freedom

poor blog. i've been neglecting you for the past few months. there has been so much going on lately, it's been hard to keep up with it all! i was home in virginia studying for my board exam for the majority of june. and now i'm back in kentucky and have been in clinic for the past couple of weeks. it's been great, my patient family is, for the most part, awesome and i've been learning so much. mostly learning a lot about patient management. how to interact with them in a way that's friendly, but professional. i try to walk a line between being casual and at the same time authoritative. after all, they have to like me, but also trust me. luckily, it seems to be working out great. there have been a few instances where it would have been more convenient for some of my patients to be seen by someone else, but they've expressed that they'd like to stay with me. yay. oh, another thing, toward the end of my first week in clinic, i was playing racket ball and twisted my ankle 90 degrees. crunch. after a visit to the emergency room and a few radiographs i was told it might be fractured. the orthopedist later told me it was a class III sprain, which in a way, is worse than a fracture, because of the longer healing time. but i'm just glad i don't have to wear a cast. although, they gave me a ski boot-like contraption to wear so i wouldn’t have to crutch around anymore. the worst part of all of this is that i have to be cooped up at home most of the day to let it heal. and after watching mtv for a whole night, i've decided i'm going to lock my kids up at home until they're 21.

i didn’t realize i was such an old fashioned grandpa. but wow. the things kids are being exposed to these days. since when did parents start treating their kids like adults after age 15? i'm sorry; a 15 year old child is not yet capable of making completely rational life decisions like their parents can. i watched a show where a 16 year old girl was dating a 21 year old guy. her parents did not agree with her decision, but still allowed her to continue her relationship with him. i don't think i'm going to be a very strict parent, but i don't understand how a parent could let their child have that level of freedom at such a young age. i know someone is going to read this and think, "oh my gosh, he hates freedom. he's going to be one of those authoritative parents and his kids won't love him." but that's not true at all. i remember when i was 17; my dad and i were at the park with some family friends, a couple and their 2 year old son. their son was very rowdy, totally out of control, and the parents usually gave in to all of his temper tantrums just to get him to quiet down. my dad quickly became frustrated with them so during one of the kid's temper tantrums, sternly told him to stop it. it was obvious he had never been scolded before and suddenly stopped and was a little scared. after things settled down, my dad went over to him and gave him a big hug and made funny faces at him to make him laugh. his parents were amazed. he told his dad, "you have to be very stern with them when they misbehave, but you also have to show them how much you love them." and that's how i feel about that. it's not so much that you have to be a fascist dictator, but too much freedom, especially at a young age, is the worst thing you can do for your kids. which reminds me of a quote by timothy keller, one of my favorite authors, in the book, the reason for god.

"freedom cannot be defined in strictly negative terms, as the absence of confinement and constraint. in fact, in many cases, confinement and constraint is actually a means to liberation. if you have musical aptitude, you may give yourself to practice, practice, practice the piano for years. this is a restriction, a limit on your freedom. there are many other things you won't be able to do with the time you invest practicing. if you have the talent, however, the discipline and limitation will unleash your ability that would otherwise go untapped. what have you done? you've deliberately lost your freedom to engage in some things in order to release yourself to a richer kind of freedom to accomplish other things... in many areas of life, freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, the liberating restrictions. those that fit with the reality of our nature and the world produce greater power and scope for our abilities and a deeper joy and fulfillment. experimentation, risk, and making mistakes bring growth only if, over time, they show us our limits as well as our abilities. if we only grow intellectually, vocationally, and physically through judicious constraints--why would it not also be true for spiritual and moral growth? instead of insisting on freedom to create spiritual reality, shouldn’t we be seeking to discover it and disciplining ourselves to live according to it?"

i agree with him completely.