To someone scrambling for worth in the dark, the accolades were intoxicating. I soon guarded my professional identity as if it were a crust of bread during famine. I embraced a twisted asceticism that denied worldly comforts in favor of “doing the right thing.”

During my second year of surgical residency, I totaled my car on the way to work at four o’clock in the morning.

Exhaustion from late nights at the hospital weighed down my limbs as I slogged into Boston. I opened the windows to jolt myself awake, but the sting of the icy winter air faded quickly. As I neared the curve of an on-ramp, my tires lost their grip against a glaze of black ice. I flailed at the steering wheel as my car slid across the highway and careened into a barrier. The airbag punched me in the face. The sickening screech of contorted metal against concrete splintered the air before the car finally skidded to a halt.

I sat trembling for several minutes, my chest heaving, blood dripping from my nose. The road was empty. God had spared not only me, but also the dozen or so commuters with whom I usually shared that stretch of highway early in the morning.

Yet in those days, my mind was far from the things of God. Instead of thanking him and retreating home to nurse my concussion, I hitched a ride with the tow-truck driver. With my head throbbing, I trekked through two miles of snow and stumbled into the hospital — not to be evaluated, but to work.

Obsessed

Taking a day off from my residency would have generated grumblings at worst. But my obsession with work so enslaved me that I barreled through catastrophe to feed my fragile sense of self-importance. I risked lives in the process — first on the road, then through my befuddled meanderings in the hospital. My actions that day were reckless, dangerous, and stupid.

But they also solidified my reputation.

After the accident, colleagues and mentors applauded me as altruistic, selfless, and committed. They nicknamed me “Mighty Mouse.” Around corners, I overheard fellow residents remark about my dedication and strength. Overnight, I transformed from an insecure trainee who endlessly fumbled to the one whose allegiance to the job superseded concerns for herself.

To someone scrambling for worth in the dark, the accolades were intoxicating. I soon guarded my professional identity as if it were a crust of bread during famine. I embraced a twisted asceticism that denied worldly comforts in favor of “doing the right thing.” My idolatry climaxed in a night spent crammed under my desk at 37-weeks pregnant, napping after staying overnight to perform an operation the on-call surgeon could have completed. The next day, I spent hours in prodromal labor.

A Respectable Idol

During these years, I worked so feverishly, not to serve God, but to relish the approval it brought me — and because I feared the implications for my identity should the praise fall silent.

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