Slaying the Dragon

When God wants to teach me something, He usually needs to send the message repeatedly. This past week, the topic was slaying our dragon.

  First, we watched a sermon by Father John Moses. When discussing what young women should use as their guide to choosing a husband, he advises them to pick someone like Saint George, a man who is willing to slay the dragon within himself. How beautifully complete! This morning, my husband showed me this post by Michael Hyatt. He discussed how all of us have dragons to slay and in particular, ones that need to be slayed before breakfast. He calls it lethargy. I call it laziness: spiritual, physical and intellectual. To combat this dragon, he talks about how he keeps a discipline of reading his Bible in the morning, exercises and listens to an audiobook (while working out). In both of these examples, I took away that we all have different dragons to slay. Selfishness. Materialism. Jealousy. Gossip. Judgement. Lust. Lukewarmness. Laziness. May God give us the grace and strength daily to slay these dragons!

Our Beloved Father

Yesterday, our beloved Pope Shenouda III, the Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, died. Today, Abouna preached about how the Pope really was a father to us, a father to millions of Coptic people all over the world. And I wanted to talk about two things in particular.

1. His weekly Q&A. Every Wednesday, the Pope would answer questions or situations that people sent to his desk. It was in the anonymous way like sex ed was when we were in middle school. I attended 2 of these in person and many more watching them on TV. These were not scholarly, theological questions most of the time. And we often made fun of that. Why are people asking him these dumb questions? THIS IS THE POPE! But he always answered them and respected the people asking. "I'm 25 and unmarried. What should I do?" "My wife nags at me so much, I could kill her! How do I make her stop?" "My kid is sick. Please pray for him, heal him." "My husband is looking at bad websites, how should I confront him?" These are questions for a father, a personal advisor, someone who you trust, not a very detached, cold, Patriarch. He taught us through his Q&A sessions that just as he cares for our very human problems, God wants us to bring every little problem we have to Him.

2. The Pope's body, in tradition with the Church, is on the Patriarchal Throne at the Cathedral for 3 days until his funeral on Tuesday. Yes, to our Western minds this is morbid. However, some Coptic people, in this foolishness, have displayed their disgust at this practice on Facebook, making a mockery of our Church. How is this SOOO different from an open-casket funeral? In many cultures, there is never a closed-casket funeral. We must train ourselves to before we call a practice "retarded" or "insane" to understand the wisdom of the Orthodox Church. As Westerners (who prefer to ignore the idea of death all-together let alone see a dead body for three days), we need to learn from this and take blessings. The presence of relics of the saints from hundreds of years ago in our Churches reminds us the holiness of the human body, that God sanctified the Body when God Himself took the form of man.

May we learn from the virtues Pope Shenouda, his love for academics (his many many publications and books, and the establishment of Sunday School in the Coptic Church!), his love for the whole world and consequent expansion of the Coptic Church to every continent except Antarctica! and his prayerful, strong and holy spirit. Pray for us before the Throne of God, Sayedna! Lord have mercy on us all.

Rank List Is In!

Today, our rank lists are due to the Match System. In 19 days, fiance and I will find out where we're moving to!!! Eeeek!!! We're very excited to where God will take us.

Guardian Angel

Chief complaint: High blood pressure
Vital signs: Blood pressure 130/85

I went to Room #20 to see my patient, a forty-something year old thin Iraqi man laying on the stretcher, with two of his adorable children sitting in the chairs. His eleven-year old son began translating for his dad and I immediately felt uncomfortable with the situation so I used the phone to get an interpreter on the line. It all started when they were at Wal-Mart looking at gold jewelry (but the gold was bad....the boy said), when his dad developed a terrible pounding headache. It took a long time to understand what was going on but basically this father was suffering from terrible anxiety not having frequent hypertensive emergencies.

After telling my attending about this patient, we also realized that he was under the wrong impression about an episode of numbness/tingling he had 3 months ago. When he presented at that time, a full work-up was done to rule out a stroke. This man, however, though that he did suffer from a stroke and had been living his life thinking he had a stroke. So with my attending, the first thing we wanted to clear up was that he NEVER had a stroke.

The man began to weep in disbelief. "What do you mean? I was told I had a stroke? I have been living in utter agony. I have been so stressed. How can I get my lost time back?" I felt so bad for him, watching his children, the three of them, watch their dad weep. "Baba, you shouldn't be crying. You should be happy that you got great news today."

I get to witness a lot of very human experiences. It really is a honor. And lately, I've also been more focused on seeing this as service to God and as an opportunity for me to witness the Love and Salvation of Christ. When people are suffering, when they are getting good news, I can be that supportive presence, a person that is in the room with them, praying for them, just like those kids were with their dad. Glory be to God.

Happy Valentine's Day!

our wedding photographer, MLP, sent us a very cute succulent and valentine note!

:) :) :) 68 more days!! This weekend was also our Katb il-Kiroot, which is the official name for putting together the invitations! :)

Organic Food: Healthier? Greener?

Just wanted to share an EXCELLENT article addressing some common myths about organic food. Some of my favorite lines:

"Some point to an "epidemic of cancer". In fact, there is no epidemic of cancer. When age-standardised, cancer rates are falling dramatically and have been doing so for 50 years." Yep.

"Sixty years ago, all Britain's food was organic; we lived only until our early sixties, malnutrition and food poisoning were rife. Now, modern agriculture (including the careful use of well-tested chemicals) makes food cheap and safe and we live into our eighties." :) :) :)

"No clear conclusions about the quality of organic food can be reached using the results of present literature and research results." Botton line. Stop wasting your money, splurge on shoes instead.

Love is Not the Same thing as Marriage

Let me start by saying, I find CNN to be an incredibly frustrating source of any news whatsoever, let alone insights into popular culture. But this article really irritated. The author basically concludes that religious views (attacking Christians, again) of marriage as a lifetime commitment are outmoded. He says, he won't be stating the line "till death do us part" at his own wedding (you will probably never get married if you feel that is a superfluous add-on, friend).

Unfortunatetly, because Americans are so independent-minded, living in an isolative, "self-gratification is everything" culture, they fit right into what he is saying. The principle of the Church telling them how to live their lives (even though, it is full of blessings and rewards) is unfathomable; it's downright oppressive---which is why the author argues attendance rates continue to fall. Well guess what? You're not doing God or the Church a favor by bumping our attendance rates. We don't care about attendance rates or how many "Christians" are actually abstinent until marriage. We're not looking for fans. God wants followers. Followers that have God's Word in their hearts and practice the teachings of Christ, the teachings of the Church.

Yes, Love is not the same as Marriage. Americans view "love" as an emotional thing, which is why when things just dont work out, they can get a divorce, or move out of the apartment their cohabitant and them share. Marriage, in the Orthodox Church, is a sacrament, a mystery by God's grace. The Orthodox marriage ceremony is the most romantic and un-romantic way to commit to someone else and God. The couple doesn't put rings on each other; the priest does. The priest symbolizes God, that once those rings are put on, they cannot be removed because God Himself has created one flesh out of the two. The crowns that the couple wears are not just because now they are King and Queen of their household, they are crowns of the cross the couple will bear--when things are difficult, when money is tight, when a child is stricken with a life-threatening disease. Our Church is the complete antithesis of the opinions of this article. But then again, we are not popular cultures. Orthodoxy is for those who recognize that the ways of the world are all in vain and lead to self-destruction. Christ said "My yoke is sweet and my burden is light." How true are those words, O Lord! God have mercy on all of us.