Career Wilderness

My current university job has been a great trial for me in a paradoxical sense - I am under-worked. I feel my research talents are wasted, opportunities to develop surgical skill is denied, and overall I have little to contribute in my current capacity. My hope of moving to our designated hospital where I may have the freedom and opportunity to fluorish has been dashed over and over again.

And all this, over the past year and a half, has plunged me into pits of depression - doubting my own worth and progress in life. I am only in my mid-30s and I feel like I'm ready for retirement!

In that context, I read today something from Rachel Remen. She says, 'Many times we can put them (suffering) behind us and get on with the rest of our lives. But.. some things are too big or too deep to do this, and we will have to leave important parts of ourselves behind if we treat them in this way. These are the places where wisdom begins to grow in us. It begins with suffering that we do not avoid or rationalize or put behind us. It starts with the realization that our loss, whatever it is, has become a part of us and has altered our lives so profoundly that we cannot go back to the way it was before.'

I am beginning to move from denial to acceptance. Life needs rebuilding and redefining. I want to believe that this period of career wilderness is refining me in ways I can't see. That God is chiseling ruthlessly away at my ambition, my drivenness and my restlesness. I am forced to ask, what IS really important to me and to God? Am I what I do, or do I do what I am? I am forced to face my deep unbelief that God could be in control and pry my controlling fingers into open hands. I am forced to confront my fears of becoming obsolete, irrelevant, useless, a vocational failure.

I believe that suffering/hunger is grace. I believe this wilderness is a gift to embrace. It is the panting without which the deer would not seek a stream. It is in my wilderness that I am compelled to ask the most important questions: who am I and who is my God?