Here I find myself, sleep schedule disrupted as it usually
is with a trip to the island. I went to sleep at 9 PM and awoke around 2:30 AM,
and, now as 4:30 AM approaches, I finally decide to stop trying to sleep. Jet
lag be a cruel mistress. Well, jet lag and the incessant roosters crowing and
dogs barking outside.
Time spent away from the island softens it a bit in your
mind. You think to yourself that it is not so bad, that you can visit for an
exam without it getting to you. But you would be wrong. Tonight, my anxieties
bubbled up incessantly in between rooster crows. My low practice test scores,
all the studying I did not manage to complete, and the relative comparative
success in studies that my peers seem to have, they all slap me in the face
like water lapping over your head as you try to swim above waves in the ocean.
I find myself feeling, once again, the burden of true
isolation. For months, I lived around people. But with the threat of
potentially having to move back to this island pending the results of
tomorrow’s exam, human contact seems a very precious commodity. Thoughts turn
to physical contact and lusts that I have not struggled with in some time.
So I turn to scripture, to those verses that inspired me to
push through the countless discouragements that plagued me before I reached
this point. I turn to Abraham, who believed against the literal impossibility
of having a child and instead put his belief in the hope of the promise that
God gave him. But after Abraham is given this fulfillment of hope, this
embodiment of God’s promises to him in the form of a child, God tells him to
sacrifice the child. This was not simply an act of abandonment of the hopes and
dreams that God has given Abraham. God tells Abraham to kill this child, this personified promise of God.
In that story, Abraham ties up his son so he cannot struggle
against what is to come. The preparations are made and this promise of God is
waiting for the death blow. As Abraham draws back his arm, knife in hand, to
extinguish the life, the hope he had been given, God speaks to him. Abraham is
told that this was a test. To receive the promise, Abraham was tested with
belief. But to continue to live out this promise, to hold onto what God has
bestowed upon him, Abraham was tested with obedience.
So now I sit here, 1200 miles from whatever now remotely
qualifies as home. I have chosen obedience to God over romance, over
friendships, over family, and certainly over my own mental health. I have
focused on myself rather than on others for the sake of helping more others in
the future. I see friends and envy their normal struggles, because with the
daily struggles come weekly reliefs. My daily struggles are typically a matter
of self-discipline; I am my greatest enemy in this.
Is God trying to teach me something through these failures?
Failing over and over with little to no relief? Am I at the point of the sermon
illustration where believing is the most important part, or are my actions
being tested? Is this God’s way of testing my willingness to part with the
calling He has given me?
Perhaps I just need to check my pride. This August, I will
have squeezed two years of medical school into three years. Professors, family,
everyone says that we need to say “when” I become a doctor, not “if”. Hundreds
of thousands of dollars have been thrown at my education, and what is stopping
me from moving on? An exam.
So maybe I should make things more clear, to myself and to
God. I am not in this because I thought highly of myself. On the contrary, I
took the side of the critics (because their opinions were objectively better
founded). In undergrad, I frequently reassessed. I told God that we can screw
my pride and ditch this doctor thing in favor of something in which I am much
more naturally equipped. I always felt that God was giving me a firm “no” on
that every time I approached Him with the subject. Given this, my mindset when
applying to medical schools was that no matter what they told me, no matter how
many extra years it took, I would make it through, provided that it was still
what God had for me. This promise I made to myself and to God has echoed in my
mind every time I face a bleak future of continued work with little relief.
God, if it is your will for me to kill this doctor dream, if
this belief and obedience was some kind of elaborate and costly test, then I
submit it to you. I do not know how one can kill a dream such as this, rather
than merely abandoning, but I wish to be obedient to your will and the
illustrations that you have given in the pursuit of your will.
I give up this whole doctor thing to you. My stake is not in
it. My stake is in you. These are mere years of my life, albeit my youth, but
you are eternity. Please forgive my pride.
I have not heard from God any command to kill this dream. So
now, in the face of the possibility of remaining on this despised island, I
submit it to you, God. I call upon you to work in me during this time. Please
give me success on this exam. I give to you the possibility of the island
again. I give you my lonely days and nights, my selfishness and my wishes to go
out to help others again. This is all yours and always has been, though it may
not have been evidenced by my handling of it. And for that, I am truly sorry.
Please help me to balance school and life and social
aspects, to fight for good and recognize when to act and when to hold my
energies in reserve.
Thank you for the gift of learning. Thank you for the gift
of dreams and promises and the beauty of hindsight. Thank you for crafting me
into the person I am. Please craft me into something newer and better for the
express purpose of serving you. Because you are the reason. For all of it.
Thank you for being, even in the midst of a world’s perceptions that would
attempt to challenge your being.
Amen.
