“Oh, that’s like the coolest thing ever.”
I could totally imagine my seventeen-year self looking at this picture- flushing with envy at the UNICEF vest, the Swazi mahiya (wrap dress), the field visit as a consultant- dying to be part of the action-
-yet feeling small, unimportant.
Lost.
For years, I felt that way.
A misfit in medical school, I scraped through every exam with my gut in my mouth. Never knowing if I’d pass. I had severe depression, anxiety, an eating disorder. Even when I graduated, I watched my peers excel while I floundered through every specialist rotation. I dropped out of residency, went to Uganda for a year and felt like I ruined my career.
I’d planned to be an eye surgeon and now that dream was destroyed. Gone forever.
The more I did Medicine, the more I felt my life was a mistake.
Filled with shame, my narrative became- I am not good enough. I don’t belong. I am a failure.
Eighteen years later, on the cusp of turning 35, I remember my 17-year old self who wrote on her university application- “I hope I can do something meaningful for the World Health Organization or UN someday”- a dream I had nearly forgotten-
-and marvel at the road God takes us through.
It is not easy, nor quick- but it is hopeful.
If I had pursued my own dream, this never would have happened.
Just days ago, I discovered accidentally that I was the first deployee to be jointly deployed by WHO, GOARN and UNICEF as a crisis communication consultant for the COVID-19 crisis. When I finally said yes, I did not realize this.
When the opportunity came, I first said no. I can’t. I’m a fraud. I’ll be exposed.
There in the tin shack, in 35-degrees boiling heat on the dusty concrete, I discovered what I was created for- because He “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world” (Eph 4:1).
All this while- through the ups and downs, He knew what He was doing. My detour, my “second best”, was His plan all this while.
If you’re feeling lost, ashamed and alone, struggling to belong, know this- You are not a mistake.
Finding what you are made for is a lifelong discovery. It took me 18 years and counting.
If you feel like you don’t belong, it’s because it’s probably true.
You were made for another world. But hang in there. He is writing your story. Don’t truncate the plot.
I promise it won’t be easy, but it’ll be a story worth telling.
Keep dreaming. Keep holding on.
You’re precious. ❤️
