Granted

Ok, so if the Fathers' Day pics proved that Josh is a great dad, then Friday reminded me to tell you that he's also a great doctor. We didn't always know if this would be true.

During med school, Josh spent hours at our tiny kitchen table, laboring over his decisions past and present. Was his passion for computers going to waste? Should he quit med school to get into the booming tech industry? If he stuck with medicine, which specialty? Nothing seemed to utilize all his strengths.

Until the second month of his last year of med school. He decided to spend a week shadowing a Vandy internist so he could choose between internal medicine (adults) and pediatrics (kids). In God's providence, that internist is also a biomedical informatics researcher. "Biomedical informatics" is literally "a discipline at the intersection of information science, computer science, and health care." Kabam.

Not only had Josh suddenly been introduced to an emerging field that perfectly fit his skills, he was also studying at the top institution in that field. Vanderbilt has the largest Biomedical Informatics department in the country.

Six years later, Josh had finished his residency in internal medicine and fellowship in biomedical informatics. He took a job at Vanderbilt, seeing patients, teaching, and researching ways computers can improve healthcare.

Three years after that, he applied for his first major federal grant (he's part of many other grants, but this stands in a class of its own). An R01, and a practical necessity for any tenure application. Josh's application was reviewed over a year ago, given a great score, and then shelved. That's right, nothing. No word. Every few months, he'd check in with the committee, but with a major budget battle going on in Washington, it didn't look good.

Which brings me back to Friday. He got it. He GOT IT! Woohoo!

Someday I'll tell you more about the ground-breaking research Josh is doing, how many lives it saves, and how good he is with patients and programmers alike, but today, let me just tell you: I am so glad the U.S. government finally got off its tush and recognized that this guy deserves this grant for this work. Because it is amazing. And so is he.

(Celebrating at Cheesecake Factory.)

Happy Day, Daddy!

I don't talk about Josh enough on this blog. Perhaps because he's my partner in crime (er, parenting) or perhaps because if I told you how wonderful a father he is, you wouldn't believe me. So here's a little proof...


 

Trucks, Guns, & Milk

Yesterday, Noah happened to be talking to me while I was near my computer, so I started taking dictation. Before I offer this peek into the mind of my 3-year-old, let me just say that while we do technically live in the South, we live in one of the least Southern cities in TN, do not own a gun, have never seen a monster truck, and are not campers. Needless to say, that has not stopped our son from spending hours talking about all of the above.

"All monster trucks are made for good guys. They're high up so bad guys can't get in them. Most monster trucks are too high for bad guys. All bad guys are small - like my GI Joe soldiers. They have to point their guns way up high (demonstrating) 'cause they're so small.

"One day I saw a policman drive by and he was way up high in a monster truck. He was in a pickup monster truck with a door on its back so he can carry stuff around, but he was carrying nothing around. He was just driving around. I didn't know where he was driving, but I just saw him. And then he stopped his truck. Then he opened the passenger door. I don't know why he opened the passenger door. But then he shut it back up.

"GI Joe soldiers speak Spanish because they don't know what the other GI Joe soldiers said. GI Joe soldiers sing songs about God differently from us. They sing like this, "Rur, rur, rur, rur..." (singing like a dog). They stop in the middle of the song because they don't know the whole song, so they can take a rest of singing the song.

"GI Joe soldiers eat food too, 'cause they don't want to die. And they try to stay away from bombs*. One day, a bomb exploded and someone shot the fire with their guns and the fire was dead. But they didn't realize there were some people confused by the explosion. I saw an explosion and a black ball came out, but it didn't have any spikes on it so I thought it was a golf ball. I was camping with my Daddy when I heard the explosion. We had some real guns in our tent so we could shoot anything like a bomb.

(Listening to his preschool's Bible song CD)
"Do you know who else sings the song about Adam and Eve?
Captain Hook. He likes to sing about Adam and Eve. He thinks it's fun."

And lest you think we're all about violence, last night's family movie was Mary Poppins, and the boys LOVED it. We also had a blast with friends at a local dairy farm last week. We can do wholesome. Between conversations about bombs. ;)

*I have to mention that we do NOT watch videos with guns or bombs. He learned what a bomb is from Peter Pan (the Golden book), and he learned about guns from friends.

Dodos, Pay Phones, & Live Lectures

What do these three have in common? I think they're likely to be nearly extinct in the next 10 years. It's easy to agree on the first two. The last is a more recent epiphany for me -- one I'm eager to explore for holes and implications. So here goes...

A couple years ago, Josh's home megachurch in Louisville created satellite churches with all their own community features except the sermon is a video feed from the megachurch. It has been hugely successful.

Why? I think it's because nowadays, we don't go to church for the lecture (aka sermon). We can hear or watch thousands of great sermons, catered to our tastes/needs/schedules online or by podcast. Many are likely better than what we can hear locally. Tim Keller, John MacArthur, Dave Stone, Andy Stanley, Beth Moore, Max Lucado -- our church could never attract/afford them full-time, but I can listen to them on the subject of my choice while I'm exercising or washing dishes. Even if I could attend their churches, I might not want a community that big.

Which brings up the reason we do go to church: community. We need the fellowship, the shared experience. If we all go through the same experience, the same content, we grow together. That doesn't require a live lecture. In fact, it may be more valuable as a video feed, book, or blog (if the teaching is better).

What does require a live speaker is an interactive experience tailored to the realtime needs of the audience. That could mean...
1) Some form of Q/A: asking live, submitting questions/subjects to be addressed next week, or staying after to answer specific questions.
2) Using the space and senses to make physical presence important, as they've done at my brother's church: everyone taking off their shoes one Sunday, arranging seats in-the-round another, passing out visual aids, or turning out the lights for a special audio presentation. Each was part of creating an overall experience that would make a point as clear, relevant, and memorable as possible. Musicians have been doing this in their concerts ever since recorded music was invented. Surprisingly, churches often catch flack for being too much like a concert, as if entertainment, education, and worship were mutually exclusive.

Which brings up the most important aspect of this whole discussion: How do we learn best? What kind of experience has the most impact? I cannot imagine the traditional church service is the answer. It's anonymous, impersonal, easy to tune-out, and disconnected from the way we learn and behave in every other area of our lives. Even when I was studying education--before texting and the Internet boom--all the research recognized that students learn best when a concept is presented in a multi-sensory way that challenges them to directly engage and apply it.

Some friends of ours visited a local church's Sunday morning service and realized when they reached their car (almost 2 hours later) that not one person had spoken to them the entire time they were there. And this was a young, vibrant, fairly small congregation. The traditional service makes interaction awkward at best: Who wants to introduce themselves to strangers after a lecture ends?

Finally, in a post-Christian society, the more a church service's format diverges from the rest of our experiences, the higher the cost of entry. If we cling too hard to past styles of communication rather than just clinging to the content of God's Word (delivered with the most effective methods), many will never hear and understand that Word. Church becomes for the churched, and eventually, just for the aged churched.

This is all part of a much larger discussion about the purposes and methods of today's churches. I've seen many references to it lately (#3 on this Church Tech blog , or this conference on church communication are the tip of the iceberg), and I don't know anyone who has it all figured out. But I do think it's going to take some time and loss for many denominations to make the adjustments necessary to stay relevant to their audiences - and more importantly, to those they haven't reached yet.

Carwash, Scarwash

Mommy, what is attacking our car?!

I didn't think twice about getting our car washed. Aaron has been through them before without a problem. But he's changing by the minute, that boy. Learning new words and discovering new things to fear.

When the carwash first started, he was uncertain, alternating between the about-to-cry-protruding-lower-lip (which is what I was trying to capture with my camera) and trust that Noah and I were not out of our minds telling him all was well.

The sudden attack of the rinse cycle put him over the edge. He jumped in his seat and then started trying to claw his way away from the window. It was too pitiful. I pulled him onto my lap for the rest, where he clung to me and waited it out in a cuddle.

Noah, ever the brave big brother, held out in the back seat and discussed the kinds of goop being sprayed on the windows, whether he'd get a chance to rewash them at the gas station, and why there weren't any brushes this time.

I love boys.

Easterish

April 14-May 15 was a very full, fun month with family visits and celebrations: Josh's birthday, Mother's Day, our 12th Anniversary, his sister's college graduation, and Easter. Since I can't possibly recap it all, I'll let the pictures talk for me...

HR Benefits

I just have to say that I really enjoy Noah and Aaron and feel SO blessed to be their mother.

I never have time to write all the posts in my head, which means sometimes the few that happen to get written don't represent the whole (my life, attitude, perspective). I had a free moment to write about Aaron's clinginess but haven't had time to do justice to his sweet spirit, his exploding vocabulary, his mugging for the camera, his easiness at bedtime, his adaptability, his caution and obedience, his obsession with the moon, his love for reading and playing chase, his attachment to his brother, and my adoration for having a cuddler.

Likewise, Noah is so good at entertaining and protecting his little brother, reasoning through problems, playing with anyone, obeying, pretending, adapting, and seeing the bright side. He loves pirates and tomcats and Billy Angel stories, will sit through as many books as we'll read, and handles disappointment better than I do.

At this stage, I especially love how easy it is for me to be "cool" and them to be entertained. Sometimes I can't believe the cheesiness I can get away with. The dry-diaper happy dance. The days-of-the-week song, brushing-teeth song, and the one that's just about toes, toes, toes. The Nemo swim trunks, Nemo swim shirt, Nemo life jacket, and bike helmet. The barrell of laughs provided by Daddy's winter hat.

I almost expect them to roll their eyes, but instead they cheerfully jump on-board. I am soaking. it. up.

I really don't know how I've gotten so lucky to have these two easy, adorable, fun-loving boys. It's a learning experience, an adventure, and a joy. I don't ever want to sound like I'm glossing over the challenges, but I also don't want to sound as if those challenges compare to the benefits.