More growing pains

I don't know if I'm supposed to write about serious things, personal things in blogs anymore. It seems as if the content of blogs has changed a lot since blogs first came out. I rarely write about personal stuff nowadays mostly because of time (these entries take a lot of time for me to write). However, sometimes physically writing in a journal is not as conducive to me processing certain things than if I was typing it. It's a lot faster and goes more with the stream of my consciousness I guess. The other major reason I post this kind of stuff would be because it's a testimony, a testimony to my weakness and immorality and God's grace. After all, this blog is named "Only Grace" and my name means "God's grace" for a reason....A wise pastor once said "The more we mature as Christians - the more we understand about Christ, God, His holiness and righteousness, the more we see our own wickedness. It's like our target for being Christ-like moves further away. But as that happens, the cross gets bigger"

 So for the past 6 months, I'd say that I've felt at a loss. There's something that's been missing since the start of my second year of med school. I had it my first year and right now, it's not here.  Maybe it's burn out but I don't think it is and it's not really a loss of passion (though I thought it was for the longest time)...I can now say that I think it's growing pains. The more I learn about what God wants me to do, the more God leads me down the pathway of becoming a doctor, the more sacrifices I realize I need to make, the harder the path gets. Naively, I thought that once I got into med school and once I confirmed God's calling in my life, I thought everything would just get easier from there. That I would somehow be able to keep running this marathon called life from there on out without sputtering because I knew my "calling". Ah, but I'd have to say that it's getting harder. Being in med school, studying to become a doctor, being a "doctor" and actually treating patients...each of those was a challenger harder than the one before it, each one more challenging as a Christian because of such inherent evil in the system and in humans (myself included), and each one illuminating such wickedness that I saw inside of myself.

The toughness of this path has been my struggle for the past 6 months. I fought with God. In my passive aggressive way, I ignored Him. And He knew (even better than I knew myself) that I was telling Him, "It's not fair". Why me? Why did You choose me? Why did it have to be a doctor? Why couldn't I have taken an easier path? I found myself lamenting and telling myself things like, 'There are plenty of other things I enjoy doing that wouldn't have required so much work'. I threw plenty of pity parties for myself and in those parties, I rewarded myself and did what I wanted. I've discovered that I'm inherently much lazier, more selfish, more passive aggressive, more sinful than I originally thought. So I lost contact with God here and there because I chose to do so. I'd have ups and downs. Times when I was convicted or really needed Him, I'd talk to Him. When I wanted to do things my way, I'd go for days on end without talking to Him because He was making my life difficult and when life gets difficult, it's easier to ignore it, pretend it's not there. That's a slippery slope...which led me down a path to doing something that has always made me feel the greatest guilt. There is one particular sin of mine that makes me feel the dirtiest I've ever felt in front of God. And so once that happened, I carried this guilt with me for months. Repenting every day but yet not feeling free and not knowing what I needed to do so I cried out to God and poured out everything. And I have to say our God is merciful and loving (not one without the other).

He gently restored me these past 2 weeks. Like Jesus restored Peter after his betrayal, Jesus also restored me 3 times.. First it was a sermon on Sunday about forgiveness. About how forgiveness from God does not rationalize, deny, or minimalize my sin. It's still happened. It's still my fault. But He forgives me and He loves me. And then the next day (monday), I learned about how guilt is one of the major causes for depression in the U.S. The guilt I was carrying was making me depressed. And today (Saturday), with my usual lack of motivation and passion, instead of studying for my family medicine shelf exam (which is in 2 weeks), I watched a movie (Princess of Thieves). And the quote at the end, blew me away.

Philip: It's not fair. A king should have everything he wants.
Gwyn: That's what I used to say every time my father went to war. 'It's not fair. Why does he love [King] Richard more than his own daughter?' I didn't understand. It wasn't Richard he loved. It was something much bigger. Something he held inside himself like a priest carries his faith.

At that moment, I realized what I had been doing all along. It all fit together. It all comes back to the beginning of this mess. I have a God, a purpose for which even the greatest of sacrifices will be worth paying. I just have to get to that point and in that sense, I am still a child. And God is trying to help me to understand, through example (Jesus), through restoration, and through this difficult path. Though I have often prayed and desired in the depths of my heart to have the passion, faith and love the apostles (and even my role models in life) in works of healing and witnessing, how God helps me to get there is another thing entirely.


Phil 3:12-14 - ¹²Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. ¹³Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.