Angelus News | February 23, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 4

WITH GRACE
DR. GRAZIE POZO CHRISTIE
How I found ‘real work’
If there is one thing written into the
reality of our human experience, it
is the necessity for work.
On this earth, if man is to have a
shelter, he’ll have to put up a roof. If
he’s to eat, he’ll have to farm or hunt.
If he doesn’t want to freeze, he’ll have
to build a fire. There is no living without
sweating, no existence without
effort. This is actually an excellent
thing, because it’s hard to imagine
anything more spiritually and morally
unhealthy than an idle life, or one
devoted to the pursuit of pleasure. We
are not built for that, but for the satisfaction
of pulling order out of chaos,
and of seeing our plans give fruit.
We can overwork, however, and that
SHUTTERSTOCK
can have disastrous consequences.
When my third child was 11 months
old, I had a nervous breakdown. One
early morning I went to work at the
small community hospital where I
was a radiologist. I had left my chubby
baby in his sleep-damp pajamas sitting
in the highchair, deliciously babbling
and laughing. The kindergartner and
the preschooler were cheerfully eating
their cereal, half-dressed and uncombed.
Trading that bright kitchen
for my lonely dark room in the cold
hospital with its nauseating smell of
disinfectant was too much for me. I
put my head on my desk and wept.
I cried for days after that, entirely at
sea about the arrangements of my life.
I had decided early on to be a
doctor, filled with enthusiasm for
what I believe is one of the noblest
of vocations. But I married a fellow
student in my third year of medical
school and our first baby was born
nine months later. I went straight into
residency, choosing radiology for its
relatively easy training period. It might
have been easy, if I didn’t have a baby
and then another. Our third was born
during my last year and I went straight
to work at a hospital as soon as I was
done. I aimed to “have it all.”
I was miserable at the hospital. All
those years of study and extreme
effort, the longing for the children,
which was always paining me, all to
end up sitting in front of a computer
interpreting images and speaking into
a recorder nine hours a day. I have to
confess, with shame, that I was horrid
to those around me — short-tempered,
impatient, quick to complain
and criticize. I kept up my professionalism
as far as my patients and my
radiology work, but I was bitter and
made my poor co-workers pay for it.
It was during that time that a friend
invited me to an Opus Dei retreat.
She had given me a prayer card of its
founder, St. Josemaría Escrivá, which
described Opus Dei as a “way of
sanctification in daily work and in the
fulfillment of the Christian’s ordinary
duties.” You can see why I was drawn
to “the Work.”
There I was, walking a dark path in
which my ordinary duties were taking
me straight to hell, not heaven. I knew
I was all wrong, and here was hope
— that I could learn to be a light to
others, even in difficult circumstances,
and that my work, if not pleasant
in itself, could be made beautiful by
being offered to God as a prayer.
26 • ANGELUS • February 23, 2024