Lindsay’s Story

As a medical resident in a Boston hospital, what I remember most is the dark and the cold. I worked nights for seemingly months at a time, so it was literally dark most of the time I was awake. My relationships were strained or non-existent. The marathon bombing was my first year, which ruined what had been one of my favorite things about the city. I had to keep telling people that they were going to die, or that their family members were going to die, including a lovely young guy who reminded me of my brother. My uncle died around that time, and after spraining my ankle I limped around the hospital telling people bad news.

But my real limp was inside. I needed to achieve, to perform and I felt like I was failing as a person because things felt so heavy. I expected myself to be calm-assertive, to be unflappable and effortlessly competent. I was told to be the best and the brightest but also approachable and attractive. I wanted to be a helper and make a difference. To earn the grace I’ve had in my life so far. I tried to ignore my awkwardness and my fear of the dark. But many days the dark felt overwhelming, and my attempts to avoid it only made things worse. I was a Christian and had been for years. My call to medicine felt like a call from God, but I hadn’t realized that a real call can be a really tricky kind of idol. My call was so interwoven with the idols of productivity and achievement that I drifted off target while barely noticing it.

I had God, but I felt I needed to do it all without Him. I don’t quite know why. Maybe I didn’t want to bother him with my limp. Perhaps I felt I should handle it myself.

I do know that the atmosphere in Boston was “excel or exit.” I was around other doctors balancing research, publishing and the image of invulnerable perfection. I always felt such shame that I was the exception. I felt like the only one who couldn’t rise to the occasion. That I was a Honda Civic trying to ride with racecars (but that clearly that couldn’t be right, because I had to be a racecar—otherwise what good was I?)

In the middle of my residency, I did a rotation in the Navajo Reservation in remote New Mexico and there in the silence of the desert, God met me. I would run down by the drainage ditch and look at the rock formations in the distance and listen to a sermon series on Eugene Peterson’s “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.”

And in the silence, I reheard my call. I was never called to “win at life” nor to absorb all the mindsets I’d been immersed in. My worth was not dependant on my performance. And I had been so focused on obeying the one part of my call, that until the separation and the silence, I had forgotten that each of our calls is multifaceted.

On the weekends I went camping in nearby National Parks. The canyons and rock arches looked other worldly. They reminded me of the enormity of God, and that I’m also meant to be other worldly. If I was a Honda Civic that was totally fine as long as Jesus was steering the car. Seeing the immensity of the stars in the desert, I could finally see that the heavens really did declare the glory of God. And I was reminded that I am a child of God and that he delights in me. That I don’t have to earn anything. That I can’t control half of what I think I can, and that that’s okay. That Jesus gives us rest.

I’d taken on the yoke of my peers. And I’d added on yoke after yoke to try to increase my excellence in an attempt to finally earn my calling and my blessings. But in the high desert, and under the impossibly vast night sky, I was reminded that Jesus only asks one yoke of me. And he promises that his yoke is an easy one. And God’s light yoke and grace helps me to extend grace to the people I work with, to meet my patients where they are. Under his yoke, it is okay not to only live by results, but instead plant seeds in obedience even when it feels like I’ll never see the fruits. Despite my time in the desert refreshing my mindset, I find I still need to come back to basics again and again. To remind myself what is true and how beautiful God is.