Psalms and Loving the Word

I sat in our small guest quarters room, my pretty pink prayer room. I had watered the plants while listening to a praise song and lighting a lovely candle. I had just structured a prayer using my hand-held prayer labyrinth, a leftover from a craft my friend and I made in a garden while on our prayer retreat last spring. I have been learning to reflect more, and to experience life with all my senses, and to take deliberate time to rest in this room without my watch or my phone.

Over the last month, I had really grown to love the psalms. For the first time, I read them out of order, but instead based on author, based on type of subject material, and with accompanying contemporary music if I could find something I liked online. I dutifully checked each psalm off my list after reading it, so I knew I had gotten through them all. But I circled the ones I loved, my favorite prayers and praises and laments. I didn’t realize before that the psalms were the ancient praise book for the Jewish and Christian faith. I never thought of them as song or prayer before. I had even picked out one of my favorites to memorize. Having gotten 23 under my belt in the spring, I was aiming for 139 now, but it was slow going, and at the end of the month I was only about six verses in.

I had to admit I didn’t read all 150 psalms in the last month. I had saved the longest, number 119 for last. I wanted to take a full day to absorb it, to see if the newfound love I had gained for the scripture in general this year could help me get through David’s perfusion of love for the law. Over the weekend, I had tried to scroll through it on my phone while waiting at a café, but I didn’t get very far. Today, I opened up an old NKJV Bible gifted to us by a mentor who left five years ago. This one had a commentary I’d never read before -a single page listing the seven words for the law that David uses in Psalm 119. I never realized before the difference between commandments, statutes, law, and all those other words. Or that all seven were used in the first few verses of 119 and almost every section after. I read about their different meanings and re-read the psalm with that in mind. Or at least the first four sections. Maybe it was going to take me all month to get through this single psalm, but I was finally starting to understand why David loved it so much.

I had never known that it took 80 English words to capture the profound meaning used for God’s “word” throughout scripture. I would have to think more on that, to ask Greg more about it. My quiet time was almost over and I was barely 20 verses in. But I think that was okay, what better place to tread slowly than a chapter where the man after God’s own heart gushes about what he loves about the way God communicates? I might not read through many books this month. I might have to revisit my goal of pondering a chapter of Proverbs each day. But I had a feeling I would enjoy this chapter of Psalms like never before.

More Free Time

What would I do if I had more time? I have asked myself that lately. Partly because, as I try to work less hours, I find that I need to fill that time with something, or else I will end up finding more work. I really do love my work, whether I am working with trainees mentoring others, researching, planning programs, or seeing patients. Well, I should say that I am mostly energized by my work, until I get burned out. That happened in the middle of last month, I was just so emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted that I couldn’t take anymore. There were some days that Greg and I just basically stared at each other in the evening, not wanting to do or say much at all.

But the overwork (mostly having to do with trying to submit 6 papers for the American Journal of Public Health, and all the logistics which came from involving six trainees and faculty from 5 other institutions) and subsequent exhaustion gave me a strong reason to work less for a couple weeks. It was an interesting time – even at patients there were less clinic visits scheduled, so I had more flexible time, and the result was interesting.

I found, as much as I liked work, when I worked less, I had more energy for people, and more ability to show love to others and to live life with joy and peace. We had visitors staying with us, and when I was able to let go of perfectionistic hosting expectations, I was able to truly enjoy them while still finding time for quiet reflection for myself. One day I didn’t have patients booked all afternoon, so I didn’t go to clinic in the afternoon, and instead I spent a morning at a café with one of my patients. It was my first time seeing her outside the clinic, and the day marked a transition in our relationship from doctor/patient to mentor/mentee, and I think that will be a nice change in the future. There was another afternoon when only one patient was booked – a 19 year old student already burned out and questioning what was next in life. It had been a year since his last appointment, and he had written out over a dozen things he wanted to talk about as he thought through his future options and his concerns, his anxieties and his hopes. I could feel the clinic visit going longer and longer, and in the end, I spent as long in clinic as if I had seen four or five patients, but I felt like I was able to give him attention and care and I pray that he will have some more confidence and resources moving forward.

I did read eleven books in the last month, I can’t say that I enjoyed all of them, but I was happy to finish 100 books in the last year. I also finished reading through the apocrypha and most of the Bible. I’m looking forward to going through some books a few more times before my trip to Israel with my church in December. It has been fun thinking about that and planning that out.

I am learning to listen to my body more, running and walking less and stretching more. My back pain is going down and I’m sleeping more. I am lighting more candles. I am not taking as many baths or naps, but I wonder if that is because I’m going to bed early and waking up feeling rested. I got to talk to a few of my favorite people on the phone, and took time for meals or walks with others. In previous months, when I was working more, I would just want to hide from people.

Even though I took a long weekend and traveled with Greg twice this month, I have been productive. My teams have submitted 3 proposals for discussion at the American College of Preventive Medicine, we helped a student with submissions to another 2 conferences and fine-tuning posters for two others, and I did help a friend with an online talk to a big group on Sunday. I think maybe I’m just someone who will either have to achieve at resting, or I’ll find something else to achieve at. But I am learning a lot these days, learning about myself, learning what drives me, and learning how I am different when I have space and time compared to when I am pushing for one thing after another.

Former Students

(Not former students, but guests and fellow teachers/pastors)

As we left church, a young man came up to us with a question Greg and I always dread, “Do you remember me?” Greg asked his forgiveness and asked for a reminder. “Would it help if I gave you the number you assigned me in class?” he asked with a smile. Greg and I chuckled a little and I asked astonishedly, “do you remember that?” The young man had been in one of Greg’s earliest ABC classes, and because he had about 100 students in each class, and because the students tended to change their names and the spelling of their names, he ended up just asking the students to put a number on their papers along with their names. It helped with attendance, too. I don’t think the former student actually remembered his number, but he thought that it was a brilliant idea to help his grading by using numbers.

The student told us that he had been doing well in the three years since graduation. He had tried some farming, but had some difficult years, and eventually got a job in telecommunications. We joked a bit about that, because the company he was working for was struggling alternatively with security of services and usefulness of the apps. We expressed our optimism that the former student could fix these problems now that he was on the “inside.” We also exchanged numbers, planning to meet up with him to see if he might be interested in some of the sustainable agriculture trainings that some of our pastors and partners groups had been pursuing.

As we finished our discussion, I saw another one of Greg’s former students walking across the parking lot. He was on his way into church, so we couldn’t talk long, but we oohed and awed over his new baby girl, and his two-year-old, who we couldn’t believe was so big already. This student, one of Greg’s best, has been serving at our church, and just opened a new youth center which is scheduled to launch with a symposium for young professionals next week.

Greg and I left the parking lot, and Greg mentioned how he always felt weird not remembering if he had given a particular student a good grade or not. We remembered together the student who called out to us on the street from a minibus complaining about his grade in a class. At this point, I wonder if Greg has taught a thousand students between the three colleges he has taught at during the seven years we have been here. I wonder how many lives he might have impacted.