Science Guide

There is a certain comfort in being helpless... assuming that you know the point of your helplessness.  As I have written, I found out about medical school recently.  I am going to school for sure.  God has been faithful in that arena, and glory be to him for it. And I mean it...

When I found out that I was on the waitlist, I was disappointed (as I wrote about in this space previously).  As time went on, I began preparing for the possibility that I was not going to get into school this year.  I was praying about taking the MCAT again, and I was praying about whether this was even the will of God or if it was my will that I was trying to impose on God.  The feeling of helplessness grew.  The feeling of being totally out of control began to creep up and bite me.

That was the way it should have been.  I believe that God is completely and totally sovereign.  By that, I mean that He is in complete control of everything that happens to me (and for that matter, to all people).  I believe that nothing can befall him and nothing can surprise.  If you do something and think to yourself that you have pulled a fast one on God, keep thinking that... it is a dream, a wish, a fantasy.  If God does not control everything that happens in this world, then we have no reason to think or believe that He controls anything in this world.  It is the "all or none principle" (also, interestingly enough, a principle of muscle contraction).  So when I started feeling this helplessness and frustration, I didn't necessarily think that meant anything in and of itself.  God answers prayers and does not grant wishes all the time, even though they come from fervent prayers of Godly men and women.  He knew and had worked it out that I would get in this year, on the very day that I found out.  But the answer at the time was "wait awhile" for a reason - He wanted to grow me.  He wanted to teach me.  He wanted to do something with my heart that  a "yes"  two months ago would have not accomplished.

I was with my dad a good bit this weekend in Birmingham.  My dad is a pillar of faith.  Although we differ in some ways, my dad is one of the wisest men I know.  He has been spot on in so many ways.  Many of the little sayings that I have and the ways I live my life are direct quotes and exact replicas of who he is (sometimes for worse, mostly for better).  One of the things that I have said before (but that he reminded of) is this... "When something happens that is unexplainable, that is beyond your control, know that God has you there for a reason, and enter with confidence."  That is the way that I have been thinking about this glorious gift that I have been given.  Getting into medical school is totally and completely a gift.  It is nothing of my own doing.  If I were to say that I worked hard and that I deserved it, I would be putting myself in place of God, because who was it that gave me the brain to understand concepts and ideas that enabled me to test well enough to get into school?  On another front, my grades are average, maybe even slightly below average for medical students.  My MCAT scores are slightly below average for medical students.  I don't have as much clinical experience as other people who got in, and probably not as much as some people who didn't get in.  While I think that my letters of recommendation were from good sources, there are probably people who had better.

Why do I say this? Because I want to be self-deprecating so as to make myself look humble?  Absolutely not.  The reason I say this is to make sure that you know the reason I got into school.  It is a matter of grace - unmerited, undeserved favor and esteem.  That, incidentally, is the reason why we have everything we have.  Everything that we have, good and bad, is a matter of grace.  Every good in our life is a blood-bought gift, a gift that we would not have had He (Jesus Christ) not died.  Every bad thing that God turns to good is the same.  So when people congratulate me, I try (though not as well as I should) to remind them of this point.  It is not me.  I Corinthians 15:10, cliche though it may be, is truth: "By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me."  I want to live my life so that the things that occur in my life can only be explained by saying "God did it."  And you know what?  That is comforting.  Do you know how much stress that takes out of the equation?  Do you know how much anxiety that will relieve?

Just to be sure I am understood, this is not a call to laziness.  I am about to enter into a professional program that will demand work that I have never been subjected to.  I will have to work hard, and that is my calling.  But the issue is not ultimately how hard I work, but how God works though me and in my hard work.  As was the case in getting in, I want people to be able to point towards God when they look at my success in medical school.  I want them to say, "There must be something to his relationship with God, because there is no way in the world he could have done that by himself."  That would be the highest compliment I could be given - not "man, you're sure working hard" or "wow, look at him go," but "Wow, isn't God good? Isn't He powerful? I want to talk to him about Him."