A Short Reflection

As I look back, I can’t help but think about how sometimes God takes us down a road, away from some “thing” that we deep down believe we need to leave, only to find ourselves back at that same “thing” days/months/years later. In my case, I now know exactly why He did this. You may have caught earlier in one of my posts that I said “I quickly began to uncover my motives for becoming a doctor” at the end of high school. During that time and the first few years of college I realized that I wanted to go into medicine for all the wrong reasons. As the first college student in my immediate family, I wanted to really blow the top off and not just go to college…but go to college for as long as I could. I also wanted to make my parents proud because of all they had done for me. Finally, I knew the pay would be nice (little did I know that it would take a 12 year, ~$500,000 educational investment to get to that point). But this time, as I wrestled with switching to premed midway through my college experience, I realized that God completely remolded these motives. Sure, I still wanted to make proud those who had supported me and I knew the job/financial security would be nice, but this time I was passionate about pursuing medicine so that I could serve those who has no voice—specifically children and Spanish speakers. Also, my experiences with the Hispanic and urban communities birthed within me a desire to bring needed resources to those who are so under resourced in our country.

So that is my “enlightenment” in a nutshell. It’s amazing to think about how I’ve arrived where I am today and how faithful God has been to me. It’s also quite humorous trying to put all my thoughts into words because this whole processes was so much more than just words; I spent days and nights thinking about whether or not this was what God wanted for my life. I worried whether or not I could take, and succeeded in, all the science courses required of me since I hadn’t taken a science class in almost 3 years. But as I have learned in my few years on this earth, God is faithful. If He places something on our hearts and we have the courage to follow that lead, He will provide.