Responding to the face of God

Another day with crazy patients today.... yelling at me, getting fresh with me, at least I didn't have anyone throw anything at me or pee on my shoes. (Yes, that has actually happened).
I've been studying like crazy recently, and in the next week I expect to be studying even more, because I have my last 2 exams coming up. After these exams I'm done writing exams for UHSA. The only ones I'll have to write are my board licensing exams (big 8-10 hour monsters), one of which will be coming up in a few short months. In January I'm going to a little town in Illinois called Champaign to take another course, and then in the Spring I'm likely heading off the Atlanta, Georgia. These aren't definite firm plans, but since people are always asking me what I'm doing, it's helpful to at least have something to say. (“What do you mean, you have no idea where you're going?”)
I've been discouraged the last few months about my school, and not comfortable settling into my role as a doctor-to-be. This week I went out to TWU, where I studied chemistry for 4 years, and visited some of my old professors. My favorite teacher of all time, Dr. Van Dyke, who taught me organic and polymer chemistry, was delighted to see me and we chatted for a while before he had to rush off to an interview. I was heading back towards my car and he was still in his interview, and suddenly there was this little voice inside me that said, Heather, wait for him, because there is something he needs to say to you.
I dawdled around in the bookstore for awhile until he finished and then I went back to his office with him. We sat surrounded by bookshelves full of chemistry textbooks and talked about life, about school, about old memories and new ones that were being made.
“Heather,” he told me, “There's a piece of advice I want to give you. I don't think you will have a problem with this, but I want to tell you anyway.”
He told me how many doctors he had met had lost the human touch, they became so wrapped up in being professional and doing a good job that they forgot who they were, and who the patient sitting in front of them was. He looked at me with his kind eyes and said,
“This is what you tell them: I am not Dr. Davies. I am a person, like yourself, who responds to the face of God. I will share with you what I know and what I've learned, in the hopes that it can help you. Never be too professional to touch your patients, and to really get personal with them.”
I felt tears welling up in my eyes. At that moment I knew how true it was, what he was saying. It is so easy in this world to put a label on ourselves, or on other people. That man is a doctor. That woman is a librarian. She's a swimming instructor. She's a stay-at-home mom. He's a farmer.
And we put false labels on ourselves. I'm a nurse. I'm a student. I'm a chemist. I'm a doctor.
But what are we, really? Deep down inside, what are you?
You are a person- a living human being- created in God's image, specially created to respond to the face of God. Your meaning and purpose, my meaning and purpose, is found only in how I relate to God. Deep down inside I'm not a doctor, although that's fine if people call me that, but really I'm Heather Davies, I'm a child of God, and I've studied all this stuff about medicine with the hopes that I may be able to share it with other people and help them find healing. Knowledge is intended to serve other people... as an expression of their worth in God's sight.
It's hard to see myself the way God sees me. Some days I feel intelligent and beautiful, other days I feel pretty darn low. (Nursing seems to be a continual blow to my self-esteem!) But it helps to remember, who am I in Christ? And why am I doing this?
I challenge you to ask yourself those questions, in relation to your job. Have you lost touch with your 'patients'? (With your co-workers, your customers, your family?)Why has God given you the skills or the knowledge or the opportunities he has? How does it change the way you work to know that you are responding to the face of God, and out of that, sharing love with those people around you?