Women are so lucky

In my "daily" devotions and in my ponderings, I have noticed that there are few, if any, good examples of being a husband in the Bible. Men do a lot of cool things in the Bible, they kill giants, overthrow evil empires, slay ferocious lions, live in palaces, and run races. What they don't do is show a good example of how to be a husband. It seems to me that one of the defining characteristics of a true manly man is how well he treats his wife and the type of husband he is. He can do a lot of manly things, but it takes a real man to be a good husband.

Lets take a few examples from some of the more well known biblical figures. David (who I am reading about currently) marries a woman and then leaves her behind when he goes on the run from the law. While he is out, he marries two other women. Once he becomes king, he cheats on his current wives in the whole Bathsheba debacle. 

Abraham, the great patriarch, allowed his wife to become friendly with Egypt's pharaoh in order to guarantee safe passage. Adam (you know, the apple guy) stood by and watched his wife blatantly disobey God, and then decided to do the same thing himself. Solomon marries a bazillion women, hardly a model of faithfulness or self-restraint. 

The only man I can think of that comes close to being a good husband is Joshua. In a time of crisis, he proclaims to all the people that he and his family will continue to serve the Lord. He shows good leadership, but after that nothing is said about his interaction with his family.

Women on the other hand have all sorts of good examples of how to be a good wife and they get to do really cool stuff. One woman kills an evil king by smashing his face with a huge rock. Neat.

(Before I get too far in this section, I get most of my pics doing an image search on google, like Chuck, who was found searching for "Manly man". I was going to do a search for "Excellent wife" and then I realized, I already have a picture of that on my comp...)

There are women in the Bible who save their husbands from their own stupidity. Actually, that is one of the main things excellent wives seem to do. Esther does that using her beauty and womanly charms and Abigail does that using her business skills and diplomacy. Proverbs has a whole chapter dedicated to how an excellent wife should look. Ruth shows how a woman leaves her family to become united with her husband. And Potiphar's wife shows us why you shouldn't have attractive, young, male servants/slaves hanging around the house.

Is this why my beautiful wife seems to be so perfect? Because she has so many good biblical examples? Or is it my lack of good biblical examples and having to make everything up as I go along approach that lies in stark contrast? (To be fair, I have many good examples of how to be a good husband in my life - my dad and my father-in-law, and many others) I'm not complaining about how the Bible was written, God did an excellent job with his first book (I'm told it has sold a lot of copies), I just wonder why good husbands seem to be hard to find and women make such great wives.

Answered

Lately I have begun praying a lot more. This has been a good thing. For a while one of the all- consuming desires in my heart was the idea of getting in to medical school. It seemed that was all I prayed about (not really, but it came up a lot). Once I got the acceptance letter, I found that I wasn't taking the little times throughout the day to pray like a I had before. This past week, while I was on spring break, I began to work on my relationship with God. Every morning I woke up and opened up my Bible. After reading, I would pray that God would awaken a desire in me to be passionate about a relationship with him.

This morning, I was worried about getting up earlier in order to have my quiet time. When my alarm went off, I was super tired and hit the snooze button. But something pulled me out of bed a few minutes later (a figurative something, not literally). After I finished getting ready, I found I still had 20 extra minutes. So I sat down on the couch, grabbed my Bible, and began to read. 

I read somewhere about how important it is to pray before reading. Now, whenever I read I pray for two specific things. First I pray that God will speak to me through his word. And second, I pray that God will help me to take joy in reading and that it would be a delight to me. So far God has been good.

While today was fairly easy, I know it will be hard some days to get up early. I tend to enjoy my sleep. With help I can keep it up. All I can do is keep praying. 

Visiting the principal

So I got called into to see my boss at the Donor Network last week. Normally if she has anything to say to me, she will just send out a quick email. When I saw the request asking me to come in to see her, I became a little apprehensive. Everything I had done wrong at work flashed through my mind. There were two things I could think of - I had made a mistake when wrapping an instrument tray and I had gone around to all the chairs in the common area and lowered them to their lowest setting. Just kidding. I didn't actually do the last one but it is a pretty good idea now that I think of it. 

I spent the entire day wondering why I was being called in because of a tray. I shouldn't have made the mistake, but it was a problem easily rectified. It maybe deserved a harshly worded email or dropping me temporarily as a friend on facebook. Why did I have to go to her office? 

Directly after school, I made the trip from Gilbert to Phoenix. When I got to the office, I waited for just a bit, before being called in to see my boss. I felt like I was back in third grade being called in to see the principal for putting fire works in the toilet. (They never could prove it was me...) My palms were sweating and my heart sped up in anxious anticipation. She greeted me pleasantly and made small talk about me getting in at Midwestern. After a few moments, she got serious and asked me to shut the door. Uh oh.

With a somber expression, she looked me straight in the eyes and said, "Do you have any concerns about DNA? I have heard that you criticized the company and wanted to hear what you have to say." 

We spoke for a while about some concerns I had, nothing too major, but I told her that I really do like working for DNA. The company tries really hard to honor the dead and make the best use possible of the donated tissue. It is a great company to work for, and my boss, Rhiannon, is one of the best bosses I have had the privilege of working for. She has been very supportive of me in my pursuit of med school and has been flexible in helping me find an optimal work schedule. She is encouraging and has always been very kind. 

At the next department meeting, my boss specifically addressed the two issues that I brought up with her and did it in such a way as to hopefully prevent them from happening in the future. The hours are a little rough in tissue recovery, but the work is rewarding and the company that employs me is an excellent company. Truly I am blessed to have such a good job in these tough times.

Whack! Thump!... pandemonium

Most of you know how much I love pandas. Actually, it's really not so much that I love pandas, it's that I love the word pandemonium. It makes me think of a bunch of little pandas bashing each other over the head with bamboo sticks. Heheh. What a great mental picture. 

I found this article about a rare, red panda that was recently born at the Houston Zoo. I have to say that the little fella really is one of the ugliest, despicable, nasty things I have ever seen. Just kidding. You should have seen your face - priceless. That is one cute little panda. Now if only we had some more of them and some bamboo rods this day would be perfect.

Don't be an idiot

Today's post is about doing stupid things. Don't do them.

What in the world?

You may be thinking to yourself right now, "Self, I wonder what that woman is doing?" If that is what you are thinking, let me answer that question. She is milking a horse. For horse milk. Like from a cow. But from a horse. Yum? Apparently people in Kazakhstan have been doing this for thousands of years. They ferment the milk and make a delicious alcoholic drink from it called koumiss. (Koumiss Light is basically the same thing, it just tastes like someone added water to the original formula). Click here for a link to the original article by the BBC. What I think everyone is probably wondering right now is what I can't quite figure out - do their rice crispies still snap, crackle, and pop with horse milk? I hope I never find out.

Beginning of the end

Yesterday I officially became a student at Midwestern University in Glendale, Arizona. In just four, short years I will graduate from there as a doctor of osteopathic medicine. A lot of thought, angst, and prayer went into making the decision to go to this particular school.

Eventually it came to down to three main things. The most important aspect (other than it being a med school) was that it is in Arizona. Although the school is in Glendale which is in the opposite corner of Phoenix from where our friends and family live, we are both just happy to be able continue to live in Arizona. The second is the school's reputation. Midwestern is one of the best DO schools in the country. They have an excellent pass rate for the boards and they have a history of excellence in education. The final issue that weighed in heavily was its philosophy of medicine. I chose not to go the traditional MD route and instead went the DO path for a number of reasons, which I will share in a future post. For now, let's just say that it lines up more with the way I view life.

And so I am now an AZCOM (Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine) student. I signed my life away yesterday. Now come some even harder decisions - where to live, how to pay for school, and when to have kids. Oh boy.

Rugby?

First off, I don't really get all the rules of rugby. Secondly, it seems like a pretty awesome game. Thirdly, the US hosted an international rugby tournament in San Diego two weekends ago and I happened to watch some of it. Fourthly, we should have more rugby on tv. Fifthly, here is a cool rugby commercial put out by snickers.


Snickers - Rugby from Spy Films on Vimeo.

Celebration

My beautiful wife turn the big 23 today. Short post in honor of her being old.

L-A-Z-Y + diamonds

Some of you have pointed out that I have begun putting up a lot of videos on my blog. This is true. There will be another video on Thursday. Part of the reason that this is happening can be explained by a general sense of apathy on my part. I just don't feel like writing and I don't care to put in the time right now to think about it, but I do want to appease the often angry mob that is my reader base. To compromise, I give you cheap entertainment. It's kind of like the husband who buys his wife diamonds to cover for the fact that he works 100+ hours a week and is never home. This way I can keep you visiting the site so that when I do have something important to say, you are here to read it.

The good news is that I plan to start writing more once I get caught up on sleep. This past weekend I managed to get 4 hours of sleep in a 48 hour period. It was not good. As I talked with my beautiful wife on Sunday night, I realized that I couldn't remember the past four days at all. Either I'm going crazy or I just need to sleep. So to sum up, expect lots of good writing to start appearing in the middle of next week sometime. For now, enjoy the the shiny rocks.