What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

I stopped by the hospital to shadow the on-call chaplain today. While there, I filled out some paperwork that included pages of questions to which I answered “no.” Had the questionnaire read like this, however, then my answers would have all been “yes”:

• Has sensitivity to strong smells.
• Gets squeamish around blood and other bodily fluids.
• Has trouble reading maps.
• Gets lost easily.
• Has trouble memorizing acronyms and profession related language and jargon.
• Struggles with issues of death and dying, especially as they relate to children and/or impact friends and family members of the deceased.
• Feels deep sadness for senior adults whose bodies are withering away.
• Has boundary issues.
• Fears dying alone.

If you know me well, then you know that I often thank God for not calling me into the medical field. There is no part of me that has ever desired to be a doctor, nurse, physician’s assistant, office worker, or anything else in the medical field.

Yet…I find myself on the brink of beginning an internship at a hospital where I will be surrounded by all of the things that I fear the most.

I keep asking myself, “What have I gotten myself into?”

I started re-reading My Utmost For His Highest on January 1st. I read it while in college and recently had a quiet desire to revisit its pages.

On day one, I read, “But before we choose to follow God’s will, a crisis must develop in our lives…God brings us to the place where God asks us to be our utmost for him and we begin to debate. God then providentially produces a crisis where we have to decide—for or against. That moment becomes a great crossroads in our lives.”

On day two, I read, “‘He went out, not knowing where he was going (Hebrews 11:8).’ Have you ever ‘gone out’ in this way? If so, there is no logical answer possible when anyone asked you what you are doing…You don’t know what you are doing to do. The only thing you know is that God knows what God is doing.”

Thank you, Oswald Chambers, for writing those lines for me in 1935.

So…what have I gotten myself into? I’ve gotten myself into God.

And I’ve answered these questions with a resounding yes:

• Loves God.
• Loves People.
• Is ready and willing to do the work…even if it means jumping off a cliff into a sea of the unknown…medical field.