slowing down

so i was all excited two days ago when i got a package in the mail with a couple of new jilbabs-- funky and spunky and fiercely cute! so i rinsed them in the sink and hung them up on the shower curtain rod to work out the wrinkles they got in shipping and today was time for the debut of my favorite.

now i'm not my best at five AM, and i threw it on over a pair of (rebellious! against dress code!) jeans (that no one would see but that i would know about) and a cute tee shirt, pinned my scarf on and ran out the door. well, not ran, really-- the thing's too long. by the time i got to the hospital and tumbled out of the car to the wards, it was painfully obvious that i was tripping over my skirts no matter how i gathered it in my one free hand. it took another few tries to realize that the trick was speed-- i had to float (rather than scamper) through the day.

as an intern on wards, this is theoretically impossible, but somehow happened and-- i don't know how-- but i think it kind of got under my skin. all day long, it was like a little voice saying "slow down" and the more i tried to float the floatier i got. today i couldn't quite hit "cheerful" but i got and held on to "warm" and while i wasn't quite "patient" i was at least "long-suffering" rather than "annoyed and about to scream."

so maybe sometimes things that are getting in your way are trying to help...

failure

so i'm having just this horrible day. i'm at work and everything frustrating is happening; it's just a long list of tedious tasks and things that require fifteen phone calls and writing the same thing over and over and over again on different sheets of paper. the thing is, when i'm mad, i try to be patient-- and i try to act patient, and i try to sound patient-- but i'm not fooling anybody. my voice may be saying "this is doctor so-and-so from family medicine, i was paged" but you can clearly hear the "@#$*&^!!!!!!!" trying desperately not to reach my vocal cords. when i'm mad, i try harder and harder to not sound mad and my voice gets slower and clearer and higher and sort of sing-song-y and the harder i try the worse it gets.

and i know that a hospital is basically a building full of people who are at the end of their ropes-- patients, family members, nurses, pharmacy technicians-- everyone just wants to scream and leave. we've all just had it up to here with each other and with this place and it is literally all we can do to keep a thin veneer of civility on our increasingly searing annoyance. i know that we're all just sick to death of being here, of slogging through the mountains of paperwork, of fighting over every scrap of resources, of the endless checking and re-checking and forms and phone calls. i know that we could all just use a little kindness, a little patience, a little understanding, a smile, and i try, really i do, but my smile looks less sincere as the day goes on, my writing gets messier and messier the more i hate the form i'm filling out, my walk turns into a stomp, my gaze into a glare, and my voice we've already discussed.

so i retreat into my iPod, which is loaded with inspirational talks at the moment. the one i'm listening to presently has to do with good character. people of good character are cheerful, it says, and do good works easily. i've been waiting for it to tell me what to do when you don't quite measure up, when "cheerful" isn't quite one of the first 5000 words you'd use to describe yourself. today it mentioned, briefly, that the trick is to keep trying.

and failing, i suppose.

but keep trying.

intentions

so last week when i went to the islamic center sunday class (which i privately think of as islam 101) the speaker veered off topic (my favorite part) and said something about intentions. i was kind of zoning out at the time, looking around the room or something, and didn't catch the first part (like you don't zone out now and then) but the point he was making was that he was having trouble in his prayer life a while back and was advised to refine his intention-- that was the key.

so i've been giving it a try. revealing to say the least. standing there, just me and God, Who can see perfectly well why i'm there, trying to articulate why at this particular moment i am praying-- "because it's time" just begs the question of why you are praying at all, let alone on time-- leads to different answers each and every time. sometimes i feel like i'm just slogging along, sometimes i feel like i'm practicing and trying to get better, sometimes i just want a break or a moment of peace-- mostly there are four or five reasons circling, many of which are embarassingly base. sometimes i'm hoping to feel God's presence or to connect with Him or to ask Him to guide me more closely or to comfort me. but how do you ask someone Who is always there, always with His hand on your forelock to be closer, to be more present, to guide you more closely? and the farthest i've gotten to the core of why i'm praying is a need to strengthen my end of the connection, to reach for Him, to take a breath and start over, to close my eyes and fall backwards into Him, to be swallowed up, lost...