***This is my final World Race blog!***
The setting I find myself in as I wake up and write this morning is a quiet apartment with clean carpet, a fridge full of food, a thermostat, and my own bathroom. I can’t decide if it feels like yesterday or a lifetime ago that I awoke to horses and buggies clopping down the road (Romania), freezing cold (Moldova), the sound of a river (Nepal), Muslim prayer calls (Tanzania), loud rap music (also Tanzania), laughing children (again, Tanzania), stifling heat (Thailand…and several other countries), the buzz of bugs around my face (Cambodia), or the honk of motos (Vietnam). While my current situation is more comfortable, I miss the heck out of those alternative ways of being awakened.
Ten months ago I finished the world race. Nine months and two weeks ago I began my first year of medical school. The contrast is striking.
I re-adjusted to life in the states quickly. I had to. Freak-outs were minimal, although a memorable one was when I went with my parents over Christmas break to use a gift card we had been given to an expensive restaurant. As I sat there and looked at the menu, all I could think about were the countless kids I had seen, played with, laughed with, and prayed for on the race that would likely never be able to experience a meal so extravagant. It took me all of four minutes to quietly ask my parents for the car keys and tell them that I would pick them up when they were done with the meal.
The world race definitely changed me. It made me more laid back about things that don’t matter that much and increased my awareness of both the miraculous and the tragic that is currently happening in our world. While many memories and lessons from the race have stuck with me, I’m not sure if any has been more applicable than this:
Choose Joy.
It’s a phrase that was so overstated on our trip that we began to say it sarcastically. “Oh yeah, choose joy today everybody.” (Not always easy on the days that were spent hot, sweaty, hungry, dirty, and homesick) But this year, when I doubted if I was in the right place, and when I was hating the amount of studying that school demanded, or when I was having massive community withdrawals and feeling lonely…choosing joy was so important. Happiness is a choice that we get to live out every day. Many people live the entirety of their lives without realizing that NOTHING will satisfy and make them happy outside of the love of God. So every morning we can try to fill ourselves up with whatever the world can offer, and ultimately miss attaining satisfaction, or we can CHOOSE to fill ourselves with the Lord and bask in the JOY that He brings.
…The attitude we choose to have is more important than the facts of the situation we are in…
…In between every stimulus and response, we have a choice. In that choice lies our character, our faith, and changes the core of who we are, for better or worse…
This year got better as it progressed and I got more comfortable with the intensity of school and built up a friend base…I’m so grateful that the Lord gave me the gift of time management, because balancing school and personal life has gone well. And the vision of what’s to come and the doors that are opened through being a physician are more than enough motivation. I want my life to be extraordinary. More accurately, I yearn for God to use my life in a way that is impactful for the Kingdom and brings Him glory. I want to heal physically, and I want to heal spiritually. I have no desire to live a “typical” life, I crave to live adventurously and fully.
In two months, on the same day that I got back from the race in 2012, I will finish my Pathology 2 final and with it my first year of medical school. I will have 4 glorious weeks of summer break to rejuvenate while rafting up at Noah’s Ark, then it’s on to Med school year 2.
And I’m so excited.
