By Jason Schoonover ’09, content specialist
November 25, 2019 | 11:30 a.m.
Jonathan Eliason ’92 says the lessons he learned at Bethel still guide him today in his career as a vascular surgeon at the University of Michigan.
Often while scrubbing his hands before a difficult surgery, Dr. Jonathan Eliason ’92 prays: “Lord, take control of this outcome, take control of my efforts, and I place my trust in you, not in myself.”
Eliason, a professor and vascular surgeon at the University of Michigan, says he’s experienced the Lord guiding his journey time and time again. When alarms warned of possible mortar attacks while he served as a military surgeon in Iraq, Eliason says, “The Lord just gave me total peace.” He felt the Lord’s hand again when he collaborated with a former military colleague to create a life-saving catheter used on soldiers and in trauma centers. “It’s just a real blessing from the Lord to go from a doodle on a napkin when we were at the VA hospital talking, to a device that actually helps people,” Eliason says. “It’s been a pretty amazing journey.”
And Eliason traces the roots of his career to Bethel, where his faith flourished and where his professors inspired him to pursue his medical school dreams.
Bethel Roots
Despite deep family ties to Bethel, it almost wasn’t a part of Eliason’s journey. His father, Leland Eliason ’62, S’66, served Bethel Seminary for more than 25 years as a faculty member, assistant to the dean, and as executive director and provost. However, Eliason’s aspirations to play football at the highest collegiate level led him to a California college for his freshman year. But he endured a lonely year with few church and faith connections.
He remembers driving his scooter up a dune near Pismo Beach, California, where he contemplated his future. “I was by myself, I was lonely, the stars were out, and I just felt like the Lord was saying, ‘Jon, this isn’t the place for you, and you’ve hidden from me long enough,’” he says. He returned to his apartment and called his father and said he wanted to transfer to Bethel. “I think that was an important moment where I felt the Lord’s direction, and I also felt him pursuing me,” he says.
Eliason rekindled his faith at Bethel, where he felt empowered to make his faith his own for the first time. “I definitely saw the foundation for my personal faith really begin at Bethel,” he says. Eliason, a defensive end and linebacker, joined Bethel’s football team during Head Coach Steve Johnson’s first year at Bethel. He embraced the coaches’ and players’ goals of living out their faith first, loving one another through that faith, and then winning football games.
Eliason also benefitted from the mentorship of Department of Biological Sciences professors like C. Weldon Jones, who pushed Eliason toward his goal to attend medical school. “He really challenged me to use the potential that God had given me,” he says. “He recognized in me some lazy attitudes and Laissez-faire ways of handling school and just challenged me to do more.” Jones and other professors helped spark Eliason’s academic energy. “Bethel’s always had a great set of science programs,” he says. “And they had a great track record for placing students in medical school.”
Serving His Country
After his first year of medical school, Eliason joined the Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP), a military scholarship program that offers year-for-year scholarships. He received tuition assistance for three years of medical school in return for three years of military service as a surgeon. During his general surgery residency at Vanderbilt University, Eliason gravitated toward vascular surgery. He calls it a specialty area focused on blood vessels outside of the heart. “It’s kind of a plumber type job,” Eliason jokes.
After starting his military service at Wilford Hall Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, Eliason spent more than four months in 2006 and 2007 deployed in Balad, Iraq, at the former Iraqi National Air Force Base with the U.S. Air Force during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Along with performing more extensive, open surgeries, Eliason was part of a team exploring how to bring minimally-invasive surgeries to a combat zone.
I feel like the Lord engineered it, because I can’t really imagine how it would have all come together without His hand involved in it.
— Dr. Jonathan Eliason ’92Bethel’s Department of Biological Sciences gives students the space and tools to investigate the wonder and intricacies of life. Students explore the grand diversity of living things and embrace our call to care for all of creation through experiences in the lab, field, and classroom.
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