Written the last day of residency (June 29)

And so, here it is – the last day of my medical training. After all of the time, energy, effort, sacrifice, victories, successes, failures, and losses of these eleven years. What does it mean to come to the end of something like this – it feels like reaching the end of my life because for at least thirty years this is the direction I have been heading – to say I’m done seems so ethereal.

I know life’s not over – far from it! Yet, to close a door that for so long has remained opened. . . To walk through this door today and out into an unknown as vast and broad as being an attending physician. Wow! If I were walking alone, and if I had not grown to accept the goodness of my Companion’s heart (as demonstrated by how he has shaped me to this point), I would probably have found a way to stay in the safety of this educational experience – but I know that such a choice is not for me. I may return to the residency setting but not out of fear but out of calling.

The view through this door appears broad and the path turns sharply and quickly out of my view, obscured by the shadows of the unknown. It’s like a thick undergrowth beneath the woods just beyond this small clearing surrounding my exit? Or is it an entrance, a way into a world to be explored? Why do my thoughts take this turn? Is there a lesson here greater than a transition in life? Could this be what it will be like to exit (or enter) through the door of death one day?

Leaving the familiar behind, the formerly comfortable to enter a world I’ve only heard about from those who have gone before – a world Jesus knows well – one that He has shaped for me, unique to me – common to others who have walked this way before but not the same – a future experience shaped by and through my previous experiences – my interpretation, appreciation, and awareness of my new world is a direct result of my journey to this point. Could this be what Heaven is like?

Prior to this, through the years I have caught an occasional whiff of what it might be like to be done with my training, to be a REAL physician. Those times encouraged me in my journey but also served to enhance a growing dissatisfaction with my current state of being still in the process of residency. But it was this dissatisfaction that compelled me on to complete the journey. Is it not the same with Heaven? Don’t I catch a whiff of the fragrance in the experiences here on earth? The brilliance of colors in the sunset last evening, the words of a friend spoken at the right time, the presence of something (Someone) with me as I settle into a new understanding of how I am made. Each of these, an encouragement in the process while also intensifying my longings for more.

And so, I pass through the door . . .