I saw a Twitter post yesterday from @lecrae, a Christian hip-hop artist who tweeted:

Hey (insert clever quote) Look at me! ( insert joke) I'm insecure. (insert deep quote) Admire me. (insert spiritual jargon).

Which he then followed up with the tweet:

Gotta love Twitter. It tells the truth in more ways than one.

I spent some time reflecting on that because a lot of my posts on my blog/Facebook/Twitter end up about me, what I'm doing and what I'm thinking (including this one!). I had to wonder if it's all for the purpose of selfishness, drawing attention to one's self.

Contrast that to Carolyn's recent blog posts which have showcased her own challenge of doing the "Love Dare". She started doing this daily "Love Dare" for Lent which has her focusing on one loving action towards her husband (me) each day for 40 days. She's been keeping a running blog report of how things go each day. It's humbling being on the receiving end of this as each day she does something to love me, even when I'm being self-centered. Ultimately it points to how God's grace is at work in her life as it pertains to our marriage, but it also demonstrates how much better of a wife she is than I am of a husband. I'm so grateful for her.

A few months ago, our church laid out a challenge to several individuals: take $100 and multiply it for the Kingdom of God. Seven thousand dollars was given out to various people in our church. It was up to us to decide on how to spend it. That money came back as $37,000! The money will be used for charity, helping local schools and churches in the area. It was a lesson of how our resources could be used for God's Kingdom.

Last week, another challenge was given at church. This time take something that you own worth $100 (or more) and sell it so that the money can be used again to serve other local charities and those less fortunate than ourselves. Immediately (and quite selfishly I might add) I used the opportunity to think about all the things I might want to get rid of SO THAT I would have an excuse to buy a new replacement. But I realized shortly afterwards that that would have been missing the point. Our pastor so effectively taught us on Sunday that by God's grace we have everything that we need, so out of the abundance of His provision we should give abundantly to others. Still, I could use that money myself to buy a brand new laptop or a new camera body, but I know that the money is far better utilized and reaches further in this world when I give it to someone who really needs it. But the temptation is still there because I really like buying shiny new toys! Oh how easily I am torn! What I really need is a change of heart. I think this Kingdom Assignment will be a good means of grace for me to move towards that. While I've been learning about not needing the nicest things, I still need to learn about being generous with the money that I don't end up spending, rather than just shifting it towards something else I want.

In the end, I've decided to sell my Nintendo Wii and give that money to the church. I decided on the Wii mainly because I don't play it anymore, but also because there's nothing that I am tempted to directly replace it with-- there's no such thing as a Super Ultra Wii 64, or something like that. Carolyn has also decided to sell something of hers; more on what she decides later. I'll also post later on what Wii and Wii accessories I'll end up selling.

I always felt that talking about research was boring, and I try to make it a point to avoid talking about my research in social settings. But the other day, my bible study explicitly asked me to finally explain my research to them. One person thought that the reason I never talked about what I worked on was because I thought that they wouldn’t understand it. In reality I felt like no one really wanted to hear a long-winded exposition about cardiovascular disease, ultrasound, and lasers.

So I realized maybe some people want to know. I figured I’d write a little blurb about what I do for those out there.

The rationale for my work is based on detecting/treating cardiovascular disease which is one of the leading causes of death in the US. Cardiovascular disease is usually caused by atherosclerosis, which is a narrowing of the vessel walls. Sometimes, the fatty plaques that build up in atherosclerosis can rupture and block blood flow causing a heart attack. One question we're trying to answer is, how can we detect the presence of these vulnerable plaques?

There's a relatively new laser-based imaging method called "photoacoustic imaging" which involves using a pulsed laser to irradiate tissue, which translates the laser energy into acoustic waves detectable by ultrasound transducers. Combined with traditional intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) which can show us the structure of the vessel, intravascular photoacoustic (IVPA) images can show the high optical absorbers in the vessel such as from collagen, or lipid build up, potentially revealing the presence of plaques. So essentially I fire lasers into blood vessels to detect the fat content in them ("pew pew pew"). You can see from the figure below that only the plaque content lights up in the IVPA image.

I've also been using this imaging technique in imaging metal objects such as stents. Cardiac stents are widely used today to treat atherosclerosis. But over time stents can degrade, drift, and are susceptible to atherosclerosis re-forming over the stent. So photoacoustic imaging can be used to monitor the integrity and position of the stent. Through image processing, a true 3d visualization of the stent and vessel can be reconstructed. So the picture below is an experiment I did to separately visualize the stent in the vessel apart from the structrual anatomy of the vessel itself.

So that's a quick run-down of what I work on. On any given day I can probably be found running experiments, writing about my experiments, or doing an number of odd-jobs around the lab.

On Monday a co-worker asked me how my house-hunting had gone over the weekend. "House hunting?" I asked.

He responded, "Yeah, didn't you say you were gonna be looking at houses this past weekend?"

We went back and forth trying to figure out why he thought that. That is, until I realized that last Friday I had told him that this weekend would be spent "Crib shopping".

Crib shopping was pretty insightful. There are a LOT of cribs out there. I originally thought that the Target/Walmart cribs were really nice... until we went to these baby boutique stores. Did you know that you could buy a crib for the price of a small house? I kinda had a small freak-out session in the middle of "Babies R Us" when I started seeing quadruple digit price tags. But after a while I started seeing how nice looking these boutique cribs were--almost like the Cadillacs of cribs. We did go back to Wal-mart later and see their selection of cribs again. By then I felt like we HAD to have the best crib money could buy. No child of mine will be sleeping in a cheap-o Target crib!

But I thought back on my childhood. My parents raised both my sister and I in a pretty cheap crib that neither of us can easily remember. My parents told me that that crib had actually been handed down twice to us, and when we were done with it, my parents handed it down to another family at our church. Do I miss it? No. Do I even remember it? No. Did I feel like I missed out on anything by not having a boutique crib? Definitely not. And I know that my parents don't feel like that either.

I used to think that my parents weren't as happy back when they first had me because they didn't have much money with my dad being in grad-school and they were living in a small 1 bedroom apartment in Houston. Looking back at old baby pictures, I always noticed the difference in what they had then vs what they have now and thought how much happier must they be now. But as Carolyn and I closely parallel their situation some 30 years later, I realize that there is a sense of joy regardless of what we have. The Bible says, "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!". There is great joy in coming home to our small apartment filled with the smells of dinner cooking on the stove. Being greeted by my beautiful wife who selflessly puts her family's needs before her own. Retelling the experiences of the day as we unwind on the couch.

Boutique crib? Nah.