"for the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart."
-hebrews 4:12

in a worldly sense, today was a great day at work.  yes, i was out of the nurse:patient ratio with 5 patients, but they were probably the 5 easiest and most coveted patients on the unit.  healthy, easygoing, not demanding, friendly...  but in a spiritual sense, today was a sobering day.  i had one particular patient, a 59-year-old male, in a comatose state.  already changed from "full code" to "DNR", on a morphine drip, comfort measures only...  he was the easiest patient of them all.  no medications, no vitals, no care required whatsoever except to monitor his status and wait for him to die.  as i contemplated this man's impending death, i kept reminding myself to care more for his spiritual state rather than his physical state.  as a practicing nurse of almost 3 years, i've grown accustomed to focusing on the nursing tasks and caring for their physical health much more than viewing my patients as souls dying in their sins.

as i worked with the palliative care doctor regarding this patient's case, i had to do things that really pushed me to the edge in my ethical beliefs and boundaries including giving extra doses of morphine, ativan, and ultimately removing the oxygen altogether to his tracheostomy.  it made me think about life and the care that i'm required to give as a nurse and what "care" and "love" really actually mean in a situation like this when family wishes may not always coincide with my beliefs, opinions, thoughts.  in any case, i had a good discussion with the doctor and together we decided on the best course of action and we withdrew him from oxygen as well as upped his morphine drip.  after the doctor left, i kept wondering to myself, "i wonder what this patient believes?  i wonder where he will go?"  as i pondered his spiritual state, one thing, one verse, kept repeating in my head over and over again...  hebrews 4:12.  dr. baker always says that the heart has thoughts and intentions.  this man's heart (not body) has thoughts and intentions.  therefore, share the gospel.

my notes from dr. baker's lecture (from bcdasocal session 8)...

• remember the inherent power of the Word of God (hebrews 4:12) even with mental handicaps or those in a coma
• the Word of God can penetrate to the deepest part of the soul/spirit
• the living Word of God can still penetrate to the heart
• salvation is a gift of God.  He does the work
• Holy Spirit causes regeneration and can do this even for mentally ill/coma patients

the heart has thoughts and intentions as it says in hebrews 4:12.  the thought kept racing through my mind and i knew i couldn't end the shift (or have the patient pass away, whichever came first), without audibly sharing the gospel with him.  so, in the quietness of the room, at 6:00pm (one hour before shift-change), i whispered the gospel to this 59-year-old comatose man, hoping that nobody would come into the room and think i'm crazy.  as i shared the wonderful news of the gospel, it felt so refreshing to be able to speak of the awesome things of God in a secular setting.  the accumulated memory verses throughout the past few years including some of my all-time favorites just flowed out of my mouth as if it came straight out of the deepest recesses of my heart (matt 12:34).  it's true that sharing the gospel is not only for the hearer, but also for the speaker, and ultimately for the glory of God.

i prayed for the man.  though his physical body is actively dying (i don't even know if he's still alive as i write this), i prayed that the thoughts and intentions of the inner man would respond rightly to the truth of the gospel.  i thought about the thief on the cross, ready and waiting to die, but repenting and turning his life over to Christ just in the nick of time.  on this side of eternity, it's never too late to believe, be saved, and spend eternity in the safety, comfort, and loving arms of the Father.

two really great blog entries regarding the purpose and biblical perspective of marriage.  (thanks, christine!)

a great commission marriage

partners in the gospel

aside from studying the Word and talking to jeh jeh & kiks, this was the joy of my heart today...

my day...in pictures.

jojo started sitting up!  here she is, trying to go from baby pack to six pack!

i was tryna make her look gangsta...

here's the SUPER yummy pasta that i helped chie make.
ok, fine.  i just boiled the noodles and heated up the hawaiian bread.  but i still felt domestic! 

and here's how we spent the rest of the night... 

takahashi's and yu's.  two families i love and admire .  thank God for skype!

what an awesome day!

I was reading “relationships: a mess worth making” and the forgiveness chapter reminded me of all the things we learned from dr. street during our family retreat.  One thing I was thinking upon is how when we forgive another, we’re choosing to absorb the cost ourselves and no matter how big or small the offense, the absorption of it hurts.  And sometimes what continues to hurt is the self-control that we must use when we can’t bring it up to them, others, or ourselves anymore.  It is completely absorbed and completely done away with.  What I realized is that sin is costly.  Yes, of course it is costly.  Jesus died on the cross to pay the cost for our sins.  BUT, sin still affects us and hurts others.  I sin all the time with my mouth, my outward attitudes, my careless words and actions…the thought that someone else has to absorb the cost of these careless words and actions is unsettling to me.  The fact that I may sin against another and have to ask for forgiveness and when they choose to forgive me and that transaction occurs, they are no longer to bring it up to me, others, or themselves and they will have to enable self-control in order to uphold their end of the deal is sad for me to think about.  I need to be mindful first of my heart/soul/mind, but also of my careless steps (ecclesiastes 5:1-2).  Then I zoom out a bit and think about Christ absorbing all the sins of the world.  Not only does He just absorb it, but He pays for it.  When I absorb someone else’s sin, I just suffer the hurt and consequences of that sin, but I am not paying for their sin.  They are still guilty for what they had done.  But when Christ absorbed all the sins of the world (past, present, and future), He paid for it all and now we are counted as if we did not commit that sin at all.  It is completely paid for and forgiven.  “…for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” (Jeremiah 31:34b).  Now that is grace.  Why is God so good to sinners?

the gospel is amazing.

...

o God of the highest heaven,
occupy the throne of my heart,
take full possession and reign supreme,
lay low every rebel lust,
let no vile passion resist thy holy war;
manifest thy mighty power,
and make me thine for ever.
Thou art worthy to be
praised with my every breath,
loved with my every faculty of soul,
served with my every act of life.
Thou hast loved me, espoused me, received me,
purchased, washed, favoured, clothed,
adorned me,
when i was worthless, vile, soiled, polluted.
i was dead in iniquities,
having no eyes to see thee,
no ears to hear thee,
no taste to relish thy joys,
no intelligence to know thee;
But thy Spirit has quickened me,
has brought me into a new world as a
new creature,
has given me spiritual perception,
has opened to me thy Word as light, guide,
solace, joy.

...

i went back to dar's xanga that i made for her a few years ago.  i couldn't help but chuckle to myself as i read the entries and comments..    it's pretty crazy how much i knew about dar's life that i could write a run-down on her day.  hahaha..  i wish i still remembered the password.  i'd update again .

man, GOOD TIMES.

my, how life has changed in just 5 years.

-patty...  i love her so, so much..
-she got a job!!  PRAISE GOD!!!  can't stop rejoicing..
-her great attitude throughout the job search
-having lunch, dinner, and dessert with her today
-how she reminds me that i deserve nothing..
-her love and passion for Christ, people, the church..

-going to every woman's grace with her!  i LOVED it!!
-meeting so many wonderful, like-minded ladies (eunice, mary, vanessa, stephanie...)
-learning about 2 thessalonians 2
-women teaching eschatology!  crazy.
-running into gary, nam, and wayne
-and pippa and jesse, too!
-grace bookstore..buying seeds cds!! 
-meeting other GCCers...such a blessing
-andrea's super yummy artichoke chicken..SO good
-lunch with adam, greatness, patty, and mike
-adam taking a 2nd lunch to eat with us
-how he takes care of us!
-greatness cracks me up!
-how he trusts the Lord..
-m street with shar!
-how tim leads her
-seeing her at least twice a week i love.
-talking about all that occurred the past month..
-talking about all that occurred the past 5 years..
-talking about our class...and how the Lord has preserved all of us..
-and how He's sanctified us..even in our theology!
-talking about the different influences in our lives..
-being amazed that we're both at ibc together..
-God's ways and plans are amazing!!  isaiah 55:8-9!
-esther and andrew's wise and straightforward counsel..SO thankful.
-texts with christine!
-emails with the wongs...glad we can keep in touch
-talking to mom and dad!
-talking to jeh jeh!
-kiki's bday dinner!  i love celebrating my friends' bdays!! 

-seeing everyone again...SO great!  SO fun!
-derekson...so ridiculous.
-jewrorory...so ridiculous.
-he let me drink his coffee drink!!  hahaha..
-laughing SO hard my face was hurting!!
-listening to the TMS choir...so great
-listening to starfield, shane & shane, enfield...i love
-the wisdom of the g
-seeing how people can break up to the glory of God...
-emails with yoonjin...sharing our lives!
-nam's message...loving ecclesiastes
-having GCC'ers at ibc!
-seeing jchang!  and catching up
-ibc debriefing meeting...love our team.
-the yi's hospitality..they are my role models!!
-meeting jerry!  his willingness to come to church!
-talking to tone-o about our patients
-kev asking for my prayer requests...and how we have the same ones!  haha
-sms texting...so great!!
-latte and SUPER yummy quiche at proof!
-going home and talking to the cons
-so thankful to live with her..
-how she watches dancing with the stars with me
-seeing kelly again!  and pictures of noelle!
-and dar and joe, too!
-planning dinner with felicia 
-talking to jen lee...love her so much.
-planning phone dates with kimbo...i miss her!!!
-excited for the gcc stm sharing
-emailing monica zheng!    miss this girl..
-getting thanksgiving off!!  PRAISE THE LORD!!
-my work schedule...i canNOT complain..
-days off!
-awesome friends, awesome sisters
-being at grace church...love the atmosphere, the community, the people..
-brings back good memories (shepherds' conference, night services, stm meetings..)
-worship times in the car!
-having a car to drive..
-great times of fellowship..
-how His Word renews my mind..
-learning to be ready and be steady (2 thessalonians)
-my salvation
-my position in Christ...can never be changed
-the ability to think about the things of Christ
-the Word...my milk...i can't imagine my life without it..
-prayer...i can't imagine my life without it..
-the Holy Spirit that dwells within..
-the ability to fight sin...praise the Lord for this!
-journaling..
-thinking upon the sermon
-communing with my Lord..

quotables from my patients

"why you let them old ladies do me like that?  they did me wronggg..."   -my 42 y.o. patient after getting a picc line placed 

talking to my 86 y.o. patient and his 87 y.o. wife regarding the kardashian and humphries divorce...
patient:  we've been married for 63 years!
me:  wow, what's the secret to a 63 year long marriage?
patient:  patience, tolerance, and keeping busy with serving the community together.

what do i have if i don't have You, Jesus?
what in this life could mean any more?
You are my Rock
You are my Glory
You are the Lifter of my head

my bro-in-law shared with me this q&a with tim keller.  thought it was good.. (thanks, derek! )

Marriage has lost its luster for many. It no longer carries the weight as being "soceity's ideal." But as Tim amd Kathy Keller write in their new book, The Meaning of Marraige, our society's break from a traditional understanding of marriage comes from hopes and desires that will never be met outside of God's design. The remedy, though, does not come from making a happy or successful marriage our ultimate hope. We need something more subversive. 

I corresponded with Tim Keller about their new book and asked about a number of issues, including how the Enlightenment has affected the Western view of marriage and how sex and fun relate to companionship and a duty to spur our spouses toward holiness.

*************************************** 

You observed that during the Enlightenment, social attitudes began to shift: “The meaning of life came to be seen as the fruit of the freedom of the individual to choose the life that most fulfills him or her personally.” How has this affected the Western view of marriage?

The older Western view was grounded in both Catholic and Protestant views that marriage was instituted by God for the common good. It was therefore a public trust. How you conducted your marriage affected everyone. Marriage was seen as the union of a man and a woman who make a permanent and exclusive commitment of each other. It was in the public interest that marriages would last, that divorce would be rare, that adultery would be punished. But the Enlightenment view—that marriage was for the fulfillment and happiness of individuals—essentially "privatized" marriage. It gave rise to the belief that married couples should be able to define and conduct marriage in any way that they found satisfying, and that if they found their marriage unsatisfying it should be easy for them to dissolve it. 

In order to put your spouse’s happiness in front of your own, you argue that we need to have good “love economics.” What do you mean?

It’s a metaphor. Philanthropy means investing money in a charity that does not pay you any dividends—you get no profit out of it. You give money and get no money back. So economically, you can’t be philanthropic—you can’t give away a lot of money—unless you have a good income from somewhere else. 

In the same way, I argue that you can’t do a good job of loving your spouse unconditionally unless you have a strong love relationship with God through Christ. Loving your spouse unconditionally means that, for a season that may be short or long, you love your spouse when you aren’t getting much or any love in response. Your spouse may be deeply discouraged or have become ill or troubled in some way. At a time like that you must serve and love your spouse without expecting much affection, service, or love in return. That is love "philanthropy." In any long-term marriage there will be times that require this. You will be giving a lot more love than you are getting. But if your spouse is the main or only source of love in your life, it will hurt too much to love without getting any love back. You won’t be able to do it. You will just blow up and attack your spouse or look elsewhere for love. God and his love must be a spiritual reality in your life if you are going to be able to love your spouse steadily over the long haul.

What’s wrong with merely looking for compatibility in a wife or husband? 

It’s not wrong if you define compatibility first as a common commitment to Christ and similar ideas of how to live out the Christian faith and minister in the world. Second, it is right to look for many common areas of delight—including books and art, landscapes, avocations, and so on. In the book, however, I resist the idea that dominates the contemporary notion of "compatibility"—namely that if you find a compatible partner, neither of you will ask the other to change at all, that each will completely accept the other as is. If there are conflicts and fights, or if there are calls to change, many people today just walk away complaining of incompatibility. The Christian view is that both spouses are sinners and, as such, have the deep incompatibility that any two self-centered human beings must share. The Christian understanding takes this fundamental incompatibility as a given, and even holds that, if addressed with the gospel, it becomes the occasion for revolutionary Christian growth in humility, self-knowledge, love, and grace in the marital partners over the years.

It’s popular today in books, blogs, or sermons on marriage to focus on a strong sex life for the endurance of a marriage. On the contrary, your book emphasizes companionship, duty, and laboring for the other's holiness, while sex and fun (dating your wife) are all by-products. How did you arrive at these conclusions?

Experience! And study of the Bible.

You summarized it well. We discovered that in the long run good sex and fun are the result of companionship, duty, and laboring for the other’s holiness, not the other way around. Sexual joy, romance, and plain fun happen when you are with someone who you admire enormously. When someone you admire tremendously loves you, it’s just thrilling. “The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards.” In the beginning of a relationship it’s not hard to think that another person is very cool and great. A person is seen as cool and great because of brains, looks, resume, talent, connections, personality, and so on. And when this cool-and-great person shows interest in me it’s very heady. 

But when you actually begin to live with someone, the person’s flaws become evident to you, and yours become obvious to your partner. No matter how brilliant, gorgeous, and talented he or she is, you will see the "feet of clay"—and find it very disillusioning. The only way to maintain respect is if you see the other person admit the flaws, work on them, and see your spouse love and serve you even when you’ve blown it. In the long run, the more superficial things that made a person sexually attractive will move to the background, and matters of character, humility, grace, courage, faithfulness, and love will come to the foreground. So companionship, duty, and mutual sacrifice are, in the end, the sexiest things of all.

The cover story of the November 2011 edition of The Atlantic says this:

Recent years have seen an explosion of male joblessness and a steep decline in men’s life prospects that have disrupted the “romantic market” in ways that narrow a marriage-minded woman’s options: increasingly, her choice is between deadbeats (whose numbers are rising) and playboys (whose power is growing). But this strange state of affairs also presents an opportunity: as the economy evolves, it’s time to embrace new ideas about romance and family—and to acknowledge the end of “traditional” marriage as society’s highest ideal. 

What would you want readers of this article to consider?

It sounds like the author is assuming that “traditional marriage” meant, mainly, a husband who worked and a wife who stayed at home to raise children. But that is not the essence of traditional marriage. For centuries, husbandsand wives labored together on the family farm, or in the family craft. Before the industrial revolution neither the husband nor the wife had to leave the home to make a living. Since then, they have, but it is wrong to identify the essence of marriage with one particular form of human economy. The essence of traditional marriage is one man and one woman uniting the entirety of their lives in a covenant relationship that is permanent and exclusive. Of course, this view of marriage is found in the Bible, and for Christians that is what matters, not cultural trends. But empirical studies (some of which I point out in our book) continue to amass evidence that traditional marriage is enormously beneficial to everyone—men, women, children, society—in multiple ways—economically, psychologically, sociologically.

it is no secret that i love my dad and think he's the bestest man in the wholest entirest worldest.

but what blows my mind a little is that i have an Abba Father who loves me perfectly and comprehensively and created me in His image.

the father-daughter relationship is just a simple, imperfect picture of the Father's love for me.

i need to think about that a little more, but it's crazy to me.

there are many things one can choose to do on a friday night.  for me, there's nothing i'd want to do more on a friday night than attend flock with the cons, the tos, yoonjin, noelle, and of course p.gary.

small.  intimate.  cozy.

great fun.  great learning.  great fellowship.

thanks, God !