A new doctor in the house!

The moment of truth...listening to my chair deliver the news I passed my final dissertation defense. Sweet words..."Congratulations, Doctor Thul!"

Everything went very well, and thank you so much for your prayers!

Hugs from Dr. Kelechi, my research mentor

With my dear Mama, the original teacher!

2012 is shaping up to be true to my word for the year!

On the home front, Amelia's been getting progressively more ill while I've been gone...she has neck pain, severe headache, light sensitivity, even her teeth hurt. So far she hasn't needed to go to the hospital, but we are heading home on an earlier flight. Please pray her condition stays stable while I am flying today - Grandma Nel is manning the home front on her own with all 4 children, so an ER run would be quite difficult for her.

When you can't take any of the credit

I was awake for 44 hours. My eyes burned, my body ached, and my spirit wilted. I had submitted my dissertation, and it failed. I had one last chance to edit the 100+ pages to suitable quality. I didn't have the strength for it. I was horribly exhausted, haunted by stress-related chest pain, my fingers tremulous from the long hours typing. 

And then God gave me the strength to stay awake for 44 hours and finish my work.

He took me to the absolute end of my physical, intellectual, and emotional limits.

He took me there so that I would know, beyond a doubt, that the result was totally in His hands. That it wasn't my smarts or my tenacity. That it was a gift.

And so I can say, with utter humility,

I PASSED.


And God gets all the credit.

The promise of grace 

And You lead us into freedom 

We're bound in Your love 

And all sin has been forgotten 

At the foot of the cross 

Where our ransom has been given 

If God is for us who can be against us 

Who can be against our God 

You give life to us all 

And you breathe on us Your spirit 

You go before us, 

Father, you protect us 

Father, you provide for us all 

Your Word is a shelter strong within 

My portion and my deliverance

(You Are the Lord, Jeremy Camp & Matt Maher)

*the portion of the dissertation I just successfully completed was the written portion. There is an oral exam portion as well, next Tuesday at 11 a.m. (CST). If you would pray for my continued strength as I prepare for this, and for God's will and power to be on display next Tuesday?

The purpose of mystery

I turned in my dissertation on Tuesday. I'm on pins and needles waiting to find out if I passed the written portion, so that I can travel down to South Carolina to do my oral defense. I was trying to describe written and oral defense to my kids while we celebrated on Tuesday evening, ice cream dripping down our chins. Rosy looked at me, confused, "What happens if you don't defend it, Mama? Will they tear it up?" While I laughed uproariously at this little 7 year old statement, inside I was wondering the same thing. What if they DO want to tear it up?

And why always with the waiting, God? Sometimes I feel as if I'm a professional at waiting. I'm always in the no-man's-land: waiting for news of cancer blood tests, waiting to get my hearing back, waiting to de-clutter my house until the dissertation is finished, waiting now for news of whether I passed or failed.

And so I ran to the Word this morning, trying to calm my nerves. And in the devotional book I'm reading right now (The Place of Help, Oswald Chambers - a book you'll only find in used bookstores these days), the title of today's reading is "At God's Discretion".

I pause, and say those familiar words from the Word, "Not my will, but thine be done." (Luke 22:42)

O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past tracing out! (Romans 11:33) The purpose of mystery is not to tantalize us and make us feel that we cannot comprehend; it is a generous purpose, and meant to assure us that slowly and surely as we can bear it, the full revelation of God's will be made clear.

Red-eyed dreams

The world turns slowly when you watch through the night, red eyes burning from too long staring at a screen, sleep gnawing the edges of consciousness, tattered after 24 hours like the edges of torn paper. The inky thoughts bleed out into a dark smudge and you lift hands to curl cramped fingers away from keys. You think to yourself that you can't use words like "illusive" and "beautiful" in a paper like the one you're writing, and a brief glimpse of the worn edges of journal pages draws you in with longing. Longing for the creative elegance of pen pushing down the fibers of real paper. The curls of letters jotted by hand. 

A short season of hard labor, and finally, the "send" button depresses under a tired pointer, and the light blinks out on a night of real sleep. But the voices of worry crowd into the weary head heavy on the pillow. Voices of failure, despair, criticism. What if that life's work, culminated in a tome of statistics and stark words...what if it's not what you think it is? What if they do tear it up?

The porch swings lulls away the worry, the night wind blowing the dusty yard clean, a twinkling planet winking good wishes. You find the pillow again, and this time, rest, as heavy as a winter quilt blankets mind and body. The synapses click as they shut themselves off for the night, like the computer winding down next to you in the dark.

Voices, when I listen to the voices
Every shroud of anger is sorrow in disguise
The voices, when I believe the voices
That convince me I am worthless,
bent on my demise


 Hear, oh hear the saints’ and angels’ voices


Everything about my weakness that is strong
Everything about the heart that could go wrong
Every hope that ever lived there but has since flown
I’m finding again, finding again


 We choose to love the things that hate us most

Here I fell on impoverished floor 

And came to rest beyond the reach of light 

Though the world would not think twice of me 

You searched for me in your own peculiar fight

 Father's wait for a long, lost child 

Scanning dawn and its bright horizons

 This is the world turning upside down 

When the light that was lost is found 

Come see the dawn with the darkness refused 

Today is yesterday made new

~from Eric Peters' Voices and Lost and Found*~

thoughts after sending in the dissertation,

as real life once again surrounds

*if you haven't discovered The Rabbit Room, head over to listen to all of Eric's songs from "Birds of Relocation" on the blog.

When God is for me...

His toes are still, coiled up brown of the barefoot boy, in a smudge on the flannel sheet. Eyelids fluttering, blond hair spiky straight like a passel of wheat stalk on the pillow. I am typing furiously, back aching, working on through the sleeping house during nap time. I prayed long, hard, through nights and days of working on one paper, that God would touch me with inspiration, let my fingers move to tell a story instead of pulling each piece of that last paper out of my gut like a difficult surgery.

The story burgeons within and I can barely type fast enough to keep up with the thoughts flowing, filling. It all comes out as easily as a blog post, and I sit back with a sigh after three days of writing without stopping, and there are 26 pages in black and white before me on the screen. I laugh a little at myself, a geek who writes 26 pages of technical wonder like it is a story to be told. But that's what it is. It may be professional, it may be scientific, it may be boring to the average person. On those pages, it's my inspiration, my passion, my conviction.

Evan Loomis answers the question, "Does your work matter to God?" His reply is thoughtful.

Not only is this the place that God has placed you to work out your salvation in the world, but he has placed you with this job to work out your own sanctification before him, which I think is a distinction. It's not just that he's pleased, but that he has given this to you as a gift to shape your character, to form virtue and to really work out the kinks in your own character.

It was easier for me to draw the connection, when I was a bedside nurse. But nursing research, about how we teach and evaluate our students? How is that God-honoring? God Himself steps in with the answers, slowly but surely. And douses me with inspiration that makes my graduation hopes for May a real possibility.

• Research studies God-created truths. I am studying how well humans can measure vital signs, which tells us more about the humans God created and their capacities.
• God gets the glory when I finish well. Cancer, a daughter with special needs, an awful ectopic pregnancy, complications of cancer treatment, now hearing loss? He overcame it all and infused me with the strength needed to complete this degree.
• Without teachers, there wouldn't be nurses. I am moving slowly to become one of the major branches of the nursing tree: my students will become branches off of the training God allowed me to pursue, and all their patients the flickering leaves.
• Self-discipline, honesty, tenacity, and curiosity were honed during my studies. He is shaping my character through further education.
• My soul was fed through this process. There is nothing more exhilarating to me than a research question answered! God has blessed me and fed me as I pursued this degree.

Gifts number 1,673-1,697:

...a dissertation flowing easily as poetry from brain to fingertips to page

...shorts weather in March

...Irish feast and Rubens for lunch the next day!

...mama and papa home safe

...a large gift from my father-in-law waters the soul

...my burning bush is back in white, flickering in the afternoon breeze

...the end. in. sight.

Courage to be the expert

The white and black of the printed page is covered in red ink. I am laughing on the phone with a believer in the South, and the red ink exhilarates me instead of scaring me. It has been thousands of days since I started down this path, and finally I can see the end. I push hard, long into the dark of night, the keyboard clicking against deadlines and my eyes burning from hours in front of the computer. It takes courage to look the dragons in their eyes and say, I think I can do this! I notice every time a strange obstacle emerges, and I think about spiritual warfare. It might not feel like I'm doing something for the kingdom, writing technical papers and conducting pilot studies, but why else would I be fighting so hard against things unseen to finish this race?

It takes bravery, too, to step away from the writing, to set aside the task that looms long and large, and feel spring with my children. To praise God for the sound of bird songs in my deaf ear that still can't understand people's voices. To see rainbows in the boiling water mist at dinner time. I look at the plane ticket confirmation, and it says 30 days to departure. One month to complete this task. I sigh deep, bone tired, and ask Him to fill me up, imbue me with strength so I can finish well. Does it matter to Him, I wonder? If the hairs on my head do, certainly He cares for my dreams. So I will be brave, and push on into the unknown.

written on Lisa-Jo's prompt, Bravery

Too busy

...to post! Or e-mail. Or hardly even shower!!! We've been surrounded by beauty and I finished the data collection for my dissertation project, a huge accomplishment that propels me toward graduation. I'm leavin' on a jet plane for home tomorrow.