{"id":1722,"date":"2017-05-20T13:44:54","date_gmt":"2017-05-20T18:44:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ashleytauriac.com\/blog\/?p=1722"},"modified":"2017-05-20T13:44:54","modified_gmt":"2017-05-20T18:44:54","slug":"where-do-you-fit-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ashleytauriac.com\/blog\/where-do-you-fit-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Where do you fit in?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Was listening to a lecture about the thyroid gland yesterday and was struck by this incredible thought: your body was designed with a specific purpose and organization in mind.<\/strong><\/span> Obviously you know that on some level, how would you accomplish anything if you were completely unconnected and random? But\u00a0I’ll explain below\u00a0why it was so amazing to me.<\/p>\n

The lecturer was talking about different procedures that could be done associated with the thyroid gland. As we learn frequently during training, he reminded that if a patient had a\u00a0thyroglossal duct cyst-<\/a> basically a collection of tissue with “anomalous thyroid migration”\u00a0where it ends up in a different part of the neck, the surgeon needed to be careful. For awhile, surgeons would remove the cyst completely and by doing so accidentally remove all of the functional thyroid tissue the person had. The person would be left hypothyroid and\u00a0require medication for the rest of their life.<\/p>\n

But the kicker came when he pointed out that they eventually realized\u00a0that if the person’s thyroid tissue was located in the cyst\u00a0it didn’t matter if they\u00a0removed it at that time or not-\u00a0basically the tissue was not normal<\/span> and was\u00a0going to fail eventually. Either they would\u00a0surgically remove it now while it still worked somewhat or they\u00a0would have to do\u00a0it when it failed later.\u00a0I.e.- poor placement left\u00a0it\u00a0unable to do its job well for very long. \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I was floored at the reminder that anything that is poorly positioned or out of place- including ourselves- will not last long on it’s own strength.<\/strong><\/span> There are many applications for that, but mostly I started thinking about our position in the body of Christ. The main strength we have in life that we far too often do not value is our church family.<\/p>\n

God’s mission in our lives<\/a> can be very overwhelming. Just like a thyroid gland having to work for 70+ years without break\u00a0or appreciation, it can be tiresome! But far too often we make it about what we personally can do, instead of what God has given us to do together.<\/p>\n

Because the truth is, you were designed and fashioned and intended to have a specific place in the body, and you can’t do it alone. You can’t ignore the church.\u00a0You can’t just “read your Bible” and “listen to online sermons” and consider yourself set. You will eventually burn out if you are not connected and placed where you were intended to be.<\/p>\n

And more than anything, you never know why your current placement happens or what good can come from it. The best example I have is that I worked for 5 summers at a bank. I was teller, admin, loan organizer… doing all kinds of random things I figured would never impact my life\u00a0as a medical doctor\u00a0again. But one of my last medical missions trips I sat in India counting lakhs.\u00a0The money in India- the rupee- is smaller than in US- so $1 in US was 67 rupees. It\u00a0quickly adds up to a lot of money\u00a0once you exchange it. We had to pay for the hotels and transportation and medical supplies and food\u00a0for\u00a0the entire team and it\u00a0added up to quite a bit in American currency, let alone in rupees. So to make things simpler, when you get up to 100,000 rupees, you are instead given what’s known as a lakh. So we spent an hour or two\u00a0counting out and\u00a0appropriately paying for things with\u00a0lakhs.\u00a0The other trip leader pointed out that it made her nervous- it was\u00a0awkward and difficult to\u00a0count up\u00a0the money and not lose your place. But it didn’t trip me up that much,\u00a0mostly because\u00a0years ago I had a lot of practice counting money when I worked\u00a0as a teller.\u00a0And suddenly, something that seemed completely unrelated to the rest of my life became the lynch pin I needed to get through that trip.<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n

We won’t always know why God places us where\u00a0He does. I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling out of place, serving where it didn’t seem like it mattered,\u00a0working with people that were very different then me, or learning something I figured I would never use again. But it’s only because I was committed to staying where I was placed that I was able to reap the benefits of that obedience and the blessings of that commitment. \u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

So what about you? Where has God placed you that feels at times feels like a poorly fit shoe but might be just the place where you can learn to thrive in a way you couldn’t anywhere else?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ephesians 4:14-16- \u201cThen we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.\u201d\u00a0<\/b><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Anatomy, anything poorly positioned and independent will not last long. What about in life?<\/p>\n

Continue readingWhere do you fit in?<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"In Anatomy, anything poorly positioned and independent will not last long in its own strength.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,67],"tags":[62,12,24,15],"class_list":["post-1722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-medicine","category-mission-of-god","tag-church","tag-identity","tag-strength","tag-teamwork","post_format-post-format-image","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ashleytauriac.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/thyroglossal.jpg?fit=500%2C334&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7N2dc-rM","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ashleytauriac.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ashleytauriac.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ashleytauriac.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ashleytauriac.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ashleytauriac.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1722"}],"version-history":[{"count":83,"href":"https:\/\/www.ashleytauriac.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1806,"href":"https:\/\/www.ashleytauriac.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1722\/revisions\/1806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ashleytauriac.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ashleytauriac.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ashleytauriac.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ashleytauriac.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}