End Of Residency Count-down (This time last year)

(I wrote this a little over a year ago, never finished it and forgot about it. Just found it tonight and thought it was interesting to remember what was going on this time last year.....packing, painting, showing the house, saying goodbye to Akron, me getting hives,  trying to find a house to rent, Anne having hives, just loads of fun. Thought I would publish it in memory of our almost year anniversary of being out of residency. I hope that the picture publishes, I am not even sure which one it is.)

This picture cracks me up. I guess it is the best we can do this year. David had just gotten home from more than 30 hours of non-stop activity at the hospital and had time to shower and eat something. The rest of us had just gotten back from church.
"Hi David, remember us? We want a family picture from this year. Put on something nice and smile."
I have always found that writing about things that are going on in my life is helpful to me. Helps me understand what is going on, how I need to respond, what my attitude is. I haven't done much of that for the past couple of years. Because I don't know how.
Residency has been difficult. I guess you could say it has been a dark place, in many ways.

Last June marked the beginning of fifth year for David. He works even longer hours this year and when he is home he works and when he should be sleeping he works too. There are presentations every week and things to oversee and tests coming up and bigger presentations coming up and the biggest test of all coming in August. If any of you are ever in the hospital and you or someone you know is being taken care of by a surgical resident and you feel tempted to be impatient with them, try to remember, they have probably been there, without sleep or food or bathroom breaks for more than 24 hours, in tense situations, making difficult decisions and dealing with unhappy people (some of them swearing, spitting, vomiting and trying to do them physical harm). They may not have had a day off in a month.

And then he gets to come home. To angelic children and a wife that has it all together. Ha!
He really just comes home to sleep.

June 15 is the last day of residency for David.
August 1 he starts work at the hospital in OR.
In mid August he will take his surgery boards, so any "free" time that he might find himself with between now and then will be spent studying his brains out.

The kids and I have a lot more opportunity for good times than David does. We just miss him.
Ohio has proven to be a place where people have alot of family and alot of traditions. Which is probably pretty fun if you are part of the family. In the 5 years that we have lived here we have not accumulated very many good friendships. We are DEEPLY GRATEFUL for the ones that God has given us.

We have good memories of sweltering in the spring and summer humidity, of catching fireflies and hiking in Metro Parks and jumping off the dock out in "The Lake". When everything freezes up we head out to the sledding hills (everyone here calls it "sled-riding" which I had never heard before.) or down to the big ice rink at the Metro Parks to skate. We use the Towpath - all the kids but Pati have learned to ride a two wheeled bike here. We have taken advantage of all of the nature programs offered through Metro Parks here and have learned more about being being "naturalists" than we ever would have thought possible in these few years. We have fed the birds by hand and watched hawks and cardinals and black squirrels out in our own yard. We have trained and run races and participated in triathlons. This is our third year of participating the Christian Home Educators of Ohio co-op that meets on Fridays and we feel as though we are juuuuust now starting to fit in there. Ohio has been a good place in many ways.

When we moved here Jan had just turned 4, Alec was still 2 and Anne was an infant. I was pregnant with Pati. When we leave, in a few months, Jan will be 9, Alec 7, Anne 5 and Pati 4. They will be leaving behind the familiar and they are apprehensive about that. But they will be moving closer to Grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles....not REALLY close, but closER. And the most exciting thing is that maybe Dad will be home for dinner, or get to go to church with us or just plain old be available to have some fun with us. We are hoping so.

There is so much to get done. Not sure of how to do it all. I had much of it all mapped out, starting with Week One of 2011. I was right on track, getting school done, housework done, exercising everyday and I had painted one of the bedrooms. Then I got this terrible horrible awful all-consuming uncontrollable ITCHING rash. And the world fell apart. No one knows what it is or why I have it. I hope it goes away for good.  (It did, finally)
And David had his last day at Akron General, and we went to the graduation and had resident friends over for a BBQ (we miss them), and the boxes got packed and loaded and the  house got recarpeted and repainted and put on the market and we said goodbye to the neighbors and we swam one last time at the lake and now we are in a really different time and place. It is a very good place, and we have found that here we have new challenges and new things to learn and trust God for. But when I think of residency I feel overwhelming gratefulness to God for his faithfulness to me. For the things that He taught me, for the blessings that he gave, for the provision that He brought, for the impossible things that He was sufficient in.