Proving it again

The past few weeks have been a blur of activity, as we are simultaneously finishing out this academic year and beginning to prepare for a new one. Spare minutes have been spent filling out new hospital applications and new insurance applications, getting fingerprinted, getting my picture taken, and trying to round up all the piecemeal documentation that I've collected over the years of too many graduations to prove that I really am qualified to be on staff at the hospital.

Transitions, even good ones like starting a great job or having a child, are stressful. For people with an analytic bent like myself, it's a great opportunity for self-doubt. I feel like I have to prove myself again in each new situation, as though maybe I've been faking it all along and my real inadequacies will finally prove to be the most important thing about me in this new situation. It's not true, and it's ridiculous, but it's where my mind goes instantly.

What I am trying to remember is that I've already been through enough hard to know that it takes a lot to knock me down, and that it's God's job to be perfect, not mine. The probability of failures along the way threatens to take the joy out of each of these amazing gifts. Being a doctor. Being a mother. Being a wife. These are impossibly complex and exhausting roles in their own right, and there's no easy or perfect way to balance them.

I get discouraged when I can't do it all, when I forget that really, all of these beings are meant to flow out of my own being quiet before God, resting before His judgement of me and not determining my own short-sighted judgement of myself to be more accurate.

I'm trying to let it go this time, to let this transition happen while I rest and trust. I'm trying to focus not on my fears and self-assessments, but on the precious days I've been given with my husband, my daughter, and the gift of a platform to advocate for health and change in the lives of my patients.

This is going to be a great, amazing, life-filled new academic year. Now here's hoping I can get out of my own head enough to get the paperwork done.