No Man is an Island

Have you ever felt like an island? Do you have days when you talk to people all day but, when the day ends, no one knows anything more significant about you than they did when it began?

Read More

An Orchestra of Garbage

In a recent sermon, I learned about a fascinating organization called the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura. A children’s orchestra outside of Asuncion, Paraguay, the Recycled Orchestra plays on garbage.

Read More

Pushing, Pulling and the Tension in Between

Protecting our Healthcare Conscience Freedoms

Just today in a text exchange about job hunting, a CMDA friend reminded several of us that God can lead us in a variety of ways. Many times, God calls us, or pulls us, into the roles He has for us. We feel clearly instructed, and we feel certain we are following His leading as we step into a new chapter, be it a job or school or church or a new family decision. As American Christians, we are used to thinking about decision-making this way, I think. We feel that we must not know the right thing to do if we don’t feel pulled to one of the options. We pray for clarity, and we seek advice because we want that sense of calling, of being pulled in the direction God would have us to go.

Read More

A Call to Holiness

This week, our kids’ Christian school published The Statement. They sent it out with The Letter. And they asked for The Signature. And once again, our family began the now-familiar dance of shame, grief, anger, prayer, isolation, indignation and so many other emotions that bubble in the toxic stew Christian organizations often throw onto families like us.

Read More

Back to Normal Life

Is life starting to feel normal again for you? By normal, I guess I mean pre-2020. Is life starting to feel the way it did before COVID and political intensity stretched us further as a society than we might have thought possible just two and a half years ago?

Read More

What Comes After the “But?”

Coming out of the darkest days of COVID, I entered 2022 feeling bludgeoned by the experience I had just endured, both in medical practice and in society around me. I felt emotionally broke, overwhelmed and lost, to use some of Ms. Morrissette’s words. I was drowning in negative emotions and feeling psychologically depleted. My natural response was to grit my teeth and force myself to keep going. To get through each shift by ignoring my feelings and retreating into my knowledge.

Read More

One Body

Today I am a pharmacist. Well, not really. I’m still a physician, but this week in the Dominican Republic on a Global Health Outreach (GHO) trip, I am serving as a pharmacist. The incredibly dedicated pharmacist who has served on this team for years is at home with COVID-19, and I am attempting to fill his shoes. And as I look around the pharmacy, I see a beautiful picture. While we don’t quite represent every tribe and tongue, we are a varied group, to be sure. There is a woman here from Georgia who is originally from Colombia, a woman here from Ohio who is originally from Indonesia and a multitude of Dominicans and Americans. When I look outside the pharmacy door at the rest of our 75+ team members, we represent at least 10 U.S. states and at least five countries of origin. We include physicians, dentists, nurses, students, optometrists, teachers, pastors and homeschooling moms. We span ages from 10 to 70. We have people triaging and organizing patients, taking vitals, pulling teeth, prescribing medications, performing ultrasounds, filling prescriptions, dancing, singing, making balloon animals and sharing the gospel. We speak English, Spanish, Indonesian and Tagolog. We are funded by people and churches who paid our way or bought medications, and we are even funded by airlines that waived baggage fees to allow the many bags of equipment to travel here. We are supported in prayer by hundreds of people across at least two countries. As a group, we exemplify the beauty of the body of Christ. 

Read More

Grasping for Certainty

I had lunch with some dear friends today—Christian women physicians who have been my friends for almost 20 years. We talked about medicine—the woes of the current healthcare system. And we said we couldn’t imagine how things would continue, given the problems our healthcare system faces. We talked about parenting—the challenges of raising daughters. And we said we couldn’t imagine how kids could process social media and technology in a healthy way. We talked about our churches—the deep divisions between the maskers and non-maskers over the last couple of years. And we said we couldn’t imagine how the wounds could be healed. We talked about politics—the uncompromising partisan viewpoints on both sides of the aisle. And we said we couldn’t imagine how people could learn to work together given the depth of the divide.

Read More

Faith and Gratitude

As I continue my series on faith and culture, Thanksgiving is right around the corner. But believe it or not, I didn’t choose this topic because of its appropriateness for Thanksgiving week. The topic has been close at hand in my own life of late, which has made me even more aware of its cultural applications.

By way of background, I must admit that I struggle to ask anyone to do anything for me. Asking a friend down the street to give my daughter a ride home from school is difficult and makes me think about what I need to do to even the playing field.

Read More

On Faith and Excellence

My kids have attended a classical, Christian school for many years. While we love the school for several reasons, its academic rigor set it apart from the several other schools we considered when making the decision to move our kids there 16 years ago. Other schools offered personal attention, others had great mission statements, others had in-depth biblical teaching. But it was all of these things, combined with high academic expectations, that sold us in the end, since the primary purpose of school is to educate kids academically. In the grammar school grades at our school, the students are taught to always do an “Excellence Check,” that is, to look back over their test or assignment and double-check for any errors prior to turning it in. The concept of the Excellence Check resonated with me when my kids were that age because it served as a regular reminder to them that they should be giving their best to each assignment. It was never a “Perfection Check” or a “Compare to Your Neighbor’s Performance Check.” It was a reminder for each student to do his or her best at all times. One student’s best might be a perfect score, while another student’s best might be much lower, but the expectation to do one’s best was clear. We might think of excellence as being at the top of the class or someone who stands out in his field, but that isn’t the way our school defined it, nor the way I am defining it here.

Read More

On Faith and Love

My recent contributions to this blog have explored some of the issues I have wrestled with throughout the turmoil of the last year and a half—namely, how faith has impacted the church’s response to issues, and where we have strayed from biblical truths in our responses. I have wrestled with faith and politics, faith and freedom and faith and fear. But the overarching issue, I think, in Christians’ response to recent—and, in fact, any—world events is love. There are only two things that Scripture tells us explicitly identify the Christ-follower: their fruit and their love. Jesus Himself said that all men would know we are His followers if we have love for one another (John 13:35). In fact, He repeatedly commanded that we love one another (John 13:34, John 15:12, John 15:17). And the rest of the New Testament tells us more than 20 times to love one another.

Read More

On Faith and Fear

During a recent urgent care shift, a young welder presented with a metal foreign body in his eye. If you work in emergency medicine, urgent care or ophthalmology, or if you weld yourself, you are already aware of this occupational hazard. I was not aware of it prior to starting work in urgent care, but I must admit that it makes any dreams I may have had of learning to weld, thereby empowering myself to do more of my own home repairs, much less attractive. Tiny hot flecks of metal landing on the human cornea quickly embed themselves and become difficult to remove. Left there for a few days, they begin to rust, leaving a small rust ring on the cornea after the metal itself is removed—a rust ring which then has to be removed with a tiny drill called an eye burr.

Read More

On Faith and Freedom

Freedom. It’s an important word to us in the United States—arguably the most important word to the founding of our country.

Read More

Upside-Down-and-Backwards: Reflection and Challenge on Inauguration Day

My grandfather was a deeply gracious man. A Southern gentleman to the core and pastor of a large church, he was loving and compassionate toward everyone he met, and he was also uniquely talented at making each and every person with whom he interacted feel loved and heard. He truly cared, and he had an amazing ability to communicate the depth of that concern. In the 40 years I knew him, I never heard him raise his voice or speak a harsh word, with one dramatic exception. So it’s no surprise that the story of Granddaddy, hospitalized and delirious after major surgery, raising his voice at Gran has gone down in family lore. His agitation at her that day was so great, and so perplexing. He was intensely frustrated with her driving, despite the fact that he been in the hospital and nowhere near a car for days. He finally burst out, in his resonant Southern voice, “You insist on driving upside down and backwards just to irritate me!” Needless to say, it did not ease his distress when the entire family burst into laughter. But some things are just so funny you can’t control yourself.

Read More

First Do No Harm

I got to hear Philip Yancey, one of my long-standing heroes of faith, speak in person a few weeks ago. My college-age daughter and I attended a conference (which, lest you are concerned, was sparsely attended, socially distanced and masked) where he spoke to a group of about 100 people. The minute I received the invitation, I knew I was going to attend if humanly possible. I am a huge fan of Philip Yancey, have read all his books and find him to be one of the most simultaneously encouraging and convicting Christian authors out there. I certainly was not going to miss the chance to hear him speak in person in a small group! I spent the intervening weeks in eager anticipation.

Read More

Living in the Household of God

Our family has an unofficial mascot—a little bendable Gumby doll. I have no idea where Gumby came from or how exactly we acquired him. He started out as a little game in which various family members move Gumby to different places around the house. When you find Gumby, you move him somewhere else where he awaits discovery by another family member. Over the years, we have adopted an unofficial motto that goes with our unofficial mascot: “Semper Gumby” (always flexible). As is true of numerous other healthcare professionals, flexibility is not my strong suit. I am really good at focus, goals, determination and persistence. Flexibility, not so much. So “Semper Gumby” is a motto for me as much as anyone else in the house. A reminder that flexibility is a necessary part of doing life with other people.

Read More

Being Refined After the Fire

I love the opportunity to write for CMDA on a regular basis. I always sit down at the computer and words flow out of my heart and out of whatever I am experiencing at that point in time. It has been a new experience to struggle so much with my blog entry this month. I have written four or five entries—and every single one of them is depressing and discouraging, and also very similar to the one I wrote on my last assigned blog date. I keep trying, and I keep coming up pretty empty. It’s only after attempt number four or five that it occurred to me to think about the emptiness itself.

Read More

The Polarizing Pandemic

We are living in a highly polarized society. Disagreeing opinions have very little overlap, making compromise difficult. People talk more than they hear, and they hear more than they listen. People rally and argue and protest, but they rarely build bridges across the divides. Political candidates represent the extreme ends of their party’s platform, and those in the middle are accused of being weak on issues. Opinions on social media are strongly worded and leave no room for useful discussion. Family members have broken fellowship over the Trump v. Clinton election. Friendships are strained over differing definitions of social distancing. The world we live in is broken, and people are afraid. Fear, in fact, is the most insidious form of brokenness. It penetrates the very marrow of our character and changes our motivations. The values and ideals we hold dear are corrupted by fear such that we no longer act based on what we believe, but rather out of avoidance of what we fear.

Read More

A Guide in the Middle of COVID-19

Photo Credit: Unsplash.com

My 21-year-old son attends university in Scotland. Scotland is a beautiful country filled with some of the loveliest people I have met in my travels. They are warm, friendly and willing to help a stranger, even if you can’t always understand what they are saying to you. Those thick Scottish brogues can be difficult! Just sayin’.

Read More

Feeling Low

I sometimes feel pretty low. I might be the only one…but I’m guessing not. Emotions are a part of what it is to be human, right? So, I imagine all of us feel down at one time or another. For me, the first couple of weeks after the holidays are always a down time. Something about coming off the merry-go-round of activity, fun, people, parties, food, drinks and general busyness, taking down the decorations and returning to real life. This year, those feelings were compounded by sending two kids back to college and then being in bed for a week with the flu (despite my flu shot!). What a return to reality.

Read More

Truth, Grace and Love Beyond the Exam Room

In medical school, were you taught to treat all patients with equal care and concern? Were you taught that it is unethical to discriminate against patients—refusing to treat someone or treating them less thoroughly—based on race, nationality, religion or even ability to pay? Were you taught to respect the beliefs of each patient, even while trying to explain how some of those beliefs might be harming their health?

Read More

Waiting

Photo: Pexels

Waiting…I’m terrible at it. My guess is I’m not the only one. In fact, among an audience of healthcare professionals, I feel certain the terrible wait-ers make up the majority. We are generally goal-oriented, focused, committed, get-her-done sort of people. Just the sort of people for whom waiting is an agony.

Read More

We Must Never Forget Lest We Become Lukewarm

In this week’s blog post, Dr. Autumn Dawn Galbreath shares about visiting Poland, what she does to prepare for a trip to another country and how what happened in Auschwitz pushes her to think about suffering for Christ and her desire to pursue Christ above everything else.

Read More

Finding Rest

Finding Rest May 16, 2019

How often do you rest? If you’re anything like me, your answer is, “Not often enough!” Most of us are overwhelmed with things that can be outside of our direct control—a busy practice, a crashing patient, an EMR that requires 1,000 clicks per chart, a healthcare system that increases the RVU requirement every year or two, a prodigal child, a distant spouse. Of course, we have input into the things which we allow to fill our time. But very often, we don’t have control over them. Other people’s requirements and expectations place demands on us that are difficult to simply discard or ignore. And, as healthcare professionals, we are doing good. Our work benefits people. We minister to others in their times of greatest need. Good busyness is the hardest kind to fight because it’s easy to justify.

Read More

Overcoming Isolation

Overcoming Isolation March 26, 2019

Drunk, rowdy, and foul smelling, he came into a busy clinic last night. He was roomed immediately to get the disruption out of the waiting room, but his volume penetrated the walls and disrupted multiple other clinic rooms. He had no ID, wouldn’t tell us his name and had no chief complaint.

Read More

Ethics, Sexuality and Truth

Photo: Pixabay

In this week’s blog post, Dr. Autumn Dawn Galbreath shares about a recent talk she listened to on ethics and sexuality, as well as how that impacts her daily practice of healthcare.

Read More

Sharing Experiences and Decreasing Isolation in Healthcare

Photo: Pexels

An article crossed both my inbox and my Facebook feed this week entitled “Here’s Why Women Doctors Need Time Together.” It certainly wasn’t an academic study, but, as a woman physician, I was intrigued by the title. One sentence summarizes the author’s major premise: “There is an amazing power in gathering, shared experiences and decreasing isolation.” And I agree. When I watch my kids play sports or perform, I gather with other parents who share that experience—and we cheer as loudly as we can. When my marriage needs refreshment, my husband and I gather with other couples who share the experiences, both joyful and difficult, of marriage—and the isolation of our challenges is decreased.

Read More