After the Oscars, Recognizing the Real Winners

Normal people don't win Academy Awards. Normal people don't get nominated or get to attend the ceremony. Most normal people go through life without recognition or honor. They wake up each day and go about their business, doing what they need to do and have to do, playing their part in the theater of life in the roles they have been assigned. Mothers and fathers, craftsmen and laborers, managers and employees, all are essential and few are recognized. Watching the Oscars caused me to stop for a moment and consider some of those in my life whose performances in the last year have been truly remarkable. Here are some of my award winners for the last year-

Best Doctor in a Starring Role- Ehab Mady, a specialist in Vascular Medicine. Over and over again he has made the difficult diagnosis and gone the extra mile, providing stellar service and amazing care, even when payment wasn’t guaranteed. He is truly a life saver. .

Best Pastor in a Supporting Role- John Coulombe, the hardest working pastor I know. As the primary pastor to the senior adults in a church of thousands he is always in demand, performing funerals and comforting the grieving, organizing events and developing ministries. He speaks several times a month, tirelessly advocates for the church to be truly intergenerational and still finds the time to be a source of encouragement to me. He never seeks the limelight but his light shines.

Best Produce- Mr. W,  Patient who runs his own construction company while battling chronic and severe pain from a severely damaged ankle, prostate cancer and a heart condition. In his extra time he leads a Bible study, and he never complains. Each time I see him he manages to encourage me. 

Best Director- Peter Mackler, the Executive Director for Government Relations for Memorial Care. He puts in long hours and countless miles, traveling to Washington DC and Sacramento advocating on behalf of doctors and patients, most of whom will never know how hard he has worked for them. I have seen in him action and benefited from his counsel.

Best Special Effects- The Parents in my practice with special needs children who juggle work schedules, school conferences, and doctor’s appointments, the spouses holding the family together while their husbands and wives battle serious illness, the countless people who each day put one foot in front of the other and simply get it done. They challenge and inspire me.

As I consider all of these people I am reminded that the true stars in this life are not the ones up on the screen, behind the podium or on a stage. The true stars are more likely to be in the audience or behind the scenes.

- Bart

The Share button is key to the success of the blog, thanks to all who use it! You can join the hundreds of others who receive posts in their email by subscribing to the blog or receive updates on posts via Twitter by following me @bartbarrettmd. Comments are welcome!

4 Rules for True Friendship

Sometimes it is hard to know who your friends really are. You think someone has your back and then when circumstances get tough, they disappear. Who do you trust? Who are your true friends? A better question- what qualities define true friendship? Here is a short list-

1- A true friend runs to your side when times get hard. "A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity,” is how it is described in Proverbs 17. When the going gets tough, great friends don't even wait for you to call. They come.

2- Friends tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. “Wounds from a friend can be trusted,” says the proverb, and it is true. Years ago a colleague called me at home and told me that my aggressive attitude was offending some of the other doctors. He encouraged me that a softer approach would serve me better. He was right and in correcting me he showed he was a friend.

3- True friends are committed to the friendship. Neither time nor circumstances should diminish the bond, which is why the Proverb says we should not forsake our friend or the friend of our father. I think of Daryl, a friend of 40 years. We have laughed together, played together and prayed together,even hurt one another, but we have never quit.

4- True friends know when to keep their mouth shut. “Gossip separates close friends.” says Proverbs 16:28, and boy does it. The writer expounds on the principle in the next chapter saying “He who covers over an offense promotes love.” Close friends know how to hurt us. True friends protect us.

What kind of friend are you? I know I can do better!

Have a "friend" who needs to read this? Please share it with them and others by clicking the link below, it really helps when you share the blog with others.

Do you feel this Important Symptom of a Diseased Spiritual Heart?

Symptoms are important. They tell the patient that something is wrong and when properly understood can tell the physician what that something is. Every once in a while I get surprised by someone who is much sicker or worse off than I imagined. I find myself asking, “How is it they didn't feel this?”

I think of a 10-year-old girl who came to my office several years ago. She had fallen off of the monkey bars a few days earlier and had occasionally complained of arm pain. Her mother was only a little concerned but brought her in to see me just to be sure she was okay.

I examined the child, poking and prodding and moving her arm and shoulder all around. Not a peep or a grimace of pain. Her exam was perfectly normal. I told the mom I could not make a good argument for getting an x-ray, but gave an order for arm and shoulder films just in case. I told her to get the x-rays done if she was not better in 2-3 days.

Three days later they were back. The girl still was relatively asymptomatic, but this time one thing was different. This time she brought an x-ray of her upper arm that showed the humerus was broken. IN TWO! Snapped. Completely broken with the bones a centimeter apart. To this day I cannot understand how she could have slept comfortably, much less allow a doctor to move the arm over her head. It is hard to recognize a problem when there are no symptoms!

Our society is in a similar circumstance right now. We have serious problems, but many people do not feel or recognize them at all. They are missing something crucial that would allow them to understand how sick they really are.

Ravi Zacharias, a brilliant and articulate Christian leader, described the problem perfectly in two recent Facebook posts-

“To raise a child without shame is to raise one with no immune system against evil.”

“Shame is to the moral health of a society what pain is to the body. The sense of shame provides an indicator to the mind.”

Dysfunction is spreading through our culture, spreading because people lack a key means of recognizing it and dealing with it. They have lost a sense of shame. People are openly proud about behaviors which were once (and still should be) considered shameful.

I can think of many examples, such as the young man who came into my office for a check up, and when I asked about his sexual history, proudly declared that he was sexually involved with several girlfriends at the same time. Taken aback by his unabashed boasting, I clarified his response, asking, “So you are not saying you have had multiple partners in the past, you are saying that you currently have multiple women you are sleeping with?”

He extended his fist to give me a knuckle punch as he laughed and turned the word “Yeah” into one of three syllables. “Yea-a-ah, dude!” He had no shame.

I have seen similar sentiments expressed on Facebook, in blog posts and on television. Casual sexual encounters, vulgar language and other immoral behaviors are displayed as badges of honor instead of markers of shame. It seems that our world has fully embraced the view that no behavior is inherently wrong. If it feels good and brings pleasure in the moment it should be proclaimed and celebrated.

The freedom promised by the shameless pursuit of pleasure is false freedom, as it traps people in lives where it is impossible to experience the joy and peace that come from living life as God intends. Instead of running from and denouncing shame and embarrassment, we should train ourselves to cultivate a healthy sense of shame that will sound the alarm when we foolishly go our own way.

God wants to heal our diseased hearts, and appropriate shame can lead us to seek the cure. Ask yourself- "Do I feel the symptoms of my sinful heart, or am I becoming hardened to shame?" The answer is important.

Why Wanting Something Does not Amount to Anything

Sometimes people do really selfish things. From what I have observed some people do selfish things a lot. Do you ever wonder why? I do. As a matter of fact I found myself wondering this today.

As I write this I am on a family vacation in Hawaii (actually on Hawaii, the Big Island.) Today we made the over two hour drive to Volcanoes National Park to tour the Kilauea crater. Awesome. On the way back to our condo we stopped off at Punaluu, a beautiful black sand beach that is known for the sea turtles that sun bathe on the sand. Sea turtles are a protected species and the law says that they must be “observed from a distance.” As the turtles are common at Punaluu, signs are posted making this law perfectly clear. Well, perfectly clear to me. This apparently was not perfectly clear to the tourists who arrived before us, as they were all taking turns posing for pictures with two turtles situated on the beach. They were kneeling right next to the turtles, just inches away. I found myself asking, “Why?”

The best answer I can come up with is, “Because they wanted to.” That's it. They knew the law, knew the turtles were protected, but in that moment what mattered more was that they wanted to be near turtles and wanted that photograph. When push came to shove what they desired, what they wanted, was all that mattered.

It is easy to wag our fingers and criticize these people for the buffoons they were at that moment, but I think this character flaw is more widespread then we care to admit. How often do we ignore what is right or best because we don't feel like it, or because we just want to do things our own way?

We want time to ourselves, so we blow off our children. We have had a hard week and we want rest, so we skip church. We want to pay less in taxes, so we fudge a little on business expenses. We want to see a movie because it's popular, so we ignore the fact that the content is immoral and objectionable. We want...

Seems like wanting something is not a very good way to decide how to act. Just ask a turtle.

Like this post? Please share it with friends. You can make sure you never miss a post by signing up to receive posts by email, just click the link in the upper right.

The One Thing Every Girl Needs

Now that Christmas has passed, we can all be grateful that we will not have to hear "Santa Baby" for another 11 months. Not only is the song incredibly annoying, it is incredibly false. None of the items in the song are what girls need. A recent afternoon in my office made this perfectly clear-

Two 14 year old girls came in with their moms. Both had severe emotional issues and were in need of psychiatric help, and both were from Christian homes. They also shared something else- a father who wasn't involved.

One was a product of a divorced home. The other's parents were still married, dad just didn't talk. I asked the girl if she talked to her dad, and she replied, “He doesn't talk much, I have just learned to accept it.”

How sad. Even among avowed family men, too many dads think their responsibility to the family is to provide materially. That's it. As long as they don't cheat, holler or beat anybody, they are doing their job. If they drive the family car to church on Sunday, then they have exceeded expectations and earned extra daddy points.

Yet they haven't. Girls need a dad who is always available and engaged, even when they grow up. They need to know that they have a man who loves them unconditionally, who will be there for them no matter what, no matter when. The only way to foster that belief is by being there as they grow up, no matter what and no matter when. It is not always easy and it seldom convenient, but there is nothing more important.