We give ourselves more credit than we give Jesus

Perhaps the deepest underlying personal factor in Helen’s tension
was the need she felt to do her very best and, if possible, to be the very
best. God called her to Africa where that was not possible. There were
continuing lessons for her: learning to treat malaria by symptoms
rather than with prescribed lab tests, having to operate without having
been trained as a surgeon, needing to make bricks rather than spending
the day with patients.

Perhaps that is an issue for some of us—struggling with the reality
that God has called us to do less than we want to do or less than
what we believe is best. That can happen in any setting. For me, it’s
been especially true in my years with small children—“I got a college
degree for this?” Maybe our problem is the way we see ourselves.
Maybe we think more highly of ourselves than we ought.

If anyone was too good to die, it was Jesus. If anyone should have
done greater things than walking dusty roads and talking with people
too dense to understand him, it was Jesus. In Philippians 3, the passage
that headlines Helen’s story, is the verse, “that I may know him and
the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming
like him in his death” (verse 10). When God called Helen to less than
she expected, he was helping her become like Christ, rather than like
the best doctor or missionary she knew of. Who is it that we want to
be like?

_Noel Piper on Helen Rosevere
"Faithful Women and their Extraordinary God"