To Heaven and Back (5 page)

I was given the job position and later was jokingly asked if I had been able to read the minds of the interviewers. One of the people on the panel told me that before meeting me, they had already interviewed a number of candidates for the position. They asked each candidate the same question about which book they had most recently read, and each one responded with the name of some sort of intellectually challenging book that seemed unrealistic, considering each candidate was in the midst of surgical training. Just before I walked in they had exasperatedly wished among themselves that a candidate, for once, would just say that the last book he or she had read was nothing but fantasy.

The Los Angeles County Hospital is part of the USC system and provides care to the indigent population. Throughout my training, I cared for many people who existed on the fringe of society, those that were incarcerated, and others who were just trying the best they could to make their part of the world better for all. Similar to my observations in the mountains of Mexico, it was clear that nothing separates these people, or
any
people, from God’s
promises or love if they just ask that God’s door be opened to them.

I certainly learned a great deal during my time at USC and one life lesson that I still think about from time to time came from an unlikely source. The old Los Angeles County Hospital had one central bank of elevators serving thirteen floors of constant activity. Each elevator had its own operator, who organized the occupants and pushed the buttons for their requested floors. The operators were usually quite territorial and swatted away the hands of people who tried to push the buttons themselves. It was a thankless job, as everyone was in a hurry and none of the young doctors, including me, understood why someone else was needed to push the buttons.

There was one elevator operator who arrived by 6
A.M.
each day with a large smile on her face and obvious joy in her heart. She was always like a beacon of light in that dark and gloomy building, and many of us would wait longer just to ride in her elevator. She was old, wizened and uneducated. She was often treated rudely. But she never let anyone or anything darken her day, and she shared her joy with anyone who cared to receive it.

Over my years at USC, I developed respect, admiration, and a little envy for this elderly operator’s world view. One day I asked her how she was always able to maintain such a rosy outlook. She told me that her joy and strength came from the
Lord. She knew the only part of life she could control was her reaction to it, so she chose to react with love.

I was reminded of her comments many years later when I asked one of the operating room nurses in the hospital where I worked in Wyoming how she could possibly work for her current supervisor and administrator (both of whom were making life quite difficult for the operating room nurses). She just looked at me and said, “I don’t work for them.” When I questioned her further, she replied, “I don’t work for her (the current operating room director) or for him (the administrator of the hospital). I work for God.”

Point made.

By the summer of 1991, I was thirty-three years old, had a husband, one child, Willie, and was about to give birth to our second child, Eliot. I had completed twelve years of high school, four years of college, four years of medical school, one and a half years of general surgery training, five years of orthopedic surgery training, and one and a half years of specialty training in trauma and spinal surgery. Mentally, emotionally, and professionally—on every level—I was more than ready to begin my “real” life. Within the context of our rapidly expanding family, I felt I could finally set my own goals and control my own future. I accepted
a position as the director of spinal surgery at the University of Southern California, as I enjoyed teaching and enjoyed the complexity of the surgical cases that are common in a university setting.

The university environment was exciting, stimulating, and ego gratifying. My position there was entirely satisfying to me for several years, and it seemed that my life was reasonably well balanced. With the help of Dawn, our delightful live-in nanny, who nurtured our kids during the day, Bill and I were both able to freely pursue our careers during the work-week. Our evenings and weekends were completely devoted to spending time with our children, and we savored every minute. We lived by the ocean, so often took them to the beach or sailing. We had barbeques in the sand, visited the museums, and taught them how to ride bicycles. Bill’s parents, who lived nearby, would visit frequently, and the kids adored them. On the weekends, we would often drive several hours to our cabin in the mountains north of Los Angeles. There we would kayak, build forts with the kids, swim, and just relax. I would say that we were quite content with the way our lives were evolving.

The time demands on me to teach, develop a medical practice, perform research, publish scientific papers, attend meetings, and commute more than two hours each day began to take its toll after several years. Rather than spending my best time and energy nurturing my relationship with God, my marriage, and encouraging my children, I began to feel that my job claimed most of my life.
My children were beginning to blossom into the people they would become, and I did not want to merely be a distant observer. My long commute to downtown Los Angeles meant that I was rarely able to attend daytime school functions, and could never attend on short notice. This also meant that I had very little time or energy to think about the role God played in my life or how I fit into God’s plan. I had made a commitment to keep God in the foreground of my life and I did not feel like I was fulfilling this adequately.

I find this to be a commonly shared reality of young people and young families. To paraphrase what my minister once wrote: “We are constantly bombarded by those who want a piece of us; seeking our time, talents, and energy. Sometimes we weary of those demands and, at times, we feel God’s call on our lives as just another pull when we already feel pulled apart.”

Another commonly shared reality, to which many, many women can attest, is the difficulty of being a working mother. Today, women are told they can be anything and achieve everything while simultaneously being great wives, great mothers, and great people. Women have convinced themselves that they can and should be “super-women,” which is exactly what they would have to be in order to do everything well. Reality is always a compromise. There are only twenty-four hours in a day and everyone must prioritize their work responsibilities, family needs, and personal
desires in order to decide where and how to make sacrifices. Appropriately prioritizing these various aspects of life is challenging since the right balance point is constantly shifting as a woman moves from one phase of life to another. I think it is healthy and essential to re-evaluate this balancing act occasionally and make changes when needed.

Early in 1993, after I gave birth to our third child, Betsy, I began to reflect on the course of my life (What else is there to do during the many long hours of nighttime baby feeding?). I clearly saw God’s fingerprints and influence in my earlier experiences with surviving the car crash as a teen, my service in Mexico, the scuba diving incident in the cave, and elsewhere, and began to wonder whether or not I was truly following God’s plan for my life. We attended the United Methodist Church, attracted by their doctrinal social creed that demonstrates a commitment to environmental stewardship, human rights, justice, and seeking peace in the world, but I didn’t think that was enough. The spiritual welfare of my children was of critical importance to me and I wanted them not only to attend church services, but also to make their own commitment to God and experience a daily relationship with a living God.

I realized that my life was beginning to tip out of balance. Not only was I becoming increasingly convinced that if I stayed in academic practice, I could not prioritize my life the way I wanted it to
be, but the secular environment of the university increasingly began to weigh on me. Not only did I want balance, I wanted the various aspects of my life to be fully integrated. My spiritual yearnings did not match the desire for ego, power, and/or money that most of the other faculty members seemed to have. Despite feeling more and more disjointed, I nonetheless found it difficult to leave my job. I knew what to expect in that environment, and was not sure that the situation would be any different or better elsewhere. For me, like for most people, a known situation, however unpleasant, is often more comfortable and easier to accept than the fear of an unknown one.

In hindsight, I can see many ways in which God had been calling to me and asking me to change the direction of my life. Because I didn’t listen, He had to shout.

New surgeons began to join our orthopaedic department and this resulted in my working environment becoming increasingly less compatible with my vision for my life. One day in 1996, my chairman hired a new surgeon to join my section of the department. I had raised concerns about his qualifications, but my chairman had been bamboozled by this surgeon’s previous employers. This new surgeon, who was on the verge of retirement, had an impressive résumé, but I found him to be languid and dull. We were definitely not compatible and I questioned my ability to spend the necessary time with him.

Not long after his arrival, we spent a family vacation in Northern Michigan. Bill’s grandfather was a professional cellist who taught each summer at the Interlochen Arts Academy, so Bill’s mother had spent most of her summers enjoying this part of Michigan. Not surprisingly, Bill and his brothers had also spent their youthful summers in Interlochen. In keeping with this generational tradition, Bill, his parents, our children, and I traveled to Interlochen and had a delightful time swimming in the lake, picking blueberries, rolling down the sand dunes, and sharing many laughs. One afternoon, we stopped in to visit the Traverse City Pie Company. This was a new business and I had discovered that the owner, Denise, was a friend I had known when we were both in high school. She and I had been on the swim team together and had shared our Christian faith. Bill returned to the cabin with our kids, leaving Denise and me to spend the warm afternoon chatting and eating pie. As we caught up on our lives, we talked about many things, including my high school commitment to Christ.

After she drove me back to my family’s little cottage, I contemplated my loving husband and our beautiful children, including Peter, our fourth child who was just beginning to form in my womb. I reflected on my conversation with Denise and my continuing desires for complete integration of my life. Until that moment, it seemed that I had done a lot of thinking and contemplating with regard to my spirituality, my desire to put God and my family
at the top of my priority list, and so on, but not much in the way of action.

This part of the story is probably starting to sound familiar. You know the one I am talking about … thinking about something, making a commitment to change, failing in the commitment, making a new commitment to change, failing again. On and on the cycle goes. Fortunately for all of us, God is very, very patient. He will continue calling to us, He will shout when He must, and He will always welcome us back with loving, nonjudgmental arms.

At that moment, although I felt like the prodigal son asking for yet another chance, I renewed my commitment to living a Christ-centered life and renewed my commitment to placing the needs of my family above those of my career. I had no idea just what this meant for me until I attended an unusually boring faculty meeting after returning to Los Angeles.

Rather than listening to the tedious agenda, I spent this time reflecting on each faculty member present. As I considered the people in the room, I thought about what I knew of each person’s life. Other than my chairman, most of the men were divorced, having affairs, were heavy drinkers, or had kids with their own brand of problems. I then considered my own life and knew that I didn’t want my future to be in this sort of environment.

That evening as I made my final decision to leave the University, I was simultaneously overcome with grief and exhilaration. I knew I would be sorry to leave my chairman, as I had great respect and fondness for him and did not want to disappoint him, but I was exhilarated by the idea of being free from the bonds of my job. I was desperate to leave and eagerly called my chairman the next morning, asking him how soon I could be released from my obligations.

I left the university within a month, joined my husband’s orthopaedic group, and was deeply grateful to God for shouting at me when I would not listen to His calling. Looking back, I was able to recognize the series of events and “coincidences” that represented the increasingly insistent calling of God for me to make this decision.