Confessions.

I am terrified of wasting my life.

There--I said it.

Here's the thing. I've spent most of the last 11 years of my young life trying to find my place in this world, trying to do something that will count. Something that will change lives for eternity. Something that will bring unchanging hope and peace to the darkest corners of the world. I've dreamt about it. I've tossed and turned in my bed many sleepless nights wondering how on earth my life can change someone else's.

One thing has lead to another and here I am today in my third year of med school, arriving rather firmly and affirmedly at a decision to pursue OB/GYN. I love OB/GYN and have for a long time. I love the primary care, the surgery, the babies, the ladies, the whole nacho.

And while my passion to live a life that affects change and inspires hope in the lives of others around the globe has remained unchanged, let's not lie--my life for the past 4 years has been all about none other than me, me, me, and well, me. How will I get into med school? Where will I go to med school? How will I survive med school? How will I make the grades? Where will I go to residency? Will I get to go where I want to go? How much longer do I have to stay at this dreary hospital today? I take call how often?! When do I get to nap?! Do I really have to do that?! And I guess, partly it has to be this way--I do need to study. I do need to work. And, well, the good Lord knows, I do need some sleep from time to time too. And it would also be nice to make sure I have some plan as to what I'm doing when I graduate next year.

(Geez, if I had that many new I's all the blind folk in Texas would be able to see by next week.)

However, I feel rather self-absorbed lately thinking and planning and scheming and trying my best to sell myself to attendings to make the grade and get favorable evaluations. And I often have to stop and recollect and ask myself why I really do all this anyhow. What was that thing about changing the world again? And is that even possible? And will I be old and grey and disillusioned once I am finally trained to do all this stuff? Oh, and do I have to go there ALONE? O geez... A whole 'nother fear for a whole 'nother blog!

But I have these friends who, and read blogs about and hear of folks, just normal folks like me, who are doing INCREDIBLE things right now to reach the nations with clean water and save women from human trafficking and help starving kids learn how to grow crops for whole villages and do just about anything to suffer with the suffering and shed any amount of the light of hope possible into dark, dark places.

My heart about beats out of my chest when I read of it.

And I wonder if my life will ever amount to anything....

I wonder if I will ever finish all this doctor-making stuff, first of all!

Then, I wonder when it's all said and done, if I will bite into the American "dream" and find myself in 10 years buying a new house and driving a new car and living in the suburbs sending a few dollars over every now and again so I can feel good about myself and feel like I am helping out. I wonder if I will find myself living the doctor high life and never having done anything that really matters.

I wonder if I will get too chicken to ever make the wild, crazy, risky decision to just GO. To drop what the world has convinced me I "deserve" and go somewhere dark and bleak and miserable and hard and uncomfortable and joyous and beautiful.

I wonder if I will be bold enough to follow those dreams that often haunt me at night and that come to life when I read of others willing to give their lives for something beyond themselves.

So, in short, I am afraid of wasting my life. Of settling for less. Of becoming numb to suffering around the world and not daring to do something about it. Of getting tired and jaded and of feeling as if I deserve comforts and trinkets and treasures.

I am afraid of forfeiting all my dreams and what I've worked so hard to obtain only for an empty box of perishable goods.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer says it like this in "The Cost of Discipleship"--

Costly Grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciples leaves his nets and follows him. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.

May my heart not be lured so much toward the world and all its trimmings and trappings, but to the grace which costs me my life that I may find my only true life!


-J

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."

-Jim Elliot, missionary and matryr