Awaken

Can anyone say "writer's block"?!

Guess it's been a while...

And the only reason I'm posting now is because if I don't post, then I never will. So here goes.

The summer flew by, as I knew it would. I have no idea what I accomplished. I did go to a conference in Portland, Oregon, which was interesting. And we have been plugging through our first animal trial for my doctoral research. So that's kept me pretty busy on and off since March.

Have I mentioned at all that I do research? Probably not. It's one of those things you have to be careful discussing, because you never know how much people actually want to know. Suffice to say I am studying what I like to call "molecular reproductive physiology" - basically, how reproduction works on a molecular level (think DNA here). Of course there's also the macro level as well (think real live animals); so we're working with bulls to get at the gene expression associated with fertility. More or less.

I am officially through the first year of my PhD. Two and half to go (that's the goal, anyway). Someone I know well and trust dearly looked at me and told me that the past year was about a 3 out of 10 for me (my husband's was a 7 out of 10!). Whew. That's better than a 1 or a 2, but here's hoping for something a little higher this year!

It's definitely been a learning process. And I guess that's the point. (Well, duh, you might say. But, no, really.) It's not so much about learning a lot of facts and gaining a lot of knowledge. It's a process that is designed to drag you through the ringer, almost literally. One professor told my husband that getting your PhD is like your second childhood. In the hard kind of way, not the fun kind of way.

You daily face the fact that you know very little, are desperately under-equipped to face the problems that need to be solved yesterday, and end up crying a lot.

And the point here wasn't to complain about how hard it is, as much as to describe how much development is going on. And though I feel that little growth has actually been obtained, I have to believe that as long as I keep plugging through, surely some ground has to be gained. Surely. Surely?

In the midst of all the unknowns educationally, I have been growing a lot spiritually. Which truly is more important to me anyway. It's been quite a deepening. I recently described to my husband that it seems I've been coasting along for the past ten years, clueless and delirious, and all of a sudden I just woke up and saw the world around me. Awakened. To something other than myself.

"For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you." Romans 12:3