Follow the Fear
The street and walkways of the town square were bustling with the joyful energy of our town’s Fall festival. Powdered sugar fell like snow down the front of my shirt as I enjoyed what would no doubt be the first of several funnel cakes. I scanned the crowd for friends as I dusted myself off. It was then that my eye caught her awkward movement. Across the street I saw an older woman wobbling, her feet seeming to defy her commands. She teetered left, then right. Then as if trying to step into the air, she lurched forward off the curb, landing with a sickening thud. She must be dead. I froze...but wait, I know what to do! Like a quickdraw cowboy, I drew my wallet from my right rear pocket, snapping the Velcro closure free in one swift snap of my wrist. I slid my crisp new CPR card out from the protected pocket shared by my newly acquired driver’s permit. Then I stood frozen as fear suddenly surged within me. I couldn’t remember what to do. I stared at the card willing it to shout out instructions. By the time I looked back up, she was sit up talking with her courageous saviors. I sheepishly slid the card back into my wallet and shuffled away, hoping nobody had taken notice of my paralysis. I made a commitment to myself that next time I would ready.
Twenty-one years later that I found myself flying into northern Iraq with the Army’s 10th Special Forces Group as part of an Air Force Special Operations Surgical Team (SOST) tasked with providing far forward trauma care to our nation’s warriors. In the twenty years since then, my work as an attending emergency medicine physician has taken me from the desert mountains of Navajo Nation through the halls of clinical academia, into the streets of urban medical centers, then coming to rest in all the complexity of private practice medicine.
Through those years I have cared for tens of thousands of patients. As I reflect back over my career, I feel I can state with confidence that I honored my commitment to “be ready.” I became expert in the field of emergency medicine, and I have been privileged to train others in their journey to do the same. Yes, I believe that I have cared well for many. But what I imagined at 16 was that in being ready, I would never again have to face the shame of insufficiency and fear. But in truth I have been afraid. I have doubted. I have trembled. I have been wrong. I have cried. I have wrestled through the night with images of death in my head, asking myself, did I do the right thing? As a physician, the frailties of my humanity have been visibly knit into every expression of my care. Though I have felt the vulnerability of this, it has been central to my capacity to care for my patients with humility and compassion. One of my favorite compliments offered to me in my nearly 30 years of medical practice was when a patient looked me in the eye and said, “Hey, you’re one of us!”
What has been made clear to me through time is that there is no room for shame in any of our experiences of fear, doubt and uncertainty, for they do not carry the authority for such an indictment. These counselors of the soul, rather, are subject to us, meant to measure, guide, redirect and inspire! My question for you is this: Have you granted fear the authority to stop you from moving towards a longing of your heart? Perhaps it is time consider whether fear’s true value was to lend insight into the necessary preparation and/or effort to satisfy that longing.