Life choices

I've lately been pondering the direction of my life. Mostly because I have to make some major decisions about it in the next few months. While I don't have any great wisdom or insight into what's making me do what I do, I have had a great deal of peace and reassurance lately.

I want to be a general surgeon, or maybe a pediatric surgeon. Or maybe a river rafting guide or a million other things (that's the subject for another post: wow I hate closing doors). But as I've struggled through giving up things that are exquisitely important to me: time spent with friends, time spent in the outdoors, living in the place that I love, I have come to a peaceful resolution. My life was never intended to be lived as a container for pleasure and self-indulgence. It was meant to be lived as a container to be filled with love and poured out on a hurting world. I'm rediscovering that trusting in God to provide a constant flow of love is the only way to keep that container full. When I try to fill it up, it's amazing how many holes start popping up.

On a similar note, I'm realizing my own inability to meet my goals. I set goals like: be a good friend to these 5 people, and subsequently ignore, put off and occasionally offend those 5 people. I set goals like: pour everything I have into doing well on my surgery rotation, and miss my lofty target by inches, but that's enough that the fall really hurts. I make goals like: get enough sleep and find myself awake at 11pm playing frisbee golf with my cousin in the twilight.

Maybe I should stop trying to set and achieve goals and live life in all its fullness right now, thanking God for the peace that rests in my heart when I realize I'm incompetent, but so loved. And there's no way I can mess things up bad enough to lose that.

So I'm going to keep struggling through my failures, as prideful and unrealistic as those failures may be, and be content to be just another messed-up guy walking with a God who redeems messed-up guys.