Dear God,
The seasons changing in my life give me a pit in my stomach. I feel a mix of pride for how far I’ve come thanks to Your provisions. I look at the doctors/mentors who’ve shaped me, the relationships I’ve made along the way and the ones here since the start, and the opportunities You give to me. Growing is painful. I don’t miss being a first year, but I definitely can’t say I can own the full title of doctor. As great of an honor as it’ll be (if I get there), I want it to be just me and You for a little bit before I get there. Actually, it’ll always be me and You even if I get there. I’ve always been somebody to You. Here’s to a goodbye and a hello, but not for us.
Love,
Grace
Sometimes when I enter my destination on whatever transit app I’m using, even if it takes longer I’ll use the route I’m more familiar with. I sense my nerves right away, even if once this route was just as new, I’m used to where it starts and where it stops. That peace of mind is somehow worth the minutes I might shave if I decide to take a new path.
I’ve done it already twice this week, and just as I write this on my last day from my 2nd externship a B70 bus passes me by. I stared at it for a brief moment, yes, I could take it to the N then transfer to my next train. Google Maps assures me when I look on my phone that I can definitely take this route to go home. But I usually take the B8! I tell myself it’ll come soon, and then I can take that home.
I feel silly because I’m such a creature of habit. I just want that familiarity on my last day. Then another B70 comes before a B8 does, and this time with one last glance to quadruple check I can take this bus I hop on.
Sometimes I’m scared because what if I get lost if I take this unknown path even with a fully charged phone and live transit map. I don’t like that uncomfortable feeling, the ? I’ve mentioned in my previous blog over my life.
It makes sense. I work in the field of seeing. To have vision, you have to have clarity on what you’re looking at. Crisp 20/20 letters.
For the same reason, I also didn’t enjoy working in glaucoma for example. Too many unknowns. When do you call someone a glaucoma suspect? When do you decide to treat? When do you say there’s progression? In my (just now) past rotation, I realized it’s a combination of “just enough” and we weigh the risks vs benefits. We have enough to say it’s possible someone has glaucoma, and that to treat now or differently is worth waiting and seeing.
Sometimes it’s also okay to say I’m not sure, but then you should have the humility to send your patient to someone who could know! It’s not the end if you don’t know, but we need to ask for help. Maybe someone else will know is the best treatment you can give to some patients.
It’s even better to know when you don’t know something, and then to have the wherewithal to step back. Stepping back is not a weakness when it makes room for someone more capable to step in.
I’m learning that “I don’t know” can be part of the answer to the solution. I guess I thought when I become a doctor, which is my prayerful hope, I’ll be calling all the shots with confidence. What my doctors have shown me at my rotation is that they have that confidence because they know their boundaries. When they can and when they can’t.
As I head back to school, I feel my nerves. I had a nightmare recently that there were a bunch of bugs popping up around me, and when I killed the last one, out of the corner a red and white striped snake emerged. I knew I couldn’t do anything to a snake. It was foolish to even try. I woke up thankfully after a fruitless attempt with a broomstick to keep it at bay. It’s a silly dream, but I think that’s a good analogy to what I’m dealing with now.
At school, I feel like neither a jack of all trades or master of one. I’m afraid to look dumb in front of my doctors when in six months I should be on my own. Is it okay if I fall? Ask for help? Don’t pretend like I know? I want to be honest, but honestly that scares me. I’m figuring it out still. I’m wincing as I go, but God never fails to hold my hand and surround me with people who know how to help me get to where I need to be.
Saying goodbye to my doctors this past week made me feel like a baby bird that just got its wings. Even though I have 6 more months ahead, I only have 6 more months ahead, and the last 3 months have prepared me beyond my education into the kind of person and potential optometrist I’m going to be.
I grew in my didactic world, clinical assessments, skill set, and team work. I shocked myself by the sheer amount of patients I saw from start to finish, the work I got to accomplish with my doctors guiding me, and the will to keep going down this path I chose.
There are just some things that take time. When I first started my externship, I actually broke down and cried because I felt so overwhelmed. My doctor listened and emphasized that I wasn’t expected to have it all now. That wasn’t what they were expecting, and I had made up an altar of who I thought I should be by now. Should is such a dangerous word in the wrong hands, I realize, because should can come with shame and disappointment without grace, perseverance, and patience. After three months, I was able to grow in the soil of all three into a stronger more well-rounded clinician. These are things you can’t express ship to yourself or earn without putting some skin in the game.
What I want to do before heading into new battlegrounds is spend some time with God. I, of course, plan to review my notes, look at all the endless documents on how each of my several clinics run, and get a good night's sleep. However, in all that preparation, I look to Jesus’ example of what he did before heading into his ministry.
I don't remember reading him practicing sermons on the mount, rehearsing how he’d call out to simple fishermen to become his disciples, or planning the best route to Samaria. Maybe he did all those things. My only account is how he takes himself into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights. This is after his baptism by John. After God said to him, You are my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. This is after Jesus is already loved and known does he go off to spend time with just him and God.
When I think about Jesus, I don’t think those days were full of productivity or strategizing how to win the hearts and souls of his people. I imagine they were full of moments where they’re walking together, talking, looking at the sky, eating some grilled fish, and prayers upon prayers.
There would be a time where he would be preaching, flipping tables, healing lepers and blind men, ending one woman’s 12 years of suffering, feeding 5000s, and ultimately dying on a cross for the very people who put him there. There would be a time, but those 40 days wouldn’t be about that.
Were those 40 days lesser because he wasn’t healing or preaching or doing? God is teaching me the power of presence. The strength that comes only out of residing and abiding. That we experience first and imitate after. A child spends time with their father, just being a child, before learning what it means to be an adult.
As I say goodbye to the first half of the fourth year, I say go with a hunger for precious moments to spend with God, just Him and me, before bulldozing ahead. They come in the form of worship songs as I climb up the stairs of my train station or quick prayers as I eat my yogurt for breakfast.
I must say it’s weird to be back at school. At one point it was familiar, but in so many ways it’s changed and so have I. I’m also in several different clinics throughout the day. I don’t know if I can adapt under the pressure, but I pray for freedom from the fear of failure. I’m taking things one moment at a time.
This is the closest I’ve been to the finish line, yet there are so many hurdles still ahead.
There are few goodbyes I find myself looking forward to, and it’s easy to feel like once I finish school I’ll just be content. I won’t want a new chapter. I’ll feel satisfied.
- - -
3 weeks back in school Grace speaking here, and I must say that coming back to school for clinic feels a bit like moving away then moving back to your hometown (note: I speak as someone who has yet to move away from home). You feel the familiarity and you remember the person you were when you left. You also feel strangely out of place as the person you are now.
As I enjoy the holiday season, it comes with a rush of anticipation and the knowledge that 6 months will pass quicker than you’d imagine. I’ll be taking the second part of my board exam next week and the third/final part next month (prayers welcomed and appreciated).
In my haste to get through this quarter back at school, I know that this may be the last time I see some of my classmates and doctors before I leave. I know that when I graduate I will simultaneously welcome freedom as well as the responsibility of someone’s vision/eye care.
I’ve come to some degree of conclusions about how I foresee the rest of the quarter panning out. As much as I do enjoy teaching, I don’t see myself in an academic institution or residency. I think I’ve invested enough of my time, energy, and the past nearly four years (even more counting undergrad and the years leading up to it), and I’m ready to lead a more balanced and sustainable life.
Sometimes, I wonder if God really knew this is how it would all pan out. That heartbreak could lead me to a deeper, more genuine relationship with Himself and others. That disappointment could reveal the hidden idols that I needed to first be cleansed of before I could fully enjoy the gifts given to me. That moments of victory could look like closed doors or can bud from gardens of my human frailties and mistakes. How God does this is beyond my comprehension.
As I also greet 2025, I must admit that 2024 has been a whirlwind of wonderful, bittersweet, challenging, at times agonizing, and humbling moments that God has single-handedly walked with me through. I still stand by God’s grace and not on my own two feet.
I think the hope I have with this blog is that as you might reflect on your own life and past year that throughout it all you would know the surpassing presence of God in your own life. I have not done my own walk perfectly by any means, but that’s not the point. The point is that even when I forget, when I am far or restless, that through Jesus we have the space to come back to God and for God to constantly be with us.
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