Journal Entry: Thoughts about my future

Right now I am torn between two very different, yet possibly complimentary paths that I could go down for my career. The one that I am actively pursuing is vocational ministry. The other is the medical field, either as an EMT or even a doctor.

I am now an intern at the Rock and these first few days have been pretty good. Of course, I have done almost nothing, but it has been good none the less. I really like to listen to people talk about their lives and I absolutely love it when I get to see God work through them as they talk or when I get to give encouragement that is actually encouraging to them. There have been several times in my past when I have been sitting in church and have had the clear thought, "I want to preach."  As I go through the internship I will get to see whether or not this is something that I want to specifically devote most of my time to.

The other option is the medical field. I have my EMT certification which means that if someone were to hire me, I could start working on an ambulance right away. It would be nice to become a doctor because EMTs and Paramedics are extremely limited in what they are allowed to do, although it would take a whole lot of time and money to do that. Although I am doing the internship with The Rock, my longing to be in an ambulance (not as the patient) or working in a hospital or doing Search and Rescue work has continued. Today I read part of a book about checklists and medicine. After reading some of the stories in there, I was ready to go home and apply for American Ambulance right then and there. To complicate things further, a friend told me that he thought that  I shouldn't just do EMS, but do firefighting/Search and Rescue also. Now that is something that is on my mind.

Now I have the idea that I can join the two. Missions has never been a passion of mine, but God may change that someday. Instead, I was thinking that as an EMT or nurse or doctor, I could be a light in a very dark place. EMS is known for drug abuse and brokenness not only in the patients, but the medical providers too. One of the major causes is stress from the job. These people deal with things regularly that most people would probably go to counseling for if they dealt with it once, like cardiac arrest. Along with that, EMTs have to deal with long hours at random times during the day or night. It would be cool to show the love of Christ to fellow EMTs and for patients.

Although many people abuse EMS, I would be able to love even those people while taking them to the hospital. I can love them, I can pray for them. That would be a mission field that I want to go to. Depending on how the internship pans out, I could go for a Masters of Divinity (or not) and then head into the medical field.