So here’s my first “blog” entry. I’m writing this out of gratitude for the men, women, and children that I treat every day who give me so much more than they receive from me. 35 years ago, I re-entered college dreaming of becoming a physician. I wanted to help people get well by using all the resources and talents available – applying the best technology with all my mind and hands could give. That was my goal and my dream.
However… I didn’t end up going to medical school. I had two wonderful boys and a wife. And debt. And every day living that needed lots of attention and wouldn’t pay for itself. And ministry, serving and loving the people that God put in my life.
And so I lived life; I got a job, and then another, and then another. And then we had another son, and another. I tried to follow God, love my wife, and love my boys. I owned a big truck, and a fifth wheel, and a house with a view in Ladera. I lived the “American dream.” But there was something missing – I was always disappointed on the inside that I didn’t help people in the way I was so sure I could.
Don’t misunderstand me. I have always been gratefully passionate about being Megan’s husband and the father of my sons. God has always used them in mighty ways to mature me and inspire me. They are my everything. But my jobs? Whether this one or that one, here, or there – employee or owner – it just never seemed enough. Money didn’t satisfy.
Prestige didn’t satisfy. And recognition didn’t satisfy. I lived in this for many years, thinking “I should be grateful for all these blessings,” and “I don’t have to be fulfilled in a job,” and “how much more can I ask for than my wife and my boys?” Yet there was that call… that longing to help people that wouldn’t go away.
My Heavenly Father heals the sick. My earthly father was a surgeon, so he had his hand in that too. That drive, that compassion and that passion, is who I am and what I was made to be. I knew that, and I know it. And all it took was the right circumstance, at the right time, along with my incredible, wonderful, ever faithful wife Megan, and an open door from the Lord.
I’m not a doctor. I thank God that I am not because I know now that wouldn’t have been “it” either. I am a prosthetist. I make lower limb prosthetics for amputees. I help people walk again. I make people smile. I help kids run really fast. I tell people I will help them and won’t give up on them. I give them tools to help them live their lives to the fullest. I weep and mourn for those who die as if they were my own family; people like Peg, like Tanesha, and like Bill. Without exaggeration, I have the best job in the world. My patients are an incomprehensible blessing to me. They are patient with me, and they are grateful for me.
I am a prosthetist; this is who I was meant to be and what I was meant to do doing. I have been trained by the best, have a wonderful, godly staff, and the best business partner around (thanks, Stan). People come to me hopeful to walk. I treat them, hopeful that they will walk and even more hopeful that I can help them really live better. My biggest hope, however, is that God will use me to introduce Him to those who don’t yet know Him, and encourage those who do.
Megan and I did leave behind so much to take this path. We have a lot less earthly security and material things. She sacrificed really big for no other reason than her love for me; she believed it was what God wanted me to do and she believed that it would make me happy. That, by the way, is the true love, sacrifice and commitment of a godly wife. God has so blessed me with this incredible woman. My Pastor says that the key to finding your life is “through a wholesale abandonment to the will of God.” ATAPAT: Any Thing, Any Place, Any Time. Any Thing that you want, God, I will do. Any Place that you lead, Lord, I will follow. Any Time that you ask, Father, I will always and only be yours. Though it is not without sacrifice, it is well worth the cost. Missionary Jim Elliot says it a different way: “He is no fool who gives up what He cannot keep, to gain that which he cannot lose.”