Hope Days

Even though the past two months have been amazing- a new rotation approaches. Inpatient medicine with a short team- yay!! But you know what, PGY2 is a lot easier than first year, by far. Its crazy to think we are halfway there. So as this new month approaches, I wanted to share something unique that we learned and really utilize when things start to get crazy during residency. We call them "Hope Days."

Hope Days stem from the verse, 

"Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life." Proverbs 13:12

We started to discover (like, 1 year into our marriage) that when months are insane and we only get a few hours a night to see each other, it makes it hard to really connect. I know right? What a concept. It makes me laugh to think that it took us a while to get this and identify it as something we wanted to overcome. Residency was happening and we knew it was going to take work and strategy, but we weren't really being strategic with it. And that is where Hope Days came from!

Hope Days are days where DrH and I schedule our time together every week. It becomes our goal, our "hope" and helps keep us motivated to get through it- knowing on Saturday or Monday night or whenever we decided, we were going to do something together, just us, with no distractions. Whether that was driving 30 minutes to Dominic's (which is an AMAZING Italian place) or spending the entire day doing things we've been wanting to do for weeks.

I love the fact we started this and it was so awesome. It gave me purpose during the week to buckle down and clean the crap out of everything, do laundry, meal plan, pay bills, and basically do everything so no errands or chores needed to happen on Hope Day. DrH would plan out what we were going to do, and I would work to keep the house in preparation. All in all, it has been one of the coolest things we've learned together in our marriage.

We loved thinking about the Biblical application to this scenario. In Hebrews 11 it states,"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Meaning that when we read our Bibles and see the truth in God's word, hope is knowing that what we've read is going to happen. It brings us comfort- even though we can't see it. Hope is a beautiful thing.

After hoping for our Hope Day all week, it felt like a tree of life when we got it. The small things like an hour long, in depth conversation over dinner was amazing...

So here is to a new month, new Hope Days, and another rollercoaster ride of rotations. :)

Love,
A Physician's Wife