Living sacrifice

My first few weeks of medical school were difficult to say the least. Still processing my trip to East Africa and moving to different state took much more of a toll on me than I ever expected! For the first 2 or 3 weeks I could barely focus on my school work and that doesn’t bring about great results in med school! I was just barely passing every exam until I flat out failed my first exam. Microbiology. I would like to say that I got my act together, pulled my self up by my bootstraps and that was the end of that. But that was not the case. Slowly I began coming out of this ‘funk.’ I was able to study and understand more rather than memorize random facts, put them together and apply them. Through all of this God has given me so much peace about life in general. I am honestly beginning to love Him more than ever before!

Just this last week, I had my second microbiology test. Obviously I needed to do extremely well on it. The weekend before I had already gone over everything up to that point and was feeling pretty good about it. 3 days before the exam we had 4 more lectures covering all the gram positive, negative and atypical bacteria that were medically relevant. That is a lot of bacteria just in case you don’t know! We had to know their physical characteristics, how they got into the body, what diseases they cause, symptoms they caused etc. It was so overwhelming. I spent the entire time those next 2 days studying those bacteria. So here’s the scene 2 days before the exam: 1:00am I have my coffee, my laptop and I am desperately trying to finish the last of like 200 flash cards while my head is throbbing from a major headache. I got about 5 hours of sleep that night and then sat through 6 hours of lectures to come home and learn the flashcards. I knew the material, sort of. I did not know every little detail of each one but I could give you a general picture. But that’s all I could do. When I finished studying I knew depending on how hard the test was I could either fail it or do really well.

So as I prayed all that day and early the next morning, I had so much peace knowing that God knew I would be facing this, He knew what would be on the test and He brought me here still. I gave it to Him as my offering, knowing that all my hard work was not just for a grade, but to honor what God has called me to. He told me to go to medical school, so here I am. I am not here for a degree but something far greater. Once He pulled my focus back on Him the outcome of the test seemed far less significant. And, even when He didn’t have to, God came through for me on that exam. I had such a clear mind, was able to think so well, and the professor was very generous in his questions. They were not easy questions, but he gave you plenty of information to deduce the answer.  

I spent Friday afternoon recuperating. This weekend I have been catching up on all the lectures I ignored last week because of micro and studying for my 2 tests next week, one on Monday and one on Wednesday. See, it never ends. And it doesn’t seem as though it ever will at least not for the next 7 years. But yet again God has proved Himself faithful to me.

Saturday morning Macy and I went to the CMDA (Christian Medical and Dental Association) Bible study. It is run by 3 second year students at my school. What an encouragement these ladies are to me each week! We have been discussing Galatians and how our relationship with Christ is based solely on what Christ did for us, how we can never ‘do’ anything to make Him love us less or more. How He is our purpose, our prize, and when we focus on Him He adds in the rest.  Praise His name!