Monday, January 7

Uncertainty, or, 2019: Midnight Tracks

I love planners; I'm a bit obsessed with them, really.  I've always had one.  I think by nature I'm a plan-maker, someone who takes the long view.  Years of practice and training have taken my penchant for journalling and turned me into a list-maker as well.  At this point, if I don't have a formal planner, I eventually clutter up my life with piles of to-do lists and thought fragments.  This year, when it became fatiguing to write, I tried to abandon my paper planner for digital alternatives that I can talk into, but it's not the same.  So a 2019 paper one it is.  Usually I get something with monthly and weekly pages, and room for notes - pretty standard.  My planner choice* is different this time, though.  For the first time, I want a goal-setting planner, I think for several reasons.



For years, I have lacked a lot of control over which goals I pursue and how.  It's part and parcel of medical training; if you want to be a doctor, your life is going to look a particular way for a long time.  Someone else tells you how much you are going to work, what you're going to work on, etc, and that process doesn't leave much room for other things.  Even when I got off the training treadmill, I was working quite a bit.  But with everything that happened this past year I made the decision to finally work less, and I've scaled back a lot the past six months.  It's freed up a lot of time that I'm not sure what to do with.  I don't want to get stuck in a rut so early.  I like the sense of satisfaction I get from choosing a project and completing it, or taking aim at a challenge and conquering it.

If I'm being perfectly honest with myself, though, that's not the only reason. I want control back.  Remember when I said I feel like 2018 happened to me?  I don't want that for a second year in a row.  And there's so much about this coming year I can't possibly control that I feel the need to control what I can and make sure I do it right.  Which brings us back around to the uncertainty of my circumstances.

I don't know much about how things will go this next year, and that scares me.  Don't give me any crap about how "technically no one knows what the future holds" - most people can reasonably predict how the coming year will go, barring catastrophe.  But where will I be in six months?  Will I still be able to safely, confidently work in emergency medicine?  If not, what do I do for work that won't make me miserable?  Will I still have the use of my hands?  How will my personal functioning change?  How will our finances be affected?  Speaking of finances, my husband starts a new job this year with uncertain income, a big change from his previous salaried position.  So neither of us can really be the safety net for the other.  So... there's no safety net.

We are launching into this thing, ready or not, no parachute, no seatbelts.

Which is not okay with me!  I cannot plan my way out of this uncertainty!  I have no way to make sure I know what's going to happen!  And anything could go wrong!

...It's probably time to take a deep breath.

Okay, a few deep breaths.

This planner can certainly help me dream and set some tangible goals.  But it can't take away my grief over my condition or fear of the unknown.  It can't give me courage to face the future.  Only God can do that.  And only if I let Him.

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I woke up this morning with a song in my heart. It's called "Wherever You Go" by Audrey Assad, and the first verse goes like this:

There's a train leaving your heart tonight
There's a silence inside your head
You're running
You're running from me
Down the tracks on a midnight line
There's a red moon in the sky
You're running
You're running from me...

I didn't know at first why that song kept playing through my mind, but it lay on me heavily all morning, letting me know it was more than just another melody stuck in my head. Then I realised. It's a song about running from God in the face of suffering, and the further suffering that comes from that, and how He pursues us faithfully, always ready for us to come back to Him. It took that song and a sermon on Ezekiel 37 for the true extent of my crushing anxiety to become clear to me. It's hard for me to accept that God may not spare me more pain; that's not a promise any Christian is given. It's hard for me to trust that His ways are good even when they're painful.

But what, like my ways are better?

God is not a fallible, limited human; he's God. And He loves me, not in the flawed way a human loves, but with a perfect, selfless, unfailing love. How could I not trust Him?

Today, for the first time in several months, I looked at all my worries and merely felt content. "God will take care of me," I thought.

And He will.

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*If you're wondering what I chose, I eventually decided on one of those construct-your-own planners from Inkwell Press.  Pricey, yes, but in theory reusable, and it had the modules I wanted.  We'll see how I feel about it.

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