Who am I becoming?

I recently met up with one of the first friends I made at university. I can’t remember exactly how we met. She was a medical student like me and her love for the Lord was strong and conspicuous and so our friendship grew, all those years ago. One of the most vivid memories I have of those early days of getting to know one another, was a trip the various bookstores in Bristol to make some decisions about which medical textbooks were worth investing in and which we could borrow from the library. It was comforting to meet someone who held a similar trepidation to me with regards to starting university and indeed, medicine– that unique and bizarre course that would have such significant consequences on our respective lives. Back then it was easy to answer the question: who am I becoming? Forty plus hours a week, give or take were spent attending lectures, being in the lab, examining cadavers, seeing patients with our allocated GP or studying in the library or at halls, all with one focus in mind; the desire to be a doctor, a physician, a healer, a carer. How I think about those former days with nostalgia and also, an air of comedy at my naivety and green shoot enthusiasm for all that was set before me. I wonder what I would say to that young, eighteen-year old as she arrived in Bristol, believing the fulfilling of her aspirational dreams to be a doctor would fulfil many of her ambition and dreams.

It’s hard to look back on those former days with the benefit of hindsight and not regret a little. Regret not choosing a course that would broaden my mind in ways medicine never could, regret not having more confidence in who I was and who I was becoming and thus avoid the perils of freshers’ week and all it’s associations, regret not being more adventurous, choosing to join societies and go on trips that it would be much harder to go one now. I don’t regret what I did do, the choices I did make; only the ones I didn’t. Funny that, isn’t it? With a finite amount of time, you are of course forced to make some choices. Choices about what is going to dictate your time and what isn’t, what needs committing to and what does not and I am at peace with the choices I made. I wouldn’t change them even now but it is interesting to ponder what my life would be like, if I had made different choices. Would I still be working in the NHS? Would I be in this country and even this continent? Would I still be in love with the Lord? Would I be married or even a mother? These are things I can never know for sure but what I do know, is that the choices that tender, eighteen-year old medical student made back in the Autumn of 2003, mean that today I love the Lord immensely, I know His provision and presence in my life and I believe in His goodness no matter what because deep in the depths of my being, I know He is good. And for this very reason, I a thankful to the Andrea of yesteryear and the choices she made. There are choices she made, that I’d rather she hadn’t but there are choices she made that I am so profoundly thankful that she did make and I know, that if she had not, I would not be the person I am today.

It may have been a couple of years since I last saw this once, former, close university friend but the sincerity of a true friendship is often revealed when time has passed and reunited, side by side, you’re able to pick up where you left off, forgetting the time between and starting again in the present day; choosing to love one another for who you knew them to be in days gone by and equally, choosing to love them for who they are now and who they are becoming. What a gift friendship is! How gracious is our Lord that he bestowed it’s beauties on us and modelled them in the trinity so wonderfully. I have so much more to learn in friendship. I think I will be learning how to give and receive friendship until my dying day. I hope I can be an active learner. In fifteen years, I want to be able to look back on the friendships I am in now with the same nostalgia I have done here. With a thankful repose and a reflective heart, I want to be able to rejoice with thanksgiving over them and even still be enjoying some of them when I’m forty-eight. My oh my, what a tremendous thought.