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| dear Xangaworld: its official...Jeremy Knapp is spoken for. December 15th i just got engaged to the most beautiful, precious Laura Pinnell. check out www.myspace.com/doctorgerms for glipse of the beauty. cheers. | | |
| Extra Partsfriends,
some of the beauties and responsibilities of friendship are openness and vulnerability. so here's a little tidbit about me that you may not know.
i had an extra leg and an extra muscle. 'yeah right!', you say, 'you're pulling my leg'. well, take a look at the xray...
yep. an osteochondroma. basically the head of a long bone (mushroom-shaped) grew off the side of my left knee. now i suspect that next you may be asking, 'sweet, did it grow big enough to kick people sideways or trip them...and did you have to have specially made pants...and gosh buying an extra shoe must've sucked', but fret not it was found early and removed 15 years ago when i was in 7th grade. and to confess, the xray is not my own, but thats pretty much what mine looked like. wild eh? and i tried to convince the doc to let me keep it...no go.
and the other, less impressive, extra body part was an extra muscle in my right wrist. senior year of high school i started lifting weighs with my good friend mike. i was doing curls one day and noticed a prominent bulge on the anterior aspect of my right wrist. i forget the formal latin name of the extra muscle, but the doctor informed me that a large number of people have this muscle, it just never develops...mine did. he also suggested its removal. frankly i think he was jealous that i already had one bone more than every other human being, and now an extra muscle was just over the top. nevertheless, it was removed, and thankfully, b/c unknown to me or the physician, it was pinching off the vein and artery in my wrist (which would have inevitably led to complications down the road).
i've had a good number of occassions and gathering where i was asked to tell all about these anomalies, but for those that never knew...now ya know.
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| da 'burghWell folks...its official (as soon as I call them back Monday), that come late May, I'll be loading up a U-haul and pulling out of a long resided home...Tulsa. They offered me the job at Pittsburgh Children's Hospital this past Tuesday (one day after I interviewed). I'll be working in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (as I am now), just making more money. But one of the greatest deciding factors in the move thoughts was being closer to home. Pittsburgh gives me the greatest of a city (while the beauty of the outdoors is merely 20 minutes away) and being far enough away from home to be away, but close enough to be close. A change in life. It's time. But change doesn't mean an end to one thing and a beginning to another in the important things in life (like friendships)...just a continuum from a different perspective. welp. back to work. | | |
| - I Got A NameHe Still Speaks...So I know I've been talking a lot about moving plans and my job (RN in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit), but I've been struggling the last few months with the satisfaction of my job. You know, the feeling that 'please God there has to be more to life than this for another 75 years' (because I'm fighting to live to be a centenarian). And I do know there is so much more I feel called to, more to life, more things to enjoy, more things to experience.
Recently I've been reading the Chronicles of Narnia. I just finished A Boy and His Horse not too long ago. I think I can safely speak for most of the men reading this that, like you, I've always desired/dreamed of being in a battle. Fighting for purpose. I imagined, as I read, the mixed emotions Shasta (the boy who was unknowingly being led by the Lord into his purpose, his calling, who was born to be...Prince Cor) felt as he charged into his first battle, ignorant of his true noble, resplendent self. Sometimes I wish I was born ages ago to maybe have caught a glimpse of this sort of life, but then again, to think how far we've come with medical advances, for instance...the advances that (not apart from the grace of God) bring health and healing to children in my unit that otherwise would be overcome by innumerable medical conditions.
But alas, my point, my job is my battle...fighting...caring for these lil tykes. I've been rummaging the thought in my head for days now (as I cared for the sickest, most beautiful little girl ever)...God speaking? I've always been the one to say "predominant thoughts" (as I call them)...the ones that just don't go away...are often the Lord's way of speaking these days. Like the verse in Psalms 139 says, "Many are the thoughts of God, how vast the sum of them..." And like so many questionable, vague "things" (for instance: my thesis statement for my senior paper in college was defining the spiritual implications of nursing interventions related to Eastern methods of alternative healthcare. Simply put, what are the spiritual consequences, per say, of participating in alternative healthcare practices like acupuncture that is rooted in Taoism?).
As I concluded in my paper, I think it boils down to what (or who) do you choose to give the glory to? Thank God, He still speaks, even to hard-headed, stubborn men like me. | | |
| - Crooked Teeth It was one hundred degrees, as we sat beneath a willow tree,
Who's tears didn't care, they just hung in the air, and refused to fall, to fall.
And I knew I'd made horrible call,
And now the state line felt like the Berlin wall,
And there was no doubt about which side I was on.
Cause I built you a home in my heart,
With rotten wood, it decayed from the start.
Cause you can't find nothing at all,
If there was nothing there all along.
No you can't find nothing at all,
If there was nothing there all along.
I'm a war, of head versus heart,
And it's always this way.
My head is weak, my heart always speaks,
Before I know what it will say.
And you can't find nothing at all,
If there was nothing there all along.
No you can't find nothing at all,
If there was nothing there all along.
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well, i didn't intend on the lyrics being posted with no thoughts. i finished reading A Boy and His Horse early this morning and was wipe, so sleep took priority over introspection. and might i add, www.wikipedia.org is one wicked cool site. i looked up places mentioned in Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia (i.e. - Calormen) and it had historical and chronological info about them...fictitous, mind you. :)but for what its worth, here's the rest.
maybe its the curse of being idealistic (or unrealistic...are they one in the same?) or just another facet of human nature, but the chorus of Crooked Teeth always makes me think of how i am (or what i'm prone to). i fight to see the best in people. i'm no saint, but i like to believe in the unbelievable i guess, as inconsistent as i may be. but i've learned the hard way ,being let down by some of those people, that maybe i just won't find anything, cause there was nothing there all along, the person was never the way i conjured them up to be in the first place in their personality, character, etc.
and likewise, in relationships in general, its so easy just to let your mind take off to places that don't exist. and when you linger there long enough, those places easily become your "reality", distorting the way things really are, ultimately causing you to miss out on something else, thedynamics of what really is. maybe not what you hoped for, but an opportunity for fellowship and brotherly love nonetheless.
witty song. | | |
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