doctor's life support

29th September: Cause for Bitterness

See to it... that no root of bitterness springs up. Hebrews 12:15

I particularly wanted to do this man's hydrocoele. He had been cancelled from our list and put onto that of another 'firm'. I arranged my work, asked the senior registrar to put the case late on the list, and the nurses to bleep me when the patient left the ward. Later in the afternoon, surprised at not yet being called, I went to the ward to find the patient just returning from the theatre. Twenty minutes later my opposite number met me, gleefully telling me they had deliberately not called me.

Three months before the start of the course my application was accepted. On the day I had planned to ask my consultant to sign my study leave form I heard that my place had been given to another doctor who had only just applied -- four weeks after the closing date. No one supported my objection, and he did the course.

How easy to be bitter about two such deliberate meannesses, to dwell on them, to imagine stinging replies to portray my hurt at their underhandedness. But the remarks are never made, and the anger and frustration are turned inwards -- to destroy myself.

How can I deal with these situations? Turn the other cheek? repeatedly? Make excuses for them, telling myself I am trying to understand why they did it? Fly off the handle and speak my mind -- and a bit more? In the short term my own response has largely been due to the part of me that reacts rapidly and usually thoughtlessly. Confessed and forgiven, those moments still take some living down. I can only trust that God is dealing with this part of me too, and that one day, maybe only in heaven, I shall have real control.

Sometimes the good which God brings out of these experiences is not at first apparent. It was thirteen years before God's plan for Joseph became clear. Moreover, we learn from his story that God's plan for our individual lives is much better than anything we had hoped for or can imagine.

O Lord, help me to bring the hurts, disappointments and frustrations of
everyday life as my living sacrifice to you that I may never be embittered
by them but through them prove your good and acceptable and perfect plan for
my life, a plan that can never be frustrated by other people.

Further reading: Phil 3:7-14.

PIMA.