Buckle up.

Wow. I have honestly been terrified of this season. Anticipating it like someone anticipates a colonoscopy (of which I have done many but never had done, but imagine is the same). I knew this season would feel unmoored. For the past five years I have known my role, been defined by it. I lived, breathed, laughed, cried, bled my job as a general surgeon. I went from being the go-to person on a surgery team to learning French and being able to communicate with a waitress at a five-year-old level. For years I was Dr. Clough, most recently the chief of a surgery team; here, I am just Launa, the bubbly loud American who will painstakingly struggle through the phrase “I would like another coffee please.”

It’s hard to explain the feeling of leaving a place where you are a valued and integral part of a team and becoming a random person on the sidewalk who maybe accidentally says “young” instead of “yellow” because, let me tell you, the words sound exactly the same.

It has been an adjustment and a humbling experience. I think about what an incredible gift God has given me to live for a while in the “in-between”. After five years of residency where my life was completely dictated by my job, I have now stepped out into a world where that part of me is completely irrelevant, at least for now.

While it has been hard to step away because at times I feel useless, I have also discovered how important it actually may be to do this hard work and get uncomfortable. For five years, I was one thing. There was a Launa before that, but I barely remember her. My value was so intertwined with being a resident, how my patients saw me, how my attendings saw me, how well I performed that operation, how quickly I could write my notes. And that was it. All of a sudden, that is completely gone. So now I have the gift of meeting myself again, rediscovering who I am separate from what I do for a job. It’s definitely scary, and I have absolutely felt lost in the past month, wondering if I mean anything alone in this foreign country. But what I have found is that I still like myself. I have found that my inherent value is in being God’s beloved, and that is not conditional on being a good surgeon.