Feet Firm and Heart Open

I always wanted to be a nurse. To be someone that could be Jesus to people in their darkest moments, whether it be cancer, failing organs, surgeries, strokes, psychiatric issues, etc. But if I am being honest, I am way less of a light than I ought to be sometimes. I have such a hard time with “those patients” that seem like they’re determined to be dissatisfied no matter what you do or offer to do for them. “Those patients” that clearly don’t want to be in the hospital but are there on their own accord. I have found I really struggle with being compassionate to some people.

Lately I have been so convicted of my own need to complain and my critical mindset. How can I glorify God through my bad attitude and my pride? How can I really care for people when they’re at their worst if I self-determine that their worst isn’t bad enough? And really, what satisfaction will I really get in the long run for getting my way that one time? Exactly.

But even while working on a better attitude, I started feeling like I wasn’t equipped to care for people where I am at. I started feeling like the work I was doing was fruitful or really making a difference in someone’s overall care or quality of life.

Then there was 179.

Here at the hospital for two weeks because of a firing defibrillator, this patient hated every single person that has stepped foot into his room. He yelled at the physical therapists, screamed racial slurs to the doctors, adamantly refused IV access and medications on several occasions, told the nurses they were in his room way too long after ten minutes…and he even listed profanities at me when I woke him up for his insulin. His quality of life was questionable, what with his failing kidneys post-transplant, heart failure, weakness, and non-compliance.

But for some reason, he tolerated me. I won’t dare say he liked me, because we definitely had some tension one of the first nights I spent with him. But he trusted me. He refused medications except for when I offered them. He allowed me to change the PICC dressing that was a week old when he yelled at anyone else who even offered. He listened to me. He even joked with me, and smiled!

To most people, this probably seems insignificant. He probably won’t think about me ever again when he is discharged. Really, in the grand scheme of things, this is but a small blip in the realm of patient care and existence. But to me, it mattered. Why? Because whatever walls this patient had up came down when I walked into the room, and I would like to think that it made his care and health just a tad better.

Before this post becomes about my own accomplishments, I want to make my point. By no means was this of my own doing. I am not nicer, more compassionate, more patient, etc. than any other nurse on my unit. Let me be clear: this is all God. This patient technically had no reason to even be on our unit based on his needs. But I know that God placed him here when He did because it was going to stretch me, and to glorify Himself of course. When I found out I was getting this patient, I complained for hours that he didn’t belong here and I didn’t feel equipped to care for him. Hah. How could I forget that God gives us things we aren’t equipped to do on purpose, so we depend on Him.

I am so humbled to have been able to care for this man, to enter into his darkness of loneliness and declining health. I am humbled that I was chosen to be the one nurse he trusted. I don’t know why it was me. But I am glad it was me. Because even if he never thinks about me another day in his life, I will never forget him, and I will never stop praying for him to know Jesus’ love before he leaves this world.

It’s Ok to not be Ok.

Yesterday, I went to the monthly Prayer and Worship night at church, and a guy came for (what I think was) the first time. As someone finished praising God for our ability to come to Him as we are, with our raw brokenness, this guy spoke up. He spoke about his recent, almost daily, thoughts of suicide, despite how successful the world saw him to be. Instinctively we surrounded him in a prayer pit, encouraging him that God will use this darkness in his life for good, and that it is simply “okay to not be okay”.

Quite honestly, I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. How wrong is it that as Christians we often act like we always have everything together and as if because we have God’s joy, there is no such thing as deserts or seasons of darkness. It is such a lie.

Our God is a God that loves when we wrestle with Him, because it’s those times when we truly know what it is like to encounter the Lord and learn how to love Him. In Genesis 31, we learn that Jacob had EVERYTHING, and yet when he wrestled with God, he asked for His blessing, because he learned the true meaning of despair: to have everything and have it not be enough.

I long for this man to know that God. The God that leads us into deserts because it’s through those deserts that we learn how much we need God’s presence in our lives and that absolutely nothing will fulfill that void in our souls like He can. The God that uses every darkness to glorify Himself and reshape us to be more like Him. The God that sees us for who we can be…for our truest potential, rather than for our brokenness…for how we are.

But instead, like Mark Batterson says in his book If, “we define ourselves by what we’ve done wrong instead of defining ourselves by what Christ has done right. Or we define ourselves by the hurtful things done to us, instead of what Christ has done for us” (30).

We are always seeing ourselves as either broken or as victims. But God does not see us that way! He sees us as ambassadors, as priests, as intercessors, and as His beloved children. He sees past what the world is determined to see in all of us, and no matter what, He NEVER gives up on us. Why? Because the price was already paid. It’s done! We need to stop seeing Jesus as if He is still on the cross and start seeing Him as a resurrected king sitting on His throne, while it is our sins and brokenness that is now held here in His place.

I know that God was very intentional about getting that man there that night. I know that it was providence for him to be there the night we prayed about how it is okay to not be okay. He needed to know that. He needed to know that whatever he was dealing with, God had a use for it; that God does not allow us to suffer without a purpose. He needed to know that something good was going to come out of it, but that right now, it is okay that it totally sucks. Because God loves it when we come to Him with rawness and honesty. God does not see us as victims. He looks at each of us and says, ” you are more than a conqueror, And with Christ’s help, there is nothing you cannot do, nothing you cannot become” (Mark Batterson, 214).

Memory-all Day

Growing up, I’ve always understood Memorial Day to have been started to honor the soldiers whose lives had been sacrificed for our freedom. We are taught in school that these brave men and women fought to end slavery and on behalf of freedom and equality. But the more I come to learn about racism segregation and white privelage, the more my white-privelaged world is shattered.

Earlier today I participated in a particularly controversial conversation around this, and my thoughts and feelings are still left unsettled by the whole exchange. How easy it is for us to take a situation like Memorial Day and use it to exalt White people and allow ourselves to turn a blind eye to racial injustice. How quick we are to consider honoring the White people we always have honored and remembering the Black people we often forget mutually exclusive. As if one could not possibly exist with the other. As if they are not both equally important to the Kingdom and God’s plan for it. It breaks my heart.

During this discussion, I learned where Memorial Day got its original roots from. According to Ben Becker (Memorial Day and its roots), Memorial Day was originally a holiday celebrated by Black residents in South Carolina after the Civil War. Originally called “Decoration Day,” this day was one where former Black slaves would celebrate emancipation and honor the soldiers that fought so hard for it. But of course, like so many Black traditions, the holiday became much broader and slowly turned to emphasize the many lives of White individuals that fought for us, slowly pushing Black soldiers to the back burner.

I can’t help but think of all the soldiers that were never recognized because of the color of their skin. I couldn’t help but be ashamed of our “savior complex”…this desire to exalt ourselves as White individuals that “fought to end slavery”, when we really practiced racial segregation and racial via within the military itself. And I can’t stop thinking about how the system CONTINUES to fail these people by allowing racism and by shoving these pains aside.

I had the privilege of being a part of a campus ministry that chose to highlight racial reconciliation as a value in their chapter. I am blessed to have learned so much about racial injustice and white privilege and to stand along others in that fight. Something I myself struggle with is wishing we could just “turn it off” and just not talk about it so much, because it is painful and I always feel ashamed. But that’s usually when the Lord humbles me. When we choose to ignore the issues around us, to allow ourselves to become frustrated that this issue is being drilled into our heads, we are exercising that white privilege. Part of our privilege is just our ability to not think about it. But for others, it is the very life they live. They can’t escape the racism and the prejudice and the hate they experience just for the color of their skin.

I have to ask. Who are we to say “I am tired of hearing about this,” when we can not possibly understand their every day struggles. We all struggle with identity. Asking ourselves who we truly are, and ultimately learning to love ourselves because Christ does. How hard it just be to truly believe that when the world tells you you’re worthless. How painful it must be to be a Black soldier on this day when the world forgets about you, and White people take credit for what you did.

In no way do I mean to dishonor those that fought for us. Every day I appreciate our freedoms to express ourselves and have open discussions like this. I mourn for wives that lost husbands and children that lost parents and parents that lost children. It breaks my heart yet simultaneously fills my heart when I see people gathering at the cemetery, or when I see pictures of Arlington National Cemetery. I could not imagine what it would be like to risk your life for your country. To me, that is such a perfect way that we get to lay our lives down for our brothers and sisters. That is truly loving as Christ loves.

I just pray that one day, we can celebrate ALL lives sacrificed. After all, it is Memory-All Day.