Called to Heal

On January 23, 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell walked across the stage at Geneva Medical College in upstate New York and received her Doctor of Medicine degree — the first ever granted to a woman in the United States. She graduated first in her class.

The path to that moment had been lined with closed doors. Twenty-nine medical schools rejected her application. Geneva's faculty, unsure what to do with a female applicant, put the decision to a vote among the all-male student body. The young men, assuming the whole thing was a prank from a rival school, voted unanimously to admit her. What began as a joke became a turning point in American medicine.

Blackwell could have accepted the rejections. She could have pursued teaching, a field considered appropriate for women at the time. Instead, she pressed forward, convinced that women deserved physicians who understood their lives. After earning her degree, she went on to establish the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children in 1857, training a new generation of female doctors.

Mordecai's words to Esther echo across the centuries: "Who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?" God does not place callings in our hearts by accident. The barriers we face are not proof that we have chosen the wrong path — they may be confirmation that we are walking exactly where He intends. When the Almighty assigns a purpose, no locked door has the final word.