Not My Bus

(There's a tiny bit of my brain that thinks I may have told this story previously on this blog, but I don't have the energy to find it, so if I have, I'm telling it again.)

A few years ago, a friend was visiting me in San Francisco. We were headed downtown and needed to catch the bus. I lived half a block from the bus stop, and as we stepped outside, we saw the bus barrel past. I groaned, as I still had to lock my door and I knew there was no way we'd make it. I said with despair, "That was our bus!" and as we watched it continue down the street, my friend replied simply, "No, it wasn't."

Perhaps it was meant as a joke, but those words resonated with me. How many times in our lives do we lament a missed opportunity, rather than see the positives that might come from it? And so "not my bus" has become my motto whenever things don't turn out as I had hoped or planned. Because if I don't end up catching the bus I had hoped to catch, then it must mean it wasn't my bus to catch in the first place.

Many of you know that I applied for a very competitive fellowship earlier this spring. It is in a field about which I am extremely passionate, and would keep me at this hospital which I love working in so very much. The team of people I would work with would be incredible - leaders in the field - and the work would be more rewarding than anything I have done before.

Today I received notice that I did not get this fellowship.

And as sick and as sad as I feel right now, I have to believe that this fellowship was not my bus... that there is something else out there I am supposed to be doing... that there is some bigger reason for this not working out as I had planned or hoped.

And so I trust in that. Despite my disappointment, I trust in that. And I look forward to discovering the bus out there that is mine, and seeing where it will take me.