I've only got a week left to study but have a lot I could do
- hoovering
- asking ridiculous questions of consultants (never a good thing!)

Anyway, that's probably enough just now. I must go back to physiology, anatomy and pathology, what joy...

It has been beautifully sunny for the past few days and I've not been at work which has been great. I'd forgotten how much I love the feeling of the sun, the warmth and chilling out with friends and family. But today, it's back to work and studying and then in 2 weeks time, it'll just be work and I'll be free from studying for a while, whoop! That is all.

hello gorgeous...

As I mentioned before, I've not really been going to church this year. That's mostly been because I work a lot of weekends and then when I'm off I quite often go away. Sometimes I get to go to different churches. Sometimes I don't. But I think the time 'out of church' has made me appreciate it all the more. I wouldn't even try to say that there's a lot of stuff that could be better, but there's a lot that I love and feel privileged to be a part of.

I love that when I turn up at my own church, people are pleased to see me. I've been going to this church for 8 years, have been pretty involved in various parts of it and so I know a fair few number of the congregation. I think if I wasn't already so settled within the church it would have been difficult to come and go, but in fact it's been great. Here are some of the amusing and lovely things that have been said to me:

Husband 1: 'Oh, you're back... if you hadn't been here this week we were going to send an email to check you hadn't got stuck in a ditch.'
Me: 'Because I would have had my computer with me...'
Wife 1: 'We thought you might have fallen into a wifi hotspot.'

Husband 2: 'Hello gorgeous, where have you been all my life?!"
Wife 2: 'Hello Elaine, lovely to see you.'

Wife 3: 'It's nice to see you, we wondered if you'd moved church but we're glad to see you're still here.'

I've also had various offers to join lots of different house groups. It's just a shame that I don't really have the time at the moment.

I went to a small church with my sister too. It was lovely. There was 20-30 people there but pretty much everyone smiled and said hello. They were very friendly and were keen for me to come along to their alpha course with my sister. I declined gracefully, driving to glasgow for that seems a bit excessive! It was great to be part of a small congregation who continued to meet despite difficult times within the church; you knew that they were all there because they loved God and not because they 'should' go to church. And again, I remembered how much I love to take communion.

This week though, I found another part of church that I love: the benediction. I can't quite remember what DC (the minister) said but I came away with a feeling of being equipped to go out into the world, to take with us what we had learned and to shine a light in our city. It was a challenge to think about what had been said, to look back on the time of worship, to work out how to put it into practice and then to let God change our lives. That's a pretty awesome thing and I left church feeling revitalised and prepared for the week ahead.

We also went out for a church walk, it was great to spend time with friends and others who I rarely see. It was also a beautiful day so I took some lovely photos. This is Fife:

Be careful what you wish for

Roughly a year ago, I was just realising that maybe I wanted to be a doctor. I'd just about finished a year as a junior doctor and I'd survived. I didn't hate it, I didn't totally love it, it was a job and I could do it. I was reaching the point when I finally accepted that maybe God had been pushing me along because he knew I'd get there eventually. I decided that surgery was my aim once more (many times throughout uni I tried to change my mind) and as such I enrolled to do at least one more year studying in an attempt to make my CV more enticing.

So, now, I've done another year of studying. I'm about 4 weeks away from my exam which scares me. I've got a set of nights to do, some studying, some boring work assessments, a reasonable amount of shifts and lots of revision to do. I'm planning to sit another exam in September and to try and do some research. Yet my plan for the year involves moving country with no guarantee I'll be able to speak Spanish and even less guarantee of a job, short or long term.

It feels so weird. I like my job, I'm motivated to do extra stuff for it (which I never have been before) and God wants me to take some time out now. It seems that I am always at odds with what God wants. When I wanted to ditch medicine, I couldn't and now that I want to stay, I'm leaving. I've worked in jobs I expected to hate and then enjoyed them. I got bored in jobs that I wish I liked. I've spent lots of time with friends and but also, hardly any time at all. I hardly ever read anymore but I've started watching the tv. I do much more than I used to and I'm less tired. I rarely go to church, never go to bible studies, and am particularly sporadic with my 'quiet times' but I feel more secure in God and I trust him completely (well, most of the time...). I spend much more time at my parent's home and want to be around next year, but I'm leaving. My life has become a collection of opposites.

And I don't really know how or why but I guess it indicates that you never know what's going to happen when you leave your life in God's hands. It may be confusing and difficult and surprising but it's never dull and you end up where you least expected. For me, that seems to be where I wanted to be as a teenager.