The med school chapter

So I’ve been debating and debating on whether or not I should start a new blog while I’m in med school or just keep this one up and going.

My reason for starting a new blog would be that the China chapter, the big interruption in my life, has ended. I didn’t see med school as an interruption … it was the perfectly normal path my life was supposed to take.

Or so I thought before China.

Now, it’s almost like med school is interrupting China. Don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled beyond belief to be here. It is an honor and a privilege to study the human body, one that I humbly accept. Every day I wake up and I say to myself, “Is this real life?”

It is real life. As surreal as it is to sit in a classroom of 165, learning with the best and the brightest, to have my hands inside a real human body in Anatomy Lab, to be studying the most fascinating aspect of God’s creation … this is my reality.

Last week I stood with my classmates and was “sworn in” to the study of medicine. It was one of the most precious moments of my life, because out of the corner of my eye, there stood my Dad, reciting the Hippocratic Oath with me and the other students and the physicians in the room. Tears came to my eyes at that moment because it dawned on me the responsibility I was taking on, the one I have watched my Dad carry for my entire life.

People joke that I was born to be a doctor. I used to believe that.

But now I understand that I was not born to be a doctor. I was called to be a doctor. There’s a distinct difference. Yes one could say medicine is in my blood, passed down from my Dad and the result of having two volumes of medical records by the time I was ten years old.

But it’s not a birthright. It’s a calling. Or rather, it’s part of my calling.

I was not born to be a doctor.  I was born to be a servant of the Most High, to glorify Him in all that I do, to serve Him above everything else. And I am privileged enough that the way I get to do that is through the art of healing.

That’s where my focus needs to be. On Him. Him alone.

Every day here my heart is torn. I am loving being in medical school, but I am missing China terribly. Med school is now interrupting my China life.

So I’m not going to start a new blog. This one is going to be both the China blog and the med school blog.

Because after all, they’re both life interruptions. But then again, they’re not.

And that’s a God thing.

Getting my white coat. I'm on the far right in the gray dress.

My beautiful parents. Couldn't have made it here without them