More from the Mental Shelf: The Lord's "Plan"

Being on call is a bit of a surreal experience…at least it is for me. It can be feast or famine, meaning there can either be so much to get done that you seriously consider taking the batteries out of your pager, smashing the batteries and tossing them off the roof and then flushing the remaining pieces of your pager down the nearest toilet! Or it can be quiet -- really quiet…

If I was forced to choose between the two, I'd go for the quiet because at least that way, you can feel confident that none of your patients are actively trying to die on you. Quiet, however, does have its downsides. You are all alone in the hospital. All of the fellow residents who are your day-to-day social life are off enjoying their brief time away from work and you are just sitting there waiting to put out the next "fire" as we like to call the little (or not so little) emergencies that pop up throughout the day. The clock seems to enter some kind of relativistic time warp and slows down to an impossibly slow rate and the sound of yourself humming amplifies and starts to ring in your head!

Anyway, I'm on call right now and it is quiet. I should probably spend the time reading and studying, but I'm just not in the mood right now. I want a mental escape from medicine for a few minutes, so I figured I'd see how far I can get into another "installment".

As far as actual news, there is very little to report. I am on an inpatient rehab rotation. As I was telling my parents in a brief phone conversation last night (the first in almost 2 weeks…sorry!), I enjoy the content of this rotation. It is a nice mixture of basic internal medicine and rehab specific medicine, and is very applicable to my future career. But while I enjoy the content of this rotation, the execution of it can be frustrating. Medicare and to a lesser extent, private insurance companies create a LOT of busy work that gets dumped onto residents. The hours are long and largely spent documenting, documenting, documenting. A 5 minute conversation and exam with a patient takes 50 minutes of typing at a computer to document all of the bits and pieces that are required for reimbursement from the government and insurance companies…kind of silly if you ask me…Anyway, besides the copious note-writing, I really like what I'm doing and what I'm learning. I get more confident each day that I chose the right field and I'm very happy to be able to say that.

So, with that very short news update, I'll turn my attention to another "mental shelf" item that has been on my mind in recent weeks.

Not long ago, someone taught me the phrase "the doctrine of conference" which is the phenomenon that occurs when you listen to general conference, or sacrament meeting talks or whatever and the same theme seems to pop up everywhere. The talks themselves are rarely about that actual subject but somehow that is all you end up hearing…you know what I'm talking about! I'm pretty sure most of us have had something at least similar to this happen. It's always fun for me to go back and re-read the talks if possible because so rarely do they deal with the theme I got out of them originally, and it just makes me realize all the more that I must have needed to hear whatever it was that I heard!

Anyway, one of the items on my mental shelf that seemed to really pop up a lot during this most recent general conference and many other places in recent months is the idea of God having a purpose and direction -- a plan -- for my life and for the lives of each of His children.

I'm sure most people have had the experience of something occurring that was not in their own "plans" for themselves. Often, these experiences are hard to confront and leave us wondering what went "wrong". A prime example for me happened after my second year of medical school. After over 4 years of intense effort working to get into medical school (I can't possibly remember the number of late nights and early mornings, not to mention Friday and Saturday nights spent studying instead of playing) and then after 2 more years of exceptionally demanding (and exceptionally expensive) coursework in medical school I faced a test that is often considered the most important test in the career of a doctor. This test is used by residency programs to determine if they will consider you as a candidate to train at their program; and while it is not the only factor they use, it is well known that it is almost always the single most important factor. Doing well on this test is paramount. Doing poorly will alter what career options are made available. Anyway, my "plan" was to ace this test and have any career I wanted available for the asking. What happened was the opposite. I did not do nearly as well as I had planned on. In fact, after all was said and done many of the doors I had expected to be thrown open and strewn with rose pedals and red carpets were in fact closed. I remember a sense of panic and dread that after all that time, all that effort and all that money, I would end up with only a few meager options that did not appeal to me as others effortlessly eased themselves into the careers I craved and had worked so hard and so long for. To say that I was distraught would be the grossest of understatements...

I use this example because it doesn't involve anyone else. I am the only character involved in the story. However, it is my experience that usually these kind of experiences -- the ones where we deviate from our "plans" for ourselves, involve others. Whether it be a friendship, a marriage or dating relationship, or a sibling-sibling relationship that deviates from our intended course or in fact, goes horribly wrong -- our relationships with others provide prime areas of our lives for things to go differently than planned. Perhaps it is because the Lord gives His children agency and allows us to make choices that can affect ourselves and others. Statistically speaking, the more people with agency involved, the more opportunity for choices to be made that cause deviation from our planned course for ourselves. Regardless, we all experience this derailment from our plans from time to time.

What I struggled with the most after the experience with the test was trying to understand how this could possibly be in my interest. How could having more limited options be a good thing? I believed then and still do that God wants me to learn as much as I can so that I can be used in any variety of ways He needs in order to help build his kingdom and fulfill whatever work he has for me. Wasn't this a move in the opposite direction? I think many of life's setbacks leave us feeling this way. I'm just betting that after Joseph in the book of Genesis was sold into Egypt and thrown into prison he likely felt similar feelings. How could any good possibly come of this setback? And what grated all the more was hearing over and over from well-intentioned people, "God has a plan for you and everything will turn out OK". In the midst of my trial and frustration this sounded trite. I had worked and sweated and bled and prayed for this thing and it was not happening (I refer specifically to the test, but more broadly to anything that we have poured our hearts into only to have it go poorly in our estimation). I admit that it was very hard to feel like God had a plan and that everything was going to turn out OK. Under such circumstances I think it is easy to feel like you must have done something wrong or missed some important step (otherwise things would be working out the way you expected…right?)

As I've pulled this particular item off the shelf over and over and thought long and hard about it (and I can't pretend that in a few instances the Lord didn't just use a good friend being very blunt and direct to circumvent my density) what I've realized is that the Lord's plan for us -- his overarching purpose -- is our eternal life and salvation. He does have a plan for us, but the purpose of that plan is much larger in scope than our own little plans for our lives. The course of God's plan for us will likely differ from what we expect or what we think should happen. For example, if getting accepted to Harvard's MBA program is part of what is essential for us to have the opportunity to gain eternal life, it will happen…If getting called to an exotic far-away mission field is essential for our chance to gain eternal life, it will happen…If getting married before the age of 30 (or getting married at all in this life) is an essential part of the path toward eternal life, it will happen. If these things, or any infinite number of other scenarios that feel so so so important to us in the here and now are an essential part of God's plan to provide us the opportunity for eternal life, they will happen. If they are not an essential part, they may or may not happen. What we can rest assured of is that what needs to happen for us to have the opportunity for eternal life will be able to happen if we do our best and let it.

Some of the unexpected or unwanted twists of my life (which are almost without exception difficult at the time) now make sense in retrospect. I can now see why things needed to go the way they did, even though at the time it felt like an unmitigated disaster. Admittedly, other things still don't make sense -- I'm still trying to understand why my work, sweat, blood, tears and prayers did not result in what I wanted…why the Lord has lead my life in the way it has gone…(why did that relationship end? Why have my efforts gone unrecognized by the people who I've tried to love/impress/serve/work for?)…Having said that though, there are things that have become clearer with time (for example, Rehab medicine is a field I love and that will ultimately be very conducive to a good family life and life of service in the Lord's kingdom, but I never would have even thought of it as a possibility if my test score was high enough to get into that ultra-competitive surgical sub-specialty I coveted. I would have gone into that surgical field without a second thought and missed this career that I enjoy so much...)

An often quoted scripture is Romans 8:28, "All things work together for good to them that love God." As I kind of mentioned above, and to my shame, there have been times (and I still struggle with this feeling when things feel like they are spinning out of control) that this verse has felt simplistic. It is easy to feel this way when things are not going as anticipated -- you failed an important test, a person you love ends your relationship, you don't like your job (or you can't seem to find one at all), you're fighting with family or friends or you feel you have been betrayed and your trust is broken -- at these times it is hard to see how things are working out for your good. The challenge, I think, is to remember that the Lord's purpose and his plan, in other words, "His work and His glory" is the eternal life and salvation of his children (Moses 1:39). President Packer compared life to a 3 act plan. This life is the 2nd act, and the next life is the 3rd act when all things tie together and conclude in our very own "happily ever after". Parts of the 2nd act don't make any sense unless you know about the story in the 1st and 3rd acts. God is the director who knows the script from beginning to end. From His perspective the parts of the 2nd act that don't make sense to us, do make sense to Him. I think it is a knowledge of this principle that allowed Moroni (in his loneliness and solitude and after witnessing the complete destruction of his people) to write about "the grace of God" and being made "perfect in Christ" (Moroni 10:32-33).

Returning to Joseph in Egypt (or Alma and Amulek, or the sons of Mosiah, or the Anti-Nephi-Lehi's if you prefer, or any number of scriptural/church history figures), it ultimately became clear why he needed to spend those years in an Egyptian prison. Joseph received an answer in his lifetime. Sometimes that happens, and sometimes, I'm convinced, those answers do not come until the next life -- but I believe they will come eventually! A close friend shared a song with me when I was in the middle of several simultaneous deviations from the path I had planned for myself (that is another point I'm convinced of: rarely do deviations from the path we have planned for ourselves happen one at a time. Rather, several areas of our lives seem to fly apart all at once…or maybe its just me…who knows...) Anyway, I thought it was a beautiful song and sums up a lot of my thoughts (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwNibdCN8sQ).

Anyway, on that note I'll finish up. I am actually now post-call (somewhere in the middle of writing all this my call night became much busier and I had to go put out a bunch of "fires" and now it is the next afternoon and I'm going to try and take a nap before church starts). For anyone crazy enough to have read to the end of this, thanks for enduring another self-therapy session! I wish you all the best!

-Eric