This month I started a new season of my career. As a fresh green attending out of fellowship less than 6 months I had my first medical student. It has been a little difficult remembering what these 3rd year medical students know and aiming to teach and point out things that are useful. I think at times I get over zealous in teaching and go too far. So, recently I went back to read my prior blogs around the time when I was about to start my clinicals. Man, did the Lord teach me even just reading what I wrote 6 years ago. At the time of the blog I just read (June 29th 2014), I had just finished board exam #2 of 6 and sat by the ocean contemplating what kind of clinician I would be when faced with the suffering of my patients. Even then I was praying that the Lord would use me to bring hope, love and comfort in the darkest nights. My eyes were set on the only Hope Himself. As I read through this I thought of the faces behind the hardest cases, the lives touched by suffering I could never have imagined. I had no idea at the time what the Lord was asking me to walk in to. Yes, He has been faithful. So many times during medical school the cry of my heart was “God, I need you!” I would surrender it all to Him confessing that if He did not come through I was done. I would cry out as Moses did in Exodus 33, Lord if you do not go with me, do not send me! The common thread throughout my medical school and residency career was my utter dependance on God.
Yes, residency was hard. The hours, the lack of sleep, the amount of information and knowledge, the hard cases, and the sheer number of cases it all stretched you to the brink. Yet, in my last year as the Lord allowed me to grow as a physician I grew comfortable and began having some pride in my work. And as soon as I hit a good stride it was over. Fellowship was a good year, but again as soon as I seemed to get settled the Lord moved me again.
So, now I find myself finally done with school after 25 years. My first “real” job but it looks nothing like I ever imagined. I’m living in a state I have no ties to nor had any desire to ever live in. I’m in the US and not overseas, I don’t’ have either of my long time companions through school. I’m still single. I’m finally through the end of the tunnel (and what a long tunnel it was) and I find myself still discontent. How is it that when I started this journey God was enough, but now that it is over my heart is no longer there? For the first time in 8 years I have the free time of a college student but I have no studying that must be done. For years when people asked what I liked to do for fun my answer was sleep. But now I actually get to sleep like normal people and I have found myself struggling with a “normal” life. What do I like to do? What would make me happy? Who am I? It seems a little dramatic, but these are for real the questions that have been circling in my head the past few months. For course, COVID makes things worse and harder to get to know other people in the area or get out and find fun things to do. But should that even matter? As a young attending I would also find myself second guessing my every decision at work because now there is no one looking over my shoulder to catch my mistakes. Almost daily again I am back to that long time prayer, “God I need you” again if He doesn’t come through then I have nothing to give. But I’m tired of this endless cycle of survival mode and changing and taking 3 steps forward and 5 steps back. Add in the pressure of the state of our earthy country and it is too easy to be discouraged.
Yet, the Lord did not give us a spirit of fear, and over and over we are told that Christ is enough (2 Peter 1:3). I’m tired of not being all that God has called me to be. There obviously has to be more. So, as our church started a series on Ecclesiastes I felt as though it couldn’t be more relevant. Solomon, king of Israel, wisest man to ever live, and wealthiest man to ever live. In all his wisdom and all is wealth what he writes to us is that it is all vanity. And can we not see it in our everyday lives today? COVID hit, and so many people are waiting on human wisdom to come up with a solution, a vaccine so we can get ‘back to normal.’ Yet, as a vaccine is rolling out (which really has been an amazing scientific feat) new variants of the virus form reminding us that we really are no match for what is going on. And, really do I even need an example of how material wealth doesn’t provide happiest but rather actually causes quite the opposite? Time and time again we hear of people who thought money was the answer only to find they were more empty inside. But the one that got me and has helped me take a step closer to being who God is calling me to be, is that even our work is all vanity.
Y’all, I just spent 8 years of my life, AFTER college to become a pediatric sports medicine physician. I have sacrificed time, and sleep, and food, and money, and brain power, and sweat and tears for this. And yet I have felt the weight of the emptiness as I face a family looking to me for answers when I have none to give. I have worked and worked and worked to save a life when it seems to slip away despite all the toil. And, to be honest, 10 out of 10 people die. So what am I doing anyway? Only prolonging the inevitable? Why did God put me through all of that? Why is it that I can make correct decisions all day long but if I miss one single detail I feel as though I failed and the day is wasted? This is the reality when we face medicine, or anything really without the foundation of Christ. I didn’t go into medicine for what it brings me, or the joy I get from being a great doctor. I didn’t go into medicine to become wise or wealthy. I didn’t go into medicine to save the world. I went because I was called. I went in obedience and for the glory of God. And as Solomon reveals in his book, this is the ONLY thing that gives life meaning.
The past few weeks I have been praying for the Lord to change my heart. As I don’t really remember all the hobbies and ‘things’ that used to bring me happiness, I am faced with an opportunity to fill my free time with something that truly matters. I can see Him starting to do this at work. Each day I have to surrender to Him every patient, family member, and colleague that I will encounter that day I can feel His Spirit giving me peace, joy and wisdom as I work. I can truly say I enjoy my job, and not because of all the earthly benefits. I really think that even if all my loans were paid off, my retirement set and I had enough money to live on, I think I would still be a pediatrician for free. I enjoying being the hands and feet of God. But, when it comes to life outside of work I have struggled finding my footing. I really don’t know what I want. And so I feel myself drifting. With no studying to do it’s too easy to waste time watching TV or anything to turn your mind off. Not that these are bad things in and of themselves. But as this happens I feel myself having a harder time hearing God speak and the lies that Satan throws at me seems to make sense and are even louder.
For the past few days my mind has wanted to drift into made up worlds of “what if.” Why is it that it’s so much easier to live in unreality. Are we, am I, running from something? Or am I just so lazy that when I’m not forced to be present I prefer to be in a world of my own making instead of facing the daily grind with all that it brings? Last night as I just let my mind drift I realized for the first time in a long time that it did not bring the peace or escape from reality I was hoping. See the past few weeks the Lord has been refining me in such a way that even I can see His face more clearly. This past year brought so much heart ache and a deeper pain than I have ever felt. But, I think the Lord is finally showing me the fruit of that season as I continue to move forward towards Him. And so last night as I tried to just let my mind go watching television or day dreaming or even just sleeping it occurred to me that these things really do not fulfill me, they are all in fact vanity. They dull my mind to what the Lord is teaching me and make it harder to see Him and be changed by Him. So, I decided to read something productive last night instead. As I opened “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality” by Peter Scazzero the very first line of the chapter I was on read, “There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality.” Yeah, no joke. I paused. Wow Lord, I think you are trying to tell me something. You see, what the Lord is making more and more clear to me is that what I want is joy, and peace, and rest. And while it seems like I can get some of those things watching Netflix all day long or daydreaming of a better day really I can only find those things in Him. Just like Solomon said thousands of years ago. So, this morning as I began my prayers before diving in the Word I started with my common cry, “God, I need you” and yet for the first time I can remember, as if from an overflow of my soul I cried, “I want YOU. And only you.”
What an amazing wonderful grace that the Lord would sanctify me in such a way as to show me that no other things in the life are worthy of my “want” but Him. That truly nothing else satisfies and nothing else can be used in its proper form until we are right with God Himself. Because when He satisfies us, everything else is in its proper place. I can enjoy friendships, and singleness, and my job, and my free time because I am already satisfied in Christ and they are all icing on the cake. And then when one or more of them are taken away, my foundation is secure and my Hope remains. Sanctification is a beautiful thing. And what makes it even sweeter is that apart from any of my own doing, God Himself chose to draw me closer and make me more like Himself. Grace, amazing grace! My prayer for you is that you too would want Him above all else. And that you would the find complete satisfaction in the only One who gives purpose and meaning to life.
